International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Twelve-Volume Set: Volume 3

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY EDITORS-IN-CHIEF ROB KITCHIN National Institute of Regional and Spatial ...

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INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

ROB KITCHIN National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) John Hume Building, National University of Ireland Maynooth, County Kildare Ireland

NIGEL THRIFT University House, University of Warwick Coventry UK

AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

ROB KITCHIN National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) John Hume Building, National University of Ireland Maynooth, County Kildare Ireland

NIGEL THRIFT University House, University of Warwick Coventry UK

AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO

Elsevier Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, The Netherlands Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK First edition 2009 Copyright & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone (+44) (0) 1865 843830; fax (+44) (0) 1865 853333; email: [email protected]. Alternatively, you can submit your request online by visiting the Elsevier web site at http://elsevier.com/locate/permissions, and selecting Obtaining permission to use Elsevier material Notice No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent veriﬁcation of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2007927349 ISBN: 978-0-08-044914-2 For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at elsevierdirect.com

Printed and bound in Italy 09 10 11 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SENIOR EDITORS Noel Castree Geography Discipline Arthur Lewis Building School of Environment and Development The University of Manchester Manchester UK Mike Crang Department of Geography Durham University Science Laboratories Durham UK Mona Domosh Department of Geography Dartmouth College Hanover, NH USA

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SECTION EDITORS Kay Anderson Centre for Cultural Research University of Western Sydney Penrith South DC, NSW, Sydney Australia Paul Cloke Department of Geography University of Exeter Exeter UK Jeremy Crampton Department of Geosciences Georgia State University Atlanta, GA USA Brian Graham University of Ulster Coleraine, N. Ireland UK Costis Hadjimichalis Department of Geography Harokopio University Athens Greece

Loretta Lees Cities Research Group Department of Geography King’s College London London UK Sara McLafferty Department of Geography University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign Urbana, IL USA Anssi Paasi Department of Geography University of Oulu Linnanmaa Oulu Finland Chris Philo Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences University of Glasgow Glasgow UK

Phil Hubbard Department of Geography University of Loughborough Loughborough UK

James Sidaway School of Geography University of Plymouth Plymouth UK

Robin Kearns School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Sciences The University of Auckland Auckland New Zealand

Katie Willis Department of Geography Royal Holloway, University of London Egham UK

Mei-Po Kwan Department of Geography The Ohio State University Columbus, OH USA

Henry Yeung Department of Geography National University of Singapore Singapore

vii

GUIDE TO USE OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA

Structure of the Encyclopedia The material in the Encyclopedia is arranged as a series of articles in alphabetical order. There are four features to help you easily ﬁnd the topic you’re interested in: an alphabetical contents list, a subject classiﬁcation index, cross references and a full subject index.

1. Alphabetical Contents List The alphabetical contents list, which appears at the front of the ﬁrst volume, lists the entries in the order that they appear in the Encyclopedia. It includes both the volume number and the page number of each entry.

2. Subject Classiﬁcation Index This index appears at the start of Volume 1 and groups entries under subject headings that reﬂect the broad themes of Human Geography. This index is useful for making quick connections between entries and locating the relevant entry for a topic that is covered in more than one article.

3. Cross-references All of the entries in the Encyclopedia have been exten sively cross referenced. The cross references which ap pear at the end of an entry, serve three different functions: i.

To indicate if a topic is discussed in greater detail elsewhere

ii. To draw the readers attention to parallel discussions in other entries iii. To indicate material that broadens the discussion Example The following list of cross references appears at the end of the entry IMPERIALISM, CULTURAL See also: Colonialism I; Colonialism II; Dependency; First World; Globalization, Cultural; Hegemony; Imperialistic Geographies; Neocolonialism; Orientalism; Postcolonia lism/Postcolonial Geographies; Poststructuralism/Post structuralist Geographies; Third World. Here you will ﬁnd examples of all three functions of the cross reference list: a topic discussed in greater detail elsewhere (e.g., Orientalism), parallel discussion in other entries (Imperialistic Geographies) and reference to en tries that broaden the discussion (e.g. Postcolonialism/ Postcolonial Geographies).

4. Index The index includes page numbers for quick reference to the information you’re looking for. The index entries differentiate between references to a whole entry, a part of an entry, and a table or ﬁgure.

5. Contributors At the start of each volume there is list of the authors who contributed to that volume.

ix

CONTRIBUTORS

VOLUME 1 M B Aalbers Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

J Crush University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa

G J Andrews McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

C D’Ignazio The Institute for Inﬁnitely Small Things, Waltham, MA, USA

H Asche University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany J O Bærenholdt Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark J Battersby-Lennard University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa J Beall London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

R J Das York University, Toronto, ON, Canada J Davidson Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada C Delano-Smith University of London, London, UK V Desai Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

K B Beesley Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada

J D Dewsbury Bristol University, Bristol, UK

K Besio University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hilo, HI, USA

J Dittmer University college London, London, UK

M Brayshay University of Plymouth, Devon, UK

H Fassmann Universita¨t Wien, Vienna, Austria

M M Breitbart Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA

C Gibson University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

S Brentjes Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain

J R Gold Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

John R Bryson The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

O Groza Universitatea Al.I Cuza, Iasi, Romania

H Buller University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

S W Hardwick University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

K A Butler University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA

M Harrower University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA

K W Butzer University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

H Hazen Macalester College, St Paul, MN, USA

S Chaturvedi Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

C Hughes Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

xi

xii

Contributors

G T Jo´hannesson University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

M Pacione University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

L Johnston University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

C Potter Imperial College London, London, UK

R J P Kain University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

R B Potter University of Reading, Reading, UK

R B Kent California State University, Northridge, Northridge, CA, USA

G Prevelakis University of Pantheon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Paris, France

M Kurtz Open University, Ottawa, ON, Canada M Kurtz Open University, Milton Keynes, UK R W Lake Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA R Le Heron The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand A A Lehtinen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland Y Leung The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

M Purcell University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA D Ramsey Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada S Reimer University of Southampton, Southampton, UK J Renes Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands, and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands V Rey Ecole Normale Supe´rieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon, France M-C Robic CNRS, Paris, France

S Lloyd-Evans University of Reading, Reading, UK

U Rossi University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

J Lossau Humboldt-Universita¨t zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

P Routledge University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

A Malmberg Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

J Siemer University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada

T Marsden Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

M W Skinner Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada

F Martinelli Universita` ‘Mediterranea’ di Reggio Calabria, Reggio di Calabria, Italy

T Slater University of Edinburgh, Bristol, UK

L Maxey Swansea University, Wales, UK D P McCormack Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

L M Takahashi University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA A Taylor University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia

P Merlin

M E Thomas The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

G A Myers University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

T M Vowles University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, USA

R P Neumann Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

A M Warnes University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK

T Oakes University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

D Wastl-Walter University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

U Oslender University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

A Watson University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Contributors C Wilbert Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK

S D Withers University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

M Williams Oxford University, Oxford, UK

N M Yantzi Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Canada

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VOLUME 2 H Aay Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

V Chouinard McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

S C Aitken San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA and National Technical Norwegian University, Trondheim, Norway

H Couclelis University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

L Albrechts Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium G J Andrews McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada N Ansell Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK D Atkinson University of Hull, Hull, UK M Batty University College London, London, UK J Baxter University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada M Be´dard Universite´ du Que´bec a` Montre´al, Montre´al, QC, Canada D Bell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK D Bennett Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

A Currah Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK R J Das York University, Toronto, ON, Canada S Davoudi Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK E Delaney US Deparment of the Interior, National Park Service, Washington, DC, USA J Dempsey University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada S J Elliott McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada V Filippakopoulou National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece W Friesen The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand C Gibson University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

U Best Technische Universita¨t Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany

A L Grifﬁn University of New South Wales – ADFA, Canberra, ACT, Australia

J Binnie Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

J W Harrington, Jr. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

C R Bryant Universite´ de Montre´al, Montre´al, QC, Canada

M Hassler Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

R Capello Milan Polytechnic, Milan, Italy

G Helms University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

R Carvalho Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

J J Holloway Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

G Chapman Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

A Hughes Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

L Cheshire The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

M Jay University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

S Chilvers York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

N Kliot University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

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Contributors

H Koskela University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

C Philo University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

J Krygier Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH, USA

A C Pratt London School of Economics, London, UK

M S Kumar Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

S Punch University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

B Lambregts University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

B Ramı´rez Universidad Auto´noma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Mexico

D Leslie University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada A Lester University of Sussex, Brighton, UK N Lewis The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand K D Lilley Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK T W Luke Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA L J C Ma University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA J Malczewski University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada D Martin University of Southampton, Southampton, UK E J McCann Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada C McIlwaine Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK K J Mee University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia S Millington Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK C J A Mitchell University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada D R Montello University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA M Morad London South Bank University, London, UK B Nakos National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

G A Rice University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland K Robinson McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada R Rundstrom University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA S Rycroft University of Sussex, Brighton, UK N Schuurman Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada J P Sharp University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK D Sibley University of Leeds, Leeds, UK T Skelton National University of Singapore, Singapore F Smith Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK J Sundberg University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada J C Sweeney National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland W S Tang Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China T Tasan-Kok Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan, The Netherlands J-C Thill University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

D O’Sullivan The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

J Tima´r Center for Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Be´ke´scsaba, Hungary

J R Oppong University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

P M Torrens Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

M Phillips University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

G Waitt University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Contributors J L Waters University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

F Wray Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

D Wood Raleigh, NC, USA

H van der Wusten Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

M Woods Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

C Young Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

VOLUME 3 T J Barnes University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

S Dall’erba University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

C Barnett The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

J Davidson Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

J Barnett University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

A Davies Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

C J Barrow Swansea University, Swansea, UK

C Dixon London Metropolitan University, London, UK

G de Bastion Deutsche Gesellschaft fu¨r Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Eschborn, Germany

R Dowling Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

J V Beaverstock University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK S Bell University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada L D Berg University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada L Bondi University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK A Bonnett Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

S Eden University of Hull, Hull, UK S J Elliott McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada G A Elmes West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA H Ernste Radboud University, Nijmegan, The Netherlands J Evans McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

L A Brown Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

J R Faulconbridge Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

R A Butlin University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

D A Fennell Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada

A Cameron University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

S Gopal Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

C Cocklin James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia

S Hall University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

M P Conzen University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

E Hartwick Framingham State College, Framingham, MA, USA

K E Corey Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

S Healy Worcester State College, Worcester, MA, USA

T Cresswell Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

M Hess University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

C D’Alessandro-Scarpari Universite´ Lumie`re Lyon 2, Lyon, France

J Holloway Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

xv

xvi

Contributors

T Jazeel University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK R Johnston University of Bristol, Bristol, UK O Jones CCRI, Cheltenham, UK A Kalogeressis University of Macedonia, Greece A Kavanagh National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland M C Keane St Mary’s University College, Belfast, UK M Keating European University Institute, Florence, Italy J Kneale University College London, London, UK A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada T Koch University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada B Korf University of Zu¨rich – Irchel, Zu¨rich, Switzerland M S Kumar Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK M Kuus University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada L Labrianidis University of Macedonia, Greece A Latham University College London, London, UK E Laurier University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK A A Lehtinen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

M Low London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK K McCracken Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia K McKittrick Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada P McManus The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia P Meth University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK J J Metz Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY, USA B E Montz Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA D P Nally University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK P M O’Neill University of Western Sydney, Parramatta, NSW, Australia C Pattie University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK N A Phelps University College London, London, UK D R Phillips Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong C Philo University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK A Pike Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK G H Pirie University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa P Plummer University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

J I Leib Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

M Power University of Durham, Durham, UK

N Lewis University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

P Rees University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

W Li Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

S A Royle Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

D Linehan University College Cork, Cork, Republic of Ireland

A Schærstro¨m Kometva¨gen, Ta¨by, Sweden

L Lo York University, Toronto, ON Canada

R Scheyvens Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

R Longhurst University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

J W Scott University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

Contributors D Seamon Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

M Tykkyla¨inen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

E Sheppard University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

T Unwin University of London, Egham, UK

David Simon University of London, Egham, UK

E Warwick King’s College London, London, UK

V F S Sit University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

H D Watts University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK

E Skop The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO, USA L Smith Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

D Weiner West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

C Sneddon Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, USA

J Wiles University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

H Southall University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

K D Willis Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

J Sowers Missouri State University, Springﬁeld, MO, USA

M I Wilson Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

E Stam Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

R Wilton McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

D Storey University of Worcester, Worcester, UK

H Winlow Bath Spa University, Bath, UK

D Sui Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA J Sundberg University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

K E Till Virginia Tech University, Alexandria, VA, USA G A Tobin University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA S W Trimble University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA S Turner McGill University, Montre´al, QC, Canada

M Webber University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia G R Webster University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA

M Smith Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

E Swyngedouw Manchester University, Manchester, UK

M Watts UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

C W J Withers University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK F Wu Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK N Xiao The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA I Yamada University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA B S A Yeoh National University of Singapore, Singapore O Yiftachel Ben Gurion University, Beer-sheva, Israel E K Z Zygmunt University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland

VOLUME 4 D Abbott University of Derby, Derby, UK

P Adey Keele University, Keele, UK

xvii

xviii

Contributors

P J Atkins Durham University, Durham, UK R Atkinson University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia G Benko Universite´ Panthe´on-Sorbonne, Paris, France P Bennett University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK L D Berg University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada M Birkin University of Leeds, Leeds, UK S Blandy University of Leeds, Leeds, UK F J Bosco San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA S Bowlby University of Reading, Reading, UK H Bradley Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Republic of Ireland P Breathnach National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland J Briggs University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK J E Castro Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK J Chapman University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK O Z Chaudhry University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK G L Clark Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK G P Clarke University of Leeds, Leeds, UK K C Clarke University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA P Claval

´ Crowley U National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Co Kildare, Republic of Ireland C Desbiens Universite´ Laval, Que´bec City, QC, Canada P Dicken University of Manchester, Manchester, UK G Dijkink University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands I Docherty University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK M Duckham University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia M Duffy University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia S Elwood University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA M F Goodchild University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA D Goodman University of California – Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA M K Goodman King’s College London, London, UK M Goodwin University of Exeter, Exeter, UK L van Grunsven Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands J Ha¨kli University of Tampere, Finland E Hall University of Dundee, Dundee, UK D J Hammel University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA B Hendrikx Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands M Hess University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Universite´ de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France

J Hessler Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA

N M Coe University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

R Hudson Durham University, Durham, UK

M Cope University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

M Huxley University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK

David Crouch University of Derby, Derby, UK

L C Johnson Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia

Contributors R Kaiser University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA

S M Otterstrom Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

A Kealy University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

A Pa´ez McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

M J Kraak International Institute of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, Enschede, The Netherlands

M Pavlovskaya Hunter College – CUNY, New York, NY, USA

A Lagendijk Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands N S Lam Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA A Latham UCL, London, UK J Lee The University of Seoul, Seoul, South Korea Y Leung The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong A Leyshon University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK J Little University of Exeter, Exeter, UK J Lovering Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK C Lukinbeal Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA W A Mackaness University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK A Maddrell University of the West of England, Bristol, UK J C Marshallw University of Oxford, Oxford, UK D R Meyer Brown University, Providence, RI, USA V Miller University of Kent, Canterbury, UK C M Moreno San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA K M Morin Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA R Morrill University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA L Muscara` Universita` del Molise, Isernia, Campobasso, Italy T Nyerges University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA w

Deceased, 22 August 2007.

xix

Linda Peake York University, Toronto, ON, Canada M Phillips University of Leicester, Leicester, UK J Pollard Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK L Price Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK B Pritchard University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia M Purvis University of Leeds, Leeds, UK M Raco King’s College London, London, UK K N Rankin University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada J Raper City University, London, UK L T Raynolds Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA P Reuber University of Mu¨nster, Mu¨nster, Germany P Richardson University of Oxford, Oxford, UK S M Roberts University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA U Rossi University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy G Rushton The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA R B Sarma Cotton College, Guwahati, India A J Secor University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA J Shaw University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK T Slater University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK K Strauss Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

xx

Contributors

M Taylor Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Republic of Ireland

S J Whatmore University of Oxford, Oxford, UK D C Wheeler Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

M Taylor University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

J Wiles University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

D Thien California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

G Williams University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK

J Tivers Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

K D Willis Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

Y Underhill-Sem University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand J Wallace University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

D Wo´jcik Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

F Wang Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

X Yao University of Georgia, Atlanta, GA, USA

B Warf University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

H W-c Yeung National University of Singapore, Singapore

VOLUME 5 A G Aguilar Universidad Nacional Auto´noma de Me´xico, Mexico City, Mexico J Agyeman Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA K Falconer Al-Hindi University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA N AlSayyad University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA G J Ashworth University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands S Asthana University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK P Barnett University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand R Barnett University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand D Bell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK J D Bohland Hollins University, Roanoke, VA, USA T Brown Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK I H Burnley University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia E Cameron Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

E P Campuzano Instituto Polite´cnico Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico F Celata University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza’’, Rome, Italy M Chapin Center for the Support of Native Lands, Arlington, VA, USA K Chapman University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK S Chaturvedi Panjab University, Chandigarh, India E Clark Lund University, Lund, Sweden N Collins-Kreiner University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel J Corbett University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada G DeVerteuil University of Southampton, Southampton, UK M Dodge University of Manchester, Manchester, UK D Dorling University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK P J Duffy National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

Contributors

xxi

J Dunn St Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada

R Hudson University of Durham, Durham, UK

R Fish University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

J S Humphreys Monash University, Bendigo, VIC, Australia

R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

R D Jacobson University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

R Foley NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

J P Jones III University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

N Gallent University College London, London, UK

R Jones Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA, Australia

C Gibson University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

C Kelly University of Greenwich, London, UK

L Gibson Land and People Information Sharing Society (LAPIS), Parksville, BC, Canada

A D King State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY, USA

J Glassman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

S Kirsch University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

A R Goetz University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

A Golan University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

N Koch Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

W T S Gould University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Z Kova´cs University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary

M Greenwood University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada

M-J Kraak ITC – International Institute of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, Enschede, The Netherlands

A L Grifﬁn University of New South Wales – ADFA, Canberra, ACT, Australia

S de Leeuw University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada

L Guelke University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

R Lewis University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

E Hague DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA

R Longhurst University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

R Haines-Young University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

D Mackinnon University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

R Harris McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

S P Mains University of the West Indies-Mona, Kingston, Jamaica

F Harvey University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

J May Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

G J D Hewings University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

P Milbourne Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

R Honey The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

C Minca Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

R Howitt Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

J Mistry University of London, Egham, UK

M Hoyler Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

R Mitchell University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

xxii

Contributors

G Moon University of Southampton, Highﬁeld, UK

M Shaw Bristol University, Bristol, UK

S Muller Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

D Simandan Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada

S Neal Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

J M Smith Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA

M E O’Kelly Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

K B Smith Monash University, Bendigo, VIC, Australia

K R Olwig Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden

M Sonis University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA, and Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

S Orford Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

M Sothern University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

M Pacione University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

R Sternberg University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany

M Parnwell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

S Suchet-Pearson Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

B Parthasarathy International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, India

I Tu¨reli Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

J Patchell Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China R Peet Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA T Peil Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia N A Phelps University College London, London, UK J M Powell Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia P Raento University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland G Rambaldi Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU, Wageningen, The Netherlands C Richmond The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada E J Roe Southampton University, Southampton, UK U Rossi University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy J Rutherford LATTS (Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Socie´te´s), Marne-la-Valle´e, France G Setten Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

J Tima´r Center for Regional Studies, Be´ke´scsaba, Hungary D P Tolia-Kelly Durham University, Durham, UK H Tunstall University of York, York, UK D Vaiou National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece S M Walcott University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA J L Waters University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK G W White Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD, USA K Wilson University of Toronto, Mississauga, ON, Canada G M Winder The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand G M Winder Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita¨t, Munich, Germany K Woodward University of Exeter, Exeter, UK R Wright Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA Y Zhou Vassar College, New York, NY, USA M Zook University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

Contributors

VOLUME 6 B T Asheim Lund University, Lund, Sweden

R Edsall University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

A Aylett University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

F Eva Universita’ Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, Treviso Campus, Italy

A Bain York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

M Farish University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

T J Barnes University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

R Fincher University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

C Benner University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA M Brosseau University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada K Browne University of Brighton, Brighton, UK R A Butlin University of Leeds, Leeds, UK C A Calder The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA P Carmody Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland W Cartwright RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia P Collier University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK S Conti Universita` e Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy P Cooke Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK K R Cox The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA N Cressie The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA A Cumbers University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK D Delaney Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA

S M Freundschuh National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, USA G Garofoli Insubria University, Varese, Italy J Gaspar CEG, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal P Giaccaria Universita` e Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy E Gilbert University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada J R Gold Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK A E Green University of Warwick, Coventry, UK M Haldrup Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark F Harvey University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA A Herod University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA M Hesse University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg S Hoelscher The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA E Holland University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

M Dodge University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

B Hooper Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

J Dubow University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK

P Hopkins Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK

C Dwyer University College London, London, UK

M W Horner The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

xxiii

xxiv

Contributors

B van Hoven University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

J O’Loughlin University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

R Howitt Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

F Owusu Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

B Hunt Santa Barbara, CA, USA

R B Parry The University of Reading, Reading, UK

J Ja¨ger University of Applied Sciences BFI, Vienna, Austria

M W Pearce Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

P Jackson University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK A E G Jonas University of Hull, Hull, UK

C Perkins University of Manchester, Manchester, UK S Pinch University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

A Jones University of London, London, UK

´ Riain SO National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

R Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

G A Rice University of Helsinki, Finland

Cristo´bal Kay Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands

J-P Rodrigue Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA

G Kearns Virginia Polytechnic and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA

T D Rutherford Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA A Saito National University of Singapore, Singapore

G Kearns Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

James D Sidaway School of Geography, University of Plymouth, UK

A Kerr National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

T Skelton National University of Singapore, Singapore

J Krygier Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH, USA W Li University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA E Mac Gillavry Webmapper, Utrecht, The Netherlands J Mansvelt Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand F Mizuoka Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan

A Tay University of Bristol, Bristol, UK D P Tolia-Kelly Durham University, Durham, UK B L Turner II Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA H Winlow Bath Spa University, Bath, UK S D Withers University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA D Wood Raleigh, NC, USA

K M Morin Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA

P Wood University College London, London, UK

A T Murray Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

C Zhang University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

C J Nash University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

M Zook University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

Contributors

xxv

VOLUME 7 S C Aitken San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA, and National Technical University of Norway, Trondheim, Norway D H Alderman East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA N Argent University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia S Bell University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada M E Bonine University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA W M Bowen Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA P Boyle University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK G Bridge University of Manchester, Manchester, UK K M Brown Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen, UK

K M Dunn School of Social Sciences, Penrith, NSW, Australia O J Dwyer Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA R Earickson University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA T Edensor Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK C Cindy Fan University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA M Farish University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada J Flint Shefﬁeld Hallam University, Shefﬁeld, UK S Fullagar Grifﬁth University, Nathan, QLD, Australia J R Gold Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK G Grabher University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

G Burgel University of Paris 10, Nanterre, France

R N Gwynne University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

M A Busteed University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

D Hill University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

L Cadman University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK I Casas University at Buffalo – SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA D B Clarke Swansea University, Swansea, UK N Clarke University of Southampton, Southampton, UK P Claval Universite´ de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France J Clayton University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK P Cooke Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK N Curry Countryside and Community Research Institute CCRI, Cheltenham, UK

H Hoernig Universite´ de Que´bec a` Montre´al, Montre´al, QC, Canada P Holland University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand P Hubbard Leicestershire University, Leicestershire, UK R D Jacobson University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada W Jenkins York University, Toronto, ON, Canada O Jones Countryside and Community Research Institute CCRI, Cheltenham, UK R Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

xxvi

Contributors

K Kafkoula Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece D H Kaplan Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA J Kenny University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

J Penrose University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK C G Pooley Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK C Radel Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA Saraswati Raju Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

M J Kuby Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

S Ratick Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

W Larner University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

T D Roberts University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

R Le Heron The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

G Schwarz Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, DC, Colombia

Sang-Il Lee Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea K D Lilley Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK D Linehan University College Cork, Cork, Republic of Ireland J Lorimer King’s College London, London, UK G MacLeod University of Durham, Durham, UK

G Setten Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway K Simonsen Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark M Sioh DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA C J Smith University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY, USA

E J McCann Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

M Tanskanen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

L McDowell University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

S Tierney University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

S McDowell University of Ulster, Coleraine, UK

C D Upchurch University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

A McGregor University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

M Walton-Roberts Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

J H McKendrick Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK

M Watts UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

P Merriman Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

A Wearing University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

W E Murray Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

D W Wong George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

G Olsson Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

R Woodward Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

K R Olwig Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden

Y-M Yeung The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

Contributors

xxvii

VOLUME 8 O Ahlqvist The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

M Dunford University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

S C Aitken San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

S Elden Durham University, Durham, UK

G Backhaus Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

A J Bailey University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

B Forest McGill University, Montre´al, QC, Canada

D Bennett Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

A Franklin University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

V Berdoulay CNRS and Universite´ de Pau, Pau, France

N R Fyfe University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

L Bondi University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

M Gren Ho´lar University College, Sauja´rkro´kur, Iceland

M Boyle National University of Ireland Maynooth, Co Kildare, Republic of Ireland E Chacko The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA X Chen Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA A O Chimhowu University of Manchester, Manchester, UK P Collier University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK D Collins University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada D Collins University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand K R Cox The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA T Cresswell Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, Fife, UK

M Haldrup Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark P Hall University College London, London, UK S Harrison University of Exeter, Penryn, UK S Hickey University of Manchester, Manchester, UK M Huxley University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK J P Jones III University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA R Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK M Kesby University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK F C Kessler Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD, USA S Kindon Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

E Delmelle University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, USA

A D King State University of New York Binghamton, Binghamton, NY, USA

J Dittmer University College London, London, UK

P T Kingsbury Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

D P Dixon The University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK

A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

xxviii

Contributors

L Koefoed Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

C Perkins University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

U Kothari University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

M Perry Massey University (Wellington), Wellington, New Zealand

D M Lawrence Virginia State University and Virginia Union University, Richmond, VA, USA

J Nederveen Pieterse University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

R Le Heron University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand J Lea Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK J Lorimer King’s College London, London, UK D P McCormack Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

J D van der Ploeg Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands Saraswati Raju Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India R Sanders Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA V R Savage National University of Singapore, Singapore B-M Shantz University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

C McEwan Durham University, Durham, UK

S J Smith University of Durham, Durham, UK

C Minca Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

L A Staeheli University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

D Mitchell Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

J-F Staszak Universite´ de Gene`ve Geneva, Switzerland

F Morton Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow, UK

P E Steinberg Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

W E Murray Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand C J Nash Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada

D Storey University of Worcester, Worcester, UK L Sy´kora Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic A R Tickamyer Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

R P Neumann Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

K Walsh University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

A Nightingale University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

B Warf University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

J O’Loughlin University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

S Warren Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA, USA

P M O’Neill University of Western Sydney, NSW, Australia

G A Wilson University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

A Paasi University of Oulu, Linnanmaa, Finland

M Woods Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

R Pain University of Durham, Durham, UK

K Woodward University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

E Pawson University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

G Yeung National University of Singapore, Singapore

Contributors

xxix

VOLUME 9 M B Aalbers Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

D W Edgington University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

M Abreu University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

C Fox Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

O Ahlqvist The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

M F Goodchild University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

J O Bærenholdt Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

K H Halfacree Swansea University, Swansea, UK

T J Barnes University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

L M B Harrington Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

R Billen University of Liege, Liege, Belgium R Black University of Sussex, Brighton, UK J S Boggs Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada G Bridge University of Bristol, Bristol, UK K Browne University of Brighton, Brighton, UK T Butler King’s College London, London, UK D Carr University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA M Charlton National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

R Hayter Simon Fraser University, Byrnaby, BC, Canada A Holden University of Durham, Durham, UK J R L Howells University of Manchester, Manchester, UK R Johnston University of Bristol, Bristol, UK J-K Jung University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND M Kiese Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada V Kolossov Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia L Kong National University of Singapore, Singapore

J P Clark Loyola University, New Orleans, LA, USA

A Lord University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

M Cope University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

D MacKinnon University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

A Cumbers University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

G MacLeod University of Durham, Durham, UK

J Cupples University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

K A MacTavish Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

J Revilla Diez Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany

J Mennis Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

I Docherty University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

F Mizuoka Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan

M Doevenspeck University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

A Nayak University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK

M Dunford University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

H Neo National University of Singapore, Singapore

xxx

Contributors

P Nijkamp Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I G Simmons University of Durham, Durham, UK

E S Norman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

T R Slater University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

H G Overman London School of Economics, London, UK A Paasi University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

E W Soja University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, and London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

B Page University College London, London, UK

M Sokol Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

J Pearce University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

M Tewdwr-Jones University College London, London, UK

R Peet Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

F To¨dtling Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna, Austria

I M M Pires Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal V Preston York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

J Tomaney Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

N M Rantisi Concordia University, Montre´al, QC, Canada

M Torrado Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

J M Read Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

A Treivish Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia N Van de Weghe Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

P Robbins University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

B Werlen Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany

S Salamon University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA

J Winders Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

H V Scott Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

M Woods Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

J Shaw University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

N Wrigley University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

N K Shortt University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

VOLUME 10 A Albet Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

A Bebbington University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

T A Arentze Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

L Bian University at Buffalo – SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA

R Atkinson University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

E Casetti Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

M Azaryahu University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

G P Chapman Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo, Norway

M Azaryahu University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

M Coleman The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Contributors T J Cooke University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

M Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

T W Crawford East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

C Kim University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

M A de Souza Universidade de Sa˜o Paulo, Campinas, Brazil

R Kitchin NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

A V Di Vittorio University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA M Duffy University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia N Duncan University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK S Elden Durham University, Durham, UK S Engel-Di Mauro SUNY New Paltz, NY, USA R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

xxxi

A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada E W LaFary The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand N S Lam Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA A Latham University College London, London, UK J Lee Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA L Lo York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

K E Foote University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

Y Lu Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, TX, USA

J D Gatrell Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, USA

S M Manson University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

C Gibson University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

D McCormack Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

B Greenhough Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

J McGarrigle Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

D A Grifﬁth University of Texas – Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

J Mohan University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

M Haldrup Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

K Newman Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

A L Hansen Lund University, Lund, Sweden

M E O’Kelly The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

R Harris Hamilton, ON, Canada

J Oldﬁeld University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

K E Haynes George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

R Panelli University College London, London, UK

P Howell University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

D Pinder Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

R W Jackson West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

M F Poulsen Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

A James Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

M Ramutsindela University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa

B Jessop Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

G M Robinson Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK

Ron Johnston University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

S M Ruddick University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

xxxii

Contributors

G Rushton The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

C Tiwari The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

A Saldanha University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

D Turnbull ACSIS, Melbourne University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

N F Sayre University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

L Twigg University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK D J Unwin Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

N Schuurman Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

A C Vias University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

T Schwanen Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

M Williams Oxford University, Oxford, UK

D M Scott McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

K D Willis Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

D Sibley University of Leeds, Leeds, UK A Smith Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

A C Winstanley National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

Q Stevens University College London, London, UK

D W Wong George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

P Sunley University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

M Yuan The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

Eric C Thompson National University of Singapore, Singapore

P Zusman University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

VOLUME 11 C G Alvstam Go¨teborg University, Gothenburg, Sweden

D Delaney Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA

D Banister University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

M Denil Washington, DC, USA

C Berndt Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

M Dijst Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

K Button George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA M Cawley National University of Ireland, Galway, Republic of Ireland G P Chapman Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK J Connell University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia M Cope University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

B Doman´ski Jagiellonian Univeristy, Krakow, Poland T Edensor Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK J A Elliott University of Brighton, Brighton, UK W M Gesler University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA V Gidwani University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

T Cresswell Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

J Glassman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

V J Del Casino, Jr. California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

R Grant University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

Contributors M Gren Ho´lar University College, Sauja´rkro´kur, Iceland

L Mu University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

J Gutie´rrez Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

D Mustafa King’s College London, London, UK

T Hall University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

A Nightingale University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

M Henry Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

G Norcliffe York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

J Hine University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, UK

K O’Connor University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

J-Y Hsu National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

J O’Loughlin University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

S Huang National University of Singapore, Singapore

K Olds University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA

P J Hugill Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA P F Kelly York University, Toronto, ON, Canada A Kent University of Manchester, Manchester, UK R D Knowles University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK M Kurtz Open University, Ottawa, ON, Canada D Ley University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada R Lippuner Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany S Lloyd-Evans University of Reading, Reading, UK B P Y Loo University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China A Mace University of Westminster, London, UK T Marsden Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK C McEwan Durham University, Durham, UK Nick Megoran University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

xxxiii

D T Ory Federal Transit Administration, Washington, DC, USA U F Paleo University of Extremadura, Caceres, Spain R Phillips University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK D Pinder Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK J P H Poon University at Buffalo – SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA R B Potter University of Reading, Reading, UK J M Powell Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia M Power University of Durham, Durham, UK J Preston University of Southampton, Southampton, UK G M Robinson Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK J Round University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK T Schwanen Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands J P Sharp University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

G Mohan The Open University – Milton Keynes, UK

S-L Shaw The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

P L Mokhtarian University of California – Davis, Davis, CA, USA

M Sheller Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, USA

xxxiv

Contributors

F M Smith University of Dundee, Dundee, UK J M Smith Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA R G Smith Swansea University, Swansea, UK

C von Schilling University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada B Warf Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA B Werlen Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany

D Straussfogel Pennsylvania State University, DuBois, PA, USA U Strohmayer National University of Ireland, Galway, Republic of Ireland

P White University of Westminster, London, UK M Whitehead Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

A Sturt University of Westminster, London, UK D Thien California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

D Wilson University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

D J Unwin University College London, London, UK

J Zhang University of Minnesota, Tacoma, WA, USA

VOLUME 12 Fiona Allon Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia S Batterbury University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia M Batty University College London, London, UK D Bell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK G Bridge University of Bristol, Bristol, UK G Brown University of Leicester, Leicester, UK A Buttimer University College Dublin, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

M Davidson University of Western Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia B Derudder Ghent University, Gent, Belgium J Dodson Grifﬁth University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia B Gleeson Grifﬁth University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia M F Goodchild University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA K H Halfacree Swansea University, Swansea, UK M G Hatvany Universite´ Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada

J Byrne Grifﬁth University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

C Haylett University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

B Christophers The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

L Holt University of Reading, Reading, UK

G P Clarke University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

J Horton University of Northampton, Northampton, UK

A Cochrane The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

R Hudson Durham University, UK

D Conradson University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

M Jayne University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

G Crow University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

N C Johnson Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Contributors D Kay Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

C Milligan Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

I M Keighren University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

M Pavlovskaya Hunter College – CUNY, New York, NY, USA

P Knox Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA

L Peake York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

P Kraftl University of Leicester, Leicester, UK D Kunze Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA M Lauria Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA R Lee Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK K D Lilley Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK F MacDonald University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia S C MacKian Open University, Milton Keynes, UK V Mamadouh University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

xxxv

C Philo University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK G M Robinson Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK S Rodgers The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK T R Slater University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK E Street King’s College London, London, UK K Terlouw Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands C R Warren University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK M Watson University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK R K Whelan University of Texas, Arlington, TX, USA

C Mason University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

B Wisner Benﬁeld UCL Hazard Research Centre, London, UK

G Mercier Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada

J Wolch University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

CONTENTS

Senior Editors

v

Section Editors

vii

Guide to use of the Encyclopedia

ix

Contributors

xi

Contents

xxxvii

Subject Classiﬁcation

lxiii

Foreword by Mary Robinson

lxxv

Foreword by Rob Kitchin

lxxvii

VOLUME 1 A Activism

L M Takahashi

Activist Geographies

1

P Routledge

Actor-Network Theory/Network Geographies

7 G T Jo´hannesson and J O Bærenholdt

15

Affect

J D Dewsbury

20

Africa

G A Myers

25

Ageing and Health

G J Andrews

31

A M Warnes

36

Ageing and Mobility Ageism and Age Agglomeration Agoraphobia

L Maxey

42

A Malmberg

48

J Davidson

Agrarian Transformations

54 J Renes

Agricultural Land Preservation Agriculture, Sustainable

K B Beesley and D Ramsey

T Marsden

Agri-Environmentalism and Rural Change Aid

58

70 C Potter

79

V Desai

84

Ame´nagement du Territoire: Territorial Development Americas

P Merlin

R B Kent and K A Butler

Anarchism/Anarchist Geography

C Wilbert

Animal Welfare, Agricultural

H Buller

91 99

M M Breitbart

Anglo-American/Anglophone Hegemony Animal Geographies

65

M B Aalbers and U Rossi

108 116 122 127

xxxvii

xxxviii

Contents

Antarctica

S Chaturvedi

133

Anthropogeography (After Ratzel)

J Lossau

Anthropology and Human Geography Anti-Geopolitics

U Oslender

Anti-Urbanism

Applied Geography

159 J Battersby-Lennard

M Pacione

179

M Kurtz and A Watson

Art and Cartography

184

C D’Ignazio

Artiﬁcial Intelligence and Expert Systems Asia

190 Y Leung

T Oakes

Atlases

225

M Purcell

Autoethnography

234

K Besio

Auto-Photography

240

M E Thomas

Avant-Garde/Avant-Garde Geographies Aviation

220

C Gibson

Autobiography

207 214

J Siemer and H Asche

Australasia

167 174

M Kurtz

Arctic

148 152

T Slater

Apartheid/Post-Apartheid

Archives

K W Butzer

140

244 J D Dewsbury

252

T M Vowles

257

V Rey and O Groza

265

B Balkans Barnes, T.

S Reimer

Beaujeu-Garnier, J. Becoming

273

M-C Robic

D P McCormack

Behavioral Geography Belonging

A Taylor

Berkeley School Berry, B.

J R Gold

277 282 294

M Williams

R W Lake

Biodiversity

275

300 305

R P Neumann

Biodiversity Mapping

H Hazen

308 314

Biopolitics

A A Lehtinen

320

Bobek, H.

H Fassmann

324

Body, The

L Johnston

326

Borderlands

D Wastl-Walter

332

Bowman, I.

J Dittmer

340

Brain Drain

J Crush and C Hughes

342

Brandt Commission Brown Agenda Buffer Zone

R B Potter and S Lloyd-Evans

348

J Beall

355

G Prevelakis

362

Business Services

John R Bryson

368

Contents

xxxix

C Capital and Space Capitalism

R J Das

375

R Le Heron

382

Capitalism and Division of Labor Care/Caregiving

M Brayshay

390

N M Yantzi and M W Skinner

Cartographic Animation

M Harrower

Cartography in Islamic Societies Cartography, History of

408

S Brentjes

414

C Delano-Smith and R J P Kain

Case Study Approach

402

428

S W Hardwick

441

Cassa per il Mezzogiorno

F Martinelli

446

Categorical Data Analysis

S D Withers

456

VOLUME 2 C Cellular Automata

P M Torrens

1

W Friesen

5

Census Geography Census Mapping

D Martin

Central Business District

G A Rice

Central Place Theory

18

J Malczewski

26

G Chapman

31

Chaos and Complexity Chicago School

12

D Sibley

Child Labor

40

S Punch

Children and Mapping

45 V Filippakopoulou and B Nakos

50

Children/Childhood

F Smith and N Ansell

58

Chinese Urbanism

L J C Ma

65

Chinese-Language Geography Choice Modeling

W S Tang

J-C Thill

Christaller, W.

78

R Capello

Christian Geography Chronic Disease Citation Geography Citizenship

84

H Aay

86

K Robinson and S J Elliott

92

M Batty and R Carvalho

97

V Chouinard

Citizenship and Governmentality, Rural City Marketing

72

E J McCann

107 L Cheshire and M Woods

113 119

City-Region

S Davoudi

125

Civil Society

C McIlwaine

136

Claval, P.

M Be´dard

Climate Change

J C Sweeney

142 147

xl

Contents

Cloke, P.

M Phillips

156

Cognitive Geography

D R Montello

160

Cohen, S.

N Kliot

167

Cold War

T W Luke

170

Colonialism I

A Lester

175

Colonialism II

D Atkinson

182

Colonialism, Internal Color, Mapping

R J Das and S Chilvers

189

A L Grifﬁn

Commodity Chains

195

M Hassler

202

Communicable Diseases, Globalization of

J R Oppong

209

J Tima´r

214

Communist and Post-Communist Geographies Community

S C Aitken

Competitiveness

221

N Lewis

226

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

G J Andrews

Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems Computational Human Geography Concentrated Deconcentration Conservation and Ecology Consumption

234 D O’Sullivan

H Couclelis

Corbridge, S.

251

M Jay and M Morad

259 268

J Baxter

275

M S Kumar

281

B Ramı´rez

Core-Periphery Models Corporate Responsibilities

286

A Hughes and F Wray

Corridor and Axis Development Cosgrove, D.

245

B Lambregts

D Leslie

Content Analysis

239

L Albrechts and T Tasan-Kok

K D Lilley

292 298 305

Cosmopolitanism

J Binnie, J J Holloway, S Millington, and C Young

307

Counter-Mapping

R Rundstrom

314

Counterurbanization Cox, K. Creativity

C J A Mitchell and C R Bryant

H van der Wusten

319 325

A Currah

327

Crime/Fear of Crime

H Koskela

334

Critical Cartography

D Wood and J Krygier

340

Critical Geography

U Best

345

Critical Geopolitics

J P Sharp

358

Critical GIS

N Schuurman

Critical Rationalism (After Popper)

363 D Bennett

Critical Realism/Critical Realist Geographies Critical Theory (After Habermas) Cross-Cultural Research Cultural Capital Cultural Economy

M Phillips

T Skelton

J L Waters A C Pratt

Andy C Pratt

369 379 385 398 404 407

Contents

xli

Cultural Geography

C Gibson and G Waitt

411

Cultural Materialism

G Helms

425

Cultural Politics

S Rycroft

431

Cultural Studies and Human Geography Cultural Turn Culture

D Bell

437

C Philo

442

K J Mee

Culture/Natures

451 J Sundberg and J Dempsey

Cumulative Causation

458

E Delaney and J W Harrington, Jr.

Cyberspace/Cyberculture

D Bell

464 468

VOLUME 3 D Darby, H. C.

R A Butlin

1

Darwinism (and Social Darwinism) Dear, M. J. Debt

H Winlow

4

A Latham

12

David Simon

Deconstruction

16

C Barnett

Defensible Space

23

E Warwick

Deforestation

31

J J Metz

De-Industrialization De-Localization Democracy

39

A Pike

51

A Kalogeressis and L Labrianidis

60

C Barnett and M Low

70

Demography

P Rees

75

Dependency

E Hartwick

91

Desertiﬁcation

C J Barrow

96

Determinism/Environmental Determinism

H Ernste and C Philo

102

Development I

K D Willis and M S Kumar

111

Development II

B Korf

117

Developmentalism Devolution

M Watts

123

M Keating

131

Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism Dialogism (After Bakhtin)

J Holloway and J Kneale

Diaries (Video, Audio or Written) Diaspora Dicken, P.

P Meth

K McKittrick

143 150

162 T Jazeel

L A Brown

Digital Data, Historical Geography and Digital Divide

137

156

J V Beaverstock

Difference/Politics of Difference Diffusion

E Swyngedouw

164 170

H Southall

T Unwin and G de Bastion

185 191

xlii

Contents

Digital Earth

G A Elmes, D Weiner, and C D’Alessandro-Scarpari

Disability and Chronic Illness Discourse

R Wilton and J Evans

T Cresswell

Discourse Analysis

198 205 211

L D Berg

215

Disease Diffusion

A Schærstro¨m

222

Disease Mapping

T Koch

234

Distance

G H Pirie

Dudley Stamp, L.

242

D Linehan

Dutch Human Geography Dwelling

252

H Ernste and L Smith

O Jones

255 266

E East Asian Miracle East/West

C Dixon

273

A Bonnett

280

e-Business and e-Commerce Ecological Fallacy Ecology

K E Corey and M I Wilson

D Sui

291

P McManus

Economic Crises

294

M Webber

Economic Development, Rural Economic Geography

285

304 D Storey

T J Barnes

310 315

Economic Geography, Quantitative

E Sheppard and P Plummer

328

Economics and Human Geography

J R Faulconbridge and S Hall

332

Economies, Alternative

S Healy

338

Economies, Borderland

M Tykkyla¨inen

345

H D Watts

354

Economies, Branch Plant Economies, Imagined

A Cameron

Economy, Informal

S Turner

361 367

Ecotourism

D A Fennell

372

Edge Cities

N A Phelps

377

Edge Effects

I Yamada

381

Education

N Lewis

Electoral Cartography Electoral Districts

A Kavanagh J I Leib and G R Webster

Electoral Geography Embeddedness

C Pattie and R Johnston M Hess

Embodied Knowing Emigration

B S A Yeoh

Emotional Knowing

399 405

429 434

J Davidson and M Smith L Bondi

M Power

Empowerment

396

423

R Longhurst

Emotional Geographies

Empire

389

R Scheyvens

440 446 453 464

Contents Enlightenment Geography Enterprise Discourse Entrepreneurship

C W J Withers

471

P M O’Neill

487

E Stam

492

Entropy-Maximising Models Environment

xliii

R Johnston and C Pattie

S Eden

499 505

Environment, Historical Geography of Environmental Hazards

S W Trimble, M P Conzen, and E K Z Zygmut

G A Tobin and B E Montz

517 521

Environmental Health

S J Elliott

528

Environmental Justice

A A Lehtinen

535

Environmental Policy

C Cocklin

Environmental Regulation

540

P McManus

Environmental Security

546

J Barnett

553

Environmental Studies and Human Geography Environmentalism

A Davies

Epidemiological Transition Equity

C Sneddon

565

K McCracken and D R Phillips

J Wiles and A Kobayashi

Error (Propagation and Modeling) Ethical Issues in Research Ethnic Conﬂict

580 S Gopal

586

R Dowling

595 601

L Lo

608

W Li and E Skop

615

Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of Ethnography

Evans, E. E.

632 638

M Kuus

644 J W Scott

649

M C Keane

Evolutionary Algorithms

658

N Xiao

Existentialism/Existential Geography Experimental Design Exploration

E Laurier

J Sundberg

Europe of Regions

620 626

Ethnomethodology/Ethnomethodological Geography

Europe

D P Nally

K E Till

Eurocentrism

571

O Yiftachel

Ethnic Economies Ethnicity

558

660 D Seamon and J Sowers

S Bell

672

S A Royle

676

Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis Export Processing Zones Extended Metropolitan Region

666

S Dall’erba

683

F Wu

691

V F S Sit

697

VOLUME 4 F Factor Analysis and Principal-Components Analysis Fair Trade

L T Raynolds

F Wang

1 8

xliv

Contents

Famine

P J Atkins

14

Fatherland/Homeland

R Kaiser

Feminism and Work

21

J Pollard

Feminism, Maps and GIS

29

M Pavlovskaya

Feminism/Feminist Geography

37

L C Johnson

44

Feminist Geography, Prehistory of

S Bowlby and J Tivers

59

Feminist Groups within Geography

K M Morin

64

Feminist Methodologies

D Thien

Feminist Political Economy Fertility

R B Sarma

79

Y Underhill-Sem

Festival and Spectacle

87

M Duffy

Feudalism and Feudal Society Field Geographies

Fieldwork

91

H Bradley and M Taylor

D Abbott J Chapman

112

F J Bosco and C M Moreno

119

C Lukinbeal

125

Finance, Historical Geographies of Finance, Offshore

M Purvis

130

S M Roberts

Financial Centers, International Financial Exclusion

139 D R Meyer

146

A Leyshon

153 w

Financial Knowledge

G L Clark, J C Marshall , and K Strauss

Financial Risks and Management Firms

P Bennett

159 167

M Taylor

173

First Law of Geography First World

98 106

Field Systems and Enclosure

Film

71

M F Goodchild

179

K D Willis

183

Flaˆneur, The

A Latham

189

Fluidity–Fixity

P Adey

194

Focus Groups

A J Secor

200

Food Networks

P Richardson and S J Whatmore

Food Networks, Alternative Food Regimes Fordism

202

D Goodman and M K Goodman

B Pritchard

208 221

R Hudson

226

Fordism, Post-Fordism and Flexible Specialization Foreign Direct Investment

J Lovering

A Lagendijk and B Hendrikx

232 243

Foucauldianism

M Huxley

255

Fractal Analysis

N S Lam

263

Francophone Geography

G Benko and C Desbiens

Functionalism (Including Structural Functionalism) Fuzzy Set and Fuzzy Logic

w

Deceased, 22 August 2007.

Y Leung

J E Castro

271 277 283

Contents

xlv

G Gardens and Gardening Garrison, W.

David Crouch

R Morrill

294

Gated Communities/Privatopias Gay Geographies

R Atkinson and S Blandy

V Miller

Gender and Health

Gender in the City

302 309

J Little

315

Linda Peake

Gender, Historical Geographies of Genealogy and Family History

Generalization

L Price

328

S M Otterstrom

334 341

W A Mackaness and O Z Chaudhry E Hall

Gentriﬁcation

345 355

D J Hammel

Gentriﬁcation, Rural

360

M Phillips

Geocomputation

368

M Birkin

Geodemographics Geodesy

320

´ Crowley U

Genealogy Method

297

J Wiles

Gender and Rurality

Genetics

289

376

M Birkin and G P Clarke

382

J Hessler

390

Geographical Journals

L D Berg

394

Geographical Masking

G Rushton

402

Geographically Weighted Regression Geography, History of

A Pa´ez and D C Wheeler

A Maddrell

407 415

Geohistory

P Claval

429

Geomatics

M Duckham, A Kealy, and J Wallace

435

Geopolitics

P Reuber

441

Geopolitics and Religion

G Dijkink

453

X Yao

458

K C Clarke

466

Georeferencing, Geocoding Geospatial Intelligence Geovisualization

M J Kraak

468

German-Language Geography Gerrymandering Ghettos

M Hess

481

R Morrill

486

T Slater

492

GIS and Cartography GIS and Society

M F Goodchild

500

T Nyerges

506

GIS, Mobile and Locational Based Services

J Raper

513

GIS, Public Participation

S Elwood

520

GIScience and Systems

M F Goodchild

526

Global Commodity Chains Global Positioning/GPS Global Production Networks

L van Grunsven

539

J Lee

548

N M Coe

Globalization and Transnational Corporations

556 P Dicken

563

xlvi

Contents

Globalization, Cultural

K N Rankin

Globalization, Economic

570

H W-c Yeung

581

Golledge, R.

G Rushton

587

Gottmann, J.

L Muscara`

590

Governance

M Goodwin

593

D Wo´jcik

Governance, Corporate Governance, Good

G Williams

Governance, Transport

606

I Docherty and J Shaw

Governance, Urban

M Raco

Green Revolution

628

J Briggs

Greenﬁeld Development

634

P Breathnach

639

B Warf

Grounded Theory

615 622

J Ha¨kli

Governmentality

Gregory, D.

600

644

M Cope

Growth Poles, Growth Centers

647 U Rossi

651

VOLUME 5 H Habitus

G Setten

Hagerstrand, T. Haggett, P.

1

R Flowerdew

4

R Flowerdew

9

Haptic or Touch-Based Knowledge Harley, J. B.

N Collins-Kreiner

Hartshorne, R. Harvey, D.

R D Jacobson

19

F Harvey

21

K Woodward and J P Jones III

Health and Development

13

S Asthana

24 28

Health Geography

G Moon

35

Health Inequalities

D Dorling and R Mitchell and S Orford and M Shaw, and H Tunstall

46

Health Services Restructuring

T Brown

Health Systems and Health Services Healthcare Accessibility Hegemony Heritage

J S Humphreys and K B Smith

J Glassman

R Jones G J Ashworth

Heritage and Identity

J D Bohland and E Hague D Bell

M Hoyler

High-Tech Industry

71

91

Heritage and Economy

Heteronormativity

58

80

C Kelly

Heritage and Culture

Hettner, A.

R Barnett and P Barnett

51

Y Zhou

98 104 109 115 120 122

Contents J Tima´r and Z Kova´cs

Hinterland Development

xlvii 128

Historical Geographies, Rural

P J Duffy

136

Historical Geographies, Urban

A Golan

146

Historical Geography

G M Winder

152

Historical Geography, Evolution of

J M Powell

158

Historical-Geographical Materialism

S Kirsch

163

HIV/AIDS in Developed Countries

M Sothern

169

HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries

W T S Gould

173

Home

T Peil

180

Homelessness

J May

Homelessness, Rural Housing

185 P Milbourne

191

M Pacione

196

Housing, Neighbourhoods and Health Housing, Rural

N Gallent

Hub Network Location

Human Rights

213

C Gibson

218

R Honey

232

Humanism/Humanistic Geography Human-Nonhuman

J M Smith

E J Roe

239 251

D P Tolia-Kelly

Hypothesis Testing

201 207

M E O’Kelly

Human Geography

Hybridity

J Dunn

258

R Haines-Young and R Fish

264

I Idealism/Idealist Human Geography Identity and Otherness, Rural Identity Politics Ideology

L Guelke

J Agyeman and S Neal

A Kobayashi

271 277 282

K R Olwig

287

Immigration I

J L Waters

297

Immigration II

I H Burnley

308

Imperial Cities

A D King

317

Imperialism, Cultural

S P Mains

Imperialistic Geographies Indian Ocean Indigeneity

322

G M Winder

S Chaturvedi

344

E Cameron and S de Leeuw, and M Greenwood

Indigenous Geographies

R Howitt and S Muller, and S Suchet-Pearson

Indigenous Health and Medicine Indigenous Knowledges Indigenous Mapping Industrial City

330

K Wilson and C Richmond

J Mistry J Corbett and M Chapin and L Gibson, and G Rambaldi

R Harris

352 358 365 371 377 383

Industrial Districts

F Celata and U Rossi

389

Industrial Location

K Chapman

396

xlviii

Contents

Industrial Organization Industrial Parks

J Patchell

S M Walcott

Industrial Restructuring Industrialization

408

R Hudson

419 R Lewis

433

A G Aguilar and E P Campuzano

Informalization

D Vaiou

Information Graphics

Informational City

459

B Parthasarathy

469

J Rutherford

475

R Sternberg

Input–Output Analysis

481

G J D Hewings and M Sonis

Institutionalism/Institutional Geographies Integrated Spatial Data Infrastructure Intensive/Extensive Research Interdisciplinarity

D Mackinnon R Foley

Intermodality

K Falconer Al-Hindi

529 R Peet

Internationalization of Education Internet, Economic Geography

536

J L Waters

548

M Zook

555

M-J Kraak

Internet-Based Measurement

562

M Dodge and M Zook

Interviews: In-Depth, Semi-Structured Investment Promotion

R Longhurst

N A Phelps

598

E Clark

Italian Language Geography

580

590

N AlSayyad and I Tu¨reli

Island Development

569

585

G W White

Islamic Urbanism

512

523

A R Goetz

Internet/Web Mapping

499

517

M Parnwell

International Organizations

491

507

P Raento

Intermediate Technology

446 454

A L Grifﬁn

Information Technology

Irredentism

426

G DeVerteuil

Informal Sector

Innovation

413

D Simandan

Industry, Historical Geographies of Inequality

402

607 C Minca

Ivy League and Geography in the US

611 R Wright and N Koch

616

VOLUME 6 J Jackson, P.

C Dwyer

Japanese Geography Johnston, R. J.

1 A Saito and F Mizuoka

James D Sidaway

4 11

Contents

xlix

K Knowledge and Education, Historical Geographies of Knowledge Communities

S Pinch

Knowledge Intensive Business Services

P Wood

J O’Loughlin and E Holland

Kriging and Variogram Models Kropo´tkin, P.

15 25

´ Riain A Kerr and S O

Knowledge Economy

Kolossov, V.

R A Butlin

31 37 45

C A Calder and N Cressie

G Kearns

49 56

L Labor Control Regime Labor Flexibility

A E G Jonas

C Benner

Labor Geography

66

T D Rutherford

Labor Market

72

P Carmody

Labor Markets, Regional Labor Unionism

79

A E Green

85

A Herod

Lacoste, Y.

91

F Eva

Lamarck(ian)ism

97

H Winlow

Land Change Science

Land Rights

99

B L Turner II

107

J Ja¨ger

Land Rent Theory

112

R Howitt

Landscape

118

J Dubow

124

Landscape Iconography

S Hoelscher

Landscape Perception Language

132

K M Morin

140

R Jones

146

Language and Research

A Aylett and T J Barnes

153

Cristo´bal Kay

159

Latin American Structuralist School Law and Law Enforcement Learning Regions Leisure

D Delaney

165

B T Asheim

172

J Mansvelt

179

Lesbian Geographies Ley, D.

59

K Browne and C J Nash

P Jackson

Liberalism

193

E Gilbert

195

Life Course Approaches Literature Livelihoods

R Fincher

207

M Brosseau

212

F Owusu

219

Local Development

G Garofoli

Local Economic Development

225 S Conti and P Giaccaria

Local Economic Development, Politics of Local–Global

187

M Haldrup

K R Cox

233 239 245

l

Contents

Locality Debates

P Cooke

Location Analysis

M W Horner

Location Theory Logistics

256 263

A T Murray

270

M Hesse and J-P Rodrigue

277

Longitudinal Methods (Cohort Analysis, Life Tables) Los Angeles School of Post-Modern Urbanism Lowenthal, D.

S D Withers B Hooper

J R Gold

Lusophone Geography

285 293 298

J Gaspar

300

M Mackinder, H. J.

G Kearns

Malls/Retail Parks Map Hacking

309

G A Rice

312

E Mac Gillavry

318

R Edsall

323

Map Interactivity

Map Libraries and Archives

R B Parry

Map Perception and Cognition Map Types

S M Freundschuh

D Wood and J B Krygier

Mapping Agencies

329 334 339

C Perkins

344

Mapping, Commercial

B Hunt

351

Mapping, Cyberspace

M Zook and M Dodge

356

Mapping, Distributed

W Cartwright

Mapping, Non-Western

M W Pearce

Mapping, Philosophy

C Perkins

Mapping, Race and Ethnicity Mapping, Topographic Maps

H Winlow

P Collier

D Wood and J Krygier

Maps and Governance Maps and Protest

D Wood and J Krygier M Farish

Markov Chain Analysis

372 385 398 409 421

F Harvey

Maps and the State

368

431 436 442

W Li and C Zhang

455

Marxism/Marxist Geography I

A Cumbers

461

Marxism/Marxist Geography II

A Jones

474

Masculinism

A Bain

486

Masculinities

B van Hoven and P Hopkins

492

Massey, D. Material Culture

T Skelton D P Tolia-Kelly

497 500

Material, The

A Tay

505

McDowell, L.

A Jones

511

Contents

li

VOLUME 7 M Media

D B Clarke

1

Medical Geography

R Earickson

9

Medieval Geography

K D Lilley

21

Medieval Historical Geographies Mega-Cities

R Jones

Y-M Yeung

Meinig, D.

40

K M Dunn

48

Memorials and Monuments Memory

D H Alderman and O J Dwyer

S McDowell

Mental Health

64

S Bell

70

Me´tropole d’e´quilibre

G Burgel

Middle East and North Africa Migrant Workers Migration

76

M E Bonine

C Cindy Fan

P Boyle

96

Military and Geography Military Geographies

W Jenkins

116

R Woodward

122

J H McKendrick

P Merriman C G Pooley

J R Gold

157 R N Gwynne

Modiﬁable Areal Unit Problem Monte Carlo Simulation Moral Economies

169

S Ratick and G Schwarz

175

Multiculturalism

185

G Setten and K M Brown

Movies and Films, Analysis of Multicultural City

S C Aitken

H Hoernig and M Walton-Roberts J Clayton

Multidimensional Scaling

164

D W Wong

L McDowell

Moral Landscapes

144 150

D Linehan

Modernization Theory

128 134

Mobility, History of Everyday

Modernity

108

M Farish

Mixed and Multiple Methods

Modern City

82 89

Migration, Historical Geographies of

Mobility

51 59

C J Smith

Mental Maps

32

191 196 201 211

W M Bowen

216

N Nation

J Penrose

National Parks

223

N Curry

National Schools of Geography National Spatialities

T Edensor

229 P Claval

236 242

lii

Contents

Nationalism

D H Kaplan

248

Nationalism, Historical Geography of

M A Busteed

255

Natural Resources

G Bridge

261

Naturalistic Testing

R D Jacobson

269

Nature

K R Olwig

275

Nature, Historical Geographies of Nature, History of

P Holland and A Wearing

286

M Tanskanen

293

S Fullagar

298

Nature, Performing Nature, Social

N Argent

303

Nature-Culture

O Jones

309

Natures, Charismatic

J Lorimer

Natures, Gendered

C Radel

Natures, Postcolonial

331

M Sioh

Neighborhood Change

337

J Kenny

Neighborhood Effects

343

Sang-Il Lee

Neighborhoods and Community Neocolonialism

324

349

J Flint

354

M Watts

360

Neoliberal Economic Strategies Neoliberalism

R Le Heron

365

W Larner

374

Neoliberalism and Development Neoliberalism, Urban

W E Murray

379

W Larner

385

Network Analysis

M J Kuby and T D Roberts and C D Upchurch, and S Tierney

391

Network Regions

P Cooke

399

Networks

G Grabher

405

Networks, Urban

N Clarke

414

Neural Networks

I Casas

419

New Regionalism New Towns

G MacLeod K Kafkoula

New Urbanism NIMBY

423 428

E J McCann

438

P Hubbard

444

Nongovernmental Organizations

Saraswati Raju

Non-Representational Theory/Non-Representational Geographies Nordic Geography

K Simonsen

Nordplan and Nordregio North–South

450 L Cadman

456 464

G Olsson

469

A McGregor and D Hill

473

VOLUME 8 O Oceania

W E Murray

Oceanographic Mapping

1 D M Lawrence

14

Contents Oceans

liii

P E Steinberg

21

M Gren

27

Olsson, G. Oral History

M Boyle

30

Oral History, Ecological Orientalism

A Nightingale

34

M Haldrup and L Koefoed

37

Other/Otherness

J-F Staszak

43

Overlay (in GIS)

O Ahlqvist

48

Oxbridge Geographies

E Pawson

56

P Paasi, A.

R Jones

Paciﬁc Rim

63

X Chen

66

Parenting/Motherhood/Fatherhood Participant Observation Participation

S C Aitken

K Walsh

77

S Hickey and U Kothari

Participatory Action Research Participatory Video Patriarchy

82

S Kindon and R Pain and M Kesby

S Kindon

Peet, R.

102 J D van der Ploeg

108

A Kobayashi

People’s Geography

114

D Mitchell

Performance, Research as

116

F Morton

Performative and Embodied Mapping Performativity

120 C Perkins

D P McCormack

Philosophy and Human Geography

G Backhaus

S Elden

Photogrammetry/Aerial Photography

137 145

P Collier

R Sanders

151 157

Physical Geography and Human Geography T Cresswell

Place Names

126 133

Phenomenology/Phenomenological Geography

Photographs

90 96

C J Nash

Peasant Agriculture

Place

72

S Harrison

163 169

V R Savage

178

Place, Politics of

L A Staeheli and D Mitchell

185

Planning, Urban

M Huxley

193

Plant Geographies

A Franklin

Point Pattern Analysis Policing

199

E Delmelle

N R Fyfe

Political Boundaries Political Ecology

204 212

A Paasi

217

R P Neumann

228

Political Economy, Geographical Political Geography Political Representation

D Storey B Forest

R Le Heron

234 243 254

liv

Contents

Polycentricity

P Hall

Polyvocality

260

Saraswati Raju

Popular Culture

J Dittmer

Population Geography

269

A J Bailey

Port-Industrial Complexes

274

M Dunford and G Yeung

Positivism/Positivist Geography Possibilism

265

285

D Bennett

295

V Berdoulay

Postcolonial Cities

312

A D King

321

Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies Postconﬂict Geographies Postdevelopment

C McEwan

J O’Loughlin

334

J Nederveen Pieterse

339

Posthumanism/Posthumanistic Geographies Postmodern City

J Lorimer

344

S Warren

Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography

355 C Minca

363

Post-Phenomenology/Post-Phenomenological Geographies Post-Productivist and Multifunctional Agriculture

J Lea

G A Wilson

L Sy´kora

Post-Socialist Cities

K Woodward and D P Dixon, and J P Jones, III

A O Chimhowu

Poverty, Rural

379

396 408

A R Tickamyer

Pragmatism/Pragmatist Geographies Pred, A.

373

387

Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies Poverty

327

416 S J Smith

421

B Warf

426

Pregnancy and Childbirth Private/Public Divide

E Chacko

429

D Collins

437

Privatization

P M O’Neill

442

Probabilism

R Flowerdew

448

Probability Models Projections Protest, Rural Psychoanalysis

R Flowerdew

451

F C Kessler

455

M Woods

474

P T Kingsbury

480

Psychoanalytic Theory/Psychoanalytic Geographies Psychotherapy/Psychotherapeutic Geographies

P T Kingsbury L Bondi

487 495

Public Good

K R Cox

501

Public Policy

M Perry

506

Public Space

D Mitchell and L A Staeheli

511

Public Spaces, Urban

D Collins and B-M Shantz

517

Contents

lv

VOLUME 9 Q Q Method/Analysis

P Robbins

1

Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Qualitative Spatial Reasoning Quantitative Data

M Cope and J-K Jung

R Billen and N Van de Weghe

M Charlton

Quantitative Methodologies

27

T J Barnes

Queer Theory/Queer Geographies Questionnaire Survey

12 19

M F Goodchild

Quantitative Revolution

7

33 K Browne

39

V Preston

46

R Race

J Winders

53

Racism and Antiracism

A Nayak

Radical Environmentalism Radical Geography

I G Simmons

65

R Peet

Radical Political Economy Railways

59

73

F Mizuoka

83

J Shaw and I Docherty

91

Rational Choice Theory (and Rational Choice Marxism) Reclus, E.

J P Clark T R Slater

M B Aalbers R Black

Regeneration to Renaissance

125

T Butler

130

J Tomaney

Regional Actors

136

M Tewdwr-Jones and A Lord

Regional Competition, Regional Dumping Regional Connectivity

111 117

Refugees and Displacement

Region

100 107

Redbrick University Geography in Britain Redlining

G Bridge

151

I M M Pires

M Sokol

156 165

Regional Development and Noneconomic Factors Regional Development and Technology

J O Bærenholdt

J R L Howells

181 187

Regional Development Models

M Dunford

192

Regional Development Theory

P Nijkamp and M Abreu

202

Regional Development, Endogenous

F To¨dtling

208

Regional Geography I

A Paasi

214

Regional Geography II

D MacKinnon

228

Regional Inequalities

M Dunford

Regional Innovation Systems Regional Integration

236

J Revilla Diez and M Kiese

A Cumbers

Regional Planning and Development Theories Regional Production Networks

D W Edgington

246 252

E W Soja

259 271

lvi

Contents

Regional Science

H G Overman

Regionalisations, Everyday Regionalism

279

B Werlen

286

J Tomaney

294

Regionalization/Zoning Systems

N K Shortt

298

J Pearce

302

Regression, Linear and Nonlinear Regulation

G MacLeod and A Holden

Relational Economic Geography Reliability and Validity

N M Rantisi and J S Boggs

320

L Kong

324

B Page

Remote Sensing

329

J M Read and M Torrado

Representation and Re-presentation Representation, Politics of Representation-Mapping

A Kobayashi

J Mennis

357

R Johnston

364

J Cupples

Resource Industries

370

Resource Management, Rural

Rio Summit

H Neo

R Hayter

Retail Geographies

347 351

Resource and Environmental Economics

Ritter, C.

335

H V Scott

Research Funding Bodies Resistance

314

O Ahlqvist

Religion/Spirituality/Faith Remittances

309

376 381

L M B Harrington

390

N Wrigley

398

E S Norman and D Carr

406

M Doevenspeck

River Basin Development Rural Communities

412 C Fox

414

S Salamon and K A MacTavish

423

Rural Geography

M Woods

429

Rural Populations

K H Halfacree

442

Rurality and Post-Rurality

K H Halfacree

Russian-Language Geography

449

V Kolossov and A Treivish

457

VOLUME 10 S Sampling

L Lo

Santos, M. Sauer, C. Scale

1

M A de Souza M Williams

15

N F Sayre and A V Di Vittorio

Scale Analytical

Scientiﬁc Method

19

T W Crawford

Science and Scientism, Cartography

Scott, A.

11

R Flowerdew

C Gibson

29 D Turnbull

37 43 46

Contents Second Homes

M Haldrup

Second World Segregation

lvii 50

J Oldﬁeld

56

M F Poulsen

63

Segregation Indices

D W Wong

70

Segregation, Urban

R Atkinson and J McGarrigle

76

Selection Bias

T J Cooke

81

Self-Other

D Sibley

85

Semiotics

K E Foote and M Azaryahu

89

Sense of Place

K E Foote and M Azaryahu

Sensorium

D McCormack

Services, Professional Services, Rural Sexuality

101

A James

106

A C Vias

112

P Howell

Shift-Share Analysis Simulation

119 R W Jackson and K E Haynes

S M Manson A Kobayashi

138

D Pinder

144

Situationism/Situationist Geography

Slums

Q Stevens

151

R Harris

Smith, N.

157

A L Hansen

Social Capital

163

A Bebbington

165

Social Capital, Place and Health Social Class

L Twigg and J Mohan

N Duncan

Social Geography

Social Movements

185

K Newman

195

M Ramutsindela

199

Social Studies of Scientiﬁc Knowledge

S M Ruddick

217

A Latham

Soundscapes South Asia Southeast Asia

204 212

Sound and Music

Sovereignty

B Greenhough

S Engel-Di Mauro

Society–Space Soja, E.

171 179

R Panelli

Social Justice, Urban

Socialism

125 132

Situated Knowledge, Reﬂexivity

Situationist City

96

227

M Duffy

230

A Saldanha

236

G P Chapman

241

Eric C Thompson M Coleman

248 255

Space I

S Elden

262

Space II

R Kitchin

268

Space-Time

J D Gatrell and E W LaFary

Space-Time Modeling

M Yuan

Spanish Language Geography Spatial Analysis, Critical

276 286

A Albet and P Zusman

T Schwanen

296 302

lviii

Contents

Spatial Autocorrelation

D A Grifﬁth

308

Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of

Y Lu

Spatial Data Mining, Cluster and Pattern Recognition Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization Spatial Data Models

T A Arentze

C Kim

337

A C Winstanley

Spatial Division of Labor

345

A Smith

Spatial Expansion Method

348

E Casetti

355

Spatial Filtering/Kernel Density Estimation Spatial Interaction Models Spatial Interpolation

G Rushton and C Tiwari

M E O’Kelly

369

N Schuurman

Spatial Science

377

Ron Johnston

384

Spatially Autoregressive Models Squatter Settlements

D A Grifﬁth

396

K D Willis

403

M Jones

State Theory

359 365

N S Lam

Spatial Ontologies

325 332

L Bian

Spatial Databases

State

317

409

B Jessop

Statistics, Descriptive

416

J Lee

422

Statistics, Inferential

D M Scott

429

Statistics, Overview

G M Robinson

436

Statistics, Spatial Storper, M.

D J Unwin

452

P Sunley

458

Street Names and Iconography

M Azaryahu

460

VOLUME 11 S Structural Adjustment

G Mohan

Structural Equations Models Structural Marxism

1

P L Mokhtarian and D T Ory

A Kent

18

Structuralism/Structuralist Geography Structuration Theory

R G Smith

R Lippuner and B Werlen

Structurationist Geography Subaltern

10

B Werlen

C McEwan

30 39 50 59

Subalternity

V Gidwani

65

Subjectivity

J P Sharp

72

Suburbanization Superpower

A Mace J O’Loughlin

Surrealism/Surrealist Geographies Surveillance

77

M Henry

82 D Pinder

87 95

Contents Surveying

U F Paleo

Sustainability

100

T Marsden

Sustainability, Urban

103

M Whitehead

Sustainable Development

109

J A Elliott

Symbolic Interactionism

117

V J Del Casino, Jr. and D Thien

Symbolism, Iconography Systems

132

M Denil

138

G P Chapman

Systems Theory

lix

146

D Straussfogel and C von Schilling

151

T Taylor, G.

J M Powell

159

Taylor, P.

J Glassman

162

Technological Change

G Norcliffe

165

Technology and Regional Development Technology Industries

Territory and Territoriality

183 B Doman´ski

D Delaney

Theocracy

J M Smith

215

D Wilson

220

Nick Megoran

Therapeutic Landscapes Thiessen Polygon Third World

223 W M Gesler

229

L Mu

231

J Connell

Third World Cities

237

S Lloyd-Evans and R B Potter

247

U Strohmayer

256

Time and Historical Geography Time Geographic Analysis Time Geography

M Kurtz

259

M Dijst

266

M Gren

Time Series Analysis

279

G M Robinson

Time-Space Diaries

285

T Schwanen

294

T Edensor

Tourism, Rural

301

M Cawley

Tourism, Urban

313

T Hall

318

J P H Poon

324

Trade, International

R Grant

329

Trade, Transport and Communications, Historical Geographies of Transatlantic

196 209

Text, Textual Analysis

Trade Blocs

190

D Mustafa

Text and Textuality

Tourism

177

B Warf

Territorial Production Complexes

Thrift, N.

171

C G Alvstam

Telecommunications

Terrorism

J Zhang

M Sheller

338 345

Transcripts (Coding and Analysis) Transitional Economies

P J Hugill

J Round

M Cope

350 355

lx

Contents

Translation

F M Smith

361

Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries Transnational Elites

C Berndt

K Olds

376

Transnational Ethnic Networks Transnationalism

Jinn-Yuh Hsu

383

D Ley

388

Transnationalism and Labor Geography

P F Kelly

Transnationalism and Technology Transfer Transnationality

368

J-Y Hsu

S Huang

394 400 404

Transport and Accessibility

J Gutie´rrez

410

Transport and Deregulation

P White and A Sturt

418

Transport and Globalization

K O’Connor

424

Transport and Social Exclusion Transport and Sustainability Transport Geography

J Hine

429

K Button

435

R D Knowles

441

Transport, Public

J Preston

452

Transport, Rural

D Banister

460

B P Y Loo

465

Transport, Urban

Transportation and Land Use Travel and Travel-Writing

476

D J Unwin

484

A Nightingale

Tropical Geography Tuan, Y-F

470

R Phillips

Trend Surface Models Triangulation

S-L Shaw

489

M Power

493

T Cresswell

499

VOLUME 12 U Uncertainty

M F Goodchild

1

Underclass

C Haylett

6

Uneven Development

B Christophers

Uneven Regional Development Urban Architecture Urban Design

R Hudson

P Kraftl

Urban Habitats/Nature Urban Modeling

32 S Rodgers

40

J Byrne and J Wolch

M Batty

Urban Morphologies, Historical Urban Morphology

18 24

E Street

Urban Growth Machine

Urban Order

12

46 51

T R Slater

K D Lilley

66

M Jayne and D Bell

Urban Planning and Human Geography

59

70 J Dodson and B Gleeson

77

Contents Urban Policy

A Cochrane

Urban Regimes

84

M Lauria and R K Whelan

Urban Representation/Imagination Urban Village

P Kraftl and J Horton

G Crow

Urbanism

94

106

P Knox

112

Urban–Rural Continuum Utopian Cities

89

101

G Bridge

Urbanization

lxi

K H Halfacree

G Brown

119 125

V Venture Capital

C Mason

131

Vichianism (After Vico)

D Kunze

138

Vidal de la Blache, P.

G Mercier

147

Visuality

F MacDonald

Visualization, Feminist Voluntary Sector

M Pavlovskaya C Milligan

von Humboldt, A. Vulnerability

151 157 165

A Buttimer

171

B Wisner

176

W War

V Mamadouh

183

War, Historical Geography and Waste Management Water

N C Johnson

M Watson

Fiona Allon

Water Management

D Kay M Davidson

D Conradson

S C MacKian

Wetlands and Reclamation

215 222

R Lee and C Philo

Welfare Reform Wellbeing

207

S Batterbury

Welfare Geography

195 201

Waterfront Development Watts, M. J.

189

224 230 235

M G Hatvany

241

Whiteness

L Peake

247

Wilderness

C R Warren

254

Wilson, A.

G P Clarke

World/Global Cities World-System

B Derudder K Terlouw

Wreford Watson, J. Wright, J. K.

G M Robinson

I M Keighren

260 262 269 279 281

Y Youth/Youth Cultures Index

L Holt

283 289

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION

CARTOGRAPHY AND GIS Art and Cartography Atlases Biodiversity Mapping Cartographic Animation Cartography, History of Cartography in Islamic Societies Census Geography Census Mapping Children and Mapping Color, Mapping Computational Human Geography Counter Mapping Critical Cartography Critical GIS Digital Data, Historical Geography and Digital Earth Disease Mapping Electoral Cartography Feminism, Maps and GIS Generalization Geodemographics Geodesy Geographical Masking Geomatics Georeferencing, Geocoding Geospatial Intelligence Geovisualization GIS and Cartography GIS and Society GIS, Mobile and Locational Based Services GIS, Public Participation GIScience and Systems Global Positioning/GPS Indigenous Mapping Information Graphics Integrated Spatial Data Infrastructure Internet/Web Mapping Map Hacking Map Interactivity Map Libraries and Archives Map Perception and Cognition

Map Types Mapping Agencies Mapping, Commercial Mapping, Cyberspace Mapping, Distributed Mapping, Non Western Mapping, Philosophy Mapping, Race and Ethnicity Mapping, Topographic Maps Maps and Governance Maps and Protest Maps and the State Oceanographic Mapping Performative and Embodied Mapping Photogrammetry/Aerial Photography Projections Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Qualitative Spatial Reasoning Quantitative Revolution Representation Mapping Science and Scientism, Cartography Space Time Modeling Spatial Databases Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization Spatial Ontologies Surveying Symbolism, Iconography DEVELOPMENT GEOGRAPHY Aid Brain Drain Brandt Commission Brown Agenda Child Labor Civil Society Colonialism I Colonialism II Colonialism, Internal Commodity Chains Debt Deforestation

lxiii

lxiv

Subject Classiﬁcation

Dependency Desertiﬁcation Developmentalism Development I Development II Digital Divide East Asian Miracle Empire Empowerment Eurocentrism Export Processing Zones Extended Metropolitan Region Fair Trade Famine First World Global Commodity Chains Governance, Good Green Revolution Health and Development HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries Imperialism, Cultural Indigenous Geographies Indigenous Knowledges Informal Sector Intermediate Technology Latin American Structuralist School Livelihoods Locality Debates Migrant Workers Modernization Theory Neocolonialism Neoliberalism and Development Nongovernmental Organizations Orientalism Participation Postcolonial Cities Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies Postdevelopment Poverty Remittances Resistance Rio Summit* Second World Social Capital Squatter Settlements Structural Adjustment Sustainable Development Theocracy Third World Third World Cities Trade, International Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries Tropical Geography Vulnerability

DISCIPLINARY MATTERS Anglo American/Anglophone Hegemony Anthropology and Human Geography Chinese Language Geography Citation Geography Communist and Post Communist Geographies Critical Geography Cultural Studies and Human Geography Dutch Human Geography Economics and Human Geography Enlightenment Geography Environmental Studies and Human Geography Feminist Groups within Geography Francophone Geography Geographical Journals German Language Geography Historical Geography Human Geography Interdisciplinarity Italian Language Geography Ivy League and Geography in the US Japanese Geography Lusophone Geography Medieval Geography Military and Geography National Schools of Geography Nordic Geography Oxbridge Geographies Philosophy and Human Geography Physical Geography and Human Geography Redbrick University Geography in Britain Research Funding Bodies Russian Language Geography Spanish Language Geography Urban Planning and Human Geography ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY Agglomeration Business Services Capital and Space Capitalism Capitalism and Division of Labor Commodity Chains Competitiveness Consumption Core Periphery Models Corporate Responsibilities Corridor and Axis Development Creativity Cultural Economy Debt De Industrialization e Business and e Commerce Economic Crises

Subject Classiﬁcation

Economic Development, Rural Economic Geography Economic Geography, Quantitative Economics and Human Geography Economies, Alternative Economies, Borderland Economies, Branch Plant Economies, Imagined Economy, Informal Embeddedness Enterprise Discourse Entrepreneurship Environmental Regulation Ethnic Economies Export Processing Zones Fair Trade Feminism and Work Feminist Political Economy Finance, Historical Geographies of Finance, Offshore Financial Centers, International Financial Exclusion Financial Knowledge Financial Risks and Management Firms Food Networks Food Regimes Fordism Fordism, Post Fordism and Flexible Specialization Foreign Direct Investment Global Commodity Chains Global Production Networks Globalization and Transnational Corporations Globalization, Economic Governance, Corporate Growth Poles, Growth Centers Heritage and Economy High Tech Industry Industrial Districts Industrialization Industrial Location Industrial Organization Industrial Parks Industrial Restructuring Industry, Historical Geographies of Informal Sector Information Technology Innovation Internationalization of Education International Organizations Internet, Economic Geography Investment Promotion Knowledge and Education, Historical Geographies of Knowledge Communities Knowledge Economy

lxv

Knowledge Intensive Business Services Labor Control Regime Labor Flexibility Labor Geography Labor Market Labor Unionism Learning Regions Local Development Local Economic Development Local Economic Development, Politics of Locality Debates Location Theory Migrant Workers Modernization Theory Natural Resources Neoliberal Economic Strategies Networks Political Economy, Geographical Privatization Public Policy Radical Political Economy Regional Integration Regional Production Networks Relational Economic Geography Remittances Resource and Environmental Economics Resource Industries Retail Geographies Services, Professional Services, Rural Spatial Division of Labor State Theory Technological Change Technology and Regional Development Technology Industries Telecommunications Trade Blocs Trade, International Trade, Transport and Communications, Historical Geographies of Transitional Economies Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries Transnational Elites Transnational Ethnic Networks Transnationalism and Labor Geography Transnationalism and Technology Transfer Uneven Development Urban Growth Machine Venture Capital HEALTH AND MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY Ageing and Health Care/Caregiving Chronic Disease Communicable Diseases, Globalization of

lxvi

Subject Classiﬁcation

Complementary and Alternative Medicine Disability and Chronic Illness Disease Diffusion Environmental Health Epidemiological Transition Gender and Health Health and Development Healthcare Accessibility Health Geography Health Inequalities Health Services Restructuring Health Systems and Health Services HIV/AIDS in Developed Countries Housing, Neighbourhoods and Health Indigenous Health and Medicine Medical Geography Mental Health Pregnancy and Childbirth Social Capital, Place and Health Therapeutic Landscapes Voluntary Sector Welfare Reform Wellbeing HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY Agrarian Transformations Capitalism and Division of Labor Digital Data, Historical Geography and Environment, Historical Geography of Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of Exploration Feminist Geography, Prehistory of Feudalism and Feudal Society Field Systems and Enclosure Finance, Historical Geographies of Gender, Historical Geographies of Genealogy and Family History Geohistory Heritage and Culture Heritage and Economy Heritage and Identity Historical Geographies, Rural Historical Geographies, Urban Historical Geography Historical Geography, Evolution of Imperial Cities Imperialistic Geographies Industry, Historical Geographies of Knowledge and Education, Historical Geographies of Medieval Historical Geographies Memory Migration, Historical Geographies of Nationalism, Historical Geography of Nature, Historical Geographies of Nature, History of

Oral History Oral History, Ecological Street Names and Iconography Time and Historical Geography Trade, Transport and Communications, Historical Geographies of Urban Morphologies, Historical War, Historical Geography and METACONCEPTS Africa Americas Antarctica Arctic Asia Australasia Balkans Community Diffusion Distance East/West Environment Europe Indian Ocean Landscape Local–Global Memory Middle East and North Africa Mobility Nature Nature Culture North–South Oceania Oceans Paciﬁc Rim Place Scale Self Other Society–Space South Asia Southeast Asia Space I Space II Space Time Territory and Territoriality Transatlantic METHODS Archives Artiﬁcial Intelligence and Expert Systems Autobiography Autoethnography Auto Photography Case Study Approach Categorical Data Analysis

Subject Classiﬁcation

Cellular Automata Census Mapping Chaos and Complexity Choice Modeling Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems Content Analysis Cross Cultural Research Diaries (Video, Audio or Written) Discourse Analysis Ecological Fallacy Edge Effects Embodied Knowing Emotional Knowing Entropy Maximising Models Error (Propagation and Modeling) Ethical Issues in Research Ethnography Evolutionary Algorithms Experimental Design Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis Factor Analysis and Principal Components Analysis Feminist Methodologies Fieldwork First Law of Geography Focus Groups Fractal Analysis Fuzzy Set and Fuzzy Logic Genealogy Method Geocomputation Geographical Masking Geographically Weighted Regression Georeferencing, Geocoding Grounded Theory Haptic or Touch Based Knowledge Hub Network Location Hypothesis Testing Input–Output Analysis Intensive/Extensive Research Internet Based Measurement Interviews: In Depth, Semi Structured Kriging and Variogram Models Landscape Iconography Landscape Perception Language and Research Life Course Approaches Location Analysis Longitudinal Methods (Cohort Analysis, Life Tables) Markov Chain Analysis Masculinism Mental Maps Mixed and Multiple Methods Modiﬁable Areal Unit Problem Monte Carlo Simulation Movies and Films, Analysis of

lxvii

Multidimensional Scaling Naturalistic Testing Neighborhood Effects Network Analysis Neural Networks Oral History Oral History, Ecological Overlay (in GIS) Participant Observation Participatory Action Research Participatory Video Performance, Research as Photographs Point Pattern Analysis Polyvocality Psychoanalysis Q Method/Analysis Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Quantitative Data Quantitative Methodologies Questionnaire Survey Regionalization/Zoning Systems Regression, Linear and Nonlinear Reliability and Validity Remote Sensing Representation and Re presentation Sampling Scale Analytical Scientiﬁc Method Segregation Indices Selection Bias Semiotics Shift Share Analysis Simulation Situated Knowledge, Reﬂexivity Sound and Music Space Time Modeling Spatial Analysis, Critical Spatial Autocorrelation Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of Spatial Data Mining, Cluster and Pattern Recognition Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization Spatial Data Models Spatial Expansion Method Spatial Filtering/Kernel Density Estimation Spatial Interaction Models Spatial Interpolation Spatially Autoregressive Models Statistics, Descriptive Statistics, Inferential Statistics, Overview Statistics, Spatial Structural Equations Models Subalternity Subjectivity

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Subject Classiﬁcation

Text, Textual Analysis Thiessen Polygon Time Geographic Analysis Time Series Analysis Time Space Diaries Transcripts (Coding and Analysis) Translation Trend Surface Models Triangulation Uncertainty Visualization, Feminist NATURE/ENVIRONMENT Agrarian Transformations Agri Environmentalism and Rural Change Animal Geographies Biodiversity Biodiversity Mapping Climate Change Conservation and Ecology Culture/Natures Deforestation Desertiﬁcation Ecotourism Environment Environmental Hazards Environmental Health Environmentalism Environmental Justice Environmental Policy Environmental Regulation Environmental Security Environmental Studies and Human Geography Environment, Historical Geography of Gardens and Gardening Green Revolution Land Change Science National Parks Natural Resources Nature Nature, Historical Geographies of Nature, History of Nature, Performing Nature, Social Natures, Charismatic Natures, Gendered Natures, Postcolonial Plant Geographies Political Ecology Radical Environmentalism Resource and Environmental Economics Resource Management, Rural Sustainability Sustainable Development Urban Habitats/Nature

Waste Management Water Management Wetlands and Reclamation Wilderness PEOPLE Barnes, T. Beaujeu Garnier, J. Berry, B. Bobek, H. Bowman, I. Christaller, W. Claval, P. Cloke, P. Cohen, S. Corbridge, S. Cosgrove, D. Cox, K. Darby, H. C. Dear, M. J. Dicken, P. Dudley Stamp, L. Evans, E. E. Garrison, W. Golledge, R. Gottmann, J. Gregory, D. Hagerstrand, T. Haggett, P. Harley, J. B. Hartshorne, R. Harvey, D. Hettner, A. Jackson, P. Johnston, R. J. Kolossov, V. Kropo´tkin, P. Lacoste, Y. Ley, D. Lowenthal, D. Mackinder, H. J. Massey, D. McDowell, L. Meinig, D. Olsson, G. Paasi, A. Peet, R. Pred, A. Reclus, E. Ritter, C. Santos, M. Sauer, C. Scott, A. Smith, N. Soja, E.

Subject Classiﬁcation

Storper, M. Taylor, G. Taylor, P. Thrift, N. Tuan, Y. F. Vidal de la Blache, P. von Humboldt, A. Watts, M. J. Wilson, A. Wreford Watson, J. Wright, J. K. PHILOSOPHY AND GEOGRAPHY Activist Geographies Actor Network Theory/Network Geographies Anarchism/Anarchist Geography Anthropogeography (After Ratzel) Applied Geography Avant Garde/Avant Garde Geographies Behavioral Geography Berkeley School Chicago School Christian Geography Cognitive Geography Computational Human Geography Critical Geography Critical Rationalism (After Popper) Critical Realism/Critical Realist Geographies Critical Theory (After Habermas) Cultural Materialism Cultural Turn Darwinism (and Social Darwinism) Deconstruction Determinism/Environmental Determinism Developmentalism Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism Dialogism (After Bakhtin) Ecology Ethnomethodology/Ethnomethodological Geography Existentialism/Existential Geography Feminism/Feminist Geography Feminist Geography, Prehistory of Feminist Political Economy Field Geographies Fluidity–Fixity Foucauldianism Functionalism (Including Structural Functionalism) Geography, History of GIS and Society Historical Geographical Materialism Humanism/Humanistic Geography Human Nonhuman Idealism/Idealist Human Geography Indigenous Geographies Institutionalism/Institutional Geographies

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Lamarck(ian)ism Local–Global Los Angeles School of Post Modern Urbanism Marxism/Marxist Geography I Marxism/Marxist Geography II Military Geographies Nature Culture Non Representational Theory/Non Representational Geographies People’s Geography Phenomenology/Phenomenological Geography Philosophy and Human Geography Physical Geography and Human Geography Political Ecology Political Economy, Geographical Positivism/Positivist Geography Possibilism Posthumanism/Posthumanistic Geographies Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography Post Phenomenology/Post Phenomenological Geographies Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies Pragmatism/Pragmatist Geographies Probabilism Probability Models Psychoanalytic Theory/Psychoanalytic Geographies Psychotherapy/Psychotherapeutic Geographies Quantitative Revolution Radical Environmentalism Radical Geography Radical Political Economy Rational Choice Theory (and Rational Choice Marxism) Regional Geography I Regional Geography II Regionalisations, Everyday Regional Science Science and Scientism, Cartography Self Other Semiotics Situationism/Situationist Geography Social Studies of Scientiﬁc Knowledge Society–Space Space Time Spatial Science Structural Marxism Structuralism/Structuralist Geography Structurationist Geography Structuration Theory Surrealism/Surrealist Geographies Symbolic Interactionism Systems Systems Theory Time Geography Vichianism (After Vico) Welfare Geography

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Subject Classiﬁcation

POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY Activism Activist Geographies Ageing and Health Anti Geopolitics Apartheid/Post Apartheid Biopolitics Borderlands Buffer Zone Citizenship Citizenship and Governmentality, Rural Cold War Colonialism I Colonialism II Communist and Post Communist Geographies Critical Geopolitics Cultural Politics Democracy Devolution Electoral Cartography Electoral Districts Electoral Geography Empire Environmental Justice Environmental Security Ethnic Conﬂict Eurocentrism Fatherland/Homeland Feudalism and Feudal Society Geopolitics Geopolitics and Religion Gerrymandering Globalization, Economic Governance Governance, Corporate Governance, Good Governance, Transport Governance, Urban Governmentality Hegemony Human Rights Ideology Imperialistic Geographies Irredentism Liberalism Maps and Governance Military and Geography Nation National Spatialities Nationalism Nationalism, Historical Geography of Neoliberalism Neoliberalism, Urban Nongovernmental Organizations

Place, Politics of Political Boundaries Political Geography Political Representation Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies Postconﬂict Geographies Protest, Rural Public Good Public Policy Regionalism Regulation Representation, Politics of Socialism Social Movements Sovereignty State State Theory Superpower Territory and Territoriality Terrorism War War, Historical Geography and World System POPULATION GEOGRAPHY Ageing and Mobility Census Geography Demography Diaspora Emigration Fertility Genetics Immigration II Migration Migration, Historical Geographies of Population Geography Refugees and Displacement Rural Populations Segregation Transnationalism REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Ame´nagement du Territoire: Territorial Development Cassa per il Mezzogiorno City Region Concentrated Deconcentration Core Periphery Models Corridor and Axis Development Cumulative Causation De Industrialization De Localization Edge Cities Europe of Regions Greenﬁeld Development Growth Poles, Growth Centers

Subject Classiﬁcation

Hinterland Development Industrial Districts Industrial Parks Informalization Island Development Labor Markets, Regional Learning Regions Local Development Me´tropole d’e´quilibre Network Regions New Regionalism New Towns Nordplan and Nordregio Polycentricity Port Industrial Complexes Region Regional Actors Regional Competition, Regional Dumping Regional Connectivity Regional Development and Noneconomic Factors Regional Development and Technology Regional Development, Endogenous Regional Development Models Regional Development Theory Regional Geography I Regional Geography II Regional Inequalities Regional Innovation Systems Regional Integration Regionalisations, Everyday Regionalism Regional Planning and Development Theories Regional Production Networks River Basin Development Territorial Production Complexes Uneven Regional Development RURAL GEOGRAPHY Agricultural Land Preservation Agriculture, Sustainable Agri Environmentalism and Rural Change Animal Welfare, Agricultural Citizenship and Governmentality, Rural Counterurbanization Economic Development, Rural Food Networks Food Networks, Alternative Food Regimes Gender and Rurality Gentriﬁcation, Rural Historical Geographies, Rural Homelessness, Rural Housing, Rural Identity and Otherness, Rural Peasant Agriculture

Post Productivist and Multifunctional Agriculture Poverty, Rural Protest, Rural Resource Management, Rural Rural Communities Rural Geography Rurality and Post Rurality Second Homes Services, Rural Tourism, Rural Transport, Rural SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY Activism Affect Ageing and Mobility Ageism and Age Agoraphobia Anthropology and Human Geography Apartheid/Post Apartheid Becoming Belonging Berkeley School Body, The Care/Caregiving Child Labor Children/Childhood Citizenship Civil Society Community Consumption Cosmopolitanism Crime/Fear of Crime Cultural Capital Cultural Economy Cultural Geography Cultural Materialism Cultural Politics Cultural Studies and Human Geography Cultural Turn Culture Culture/Natures Cyberspace/Cyberculture Diaspora Difference/Politics of Difference Digital Divide Discourse Dwelling Education Embodied Knowing Emotional Geographies Emotional Knowing Empowerment Equity Ethnic Conﬂict

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Subject Classiﬁcation

Ethnic Economies Ethnicity Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of Festival and Spectacle Film Gay Geographies Gender and Rurality Gender, Historical Geographies of Globalization, Cultural Habitus Heritage Heteronormativity Home Homelessness Homelessness, Rural Hybridity Identity and Otherness, Rural Identity Politics Immigration I Imperialism, Cultural Indigeneity Indigenous Knowledges Indigenous Mapping Inequality Land Rights Landscape Landscape Iconography Language Law and Law Enforcement Leisure Lesbian Geographies Literature Masculinism Masculinities Material Culture Material, The Media Memorials and Monuments Modernity Moral Economies Moral Landscapes Multiculturalism Nature, Social Orientalism Other/Otherness Parenting/Motherhood/Fatherhood Patriarchy Performativity Place Names Policing Popular Culture Poverty Poverty, Rural Private/Public Divide

Public Space Public Spaces, Urban Queer Theory/Queer Geographies Race Racism and Antiracism Religion/Spirituality/Faith Representation, Politics of Segregation, Urban Sense of Place Sensorium Sexuality Social Capital Social Capital, Place and Health Social Class Social Geography Social Justice, Urban Soundscapes Street Names and Iconography Subaltern Surveillance Symbolism, Iconography Text and Textuality Tourism Transnationality Travel and Travel Writing Underclass Visuality Voluntary Sector Water Welfare Geography Welfare Reform Wellbeing Whiteness Youth/Youth Cultures TRANSPORT GEOGRAPHY Aviation Ecotourism Governance, Transport Intermodality Logistics Mobility, History of Everyday Railways Regional Connectivity Tourism Tourism, Rural Tourism, Urban Transport and Accessibility Transport and Deregulation Transport and Globalization Transport and Social Exclusion Transport and Sustainability Transportation and Land Use Transport Geography Transport, Public

Subject Classiﬁcation

Transport, Rural Transport, Urban URBAN GEOGRAPHY Anti Urbanism Cellular Automata Central Business District Central Place Theory Chinese Urbanism City Marketing City Region Counterurbanization Defensible Space Edge Cities Financial Centers, International Flaˆneur, The Gated Communities/Privatopias Gender in the City Gentriﬁcation Ghettos Governance, Urban Historical Geographies, Urban Housing Imperial Cities Industrial City Informational City Islamic Urbanism Land Rent Theory Malls/Retail Parks Mega Cities Modern City Multicultural City Neighborhood Change Neighborhoods and Community Neoliberalism, Urban Networks, Urban New Towns New Urbanism NIMBY

Planning, Urban Polycentricity Postcolonial Cities Postmodern City Post Socialist Cities Public Spaces, Urban Redlining Regeneration to Renaissance Segregation Indices Segregation, Urban Situationism/Situationist Geography Situationist City Slums Social Justice, Urban Street Names and Iconography Suburbanization Sustainability, Urban Third World Cities Tourism, Urban Transport, Urban Underclass Urban Architecture Urban Design Urban Growth Machine Urban Habitats/Nature Urbanism Urbanization Urban Modeling Urban Morphologies, Historical Urban Morphology Urban Order Urban Policy Urban Regimes Urban Representation/Imagination Urban Village Urban–Rural Continuum Utopian Cities Waterfront Development World/Global Cities

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FOREWORD

We should reﬂect more on the increasingly inter connected and interdependent world we live in. Places that a century ago would have taken months to reach by boat can be reached in hours on a plane and at a price affordable to many more people. Changes in ﬁnancial markets on one side of the globe instantly ricochet around the planet. Decisions taken in one country or at a supra national scale affect jobs and well being in another. This is the world we have inherited sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reminds us of the work still needed to implement those shared values. For while the Earth seems to be getting smaller in space and time, the relative differences between places are often growing apace. The situation in many de veloping countries is currently regressing with falling life expectancy, rising national debts, and weakening econ omies. In the developed North there continue to be large differences in the standards of living between rich and poor, core and periphery, rural and urban areas. Con sequently, the mobility of people is increasing around the globe with millions of labour migrants and refugees on the move, seeking better lives elsewhere. In addition, humanity is beginning to recognise and address the sig niﬁcant global challenge of climate change which is in part created by the processes of development and glob alisation, but will require to be addressed with principles of climate justice. The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography documents and explains all of these issues, and many more besides. Focused through the spatial lens of a modern geography sensitive to how social, economic, political, cultural or environmental processes work within and between places, the entries cover the full spectrum of issues facing humanity today across the

planet. Together the essays provide a fascinating over view of the diverse, complex and sometimes paradoxical relationships between people, places and environments, written in a style accessible to students and interested parties. As well, the vast array of methodologies and theories employed by geographers and others is docu mented, to make sense of the developments now occur ring. Indeed, in the very fact that it contains 914 essays, written by 844 contributors from over 40 countries, it is itself a product of the way in which the geography of communication and cooperation has rapidly evolved in recent years! The challenges facing all of us, whether they concern the present global economic downturn, survival in a country at war, managing environmental change, and a host of other pressing issues, require a broad and deep knowledge of the fundamental processes shaping our future. The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography provides a comprehensive overview of that knowledge and points to the tools needed to build planetary citi zenship and to think through a more ethical version of globalisation. I hope that it will be used extensively by present and future generations so that, as the planet seemingly shrinks in size, so the problems we face and the differences between us shrink too.

Mary Robinson President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalisation Initiative Honorary President of Oxfam International United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1997–2002 President of Ireland, 1990–1997

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FOREWORD

Over the past 100 hundred years or so, human geography has grown into one of the most vibrant university discip lines around the world. Expanding from its origins in the colonial pursuit of geographic knowledge, modern human geography has developed into a diverse collection of so phisticated, spatially inﬂected knowledges underpinned by a reﬁned set of theoretical concepts and methodological tools. As a result, deﬁning contemporary human geography is not an easy task, not least because what passes for geo graphic theory and praxis varies across time and space. For us, what marks the discipline from other social and natural sciences is its focus on the relationship between people and the world they inhabit, its core metaconcepts (such as space, place, landscape, nature, mobility, environment, and scale), and its use of geographically sensitive methods of data generation and analysis. Human geography, as the contents list of this encyclopedia amply demonstrates, fo cuses on key issues of the day, and opens up new and vital perspectives on questions that affect our everyday lives. It engages with and problematizes apparently unequivocal statements such as: planet is large; • the the teems with life; and • the planet planet is under threat. • Through the lens of human geography, these statements are revealed as equivocal and often paradoxical. What do we mean by ‘large’ in a period in which a scientiﬁc shift based on the discovery of fractals has expanded our perception of the length and complexity of lines at exactly the same time that transport and communications technologies shrink the world to such an extent that we can interact in real time with people on the far side of the planet and maps of the planet can be called up online by ordinary citizens and analyzed in diverse ways? What do we mean by ‘life’ in a

period in which we keep discovering more of it in more and more unlikely places, while scientiﬁc and cultural changes are continually expanding our deﬁnition of what ‘life’ consists of? What do we mean by ‘threat’ when we are unable to agree on the nature of a threat, let alone a so lution, when technologies that offer the promise of salvation all too often create new problems and when increasing populations offer new resources as well as consume them? Human geography seeks to answer such questions not only in order to understand the world but also to make practical interventions. Unlike many disciplines, it is built on unsure foundations without much in the way of a canon. Some might say that that is its attraction; that it has perennially been driven by the changing world around it. The discipline is willing to go where other disciplines fear to tread because its history is loosely connected, more like a conglomerate than a series of well deﬁned strata – it has not been wed to a single or limited theoretical approach but rather it has explored and drawn together all manner of approaches in order to address issues geographically. Equally though, it is born out of a longing for a planetary citizenship, with that longing sitting alongside a radical appreciation of how all the differences that make up the discipline both com promise and strengthen that goal. Whatever might be the case, at the heart of this endeavor has been the notion that geography matters – the spatial conﬁguration of events is not a mere add on to other somehow deeper, more abstract aspatial processes, but rather is central to how the processes unfold. These tensions between a discipline organized around understanding the world and a discipline consisting of and deﬁned by its own approaches, are manifest in how geog raphy tells its own history (and how one might organize an encyclopedia). One way would be to trace the changing approaches, epistemologies, and concerns of the discipline.

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Foreword

Thus one could track the multiple interpretations of the writing of Alexander von Humboldt, often cited as one of the key disciplinary ancestors. Alternately, one could chart the intellectual genealogies of ‘key’ texts, concepts, and places to provide counterpoints to more traditional chronological histories of various theoretical schools. Or, one could create accounts that organize the discipline via key processes and events in the world. To take other examples, there are presently attempts to write about differences in more satisfying and nuanced ways, ways that can bring about new means of living and experiencing the world through reinventing familiar categories like gender, race, and sexu ality, categories that have their own complex geographies which are a very part of the process of reinvention. There are efforts to reconceive cities taking account of the affective, the mundane, the ongoing incompleteness, fuzziness, and unpredictability that make up urban life, and there are at tempts to reimagine the economic as thoroughly infused with the cultural. Sometimes clumsy and awkward, some times plain inspired, these kinds of developments are surely worth following in a world too often characterized by div ision and despair. And follow them, this encyclopedia does.

The Encyclopedia The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography is a multinational attempt to capture and trace the state of human geography as a discipline and as a description of the world as it exists today and as it changes its shape in the future. Its ambition, in other words, is to provide a major and continually updated resource that provides an always temporary but hopefully authoritative means of answering questions of the sort posed above, and many others like them. This it does by taking on the venerable format of an encyclopedia which we can understand both in its original meaning as a course of education – in this case with the description ‘human geography’ – or in its more modern meaning as treating a particular branch of knowledge comprehensively through the medium of articles arranged alphabetically, by subject. Of course, producing an encyclopedia provides real opportunities, most especially the ability to stretch out explanations in a way not available in the more common dictionary form. Thus, our aim has not been to produce a portable, condensed summary or bite sized deﬁnitions of concepts, but rather clear, authoritative statements that set out the evolution and implications of geographic thought. Such an endeavor also produces some inevitable challenges. We want to use these challenges to explore how this encyclopedia has been put together, under standing that such challenges do not have to be under stood just as undesirable or unpleasant choices between alternatives. They can equally well be understood as producing the means to fuel productive encounters.

The ﬁrst challenge is an obvious one. There is an in evitable degree of arbitrariness about what is included and what is not. We have made an honest attempt to cover the whole range of what can possibly be treated as human geography in terms of issues on the ground and traditions within the discipline. This has been achieved through an intensive, iterative process involving all the editors, worked through at face to face meetings, conference phone calls, and e mail. Inevitably, there will be topics, methods, and thinkers considered important by some that we felt did not justify a stand alone entry. Moreover, we fully expect that as some issues grow or decline in im portance – to the world and/or the discipline – we shall have occasion in the future to expand or contract the coverage in different ﬁelds. This dilemma of selecting what to cover brings with it other issues too. Foremost among these has been how to shape the coverage of each entry and title each entry in an informative yet pithy way. There are many bodies of conceptual and substantive knowledge that cannot easily be encompassed by a single term or phrase. The result is that some of the entries have somewhat contrived titles. Better that, though, than titles that are vague or oblique, especially in these days of vo luminous information accessible across the Internet. The second challenge is an authorial one. It was a guiding principle of this encyclopedia that we would attempt to extend authorship beyond the ‘charmed circle’ of Anglophone/Western geographers, both as a response to postcolonial critiques and as a response to the critiques of scholars from outside the Euro American zone who felt disenfranchised by what is possible to perceive as an Anglophone/Western ascendancy. We have then been attentive to the geographies of the discipline of geog raphy, not least since scholars in diverse locales see the world differently in terms of what processes seem most important and what traditions of interpretation they use. We have not always been successful in achieving our goal of wide international authorship, partly because the geographical establishment is simply larger in some countries than others and partly because human geog raphy still bears some of the marks of its own history, not least as a colonial enterprise. Inevitably perhaps, the historical geography of geography kept coming home to roost. Moreover, scholars from different locales had varying abilities to contribute due to issues of time, ac cess to resources, and language. As a result, we have not been able to include some topics and perspectives. That said, entries have been solicited from 844 scholars located in over 40 countries around the world working within different traditions and we have managed to describe the different ideas and practices of geography in many countries/language groups. Again, this is a project that will be added to, over the coming years. The third challenge was to draw on the expertise of the human geographical community in ways that ensured

Foreword

some degree of diversity. In particular, we are proud that we have been able to balance the voices of established scholars with those of younger writers. This has had salutary effects. For example, we have been able to trace the history of philosophical ideas in geography both from the point of view of those that have been deeply involved in the explosion of different conceptual possibilities that took place in the discipline from the late 1960s onward, as well as the point of view of younger scholars who have set out quite different agendas. The fourth challenge was to ensure a relatively con sistent standard of scholarship for each entry and to provide a balanced content with respect to ideas and geographical coverage. To that end, each entry was ini tially refereed by a section editor who had overall re sponsibility for a selection of related entries (e.g., political, urban, regional development, quantitative methods, people) and a senior editor. Each senior editor oversaw three sections in order to ensure sections were approximately commensurate in style, content, and length. To provide breadth as well as depth, authors were asked to draw on examples and traditions from around the world and not simply rely on charting an issue with respect to their own local circumstance. The ﬁfth challenge was to use the Internet in pro ductive ways. One of the motivations for this encyclo pedia was the production of a platform upon which we might then build a future memory for human geography. It is an attempt to begin to produce a living, breathing archive which will gradually evolve, by using the powers of the Internet. Though in this ﬁrst edition, both print and Internet editions exist side by side, in later editions the Internet edition will exist singly, opening the way to a vision of geography which is in keeping with the age in which we now live. Since the articles are on the web, it will be possible to update them on a regular, rolling basis without having to wait for the revision of every other article. Equally, they will have all kinds of extra resources associated with them – illustrations of all types, including more and more videos as well as maps and diagrams, ‘active’ reference links that will take the reader straight to the listed journal article, and so on. Then, more articles will be added at regular intervals, both ﬁlling in gaps and supplementing existing articles. All articles will be left in situ – old articles will not be deleted – so that, in time, we will be able to produce a ‘timeline’ for many subjects, making it possible to see how thinking has evolved, thereby producing a real sense of historical accretion. Over time, we hope that the encyclopedia will become an institutionalized memory of human geography. The sixth challenge was to produce an encyclopedia of human geography that was relevant to issues that must concern us all. We sought an encyclopedia that espoused responsibility to the planet and its people certainly. But we also became, however awkwardly and unsuccessfully,

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involved in thinking what that responsibility might mean. A difﬁcult but ultimately productive instance of what this might entail – and how difﬁcult it can be to think through – was provided by the proposed boycott of the encyclo pedia by some authors concerned at Reed International’s (a sister company to Elsevier) involvement in the arms trade, an affair settled when Reed withdrew from these activities. Here, we saw the same concerns being aired by many participants but radically different solutions being put on offer. We hope that the encyclopedia mirrors this diversity of response. Bringing these six, and especially the last three, points together we hope and trust that this encyclopedia will be counted as a contribution to the global commons of knowledge. The production of a discipline depends on the goodwill of many who labor over ideas, who dis seminate, review, and rework them. We are painfully aware that in the current global climate of academia, when what counts as valued academic practices is nar rowing, writing authoritative and scholarly articles for publications such as this venture provides few rewards and attracts little institutional support. However, it is a vital component in the reproduction and development of a discipline. Rather than simply being understood as the creation of canonical knowledge by authorial com munities we would like to thank all those who have written and reviewed material here for an activity that may be deemed a professional service but is one that, sadly, is seen as subverting the institutional priorities of a number of universities.

By Way of Conclusion This encyclopedia is an attempt to summarize knowledge of the discipline using the encyclopedia format. In time, we hope that this encyclopedia will build into a com prehensive resource which constitutes both an archive of the discipline and, of course, of what it knows about the world. That knowledge, what facts are arraigned to support it, and what theories and methodologies are used as a means of making it credible, is, of course, a movable feast. Think of the notion of the ‘world’, which it is easy to demonstrate has changed its form many times over the course of history, as the development of the map shows all too well as Denis Cosgrove noted: There is no single map of the world, but a vast range of images that present different facets of the globe and its contents. y A map of the world is a global cultural artefact, an extraordinary human accomplishment, pro duced by contributions from many cultures. It is a highly sophisticated scientiﬁc achievement, and each advance in the various technologies that coalesce within it renders it more detailed, ﬂexible, and widely available. Google Earth is certainly not the last stage in its evolution.

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Foreword

Yet even [a] cursory survey of world mapping y re veals that science and technology are only a part of the story. Of equal importance are such affective aspects as imagination, faith, fear, and desire. We spot them im mediately in the world maps of nonmodern cultures, and even in early examples of the modern world map. For us humans, the earth is always more than its physical form and nature; it is, indeed, a world. y Today that world seems wholly visible, even transparent. y Yet today’s world maps are as hued by the contingencies of our own times as any previous ones, and we are ‘mapped’ into them as surely as Xiuhtechitli was mapped into the ﬁf teenth century Mesoamerican world. Because every ‘world’ is social and imaginative as much as it is material, our own world maps will in due course come to seem as quaint as Jain mandalas or medieval mappae mundi seem to us today. (Denis Cosgrove, 2007: 112 113)

Or, indeed, consider the idea of the encyclopedia it self. Encyclopedias are often thought to be an invention of the West. Speciﬁcally, the general purpose, widely distributed, printed encyclopedia is usually considered to have been conceived in eighteenth century Europe with Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728), and the Encyclope´die of Diderot and D’Alembert (1751 onward). These volumes are often considered to be the ﬁrst to take on a recognizably

modern form, with a comprehensive list of topics, dis cussed in depth and organized in what we would consider a systematic way. But, once we take a broader view in which places and times are not necessarily weighted by particular prejudices, a very different account hoves into view in which all manner of authors in different parts of the world revealed an encyclopedic instinct, and from much earlier on. For example, a tradition of encyclo pedia like volumes can be found in China from the eleventh century onward, and these were often massive undertakings involving as many as a thousand volumes. The point that these two examples make is that all we can be certain of is that the contours of knowledge will constantly change. There can be no absolute certainty about what will be included in and what will be excluded from human geography in times to come. But with this encyclopedia, we believe we now have a tool that will be able to trace this evolution as it happens. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift

Further Reading Cosgrove, D. (2007). Mapping the world. In Akerman, J. & Karrow, R. (eds.) Maps. Finding Our Place in the World, pp 65 158. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

D Darby, H. C. R. A. Butlin, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Darby, Henry Clifford (1909–1992) Henry Clifford Darby (see Figure 1) was one of the most inﬂuential ﬁgures in the ﬁeld of historical geography in the twentieth century, pioneering the mapping of medieval English data (notably the land measurements and other material contained in the Domesday survey of 1086), the description and analysis of regional landscapes, notably the Fenland of Cambridgeshire, the represen tations of the historical geographies of England, and some

Figure 1 Henry Clifford Darby (1909 1992).

of the related methodological and conceptual problems of describing and accounting for changes in the past. While based at Cambridge during World War II, he played a major role in the production of 30 Admiralty Handbooks: books produced to provide information for the British Navy on the history and geography of states of Europe and other countries involved in the war. He built up groups of researchers in historical geography in the university departments where he was Professor of Geography: at Liverpool (1945–49), at University College, London (1949–66), and at Cambridge (1966–1976). He was recognized as a polished lecturer and writer, and an experienced and effective administrator. Darby was born in Resolven in the county of Glamorgan, South Wales, on 7 February 1909, was edu cated at Neath County School, and in 1925 became a student at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated with ﬁrst class honors in geography in 1928. He then became a research student at the same college, spending part of his ﬁrst research year working in Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland on pioneer settlement as part of a project managed by Isaiah Bowman, the director of the American Geographical Society. He obtained his PhD in 1931 (the ﬁrst geography PhD awarded at Cambridge) with a dissertation on the role of the Fenland in English history, supervised by Bernard Manning (a lecturer in geography with strong interests in medieval history). He was appointed to a university lectureship in geography at Cambridge in 1931, and elected to a fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1932. Darby’s early publications in the late 1920s and early 1930s included papers on the architectural geography of Great Britain, the tinplate industry in the Vale of Neath, settlement geography in Northern Rhodesia, and a series of papers on the Fenland. He published two books on the Fenland in 1940: The Medieval Fenland and The Draining of the Fens (the latter being republished in 1956). Many years later, in 1983, he published The Changing Fenland,

1

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Darby, H. C.

comprising revisions of ﬁve chapters of The Draining of the Fens plus an introductory chapter on the Middle Ages. As was the case for much of Darby’s regional work, these volumes evidence the most thorough interrogation of manuscript and published sources, detailed knowledge based on personal ﬁeld experience, and meticulous presentation. However, H. C. Darby is perhaps best known for his collaborative studies of the geographies of the material contained in the volumes of the Domesday Book, using a range of mapping techniques to portray a wide range of phenomena that help to identify and characterize essential features of the administrative, settlement, and economic geography of medieval England at a particular point in time. This was a considerable feat, accomplished in the days well before computers and geographical information systems. Seven volumes of the Domesday Geographies were published by Cambridge University Press between 1952 and 1975, ﬁve of them dealing with regions and the remaining two a gazetteer and a review volume. These studies also paved the way for similar analyses and mappings of historical data, such as tithe and census data, which contributed considerably to the understanding of historical geography. Darby also edited and contributed to two important sets of essays on the changing historical geography of England: An Historical Geography of England before A.D. 800, published in 1936, and a New Historical Geography of England, published in 1973. The bases of these books were chapters written by distinguished scholars, not all geog raphers, dealing with England and some of its regions, either at speciﬁc periods in time or longer periods of transition and change. The ﬁrst of these books was made up of (largely thick) cross sections of history, such as ‘The human geography of Roman Britain’ (Chapter 2), ‘Leland’s England’ (Chapter 9), ‘The draining of the Fens’ (Chapter 12), and ‘The growth of London, AD 1660– 1800’. This volume was seen by Darby as a methodo logical compromise in the management and presentation of place through time, and hence the second book adopted a slightly different approach, using both time slices but also narratives of change through time. The titles of chapters 5–8 were: ‘Changes in the later Middle Ages’, ‘England circa 1600’, ‘The age of the improver: 1600–1800’, and ‘England circa 1800’. They were illus trated by meticulously drawn maps and bore the signs of very careful editing. The ﬁrst of these two books was in every way a pioneering product, the second a way of attempting to address some methodological and practical problems of the ﬁrst (though partly also a vehicle for new research ﬁndings). Darby’s interest in mapping was also reﬂected in his joint editorship of The University Atlas, published ﬁrst in 1936 and running into 22 editions, and the New Cambridge Modern History Atlas, published in 1970.

Darby addressed some of the basic characteristics and problems of historical and human geography in his published essays and addresses to learned societies, notably his 1962 paper on ‘The problem of geographical description’, but theory was not high on his list of intellectual priorities. Nonetheless, he published a wide range of papers on methodology that revealed what Alan Baker has described as his ‘mission to establish a new, catholic historical geography and his passion for methodological challenges and experiments’. He pre ferred on the whole to work on empirical data and their analysis and presentation, and research that led to better understanding of the historical geography of landscape. A seminal paper of 1951 on ‘The changing English landscape’ was a timely summary of such processes of change as woodland clearance, marshland drainage, heathland reclamation, changes in arable land, landscape gardening, and changes in towns and industry. Although, as Michael Williams has suggested, ‘‘It caused few ﬂutters in the geographical worldyFew realised that it was, in fact, a radical departure,’’ that ‘‘sought to integrate people and the world they inhabited.’’ Darby was always interested in and connected with the historical geography of countries and regions outside Britain, notably France, Europe more generally, and the US, and used material from readings and visits in some of his publications and academic seminars, though a number of manuscripts on these subjects were not published until after his death. Clifford Darby’s outstanding work was recognized with a knighthood in 1988 for ‘services to historical geography’, by the awards of seven honorary doctorates, and by his election to fellowship and membership of a range of august institutions, including the British Academy and the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments. His work was directly and substantially inﬂuential, along with that of others, in establishing historical geography as a major subject of research and teaching in universities in Britain and elsewhere, and of encouraging younger scholars, usually on his own terms, to commit to this fascinating and challenging subject. Some of his own students would later produce critiques of his work, which itself had earlier been a critique of the practices of historical geography and geographical history of the 1920s and 1930s. See also: Archives; Bowman, I.; Historical Geography; Regional Geography II.

Further Reading Baker, A. R. H. (1992). Obituary. Henry Clifford Darby 1909 1992. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 17, 495 501.

Darby, H. C.

Baker, A. R. H. (2003). Geography and History. Bridging the Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clout, H. D. (2007). Henry Clifford Darby 1909 1992. Geographers. Bibliographic Studies 26, 79 97. Darby, H. C. (1989). The published writings of Sir Clifford Darby, C.B.E., F.B.A. Journal of Historical Geography 15(1), 5 13. Darby, H. C., Williams, M., Clout, H., Coppock, T. and Prince, H. (2002). The Relations of History and Geography. Studies in England, France and the United States. Exeter: Exeter University Press. Harley, J. B. (1989). Historical geography and the cartographic illusion. Journal of Historical Geography 15(1), 80 91. Lawton, R. and Butlin, R. (1989). Clifford Darby: An appreciation. Journal of Historical Geography 15(1) 1, 14 19.

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Mead, W. R. (1992). Professor Sir Clifford Darby 1909 1992. The Geographical Journal 158(3), 352 355. Meinig, D. W. (1989). Clifford Darby: An American appreciation. Journal of Historical Geography 15(1), 20 23. Prince, H. (1992). H. C. Darby, 1909 1992. Journal of Historical Geography 18(4), 456 460. Williams, M. (1989). Historical geography and the concept of landscape. Journal of Historical Geography 15(1), 92 104. Williams, M. W. (1995). Henry Clifford Darby 1909 1992. Proceedings of the British Academy 87, 289 306.

Darwinism (and Social Darwinism) H. Winlow, Bath Spa University, Bath, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Descent All animal species are linked through time and space and have a common ancestor. Gradualism A series of small-scale changes which over time result in large-scale change, for example, in the evolution of geological forms or plant and animal species. Monogenism The idea that all human races are united as one species. Natural Selection The individual traits within each species are selected by environmental conditions which, over time, will result in the emergence of new species types. Organism Analogy The comparison of larger groups in society to the development of an individual organism at a variety of scales, for example, a city, a state, or the world. Polygenism The idea that different human races are different species and that some of these species are biologically and socially inferior to others.

Darwinism: Deﬁnition The term Darwinism stems from Charles Darwin’s (1809–82; Figure 1) biological evolutionary theories, including his development of the theory of natural se lection, as outlined in his 1859 text On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Following the publication of The Origin the term was initially coined by Darwin’s supporters, but over time it became associated with a wider suite of biological evolutionary theories (despite Darwin’s attempts to narrow the term to incorporate only natural selection). This resulted in its application to forms of evolutionary theory which were quite distinct from Darwin’s natural selection and his stress on haphazard development. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many scientists, including geographers, described themselves as Darwinian, al though their work clearly displayed the inﬂuence of a number of biological evolutionary theories, includ ing neo Lamarck(ian)ism which emphasized linear pro gressionism. Conventionally evolutionary theory has been widely regarded as synonymous with Darwinism, but historians of science note an overuse of Darwin in accounting for the widespread inﬂuence of evolutionary

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theories on emerging scientiﬁc disciplines, including geography and anthropology, in the late nineteenth century.

Origins of The Origin Charles Darwin has been popularized as the champion of nineteenth century biological science, and natural selection has been portrayed as a turning point in social and scientiﬁc thought – a misconception that remains within mainstream representations of evolutionary sci ence. In attempts to dispel this myth, recent historians of science have argued that natural selection represented a continuation of ideas, rather than a turning point. In contrast to Kuhn’s paradigmatic framework recent accounts emphasize a slow revolution, where Darwin’s work is situated in the context of a longer standing tradition of biological and geological investigation and within the context of the work of his contemporaries. The construction of the geological column and the establishment of the antiquity of the Earth in the early nineteenth century represented a divergence from the creationist view of world history. Charles Lyell’s 1830–33 text Principles of Geology suggested a gradual, rather than a catastrophic, evolution of landscapes. This was partly evidenced by research undertaken on the Jurassic

Figure 1 Charles Darwin in 1840, by George Richmond.

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coastline in Dorset, England, and his emphasis on gradual change reﬂected a British conservative political outlook, which contrasted with revolutionary changes in Europe. Lyell’s geological system meant that fossils could no longer be seen simply as markers of strata but as evidence of former life. The acceptance of his timescale marked a cornerstone in the development of geology, and inﬂu enced other ﬁelds of research, including developmental biology. While Lyell and Darwin shared a gradualist approach to science, Lyell rejected the Darwinian tree of life and associated concepts of the ape ancestry of the human species – links that can be traced back to the Linnaean taxonomy of the eighteenth century. In The Origin Darwin used Lyell’s stress on gradual temporal changes in support of the theory of natural selection: I am well aware that this doctrine of natural selection y is open to the same objections which were at ﬁrst urged against Sir Charles Lyell’s noble views on ‘‘the modern changes of the earth, as illustrative of geology;’’ but we now very seldom hear the action, for instance, of the coast waves, called a triﬂing and insigniﬁcant cause, when applied to the excavation of gigantic valleys or to the formation of the longest lines of inland cliffs. Natural selection can act only by the preservation and accumu lation of inﬁnitesimally small inherited modiﬁcations, each proﬁtable to the preserved being; and as modern geology has almost banished such views as the excavation of a great valley by a single diluvial wave, so will natural selection, if it be a true principle, banish the belief of the continued creation of new organic beings, or of any great and sudden modiﬁcation in their structure. (Darwin, 1859: 95 96)

While the idea of the antiquity of the Earth gradually became incorporated into theological perspectives, the origin of plant, animal, and human species remained controversial. In the ﬁrst half of the nineteenth century, the creationist view of development dominated society and science – although earlier evolutionary theories, including Lamarckian and Geoffroyan doctrines of comparative evolution, had gained support among London’s working class evolutionists. Realizing that his ideas would not gain support from the scientiﬁc elite in the 1830s, Darwin delayed publication for at least 20 years, during which time he consolidated his work and gathered further evidence to support his theories. When The Origin was published in 1859, evolutionary ideas were becoming less controversial among the middle classes. Darwin, however, still received criticism from the clergy and the popular press, as evidenced in a number of cartoons (Figure 2). Darwin published his theories after receiving a letter in 1858, from fellow naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, which revealed that he had come to similar conclusions about species evolution.

Figure 2 Darwin as an Orangutang. Source: The Hornet (1871).

Several major inﬂuences on Darwin’s development of natural selection have been discussed by geographers and historians. These inﬂuences include: ﬁrst, discoveries made while on the Beagle voyage of 1831–36; second research into pigeon breeding; and third, Reverend Thomas Malthus’ 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population. The 5 year Beagle voyage made a strong impression on Darwin’s life and intellectual development. He traveled extensively and observed a wide variety of plant, animal, and human species in their native environments. One reason that The Origin received rapid recognition from contemporaries was because Darwin was known as the author of The Voyage of the Beagle (originally published as the third volume of the Journal of the Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by HMS Beagle in 1839), an ethnographic account which included descriptions of indigenous peoples and their struggle for life, particularly in relation to colonization. The geographical distribution and diversity of species encountered on the voyage led Darwin to question Paleyian natural theology. It was clear that geographic environment, be it continental or island based, had played a role in the development of species variety, as evidenced, for example, by the Galapagos turtles and the unique ﬁnch varieties found on each separate island.

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It was not until the late 1830s, after his return to England, that Darwin developed the idea of natural selection. Following his return Darwin undertook investigations into pigeon breeding and observed that, over time, decisions by breeders to select speciﬁc characteristics had resulted in many different breeds. He speculated that nature may behave in similar ways and developed the metaphor of nature as breeder. If nature was viewed in the same way as generations of human breeders it may be possible to discover the principles of selection in nature. Commentators have stressed, to varying degrees, the inﬂuence of Malthusian concepts on Darwin’s work. Darwin read Malthus’ Essay in September 1838 and the ideas expressed there helped shape his ideas on natural selection. Malthus observed that the human population increased exponentially, while food production only in creased arithmetically, and stressed the need for positive and preventative checks for population control. Positive checks included starvation, famine, pestilence, and war, while preventative (or social) checks included moral restraints, late marriage, and cultural practices, such as abortion, infanticide, and birth control. Darwin viewed the struggle for existence identiﬁed by Malthus as applicable to all animal and plant species: A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase. y Hence, as more individuals are produced than can pos sibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artiﬁcial increase of food, and no prudential restraint from marriage (Darwin, 1859: 63 64).

Natural Selection The theory of natural selection was the main tenet of Darwin’s biological evolutionary scheme, although other important aspects included descent, gradualism, the multiplication of species (including geographic speci ation), and sexual selection. While incorporating Mal thusian aspects of the multiplication of species and population checks, Darwin’s insight was that the stronger members of each species would survive and the weakest would be eliminated (become extinct). These concepts formed the basis of natural selection, which was Darwin’s ‘mechanism’ of evolutionary change. Darwin argued for a natural process of variation, struggle, and the selection of traits favorable for survival: Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any

degree proﬁtable to an individual of any species, in its inﬁnitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring. y I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man’s power of selection (Darwin, 1859: 61).

Darwin’s theory of natural selection incorporated the idea that all species were linked to one another in time and space by descent. This was expressed through the metaphor of a branching tree of life, where the trunk symbolized the common ancestor from which all animals had originated. Central to this model of evolutionary development was the idea of a haphazard process of evolution, which rejected progressionist notions of linear development. This haphazard process occurred as each species became better adapted to its surrounding environment. Any environmental changes that occurred would affect the development of the species, and could cause species to diverge onto different branches of evolution, and in some cases to become extinct. The branching tree metaphor was considered early in the development of the theory of natural selection, as shown by a sketch in Darwin’s Notebook B (Figure 3) and a detailed diagram was included in The Origin (Figure 4). Here the letters A–L represent parent species which resemble each other to varying degrees (thus spaced unevenly). The dotted lines diverging from each original species represent offspring from these species. Through the process of natural selection over many generations, some original species will develop new varieties and others will become extinct. New species varieties are represented at the top of the diagram (a14, q14, and so on). Darwin meticulously explained this diagram in chapter IV of The Origin, and the strength of his account is reinforced through the written description with which he concluded the chapter: y As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which ﬁlls with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramiﬁ cations (Darwin, 1859: 129 130).

The theory of natural selection did not occur in an ideological void but consolidated earlier debates on the development of species. However, despite Darwin’s already well formulated ideas on human evolution – as reﬂected in his notebooks from the late 1830s – he largely avoided this issue in The Origin. Darwin eventually addressed human evolution in his 1871 text The Descent of

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abstraction created by historians and read into the past. The term was not commonly used until the turn of the century and has negative associations. Over the course of the twentieth century, Social Darwinism has been equa ted with racism, Nazism, and the eugenics movement, perhaps explaining why more recent engagement with evolutionism has been conspicuous by its absence within human geography.

Forms of Social Darwinism

Figure 3 A page from Darwin’s Notebook B showing his ﬁrst evolutionary tree diagram, London 1837. From http://darwinonline.org.uk, The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online.

Man and Selection in Relation to Sex by which time debates over human ancestry were well established.

Social Darwinism: Deﬁnition Social Darwinism is commonly understood to mean the application of Darwin’s biological theories to the social and cultural realm. In reality, sociocultural evolutionary theories developed in parallel to biological theories, rather than emerging from them. Social Darwinism is an umbrella term which was applied indiscriminately to a variety of social theories that emerged in the late nine teenth century, with often little resemblance to Darwin’s original theories. Since science itself cannot easily be separated from inﬂuences within society, there is no clear set of concepts which can be deﬁned as Social Darwinism. There are grounds to question whether the label named any actual social movement, or whether it was an

Classical theories of social evolution coincided with the rise of Darwinian bioevolutionary theory and the two areas of inquiry inﬂuenced one another. The application of biological evolutionary theories to society naturalized the social order, and was, in many instances, used to legitimize class and racial hierarchies. Nineteenth century social evolutionary theories tended to incorpor ate ideas of progressionism carried over from the Enlightenment period, as shown in the work of British philosopher and social theorist Herbert Spencer (1820– 1903) and of British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917). Spencerianism is the set of theories most commonly equated with Social Darwinism, despite the fact that Spencer’s work was heavily inﬂuenced by Lamarckian, and not Darwinian, evolutionary concepts. Spencer published his ﬁrst book Social Statistics in 1851 in which he integrated aspects of Lamarckian progress with laissez faire economics, and developed the metaphor of the social organism. In his promotion of universal progressionism, Spencer linked strands of biological, psychological, and social evolution. These theories could be used both to describe the origin of racial differences, to account for deviations from the unilineal sequence of development, and to explain the evolution of higher mental faculties. Spencer was responsible for coining the term ‘survival of the ﬁttest’ which over time became linked to Dar winism. This was in part due to Darwin’s incorporation of the term in the ﬁfth edition of The Origin, published in 1869, where he changed the title of chapter IV from ‘Natural selection’ to ‘Natural selection; or the survival of the ﬁttest’. This move proved to be unfortunate and cleared the way for cruder forms of Social Darwinism which emphasized the exclusion of the weaker (or in ferior) members of society in a competition for proﬁt. Edward Burnett Tylor’s cultural evolutionary theory stressed a linear model of cultural development. Tylor argued that similarities between cultures in different areas of the world could be explained by independent invention and that cultures were forced into parallel channels of development by the need to follow a hier archy of cultural stages. The existence of persistent relics (or survivals) from previous stages of advancement which

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Darwinism (and Social Darwinism)

Figure 4 Branching tree diagram of species descent. Source: Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1st edn.), 1st issue. London: John Murray.

no longer served a purpose was cited as evidence. Tylor was a monogenist, and for him the acceptance of linear progressionism meant that the idea of unity need not be abandoned. The ladder metaphor could be used to ex plain the existence of apparently inferior groups in biological and sociocultural terms. Tylor, like Darwin, originally denied links between the cultural progress and biological origins of the human race for fear of implying intellectual inferiority, but eventually both accepted these links, becoming more racialist in approach.

Geographies of Darwinism The reception of Darwin’s ideas varied between different places within the wider context of societal values, ideals, and practices. The reception of Darwin’s theories in different geographical locations is explored in a 2005 paper by Livingstone, who has developed the idea of a geography of reading. Livingstone (2005:391) argues that ‘‘where scientiﬁc texts are read has an important bearing on how they are read.’’ The reception of Darwin’s bioevolutionary theories in different places is explored, focusing on Charleston Museum of Natural History (USA), Wellington Philosophical Society (New Zealand), and the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists (Russia). Scientists based at Charlestown Museum of Natural History developed a style of Southern science based on political ideology which incorporated polygenist principles and legitimated slavery. In this political environment Darwin’s theories of species transmutation were regarded as a threat to Southern racial and religious

culture. In Wellington, Darwin’s theories were also read from a racialist perspective, but here they were inter preted as supporting the success of white colonialism. A set of public lectures in 1868–69, held at the Colonial Museum in Wellington, introduced Darwin’s ideas to the public. This included an address by politician William Travers, who brought to Darwin’s text the long standing colonial conviction that the Maori were fated for extinction by nature. In St. Petersburg, an 1879 essay by Karl Kessler titled ‘On the law of mutual aid’ condemned Darwin’s law of the struggle for existence, and stressed the importance of mutual aid. Kessler’s stress on mutual aid was later vigorously promoted by Peter Kropotkin. These examples illustrate how the politics of place shaped the ways in which Darwinian theory was read and understood by nineteenth century academics.

Darwinism in Geography Geography, Evolutionary Theory, and Imperialism Evolutionary perspectives coupled with the imperialism of the age had a lasting effect on the emerging discipline of geography. Evolutionary theories were translated into geography in large part through environmental deter minism, which can be perceived as a version of Social Darwinism. Geographical perspectives promoted over seas expansion and included assumptions about the moral, intellectual, and biological superiority of white Europeans in comparison to other racial groups.

Darwinism (and Social Darwinism)

Most geographers accepted the organic metaphor and utilized it in different ways. The organism analogy was one thread of Darwinian theory but was also important in neo Lamarckian biology. This concept played a forma tive role in the work of geographers Freidrich Ratzel (1844–1904) in Germany, William Morris Davis (1850– 1934) in the USA, and Halford Mackinder (1861–1947) in Britain. The relationship between geography, imperialism, and evolutionary theories is evident in the work of Ratzel who had the twin concerns of scientizing geography and putting it into the service of imperialism. Ratzel’s 1881 text Anthropogeographie illustrated his version of human geography through the main themes of migration, isol ation, space, and environmental determinism (themes that had previously been identiﬁed in the work of Moritz Wagner, who stressed the importance of migration in species variation). In Anthropogeographie, Ratzel introduced the concepts of Lebensraum (living space) and Grossraum (large space). Building on Spencerian notions of society as organism and Malthusian notions of population expansion, Ratzel’s stress on Lebensraum developed the idea of the state as organism. Ratzel argued that population enlargement would reach the point where territorial expansion was inevitable. The state would eventually aspire to Grossraum. This was seen as a natural evolutionary process, incorporating concepts of com petition and survival (of the ﬁttest state). Thus, the late nineteenth century European expansion into Africa was legitimated as a natural process. Davis applied evolutionary theories to landscapes through his development of the cycle of erosion, ﬁrst presented in 1889. The cycle began with an uplift of the land, which would gradually wear back to a peneplain, after going through a number of sequential forms. The inﬂuence of evolutionary theory was reﬂected in his use of biological terms, including birth, adolescence, matur ity, and death. Davis’ work incorporated the Darwinian stress on the importance of time in evolutionary development, although his work also contained neo Lamarckian elements. Mackinder conceptualized the discipline of geography as a means of encouraging British people from a young age to think imperially. The inﬂuences of imperialism and evolutionary theory were apparent in his ‘Heartland Thesis’, a concept ﬁrst outlined in a paper on ‘The geographical pivot of history’, presented at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in January 1904. This the ory stressed the advancement of civilization and reﬂected Ratzel’s concept of Lebensraum. The heartland was con ceived as a land locked area in Eurasia, where a power base could be created. In Mackinder’s imperial approach, the exercise of world power was vital if the world organism was to grow democratically. The discourse of race was a central element of his theorizing – if the

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British race failed in its domination of the globe then another race would become the world power. His belief in environmental determinism led him to view the nat ural environment as the stage for the struggle of the races and, as in Ratzel’s geography, imperial expansion was naturalized. Racial Classiﬁcation and Mapping Modern understandings of race have their roots in the Enlightenment period. Kant, for example, stressed the links between distance from the equator and skin color, while the concept of ‘The Great Chain of Being’ inﬂu enced later ideas of racial hierarchy. From the 1850s in Britain, evolutionary theories and debates over the origin and unity of the human species shaped scientiﬁc thinking. Allied to these developments was the idea that a discrete number of racial types could be delineated, and the measurement of racial traits dominated physical anthro pology. Previous assumptions about racial superiority and inferiority inﬂuenced racial classiﬁcation systems. For example, since the Enlightenment it had been assumed that Australian aborigines were a doomed race that had not progressed far up the ladder of civilization and would soon become extinct. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century racial taxonomies generally placed nonwhite groups further down the ladder of evolution, with white Europeans perceived as superior and ﬁtter in biological, social, and intellectual terms. Working at the intersection of anthropology and geography a number of late nineteenth and early twentieth century academics classiﬁed and mapped human racial groups. These anthropogeographers were strongly inﬂuenced by evolutionary theories (both Dar winian and neo Lamarckian), environmental determin ism, and systems of measurement derived from anthropology. In his 1899 volume The Races of Europe, American economist and anthropogeographer William Zebina Ripley (1867–1941) suggested a tripartite racial scheme for Europe (Teuton, Alpine, and Mediterranean), which combined a reliance on anthropometric measurement with the assumption that racial characteristics had been molded by environmental conditions (for example, he mapped the increase in pigmentation moving South through Europe). Ripley’s work was later utilized by anti immigration supporters in the US in attempts to prevent migration from Southern and Eastern Europe (Ripley’s Mediterranean category), groups who became perceived as inferior to Northern Europeans. The prominent Australian geographer, Grifﬁth Taylor (1880–1963) attempted to delineate discrete racial groups through his zones and strata theory (developed in 1919), where the migration and settlement of racial groups was crudely equated to geological formations at a world scale.

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His model combined an emphasis on migration, on en vironmental determinism, and on heredity of particular racial characteristics, especially cephalic index. Taylor divided the world into six racial categories and in corporated preexisting assumptions on development. Australian aborigines and black Africans were ranked in the lower layers of strata, while Europeans and Asians were ranked more favorably. A strongly deterministic approach to the evolution of race was clear in the work of Ellsworth Huntington, who, in 1915, produced world maps purporting to illustrate the relationship between climate and civilization. Huntington argued that climate had enervated those in the Northern latitudes, while the tropics had debilitating effects on development. Not surprisingly, given his original assumptions, the areas he deﬁned as having the best climate overlapped with those deﬁned as the most civilized and occurred in Europe and other areas of successful white settlement. Other Applications of Evolutionary Metaphors Urban ecology

Evolutionary metaphors were applied to studies of urban development as evidenced by the work of the Chicago School which embarked on a major program of research on the American city in the early to mid twentieth century. Urban ecology was central to the work of Robert Park and stressed the idea of society as organism, with each part being symbiotically related to all others in a web of competitive and cooperative behavior (incorpor ating Darwin’s stress on these two elements). Central to Park’s analysis of the city was the idea that humans would naturally be channeled into different groups which would ﬁnd residential and occupational niches in society. Burgess’ 1920s concentric zone model of urban devel opment incorporated the idea of invasion and succession based on the assumption that cities, as organisms, must grow, and that individuals within the economy would be

upwardly mobile. Urban ecology has been criticized for emphasizing the supposedly natural development of cities and ignoring social factors, such as discrimination and social exclusion. The urban models were also seen as endorsing the modern capitalist economic system. Capitalism

Organic metaphors have been associated with the de velopment of the capitalist economy since the late eighteenth century (predating Darwin). Commentators, including Marx, have observed that Darwin must have been affected by the era of competitive capitalism in which he lived, as reﬂected in his development of con cepts such as competition and the struggle for existence. In the nineteenth century ideas of biological organisms ﬁghting for survival became linked to ideas of natural dominance and in economic terms this translated as the dominance of capitalism and the capitalist class. Gibson Graham, in her 1996 book, argues that the ladder metaphor of development (stemming from the Enlightenment and reﬂected in Lamarckian theory) has been applied to the transition from pre Fordism to Fordism to post Fordism, regarded as an improvement in the capitalist organism. This model, however, fails to recognize the diverse forms of capitalism that may have developed or the ways that economic development occurs unevenly over economic landscapes. Gibson Graham argues that the idea of an evolutionary bush is a more informative way of regarding changes in both capitalist and noncapitalist (domestic) forms of economy (Figure 5), reﬂecting Darwin’s branching tree analogy.

Darwinism in the Current Landscape of Discipline In the biological sciences the modern synthesis emerged between 1920 and 1950 and involved the combination of

Post-Fordist 1975 Fordist / Monopoly 1920 Competitive 1860 Primitive Accumulation Capitalist bush

Noncapitalist bush

Capitalist ladder

Figure 5 Branching trees and ladders of capitalism. From Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell.

Darwinism (and Social Darwinism)

Darwinian biology and Mendelian genetics. The dis covery of the structure of DNA in 1953 further strengthened the modern synthesis and validated key components of Darwin’s theory. An engagement with evolutionary theory is less developed in the social sciences, especially within human geography. There remains an unease to engage with evolutionary theories due to the previous uncritical application of biological theories to the social realm, which resulted in a number of problems, including links between Social Darwinism and Nazism, social antagonisms created by sociobiology, and the eugenics movement. Geography as a discipline has historically been conceived as incorporating both studies of nature and of humanity. Rather than being fully integrated, a divide emerged between the human geographical focus on society and physical geographical studies of the natural environment. Recent posthumanist perspectives in human geography are beginning to address the wider connections between evolution, adaptation, and environ ment–organism relationships. Geographers such as Harvey, Whatmore, and Thrift have noticed an artiﬁcial break between human society and nature. Thrift considers the relationships between humans, animals, and techno logical developments (such as tool use and the develop ment of the human hand, and the idea of writing as technology) and argues that vital spaces exist where a network (rather than a tree) of biological and technolo gical interaction occurs. In his 1996 text Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, Harvey notes the importance of developing a language which would incorporate evo lutionary ideas into societal perspectives within a positive ecological framework. He draws attention to four aspects of interactions between living organisms, which integrate aspects of Darwinian theory. These four relational categories are: ﬁrst, the competition and struggle for existence; second, the adaptation and diversiﬁcation into environmental niches; third, collaboration, cooperation, and mutual aid; and fourth, environmental transformation. Constructive reengagement with biological and ecological theory by human geographers may lead to a closer understanding of the interrelationships between humanity and nature and a greater respect for, and understanding of, our environment. See also: Anthropogeography (After Ratzel); Determinism/Environmental Determinism; Indigenous

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Geographies; Lamarck(ian)ism; Mackinder, H. J.; Mapping, Race and Ethnicity; Taylor, G.

Further Reading Beer, G. (1988). Introduction. In Darwin, C. (ed.) (1859) The Origin of Species, (2nd edn.) pp vii xxviii. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bowler, P. J. (1986). Theories of Human Evolution. Oxford: Blackwell. Browne, J. (1995). Charles Darwin: Voyaging, vol. 1. London: Jonathan Cape. Burrow, J. W. (1966). Evolution and Society; a Study in Victorian Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carroll, J. (2000). Introduction. In Darwin, C. (ed.) (1859) The Origin of Species (1st edn.), reprinted, pp 9 72. Peterborough: Broadview Texts. Darwin, C. (1859). On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, (1st edn.) 1st issue. London: John Murray. Desmond, A. and Moore, J. (1991). Darwin. London: Michael Joseph. Fitzsimmons, M. (2004). Engaging ecologies. In Cloke, P., Crang, P. & Goodwin, M. (eds.) Envisioning Human Geographies, pp 30 47. London: Arnold. Gibson Graham, J. K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Livingstone, D. N. (1992). The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise. Oxford: Blackwell. Livingstone, D. N. (1994). Science and religion: Foreword to the historical geography of an encounter. Journal of Historical Geography 20(4), 367 383. Livingstone, D. N. (2005). Science, text and space: Thoughts on the geography of reading. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, NS 30(4), 391 401. Mayr, E. (1985). Darwin’s ﬁve theories of evolution. In Kohn, D. (ed.) The Darwinian Heritage, pp 755 772. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stoddart, D. R. (1966). Darwin’s impact on geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 56, 683 698. Thrift, N. (2005). From born to made: Technology, biology and space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, NS 30(4), 463 476. Whatmore, S. (2002). Hybrid Geographies: Natures Cultures Spaces. London: Sage. Winlow, H. (2006). Mapping moral geographies: W.Z. Ripley’s races of Europe and the United States. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96(1), 119 141.

Relevant Websites http://www.lamarck.cnrs.fr Much of Lamarck’s original writing is free online. http://darwin online.org.uk The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online.

Dear, M. J. A. Latham, University College London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Micheal J. Dear (Figure 1) has, at various times, been an urban geographer, homelessness researcher, postmodern theorist, and central member of the Los Angeles School of urban studies. Co author of two seminal monographs on mental healthcare provision and urban homelessness in North America, Dear is nonetheless most well known for his more recent work on the urban dynamics of Los Angeles and his attempts to develop a postmodern style of geographical analysis. His central argument is that Los Angeles – long thought of as a city deﬁned by its singularity – has come to deﬁne the paradoxes and pos sibilities of the contemporary metropolis. Drawing on continental European philosophy, neo Marxism, and mainstream social science, in combination with techni ques from the humanities and creative arts, Dear’s often experimental, and highly distinctive, essays on postmodern Los Angeles have – along with those of Ed Soja – mapped out the critical edge of postmodern human geography. If Dear’s recent – and most inﬂuential – work is characterized by its experimental and avant garde feel, his early academic trajectory hardly pointed in this direction. Born in Treorchy, South Wales, in 1944, Dear read for his undergraduate degree in geography at the University of Birmingham, before completing an MPhil in town and country planning at University College London in 1969. He then moved to the University of Pennsylvania to

Figure 1 Micheal J. Dear.

12

pursue doctoral work. He was awarded his doctorate in 1974 for a dissertation ‘Locational analysis for public mental health facilities’, at which time he took up a teaching appointment at McMaster University in On tario, Canada. Dear’s early publications focused – like his PhD dissertation – on the geography of mental health care provision. And, like his dissertation, they had a strong regional science feel (not surprising given the University of Pennsylvania’s strength in this discipline at the time). Notwithstanding his methods, however, Dear’s work on the provision of mental healthcare facilities did have a critical edge. His publications highlighted the many inadequacies of then current mental health policies, in cluding the remarkably uneven geographic distribution of community healthcare facilities in American and Canadian cities, the overwhelming tendency of such community facilities to be clustered in the poorest and most socially disorganized parts of cities, and the lack of objective locational criteria used by policymakers in their decisions as to where to locate mental healthcare facilities. Dear’s early research also highlighted the emergence of mentally disabled ‘ghettos’ in the inner city of many North American cities, as mentally ill indi viduals who had formerly been warehoused in residential asylums were released into ‘community care’ in 1960s and 1970s as part of a general policy shift toward the deinstitutionalization of mental healthcare provision. This ‘‘ghettoization’’ (Dear 1977, page 588) of service dependent mental health patients was in part simply a product of the low cost and accessibility of the housing in these areas. But as more and more community mental health facilities came to be located in inner city neighborhoods – because of low real estate costs, the availability of large, formerly upper middle class houses easily converted into hostels or treatment centers, the presence of restrictive zoning restrictions in other neighborhoods, the lack of organized community opposition – such neighborhoods also began to attract deinstitutionalized mental health patients simply because of the density and extent of care provision available. In effect, then, and as an unintended result of the general policy shift toward the deinstitutionalization of mental healthcare provision, areas of North American cities were ‘‘becoming [in effect] the location of an asylum without walls’’ (Dear 1977, page 588). As Dear extended his analysis of mental healthcare provision in the late 1970s and 1980s, his work developed an increasingly critical and political inﬂection. For one,

Dear, M. J.

his work began to explore the links between the inner city ‘ghettoization’ of mental health patients, and the precipitous rise of homelessness and rough sleeping that was simultaneously occurring in Canadian and American cities. For another, to understand the social, economic, and political dynamics that were driving the patterns of mental healthcare provision (or indeed lack of it) his work was documenting, Dear began to develop an increasingly sophisticated interest in political theory, critical social theory, and political economy. The patterns of welfare neglect, self interested neighborhood pro tection, and local and national policy development, that were driving many of the trends in mental health pro vision required an in depth consideration of the insti tutional structures that brought these trends into being if they were to be explained with any intellectual rigor. This in turn required careful consideration of what exactly the state is and how it – and its various agents – deﬁnes and governs territory. Thus, in State Apparatus: Structures of Languages of Legitimacy, co authored with Gordon Clark, Dear turned to examining ‘‘how the state and the state apparatus structure the sociospatial organization of capitalist society’’ (Clark and Dear 1984, page 1). From the start Clark and Dear highlighted the problems they saw with liberal and pluralist accounts of the modern state – their inability to recognize the inequalities that capitalism is based upon, nor to fully account for the extent to which the state apparatus reaches into evermore dimensions of economic and social life. Nonetheless, while Clark and Dear’s analysis was heavily inﬂuenced by the radical critique of mainstream social science (and especially the mainstream liberal politics that Marxist geographers like David Harvey, Richard Peet, and Neil Smith had been developing since the early 1970s), they stopped short of endorsing a Marxist theory of the capitalist state. Instead, they con cluded (not entirely convincingly) that the primary goal of the state – and the only one that could ensure its legitimacy – should be ensuring ‘‘social justice’’ (Clark and Dear, page 191). State Apparatus was a densely argued and largely theoretically oriented text. However, many of its themes are reprised in more empirically grounded form in Dear’s two following monographs on homelessness and mental healthcare: Landscapes of Despair: From Deinstitutionalisation to Homelessness and Malign Neglect: Homelessness in an American City, both co written with Jennifer Wolch. Landscapes of Despair is an in depth analysis of the health and welfare policies that had led to the mental health ‘ghettoization’ described in Dear’s earlier paper. But as well as mapping and describing the emergence of areas dominated by mental healthcare users as his earlier work had done, Landscapes of Despair also presents a detailed historical geography of the political and economic dynamics which had shaped mental healthcare policies.

13

As the title suggests, Dear and Wolch also explicitly linked the deinstitutionalization of mental healthcare provision with the dramatic rise in urban homelessness that many North American cities experienced in the 1980s. As with the emergence of the mental healthcare ‘ghetto’, which Dear and Wolch now called the zone of dependence, the rise of homelessness was not simply a straightforward product of deinstitutionalization. Rather, it was produced through the interaction of a range of often unexpected forces – cuts in welfare provision, social housing policies, the decline in hostels offering single rented rooms, economic restructuring which destroyed many low paid, low skill jobs, to name just a few of the more prominent causes. Moving beyond these causes, Landscapes of Despair also explored how the service dependent ghetto functioned; despite its haphazard constriction it often offered a genuinely supportive environment for those housed within it, as well as gen erating a kind of shadow state of charity and voluntary organizations funded by state money but not publicly accountable to any electorate. This was a set of themes reprised in more detail in Malign Neglect which, unlike Landscapes of Despair, focused on a single city, Los Angeles (described in the 1980s and early 1990s as the ‘homeless capital of America’). However, Malign Neglect also examined the emergence of a ‘proto homeless’ popu lation, a stratum of people that stretched well beyond the mentally ill and disabled who because of the decline in welfare provision, a lack of social housing provision, and the precariousness of their economic position, were on the edge of falling out of the housing market. Landscapes of Despair and Malign Neglect both were – and indeed remain – widely admired, widely read, and frequently cited texts. In many ways they still deﬁne the central terrain of contemporary geographical debates about homelessness, vagrancy, and mental health pro vision. With these two books Dear established himself not only as a preeminent ﬁgure in health and welfare geography, but also as one of small number of high proﬁle scholars deﬁning the frontier of possibility for a newly theoretically literate human geography. Given the as suredness of Dear’s arguments, and the degree which they are quite clearly rooted in the broader shift within Anglo American human geography toward the social sciences, it is perhaps surprising that just months after the publication of Landscapes of Despair, Dear was declaring in an article in The Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers that ‘‘this is a time of intellectual crisis’’ (Dear 1988, pages 262), and that human geography was caught up within this crisis. ‘‘[Contemporary] geography,’’ he wrote, ‘‘is an eclectic mish mash of old and new, per tinent and irrelevant, the quirky and incomplete. [y] There seems to be no consensus on what human geog raphy is, or what are its objectives in analysis.’’

14

Dear, M. J.

This seems a strange argument for someone who has just shown the beneﬁts of human geography’s engage ment with the social sciences in general, and social theory in particular. But Dear’s intervention is not nearly as odd as it ﬁrst appears. Dear worried that human geography’s engagement with the social sciences had not gone far enough. While much of Anglo American human geography had moved toward the social sciences, the discipline remained riven by a labyrinth of sub disciplinary rivalries and divisions. Each subdiscipline deﬁned its own engagement with wider social scientiﬁc and social theoretical debates, and there was little ground for debate within the discipline on how these different perspectives might relate to each other. Thus, while a range of cognate social science disciplines such as an thropology, sociology, and history were experiencing a so called ‘spatial turn’ – discovering that space did in deed matter – geography remained trapped by its own parochialism, unable to reap the beneﬁts of this sudden interest in the discipline’s core focus, spatiality. Dear argued that to escape this parochialism geography nee ded to complete the reinvention of the discipline that the initial discovery of social theory in the 1960s and 1970s had begun. How to bring about this reinvention? In Dear’s view, what was required was not the reassertion of a singular vision of human geography – for example, a return to positivism, or a total embrace of Marxism, or political economy, or post structuralism. What was instead needed was some shared sense of what human geography’s core concerns were, some common basis for discussion across differing approaches to undertaking geographical research. Turning to a series of ongoing debates in philosophy, the creative arts, and some parts of the social sciences, Dear argued that what geography needed to do was engage with its diversity through rethinking itself as a postmodern discipline. Postmodernism is deﬁned through its assertion that there is no foundational pos ition from which knowledge claims could be judged. The point (at least in Dear’s reading) is not that all knowledge claims are equal, but that there is no one theory that can claim a privileged position. Thus, ‘‘the postmodern challenge is to face up to the relativism of human knowledge, and to proceed form this position to a better understanding’’ (Dear 1988, page 271). Following on from this argument, and drawing in spiration from his move in 1986 from McMaster University to a chair in geography at the University of Southern California, where in 1995 he became the founding director of The Southern California Studies Center, Dear’s writing began to focus almost exclusively on articulating what a postmodern geography would involve. In particular, in concert with a number of other Californian based urban scholars such as Ed Soja, Micheal Storper, Allen Scott, Mike Davis, and Jennifer

Wolch, Dear connected his call for a postmodern geog raphy with the claim that the Los Angeles metropolitan region offered a ‘prototypical’ example of an emergent form of postmodern urbanism. Dear’s conviction was that LA with its sprawling, decentralized form, its hyper automobility, its ethnically diverse population, its rich mix of cutting edge technology and media industries, classic Fordist manufacturing industries, and all sorts of low technology, low wage, industrial sectors, and its complex international connections, in some sense deﬁned the postmodern moment. So, where ‘‘Los Angeles [had] almost always been viewed as an exception to the mainstream of American urban culture’’ (Hise et al. 1996, page 1), for Dear and his fellow Los Angeles School theorists LA had became the place where things ‘all came together’. This was – and remains – a rather grand claim. In a series of edited collections and a single authored book, The Postmodern Urban Condition, Dear has tried to demonstrate the productiveness of such an approach. A key dimension to this is Dear’s experimentation with narrative, and exploration of novel forms of argumen tation and representation. Thus, like his fellow Los Angeles School colleagues, Ed Soja, and Mike Davis, Dear’s analysis is driven by great ﬂocks of neologisms: ‘ﬂexism’ (capitalism organized through ultra responsive supply chains); ‘keno capitalism’ (seemingly random patterns of urban land use and development); ‘cyburbia’ (suburbs that highly integrated into national and inter national electronic communication networks); ‘commu dies’ (communities based on a pre packed lifestyle); ‘cyberia’ (areas without access to electronic communi cations like the Internet); ‘cybergeogeoisie’ (the privil eged elites who run the global economic system); ‘protosurps’ (the unskilled, marginalized, and disposable labor that allows ﬂexism to function); ‘holsteinization’ (the ‘monoculturing of consumers’ to make them better targets for marketing); and mimetic contagion (the spontaneous crossover of cultural practices from one group to another). Indeed, in places Dear’s writing reads more like a novel by Phillip K. Dick or William Gibson than it does serious academic prose. But while critics such as Richard Symanski, Peter Jackson, Robert Lake, Robert Beauregard, and Donald McNeill have found Dear’s approach exaggerated, self indulgent, or simply pointless, there is a method to all these superlatives and hyperbole. They are meant to shake the reader (and indeed the writer) out of estab lished patterns of thought. The hyperbolic, exaggerated, prose employed throughout much of Dear’s writing on postmodern urbanism – most notoriously in his The Postmodern Urban Condition – is meant to ‘‘encourage new ways of seeing’’ (Dear 2003, page 202). Dear’s writing does do this. Even if readers are often unconvinced by Dear’s more outlandish claims, they are forced to

Dear, M. J.

consider why they disagree with what he is saying. This, perhaps, is the most signiﬁcant achievement of Dear’s postmodern urbanism. It is not so much that it has pre sented a new, deﬁnitive, way of doing urban geography. Rather his postmodern urbanism has opened up an exciting terrain through which novel and challenging forms of urban analysis might be legitimately explored and experimented with. See also: Health Geography; Homelessness; Los Angeles School of Post-Modern Urbanism; Postmodernism/ Postmodern Geography; Poststructuralism/ Poststructuralist Geographies; Soja, E.

Further Reading Clark, G. and Dear, M. (1984). State Apparatus: Structures of Languages of Legitimacy. Boston, MA: Allen Unwin.

15

Dear, M. (1977). Psychiatric patients and the inner city. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 67(4), 588 594. Dear, M. (1987). The postmodern challenge: Re constructing human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 13, 262 274. Dear, M. (2000). The Postmodern Urban Condition. Oxford: Blackwell. Dear, M. (ed.) (2002). From Chicago to L.A.: Making Sense of Urban Theory. Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage. Dear, M. (2003). Superlative urbanisms: The necessity of rhetoric in social theory. City and Community 2(3), 201 204. Dear, M. and Flusty, S. (1998). Postmodern urbanism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88(1), 50 72. Dear, M. and Leclerc, G. (eds.) (2003). Postborder City: Cultural Spaces of Bajalta California. New York: Routledge. Dear, M. and Wolch, J. (1987). Landscapes of Despair: From Deinstitutionalisation to Homelessness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Leclerc, G., Villa, R. and Dear, M. (eds.) (1999). La Vida Latina en L.A.: Urban Latino Cultures. Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage. Wolch, J. and Dear, M. (1993). Malign Neglect: Homelessness in an American City. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

Debt David Simon, University of London, Egham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Club of London The group of creditor commercial banks and other ﬁnancial institutions that negotiates collective policies in respect of indebted countries and repayments. Club of Paris The group of ofﬁcial (governmental and intergovernmental) creditor institutions (e.g., government aid agencies, the regional development banks, World Bank, and IMF) that negotiates collective policies in respect of indebted countries and repayments. Countertrade A more sophisticated form of barter involving bridging ﬁnance to enable the traded commodities to be exchanged at different times. Debt–Equity Swaps A debt reduction mechanism whereby commercial creditors accept equity stakes in debtor state bonds or enterprises, usually at a discount, in lieu of actual debt repayments. Debt for Nature Swaps Similar to debt–equity swaps except that the debtor invests in environmental conservation, for example, national parks, biodiversity reserves, pro rata for the value of debt written off. Debt–Export Ratio The total external debt as a proportion of the value of exports of goods and services. Debt–Interest Ratio Debt interest payments as a proportion of the value of exports. Debt Rescheduling A renegotiation of the original terms and conditions of loan repayment to a creditor, usually involving an extension of the grace and repayment periods in return for imposition of a higher interest rate. Debt–Service Ratio Total debt service burden as a proportion of the value of exports. Long-Term Debt Debt with a maturity of more than one year. Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) Successor to structural adjustment and economic recovery programs introduced in 2000–01 by the IMF and World Bank to refocus debtor governments’ efforts and donor budgetary support on poverty reduction in line with the Millennium Development Goals and to ensure civil society participation in their production. Total External Debt Debt owed to non-residents and payable in foreign currency, goods, or services.

16

Introduction Few episodes have so profoundly affected the global political economy over recent decades as the onset in 1980–81 of the so called ‘debt crisis’ which destabilized, and for a time threatened the very survival of, the entire global trading and ﬁnancial system. Its impact still dominates key national and international policy arenas, affecting both governmentality and – especially in the more heavily indebted countries – processes of govern ance. While the crisis erupted into the news headlines when Mexico in 1982, and then Brazil and Argentina, announced their inability to service their accumulated debt, it is important to understand the origins of the crisis in structural and historical terms. Such an explanation also provides an appreciation of the limitations of most solutions proposed over the intervening years. Ulti mately, tackling the problem will require more funda mental measures to address the underlying inequalities that produced it. Although inequalities in the global trade regime were longstanding – with origins dating back to the European imperial and colonial eras but especially grandiose modernization strategies after independence – the more immediate roots of the crisis lie in Middle Eastern geo politics. During the Arab–Israeli war of late 1973, the key oil producing Arab states retaliated against Western support for Israel, and sought to raise additional revenues for their war effort, by means of a dramatic increase in the hitherto low producer price of crude oil. At the time, international commodity trade occurred mainly in terms of ﬁxed prices set by producers. The success of this stratagem resulted in a second price increase in 1979, the combined effect of which raised prevailing prices more than sixfold over early 1973. The shockwaves of so dramatic a price increase of this essential commodity, on which most modern eco nomic activity depends, rapidly ended the period of unprecedented international economic growth and opti mism that had prevailed since the mid 1960s and trig gered a severe global recession. Efforts to reduce oil consumption impacted upon industrial output, which in turn depressed the hitherto buoyant prices of other pri mary commodities that formed the bulk of poor country exports. Although the impact everywhere was substantial, among the worst hit were non oil producing poor countries, which suffered the triple shock of falling ex port prices, rapidly increasing import prices for oil and industrial commodities, and a rapid decline in ofﬁcial development assistance (ODA) as donor governments cut

Debt

back as part of their overall adjustment to domestic recession. Conversely, the large oil producers were unable to absorb the vast ﬂows of ‘petrodollars’, as oil revenues came to be known, into their often small modern economic sectors. Hence many billions of surplus dollars were invested abroad, in European and North American real estate and in the international banking system. Unable to ofﬂoad all these funds in recession hit markets of the global North, the banks found a ready market with governments and parastatal corporations in the newly industrializing and other lower middle income countries eager to replace their dwindling ODA inﬂows in order to complete the many ﬂagship large scale, capital intensive industrial and infrastructural projects being undertaken as part of their economic modern ization drives. Indeed, many saw the excess international ﬁnancial liquidity as an opportunity to obtain funds to accelerate their ambitious plans. This process greatly accelerated the historical shift away from grant based ODA toward loans, increasingly from commercial sour ces. Although 36% of total Latin American debt had been with ofﬁcial sources and 64% with private sources in 1970, by 1981 the respective percentages were 12 and 88. Crucially, real interest rates (i.e., rates that have been discounted for inﬂation) were at historically low levels when these new commercial loans – mostly with a maturity period of ﬁve or more years as a reﬂection of the still optimistic expectations in borrowing countries – were negotiated. However, despite the prevailing practice of arranging ﬁxed interest loans, the lenders insisted on using variable interest rates in order to compensate for higher perceived risks. Apart from their perceptions of borrowers’ ability to afford the higher interest rates, banks favored countries with the best growth records or prospects, and perceived political stability. As the global recession deepened rapidly, interest rates climbed steeply, reaching historically high levels within the life of these large loans. This imposed a rapidly increasing debt service burden on the borrowers, and, when the loans matured in large numbers toward the end of the 1970s, repayment of the principal became impossible. Even where the projects had been completed successfully, the ‘triple whammy’ referred to above meant that public sector balances of payments were in a parlous state. Increased borrowing became necessary to offset balance of payments deﬁcits and to repay earlier loans. When the three largest debtors, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, declared their inability to continue servicing their debt in the early 1980s, the ‘debt crisis’ broke.

Anatomy of Debt The essence of the crisis has not been the absolute value of the external debt as such, but its scale relative to

17

other economic indicators which determine the ability of a country to service that debt. The crisis deepened and broadened rapidly during the 1980s, with even more countries defaulting or threatening to default on one or both components of debt service, namely interest pay ments and repayment of the ‘principal’, that is, the capital loan. Poland was the ﬁrst European country to reach crisis point, in 1981 – even before Mexico – but as an apparently isolated case it did not have the same global impact, despite the severity of the problem domestically. By the end of 1985, Mexico and Brazil each owed over US$100 billion and Argentina some US$50 billion. Latin American debt was fairly evenly split between ofﬁcial and commercial sources, whereas in sub Saharan Africa the debt was substantially to ofﬁcial sources. By early 1986, total Third World debt reached US$1 trillion (1000 billion) and continued to rise. However, not all countries and regions fared equally badly. The harsh counter measures enforced and adopted in Latin America, for example, led to a reduction in overall indebtedness by 1990 on two of the three conventional indicators (debt– export ratio, debt service ratio, and debt interest ratio), whereas sub Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa saw their aggregate indebtedness rise sharply during the 1980s, despite lower dollar values of debt. The precise extent of these trend changes depends on which of the different, but related, variables is used (see Table 1). The crisis in Latin America was so severe in terms of its overall developmental and social impacts that the 1980s became known as the Lost Decade. Debt–export ratios of over 150% and debt– service ratios above 15–20% are generally regarded as unsustainable in the medium or long term because they displace productive investment and expenditure. Over the period 1990–2003, the total external in debtedness of poorer countries continued to rise, reaching over US$2.5 trillion, an increase of over 91% (Table 2). However, the increase for low income countries was a modest 24.3% at current prices (representing a decrease in real terms), whereas, for middle income countries as a whole, and for both sub categories, debt more than doubled at current prices and in 2003 accounted for 84% of the total for both categories. Geographically, the increases ranged from a mere 13.8% in the Middle East and North Africa, and 30.8% in sub Saharan Africa, to 124.5% in East Asia and the Paciﬁc and a massive 211.2% in Europe and Central Asia (Figure 1). The largest individual debtor countries in 2003 were (all in billions of US dollars) Brazil (235.4; 330%), China (193.6; 48%), Russian Federation (175.3; 135%), Argentina (166.2; 533%), Turkey (145.7; 251%), Mexico (140; 88%), Indonesia (134.4; 204%), and India (113.5; 123%), where the percentages represent the respective debt–export ratios. These included the world’s most populous and among the economically fastest growing

18

Debt

Table 1

External debt burden, 1990 (and 1980)

Region/Country

Total external debt as percentage of exports of goods and services

Total debt service as percentage of exports

Interest payments as percentage of exports

Sub-Saharan Africa Low-income countries Ethiopia Somalia Lower middle-income countries Coˆte d’Ivoire Upper middle-income countries East Asia and Paciﬁc Korea, Republic South Asia Bangladesh India Europe Middle East and North Africa Latin America and Caribbean Mexico Brazil

324.3 218.5 480.3 2576.2 179.0 487.4 132.1 91.1 130.6 281.5 448.2 282.4 125.7 180.3 257.4 222.0 326.8

19.3 20.1 33.0 11.7 20.3 38.6 17.9 14.6 19.7 25.9 25.4 28.8 16.9 24.4 25.0 27.8 20.8

8.9 9.3 8.1 5.8 8.4 13.3 8.2 5.8 12.7 13.1 7.7 15.9 6.8 8.1 13.3 16.7 8.2

(96.8) (105.1) (136.2) (252.0) (115.2) (160.7) (159.6) (88.8) (44.0) (162.9) (345.6) (136.0) (90.6) (114.9) (196.8) (259.2) (304.9)

(10.9) (10.3) (7.6) (4.9) (18.8) (28.3) (31.0) (13.5) (10.7) (12.2) (23.2) (9.3) (15.9) (16.4) (37.3) (49.5) (63.1)

(5.7) (5.1) (4.7) (0.9) (9.1) (13.0) (16.6) (7.7) (3.5) (5.2) (6.4) (4.2) (7.1) (7.4) (19.7) (27.4) (33.8)

Source: Simon, D. (1995). Debt, democracy and development: Sub Saharan Africa in the 1990s. In Simon, D., Van Spengen, W., Dixon, C. & Narman, A. (eds.) Structurally adjusted Africa: Poverty, debt and basic needs, p. 25. London: Pluto.

Table 2

External debt and debt burden, 1990 and 2003 Total of external debt ($/mn)

Low income Middle incomea Lower middle income Upper middle incomea Low and Middle Incomea East Asia and Paciﬁc Europe and Central Asia Latin America and Caribbean Middle East and North Africa South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa

Short term debt as % of total debt

Total public and publicity guaranteed debt ($/mn)

1990

2003

% change

1990

2003

1990

2003

341 580 995 453 653 470 341 983 1 337 033 234 081 217 224 444 900 139 555 124 396 176 878

424 472 2 129 666 1 392 764 736 902 2 554 138 525 535 675 998 779 632 158 827 182 785 231 360

þ 24.26 þ 113.9 þ 113.1 þ 115.5 þ 91.03 þ 124.5 þ 211.2 þ 75.2 þ 13.8 þ 46.9 þ 30.8

11.0 16.6 16.7 16.4 15.2 16.0 18.2 16.5 14.1 9.9 11.6

7.9 17.3 17.1 17.7 15.7 23.9 19.9 10.7 12.8 3.9 13.4

7692 52 315 34 132 18 182 60 007 21 635 4921 25 029 1418 1727 5276

23 821 571 305 338 332 232 973 595 126 120 503 206 601 227 856 6747 17 796 15 623

a

includes data for Gibraltar. Source: World Bank (2005). World Development Indicators 2005. Washington, DC: Tables 4.16 and 4.17.

states, the largest transitional economy, a geostrategically important and pro Western Islamic state, and the three original big debtors from 1980. Together, these eight biggest debtors accounted for US$1304.1 billion, approximately 51% of all low and middle income countries’ debt. However, their respective debt–export ratios vary considerably, representing different debt burdens, from a very manageable level in China and Mexico to unsustainable burdens in Argentina and Brazil. The heaviest debt–export ratios in the world in 2003 were 1952% in Liberia, 799% in Sudan, 697% in Sierra Leone, and 632% in Rwanda, all amongst the poorest and most war ravaged economies. Liberia would require

almost 20 years of current export revenues to pay off its external debt. Such aggregate and snapshot data conceal both sub national variations in terms of geography, class, ethnicity, and agro ecological system, and also trend changes within the overall period. For instance, despite the in creased absolute indebtedness in 2003, Latin America’s fortunes are generally held to have improved sub stantially during much of the 1990s, sometimes dubbed the Miracle Decade in contrast to the Lost Decade of the 1980s. However, the late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed renewed ﬁnancial turmoil and short term crises in the major debtor states.

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19

2003 Total external debt = $2 554 138

Sub-Saharan Africa

1990 Total external debt = $1 337 033 South Asia Sub-Saharan East Asia and Africa Pacific South Asia Middle East and North Africa

East Asia and Pacific

Middle East and North Africa

Europe and Central Asia

Latin America and Caribbean

Latin America and Caribbean

Europe and Central Asia

Figure 1 Geographical distribution of external debt, low- and middle-income countries, 1990 and 2003 ($ millions).

Response of the Global Regulators The likely implications of the debt crisis were immedi ately appreciated by the international ﬁnancial insti tutions (IFIs) like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) that regulate the global economy, along with the major donor governments and bilateral aid agencies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the banks themselves. Some of the most heavily exposed banks were threatened with bankruptcy, while any collective default – such as was seriously considered by the Car tagena Group of Latin American states in 1985–86 – would have threatened the entire global economic and ﬁnancial system. In defense of their own interests, the banks sought and usually received assistance (from tax write offs to direct bale outs) from their home govern ments while pursuing debt repayment with vigor. The IMF, WB, and main creditor agencies adopted an inﬂexible position that blamed debtor countries alone for their predicament and ignored the role of the creditor banks and agencies in having been the knowing partners to loan agreements with duly appraised risks. Accord ingly, the IFIs’ strategy – that became their holy grail – was to enforce a package of harsh remedial measures (known as Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)) on debtor countries as a precondition for any further ﬁnancial assistance, including rescheduling of public

debt. They also strenuously opposed any attempt by debtor countries to unite into a grouping as a counterpart to the London and Paris Clubs of creditors, insisting on dealing with defaulters individually. Their ability to enforce this has both reﬂected and reinforced the struc tural imbalances of the global political economy and the relative weakness of debtors (neocolonialism). Until the late 1980s, private and public creditors were reluctant to accept that even the most severely indebted countries were unlikely ever to be able to repay much of their accumulated debt. Accordingly, they opposed write offs in principle and because they feared a domino effect. Instead, they undertook debt reschedulings, with terms reﬂecting their perceptions of likely repayment and sought, as a minimum, to ensure continuing interest repayments.

Tackling the Debt Crisis SAPs were designed as short term strategies to stabilize heavily indebted economies, and were followed by long term Economic Recovery Programs (ERPs) designed to restructure and revitalize the economies through extensive liberalization and privatization, diversiﬁcation of exports, and the like. The ﬁrst generation programs were applied blueprint like to very different contexts and were unduly harsh, especially on social expenditure.

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These shortcomings were eventually acknowledged and addressed, to some extent, after the late 1980s but not before many of the education, health, and welfare gains of previous decades had been undermined. By 1997, the importance of effective state capacity was also recognized in the World Development Report, heralding a partial U turn that sought to reinvigorate government insti tutions selectively, alongside attention to social capital. Although SAPs and ERPs were intended as bitter medicine to restore the sick debtor economies to health so that they would be able to repay their debts, it became clear that debt reduction required more direct action. Already by the mid 1980s, Latin America and sub Saharan Africa became net capital exporters, that is, their debt repayments exceeded capital inﬂows through ODA, new loans, and FDI. Still reluctant to write off debt unilaterally, creditors devised a series of other mech anisms to reduce the debt overhang (a situation where new loans are taken out entirely to service existing ones and where the debt service burden displaces productive economic activity). These are discussed next. Debt–equity swaps were usually undertaken at a dis count, the rate of which reﬂected the likelihood of the debt repayment. A secondary debt market then emerged in which creditors traded discounted debt certiﬁcates according to each party’s perception of the eventual re demption prospects. Considerable debt reductions did occur; for example, Mexico reduced its burden by almost US$1.5 billion in 1987. However, the practice declined in the 1990s as a result of increasing domestic criticism in debtor countries that this represented economic neo colonialism, whereby economic sovereignty was being eroded in favor of foreign governments and institutions. Debt–for–nature swaps represented an effort to over come this criticism while also promoting biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Costa Rica was the country most deeply involved in this mechanism, recording some demonstrable beneﬁts but ultimately suffering similar concerns about economic and environ mental sovereignty. Debt auctions involved debtor countries offering their debt certiﬁcates to the highest bidder – at discounts representing the purchaser’s perception of the prospects of repayment – for conversion into local equity. Auctions were held every month or two in the late 1980s, often involving amounts of over US$100 million. The equity could be for new investment, not just shareholdings in existing companies, hence potentially beneﬁting the debtor country. By the mid 1990s, however, debt auctions had been discontinued for similar reasons to debt–equity swaps. Countertrade represented a strategy by debtor coun tries to increase trade among themselves by circumventing the need for hard currency (in which conventional trade is undertaken), and thereby also promoting South–South

cooperation. Governments, trade institutions, or donors like oil exporting countries provided bridging funds to enable the commodities being bartered to be consigned at different times. For instance, if Oman and Zimbabwe desired to trade oil for beef but the oil was needed in order to process and transport the beef, the oil–beef exchange rate would be negotiated at the outset, then the oil shipped to Zimbabwe and, after an agreed period of time, the beef would be sent to Oman. The bridging funds would cover transport, demurrage and interest payments. Ultimately, the time consuming negotiations required for each deal, as well as limited countertrade possibilities, undermined the mechanism. Poverty reduction strategies (PRSs), more commonly known by the title of their principal documents, poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), replaced SAPs and ERPs as the principal IFI adjustment vehicles in 2000–01. PRSPs are required to be compiled through a process of wide ranging consultations between governments and civil society, but the extent of such engagement varies widely and has often been token. In accordance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the central focus is required to be on the reduction of poverty. Adoption and then IFI approval of a PRSP is – like its predecessors – a prerequisite for adjustment lending or debt relief under the Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative. The HIPC initiative is a program through which OECD member states provide debt relief to the world’s poorest countries with the heaviest debt burden by reducing it to sustainable levels. Launched in 1996 by the IMF and WB, it has involved negotiations with each of the identiﬁed debtor states to agree the donors’ terms, namely that resources saved by debt forgiveness must be used to tackle poverty and could not be spent on military, security, or other nonpoverty activities. The target is to reduce countries’ debt–export ratios to a supposedly sustainable 150%. Signing up the debtors has proved very time consuming and the original target of 20 countries by the end of 2000, to coincide with the Jubilee 2000 campaign by international civil society for large scale debt relief, was not met. The target has since been expanded to 25 and now 38 (of which 32 are in sub Saharan Africa), although not all have yet qualiﬁed to participate. A report in May 2006 by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the WB’s self auditing arm, showed that 29 countries had reached the ﬁrst stage of debt relief, called ‘decision point’. This means that they had qualiﬁed to receive interim debt relief, ceased to make debt service payments, and had begun to implement the donor policy requirements. The Republic of Congo, which qualiﬁed in early 2006, is expected to have debts of US$2.9 billion written off. Eighteen countries had reached the second stage, known as ‘completion point’, that is, the countries

Debt

21

had implemented the donor requirements – principally implementation of a PRS (see above) – and received ﬁnal debt relief totaling US$19 billion. However, these coun tries had made only modest progress toward achieving the MDGs. Furthermore, in 11 countries where debts had already been canceled, total external debts had actually risen on account of conditions attached to new loans, exchange rate movements, difﬁculties in diversifying exports, and so forth. Eight of them (Rwanda, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ghana, and Mali) still had moderate debt distress risk, remained vulnerable to external shocks, and would con tinue to require highly concessionary ﬁnancing. When the 29 countries receive all eligible relief after reaching their completion points, the total debt forgiven will be approximately $73 billion. These new data underscore some of the HIPC’s limitations, including the need for complementary policy actions beyond the scope of HIPC itself, and the ability of the IFIs to introduce new preconditions for qualiﬁ cation even once the process is well advanced. In contrast to the IEG report, bilateral agencies like the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) report major progress through increased expenditure on health, education, and other antipoverty measures in beneﬁciary countries as a result of HIPC debt forgiveness. The HIPC has become the OECD members’ principal multilateral debt relief vehicle, although members are also encouraged to forgive bilateral debt in parallel. Like some other donors, the UK writes off 100% of such bilateral debt, compared to about 50% by multilateral bodies. In addition, debt service payments made by a country after reaching decision point are held in trust by the UK and then returned when the completion point is reached. By May 2006, the combined value of the UK’s HIPC and bilateral debt forgiveness totaled d1225 million (c. US$2450 million at late 2006 exchange rates). Prime Minister Blair’s Commission for Africa report in 2005 saw a positive ongoing role for the HIPC initiative and associated debt relief. This, in turn, fed into the commitment by the G8 summit at Gleneagles in July 2005 to provide enhanced debt relief by canceling 100% of the remaining debt owed to the concessionary lending arms of the WB, African Development Bank (AfDB), and IMF. If agreed by other countries and the Boards of the WB, AfDB, and IMF, the deal could be worth up to US$55 billion for 38 HIPCs.

See also: Aid; Foreign Direct Investment; Geopolitics; Modernization Theory; Neocolonialism; Poverty; Social Capital; Structural Adjustment; Sustainable Development.

Conclusions

Further Reading

The debt crisis has been with us for over a quarter of a century and, despite many initiatives by creditors and indebted countries, it is unlikely to disappear in the

Booth, D. (ed.) (2003). Fighting poverty in Africa: Are PRSPs making a difference? London: Overseas Development Institute. Craig, D. and Porter, D. (2003). Poverty reduction strategy papers: A new convergence. World Development 31(1), 53 69.

foreseeable future. The largest absolute external debtors are middle income or, like China and India, economic ally fast growing countries. However, not all of these are experiencing the heaviest debt burden; this depends on the ability of a country to service its debt. Although the US government is by far the world’s largest debtor, being unable to cover its ﬁscal deﬁcit (which stood at $8.348 trillion in late May 2006), this debt is predominantly domestic rather than external, and there is little concern about possible economic collapse because the debts are generally (if not universally) felt to be sustainable. Nevertheless, it is salutary to note that this debt was more than three times higher than the total external debt of all low and middle income countries in 2005. While some donors have shown increasing urgency and commitment, such attitudes are far from universally held. However, for impoverished people in different debtor countries – not just the HIPCs – meaningful action to tackle the debt burden is literally a matter of life or death. Poor people live in rural, periurban, and urban areas, all of which must be addressed by appro priate policies. In other words, nationally and locally speciﬁc conditions can be crucial; simplistic blueprint type policies implemented across the board stand little prospect of success. Schemes like debt–equity swaps and countertrade have been supplanted by the combination of donor driven PRSs and the HIPC initiative as the principal current mechanisms for economic restructuring, debt relief, and poverty reduction. Some real beneﬁts have been demonstrated in countries like Zambia, where pri mary school fees have been abolished, teacher recruit ment increased, and school rehabilitation schemes undertaken with the resources freed from debt service. However, these initiatives alone are inadequate. Con certed civil society protests and activism, through inter national campaigns like Jubilee 2000 and the Trade Justice Movement, have undoubtedly inﬂuenced ofﬁcial bilateral and multilateral policies positively in recent years. Ultimately, only more equitable terms of trade will remove the foundation of the debt crisis. As demon strated here, debt write offs can help but will not, on their own, preclude further debt accrual or solve wider problems.

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Fraser, A. (2005). Poverty reduction strategy papers: Now who calls the shots? Review of African Political Economy 32(104 105), 317 340. George, S. (1988). A fate worse than debt. London: Penguin. George, S. (1992). The debt boomerang: How third world debt harms us all. London: Pluto. Green, D. (2003). Silent revolution: The rise and crisis of market economics in Latin America (2nd edn). London and New York: Latin America Bureau and Monthly Review Press. Helleiner, G. (1992). The IMF, the World Bank and Africa’s adjustment and external debt problems: An unofﬁcial view. World Development 20(6), 779 792. Neumayer, E. (2002). Is good governance rewarded? A cross national analysis of debt forgiveness. World Development 30(6), 913 930. Pettifor, A. (2000). Debt cancellation, lender responsibility and poor country empowerment. Review of African Political Economy 83, 138 144. Schatan, J. (1987). World debt: Who is to pay? London: Zed Books. Simon, D. (1995). Debt, democracy and development: Sub Saharan Africa in the 1990s. In Simon, D., Van Spengen, W., Dixon, C. & Narman, A. (eds) Structurally adjusted Africa: Poverty, debt and basic needs, pp 17 44. London: Pluto.

World Bank (2005). World development indicators 2005. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Relevant Websites http://www.wdm.org.uk World Development Movement. http://www.oneworld.net NGO network, debt. http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org Bretton Woods Project, a forum focusing on critiques of the Bretton Woods approach to debt and development. http://www.dﬁd.gov.uk/mdg/debt hipc faqs.asp DFID UK Department for International Development, The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative Frequently Asked Questions. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/ 0,menuPK:336998~pagePK:149018~piPK:149093~ the SitePK:3369992,00.html PovertyNet, the WB’s central focus on poverty, including Poverty Reduction Strategies.

Deconstruction C. Barnett, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Diffe´rance A neologism that refers to both a sense of spatial dispersal and temporal deferral characteristic of textuality. Logocentrism The belief in the unmediated relationship between thought and linguistic expression. Metaphysics of Presence The privileging of the present tense in the determination of Being in Western metaphysics. Performative A linguistic act that brings into existence or enacts what it seems to describe, for example, ‘‘I name this shipy .’’ Textuality A conceptual ﬁgure for the generalization of those attributes normally ascribed to writing (e.g., absence, chance, spatial dissemination, temporal delay, impurity) to practices of signiﬁcation in general.

Introduction: What’s in a Name? Deconstruction is a distinctive tradition of philosophical analysis and textual criticism. It is indelibly associated with the writings of Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Deconstruction ﬁrst came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s as a strand of a broad wave of structuralist and poststructuralist thought emanating from the French academy. Derrida is often thought of as the quintessen tially ‘French’ theorist, but deconstruction has been most inﬂuential in the English speaking academy. By the 1990s, Derrida’s writings were translated into English almost without delay. Deconstruction is a tradition that exists in and through the medium, institutions, and conventions of translation. Deconstruction has a distinctive presence in con temporary popular culture. Derrida has had a pop song written in his honor, and a documentary ﬁlm in which he ‘starred’. The academic reception of deconstruction is difﬁcult to disentangle from a succession of very public controversies in which Derrida himself, or decon struction as an intellectual movement, became more or less willingly involved. This includes the ‘Cambridge Affair’ in 1992, when a few disgruntled academics for mally objected to the University of Cambridge conferring an honorary degree on Derrida, and the invocation of deconstruction in the ‘Sokal Affair’ in the late 1990s, a controversy surrounding the status of social constru ctionism and scientiﬁc authority. When Derrida died in

2004, comments extended well beyond the usual aca demic memorials and broadsheet obituaries to the letters pages and op ed pages of major national newspapers in North America and Europe. Though less controversial than in the 1980s, Derrida’s legacy nonetheless remained a matter of more than academic interest. This presence of deconstruction in popular culture provides an interesting counterpoint to what is often a rather self righteous academic insistence, by Derrida and others, that deconstruction is peculiarly resistant to deﬁnition. This is normally how entries on decon struction, such as this one, would start. Derrida once commented that any proposition of the form ‘Decon struction is X’ was missing the point. Beneath this claim is a serious line of reﬂection on the philosophical con strual of the mediums through which things present themselves to thought and action. But the popular presence of deconstruction should not be dismissed too rapidly. Deconstruction has become, whatever Derrida’s intentions, a popular verb referring to the dismantling and taking apart of authoritative narratives, opinions, or identities, exposing their contingency to view. It is, in this usage, a popular synonym for the more austere sounding concept of critique. Deconstruction is also associated, more positively, with particular styles of artistic practice that take apart and then reassemble the materials and conventions of established genres. The model here is so called deconstructivist architecture, with which Derrida himself was closely associated through his collaborations with internationally renowned architects, such as Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. If this populist reference seems out of place in an academic entry on deconstruction, then it is worth acknowledging that this mixing of genres and disrupting of boundaries is a deﬁning feature of Derrida’s academic work. Derrida’s writing ranges over a huge range of topics and ﬁelds. This includes the canon of Western philosophy from Plato onward, including Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, and Nietzche, Husserl, and Heidegger. But Derrida’s reading of philosophy is explicitly inﬂected by an engagement with the canon of modernist literature, including Mallarme´, Celan, Blanchot, and Joyce. One recurrent theme of Derrida’s work is the degree to which a clear cut distinction between philosophical reason and literary expression is not possible. Derrida also engages with the work of key modern social and political thinkers, including Marx, Freud, Saussure, and Levi Strauss. Here, the recurrent theme is the degree to which modern social science entrains a series of philosophical tropes just as it

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24

Deconstruction

breaks from classical metaphysical modes of reﬂection. In his engagement with the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Walter Benjamin, and Søren Kierkegaard, Derrida simi larly raises the question of whether the secularization associated with post Enlightenment reason can or should break wholly with intuitions of religious faith. In his consistent engagement with nonwritten arts, including painting and architecture, Derrida likewise raises ques tions about the hierarchies of different sensory modalities that elevate philosophical reﬂection to the highest order. Deconstruction is best approached as a way of reading. As a method of analysis, deconstruction exposes un acknowledged implications in existing traditions. If this is understood solely as a critical impulse, however, then deconstruction is hardly distinct from a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’. But Derrida was less a critic than he was an advocate of the writers and texts that he subjected to such forensic attention. Derrida leaves us with a whole new genre of theory, in which thinking is nothing more than the working through of an inheritance and a taking of responsibility for traditions of thought. The general signiﬁcance of Derrida’s work cannot be detached from the distinctive style of his writing. All of Derrida’s signiﬁcant works are commentaries on texts by other writers. Deconstruction thus works through the elaboration of particular texts, rather than creating con cepts or general systems. The concepts most often asso ciated with deconstruction – such as ‘supplement’, ‘pharmakon’, ‘trace’, and ‘chora’ – are found by Derrida in the texts he reads. He shows that they turn out to have greater potential meaning than they are usually ascribed by their host traditions. This systematically parasitical dependence on other texts for the elaboration of a deconstructive conceptual vocabulary implies that the generalizing application of deconstructive motifs in other contexts should be undertaken with great care. Given the size, range, and depth of Derrida’s oeuvre, it is useful to think of his career falling into two phases. In the ﬁrst phase, deconstruction was an avowedly critical enterprise, and became closely associated with a rigorous mode of literary–theoretical textual analysis. In the second phase, deconstruction takes on a more afﬁrmative tenor.

Deconstruction: The Basics Derrida’s most important work is Of Grammatology, ﬁrst published in France in 1967, and translated into English in 1976. Of Grammatology lays out the basic lineaments of a deconstructive method of philosophical analysis, which refuses to ignore the textual medium in which universal philosophical propositions are presented. It is in this book that Derrida makes the famous claim that ‘‘There is nothing outside the text.’’ This remark has become one of

the most widely cited, and most widely misunderstood, thoughts in twentieth century philosophy. It is best understood as an interpretative rule, according to which reading follows the immanent patterns of texts to lay bare inconsistencies and contradictions, rather than apply external criteria of interpretation in order to impose unity on them. This protocol of literal reading draws on an older and deeper tradition of heterodox hermeneutics that stretches back to Spinoza. Of Grammatology consists of close readings of canonical texts by the founder of modern structural linguistics, Saussure; the anthropologist, Levi Strauss, who pion eered structuralist anthropology; and one of the pivotal ﬁgures of modern political thought, Rousseau. This is, then, a critical engagement with some of the founding texts of radical egalitarian thought. In the case of each author, Derrida identiﬁes a tendency to denigrate writing as a secondary, contingent medium for the articulation of pure thoughts properly expressed in direct speech. Derrida calls this privileging of expressive speech over the dangers and impurities of materially mediated com munication ‘logocentrism’. Logocentrism embodies a deep prejudice in Western thought for the ideal of a disembodied, isolated subject free from dependence on others. In the ﬁrst, critical phase of deconstruction, this in herently normative evaluation of the relationship between speech and writing, and orality and literacy, is subjected to a sustained analysis that leads to apparently perverse conclusions. Derrida argues that if writing is able to act as a material support to the purity of expressive speech which always threatens to supplant the original, then this logically implies that something essential must be absent from the pure form. It turns out that far from being a mere supplement, writing is a necessary supplement to the supposedly pure form of speech. This analysis of speech and writing in Of Grammatology exempliﬁes a more general theme in deconstruction, whereby what is secondary, accidental, or contingent turns out to be fundamental to the working of identities, meanings, and systems. In 1988, Derrida characterized deconstruction as ‘‘a practical analysis of the parasite and of the axiomatics upon which its interpretation is based.’’ In invoking the parasite as the term with which to question the normativity of received understandings of belonging and property, Derrida made recourse to a resolutely spatial ﬁgure. Derrida calls the assumption that phenomena, such as meaning or identity, must have essentialist forms, ‘‘the metaphysics of presence.’’ This term indicates the rele vance of deconstruction to geography’s concern with spatiality and temporality. Deconstruction is indebted to Heidegger’s argument that Western thought has consist ently privileged the present tense when trying to ap prehend the nature of Being. By afﬁrming the irreducible

Deconstruction

role of writing in the expression of thought, Derrida argues that all those qualities for which writing (or tex tuality) stands – absence, spatial, and temporal extension, the threat of intention going astray or of destinations not reached – are constitutive of apparently free standing entities such as the uniﬁed self identical subject of philosophical reason. This theme is articulated by one of Derrida’s most important neologisms, the notion of diffe´rance. This term refers to the movement of spatial dispersal and temporal deferral that Derrida holds to be the condition of possibility for any and all identity, punctuality, or unity. In geography, as in any other ﬁelds, Derrida’s work is most often thought of as a poststructuralist radical ization of structuralist accounts of the relational quality of meaning (and by extension, of identity). On this understanding, Derrida is usually interpreted as afﬁrming an endless, interminable slippage of meaning that escapes any attempt at closure. But the concern in his work with issues of presence and absence also indicates the degree to which deconstruction is indebted to phe nomenology. This is a much more important context for understanding deconstruction than is usually acknow ledged in the interpretation of Derrida as a post structuralist thinker. Derrida’s earliest work was on Husserl, the founder of modern phenomenology. His analysis of the metaphysics of presence, as already suggested, is developed in a tense relation of attraction and repulsion to the work of Martin Heidegger, the other pivotal thinker of the phenomenological tradition. And one of his closest mentors, with whom his work continues on an oblique dialog from the 1960s onward, was Emmanuel Levinas, whose phenomenological writ ings challenge Heidegger’s privileging of fundamental ontology and reassert the priority of ethical orientations to others as the constitutive mode of human relationality. By bringing his analysis of logocentrism to bear on this tradition, Derrida points up the limitations of the persistent privilege accorded to unmediated subjective experience in phenomenology. In relation to both structuralism and phenomenology, Derrida’s itinerary remains ﬁrmly entrenched in what has become known as ‘continental philosophy’. But Derrida’s own work engages in important ways with what is often considered a distinctively Anglophone tradition of ‘analytical philosophy’. In Derrida’s case, this is most clearly evident in his long time engagement with the writings of J. L. Austin, the most famous exponent of ordinary language philosophy. Derrida’s treatment of Austin’s idiosyncratic ‘linguistic phenomenology’ is the most important single source for the popularization of the notion of performativity across the social sciences and humanities. In the 1970s, Austin became the focus of an ill tempered exchange between Derrida and the American philosopher John Searle. This exchange has

25

become a model for the mutual hostility and incompre hension between analytical and continental philosophy. But Derrida’s ongoing appreciation of Austin, as well as the degree to which Austin’s vocabulary becomes an essential aspect of how deconstruction is made intelli gible by its supporters from the 1980s onward, is indicative of a much more messy, even parasitical rela tionship between deconstruction and ordinary language philosophy than is often admitted by either ‘side’ of this division. One lesson to take from this relationship between the quintessentially French philosopher Derrida, and the quintessential exponent of ‘Oxford philosophy’ is that deconstruction is less a tradition concerned with lan guage, textuality, or meaning in narrow ways, but is part of a broader revival of interest in the arts of rhetoric, in language in use. Rhetoric is classically deﬁned as the art of persuasion and eloquence. The history of Western thought can be understood as a long quarrel between serious reason and rhetoric. From one perspective, sci ence, rationality, and enlightenment overcome religion, superstition, and magic. A counternarrative sees in this process only the subordination of visceral, creative pluralism to soulless reason. The quarrel turns on a shared set of opposed pairs: reason versus passion; fact versus opinion; neutral versus partisan; and reason versus rhetoric. This opposition underplays the extent to which rhetoric, as a classical discipline, was concerned with the ways in which audiences could be swayed through a combination of both rationality and emotion. Derrida’s consistent concern with the medium in which philo sophical truth is communicated – its textuality – and with the parasitic relationship between the value of truth and the forms of ﬁction and imagination, sits squarely within a tradition of thought that endeavors to reorder these oppositional pairs, rather than assert the superiority of one over the other. There is another important feature of Derrida’s debt to Austin. Austin’s account of ordinary language focused on the ‘force’ which secured the authority of acts that had no ﬁnal foundation in representational truth. Derrida uses this analysis of the conventional qualities of public acts of language use to open up a line of questioning concerning the foundational conditions for the success of various sorts of ‘performative’ acts. This includes an analysis of the peculiar force of the constitutional foundations of modern democracy. The reference to Austin is also evident in Derrida’s most inﬂuential political essay, the Force of Law, which is an extended reﬂection on the relationships between justice, law, and violence. It is Austin’s resolutely English, almost paro chial philosophical vocabulary, that serves as the privil eged register in which Derrida, the embodiment of ‘French theory’, sought to articulate the politics of deconstruction from the late 1980s onward.

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Deconstruction and Politics Derrida’s work has been consistently subjected to a demand for politics. The political relevance of decon struction in its critical phase was somewhat unclear. The elusive quality of Derrida’s writing generated a great deal of commentary, in which deconstruction was interpreted as a variety of ideology critique, which can help to expose the contingent foundations of naturalized ways of thinking about identity, meaning, or subjectivity. In this interpretation, deconstruction’s demonstration of ambivalence, contradiction, or silence in canonical traditions of thought is assumed to be automatically disobliging: it is assumed that showing the contingent conditions of beliefs or values weakens the level of con ﬁdence which should be invested in them. This inter pretation, while widespread, mistakes the ethicopolitical force of Derrida’s work. Any political interpretation of deconstruction must give due weight to how Derrida’s writing, in its very method and style, reorders the assumed relationships between what is given and what is possible that underwrites standard models of academic critique. Derrida does not present what is given as in need of negation or transcendence, or as something to be overcome, transformed, or sloughed off. Rather, the given is treated as an inheritance, one that must be approached responsibly in order to judge what should be subjected to criticism, what should be jettisoned, and what should be afﬁrmed. This means that any exercise in deconstruction is just as likely to be vindicatory as it is disobliging. This afﬁrmative ethos of deconstruction became much more explicit in the last decade and a half of Derrida’s career. Deconstruction had reached its institutional zenith in the 1980s, primarily in literary studies in the USA. Up to this time, deconstruction had been less than warmly received in mainstream English language phil osophy. The shift in Derrida’s work from taking Western philosophy to task for its blind spots toward developing a vocabulary of ethical concern and political responsibility coincides with a series of controversies that propelled deconstruction onto the front pages of national news papers in the USA, UK, and Europe. One of these controversies surrounded renewed interest in the depth and profundity of Heidegger’s Nazi afﬁliations in the 1930s and 1940s, in view of deconstruction’s intellectual proximity to Heidegger’s project. A much more inﬂuen tial controversy followed the revelation in 1987 that Paul de Man, Derrida’s close friend and the leading deconstructionist critic in the USA until his death in 1983, had penned anti Semitic literary journalism in wartime Belgium. There is little doubt that in the wake of these con troversies Derrida’s writing undergoes an explicit ethical and political turn. This leads, paradoxically perhaps, to a much more receptive engagement with deconstruction

across the social sciences than had previously been the case, when it had been so closely identiﬁed as literary theory. The ethical dimensions of deconstruction became increasingly foregrounded as the importance of Levinas as a reference point for Derrida’s project became more widely appreciated. Derrida’s own writing also begins to address itself much more explicitly to ethical and polit ical topics in various traditions of political theory, moral philosophy, and theology. Derrida’s later work focused on a family of virtues and values of relating: hospitality, forgiveness, confession, tolerance, testifying, bearing witness, gift relations, mourning, justice, and friendship. All of these refer to a set of attentive, generous, and responsive ways of relating to others. Derrida’s ethical writings have thus contributed to the idea that ethics is primarily concerned with the relationship between responsibility and otherness, a theme developed in recent work in geography on post structuralist ethics and nonrepresentational theory. However, Derrida’s philosophical revival of this family of topics should not be too quickly consigned to the ethereal arena of ethics. What is at stake is an effort to think about politics without conforming to established models of political relationality, which depend either on idealized models of consensus and reciprocity or darkly pessimistic views about violence and antagonism, which evacuate any and all space for normative judgment from the world. Derrida’s discussion of this family of topics is, furthermore, explicitly presented in a political register in which geographical themes play an important part. For example, his discussions of hospitality and cosmo politanism are addressed to contemporary debates about immigration, asylum, and multicultural in European nation states. His evocation of the rhetoric of ghosts and haunting in his long awaited reading of Marx rethinks the possibility of international solidarity in an age of economic globalization. And his treatment of the theme of friendship rethinks traditional conceptions of sover eignty, law, and statehood. At the same time as Derrida’s reﬂections on ethics and politics address key geographical assumptions of modern thought, they also focus on a set of understandings of historicity and temporality. For example, Derrida’s concern with ‘democracy to come’ explores the relationship between the promise of political ideals and their institutionalization. Any concrete manifestation of democratic norms in legal form will always be exceeded by demands for justice that cannot be anticipated. Derrida’s more explicit treatment of ethical and pol itical issues has meant that deconstruction has been reconciled with traditions of Marxist and post Marxist critical theory that were previously doubtful of its political credentials. This has coincided with a degree of rapprochement between deconstruction and analytical traditions of philosophy. Where once it was claimed by

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Derrida’s detractors that ‘proper’ philosophers did not bother with deconstruction, there is now a ﬂourishing literature concerning the overlaps between decon struction and analytical approaches. One important reference point for this movement is the idiosyncratic philosophy of Stanley Cavell, which displays a guarded appreciation of Derrida’s philosophical project as a complement to his own. But above all, perhaps, it has been provoked by the renewed interest among Anglo American philosophers in philosophical pragmatism triggered by Richard Rorty in the late 1970s. It is through this pragmatist interpretation of Derrida that decon struction has been most inﬂuentially translated into the disciplinary debates shaping human geography.

Deconstruction in Geography Deconstruction has had a variable reception history in geography. The ways in which deconstruction has been interpreted disclose some of the conventions of theory construction in the discipline. Derrida is rarely cited as a key thinker on issues of space and place. Nor does his work conform easily to the preference for materialist analysis that emphasizes relations of power which has shaped the discipline’s engagement with post structuralism. Deconstruction has been thought to over emphasize textuality, without much care being taken to consider how Derrida’s re inscription of the texture of textuality might carry some important insights for how to conceptualize spatiality and temporality. Nonetheless, Derrida is a background presence in a number of intel lectual developments in the discipline in the last decade and a half. For example, many of the feminist theorists with whom geographers have most closely engaged are strongly indebted to Derrida and deconstruction. This is true, for example, of Judith Butler’s politics of perfor mativity; Elizabeth Grosz’s work on embodiment; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Marxist deconstructionist post colonialism; and Iris Marion Young’s retheorization of justice and the politics of difference. Deconstruction ﬁrst came to prominence in geog raphy as part of debates about postmodernism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was invoked as an authoritative reference point for critiques of essentialism and foun dationalism in epistemology. This epistemological read ing of deconstruction saw Derrida’s situated readings of philosophical traditions externally applied to support generalized arguments about the contingency of all knowledge claims and the constructedness of social phenomena. The construal of deconstruction as anti essentialist and antifoundationalist owes a great deal to the ways in which geographers’ discussions of post modernism were shaped by Richard Rorty’s distinctive revival of philosophical pragmatism. Derrida has become

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the authoritative reference point for a set of general claims about binary oppositions, dichotomies, and dual isms that shape the terms of theoretical criticism in poststructuralist geography. His work is meant to prove beyond doubt that all meaning depends on the temporary stabilization of the differential movement of signiﬁcation; that the validity of all foundations is dependent on the operation of hierarchical binary oppositions; and that all identities are constituted through arbitrary acts of ex clusion and closure. Deconstruction is used as the source of external criteria that can be applied to particular objects of critical analysis. In this usage, geographers have applied deconstruction as a variety of ideology critique to debunk claims of objectivity and naturalness. The epistemological framing of deconstruction has been supplemented more recently by a more sophisti cated focus on the spatial and temporal vocabularies through which Derrida’s writing questions philosophical reason. The single most sustained engagement with Derrida’s ideas in geography is Marcus Doel’s treatment of the spatial and temporal metaphysics of decon struction in Poststructuralist Geographies, which lays out an alternative spatial grammar of mobility, relations, and foldings. This treatment underscores two features about theory construction in geography. First, Derrida con tinues to be interpreted as distinctively ‘French’ and/or ‘Continental’, covering over the conditions of translation and controversy through which deconstruction has developed as a hybrid tradition of thought. Second, Derrida increasingly comes into focus for geographers because of a creeping ontologization of theory in the discipline. This is one index of a more fundamental problem with the use of deconstruction in geography. There is a tendency to apply deconstructive concepts as if they were social–theoretical concepts. Derrida’s engagement with traditions of philosophical, literary, and aesthetic reﬂection are almost completely devoid of any mediation by sociological or historical conceptualization. When deconstruction is mistaken for social theory per se, this ends up producing highly abstract, and somewhat, simplistic formulae. In geography, deconstruction is primarily treated as a stock of ideas to be applied, rather than a practical, methodological orientation to research. There are at least three examples of such ‘application’ of deconstruction to social theory that have been given an airing in geography. First, it is often assumed that the deconstruction of the grammatical subject of philosophical reasoning maps directly onto an account of the contingency of personal or social identities. In this application, deconstruction tends to be run together with other poststructuralist accounts of subject formation, for example, from psy choanalysis or from discourse theory, to produce a standard account of ‘the social construction’ of identity. What distinguishes this variety of social constructionism

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from older ones is a strong emphasis on language as the medium in and through which subjectivity is constructed. To borrow a distinction from Nigel Thrift, this style of poststructuralism ends up overemphasizing the degree to which subjectivity is socially ‘constructed’ at the expense of exploring how people are always busy socially ‘con structing’ subjectivity in interaction. Second, this style of argument about the social con struction of the subject is closely associated with a model of power that appeals to the authority of deconstruction. Here, Derrida’s demonstration that the intelligibility of meaning depends on a play of what is present and what is absent is reinterpreted into a claim that all identities, institutions, or meanings depend for their coherence on the exclusion of some element that, in turn, returns to potentially undermine this coherence. Understanding power in terms of exclusion and closure has an obvious appeal to geographers. It has become inﬂuential in vari ous strands of relational thinking in geography. However, like the argument about subjectivity with which it is closely associated, it tends to subsume deconstruction under a broader psychoanalytical vocabulary (and spe ciﬁcally, it insists on reading Derrida through the lens of Lacan’s interpretation of structural linguistics). In both cases, in the account of the subject and of power, deconstruction is made applicable to social sci ence by adhering to a fairly standard model of language as a system of meaning. Deconstruction is invoked to claim that meaning is inherently ﬂuid, only temporarily stabilized through arbitrary acts of closure. These sorts of arguments, by investing so much theoretical authority into theories of language, miss the point of Derrida’s critique of logocentrism: the assumption that the subject is located wholly on one side of a division between thought and the world is precisely the target of Derrida’s work. It is this focus that brings his work into more or less unlikely proximity with other critics of philosophical skepticism since Wittgenstein, such as Stanley Cavell or John McDowell. And as already suggested, these argu ments also underplay the extent to which deconstruction is really concerned with the arts of rhetoric rather than developing a theory of language, focusing on textualized modalities of action rather than on concepts of meaning and signiﬁcation. This brings us to a third application of deconstruction in social science, in which Derrida’s work is invoked to argue that all social analysis is really just a form of ‘writing’. This sort of argument has to invent a straw ﬁgure of naturalist social science as naı¨ve empiricism or positivism in order to claim that deconstruction demonstrates that all description or explanation of the real world is dependent on conventions of narrative and storytelling. The real, it turns out, is just an effect of ﬁctional representations. This sort of argument presents deconstruction as the latest in a longer line of broadly

interpretative approaches to social science. It radicalizes these approaches by claiming that all writing is a variant of ﬁctional storytelling. In so doing, this application of deconstruction ends up inadvertently relying on sub jectivist, expressive conceptions of literary writing that deconstruction, in an earlier incarnation as literary the ory, had systematically criticized. It also tends to reduce deconstruction’s analysis of textuality to a simplistic understanding of writing as a system of conventional meaning making. Each of these three applications of deconstruction to social science is visible in geography. In each case, deconstruction is positioned as a variant of interpretative social science, made to bolster this broad perspective against the imagined threats of naturalist, objectivist, quantifying explanatory social science. What seems to get lost in this application of deconstruction is the extent to which Derrida’s work, in its critical phase, actually calls into question some of the basic assumptions about the relationships between meaning, experience, and subject ivity upon which interpretative approaches to social science themselves rely. The targets of Derrida’s decon structions are, remember, the key thinkers in the struc turalist and phenomenological canon, the two most important sources for interpretative social science in the twentieth century. What emerges from this phase of deconstruction is a persistent focus on the way in which these avowedly radical approaches tend to install hidden normative criteria of harmony, originality, purity, and unity into the interpretative methods of analysis, evalu ation, judgment, selection, and reading, which they be queath the social sciences. It is here that deconstruction’s relevance to social science lies. If deconstruction is critical, then it is ﬁrst and foremost critical of the elitism, moralism, and piety of radical intepretativism in the social sciences as well as the humanities. Deconstruction encourages us to reconsider the normative assumptions built into theory formation, empirical investigation, and concept use. It is unwise to assume that the force of deconstruction rests on a debunking of claims to ob jectivity or rational argument in the social sciences. To do so is to reproduce a long standing romanticism, not least in human geography, wherein the value of authentic experience of places, of direct contact with the ﬁeld, and of unmediated and expressive forms of com munication continue to be held in the highest regard. The afﬁrmative phase of Derrida’s writing abounds with ﬁgures of attentive, generous, and responsive relations of openness, such as arrival, hospitality, and forgiveness. This work is easily read as providing a kind of ethical vocabulary, which can serve as the regulative ideals with which to oppose the grubby realities of worldly exclusions, closures, and resentments. But this is probably the wrong way to interpret this work, not least because it ends up overemphasizing the spatial aspects of

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these ﬁgures at the cost of taking seriously the distinctive temporality of relating that they stand for. What Derrida seems to have been striving for in this work is not an ‘ethics’, but rather a way of bringing into view those aspects of togetherness that ‘conventional’ understand ings of sociability, whether based on models of interest or meaning, cause or motive, squeeze from view: the emergent dimensions of being with others which are contingent in the sense that they can and do adjust to unanticipated events, rely on tacit understandings yet to be articulated, and may take forms that cannot yet be imagined. There are certainly areas of geographical research in which these aspects of deconstruction have been ac knowledged and productively developed. For example, one substantive area of research in geography which is heavily inﬂected by deconstruction is postcolonialism. Derrida’s concern with issues of reading, interpretation, and context are intimately related to a wider critique of Western historicism. The deconstruction of the speech/ writing distinction in Of Grammatology, for example, was presented as a critique of a deep seated ethnocentrism that inhered in even the most radical aspects of Western social and political thought. The degree to which deconstruction in translation might have been always already postcolonial is indicated by the fact that this book was translated into English by Spivak, a leading post colonial theorist and maverick deconstructionist critic at the same time. This postcolonial dimension to decon struction is also evident in Derrida’s treatment of dem ocracy to come. The idea of the West as the unique bearer of principles of Enlightenment (e.g., liberty, democracy, or justice) which are diffused outward to non Western cultures is challenged by his afﬁrmation of the radically open ended quality of forms of democracy yet to be anticipated. Another related area where deconstruction has made its mark in geography is in discussions of radical dem ocracy. Derrida’s discussions of sovereignty, hospitality, friendship, and cosmopolitanism challenge some of the basic assumptions about the spaces and times in which democracy is enacted. Deconstruction is thus closely related to projects aimed at rethinking ‘the political’. However, there is a tendency in this style of political deconstruction to ontologize relations of hostility and antagonism as the primary generative force of human affairs. Derrida’s account of the performative force of relations of law and justice is easily interpreted as an account of how all sovereign power is necessarily underwritten by relations of violent exclusion. This sort of account makes it very difﬁcult to account for observable relationships of compromise, negotiation, and cohabitation. Yet these were precisely the focus of Derrida’s readings of various attentive, generous, and responsive modes of relating in his later work.

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An alternative interpretation of deconstruction as bearing on issues of democratic theory would start from the observation that these modes of relating all enact some form of public space of address and encounter. Another of the unexpected rapprochements in Derrida’s later career was a convergence with the critical theory of Ju¨rgen Habermas. These two thinkers, so often taken to stand for fundamentally opposed perspectives on the legacy of the Enlightenment tradition, turn out to have a number of shared interests. For example, both owe a debt of gratitude to Austin’s ordinary language philosophy, and its intriguing implications about how actions bring into existence different scenes of public engagement. Both also share a concern to redeem what is of lasting value from Kant’s treatment of universality and cosmopolitanism in an age in which issues of global responsibility are acutely felt. In both respects, there is considerable potential for connecting Derrida’s work to the task of rethinking the terms in which geographers have conceptualized practices and regulative ideas of public space.

Conclusion The controversies that characterized Derrida’s academic and public career, and out of which the styles and topics of deconstruction emerge, reveal the expectations that academics bring to their engagement with complex conceptual and philosophical ideas. Deconstruction has often been found unsettling because it does not culmin ate in clear criteria of judgment or practical reason. Even many of Derrida’s fans tend to suggest that he just does not know when to stop with the relentless ques tioning: that deconstruction needs to be followed by reconstruction. This sort of claim only reproduces the idea that deconstruction is a negative, disobliging pro cedure of demystiﬁcation. But deconstruction is better thought of as a practice of reasoning governed by the imperative of working through inherited traditions in critical, inventive, and responsible ways. See also: Language and Research; Other/Otherness; Performativity; Phenomenology/Phenomenological Geography; Philosophy and Human Geography; Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography; Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies; Pragmatism/Pragmatist Geographies; Semiotics; Structuralism/Structuralist Geography; Text and Textuality.

Further Reading Barnett, C. (1999). Deconstructing context: Exposing Derrida. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (New Series) 24, 277 293.

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Barnett, C. (2004). Deconstructing radical democracy: Articulation, representation and being with others. Political Geography 23, 503 528. Barnett, C. (2005). Ways of relating: Hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness. Progress in Human Geography 29, 1 17. Critchley, S. (1999). The Ethics of Deconstruction (2nd edn.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Derrida, J. (1982). Margins of Philosophy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, J. (2002). Acts of Religion. London: Routledge. Derrida, J. (2002). Negotiations: Interventions and Interviews 1971 2001. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Derrida, J. (2005). Paper Machine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Doel, M. (1999). Poststructuralist Geographies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Glendinning, S. (ed.) (2001). Arguing with Derrida. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Harpham, G. G. (2002). Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity. London: Routledge. Mouffe, C. (ed.) (1996). Deconstruction and Pragmatism. London: Routledge. Norris, C. and Benjamin, A. (1988). What is Deconstruction? London: Academy Editions. Royle, N. (ed.) (1999). Deconstructions: A User’s Guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Thomas, M. (2006). The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Thomassen, L. (2006). The Derrida Habermas Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Wheeler, S. (2000). Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wigley, M. (1993). The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida’s Haunt. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Young, R. (1990). White Mythologies. London: Routledge.

Defensible Space E. Warwick, King’s College London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Defensible Space A design concept identifying spaces that can be controlled and supervised by the occupants of the surrounding buildings. Environmental/Architectural/Social Determinism The extent to which the environment, architecture, or social factors dictate human behavior. Image The impact of a physical design’s form and materials to inﬂuence the occupants’ perception of it, particularly negative associations with class, the isolation, and stigma of poor quality housing. Milieu The positive inﬂuence of adjacent activities, for example, the juxtaposition of active, well-used streets, on the security of adjacent areas. Surveillance The opportunities from the physical design of buildings and streets to provide surveillance to residents. Defensible space principles emphasize natural surveillance (location of overlooking windows, visible pathways, and spaces) over technical means such as CCTV, or external activities such as police or security guards. Territoriality The feeling of ownership of a space by its occupants, with an associated sense that strangers are unwelcome. The concept of defensible space identiﬁes territoriality as the ability of the physical environment to create identiﬁable zones of inﬂuence.

late twentieth century mass housing, has warranted its continued interest to both academics and practitioners. The application of its principles has been extensive and is commonly understood by a variety of disciplines and areas of study (e.g., urban geography, urban sociology, architecture, planning and housing policy, and even spawned subﬁelds in criminology such as environmental criminology). While it has primarily been used to explain the interaction between the physical design of spaces and crime, the concept is far richer and more complex than simply the degree that the design of space facilitates or inhibits criminal activity, and has inﬂuenced interpreta tions of place, meaning, and behavior.

The Dimensions of Defensible Space The criteria required to achieve defensible space are a mixture of social and physical circumstances. There is a cluster of criteria inﬂuencing perceptions of safety and control; ‘‘visibility to witnesses, community spirit and being prepared to guard neutral territory, stream of potential witnesses, and demarcation of private territory physically and symbolically’’ (Mawby, 1977: 171), with a second cluster related to building form, appearance, and location. Newman named these four dimensions terri toriality, surveillance, image, and milieu. Territoriality

The Concept of Defensible Space At its simplest, defensible space is a design concept de ﬁning spaces that can be controlled and supervised by the occupants of the surrounding buildings. Oscar Newman, its best known advocate, conceptualized it as the way that residential environments can be designed so that their physical characteristics (the layout of the site, the buildings, and the architectural design of the homes themselves) allow the residents to directly participate in ensuring their security. Lack of defensible space is perceived to have a negative effect, resulting in a range of undesirable be haviors; from increased vandalism to weakening of casual social interaction and good neighborliness. The strength of design in countering or preventing antisocial behavior is contested. But despite the uncertainty surrounding its validity, defensible space’s potential as an explanation for, and a possible solution to, many of the failures of

Territoriality has an extremely broad interpretation, from the concept of place attachment or social commit ment to location, to animal like defending of ‘turf ’ through symbolic or physical acts. Similarly, territoriality can be applied at a range of scales, relating to speciﬁc sites or wider neighborhoods. The positive and negative attributes of territoriality are explored across the social science disciplines; a con tradictory interpretation of territoriality arises from interconnected mechanisms that establish control over space. This control can be communicated in a multitude of ways: physical (a person’s presence reducing and in hibiting criminal activity or a physical barrier such as fences or walls); symbolic (plants and or others symbol izing ownership of the space); visual (grafﬁti tags); or physiological (encouraging a sense of safety through well lit, well looked after places). Control mechanisms applied to the same space that communicate possession, can result in alternative readings from a range of users.

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To Newman, territoriality consisted of several inter connected effects:

• • •

the process of establishing a sense of ownership for legitimate users of the space; which in turn provides a clear deﬁnition of areas controlled and inﬂuenced by inhabitants; and is encouraged through familiarity with neighbors or passers by.

Territoriality is often characterized as ‘the absence of anonymity’ for legitimate inhabitants, according to Ley, and he emphasizes opportunities for casual contact, leading to joint ownership of space and to the exclusion of noninhabitants. For Newman, territoriality is directed at strangers by controlling their access and movement through an estate. Yet, territoriality might inﬂuence factors that jeopardize as well as improve security. The number or frequency of passers by has contradictory interpretations, providing a spectrum of explanations; many strangers might provide greater anonymity for criminals, but the same number of familiar passers by might act as potential witnesses or provide positive opportunities for social interaction. Surveillance Surveillance is especially emphasized in the concept of defensible space, which favors the use of natural or in formal surveillance (windows overlooking public spaces, or active street frontages) over mechanical (CCTV) or formal forms of supervision (security guards). However, even with an as apparently simple approach as natural surveillance, there may be contradictory consequences to design decisions; ground ﬂoor windows, which may improve visibility over adjacent spaces, might also be advertising opportunities for burglary. Image Image is the least well deﬁned, but in some ways the most tangible of Newman’s dimensions; he includes the use of distinctive built forms, materials, ﬁnishes, or aesthetics, which are identiﬁed as having associations with a par ticular social class or lifestyle. Image, and its resultant associations, suffuse housing design from the urban scale to the detail, from the size and scale of the blocks themselves to the selection of particularly institutional or vulnerable materials. Image is, of course, affected by the physical condition of the buildings and spaces, by signs of decay, neglect, or poor maintenance. The dominance of materials in the reading of spaces is widespread; cracked ﬂuorescent lights cruelly exposing the ﬂaws in cold damp concrete ceilings speak of tight budgets, lack of care, and neglected maintenance, and have become synonymous with public housing stigmatized by its appearance and design.

Milieu Milieu is the positive inﬂuence of activities perceived as safe (such as police stations or well used streets) adjacent to areas suffering from crime. Greater levels of activity contribute to a positive milieu through a potentially benevolent increase in passers by. It encompasses the effects of neighborhood context and reputation, and identiﬁes urban design decisions for the location of amenities as an explanation for spatial concentrations of crime or the presence of unpopular areas. Certain activities or amenities (shops, clubs, or bars) act as attractors for crime. Here, Newman touched on the Chicago School ideas of Burgess, Shaw, and McKay of crime hot spots through mapping high and low risk neighborhoods. He ascribes a simplistic juxtaposition of high crime and low crime areas and proposed pepper potting potentially difﬁcult residents within quiet well behaved neighborhoods to reduce crime levels.

The Emergence of Defensible Space from Various Disciplines Defensible space unites reading of urban space of varied types and scales, across the disciplines inﬂuencing ideas of urban design, geographies of crime, and ethnographies of crime. Initially, research into defensible space focused on low income, high density urban social housing, ﬁrst in America and then later in the UK. Two key proponents of defensible space were Oscar Newman, an American architect and planner (1935–2004), and the British geographer Alice Coleman (1935). While Newman and Coleman can be credited with popularizing the term defensible space in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly its application to spaces around housing estates, it was clearly not a new concept. The theoretical foundations of the idea can be traced back to Lewis Mumford’s positive examples of humane urban environments described in The Culture of Cities, and the concepts of encounter and the interconnectedness of common space that were being explored by urban re searchers. From this developed an understanding of the physical impact of the built form that incorporated image, meaning, and legibility in the formulation of perceptual concepts of place. These strands are united in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs’ positive numerous social interactions were encouraged and iden tiﬁed as indicators for successful well designed places. In his inﬂuential paper on the Pruitt Igoe housing project, the sociologist William Yancey found that resi dents clearly recognized the difference between ‘private space’ in apartments and ‘public space’ such as shared grounds. In his critique of the estate’s design and layout, he identiﬁes a lack of ‘semipublic space’, which he feels is

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referred to by housing management professionals as ‘wasted space’. But far from being wasteful, he argues that the lack of provision of this type of semipublic space results in residents retreating into internal private spaces. Yancey termed these semiprivate areas that might act as foci for informal networks to develop as defensible space exploring, several years before Newman used the term. A decade later, Wilson and Kelling also identiﬁed a retreat into domestic space as a response to, and an escape from, neglected spaces. This sparks a cycle of decay where residents’ retreat from public spaces further undermines the social control of communal areas, leading to increased vandalism and disorder. There is a similarly extensive spatial perspective on crime, and David Herbert’s Geography of Crime succinctly records the parallel development of criminological and geographical theories. Historically, both disciplines focused on problem areas of the city, looking for patterns of crime and concentrations of criminals (e.g., the nineteenth century studies of British rookeries or Burgess’ pre World War I concentric crime model of Chicago). This neutral locational analysis of neighbor hood mapped purely spatial patterns of crime, proposing an environment without behavioral differentiation. The areal approach was expanded through an ecological analysis of the impact of poor housing, poverty, transient or foreign populations on crime during the 1950s. Yet, these methods still maintained that a speciﬁc behavioral setting had the power to elicit similar responses from diverse occupants and remained at an aggregate inter urban scale of investigation. The evolution of a humanistic geography required a more sensitive approach to reading the mutual inter action of place and people. David Ley’s exploration of gang territory in Philadelphia during the 1970s provides a useful explanation of the defensible space concept. His ethnographic approach combined environmental psychology and behavioral science to show how the identity of spaces reinforces the social identity of the group that inhabits them. The meaning of these spaces contains clues that encourage appropriate forms of behavior. Ley’s gangs displayed a sophisticated mapping of their turf as defensible space and a complex reading of the physical and symbolic markings of territory and boundary. Similar sensitivities to spatial meaning are displayed in groups seen as victims, the elderly, women, or ethnic minorities. Herbert proposed a research agenda to be applied to understanding the geography of crime, and particularly defensible space: the classiﬁcation and understanding of vulnerable environments related to the potential for different offences; the balance between the social and physical factors that expose these vulnerabilities; and ﬁ nally, most signiﬁcant to human geographers, whether these social and physical qualities can be classiﬁed

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subjectively by the occupiers of the spaces. Applying this approach to his study of burgled homes in Swansea, Herbert argues that the interpretation of design features (even apparently simple placement of entrance doors or windows) needs to be related to how they are perceived by occupiers and offenders. It was not until 20 years later that research interests moved from mapping the location of offenders or offences, to explore the idea of the local environment as a framework for individual behavior. Reviewing the lit erature on the fear of crime, Susan M Smith identiﬁes how vandalism and urban decay are primary sources of residents’ anxiety. Anxiety is then easily translated into fear of crime. The higher levels of anxiety and fear found in deprived urban neighborhoods, particularly rundown poor council estates, can explain the anomalies found between the objective distribution of offenses to the perception of the risk of crime. The evolving geographies of crime, deviance, and fear provide multiple readings of the same physical urban environment, requiring differ entiation between the responses of diverse demographic and social groups. The shift toward multiple readings; to the experience of the victim; to inhabitants as agents of control; to prevention rather than containment of crime; and to a blurring of boundaries between the social sci ence disciplines, has led toward a more holistic under standing of environment and social inﬂuences of crime. The long term ability of defensible space design principles to inﬂuence crime rates is still to be conﬁrmed; its power and appeal to current human geographers clearly lies in the potential of environmental improve ments to encourage a greater sense of safety to a broad community. Defensible space theorists’ concentration on the communal spaces surrounding mass housing as a vulnerable environment, establishes it as a particular subset of the discussion of crime in the wider urban realm. The restrained social expectations for the threshold spaces to our homes, which vary from the perceptions of acceptable behavior for a busy public street, intensify rather than simplify this complex interactive issue.

In and out of Favor: The Investigation and Practical Application of Defensible Space in the US and the UK over the Last 30 Years Newman’s pioneering work on the concept started in St. Louis where he taught architecture and city planning at Washington University from 1965. He writes how watching the decline of the infamous Pruitt Igoe public housing project in St. Louis at ﬁrst hand, already a dangerous, unpopular place to live only a few years after its completion in 1956 and uninhabitable long before its demolition in 1972, acted as a stimulus for developing

34

Defensible Space

the idea of defensible space. He explored the effects of defensible space in a research study in which he com pared the crime rates of two housing estates in Yonkers and the Bronx, New York. Newman found that one (with high rise blocks) had 50% more criminal offenses than the other which consisted of six story blocks designed to conform to the characteristics of defensible space. Newman publicized his ﬁndings in his populist, and publicly well received, 1973 book Defensible Space : People and Design in the Violent City. Over the next 20 years, there were relatively few practical applications of the defensible space approach in the USA (mainly due to Reagan era ﬁnancial constraints restricting the construction or remodeling of public housing) until the 1990s. Newman remodeled a few decaying and unpopular estates in Chicago in the late 1980s, and most recently adapted a medium size neigh borhood in Dayton, Ohio, which had fallen into decline during the early 1990s. Newman continued to write design guidance, to campaign for improvements in the design of housing and residential neighborhoods, and to proselytize for defensible space until his death. Publicity surrounding Newman’s book was extensive in both the USA and the UK, and the ideas it contained were perceived as contentious but attractive to a range of professionals. It reinforced contemporary research in Britain where Mawby’s study of high rise housing in Shefﬁeld explored the relationship of the built environ ment to crime in 1969. During the 1970s, the defensible space concept inﬁltrated several major housing renewal projects such as the Liverpool Inner Area Research Team’s improvements to unpopular 1950s estates and the Department of the Environment’s (DoE) research into remediation of difﬁcult to let estates. But little British ‘evidence’ existed and it was not until the end of the following decade that Alice Coleman’s research gathered any substantial data on the impact of defensible space in the UK context. Coleman’s research began in 1979 with an extensive study of over 100 000 homes on council estates in south and east London, undertaken by the Land Use Research Unit at King’s College, London. Coleman’s research was published in the sensationally titled Utopia on Trial in 1985, and the presentation of her ﬁndings as ‘suspects’ and ‘prosecution evidence’ established an adversarial courtroom tone to her argument. To test her ideas in practice, funding was provided in 1988 by the DoE to remodel ﬁve estates in north London, Northampton, Lancashire, and Manchester through the ‘design improvement controlled experiment’ (DICE) initiative. A d43M program of work included dividing large blocks of ﬂats into smaller self contained sections, providing individual entrances to homes, enclosing private gardens, removing walkways, constructing new roads to improve access, and building inﬁll housing to occupy the underused open spaces on the estates.

The DICE initiative continued until the mid 1990s. A thorough evaluation of DICE in 1997 by consultants Price Waterhouse made unfavorable comparison to other renewal programs such as the ‘estates action scheme’, or the ‘priority estates program’ (PEP). This report for the DoE suggested that while the design improvements had made some impact, DICE was not a more successful regeneration initiative than others such as PEP, just more expensive, failing to achieve the expected savings in maintenance costs, or higher rental income from tenants. Slight improvements in residents’ perceptions of the estates and feelings of safety were noticed, but these effects were not sustained. Again, the extreme claims of its originators were not demonstrated conclusively, and the evidence to support defensible space still proved inconclusive. From Theoretical Concept to Operationalized Approach The translation of the research on defensible space into actual design guidelines required a simpliﬁcation of the concepts to facilitate their application to discrete examples of architecture and urban design. The advice concentrated on two aspects: the classiﬁcation of space, and establishing criteria for the design of speciﬁc aspects of buildings or spaces. The Practical Elaboration of a Public/Private Space Taxonomy

The division of human activities into public and private spheres has long been the foundation of political and social theories. Translating those social concepts into theories of urban experiences requires a spatialization of these disparate spheres. Jacobs ﬁrst provided a succinct argument for the necessary delineation of urban public and private space. Acknowledging that space in a suburban setting differs in function to that of an inner city housing project, Jacobs criticized urban spaces that ooze into each other, iden tifying the lack of deﬁnition and demarcation as sending out confusing signals for responsibility and ownership over those spaces. Newman’s concept of defensible space elaborated these two existing deﬁnitions of space as either discrete public or private space, into a further four categories: private, semiprivate, semipublic, and public space. Interior spaces within ﬂats were obviously classiﬁed as private and streets as public. Lobbies, stairs, or shared internal spaces would be considered semiprivate spaces, and external grounds or gardens accessed by a wider number of residents were classiﬁed as semipublic. However, depending on the design and layout, lifts and other internal circulation areas such as walkways or access decks can be classiﬁed as public.

Defensible Space

Coleman later expanded these categories further to include ‘confused’ space, to describe the grassy patches of indeterminate function often between post war housing blocks, corresponding to the planning term SLOPE – space left over from planning. Later studies recognized that there may be more subtle hierarchies within public space rather than such distinct categorizations, for ex ample, a spectrum of public accessibility between highly public spaces and less public space. While terms such as semiprivate space were commonly used across the disciplines of sociology and urban design; by the early 1970s, there was a growing emphasis placed by geographers on the classiﬁcation of space and a desire to codify and empirically measure the effects of space. Design Elements Affected by Defensible Space

Newman identiﬁed eight speciﬁc design variables that contributed to poor defensible space: and scale of the block or estate; • size of dwellings using the same entrance; • number of storeys in a block; • number interconnected vertical routes (either stairs or lifts); • presence of multiple alternative escape routes; • degree that grounds and common areas are shared by • different families; presence of internal corridors rather than open visible • access ways; or location and form of the entrance (ﬂush entrances • being preferable to set back front doors or entrances facing away from the street). To these, Coleman added a further seven design variables: storeys per dwelling (ﬂats being preferable to mai • sonettes which Coleman perceived as a proxy for

• • • • • •

family accommodation and were thus associated with the problems of children living above ground level); overhead walkways; type of entrance; blocks raised up on pilotti or above garages; number of blocks on the site; number of access points onto the site; and presence of play areas.

These cluster into those variables directly limiting sur veillance and increasing opportunities for crime (poor visibility in the design of entrances) and those variables that more generally affect positive territoriality and ownership of common areas. The types of negative effects resulting in these design characteristics were overused entrances, isolated and deserted internal corridors or access decks, and unused vulnerable unsupervised places such as pram stores or garages subject to vandalism. Talking to residents, Coleman found it was not just the visible signs of destruction that shaped residents’

35

concepts of these spaces but the noise disruption from poor soundprooﬁng between ﬂats or from children in inappropriately located playspaces. The powerful effect of Newman’s ﬁrst three variables arises from the large number of neighbors sharing entrances or blocks, rather than the height of the dwell ings, and Newman identiﬁed a high number of dwellings sharing the same entrance as the most inﬂuential factor. Emphasizing the impact of density of occupation, New man placed an almost moral emphasis on the overlarge scale of the estates resulting in a greater number of residents affected by the poor design. Coleman also mentioned the related issue of high child density. But the interaction of these design variables is com plex and possibly contradictory. While an individual front door or garden might facilitate pride and responsibility for its upkeep, unless a front garden is designed as a place to linger, it introduces a buffer zone reducing contact between neighbors. Similarly, breaking estates into smaller parts, limiting access points, or removing walkways, may reduce potential escape routes for crim inals but it may also increase residents’ sense of isolation and disconnection with the wider urban fabric. Linking Design Variables to Social Data

Using these design variables, Newman tried to establish a connection between design characteristics and police crime data on robbery and burglary as well as visible signs of disorder such as broken lights in communal corridors. He made no distinction between the serious ness of the criminal activity, whereas Coleman’s research relied on a purely visual inspection of the disordered environment, and measured visible signs of litter, grafﬁti, vandalism, or urine and feces. She used this visual evi dence as a proxy for broader social malaise and her only social measure was the number of children taken into care. She argued that the sense of unease arising from a chaotic disordered environment is a more immediate gauge of community control and satisfaction than crime events or fear of crime. From these 15 variables, the concept of defensible space was codiﬁed into several indicators, each with acceptable thresholds: Coleman devising the ‘design disadvantage score’ and Newman developing a similar 100 point scoring system in the Defensible Space Guidelines for Yonkers RFT. It was these processes of being able to score and assess a design and thus make a predictive assessment of proposed physical changes which appealed to housing policymakers. Both Newman and Coleman argued that by following these indicators, the redesigned housing and its surroundings would be transformed, converting danger ous crime ridden estates into safe, well integrated neighborhoods. They suggested practical modiﬁcations through minor interventions to the typology (dividing

36

Defensible Space

open spaces into private gardens) and more radical changes to the urban grain; replacing high rise towers with terraced row houses, and implementing resident controlled streets and cul de sacs. As well as reducing ongoing management and main tenance costs caused by vandalism, Coleman claimed that designing for defensible space solved many other trying symptoms of ‘social malaise’ from antisocial behavior, delinquency, and even drug dealing. Here was a way of salvaging existing mass housing and making good the mistakes of the past.

Suspicion and Criticism of the Idea There have been speciﬁc criticisms of the concept of defensible space from a range of professional, as well as academic, viewpoints. In the US, the architecture and planning profession initially reacted positively to New man’s publication. Yet, in the UK, designers appeared more suspicious of the concept, exhibiting a sense of British superiority over what were perceived as extreme problems of American public housing. Newman’s original studies were heavily criticized on methodological grounds. Subsequent researchers have identiﬁed statistical ﬂaws, questioning both the statistical analysis and the selective use and underplaying of sta tistics. Coleman’s lack of statistical sophistication and failure to control for background variables was similarly attacked. Several critics implied that Newman made careful selection of the projects to study, and he is ac cused of omitting potentially conﬂicting or explanatory data; for example, income, or data on social class. A more fundamental and deep rooted criticism is Newman and Coleman’s misunderstanding of demo graphic or socioeconomic factors, and their failure to take account of the broader social context. Coleman’s frame of analysis is myopically locked into a dislike of a speciﬁc historical aspect of architectural style. This leads to some ludicrous claims of causality, linking the growth in crime rates in Britain since World War II to the introduction of ‘modern movement’ architectural esthetics as the com monest style for public mass housing. Her assertion, that the increase of illegal drug usage on the poorest designed estates is due to design and layout, completely ignores the increased accessibility, affordability, and growth in the popularity of particular drugs that can have little to do with the shape or form of the built environment.

Defensible Space Has Been Blamed for Many Things In practice, defensible space has proved less successful than predicted by its proponents. Applying defensible space principles has been found to contradict

construction and ﬁre regulations or to inhibit residents’ privacy. The principles also challenge urban design ideals such as connectivity and permeable space, potentially resulting in fortress like housing estates and gated com munities, isolated from their surroundings. Evaluation of remodeled housing estates where the principles have been applied show the claims that the capital cost of the physical improvements will pay for themselves through reduced repair costs, or in nonmonetary improvements in residents’ health, have proved unfounded. The debate about defensible space hinges on the relative signiﬁcance of physical space or social factors on an individual’s behavior. Environmental determinism, the extent to which surroundings dictate human actions, has been an ongoing anthropological and geographical tra dition since Darwin. The strength of this effect has been ﬁercely debated but continually recurs in explanations of spatial behavior. During the 1980s and 1990s, while Coleman was pro moting her work in Britain, architectural determinism was an acutely potent accusation. As a writer on architectural and urban space, Hillier is clear about the potential dif ﬁculties in attributing causality to buildings and their architecture. ‘‘There is a problem of method in establish ing any kind of link between architecture and social out comesy Housing is invariably a social process as well as a physical product.’’ He points out that it is impossible to separate either architecture or built form as an in dependent variable in a process of social disadvantage (both markets and bureaucracies assign poor people to poor housing). He also identiﬁes a second difﬁculty around the strength and scope of defensible space as a sufﬁciently strong effect to inﬂuence both individual and group be havior. If it is hard to establish credible models of causality for an individual’s behavior, then extending a robust causality to whole communities is even more problematic. However, Hillier argues against the converse position that, as environments are behaviorally neutral, their de sign is irrelevant. Clearly, the reading and understanding of space is signiﬁcant. But the investigation of defensible space needs to be reformulated to separate out low level effects of space from more complex social systems. Both Newman and Coleman presented the design of defensible space as a panacea to overcome social differ ences, and improve behavior, as well as to reduce crime, and as such were typecast as determinists. However, while extensively asserting the dominance of design’s inﬂuence, both were careful to provide disclaimers. Newman was initially circumspect in his claims for architecture’s positive behavioral inﬂuence: Architecture operates more in the area of inﬂuence than control. It can create a setting conducive to realising the potential of mutual concern. It does not, and can not, manipulate people towards these feelings but rather

Defensible Space allows mutually beneﬁcial attitudes to surface (Newman, 1972: 201).

Newman’s later publications became even less deﬁnite on the primacy of physical design; acknowledging that there were requirements for both behavioral and physical effects to achieve a successful defensible space and describing it as a sociophysical phenomenon. Good design could facilitate defensive behavior, but only under certain social conditions. Despite these disclaimers, it has been suggested that Newman’s position popularizing environmental deter minism forced a reaction from behavioral scientists reestablishing social determinism as the dominant urban science approach. And this cycle had parallels among policy circles; as physical interventions became un fashionable, their perpetrators were berated as environ mental determinists. The resulting dominance of social policy initiatives is equally open to accusations of social engineering. The artiﬁcial dichotomy between physical or social inﬂuences appears to have been fueled by the need to distinguish varied disciplines of practice (differentiating urban de signers, planners, and social scientists). And beneath the blanket accusations of determinism (both environmental and social), the subtleties of the interaction between people and places, and the nuances of how we read, understand, and use spaces were often lost.

Designing Safe Spaces Where People Want to Live As concerns increase over the growing seriousness of the crimes and levels of violence experienced on housing estates, the desire to design safe spaces to live in has rekindled interest in defensible space. In 1994, residents surveyed by the US Federal Housing and Urban Devel opment unit (HUD) recorded growing concerns about gun or drug crime. There is an element of wistful nos talgia that during the same period, in the UK, Coleman’s researchers could have been measuring symptoms of social malaise in terms of the number of discarded crisp packets, amount of dog poo, or defacement of council property. Yet, despite being at opposing ends of a spec trum of seriousness, the solutions to these concerns continue to privilege the offender through focusing on minority behavior. Defensible space principles focus on design interventions to limit the actions of a criminal minority rather than facilitate the improved quality of life for a respectable, legitimate majority. Herbert (1982: 46) usefully sets out a tripartite deﬁnition of defensible space summarizing the range of its effects: as a model for residential environments which inhibit • crime by creating the physical expression of a social fabric that defends itself;

37

as a surrogate term for the range of mechanisms – real • and symbolic barriers, strongly deﬁned areas of in

•

ﬂuence, and improved opportunities for surveillance – that combine to bring an environment under the control of its residents; as a living environment which can be employed by its inhabitants for the enhancement of their own lives, while providing security for their neighbors, families, and friends.

It is this third way that attempts to redress the imbalance between the concept of defensible space as an exploration of how spatial structure underpins social life and inter actions, rather than simply as an explanation for the location of crime. Both Newman and Coleman argued that crime can be built into housing form, and that applying defensible space principles provided far reaching solutions to a range of social ills. Newman believed that remaking poorly designed housing would reduce criminal acts and foster a sense of community and place; Coleman, that the design principles would provide a more universal panacea – even with the potential to improve educational attainment and the concentration of school children. In this, they display an unacknowledged but equally ambitious belief in the power and value of design. Defensible space as a concept to salvage problem mass housing estates displays as lofty an idealism as the utopian dreams of the architects who originally built them. See also: Gated Communities/Privatopias; Neighborhoods and Community; New Urbanism; Public Spaces, Urban; Urban Design; Urban Policy.

Further Reading Coleman, A. (1985). Utopia on Trial: Vision and Reality in Planned Housing. Oxford: Hilary Shipman. Herbert, D. (1982). Geography of Urban Crime. New York: Longman. Hillier, B. (1996). Space Is the Machine: A Conﬁgurational Theory of Architecture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House (Vintage edition 1992). Ley, D. (1974). Black Inner City as Frontier Outpost: Images and Behaviour of a Philadelphia Neighbourhood. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers. Mawby, R. I. (1977). Defensible space: A theoretical and empirical appraisal. Urban Studies 14, 169 179. Mayhew, P. (1979). Defensible space: The current status of crime prevention theory. Howard Journal of Penology and Crime Prevention 18, 150 159. Merry, S. E. (1981). Defensible space undefended: Social factors in crime control through environmental design. Urban Affairs Quarterly 16(4), 397 422. Mumford, L. (1938). The Culture of Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co. Newman, O. (1973). Defensible Space: People and Design in the Violent City. London: Architectural Press.

38

Defensible Space

Newman, O. (1996). Creating Defensible Space. Washington, DC: US Department of Housing and Urban Development Ofﬁce of Policy Development and Research. Pain, R. (2000). Place, social relations and the fear of crime: A review. Progress in Human Geography 24(3), 365 387. Smith, S. J. (1987). Fear of crime: Beyond a geography of deviance. Progress in Human Geography 11, 1 23.

Wilson, J. W. and Kelling, G. L. (1982). Broken windows. The Atlantic Monthly 3, 29 38. Yancey, W. L. (1971). Architecture, interaction, and social control: The case of a large scale public housing project. Environment and Behaviour 3(1), 3 21.

Deforestation J. J. Metz, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Kuznets Curve The U-shaped graphical relationship between a dependent variable (e.g., income inequality, environmental quality, forest cover) registered on the y-axis and an independent variable measuring economic growth, located on the x-axis. Originally proposed in a 1955 article by economist, S. Kuznets. Monocrop A single species, and often single variety, to which an agroecosystem is planted. Shifting Cultivation The farming system which operates within a forest by cutting, drying, and burning a small patch of forest, then planting multiple crops in the ashes for one to several years. When the plot is abandoned, the forest reoccupies the site and is left uncut for an extended period before renewing the cycle.

Introduction Concern over deforestation of the tropics has increased steadily over the last decades, as increasing numbers of people have come to believe that deforestation and the related processes of global warming and biodiversity loss threaten our future. This concern is mirrored and reinforced by the growing numbers of scientiﬁc studies to specify these processes and the potential losses they are creating. Yet, ‘deforestation’ is an ambiguous term, not only because it encompasses a variety of processes and results, but also because deforestation has been, and continues to be, judged both a positive and a negative process. The soybean farmer in the Amazon says he is only doing what farmers of the developed world have done in the past: converting forests to agricultural ﬁelds in order to gain personal wealth and feed the world. His point reminds us that deforestation has a long history, one which must be considered as the context for con temporary processes. This article, therefore, will proceed by examining the deﬁnitions and data by which we can evaluate deforest ation in its ﬁrst section titled ‘What is a forest? What is deforestation?’ The second section titled ‘Patterns of forest conversion and degradation’ will sketch the history of deforestation leading to and summarizing con temporary processes. The third section titled ‘Environ mental and social costs of deforestation’ will sketch the social and environmental impacts of deforestation. The fourth section titled ‘Causes of forest conversion and

degradation’ will explore the causes of deforestation, suggesting a nested hierarchy of forces operating at local, national and international scales which interact in spe ciﬁc geographic landscapes and through speciﬁc histories to produce deforestation. A ﬁfth section titled ‘Policies to preserve forests and forest services’ will review policies to improve forest management and some of the potential pitfalls of such policies. Finally, the article will conclude with a summary of major points.

What Is a Forest? What Is Deforestation? Deforestation is ambiguous because it is used for the ‘conversion’ of forests to other land uses, for the ‘deg radation’ of existing forests via logging, forest product extraction, or environmental modiﬁcation, and for all the combinations of these processes. Moreover, how we deﬁne a forest will inﬂuence how much of it we ﬁnd: some estimates deﬁne ‘forest’ as areas with only 10% of the land covered with trees. Finally, people have judged deforestation as both ‘good’ or ‘bad’, which reveals how the term and concept are embedded in the broader narratives or systems of interpretation which we use to interact with our world and give meaning to our lives. Concern over the environmental and social impacts of deforestation has grown during the same years that sat ellite imagery has allowed humans to observe the Earth and record changes. Yet, obtaining data on the extent of forest change is more difﬁcult than one would expect. Analyzing the entire world is a formidable task, so there is a trade off between breadth and depth of coverage. Early satellite imagery was unable to assess the quality of the resource, so degraded or regenerating forests could not be unambiguously identiﬁed, and this meant that time series data had to be based on aggregated data which might not show a change in forest area even though new forests had been cleared while abandoned cleared forests had regrown. More recently, as satellite imagery and geographic information system (GIS) tech nologies have improved, spatially explicit pixel by pixel comparisons over time have become more common, but in tropical areas only India and Brazil are doing such comprehensive monitoring, though other countries have used good data from different time periods to estimate change. Other sophisticated analyses have applied high resolution (30 m pixel) imagery to 10% samples of tropical forests to identify forest conversion and deg radation. Yet, recent low resolution imagery continues to have difﬁculty identifying degradation, especially in dry

39

40

Deforestation

forests. These remotely sensed data are seldom country speciﬁc and since the forest policies and economic opportunities that inﬂuence forest conversion and deg radation ‘are’ country speciﬁc, country based data are crucial to identifying and understanding the trends. The best country based global data on forests comes from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organ ization’s (FAO) Forestry Resource Assessments (FRA) which were made at 5 year intervals between 1948 and 1963, and then resumed with increasing sophistication in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2005. These rely on country reports by national forest experts of the reporting countries (138 for the 2005 FRA), but because resources vary, not all countries have comparably detailed and reliable information. In the discussion below, the FAO data from the 2005 FRA have been used primarily for contemporary estimates of forest cover and change. The FAO illustrates the problems resulting from how we deﬁne ‘forest’. Until the 2000 survey the deﬁnition of forest varied; it was deﬁned as greater than 20% ground cover of 5 m tall woody plants in the developed countries, but only greater than 10% ground cover in the de veloping world. The 2000 survey extended the ‘greater than 10% cover’ deﬁnition to the entire world, thereby expanding the ‘forests’ of Russia and Australia.

Patterns of Forest Conversion and Degradation Contemporary concerns center on forest conversion and degradation in the tropics, and this concern is warranted because over the last quarter century 4–5% of tropical forests have been disappearing each decade. Yet, mature temperate and boreal forests continue to be logged around the world, especially in Russia. Although tropical forest conversion and degradation are estimated to be contributing 20% of the CO2 being added to the at mosphere and to be threatening mass extinctions at rates not seen since the demise of the dinosaurs, anthropogenic deforestation has been occurring at accelerating rates since humans ﬁrst gained control of ﬁre. Forest conversion and degradation rates increased dramatically as human societies shifted from hunting and gathering to ﬁxed ﬁeld farming and again from feudal agriculture to industrial capitalism. The invention of agriculture and production of agricultural surpluses freed some members of society to specialize in handicraft production, soldiering, and ruling. With population growth and technological advancement, these feudal/ tributary societies converted more and more forests and grasslands to agriculture and agricultural surpluses to luxury items for trade with similarly organized societies. The pattern of interaction accelerated again in the 1490s when one of the world’s civilizations, Europe, gained

access to all other civilizations, concentrated mercantile surpluses in their own hands, and began to integrate the world into one economic system, increasingly based on traded commodities. During the eighteenth century a new nickpoint in the upward trajectory of change emerged as a few of the merchants stopped trading handicraft goods and began producing commodities in factories with machines operated by wage labor and fueled by fossil energy. This revolution in production led to a total reorganization of society and of personal experience, as ever expanding numbers of people organized their lives around factory and ofﬁce work rather than agricultural production, and as an unending stream of standardized, increasingly cheap commodities poured out of factories and into workers’ hands. A key change in this new industrial system was the competition driven need to reinvest surpluses into improving the production system and developing new products. This system can only remain healthy with endless growth in consumption. All these changes led to expanding populations of increasingly voracious consumers, and this led to expanding demands on forests, grasslands, and all the Earth’s ecosystems. Timber and naval stores for ship building stripped forests from the lands surrounding the Baltic Sea, and then from eastern North America, Cen tral America, and the Caribbean in the sixteenth through seventeenth centuries. Sugar produced by slaves con verted the forests of the coast of Northeast Brazil and then of the Caribbean islands. Tea expansion in south eastern China, opium in India, cotton in the US south, grains in the central plains of the US and South American pampas, coffee and bananas in Latin America – all were parts of the global transformation of the world’s ecosystems. Contemporary deforestation of the tropics is only the latest phase of that long process. From an ecological perspective these human activities have had two general trends: ecological simpliﬁcation and cashing in of natural capital. In forests and other ecosystems little modiﬁed by human activities, solar energy is captured by plants and ﬂows through myriad pathways to support many species of herbivores, carni vores, and detritivores (organisms that eat and decompose dead plants and animals). Some of the energy is stored in the structure of the ecosystem, like tree trunks, soil organic matter, plant nutrients. Human agroecosystems simplify the systems so that the maximum amount of solar energy ﬂows into the food or raw materials for industrial production. Breeding of domestic species, with its latest genetic engineering phase, produces large areas of genetically identical monocrops, narrowing the diversity further. Moreover, the wood, nutrients, and humus stored in the system are depleted by the con version to and operation of agroecosystem. By 1900, in dustrial processes using fossil energy began to provide

Deforestation

energy subsidies, like machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, which produced huge increases in yields, but masked the loss of order and diversity. From a social perspective, we see ever increasing numbers and percentages of the world’s people trading relatively self sufﬁcient production systems for minor supporting roles in the expanding world economy. As the system unfolds, surpluses and wealth continue to con centrate under the control of fewer and fewer entities. These processes are statistically manifested in shrinking forests and expanding agricultural ﬁelds and pastures (Table 1). From 1700 to 1980 world croplands expanded almost ﬁvefold from a small base to 1235 million ha, while the world’s large forest estate has decreased by 1015 million ha, or 19% (Table 1). Some of

Table 1

41

the agricultural expansion has been into grasslands and some forests converted to farmlands have reverted to forest, especially in Europe and North America. This reforestation trend has continued since 1980 and has been supplemented by forest plantations in some coun tries, but in most of the world the net result is smaller areas of forest (Tables 2–4). The 2005 Forest Resource Assessment of the FAO shows Europe with the largest area of forest because all of Russia, the country with the world’s largest area of forest, is classiﬁed as Europe (Table 2). Much of Russia’s forest is boreal forest, dominated by three, two, or even one species of relatively low stature conifer, but Russia’s southeastern regions are covered with more diverse forests of larger broadleaf deciduous trees. Since the end

Changes in land cover/land use, 1700 1980

Region

Vegetation

Area in millions of ha (% change from previous time)

% Change

1700

1850

1920

1950

1980

1790 1980

Tropical Africa

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

1358 1052 44

1336 ( 1.6) 1061 (0.9) 57 (29.5)

1275 ( 4.6) 1091 (2.8) 88 (54.4)

1188 ( 6.8) 1130 (3.6) 136 (54.5)

1074 ( 9.6) 1158 (2.5) 222 (63.2)

20.9% 10.1% 404.5%

N. Africa Mid East

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

38 1123 20

34 ( 10.5) 1119 ( 0.4) 27 (35.0)

27 ( 20.6) 1112 ( 0.6) 43 (59.3)

18 ( 33.3) 1097 ( 1.3) 66 (53.5)

14 ( 22.2) 1060 ( 3.4) 107 (62.1)

63.2% 5.6% 435.0%

North America

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

1016 915 3

971 ( 4.4) 914 ( 0.1) 50 (1666.7)

944 ( 2.8) 811 ( 11.3) 179 (258)

939 ( 0.5) 789 ( 2.7) 206 (15.1)

942 ( þ 0.3) 790 ( þ 0.1) 2039 ( 1.5)

7.3% 13.7% 6666.7%

Latin America

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

1445 608 7

1420 ( 1.7) 621 (2.1) 18 (157.1)

1369 ( 3.6) 646 (4.0) 45 (150.0)

1273 ( 7.0) 700 (8.4) 87 (93.3)

1151 ( 9.6) 767 (9.6) 142 (63.2)

20.3% 26.2% 1928.6%

China

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

135 951 29

96 ( 28.9) 944 ( 0.7) 75 (158.6)

79 ( 17.7) 941 ( 0.3) 95 (26.7)

69 ( 12.7) 938 ( 0.3) 108 (13.7)

58 ( 15.9) 923 ( 1.6) 134 (24.1)

57.0% 2.9% 362.1%

S. Asia

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

335 189 53

317 ( 5.5) 189 (0.0) 71 (34.0)

289 ( 8.8) 190 (0.5) 98 (38.0)

251 ( 13.1) 190 (0.0) 136 (38.8)

180 ( 28.3) 187 ( 1.6) 210 (54.4)

46.3% 1.1% 296.2%

SE. Asia

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

253 125 4

252 ( 0.4) 123 ( 1.6) 7 (75.0)

247 ( 2.0) 114 ( 7.3) 21 (200.0)

242 ( 2.0) 105 ( 7.9) 35 (66.7)

235 ( 2.9) 92 ( 12.4) 55 (57.1)

7.1% 26.4% 1275.0%

Europe

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

230 190 67

205 ( 10.9) 150 ( 21.1) 132 (97.0)

200 ( 2.4) 139 ( 7.3) 147 (11.4)

199 ( 0.5) 136 ( 2.3) 152 (3.4)

212 ( þ 6.5) 138 ( þ 1.5) 137 ( 9.9)

7.8% 27.4% 104.5%

Russia/USSR

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

1138 1068 33

1067 ( 6.2) 1078 ( þ 0.9) 93 (184.8)

987 ( 7.5) 1074 ( 0.4) 178 (89.4)

952 ( 3.5) 1070 ( 0.4) 216 (21.3)

941 ( 1.2) 1065 ( 0.5) 233 (7.9)

17.3% 0.3% 606.1%

Paciﬁc developed countries

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

267 639 5

267 (0.0) 638 ( 0.2) 6 (20.0)

261 ( 2.2) 630 ( 1.3) 9 (216.7)

258 ( 1.1) 625 ( 0.8) 28 (47.4)

246 ( 4.7) 608 ( 2.7) 58 (107.1)

7.9% 4.9% 1060.0%

Total

Forests/woodlands Grassland/pasture Croplands

6215 6860 265

5965 ( 4.0) 6837 ( 0.3) 537 (102.6)

5678 ( 4.8) 6748 ( 1.3) 913 (70.0)

5389 ( 5.1) 6780 ( þ 0.5) 1170 (28.1)

5053 ( 6.2) 6788 ( þ 0.1) 1501 (28.3)

18.7% 1.0% 466.4%

Source: Adapted from Richards, J. F. (1990). Land transformation. In Turner, B. L., II., Clark, W. C., Kates, R. C. et al. (eds.) The Earth As Transformed by Human Action, pp 179 201. New York: Cambridge University Press.

42

Deforestation

Table 2

Forest area by world region in 2005 (Ten largest forest-holding countries listed)

Region/subregion

Forest area (1000 ha)

Total Africa Eastern/Southern Africa Northern Africa Western and Central Africa Democratic Republic of Congo

635 412 226 534 131 048 277 829 134 000 (seventh largest)

% Global forest area 16.1 5.7 3.3 7.0

% Land area 21.4 27.8 8.6 44.1

Total Asia East Asia China South and Southeast Asia Indonesia India Western and Central Asia

571 577 244 862 197 000 (ﬁfth largest) 283 127 88 000 (eigth largest) 68 000 (tenth largest) 43 588

14.5 6.2

18.5 21.3

7.2

33.4

1.1

4.0

Total Europe Russia

1 001 394 809 000 (largest forest holdings)

25.3

44.3

Total North and Central America Caribbean Central America North America Canada United States

705 849

17.9

32.9

5974 22 411 677 464 310 000 (third largest) 303 000 (fourth largest)

0.2 0.6 17.1

26.1 43.9 32.7

Total Oceania Australia

206 254 164 000 (sixth largest)

17.9

24.3

Total South America Brazil Peru

831 540 478 000 (second largest) 69 000 (ninth largest)

21

47.7

World

3 952 025

100

30.3

Adapted from FAO (2006). Forest resource assessment 2005. Tables 2.1, 2.3, Figure 2.3 (pp 16 18). Food and Agricultural Organization. Viewed July 2008 at www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005.

of the Soviet era, Russian forests are being logged aggressively and often illegally in eastern Asia, part of a global pattern of unsustainable logging. South America has the second largest area of forests because it contains the Amazon, three quarters of which remains intact. Brazil has the world’s second largest area of forest, and Peru’s Amazon forests make it the ninth largest forest holder (Table 2). Nevertheless, conversion and degradation of the Amazon forests allow South America’s loss (8 153 000 ha) to almost equal the area lost in Africa (8ha) between 1990 and 2005 and makes Brazil the country with the world’s largest forest loss, about three eights of the world total (Tables 3 and 4). Africa’s smaller area of forests have a higher rate of forest loss (–0.63% per year) than South America (–0.47% per year). Asia has had less aggregate forest loss, and even a gain from 2000 to 2005 because China has embarked on a massive program of establishing plantations, over 2 million ha added from 1900 to 2005 (Table 5). China’s plantation expansion masks Southeast Asia’s forest loss, which is the highest rate ( 0.91% per year) of any major subregion. Central America has a higher rate, but only a small area of residual forest (Tables 2, 3, and 5).

The cases of China and of Europe reveal expanding forests and plantations. Indeed, the analysis of 227 countries reporting forest area in the 2005 FRA found only 88 (39%) reporting a decline in forest area, 60 (26%) reporting expanding forests, and 79 (35%) reporting no change. This trend comes either from ‘reforestation’ of former forest lands through spontaneous regeneration and nurtured protection or from ‘afforest ation’, the planting of trees and creation of forests on lands that were not recently forested. Forest expansion, called ‘forest transitions’ by scholars, has been occurring in developed countries for 50 years at least as people leave the poverty of rural areas for urban opportunities. Because of infertile soils, cleared lands in the tropics are often abandoned and sometimes revert to forest. Plantation expansion is different in that it requires greater investment. Plantations are prevalent in countries with large forest product demands and strong govern ments which guarantee secure tenure and create tax or other incentives to reward planting (Tables 4 and 5). Forest transitions are an example of environmental Kuznets Curve phenomena: the U shaped pattern in which measures of environmental quality (the y axis) at

Deforestation

43

Table 3 Net annual change in forest by world region or subregion from 1990 to 2000 and from 2000 to 2005 Region or subrebion

Change 1990 2000 Change 1990 1000 ha/yr 2000%/yr

Change 2000 2005 Change 2000 1000 ha/yr 2005%/yr

Total Africa Eastern and Southern Africa Northern Africa Western and Central Africa

4375 1731

0.64 0.71

4040 1702

0.62 0.74

1013 1631

0.72 0.56

982 1356

0.73 0.48

Total Asia East Asia South and Southeast Asia Western and Central Asia

792 1751 2578

0.14 þ 0.81 0.83

þ 1003 þ 3840 2851

þ 0.18 þ 1.65 0.98

þ 34

þ 0.08

þ 14

þ 0.03

þ 877

þ 0.09

þ 661

þ 0.07

328

0.05

333

0.05

þ 54 285 101

þ 0.92 1.23 0.01

Total Europe Total North and Central America Caribbean Central America North America

þ 36 380 þ 17

Total Oceania

þ 0.65 1.45 Not signiﬁcant

448

0.21

356

0.17

Total South America

3902

0.44

4251

0.50

World

8868

0.22

7317

0.18

Adapted from FAO (2006). Forest resource assessment 2005. Table 2.4 (p 20). Food and Agricultural Organization. Viewed May 2007 at www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005.

Table 4 Ten countries with largest annual net loss or net gain of forest area, 2000 05 Countries with loss Brazil Indonesia Sudan Myanmar Zambia Tanzania Nigeria Democratic Republic of the Congo Zimbabwe Venezuela Total

Annual change loss (1000 ha/yr)

Countries with gain

Annual change gain (1000 ha/yr) þ 4058 þ 296 þ 241 þ 159

445 412 410 319

China Spain Vietnam United States Italy Chile Cuba Bulgaria

313 288 8216

France Portugal Total

þ 41 þ 40 þ 5104

3103 1871 589 466

þ 106 þ 57 þ 56 þ 50

Adapted from FAO (2006). Forest resource assessment 2005. Tables 2.5, 2.6 (p 21). Food and Agricultural Organization. Viewed May 2007 at www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005.

ﬁrst decrease as a society’s average income (the x axis) increases, but then level off and begin to improve as the society’s wealth continues to increase beyond the inﬂection point. Forest area and quality are seen to be following this pattern because as societies gain wealth

Table 5

Recent increases in plantation forests

Country

Added 1990 2000 (1000 ha)

Added 2000 2005 (1000 ha)

China United States Russia Vietnam India Indonesia Chile Australia Turkey Korea New Zealand Uruguay Argentina Myanmar Peru

545.8 596.9 270.9 108.3 85.1 79.3 61.3 46.2 46.5 44.0 50.8 46.8 30.9 30.2 45.2

1489.0 157.0 320.4 129.0 84.2 79.4 61.4 56.2 46.6 35.2 16.6 19.4 30.2 30.6 7.8

Adapted from FAO (2006). Forest resource assessment 2005. Annex 3, Table 10. Food and Agricultural Organization. Viewed May 2007 at www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005.

and opportunity, rural populations move to cities reducing subsistence pressures on forests and because those controlling forests apply scientiﬁc management to them. Some ecologists have suggested that the pro jected problems of global warming, mass extinctions, and

44

Deforestation

environmental decline will be mitigated by these trends, but others argue that forest transitions only occur when either labor becomes so scarce and expensive that land is abandoned or when the forest resources are so severely depleted that governments encourage individuals and/or communities to initiate and protect forest plantations or natural regeneration. In areas with many underemployed workers and/or large forest resources and/or govern ments unable/unwilling to maintain order, forest decline will continue. Moreover, other critics note that severely fragmented primeval forests will not regenerate suf ﬁciently to maintain the intact ecosystems needed to preserve biodiversity. What is clear is that plantations will in no way maintain biodiversity. Other concerns about planting trees to offset carbon emissions arise from attempts by the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Convention on Climate Change to use market forces to promote greenhouse gas reductions. The plan is to set up an international market through which carbon emitters can reduce their carbon footprint by paying for projects to reestablish forests in the developing world. Other pro posals call for greenhouse gas emitters to pay govern ments and logging concession grantees not to log, convert, or degrade forests. One well known example in the 1990s was a US electric utility paying the government of Bolivia to establish a 149ha national park in its portion of the Amazon basin. Problems with these schemes are primarily technical but are highly signiﬁcant: how can an independent agency determine the value of the preserved forest, both in terms of its carbon content and its ‘environmental services’, like biodiversity preservation? How can an independent agency ensure that the pre servation of an area of forest does not induce excessive Table 6

degradation of nonpreserved or reforested areas nearby? Will governments have the resources and will to monitor these projects effectively? Can governments be assured that participating in these plans will not threaten their sovereignty? Theoretically, these types of projects offer great promise, but they are extremely difﬁcult to implement. Although forest area continues to decline in only 40% of the world’s countries, most of these are in the biologically rich tropics. We have not considered how forest quality is declining. The FRA provides estimates of the area of forests considered ‘primary forest’ (native species, no evidence of human disturbance), ‘modiﬁed natural forest’ (native species, some evidence of humans), ‘semi natural forests’ (native species established by planting or assisted natural regeneration), and ‘plan tations’ (see Tables 6 and 7). Table 6 provides the percentages of these categories for the largest 15 coun tries, and Table 7 shows recent changes in primary forest for the same countries. Much of the Amazon remains in the primary category, while developed countries have most forests in the modiﬁed natural category.

Environmental and Social Costs of Deforestation The local, national, and global impacts of converting and degrading forests and other intact ecosystems are forcing people to recognize the essential services these eco systems provide. First, intact forests can provide a steady supply of products: foods, construction materials, medi cines, fuel, industrial raw materials, fresh water, and

Percentages of forests in FAO forest quality classes: 15 largest forest-owning countries

Country (Area in forest million ha)

Percent primary forest

Percent modiﬁed natural forest

Percent seminatural forests

Percent protective plantation

Percent productive plantation

World Russia (808.8) Brazil (477.7) Canada (310.1) United States (303.1) China (197.3) Australia (163.7) Democratic Republic Congo (133.6) Indonesia (88.5) Peru (68.7) India (67.7) Sudan (67.5) Mexico (64.2) Colombia (60.7) Angola (59.1) Bolivia (58.7)

36.4 31.6 87.1 55.3 34.4 5.9 3.2 No data

52.7 66.3 11.8 46.7 57.9 58.0 95.7 No data

7.1 0 0 0 2.1 20.3 0 No data

3.0 1.5 1.1 0 5.6 14.5 1.0 No data

0.8 0.6 0 0 0 1.4 1.5 No data

55.0 88.8 0 20.0 51.1 87.4 0 50.0

0 10.1 48.7 70.0 47.2 12.1 99.8 50.0

41.1 0 46.6 2.0 0 0 0 0

3.8 1.0 1.6 7.0 0.1 0.5 0.2 0

0 0 3.2 1.0 1.5 0 0 0

Adapted from FAO (2006). Forest resource assessment 2005. Annex 3, Table 8 (pp 220 231). Food and Agricultural Organization. Viewed May 2007 at www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005.

Deforestation

Table 7

45

Changes in primary forest in 15 largest forest states, 1990 2005

Country

Russia Brazil Canada United States China Australia Democratic Republic of Congo Indonesia Peru India Sudan Mexico Colombia Angola Bolivia

Area in primary forest (millions ha)

Changes in primary forest (1000 ha/yr)

1990

2000

2005

1990 2000

2000 2005

241.7 460.5 165.4 105.3 11.7 No data No data 70.4 62.9 No data 15.3 38.8 53.8 0 460.5

258.1 433.2 165.4 105.3 11.7 5.2 No data 55.9 62.2 No data 14.1 34.8 53.3 0 433.2

255.5 415.9 165.4 104.2 11.7 5.2 No data 48.7 61.1 No data 13.5 32.8 53.1 0 415.9

þ 1640 2729.3 0 1.0 0 0 No data 1447.8 72.2 No data 117.8 395.0 51.1 0 2729.3

532.2 3466.0 0 215.2 0 0 No data 1447.8 224.6 No data 117.8 395.0 56.2 0 3466.0

Adapted from FAO (2006). Forest resource assessment 2005. Annex 3, Table 9 (pp 232 237). Food and Agricultural Organization. Viewed May 2007 at www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005.

DNA. Second, forests and other ecosystems also provide environmental services by regulating environmental processes. They can clean the air and water of pollutants. They regulate local, regional, global climates by damp ening daily cycles of temperature and humidity, by transpiring water so that moisture penetrates the in teriors of continents (half of the Amazon’s rainfall is thought to come from transpired water), by absorbing and sequestering greenhouse gasses, especially CO2. They provide habitat for insect, bird, and mammal pollinators of human crops. They regulate pests, buffer the impacts of natural hazards (e.g., mangroves and wetlands), reduce soil erosion, and minimize runoff of nutrients and rain fall. Forests also provide cultural and social services by being sites of spiritual, religious, and esthetic experience, by providing people with habitats within which they develop their cultures, by offering sites for recreation and ecotourism. Hitherto, people have seen the costs resulting from forest loss as local or at worst regional, costs which can be remedied by reforms at home or ignored when they only affect people in far off lands. However, the growing awareness that global warming and biodiversity loss can personally affect even the afﬂuent has focused attention on these issues. About 20% of the CO2 gasses entering the atmosphere come from forest burning and de composition, most of which occurs in the tropics. Con versely, expanding forest can absorb and sequester CO2 and is proposed as one of the major paths to reducing global warming. Expanding plantations is an easy way toward that goal, but it does virtually nothing to preserve biological diversity. Biologists deﬁne three levels of biodiversity: at the genetic, species, and ecosystem levels. Ultimately, all this

diversity can be preserved for future human use and for its own sake only by preserving the ecosystems which sustain it. There are attempts to store the diversity of life. As technological agriculture and genetic engineering are eliminating the genetic variability of key crops and livestock, breeding institutions have stored the genetic material of many tens of thousands of crop and domestic animal varieties in refrigerated storehouses, placing the 10,000 year heritage of human breeding experience into a few vulnerable places. Zoos and other storehouses of nondomesticated organisms can also preserve some of the diversity, but it will only be a tiny fraction. Without maintaining intact ecosystems, the projected extinctions will accelerate. Although the world is now experiencing extinction rates between 50 and 500 times higher than those recorded in the fossil record, the continuation of current trends is estimated to raise the rate another 10 times higher.

Causes of Forest Conversion and Degradation Although no widely accepted, comprehensive expla nation of deforestation has emerged from the hundreds of papers analyzing the processes, the best summaries argue (1) that multiple factors interact to produce forest loss; (2) that both direct actions (like agricultural expansions or logging) and indirect or underlying factors (like gov ernment colonization programs or export crops) operate; and (3) each case is geographically and historically spe ciﬁc. This last makes generalizations difﬁcult. We can advance understanding by basing analysis on a nested hierarchy of local, national, and global scales at which

46

Deforestation

Global Scale: how have forests been affected by: • Development institutions: how have bilateral and multilateral institutions changed with regard to their roles, importance, and use of grants vs. loans? • Development theories: how have modernization, basic needs, neoliberal theories affected forest uses?

National−Subnational Scale: how have forests been affected by: • Development policies like: colonization schemes; promotion of exports; subsidies – to whom and for what? • Tenure arrangements: Nationalized forests, recognition of communal rights, grants of large blocks of forest to elites for development projects? • Governance practices: Level of control over state territory; unity of citizenry– level of differences based on wealth, race, ethnicity; relative democratic vs authoritarian political structures; susceptibility to outside pressures; amount of debt? Local Scale: how have forests been affected by: • Local environment: climate - length and timing of dry season; soil quality; topography? • Agricultural expansion: - Small holders: traditional shifting cultivators; immigrant slash and burn farmers; permanent fixed field farmers? - Large holders: plantation agriculture; cattle ranching; tree plantation? • Logging: road construction; clear-cutting; selective cutting; other extraction methods? • Mineral extraction: mining, forest clearing, road building?

Figure 1 Nested hierarchy of causes of deforestation.

the forces inﬂuencing forest use operate (Figure 1). The actors at these various scales are all inﬂuenced by the speciﬁcs of geography and history. Local Scale At the local scale in the tropics, agricultural expansion is often identiﬁed as a major cause of forest conversion and degradation, but who are the actors: small scale subsist ence farmers or large scale commodity producers? If subsistence farmers, are they traditional shifting culti vators, immigrant slash and burn cultivators, or per manent ﬁeld farmers? ‘Slash and burn’ is a label used without distinguishing between traditional shifting cul tivators and recent immigrants who are often unfamiliar with local conditions. This leads to considering the local environment. Most upland tropical soils are infertile because many of their nutrients have been leached by the heavy rainfall. Tro pical forests, unlike mid latitude forests and soils, have most nutrients held within the living organisms, which efﬁciently capture and recycle them. Clearing and burning the vegetation releases the nutrients, but the closed nutrient cycles are broken and nutrients disappear within a few years. Traditional shifting cultivators clear and burn small patches of forest, plant them to many crops, and abandon the plots so that the surrounding forest can reoccupy the site. They leave the abandoned plot to the regrowing forest for long periods before re turning. They have been using these forests in this way for thousands of years, so they are not the cause of tro pical forest loss. Outside immigrants, in contrast, settle in areas adjacent to roads, but abandon their ﬁelds to clear new forest when fertility declines and weeds take over. They often continue to burn their abandoned ﬁelds

which seldom revert to forest, so they create the ﬁshbone pattern of deforestation revealed in satellite images. Some tropical soils retain fertility because they form from recent volcanic deposits or on ﬂoodplains whose nutrients are replenished annually. Such sites can support permanent agriculture, though the favorable climate allows pests to ﬂourish and induces heavy pesticide applications. Soil quality is one example of how local conditions inﬂuence potential uses of tropical forests. The Amazon basin has few volcanic soils, but parts of Central America and of Southeast Asia do, so permanent agriculture is much more successful in these regions. Climate and topography are other locally speciﬁc conditions which inﬂuence the productive potential of a site. Is there a dry season? During what time of the year does it fall? If the country is mountainous or hilly, higher elevations have cooler temperatures, which reduces water demand, and higher or lower precipitation depending on location relative to prevailing winds. Another local and regional factor affecting the like lihood of disturbance is the percentage of trees that are commercially valuable timber. For example, Southeast Asian forests had large numbers of dipterocarp species like teak, while the Amazon and Africa had considerably fewer valuable trees, so logging causes more forest loss in Asia than elsewhere. Logging is often done when a government sells a ‘concession’ to a private individual or corporation. These usually specify the species and size of the trees that can be cut; and sometimes they specify the way the timber must be removed. In very few cases are these regulations observed. A World Bank study in 2006 estimated that timber worth $10 billion is taken illegally each year, and this costs governments another $5 billion in lost royalties

Deforestation

and taxes. The report listed 17 countries where more than 50% of the timber is illegally logged. Over the last 15 years China has become the center of furniture, ﬂooring, and plywood production, relying on imported wood. As long as the timber has paperwork claiming it was logged legally, they process it. Logging exempliﬁes well the way different causes of deforestation interact: logging roads open forests to other exploiters: squatters, ranchers, miners. Brazil’s Amazon reportedly had 105 000 miles of such roads in 2006, more than 10 times the total of government roads. Roads, mines, pipelines, and other types of development also destroy forests directly and open areas to others. That wealthy individuals and corporations are able to buy logging rights and ignore tree harvesting regulations reveals the role power and wealth play in deforestation. Land development schemes in the Amazon granted rich individuals several thousand hectare blocks of forest to convert to ranches or soybean farms. The total impact of these few wealthy exploiters is often greater than the thousands of poor seeking to survive on the forest fron tier. This discussion leads to the role of national governments. National- and Subnational-Scale Forces Government policies are major causes of deforestation in multiple ways. During colonial times, many governments promoted forest conversion to agriculture in order to increase tax revenue. However, by the mid nineteenth century, as industrial processes spread into the colonies, forest departments began to oppose revenue ministries over whether forests should be converted to agriculture or preserved for industrial uses. This contest developed ﬁrst in India, as timber for railway construction con sumed huge volumes of wood. The forest department induced the government to nationalize and restrict access to many forests, thereby outlawing essential subsistence uses and alienating subsistence users. Colonial foresters ﬁrst developed the narratives of deforestation induced environmental destruction that later were used in African colonies and continue to justify excluding traditional forest users around the world. Forest policies of postcolonial states vary, depending on how much forest they control. States with large holdings (Brazil, Indonesia) promote forest conversion and exploitation, but countries whose forests are depleted (India) have, until the mid 1980s, followed colonial policies outlawing subsistence use. Governments pro moting forest exploitation do so through their general development policies, through land tenure arrangements, and through how effectively they govern their territory. Development policies can directly support forest exploitation by granting logging concessions, initiating forest colonization projects for the landless poor (Brazil,

47

Peru, Indonesia have done this, usually to avoid re distributing land owned by the elite), or by giving large blocks of forest to wealthy citizens able to develop it (e.g., cattle or soybean estates in Brazil). More ubiquitous and subtle are the indirect ways governments have supported forest use. These include development policies (1) that build roads and other infrastructure into forested regions, (2) that promote exports crops, and (3) that provide tax and other subsidies to forest users. Land tenure arrangements also affect forest use. Colonial and independent governments claimed all for ests as state property early on ignoring the customary claims of traditional users. As the forest becomes devel opment frontier, three groups often contend for control of the forest: indigenous users, who often had managed communal forests sustainably; immigrant small holders seeking new farm land; and wealthy outsiders seeking to log or establish large scale agricultural operations. Governments have almost always supported the last group by sanctioning their tenure and ignoring their legal transgressions. Since the mid 1980s pressure from international donors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have forced many governments to recognize the tenure claims of indigenous groups. The quality of state governance also inﬂuences forest preservation or conversion. The ﬁrst consideration is whether the state is capable of controlling its territory. Does it have the ﬁnancial and personnel resources to govern? Does it have a citizenry uniﬁed by a common vision? Most developing countries were created by co lonial occupiers with no regard for territorial viability or integrity. When the resulting country contains fragments of many ethnic groups and few valuable resources, it faces great challenges. A second factor is how evenly the land and wealth of the country are distributed. Does a small minority control most wealth and the state apparatus? This is a common situation which will inevitably lead to the government ignoring the needs of the majority either directly, via state support to the already rich, or indirectly by failing to enforce the law and allowing ‘corruption’ to ﬂourish. A third factor is the extent to which the state is demo cratic; this means more than having sham elections: to what extent are the leaders accountable to those affected by their choices? State policies lead to global inﬂuences. Global-Scale Inﬂuences The impact of global actors is already apparent from the discussion above, but explicit discussion will clarify its importance and changing history. During colonial times colonies were affected by the changing demands of the occupier: agricultural commodities and tax revenues before 1850 but thereafter timber and industrial wood. In postcolonial times direct control of production has

48

Deforestation

given way to indirect control via development policies and ﬁnancing, yet the overall demand for export com modities has remained. Three periods are commonly recognized. In the ﬁrst period, from 1945 to about 1970, modernization theories and bilateral grants dominated. Modernization encouraged industrialization, often gui ded by government planning. Agricultural aid sought to develop large scale crops for export. Land redistribution policies were promoted, but implemented in ways that did not threaten elite control. Economies grew, but the wealth did not trickle down, so relative and even absolute poverty expanded. The second period which dominated through the 1970s sought to meet the basic needs of the poor by continuing growth oriented policies while dir ecting the beneﬁts to the poor. During this basic needs period loans replaced grants and multilateral agencies assumed larger roles. Debt burdens of many countries grew rapidly and forced governments to emphasize exports even more strongly. Also during this period en vironmental concerns intensiﬁed in the developed world, and the ﬁrst concerns about biodiversity loss and global warming were articulated. By the 1980s debt crises swept the developing world and the third period of neoliberal development theory took hold and continues to guide policies to this day. Neoliberalism holds that the market rather than government planning and intervention could create sustainable development. As debt burdened countries reﬁnanced, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced them to adopt structural adjustment policies of the neoliberal model, that is, to offer unrestricted access to foreign investors, to reduce and end tariffs and to

Table 8

Carbon in forest ecosystems of regions of world in 2005 (tonnes/ha)

Region or subregion

Carbon in living biomass

Total Africa Eastern and Southern Africa Northern Africa Western and Central Africa

95.8 63.5 26.0 155.0

7.6 7.5 3.3 9.8

57.0 37.0 77.0 39.7

6.9 5.0 9.0 3.6

Total Asia East Asia South and Southeast Asia Western and Central Asia Total Europe Total North and Central America Caribbean Central America North America Total Oceania Total South America World

terminate government run enterprises. During the neo liberal era, however, concerns over deforestation, bio diversity loss, and global warming have become so powerful that the multilateral and bilateral donors have forced recipient countries to structure their development projects to minimize these problems. Hence, Brazil now requires that for each hectare of forest converted, 2–4 ha must be preserved. Environmental concerns have interacted with neo liberal theory in interesting ways. Environmentalists and human rights groups have complained that state policies have destroyed forests, while indigenous forest users have managed forests much better than the state; hence, in digenous groups must be given tenure rights to their forests. Donors have forced many states to do this. This devolution of power to local users ﬁts well with the neoliberal goal of privatizing resources, though com munal property rights differ from the preferred private property ideal. Claims that they support sustainable development and pressure from citizens and environ mental groups have forced donors to recognize that environmental services provided by intact ecosystems (biodiversity preservation, pollination, climate regulation) are externalities the market fails to include in its magic. The World Bank’s 2004 forest strategy proposes de veloping market values for these services and establishing markets to compensate states and individuals for these services when they forego forest conversion. Whether the international donors will implement and/or force gov ernments to follow these requirements remains to be seen, but these seem to be the only hope for preserving forests and the services they provide.

Carbon in dead wood

Carbon in litter 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.1 2.9 No data 2.7 11.4

Carbon in soil

Total carbon

55.3 No data 33.5 56.0

160.8 73 þ 64.9 222.9

66.1 No data 68.4 41.0

132.9 42 þ 157.1 95.8

43.9

14.0

6.1

112.9

176.9

60.1 99.7 119.4 57.8

9.0 8.8 14.4 8.8

14.8 2.2 2.1 15.4

36.6 70.5 43.3 35.8

120.6 181.2 179.2 117.8

55.0

7.4

9.5

101.2

173.1

110.0

9.2

4.2

71.1

194.6

71.5

9.7

6.3

73.5

161.1

Adapted from FAO (2006). Forest resource assessment 2005. Annex 3, Table 2.8 (p 34). Food and Agricultural Organization. Viewed May 2007 at www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005.

Deforestation

Policies to Preserve Forests and Forest Services The previous section presented the best hopes for pre serving forests and their services. If current trends con tinue, there is little doubt that the developing world will follow the example of the developed countries and convert their forests to short term proﬁt generating uses. The hope of establishing preserves to maintain diversity and plantations to sequester carbon may compensate for CO2 emissions, but will only preserve a small percentage of the diversity (see Table 8). The world’s 30 000 pro tected areas cover only about 7% of the 250 million ha of forest and if they are well maintained will only save 50– 70% of the existing species. However, preservation is a continuing expense which is a burden on developing countries and will be ignored in times of crisis. Inter national ﬁnancing of biological preserves is also un reliable: it fell by 50% from 1995 to 2001. Ecotourism can provide income to support bioreserves, but is not likely to provide sufﬁcient income to sustain them or the broader array of ecosystems needed. Establishing a system to value and compensate forest owners for not destroying forests is a challenge that remains to be implemented. Some scholars argue that only indigenous com munities and settled agroforestry farmers have the in centives and skills to preserve forests, but they must be granted secure tenure and be assured that they can gain fair value for the forest products they harvest. Over the last 20 years land tenure reform has given indigenous communities or small agroforestry farmers legal owner ship or management rights over 25% of the developing world’s forests. Current markets, which favor large enterprises, must be modiﬁed to make capital, infor mation, market access, and appropriate prices available to small holders. Payments for maintaining environmental services must be delivered to forest users. These changes are being considered by donors and grudgingly accepted by governments. They ﬂy in the face of trends promoting large plantations for carbon sequestration and bioenergy production. Whether they are implemented or not will likely determine the future of forests.

Conclusions People have been degrading forests and converting them to other land uses since humans ﬁrst evolved, but the areas converted and degraded have accelerated con tinuously as agriculture was invented, populations grew, and the global economy expanded to incorporate even the most remote communities into its processes. Current forest losses are caused by multiple factors operating at local, national, and global scales, as these processes are

49

inﬂuenced by local geographies and histories. National policies, supported by global actors, drive deforestation by encouraging elites to harvest forest wealth through logging, through large scale forest clearing for ranching and plantations, and through maintaining highly con centrated land ownership patterns, thereby driving poor farmers into forests for survival. National governments, again supported by global organizations, establish forest preserves, but they are usually too small and too poorly protected to prevent massive extinctions. Only by en suring that poor forest dwellers have legal management rights to forests and are fairly compensated for sustain ably harvesting forest products will it be possible to block catastrophic loss of forests. See also: Development I; Development II; Environment; Industrialization; Modernization Theory; Neoliberalism and Development.

Further Reading FAO (2006). Forest Resource Assessment 2005. Food and Agricultural Organization. http://www.fao.org/forestry/site/fra2005/en (accessed April 2008). IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2007). Summary for policy makers. Working Group II Report: Impacts, Adaptation, Vulnerability. http://www.ipcc.ch (accessed April 2008). Kohm, K. A. and Franklin, J. F. (eds.) (1997). Creating a Forestry for the 21st Century. Covelo, CA: Island Press. Leach, M. and Mearns, R. (eds.) (1996). The Lie of the Land. Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment. Oxford: International African Institute. Molnar, A., Scherr, S. J. and Khare, A. (2004). Who Conserves the World’s Forests? A New Assessment of Conservation and Investment Trends. Washington, DC: Forest Trends. http:// www.forest trends.org/documents/publications/Who%20 Conserves long ﬁnal%202 14 05.pdf (accessed April 2008). Myers, N., Mittermeier, R. A., Mittermeier, C. G., da Fonseca, G. A. B. and Kent, J. (2000). Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403, 853 858. Orme, C. D. L., Davies, R. G., Burgess, M. et al. (2005). Global hotspots of species richness are not congruent with endemism or threat. Nature 436, 1016 1019. Richards, J. F. (1990). Land transformation. In Turner, B. L., Clark, W. C., Kates, R. C. et al. (eds.) The Earth As Transformed by Human Action, pp 179 201. New York: Cambridge University Press. Richards, J. F. and Tucker, R. P. (eds.) (1988). World Deforestation in the Twentieth Century. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rudel, T. K., Coomes, O. T., Moran, E. et al. (2005). Forest transitions: Towards a global understanding of land use change. Global Environmental Change 15, 23 31. Sayer, J. (ed.) (2005). The Earthscan Reader in Forestry and Development. London: Earthscan. Sharma, N. P. (ed.) (1994). Managing the World’s Forests. Looking for Balance between Conservation and Development. Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing. Tucker, R. P. and Richards, J. F. (eds.) (1983). Global Deforestation in the Nineteenth Century World Economy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wertz Kanounnikoff, S., DeLuca, G., Thomas, T., Buys, P. and Chomitz, K. M. (eds.) (2006). At Loggerheads? Agricultural Expansion, Poverty Reduction and Environment in the Tropical Forests. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications. http://www.worldbank.org/tropicalforestreport (accessed April 2008).

50

Deforestation

WRI (World Resources Institute) (2005). Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Covelo, CA: Island Press. http://www.maweb.org/en/ index.aspx (accessed April 2008). Wright, S. J. and Muller Landau, H. C. (2006). The future of tropical forest species. Biotropica 38(3), 287 301.

Relevant Websites http://www.cifor.cgiar.org Center for International Forestry Research. http://www.fao.org Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations: Forest Resource Assessment 2005.

http://www.forests.org Forest Conservation Portal. A Large Inventory of Information and Links. http://www.forest trends.org Forest Trends. A Large Inventory of Information and Links. http://www.ipcc.ch Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. http://www.ITTO.or.jp International Tropical Timber Organization. http://www.millenniumassessment.org Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. http://www.rightsandresources.org Rights and Resources Initiative. Collaborative Site Focused on Community Control of Natural Resources, Especially Forests.

De-Industrialization A. Pike, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction The contraction and rationalization of manufacturing industry – ‘de industrialization’ – occupies a central role in the uneven geographical development of capitalism. De industrialization has been experienced unevenly in different countries, regions and localities, and between different industries, ﬁrms, social groups, and individuals. Building upon the pioneering work of economists in understanding the phenomenon and its narrowly eco nomic dimensions from the late 1970s, geographers were the ﬁrst to explain the geographical differentiation of de industrialization over time, across space, and in place. Signiﬁcant theoretical and empirical advances were provided by revealing the geographical extent of de industrialization through mapping where and when it was happening, and deepening our understanding of its precise nature through conceptualizing the different forms of contraction and varying kinds of economic activities, ﬁrms, and jobs being lost. As the geographical reach of de industrialization has extended, new insights are being uncovered into its forms, degrees, and character by geographers working internationally. De industrialization is an ongoing historical process and its causes and implications are deeply geographical. Adaptation to manufacturing decline in localities and regions is often highly uneven and differentiated. Some places are better able to adapt to economic change than others. Economic inefﬁciencies emerge, however, as the result of particular forms of adjustment. Productivity in the economy as a whole falls when a skilled manufacturer who loses his or her industrial job ends up in lower value added, lower wage, and lower productivity service employment. Output and relative living standards fall as a consequence. De industrialization imposes often huge social costs on people, households, and families formerly dependent upon manufacturing employment for their livelihoods and well being. Deep seated dislocations caused by concentrated and prolonged local and regional manufacturing decline include: the economic, social, and psychological costs of job loss and unemployment; the risks and anxiety felt by ‘reluctant entrepreneurs’ forced into self employment or establishing new busi nesses by the absence of alternative local employment opportunities; economic, social, and environmental costs generated by longer distance commuting ﬂows as people are forced to work further away from home; and, com munities being fragmented as people move and migrate

in search of work in the face of negligible local job prospects.

Deﬁning and Explaining De-industrialization What do we mean by de industrialization? At its most basic level, de industrialization refers to the contraction and decline of the weight of manufacturing industry within an economy. This is usually measured in terms of output (the total value produced by the sector) and employment (the number of people working in the sector). A distinction is drawn between absolute declines in output and employment and relative declines in the proportion or share of manufacturing in total output and employment. This is important because in a growing economy, manufacturing may be declining in relative terms but maintaining its absolute size and importance. Another key measure of de industrialization is trade competitiveness. This focuses on the relative share of international markets held by manufacturing exports from particular countries and regions. Where such shares are falling, this reveals declining competitiveness in manufacturing against other producers. Falling demand for output and labor can generate de industrialization. When considering de industrialization as a particular process of change the scale is important – how much has output, employment, or exports fallen – as well as the rate at which any declines have occurred. The magnitude and speed at which de industrialization is experienced shapes its impact and the potential for adaptation in localities and regions. Explanation of de industrialization has focused on four main sets of arguments. First, the ‘maturity thesis’ emphasizes the ‘natural’ evolution of the economy through primary (agriculture, mining) to secondary (manufacturing) to tertiary (services) and then quater nary (knowledge based) stages over time. Figure 1 depicts this theory in terms of changes in employment and per capita income as part of a transition between sectors through time. De industrialization – falling proportions of employment in industry – is seen to occur alongside expansion of employment in the service sector. De industrialization, then, is interpreted as a direct consequence of the evolution and stage of maturity of the economy. As economies develop through this model, they evolve into more advanced forms of economic activity.

51

52

De-Industrialization

‘Smokestack’ manufacturing industries – typically char acterized as heavy engineering, shipbuilding, steel, and textiles – are left behind as the economy develops. New service activities expand and absorb the surplus labor ejected from manufacturing. For some, what is at issue is not whether de industrialization is occurring but whether it is occurring fast enough to shift economic resources from outdated and uncompetitive industrial sectors into new and more advanced economic activities – a process Joseph Schumpeter described as ‘creative destruction’. The maturity thesis has strong roots in the Fisher–Clark theory of economic evolution and Daniel Bell’s ‘postindustrialism’ thesis. Table 1 demonstrates how the relative contribution of manu facturing to output has declined to varying degrees in all areas internationally between 1990 and 2003, except East Asia and the Paciﬁc where it has grown from 30% to 36% of GDP and the Middle East and North Africa where it is stable at 13%. Such geographically variable experience supports critics who argue that economic change does not follow the inevitable, linear, and singular route suggested by the maturity thesis. The agency of

institutions and people in localities and regions means the outcomes are more contingent with potentially multiple pathways of adaptation, including possible reversals and stasis. Second, drawing upon the orthodox economic theory of comparative economic specialization and the beneﬁts of trade, the ‘trade specialization thesis’ emphasizes how places specialize in economic activities where they hold a comparative advantage against other places due to their economic assets and capabilities. Following this logic, for example, relatively low wage economies specialize in labor intensive activities in which this characteristic offers them a comparable economic advantage in com petition with other producers. Economic specialization is shaped by a complex mix of factors, including natural resource endowments and socially and insti tutionally produced capabilities, that can be accumulated and lost over time through shifts in market and industry structure, technologies, competition, and regulation. As depicted in the growth of output in East Asia and the Paciﬁc (Table 1), the geographical locus of manufacturing specialization has shifted internationally from West to East in recent decades as part of the new international division of labor. Former regional and local centers of manufacturing have consequently suf fered de industrialization in its wake. Third, de industrialization has been explained in terms of the ‘competitive failure of manufacturing’ in its international context. Producers in a speciﬁc locality or region are interpreted as uncompetitive against other producers located elsewhere within international mar kets. Figure 2 illustrates the dramatic growth in the value of merchandise exports from the early 1980s in the ‘newly industrializing countries’ (NICs) in Central and Latin America and Asia, especially China. This reveals the degree of specialization in export led manufacturing in these countries and intensiﬁed competition in export

100

Employment (%)

Agriculture Services

Industry 0

Per capita income over time

Figure 1 Changes in employment (%) and per capita income over time by sector.

Table 1

Changes in structure of output (% of GDP) by country type and sector, 1990 2003 Industry a

Manufacturing

Services

1990

2003

1990

2003

1990

2003

2 2

33 34

27 28

22 24

18 20

65 62

71 70

15 25 16 9 14 31 19

10 14 8 7 11 22 17

39 40 43 36 38 27 34

36 49 31 27 43 26 31

24 30 22 13 17 17

22 36 18 16 13 16 14

46 35 41 55 48 43 47

54 36 61 66 47 51 52

32 5

24 4

26 34

27 28

15 22

14 18

41 61

49 68

Agriculture 1990

2003

3 4

Middle income East Asia and Paciﬁc Europe and Central Asia LA and Caribbean Middle East and N. Africa South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa Low income World

High income Europe EMU

a Industry includes mining, manufacturing (columns 6 7), construction, electricity, water, and gas. Source: Adapted from The World Bank (2005). World Development Indicators 2005. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

De-Industrialization

53

700 000 Brazil 600 000

Mexico Turkey

500 000 Value ($m)a

China 400 000

Hong Kong Taiwan

300 000

India 200 000

South Korea Malaysia

100 000

Philippines 0 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990 1989 1988 1987 1986 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981 1980 1979 1978 1977 1976 1975 1974 1973 1972 1971 1970 1969 1968 1967 1966 1965 1964 1963 1962 1961 1960 1959 1958 1957 1956 1955 1954 1953 1952 1951 1950 1949 1948

Year

Singapore Thailand

Figure 2 Merchandise exports by value ($m) and country, 1948 2004. a$m unadjusted values. Source: Calculated from UNCTAD Statistical Database.

and domestic markets for manufacturers in the histori cally industrialized countries. Loss of market share, sales, and revenues challenges and potentially undermines manufacturers’ proﬁtability and viability. In response, ﬁrms attempt to adapt their economic activities, not always successfully, to changes in markets and among competitors. Declines in output and/or employment – de industrialization – can result. Britain’s early, large scale, and intense experience of de industrialization in the late 1970s and early 1980s, for example, has been explained by some in terms of a particular ‘British dis ease’ comprising weak management, short term invest ment, poor quality, low productivity, inability to compete with exports from the NICs, and militant industrial relations. For orthodox neoclassical economic geog raphers, failure to grow or even sustain market share is interpreted as a clear market signal that demand is not present or sufﬁcient for the goods that manufacturers in a particular place are producing. Rational economic factors responding to signals through the market adjustment mechanism will therefore shift investment resources, output, and jobs into activities where demand exists. What is left of manufacturing will be the most techno logically innovative and productive that can compete internationally. Manufacturing will be ‘leaner’ and ‘ﬁtter’ having shed its inefﬁcient parts. Last, the ‘disinvestment thesis’ explains de indus trialization as the active disinvestment in manufacturing by ﬁrms and, in the case of nationalized industries, states. For ﬁrms with increasingly internationalized production networks expanding geographically to take advantage of differential production costs, ‘hollowing out’ their manufacturing activities can make economic sense. This typically involves a shift to lower value added

assembly rather than higher value added manufacture – turning manufacturing plants into ‘warehouses’ rather than ‘factories’. In this way, ﬁrms can still access high value and lucrative advanced country markets and bypass any tariff or nontariff barriers to trade on im ported, fully assembled goods by importing components and subassemblies manufactured more competitively elsewhere. Where manufacturing remains relatively capital in tensive, as compared to services, and only weakly prof itable, it struggles internally to generate sufﬁcient investment capital for its needs and increasingly comes to rely upon the external capital market. In the context of the increasing dominance of the international ﬁnancial system in shaping access to investment capital, ﬁnancial institutions have grown in sophistication and in their ability to assess potential returns on capital among par cels of economic activities competing for investment funds. Ostensibly manufacturing ﬁrms can therefore be encouraged through their owners, investors, and/or managers to search and switch into activities potentially offering higher relative returns and generating greater ‘shareholder value’. Crucially, it is often not that manu facturing is not proﬁtable. It is that manufacturing is not proﬁtable enough in comparison with other economic activities. During the 1980s, Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison termed this ‘conglomeratization’ as manu facturing ﬁrms diversiﬁed, sometimes unsuccessfully, into often unrelated sectors such as property development in search of relatively higher investment returns to satisfy increasingly demanding capital markets. More recently, geographers have begun to focus upon the impact of new ﬁnancial vehicles such as hedge funds and private equity in promoting and facilitating such disinvestment

54

De-Industrialization

in manufacturing. A ﬂight from manufacturing and de industrialization, then, accompanies such disinvest ment and restructuring. Where manufacturing industry has been state owned, de industrialization can follow the reduction of state ownership – either directly through reduced ﬁnancial stakes or wholesale privatization or indirectly through the reduction of levels of subsidy or other forms of state aid. Restructuring formerly state owned manufacturing industry has generated de industrialization as ﬁrms are rationalized and sometimes closed in a bid to strip out the proﬁtable activities in the context of increased exposure to competitive external markets. Privatization of manufacturing has been an important cause of de industrialization especially in strategic industrial sectors such as defence, including aerospace and shipbuilding, and steel. The starkest recent example is in the formerly centrally planned economies in Central and Eastern Europe. Large scale privatization has occurred as part of the transition to mixed economies of market and state, resulting in huge scale de industrialization and the loss of thousands of jobs.

Uneven Histories and Geographies of De-industrialization De industrialization is characterized by highly uneven histories and geographies. The ways in which the process has unfolded is geographically differentiated in time and space. Different localities and regions have experienced de industrialization in different ways and to varying degrees, shaped by their particular histories and insti tutional legacies of industrialization, labor, culture, and politics. De industrialization has become a more widespread geographical phenomenon, extending inter nationally in recent years. De industrialization is mani fest at different geographical scales. National experiences differ and are mediated by the different institutional formations and variegated forms of capitalism in different national political economies. Inter and intraregional transitions at the subregional, local, and urban scales reveal further differentiation, diversity, and variety at ﬁner levels of geographical resolution. In the midst of the economic dislocations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Western European hearths of industrialization during the Industrial Revolution of the mid nineteenth century were among the ﬁrst to experi ence de industrialization, particularly the UK’s north, Scotland’s central belt and south Wales, as well as France particularly Lorraine and Nord Pas de Calais, and Ger many especially the Ruhrgebeit and Saarland. Table 2 reveals the geographically differentiated experience of de industrialization in Europe over time. The older industrialized countries and regions, such as Belgium

Table 2 1965 95

Industrial employment in European Union countries, Industrial labour force (%)

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France F.R. Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom EU15

1965

1975

1985

1995

45 46 37 36 39 48 24 28 42

na 39.9 31.5 na 38.7 46 29.2 30.5 39.1 46.3 34.6 33.8 38.3

38.1 31.8 27.9 31.9 32.4 41 25.7 30 33.5 32 28.2 33.9 31.8 29.9 34.6

35.4 28.3 27.1 27.9 26.9 36 23.2 31.4 32.1 25.5 22.8 32.2 30.2 26.6 27.4 30.3

41 31 35 43 47

40.7

Source: Adapted from Cumbers, A. and Birch, K. (2006). Divergent Pathways in Europe’s Old Industrial Regions? Draft Paper for SPIF Meeting, 27 October, Glasgow, UK: Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR), University of Glasgow.

especially Wallonia, Denmark particularly Jutland, and the Netherlands especially Limburg, began their de in dustrialization earlier in the 1960s. Indeed, between 1965 and 1975, several peripheral European countries ex perienced industrialization, including Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Between 1975 and 1995, de indus trialization spread out unevenly and to varying degrees from the older heartlands of industrialism, affecting places such as Paı´s Vasco in Spain and Setu´bal in Por tugal. By 1995, only Ireland and Portugal had higher proportions of industrial employment than in 1965. Greece too has held its share, despite falling from a peak in 1975. Anglo American geographers were ﬁrst to grapple with the uneven geographies of de industrialization. In the UK from the late 1970s, a ‘North–South divide’ emerged at the regional level as waves of de industrial ization hit, ﬁrst, the old industrial regions of the north west, north, Yorkshire and Humberside, Scotland and Wales and, second, the post war growth areas in the West Midlands and Greater London. Pervasive processes of change reached deep into the industrial fabric of manufacturing regions negatively to affect networks of small and medium sized subcontractors. At the subregional scale, an urban–rural shift occurred with de industrialization concentrated in London and the provincial cities of Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle while re industrialization occurred in the smaller urban centers, new towns, and rural areas, especially in the ‘Golden Crescent’ from East Anglia around Cambridge across to the ‘M4 Corridor’ to the west of London.

De-Industrialization

Such intense experiences prompted debate among economic geographers about the causes and interpret ation of de industrialization. Inspired by neoclassical economics, the ‘location factors’ approach explained this geography of de industrialization in terms of industrial, ﬁrm size, ownership and urban structures, and regional policy. De industrializing places overspecialized in de clining sectors, large and foreign owned or nationalized ﬁrms and were concentrated in cities. Neo Marxian analysts situated the changes in structural shifts in Britain’s changing post imperial role in the international economy, ﬁrms and industry’s changing positions in the spatial division of labor and consequent restructuring, urban labor militancy and the potential ﬂexibility of new ‘greenﬁeld’ plants, especially for feminization of the workforce. Both approaches agreed that regional policy played a role in encouraging de industrialization through modernization and spatial relocation. Speciﬁcally, per ipheral regions that beneﬁted from the relocation of nationalized industries as part of regional policy sub sequently bore the brunt of rationalization following privatization. In North America in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the geography of de industrialization comprised a shift from the ‘snowbelt’ of the former industrial heartlands of the north and east such as Michigan and Pennsylvania to the ‘sunbelt’ of the southern states such as Arizona and New Mexico. Older vintages of manufacturing in cities, for example, Los Angeles in California, were affected too. The relocation to the southern states was caused by the relatively lower wage costs for labor of comparable skills and productivity, lower business taxes, ‘right to work’ legislation preventing strikes and industrial militancy, and ‘green’, unorganized labor that promised enhanced ﬂexibility for manufacturers. The older industrial heart lands remained important but shrunk in their relative size and weight as new rounds of investment went south. More recently, de industrialization in the northern, eastern, as well as some southern states has occurred through manufacturing relocation to Mexico as activity grew among the maquilladores operations that emerged along the border to serve the US market in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Geographies of de industrialization continued to be highly differentiated locally and regionally in response to such broader pressures for change. De industrialization has not remained conﬁned to the advanced Western European and American heartlands of industrialization. As an inevitably geographical phenom enon, de industrialization has extended its spatial reach to the former peripheries of the new international division of labor established as assembly and production outposts from the core manufacturing nations and regions, as well as components of national industrialization and develop ment strategies during the 1970s. Indeed, some argue that

55

because of an increasingly ‘globalized’ economy the ‘industrialization–de industrialization’ cycle has speeded up due to heightened levels of interconnection and interdependency facilitated by new information and communication technologies, intensiﬁed competition, and the geographically extended coordination opportun ities afforded by ‘global production networks’. In Southern Europe, for example, Greece, southern Italy, Spain, and Portugal, work by geographers has re inforced the understanding that de industrialization is a profoundly geographically uneven phenomenon that can occur simultaneously with industrialization – as Table 2 reveals – and is economically uneven because it does not just affect large scale Fordist or even post Fordist high volume manufacturing. Geographers have demonstrated how manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the particular industrial structures of Southern European states experienced de industrialization albeit in differentiated ways. Accession to the EU and the es tablishment of the Single European Market and Eco nomic and Monetary Union in the late 1980s and 1990s has shaped particular experiences of de industrialization through the heightened mobility of capital and labor, intensiﬁed competition, corporate concentration and centralization, rationalization, ‘Europeanization’ and internationalization of supply networks, liberalized pub lic procurement, and reduced state subsidies. Even the paradigmatic local and regional development model of agglomerated industrialization in the industrial districts of the ‘Third Italy’ around Emilia Romagna is being de industrialized and reconﬁgured by ‘offshoring’ and the international decentralization of production. Following the ‘Velvet Revolution’ in 1989, the for merly centrally planned economies of Central and Eastern Europe have begun a highly geographically un even transition to mixed economies of market and state. De industrialization in post socialist countries has oc curred on a massive and unprecedented scale and in a highly compressed time period. Historically, the centrally planned economies maintained relatively high levels of industrialization to promote economic growth and pro vide employment and military capacity. Following the collapse of communism, a process of transition has been unfolding through the introduction of market reforms and privatization. A dramatic shake out has occurred as manufacturers and jobs formerly serving protected markets within the Soviet trading system Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) were newly exposed to international market competition. The mag nitude of de industrialization is unprecedented, espe cially in employment terms, and highly geographically uneven with differentiated transition paths evident at the national and regional levels. Table 3 reveals the uneven geography of industrial employment collapse, especially (outside areas of conﬂict in the Balkans in the 1990s) in

56

De-Industrialization

Table 3 Employment in industry by country, Eastern Europe, Baltic States and CIS, 1990 1999 (indices 1989 100) Country a

Eastern Europe Albania Bosnia and Herzogovina Bulgaria Croatia Czech Republic Hungary Poland Romaniab Slovak Republic Slovenia Macedonia F.R. Yugoslavia Baltic States Estoniac Latvia Lithuania CIS Armenia Azerbaijan Belarus Georgia Republic of Moldovac Russian Federation Ukraine

1990

1999

95.6

60.9

98.3 91.0 102.4 95.8 97.0 93.7 96.5 95.7 95.1 95.3 100.9

28.9 46.7 58.3 73.4 66.4 69.5 49.5 65.4 66.7 55.4 65.3

96.8 96.9 97.0 96.7

54.0 63.6 45.7 55.7

98.2 102.6 97.1 98.6 104.2 102.4 97.7 98.1

Total above

97.4

Former Soviet Union

98.2

40.5 53.6 76.2 35.9 62.6 54.4

a

Excluding Albania. End of year. c Excluding Transdniestria since 1993. Source: Adapted from UN/ECE Common Database data in Philipov, D. and Dorbritz, J. (2003). Demographic Consequences of Economic Transition in Countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Population Studies No. 39, DGIII Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe Publishing. b

the Republic of Moldova, Armenia, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Ukraine, for example, in its industrial centers in Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk. Those that have experienced de industrialization to a lesser degree in clude Belarus, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, the Slovak Republic, and Hungary, buoyed by simultaneous industrialization through the wholesale or partial acqui sition of indigenous industry and relocation of typically foreign owned manufacturing capacity from Western Europe. The post Soviet bloc is highly heterogenous, however, with relatively ‘successful’ reformers Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland experiencing de indus trialization alongside a rapid growth of services. Whereas Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine, as well as to a lesser degree Bulgaria and Russia have seen an increased employment share in agriculture following the decline in industrial employment but only sluggish service em ployment growth. In these places, a return to subsistence

forms of economic activity is a rational economic response to the calamitous collapse in local industrial output, income, and job opportunities but may be per ceived as a backward step in terms of the linear stages model of economic evolution and modernization de scribed by the maturity thesis. Beyond Europe, the fast growth NICs from the 1970s have since experienced uneven de industrialization in distinct waves. In Asia, pioneering work by geographers demonstrated how the rapid appreciation of the Japanese currency, the yen, during the 1980s – the ‘endaka’ phe nomenon – undermined the export competitiveness of Japanese manufacturers and, by cheapening imports, triggered decentralization of their production networks more broadly within East Asia. This accounts for part of the growth in industrial employment in East Asia and the Paciﬁc in Table 1. Crucially, this decline in manu facturing output and employment affected not just the large original equipment manufacturers but also their hierarchically organized tiers of SME subcontractors. Table 4 illustrates how Japan has continued to experi ence de industrialization in terms of output and employment through the 1990s, especially in the indus trial belts of Kanagawa, Osaka, Tokyo, and Saitama. In later waves, de industrialization has hit both South Korea especially in employment terms and in places such as Busan and Ulsan in the south, and older industrial centers in Taiwan within and beyond Taipei. De industrialization has created unprecedented challenges for these developmental states and their export led industrialization strategies that they are only now struggling to come to terms with. Prior to its incorpor ation into China in the late 1990s, Hong Kong had experienced de industrialization from the 1980s through the 1990s, especially the small locally owned manu facturers, where manufacturing collapsed from 17% to 5% of GDP and from 37% to 27% of men’s jobs and from 27% to 10% of women’s jobs in the context of an export dependent economic structure, rapid tertiariza tion, and a noninterventionist state (Table 4). Australia too experienced contraction of its share of industrial employment, especially in steel and motor vehicles, following its deeper integration into the international manufacturing division of labor and evolution into a service dominated economy. De industrialization is evi dent in Asia Paciﬁc as at least labor intensive production shifts geographically to emerging centers of manu facturing specialization and growth in China – whose share of manufacturing output rose from 33% to 39% of GDP in a fast growing economy between 1990 and 2003 (Table 4) – and India, as well as Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. In parallel from the 1980s, Central and Latin America, including Mexico, Argentina, and Colombi a and especially Brazil and Uruguay, have experienced

De-Industrialization

57

Table 4 Manufacturing output (% of GDP) and industrial employment (% of total male and female employment) by selected country, 1990/92 2002/03 Country

China Singapore Argentina South Korea Japan Uruguay World India Colombia Australia Brazil Hong Kong

Industrial employment a (% of total male and female employment)

Manufacturing output (% of GDP) 1990

2003 b

33

39 28 24 23 21 19 18 16 14 12 11 5

27 27 28 22 17 21 14 25 17

1990 92

2000 02

36 40 40 40 36

32 18 28 27 21

31 30 34 37 32

18 12 19 21 14

35 32 27 37

25 12 10 27

19 30 27 27

17 10 10 10

a

Includes mining and quarrying (including oil production), manufacturing, construction and utilities (electricity, gas, and water). Entries are listed in decreasing order of manufacturing output for 2003. Source: Adapted from The World Bank (2005). World Development Indicators 2005. Washington, DC: The World Bank. b

de industrialization to differing degrees. Brazil, particu larly, has seen manufacturing’s share of GDP and em ployment fall from 25% to 11% and from 37% to 10%, respectively, between 1990 and 2003 (Table 4), especially in its industrial heartland in Sa˜o Paulo. Deepened eco nomic integration, including the establishment of the MERCOSUR trading bloc, international market and trade liberalization, and the reduction of tariff and non tariff barriers have all underpinned a reduction in the relative weight of manufacturing in total output and employment. The shifting geographical locus of trade specialization in labor intensive manufacturing to the Asian nations of the Paciﬁc Rim has further reinforced such changes in Central and Latin America. Recent evidence suggests de industrialization is becoming even more international, even global, in its geographical reach. Localities and regions industrialized as part of earlier waves of development in the emergent economies China and India, as well as even some parts of Africa are beginning to experience de industrialization. Sukti Dasgupta and Ajit Singh call this ‘premature de industrialization’ in the developing countries where declines in the proportion of manufacturing jobs in total employment are happening at much lower levels of per capita income than occurred in today’s historically industrialized developed countries.

The Politics of De-industrialization For those localities and regions affected, de industrial ization raises fundamental questions about politics, pol icy, and the roles of localities and regions within the broader spatial division of labor. Contesting and resisting de industrialization has a geographically uneven and

differentiated history, shaped by political cultures, tra ditions, and institutions. Geographers identiﬁed the fundamental tension between class and territory as bases of social organization in responding and seeking to shape industrial change. This work was highly innovative in situating campaigns to save a speciﬁc plant in a particular place in the context of placing other plants in other places at risk of rationalization. As social relations were stretched across space through the spatial division of labor, defending manufacturing in one place could in advertently mean betraying class by deﬂecting rational ization elsewhere. During the 1970s and 1980s, laborism and trade unionism were relatively stronger, especially in the industrial cores of the developed world, and political activism in concert with local states and communities against de industrialization was more evident and wide spread. In more recent years, such social agency in localities and regions facing de industrialization has often been replaced by greater degrees of fatalism and acknowledgment of their fate in the context of the growing volatility of investment ﬂows and overwhelming economic and political constructions of ‘globalization’. Colored by their experiences in failing to prevent and perhaps only slowing down acute industrial adaptation, localities and regions have developed strategies of coping with de industrialization. Policy and institutional innov ation and experimentation have occurred. Task forces have become a standardized response to manufacturing rationalization to coordinate economic development activities, including the sale of businesses and sites and addressing labor market and supply chain adaptation through retraining and market diversiﬁcation. The politics of de industrialization raise normative questions about what direction and form the local and regional economy should be taking and the role of state

58

De-Industrialization

and other institutions in hastening or managing manu facturing’s orderly decline or nurturing and sustaining its continued growth. Geographers have innovatively drawn on evolutionary and institutional economics in seeking to interpret whether and how traditional in dustrial regions adapt to new economic development trajectories. Older industrial regions internationally are seen to suffer from different varieties of ‘lock in’ – economic, cognitive, political – that impart strong path dependencies upon their future development tra jectories. These may constrain or prevent places from collectively renewing and/or modernizing their existing industrial structures or diversifying and moving into new activities, potentially reorienting existing, as well as developing new knowledges, skills, and assets to shift localities and regions formerly dependent upon manufacturing onto development trajectories based upon new economic activities. Preventing or delaying such adjustment is seen by some to be slowing down inevitable evolution in economic structures. Localities and regions experiencing de industrialization face tough challenges about the nature and course of their future direction. Challenging the conventional wisdom of the maturity thesis that de industrialization is inevitable or desirable are arguments that underline manufacturing’s distinctive contribution to local, regional, and national economies.

Coda: Manufacturing (Still) Matters In the wake of its absolute and/or relative decline, policy debate has focused upon the importance of manu facturing to economies, particularly when de industrial ization appears to show few signs of abating even among those ﬁrst gripped by its effects. Some argue that the transition toward services is desirable, inevitable, and evidence of the development and maturity of economies. Ushering in and addressing the adjustment costs of a transition to a post industrial economy are seen as the appropriate aims of policy. Making things is consigned to an earlier, less advanced stage of economic evolution. Production is best undertaken by those localities and regions specialized and cost competitive in manu facturing internationally. Services, it is argued, are potentially more knowledge intensive, specialized and sophisticated, higher value added and less vulnerable to imitation and cost based competition in a globalizing economy. Others claim that manufacturing remains vital to local, regional, and national economic growth. Their arguments cite Nicholas Kaldor’s famous axiom that manufacturing is the ‘ﬂywheel of growth’ because the rate of growth of manufacturing output tends to drive the rate of productivity growth in manufacturing and in

services. This is because manufacturing has a much greater potential for technological progress and prod uctivity growth, especially relative to services, and has the potential for dynamic increasing returns to scale and the ability to absorb surplus labor from other sectors. The growth of tradeable services – so called ‘invisibles’ such as insurance – has grown substantially especially in advanced economies in recent years. However, the export and trade of manufacturing goods remain relatively more important to the national econ omy’s ability to pay its way in the world through earnings from the overseas sales of its exports, maintaining its balance of payments between income and expenditure in its national accounts, managing inﬂation, and sus taining the value of the exchange rate of its currency internationally. The post industrial arguments ignore another two dimensions fostered by the ways in which manufacturing has been changing in recent years. First, some parts of manufacturing have become more knowledge intensive and sophisticated. Even so called ‘smokestack’ sectors, such as shipbuilding, involve highly complex microelec tronic systems and software and, for example, textiles are increasingly overlapping with nanotechnologies in bio medical applications. Where comparative advantage is based upon innovativeness, technology, and organization, manufacturing can retain a signiﬁcant high value added role within the economy requiring highly specialized and skilled labor. Manufacturing can, then, be much more productive and employ many fewer people in more skilled jobs than hitherto. Second, the traditional dis tinction between ‘manufacturing’ and ‘services’ has become somewhat blurred. Think about the complex bundle of services wrapped around the manufactured commodity of the mobile phone, digital music player, or laptop computer. Manufacturing entities are increasingly looking to more sophisticated and higher value added services – for example, branding, subcontracted on site support, logistics, web based networks, after sales, recycling – in which to embed their products as a means of providing differentiation, sustaining competitiveness, enriching proﬁtability, and locking customers into longer term relationships and repeat business. Such ser vices, crucially, are dependent upon the manufactures at their heart. Despite the ongoing waves of geographically differentiated de industrialization being experienced globally, these commodities still have to be made by someone somewhere.

Acknowledgments Thanks to Costis Hadjimichalis, Stuart Dawley, and John Tomaney for constructive and incisive advice on the content and Andy Cumbers, Danny MacKinnon, and

De-Industrialization

Kean Birch for discussions about adaptation in old in dustrial regions. The usual disclaimers, as always, apply.

Further Reading Blackaby, F. (ed.) (1978). De Industrialisation. London: Heinemann. Bluestone, B. and Harrison, B. (1982). The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismantling of Basic Industry. New York: Basic Books. Bosch, G. (1992). Retraining Not Redundancy: Innovative Approaches to Industrial Restructuring in Germany and France. Geneva: ILO. Cohen, S. S. and Zysman, J. (1987). Manufacturing Matters: The Myth of the Post Industrial Economy. New York: Basic Books. Cumbers, A. and Birch, K. (2006). Divergent Pathways in Europe’s Old Industrial Regions? Draft Paper for SPIF Meeting, 27 October, Glasgow, UK: Centre for Public Policy for Regions (CPPR), University of Glasgow. Daniels, P. (2006). On services and economic geography. In Bagchi Sen, S. & Lawton Smith, H. (eds.) Economic Geography: Past, Present and Future, pp 112 125. London: Routledge. Dasgupta, S. and Singh, A. (2006). Manufacturing, Services and Premature De Industrialisation in Developing Countries: A Kaldorian Empirical Analysis, Working Paper 327. Cambridge: Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge. Dawley, S. (2007). Making labour market geographies: Volatile ‘ﬂagship’ inward investment and peripheral regions. Environment and Planning A 39(6), 1403 1419. Dicken, P. (2006). Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century (4th edn.). New York: The Guilford Press. Edgington, D. (1994). The geography of Endaka: Industrial transformation and regional employment changes in Japan, 1986 1991. Regional Studies 28(5), 521 535. Evans, Y. and Smith, A. (2006). Surviving at the margins? De industrialisation, the creative industries and upgrading in London’s garment sector. Environment and Planning A 38(12), 2253 2269. Grabher, G. (1993). The weakness of strong ties: The lock in of regional development in the Ruhr Area. In Grabher, G. (ed.) The Embedded Firm: On the Socio Economics of Industrial Networks, pp 255 277. London: Routledge. Hadjimichalis, C. (2006). The end of the third Italy as we knew it. Antipode 38(1), 82 106. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Haslam, C., Williams, J. and Williams, K. (1990). The hollowing out of British manufacturing. Economy and Society 19(4), 456 490. Hassink, R. and Shin, D. H. (2005). Guest editorial: The restructuring of old industrial areas in Europe and Asia. Environment and Planning A 37, 571 580. Hudson, R. and Sadler, D. (1986). Contesting works closures in western Europe’s industrial regions: Defending place or betraying class? In Scott, A. & Storper, M. (eds.) Production, Work, Territory, pp 172 193. Winchester, MA: Allen and Unwin.

59

Lever, W. F. (1991). Deindustrialization and the reality of the postindustrial city. Urban Studies 28(6), 983 999. Liu, T. L. and Chiu, S. (1993). Industrial restructuring and labour market adjustment under positive non interventionism: The case of Hong Kong. Environment and Planning A 25(1), 63 79. Lloyd, R. and Sazanami, H. (eds.) (1991). Industrial Change and Regional Economic Transformation: The Experience of Western Europe. London: Harper Collins. Lloyd, R. and Sazanami, H. (eds.) (1989). Deindustrialization and Regional Economic Transformation: The Experience of the United States. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Martin, R. and Rowthorn, B. (eds.) (1986). The Geography of De Industrialisation. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Massey, D. and Meegan, R. (1982). The Anatomy of Job Loss. London: Methuen. Massey, D. and Meegan, R. (1985). Politics and Method. London: Methuen. Mickiewicz, T. and Zalewska, A. (2002). De industrialisation. Lessons from the structural outcomes of post communist transition, William Davidson working paper No. 463, January. Ann Arbor, MI: William Davidson Institute, University of Michigan. Morris, A. S. (1996). Regional industrial promotion in Argentine Patagonia. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe 87(5), 399 406. Philipov, D. and Dorbritz, J. (2003). Demographic Consequences of Economic Transition in Countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Population Studies No. 39, DGIII Social Cohesion, Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe Publishing. Pieper, U. (2000). De industrialisation and the social and economic sustainability nexus in developing countries: Cross country evidence on productivity and employment. Journal of Development Studies 36(4), 66 99. Pike, A. (2002). Task forces and the organisation of economic development: The case of the north east region of England. Environment and Planning C 20, 717 739. Pike, A. (2005). Building a geographical political economy of closure: The closure of R&D Co in north east England. Antipode 37(1), 93 115. Pike, A. (2006). Shareholder value versus the regions: The closure of the Vaux Brewery in Sunderland. Journal of Economic Geography 6, 201 222. Pike, A., Rodrı´guez Pose, A. and Tomaney, J. (2006). Local and Regional Development. London: Routledge. Pitelis, C. and Antonakis, N. (1998). Manufacturing and De Industrialisation: Theory, Evidence and the Case of Greece. Cambridge: Judge Institute of Management Studies. Rodrı´guez Pose, A. and Tomaney, J. (1999). Industrial crisis in the centre of the periphery: Stabilisation, economic restructuring and policy responses in the Sao Paulo metropolitan region. Urban Studies 36(3), 479 498. Sawers, L. and Tabb, W. K. (eds.) (1984). Sunbelt/snowbelt: Urban Development and Regional Restructuring. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The World Bank (2005). World Development Indicators 2005. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

De-Localization A. Kalogeressis and L. Labrianidis, University of Macedonia, Greece & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Foreign Direct Investment An investment involving a long-term relationship and reﬂecting a lasting interest and control by a resident entity in one economy (foreign direct investor or parent enterprise) in an enterprise resident in an economy other than that of the foreign direct investor (FDI enterprise or afﬁliate enterprise or foreign afﬁliate). Outsourcing Outsourcing is the delegation of tasks or jobs from internal production to an external entity (such as a subcontractor). Most recently, it has come to mean the elimination of native staff to staff overseas, where salaries are markedly lower. This is despite the fact that the majority of outsourcing that occurs today still occurs within country boundaries. Subcontracting Subcontracting is the manufacture of goods by one ﬁrm (the subcontractor) for another (the lead ﬁrm) based on the speciﬁcations of the latter. Often there can be several layers of ﬁrms or intermediaries mediating the relationship between the actual production workers and the end product market. The lead ﬁrms normally exercise considerable control over their subcontractors in terms of price, quality and timing of the products they supply.

Introduction Originally delocalisation was conceived as another vari ant of the long list of terms referring to the splitting of a production process, including but not limited to disintegration, internationalization, intra mediate trade, intra product specialization, kaleidoscope comparative advantage, multistage production, outsourcing, slicing up the value chain, splintering, subcontracting and ver tical specialization. Some of these terms, such as sub contracting and internationalization were, of course, already in use with slightly or completely different meanings. Others, such as kaleidoscope comparative advantage and slicing up the value chain were too idio syncratic to gain wide acceptance. Finally, others – delocalisation being one of them – gradually took on a quite different meaning. Therefore, delocalisation is a term referring to the spatial restructuring of industry at a national, regional or global scale. Its primary elements are Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and outsourcing, although it also refers

60

to all other types of cross border business interactions. The direction of the movement is usually from the more developed to the less developed countries. In other words, delocalisation is a term that is ‘wider’ than the other terms, which, at least in mainstream international economics, are identiﬁed with and limited to trade in intermediate products. To give a simple example, any industry that is moving, either directly or indirectly, its most labor intensive sections abroad is delocalizing. Broadly speaking FDI could be considered the direct movement, while subcontracting or outsourcing account for the indirect movement. Before analyzing delocalisation, let us ﬁrst try to ﬁnd our way through the ‘forest’ of terms and try to produce a taxonomy of ﬁrm organization (Table 1). Let us suppose that we have a domestic ﬁrm producing a single product using two intermediate goods (1 and 2 respectively, the former being labor and the latter knowledge intensive), domestic capital and domestic labor. Let us start with a vertically integrated domestic ﬁrm. In this case both intermediate goods are produced in house using domestic capital and labor. Under this con ﬁguration, the ﬁrm can only be linked with the world market through its ﬁnal good exports, or raw materials imports. The ﬁrst possible deviation occurs when the ﬁrm realizes that, for a number of reasons a foreign market can be better served by producing the product there rather than exporting it. This implies a duplication of the pro duction process as additional plants are established to supply different locations: a horizontal FDI. On the other hand, when the ﬁrm realizes that, for example intermediate good 1 can be produced more efﬁciently in a less developed (and lower labor cost)

Table 1

A Taxonomy of delocalization

Location of production Home country

Foreign country (delocalization) For service industries Offshoring

Production Internalized

Externalized

Production kept in-house at home (vertically integrated domestic ﬁrm) Vertical or horizontal FDI Intra-ﬁrm (captive) offshoring

Outsourcing (production outsourced to third-party ﬁrm, e.g., a subcontractor) International outsourcing Outsourced offshoring

De-Localization

country, it may decide to set up a plant there to produce it. Although such movements have traditionally been described as vertical FDI, quite recently the alternative term intra ﬁrm or ‘captive’ offshoring has entered the International Business (IB) vocabulary. The differences between the two terms are almost inexistent, although the latter tends to apply more to service industries, while the former to manufacturing ones. Alternatively, the ﬁrm may decide that it is in its best interest to focus on its core competences, which we may assume are better employed in the production of inter mediate good 2. This could imply that the ﬁrm wishes to stop producing intermediate good 1. Assuming that the latter is still essential to the ﬁrm, it would probably outsource it to either a local ﬁrm in a foreign country, or to an afﬁliate of another Trans national Corporation (TNC). The inherent difﬁculties in deﬁning the terms are now more or less evident. One question that arises is whether ﬁrms that traditionally bought the intermediate product (i.e. never produced it in house and therefore never stopped producing it) are outsourcing. Another issue is related with subcontracting: is it merely a special case of outsourcing or a completely distinct category? Finally, one last issue ignored by this relatively simple taxonomy – however very important in our context has to do with the governance; are relationships based on formal, contractual agreements, the outcome of speciﬁc social environments, trust and embeddedness?

The changing Geographies of Production In the 60 years between the end of the 2nd WW and today, the global map of production of goods and services has changed signiﬁcantly. Although three fourths of the global manufacturing still takes place in Developed countries, the share of Developing countries has risen

61

considerably; from 5% in 1953 to almost 24% in 2001. Another signiﬁcant feature of the world production map is that a very small number of countries produce a sig niﬁcant part of the global output. In 2003 the 15 most signiﬁcant producers contributed 78% of the global manufacturing value added (Figure 1). A simple illustration of the extent of the inequalities is the fact that the manufacturing value added of the Russian Federation (the last country in our top 15 list) is more than the sum of the 86 countries at the bottom of the list! The situation within the various groups of countries also changed signiﬁcantly. Concerning the Developing countries, almost all the change in the region’s per formance was due to the rapid increases in a relatively small number of countries in S.E. Asia. Led by the four Asian ‘tiger’ economies of S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, which were later followed by a number of other countries, the share of the region in world manufacturing value added (see Figure 2) more than tripled during the last two decades. Among the countries of the region, it was China that displayed the most spectacular performance, recently overtaking Germany as the third most signiﬁcant manufacturing producer in the world. In contrast, the performance of the other subgroups of the Developing countries group was rather disappointing. Speciﬁcally, the Developing countries of America lost ground, producing approximately one third of S. & E. Asia in 2001, while only two decades ago the situation was reverse. On the other hand, Africa and the Developing countries of W. Asia and Europe were and still are marginal in the global map of production. Within the Developed countries there have also been considerable changes. North America emerged as the dominant region with more than 30% of the world manufacturing value added in 2001, outperforming Western Europe during the last decade. The performance

30% Share of total

25% 20% 15% 10% 5%

U

ni

te

d

St

at es Ja pa n C hi n a G U e ni te rma d Ki ny ng do m Fr an ce Ita ly C an Ko a re da a, R ep . Sp ai M n ex ic o Br az il In Sa d R ia ud us iA si an ra bi Fe a de ra tio O n th er s

0%

Figure 1 The 15 most signiﬁcant producers (industry, value-added constant 2000 US$). Data from World Bank WDI database (http:// devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/).

62

De-Localization 40 35 30 25 20

1980

15

1990

10

2001

Developing countries

Developed countries

LDCs

China**

CEECs

Others

W. Europe

N. America

W. Asia & Europe

S.& E. Asia

America

0

Africa

5

Others

Figure 2 Evolution of world manufacturing value added. Source: Data from UNCTAD Globstat (http://globstat.unctad.org/html/ index.html).

12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000

74 19 76 19 78 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00 20 02

19

19

19

70 72

0

Growth of FDI inflows (millions of dollars) Growth of GDP (current US$) Growth of Merchandise imports (current US$)

Figure 3 Evolution of FDI, GDP and imports (1970 100). Sources: Data from World Bank WDI database (http:// devdata.worldbank.org/dataonline/) for imports and output, and UNCATAD FDI Database (http://stats.unctad.org ) for FDI inﬂows.

of the ‘other’ Developed countries seems to depict the slump of the Japanese economy during the 1990s. However, the regions where the most impressive (although very different in direction) changes took place are the CEECs and China. The former appear to have experienced a dramatic crisis, currently accounting for less than 3% of the world manufacturing value added (down from almost 20% in 1980). China, on the other hand, is currently the fastest growing economy. FDI Growth and Distribution Although with signiﬁcant ﬂuctuations, FDI has grown enormously during the last 35 years, and especially, since 1985. More speciﬁcally, during the period 1970–2003 the average rate of change of FDI inﬂows was 14.7%,

growing signiﬁcantly faster than exports (11.2%), and even faster than output (9.3%). Until 1982 world output and trade grew at about the same rate (Figure 3). Since then, trade started growing signiﬁcantly faster than GDP. In 2003 trade was 29 times its 1970 level, while output had only grown 18 times. More importantly, since 1993 (almost a decade after trade started growing faster than output), trade growth was in its turn superseded by FDI growth (Figure 3). FDI growth was in fact so spectacular, that after three decades of growth, in 2000 (its peak year) it was more than 100 times higher than its 1970 level, with more than 80% of that growth occurring during the last decade. TNCs and accordingly FDI (outward, Figure 4) as well as inward) are still concentrated in Developed countries. Low labor costs alone are not sufﬁcient for a

De-Localization

63

Global production networks

wer ing po

Strat egic coup ling p roces s

in Barga

-Focal firms

-Subsidiaries and suppliers

Global level Global Institutions -WTO -ILO -NGOs

-Customers

National level National institutions -Government agencies -Labour organization -Business associations -NGOs

Assets -Technology -Organization -Territory -Society

National/ local firms Dependency and transformation

Figure 4 (A conceptual framework for analyzing the impacts of delocalization. Source: Coe, N. M. et al. (2004). Globalizing regional development:A global production networks perspective. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 29(4), 468 484.

country to attract FDI. There are other more important factors, including for example physical and non material infrastructure, socio economic stability and human cap ital. In 2004, the inward FDI stock of Developed coun tries amounted to $6 766 per capita, while the respective ﬁgure for Developing countries was only $438. Further more, the stock of outward FDI of Developed countries was $9 005 per capita, while the equivalent ﬁgure for Developing countries was only $223. Another important aspect regarding FDI is its distri bution between developing countries. Table 2 provides a number of quite interesting hints about the distribution of FDI within developing countries: The 20 most important FDI recipients absorb an • extremely large share of the total inward FDI (84.1%

•

in 2004). although the concentration is very signiﬁcant, it nevertheless is gradually being reduced. However, this does not imply that more countries are becoming signiﬁcant players (in 1990 the countries receiving more than 1% of the total inward FDI stock were 20,

•

while in 2004 they were 21). It rather appears as a consolidation of the place of established countries. East and South east Asian countries along with a small number of Latin American countries appear to have beneﬁted the most. On the contrary, African countries are clearly underrepresented.

The Growing Importance of Outsourcing The problems related to the deﬁnition of outsourcing, brieﬂy analysed above, are reﬂected in the difﬁculties to measure it. In all types of efforts, outsourcing is measured in terms of trade ﬂows or as shares of total trade ﬂows. Intra ﬁrm trade (trade between parents and afﬁliates in a TNC network) is one of the measures often used to capture outsourcing. As in the case of FDI, most of the empirical evidence comes from the USA, Japan and Sweden. In these three countries, intra ﬁrm trade ac counts for 38–45% (in the case of the USA), 30% (Japan) and 50% (Sweden) of the total trade of the parent companies.

64

De-Localization

Table 2

The 20 most signiﬁcant developing FDI recipients

Country

1980 Share (%)

Rank

1990 Share (%)

China, Hong Kong SAR China Mexico Singapore Brazil Russian Federation Bermuda Korea, Republic of Chile Argentina Thailand Malaysia South Africa Venezuela China, Taiwan Province of India Cayman Islands Turkey Nigeria Viet Nam

15.4 0.9 0.7 5.3 12.7

1 25 31 5 2

12.4 5.7 6.2 8.4 10.2

1 5 4 3 2

3.0 1.0 0.9 4.0 0.8 3.5 9.8 1.2 1.7 0.4 0.2 5.9 2.0 0.9

8 23 30 6 27 7 3 20 16 45 60 4 15 22

3.8 1.4 2.8 2.4 2.3 2.8 2.5 1.1 2.7 0.5 0.5 3.1 2.3 0.5

7 19 11 15 17 10 13 20 12 34 31 8 16 35

Total

85.9

86.5

Rank

2004 Share (%)

Rank

20.5 11.0 8.2 7.2 6.8 4.4 3.5 2.5 2.4 2.4 2.2 2.1 2.1 2.0 1.7 1.7 1.6 1.6 1.4 1.3

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

84.1

Source: UNCTAD FDI Database (http://stats.unctad.org).

The second, and much more popular, measure is the various approaches of intermediate inputs. One such approach has been the effort to estimate the level of ‘Vertical Specialisation’ (VS) as a measure of the imported inputs in products that are then exported. This measure is a subset of all intermediate inputs, as some of these are not embodied into export products. In studies of OECD and developing countries increasing shares of VS trade in the majority of countries have been observed. Furthermore, it has been argued that about 30% of the growth of exports of these countries is attributed to VS.

The globalisation of services

While the delocalisation processes in services and manufacturing are similar, there are important differ ences too. First, although the services sector is much larger than the manufacturing sector, only some 10% of its output enters international trade, compared with over 50% for manufacturing. Second, the pace of Global isation of services affected by the tradability revolution is faster than manufacturing. Third, whereas the relocation of goods production has involved, overwhelmingly, ﬁrms in manufacturing, service functions are located abroad by companies in all sectors. Fourth, the skill intensity is generally higher for tradable services than for manu facturing located abroad, thus affecting white collar jobs in particular. And ﬁnally, services located abroad may be more footloose than relocated manufacturing activities because of lower capital intensity and sunk costs, espe cially services that do not require high skills.

The Globalisation of services reﬂects nothing less than a revolution in the tradability of services. Tradi tionally, most services have been non tradable in that they require buyers and sellers to be in the same place at the same time. Unlike physical products they could not be traded between parties located in different countries; a haircut, for instance, is impossible to deliver across a distance. Many services however, do not require physical proximity, but have usually taken place face to face because of technical constraints, habits or customs. These services center on exchange, storage, processing and retrieval of information broadly deﬁned. New ICTs are dramatically changing the tradability of the information centered set of services, in several ways. For example, all kinds of information can be stored by digitization. And much cheaper and faster transportation allows the instantaneous exchange of digitized infor mation and voice communication between people any where around the globe. The use of ICT allows knowledge to be codiﬁed, standardized and digitized, which in turn allows the production of more services to be split up, or ‘‘fragmented,’’ into smaller components that can be located elsewhere to take advantage of cost, quality, and economies of scale or other factors. This makes it possible to produce certain services in one location and consume them (or use them in further production) in another – either simultaneously (e.g. in formation provided via call centers) or at different time (e.g. data entry, software development). Services delocalisation is not simply a North – South issue. A signiﬁcant share of relocation takes place among

De-Localization

Developed countries (i.e. Canada, Ireland and various W. European countries remain among the most attractive locations). Lower wages are not the only driver of services relocation. The phenomenon is essentially a manifestation of a shift in production in response to comparative advantage. It offers all the advantages and costs of such a shift. Services relocation is not a ‘‘zero sum game,’’ in which one party (the countries receiving service work) gains at the expense of the other party. Interesting parallels can be drawn with the relocation of jobs in ICT related manufacturing, when assembly operations shifted to East Asia. Together with technical progress, the Globalisation of hardware cut the prices of ICT products, increased investment in ICT hardware and contributed to higher productivity and growth. Many new jobs emerged in the US to integrate ICT equipment into the workplace and such jobs grew twice as fast as overall employment.

A Conceptual Framework In discussing a conceptual framework for delocalization, there are two distinct questions to be answered. Both have been adequately addressed by quite distinct schools of thought, however, there have been precious little efforts to bring them together. The ﬁrst is ‘why’, while the second is ‘how’ are ﬁrms delocalizing. The ﬁrst question has been the main subject of a number of theories falling into the wider International Business (IB) discipline, the most inﬂuential of which have been the internalization theory and Dunning’s eclectic (or otherwise known as Ownership, Locations, Internalisation – OLI) approach. Concerning the second question, one needs to start looking at how the economy is organised from pro duction to consumption. Although there have been nu merous efforts it is Gerefﬁ’s Global Commodity Chains (GCCs) and the Global Production Networks (GPNs) that have been the most inﬂuential paradigms (particu larly the former). The conceptual framework proposed for analysing delocalisation is based on the GPN approach and has four main analytical dimensions that are intersected by wider categories i.e. 1. The ﬁrm, with its own unique set of resources and competitive advantages 2. The sector, with its given technologies and markets 3. The ‘‘environment’’ (local/ regional/national) with its unique institutions, civil society, history and policies 4. The global ‘‘environment’’ with its unique institutions, governance and power relations Finally, the wider categories intersecting the four ana lytical dimensions are value, embeddedness, and power.

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Furthermore, in order to understand how delocalisa tion affects development (which is identiﬁed with value creation, enhancement and capture) one could look at the interplay between three large groups of variables: assets, institutions and GPNs. Each country or region is endowed with (or has cre ated) a set of assets, some of which are ubiquitous, while others are more or less exclusive to the country. Firms lie at the other apex of the triangle. These may be the focal ﬁrms, their subsidiaries or suppliers or their customers. However, this can also be expanded to ﬁrms that are not part of GPNs or GCCs. Firms operating within bi national or regional networks, which are most usually considered as quite irrelevant to not only the more mainstream IB or neoclassical approaches, but also to the more ‘socialised’ network approaches, need to be seriously considered, as they often support or outright substitute GPNs in their role of growth enhancement. Speciﬁcally, a region’s (and therefore a nation’s) assets (in fact the economies of scale and/or scope implied by the speciﬁc assets) can bring growth inasmuch as they com plement the strategic needs of trans local actors situated within GPNs. This strategic coupling (of the ﬁrms’ of GPNs’ strategic goals and the regions’ economies) is therefore of primary importance to development. Nevertheless, we should try not to ignore the possibilities of a decoupling process that can be equivalently detri mental to development. This possibility points to the importance of embeddedness to the sustainability of development. Here the term embeddedness is used in a very precise way, in order to capture the extent to which an activity becomes ﬁxed in a particular place and, as such, contributes to local/national economic develop ment through both direct and indirect spinoffs (including backward linkages with local suppliers)’. It is clear then that even local ﬁrms can become dissembedded. Finally, we have the institutions at all levels of gov ernance (national, regional or local). During the last decades, there has been a growing devolution of political and economic power from the central state to local and regional institutions. This has resulted to a multitude of conﬁgurations of institutions, affecting both the regional or national sets of assets and the bargaining power vis a` vis the TNCs. The result of this interplay between countries or regions with their assets and institutions and ﬁrms trying to take advantage of the assets is development, which is conceptualised as value that is created, enhanced and captured. Assuming that value is created in the country, the big question then is how to enhance this value and, more importantly, how to capture it. Finally the two levels of analysis (the global and the national/local), as well as the three tangible dimensions parallel to the two levels, i.e. the ﬁrms, the assets and the institutions, get transcended by the value created in the

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production and consumption of goods. The territorial embeddedness of the ﬁrms, as well as the power they possess within their respective networks, more or less deﬁnes how much of this value will be captured by the regions. It is clear that these factors combine in a rather in dividualistic way, consequently rendering prescriptions extremely difﬁcult.

highly stylised, reﬂect the reality of the vast majority of the sector. During the ﬁrst stage (1970–80 – Figure 5) orders to Greek subcontractors started coming from W. European (mainly German) and to a lesser extent American lead ﬁrms. This happened for a number of reasons, such as the country’s relatively low labour cost, as well as its privileged status as a trade partner of the EU. These orders were normally executed within the company, although in some cases, there were also 2nd layer subcontractors within the same city (e.g. Thessa loniki), so as to lower labour costs. The change that takes place during the second stage (1980–1990/91; Figure 6) comes from the Greek sub contractors, since they gradually develop quite extensive subcontracting networks of 2nd layer subcontractors within the city and mainly in the surrounding villages. Although a considerable part of the less labour intensive tasks are still performed in house by the ﬁrst level sub contractors, the simpler tasks are assigned to 2nd layer subcontractors, who, in their turn often develop their

A Case Study: The Delocalisation of the Garment Industry in the Southern European Periphery This section is a case study of the delocalisation of the garment industry through N. Greece, and particularly the city of Thessaloniki and its neighbouring prefectures. Figures 5–8 describe the various stages in the trans formation of the sector. In order to better comprehend the various movements, we have divided the whole process into four quite distinct stages, which, although

S. Bulgaria Germany

N. Greece

Thessaloniki

Athens 1970−1980 Firms Firm activity:

Firm ownership:

Position: (Width indicates position)

Developement

Not domestic

Lead firm

Manufacturing

Domestic

1st tier network member

Distribution

Joint venture

2nd tier network member

Intermediary Relationships/flows Type of flow: (Arrowhead indicates direction)

Power structure: (concerns the firm to the right of the arrow)

Information/knowledge

Independent

Material

Dependent

Figure 5 Stage 1 of the delocalization of the garment industry through Greece.

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S. Bulgaria Germany

N. Greece

Thessaloniki

Athens

1980−1990

Figure 6 Stage 2 of the delocalization of the garment industry through Greece.

S. Bulgaria Germany

N. Greece

Thessaloniki

Athens 1990−2000

Figure 7 Stage 3 of the delocalization of the garment industry through Greece.

own – smaller – networks of 3rd level subcontractors, often homeworkers. The third stage (1990/1–2000 – Figure 7) is the ‘triangular’ manufacturing stage. Lead ﬁrms in e.g. Germany or the US, continue placing their orders to their established Greek partners. However, soon after the collapse of the state socialist regimes, the latter are beginning to transfer parts of their activities to 2nd layer subcontractors in the Southern parts of the neighbouring countries, particularly Bulgaria, and FYROM. By the end of this period, most Greek garment ﬁrms are mainly

responsible for the organisation of the network. It is interesting to note that for variable periods (ranging from several months to few years) the lead ﬁrms were un informed of this development. This gave ﬁrst movers a considerable advantage, since they were paid Greek prices for Eastern European labour costs. Finally, during the ﬁnal stage (2000 – today), more direct links are gradually developed between Germany and Bulgaria. The Greek – German – Bulgarian ‘triangle’ highlight a number of issues which are of relevance to the understanding of delocalisation. Firstly, extreme mobility

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S. Bulgaria Germany N. Greece

Thessaloniki

2000−Today

Athens

Figure 8 Stage 4 of the delocalization of the garment industry through Greece.

often co exists with various degrees of locational sticki ness. In our case, it seems to have taken many of the German lead ﬁrms more than 30 years to abandon their Greek partners. Developing a relationship with a new contractor usually takes a long time; thus lead ﬁrms may prefer to follow their established patterns wherever they decide to shift to a new country and keep on ne gotiating the conditions of their relations rather than looking for new suppliers. Moreover, dependence and asymmetrical power relations may co exist with mutual conﬁdence. These two factors can explain, at least in part, why Greek ﬁrms continue to form one of the apexes of the German Greek – Bulgarian garment manufacturing triangle. Of course, the role of proximity in the creation of the Greek Bulgarian cluster has been immense. In fact, the Greek Bulgarian borders highlight the case that in tense delocalisation in the border areas can provide a fertile ground for companies that otherwise would not be able to go international. On the other hand, the very fact that even very small companies can easily go inter national can create a shock, at least in the short term, to the local economy of the home country. However, when ﬁrms or sectors fail to functionally upgrade or diversify, there seem to be limits to the degree of stickiness, since, sooner or later, the costs of main taining established relations exceed those of establishing new ones. So, the second point is related to the devel opment implications. In Figure 8 it becomes evident that the garment sector is in a sharp recession phase in Thessaloniki and the surrounding area. Not only are German ﬁrms increasing establishing direct links with Bulgaria, but local producers never really managed to gain a foothold in the local, not to mention national market, which during the last few years is increasingly dominated by ﬁrms originating from Athens. In other

words, functional upgrading for the cluster’s ﬁrms was a real rarity. How did this come to happen? This is cer tainly not a case of obstacles imposed by the buyers. What seems to be the answer to this question is the fact that Greek subcontractors became locked in into what was, at least initially, a very rewarding arrangement. Almost overnight these ﬁrms broke into foreign markets, eschewing the considerable sunk cost necessary in order to become exporters. In fact, most of these ﬁrms never even searched for new clients. In a sense, the obstacles to upgrading were imposed by the ﬁrms themselves and their unfortunate short termist view of success. This, of course, emphatically highlights the extreme difﬁculty to generalise both about the course of delocalisation, as well as its implications.

Implications of Delocalisation The issue of the implications of delocalisation is very interesting in the sense that the literature appears to largely ignore the fact that, to a signiﬁcant extent, similar questions have been asked and answered in the past. So, in both the academic and non academic literature the threat of jobs relocation to lower labor cost countries often emerges as an unprecedented phenomenon. The rise of global outsourcing has triggered waves of con sternation in advanced economies about job loss and the degradation of capabilities that could spell the dis appearance of entire national industries. It is not the ﬁrst time the international activities of national ﬁrms is causing such concerns, since almost 40 years ago (1968) the ﬁrst report concerning the impact of FDI on the source country, prepared by a Commission headed by W. B. Reddaway, was published. It was followed by a very

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large number of papers studying almost every possible aspect of the impacts of FDI including the impact of FDI on exports, employment, industry structure and domestic investment. Delocalization has both advantages and disadvantages for host and home countries. In host countries in particular: FDI in export oriented services offers a number of economic development beneﬁts such as increased export earnings, job creation, higher wages and upgrading of skills. Concerns have been expressed that the growth of not only blue, but also white collar jobs in host countries signals employment losses in the home countries (i.e. Developed countries) and potential harm to their economies. However, somewhat paradoxically, the latter are expected to reap a considerable part of the gains from relocating. Beneﬁts include lower prices to consumers, expanding markets for exports and higher corporate proﬁts. A study has found that for every dollar spent on services relocation to India, ﬁrms in the US reaped $1.12 $1.14 in beneﬁts. Hence, there are good reasons for Developed countries to welcome the trend. This does not mean that this process will necessarily be smooth; there are bound to be short term challenges for policy makers, especially in terms of adjusting to the restructuring taking place in response to shifting comparative advan tage. What is not clear here is who uses this money and for what purposes. As when production remains domestic then this money is passed to the employees and then in the domestic economy, whereas in the latter case the ﬁnal recipient of this money may be the US company, but it is not at all clear where the money is spent, invested or taxed. So it is vital to distinguish between the micro and the macroeconomic levels. Not surprisingly, because of the important role of out sourcing and subcontracting, most of the concerns about delocalisation center on jobs, wages, and skills in the countries involved. In fact, the concerns are so grave that one could easily get the impression that this is the end of the world as we know it. This is certainly an optical illusion. There is an over exaggeration of the number of jobs that have been lost by Developed countries. For example, in the US, only 2.5% of all job losses during the ﬁrst quarter of 2004 were the result of relocation. 850 000 jobs may move from US. But even though this number sounds alarming it represents a relatively small slice of the 131 million people employed in the US. Technical change is a far more important cause of job losses. Bank tellers, answering services and secretaries are replaced by ATMs, voice answering technologies and word processing soft ware. Those are two parallel phenomena, both of vital importance for labor intensive industries. However, technological change has been around for several dec ades, whereas delocalisation is a new trend – at least in its current form.

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On the other hand, there is an over exaggeration again of the beneﬁts in employment created in the countries hosting such activities. For example, India’s high tech boom, even with an estimated 700 000 computer software professionals, still involves less than 0.2% of the nation’s more than 400 million of economically active population. In turn, what is most concerning about delocalisation is that it’s diverting the attention of business leaders from building successful, innovative companies to integrating the ﬁrm’s speciﬁc assets that they control to simply ﬁnding cheaper inputs. Of course there are innovators who are using delocalisation to get cheaper inputs in a way that is really speeding up their innovation cycle as well. See also: Foreign Direct Investment; Globalization, Economic; Networks; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Transnationalism and Labor Geography.

Further Reading Blomstrom, M. and Kokko, A. (1996). How foreign investment affects host countries. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 1745. Coe, N. M. et al. (2004). Globalizing regional development: A global production networks perspective. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29(4), 468 484. Dicken, P. (2003). Global Shift: Reshaping the Global Economic Map in the 21st Century (4th edn.). London/New York: Sage Publications/ Guilford Press. Dicken, P., Kelly, P. F., Olds, K. and Yeung, H. W. C. (2001). Chains and networks, territories and scales: Towards a relational framework for analysing the global economy. Global Networks 1, 99 123. Dunning, J. H. (1993). Multinational Enterprises and the Global Economy. Workingham: Addison Wesley. Feenstra, R. C. (1998). Integration of trade and disintegration of production in the global economy. Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(4), 37 50. Gerefﬁ, G. and Korzeniewicz, M. (eds.) (1994). Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1999). Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance (2nd edn.). Cambridge: Polity Press. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (1993). World Investment Report: Transnational Corporations and Integrated International Production. New York: United Nations. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (2004). World Investment Report: The Shift towards Services. New York and Geneva: United Nations Publications.

Relevant Websites http://www personal.umich.edu/Balandear/glossary/ The Terms of Trade and Other Wonders: Deardorff’s Glossary of International Economics. http://www.unctad.org United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. http://www.unctad.org/Templates/Page.asp?intItemID=1888&lang ¼ 1 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Statistical Databases on line. http://worldbank.org/ The World Bank.

Democracy C. Barnett, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK M. Low, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Democracy has a simple meaning: ‘Rule by the people’. However, the meaning of ‘the people’ and of ‘rule’ is far from straightforward. The historical geography of democracy involves the ongoing process of ﬁnding answers to various practical problems: Who belongs to the demos? How should rule be organized? What is the scope of the activities over which democratic rule should be extended? Disagreement over basic deﬁnitions, con cepts, and institutions is constitutive of democracy’s dynamism, inclusiveness, and widespread appeal. These questions of the scope of rule and the delimi tation of the people raise important geographical ques tions. In large territorial states, the question of rule raises issues of the spatial reach and territorial organization of the mechanisms of popular rule. Is democratic rule limited only to electoral practices and representative mechanisms, or should it extend to more participatory practices such as citizens’ juries or participatory bud geting? Likewise, the question of the people raises issues of how to deﬁne membership of a polity. Should cultural criteria of shared belonging to a community prevail? Or should criteria of place of residence be used? Or should a principle of affected interest be used to deﬁne the iden tity of those who should have a say in shaping decisions? Democracy has not been an explicit object of analysis in geography until very recently. The heightened interest in this topic is in part a reﬂection of real world processes of democratization, and awareness of the worldly rele vance of electoral geographies to the exercise of power across the globe. It is also, however, a reﬂection of shifts in the normative paradigms which underwrite self consciously critical human geography. Until recently, there has been little explicit focus in human geography on the normative questions that are at the core of debates about the relationship between democracy and spatiality. The revival of political philosophy since the 1970s was more or less systematically marginalized by more radical perspectives, often dismissed as too ‘liberal’. However, the 1990s saw a shift in various subdisciplines toward investigating the way normative issues central to demo cratic theory played out in practice. This is reﬂected, for example, in discussions of issues of citizenship, deliberation, and participation in areas such as develop ment geography, urban studies, planning studies, and environmental studies. Democracy now provides the

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rallying call of even the most radical of geographical analyses of neoliberal capitalism. The absence of demo cratic politics is now recognized as a key factor in the reproduction of social injustice and inequality, and the exposure of vulnerable or marginalized groups to serious harm. At the same time, the terms of democratic politics have been reconﬁgured by innovative mobilizations by social movements. At a more abstract theoretical level, the styles of spatialized ontology that geographers have pioneered have opened up new understandings of ‘the political’. This has drawn the discipline into debates in formed by a distinctive strand of contemporary political theory that focuses on the agonistic, dissensual aspects of democracy. Aspects of democratic theory are now present across human geography. This work can be divided into two broad areas of concern: research into and evaluations of liberal democracy; and explorations of a variety of alternative forms of democracy.

Geographies of Liberal Democracy Liberal democracy is usually taken to refer to forms of institutionalized popular representation, involving peri odic mass election of representatives to authoritative le gislatures (and in many cases of executive heads of state), under conditions of free speech and association. This is a model unevenly developed in the post Enlightenment West, and widely emulated and/or imposed in other parts of the world. Liberal representative democracy is usually legitimated by appealing to the basis of politics in the preferences and liberties of private individuals recog nized as equal citizens under the rule of law. There is an enormous ﬁeld of literature, largely in political science, devoted to examining the conditions under which such liberal democratic institutions develop, as well as to particular aspects of these systems, including political parties, elections, voting behavior, citizenship, and the media. There is also a substantial body of liberal political theory associated with the justiﬁcation of institutions of liberal democracy, a body of work that often provides key critical insights into the operations of actually existing liberal democracies. Both these ﬁelds of research – pol itical science and political theory – tend to assume a given spatial formation of democracy, consisting of ter ritorialized national states, internally divided in some way or another.

Democracy

Modern democratic theory has developed around a speciﬁc geographical imagination. This assumes that democracy is framed by bounded territories, involving a nested hierarchy of scales contained within the nation state. Thinkers in this tradition have focused considerable attention on the geographical organization of democratic politics in complex, spatially extensive territories. Re search on liberal representative democracy in geography has focused on two areas: electoral geographies and geographies of democratization. The subﬁeld of electoral geography has consistently focused on aspects of how geography and democracy are related in liberal polities. Much of this research has been focused on explaining and mapping the spatial distri bution of votes. Geographers have demonstrated how the spatial organization of electoral systems effects how votes are translated into representative majorities in liberal democracies. Recent attention has focused on developing more sophisticated, contextually sensitive explanations for voting behavior. Research on electoral processes has broadened out to include the geographies of cam paigning, party formation, and political communication. The spatial organization of formal democracy therefore has consequences for democratic outcomes in terms of basic normative criteria of equality and representative ness. Accordingly, recent research in electoral geography has more explicitly addressed the normative issues raised by practices of gerrymandering, political redistricting, and the design of representative devices. Research on the geographies of democratization is part of a broader tradition of work examining the con ditions for the formation and maintenance of liberal democratic polities. Since the late 1980s, the diffusion of democracy as a global form of governance has followed in the wake of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, political transitions away from authoritarianism in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and the application of norms of democratic governance in the geopolitics of Western international ﬁnancial policy, trade negoti ations, and military engagements. Geographers have investigated the degree to which the adoption of democratic forms of governance can be accounted for by speciﬁcally geographical factors. This research con tributes to renewed debates over whether democracy can only be established and sustained after various socioeconomic and cultural prerequisites have been met. Geographers have also critically assessed the theore tical assumptions and the practical devices through which liberal forms of electoral democracy have been circulated as the global norm. Debates about democra tization raise fundamental questions regarding the degree to which the norms of Western, liberal, representative democracy can and should be practically applied in non Western contexts and deployed as normative benchmarks of critical analysis. The geographical mobility of

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democratic practices suggests that the devices through which different imperatives of democratic rule are enacted can be combined, adapted, and reordered in different geographical contexts. As a consequence, the values enacted through these devices – the ways in which interests are represented, conﬂicts resolved, participation practised, accountability enforced – might be highly variable between different geographical contexts.

Alternative Democratic Spaces Criticisms of theories of liberal representative dem ocracy that assume the nation state as the natural container of democratic politics have encouraged geog raphers to give increasing attention to various alternative models of democratic politics. There are two aspects to this focus: a concern with scales of democratic politics above and below that of the nation state; and a concern with the potential for radicalizing democratic politics in established and new arenas. The ﬁrst aspect of the attention on alternative models of democratic politics is the focus on the spaces of democratic politics that exist above and below the level of the nation state. While electoral geography tends to focus on the translation of subnational electoral outcomes into aggregate national election results, a burgeoning literature focuses on the city or the region as a privileged scene of democratic politics in its own right. This focus is related to claims about place as the key spatial modality in which different identities and interests are experienced and negotiated. At the same time, in political science and political theory, the territorial framing of democracy is increasingly sub jected to critical investigation by confronting democratic theory with the facts of contemporary transnationalism and globalization. This marks one area of overlap with research in geography. Settled assumptions about inclusion and participation in democratic politics are disturbed by transnational social relations and identiﬁ cations, which point up the limitations of territorialized models of representation. Settled assumptions about the objects of democratic decision making are likewise in creasingly under strain with the proliferation of non territorial concerns, such as global climate change, pandemic disease, and integrated transnational ﬁnancial markets. This shift of attention to the complex spaces and scales through which democratic politics operates is related to a second aspect of research on alternative democratic spaces in geography. It is concerned with searching out and afﬁrming various fractures in liberal representative regimes. These explorations are commit ted to thinking of democracy as more than simply a procedure for legitimizing the decisions of centralized

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bureaucracies and holding elected representatives accountable. This reﬂects a broader turn to thinking of democracy as a contestatory regime. This is indicated by the prevalence of theories of democracy in geography which focus on redeﬁning ‘the political’ as a realm in which new identities are formed and new agendas are generated, and through which the stabilized procedures, institutions, and identiﬁcations of ofﬁcial politics are contested and potentially transformed. This is indicative of an alternative sense of ‘democratization’, understood not so much as the geographical diffusion of established norms of democracy, but the deepening of democratic impulses and their extension of new arenas of everyday life. In contrast to the focus of electoral geography and mainstream political science on the formal democratic procedures of elections, voting, and parties, attention is paid to the diverse practices and sites where questions of accountability, citizenship, justice, and participation are contested. These broad schools of democratic thought share an emphasis on the instrumental and intrinsic value of ‘participation’ as the central normative feature of democratic politics. They belong to a broader family of twentieth century egalitarian thought about the rela tionships between democracy, rights, and social justice, including post Rawslian political philosophy; post Habermasian theories of democracy, including their feminist variants; various postcolonial liberalisms; agon istic liberalisms and post structuralist theories of radical democracy; and the revival of republican theories of democracy, freedom, and justice. These traditions share a conviction that democratic politics amounts to more than formal procedures for the aggregation of individualized voter preferences, and taken together amount to a broad tradition of theories of ‘radical democracy’. However, radical democracy in this expansive sense is not best thought of as a rejection of liberalism ‘tout court’. One of the lessons drawn by diverse strands of radical political theory from the experience of twentieth century history is that struggles for social justice can create new forms of domination and inequality. This leads to a grudging ap preciation of liberalism as a potential source for insight into the politics of pluralistic associational life. The problems of coordination, institutional design, and justi ﬁcation which liberal political theory dwells at length on are unavoidable in any normatively persuasive and empirically grounded critical theory of democracy. In geography, ‘radical democracy’ has often been taken to be synonymous with a speciﬁcally post structuralist approach developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. However, the term is better used to describe a broad variety of approaches that emphasize the inclusive, participatory, and contestatory qualities of democratic politics. Perhaps the most inﬂuential of these approaches is the broad family of theories of deliberative

democracy, often sharing a critical interest in the ideas of Ju¨rgen Habermas. Approaches that develop various strategies for informed, structured participatory dis cussion and decision making are now central to debates over democratic theory. These generally imply a much more active role for citizens in all facets of decision making, as well as, in many cases, the extension of democratic norms to a far wider array of activities. They also involve thinking of a range of activities that are not directly political, in the sense of being tied directly to decision making processes, as nonetheless important facets of a broader democratic culture by virtue of their contribution to the quality of the public sphere. Post structuralist theories of radical democracy have also had signiﬁcant inﬂuence in geography. These emphasize the idea of democracy as a diverse set of practices of chal lenging the boundaries of ‘the political’ in two senses: by establishing new issues as counting as political; and by focussing on the active formation of subjectivities and identiﬁcations in and through political practices of ag onistic contestation and collective mobilization. Post structuralist theories of radical democracy tend to lay considerable emphasis on space, as a scene of multiplicity and encounter with difference, as the very scene of democratic politics. These theories are also related to a distinctive understanding of ‘democracy to come’, derived from the work of Jacques Derrida, which emphasizes the idea that democracy is an inherently contested, evaluative, incomplete formation which is always open to further perfection, without hope of ﬁnally culminating in a pure form. Theories of radical democracy, whether of a Haberma sian or post struturalist inﬂection, focus on forms of broadly noninstrumental cultural practice and performance, understood as key mediums of democratic opinion for mation or democratic subject formation. In turn, both broad approaches share in the problem of whether the forms of ‘inﬂuence’ that can be generated in the public sphere or in cultivating an agonistic democratic ethos can or should be articulated with the institutionalized ‘exercise’ of power. Post Habermasian approaches ﬁnesse this issue through concepts of weak and strong public spheres. Post structuralist theorists, who address the communicative conditions of pluralistic democracy through ﬁgures of democratic ethos, are even more wary of drawing too close to sites of decision making and rule. For them, the force of democratic politics is reserved for the disruptive energies of contestatory practices. In practical terms, theories of radical democracy, broadly deﬁned, are often associated with calls for the ‘decentralization’ of decision making and political par ticipation to subnational scales of regions and cities. This ‘localizing’ impulse easily falls into the trap of assuming that subnational scales of governance are somehow more democratic by virtue of being closer to people’s everyday

Democracy

concerns. At the same time, there is increasing attention given to emergent forms of transnational democracy, focusing on the problem of whether systems of globalized economic and political governance can be subordinated to democratic oversight. Research on this dimension of contemporary democratic politics has important practical and theoretical lessons for thinking about the degree to which radical practices of deliberation, participation, and contestation might always have to contend with the problem of representation. It is in work on issues of global justice and transnational democracy that one ﬁnds sustained attention to the diverse agents of justice through which democratic justice can be pursued and secured, moving beyond an exclusive focus on states as the privileged containers of democratic politics. This emphasis on the global dimensions of democratic politics has two important implications for geographical research on democracy. First, it indicates that, rather than op posing representative to participatory forms of dem ocracy, any viable form of democratic polity is likely to combine aspects of these practices in different ways. For both practical and normative reasons, representation seems an irreducible aspect of any viable, pluralistic model of democracy. Not only do representative pro cedures enable the ‘time space distanciation’ of demo cratic politics, but they also embody important principles of difference and nonidentity within the ‘demos’. Rep resentation is also an unavoidable mechanism for the integration of so called mute interests, such as future generations or nonhuman actors. The second reason why the globalization of democracy is signiﬁcant is that it suggests a move beyond the predominant territorial framing of the spatiality of democracy. Rather than thinking simply in terms of the need to articulate sub national and national scales with global scales, dis cussions of these topics increasingly focus on the diverse spatialities of democracy, ones that articulate territorial and nonterritorial practices, and scalar and nonscalar conceptualizations of space.

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In this sense, geography is at stake in a new way across the social sciences: understanding contemporary democracy requires geographical contributions by everyone, and democracy as an object of analysis offers considerable potential for new forms of cross disciplinary engagement. However, further engagement with these debates by geographers presents a challenge for prevalent understandings of critical vocation in the discipline. The predominant understanding of critical analysis in human geography has been developed by engaging with the defects of liberal theory, primarily by reference to eco nomics. But as we have already suggested, it is difﬁcult to appreciate the dialogic contexts of contemporary theories of radical democracy without acknowledging the degree to which these theories draw on key themes from tradi tions of political liberalism, such as pluralism, citizenship, rights, or the separation of powers. It is tempting to see in the energy of theories of radical democracy a promise that everything can and should be democratized and that all interests can and should be included in democratic practices. However, an abiding aspect of liberal theories of democratic politics is a concern with the justiﬁable limits of collective decision making, a concern informed by an acknowledgement of the potential harms, injustice, and violence that can be generated by the putatively democratic exercise of coercive power. Democracy, it should be remembered, is a way of doing politics, and not a substitute for politics. Tallying with the ways in which nondemocratic relationships, such as those based on faith, or those mediated through bureaucratic institutions, or those underwritten by the force of violence can and should be democratized is a pressing problem of empir ical, normative, and theoretical analysis. See also: Citizenship; Civil Society; Electoral Geography; Governance, Good; Participation; Political Representation; Social Movements.

Further Reading Conclusion It is signiﬁcant that in those ﬁelds of social science where issues of democratic theory and practice are primarily considered, in political science and political theory, for example, contemporary debates often hinge on geo graphical themes and geographical problems. Geog raphers’ contributions to further spatializing the analysis of democratic practices such as elections, and to im agining alternative democratic geographies, synthesize quite well with emerging concerns about how democracy can be understood in a world where the sites of politics are multiplying and crucial decisions are made in ways that cut across territorially organized liberal regimes.

Agnew, J. (1996). Mapping politics: How context counts in electoral geography. Political Geography 15, 129 146. Amin, A., Thrift, N., Baker, H. and Massey, D. (2005). Centres don’t have to be points: Politics beyond state boundaries. In Latour, B. & Weibel, P. (eds.) Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Anderson, J. (ed.) (2002). Transnational Democracy: Political Spaces and Border Crossings. London: Routledge. Barnett, C. (2003). Culture and Democracy: Media, Space and Representation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Barnett, C. (2004). Deconstructing radical democracy: Articulation, representation and being with others. Political Geography 23, 503 528. Barnett, C. (2005). Temporality and the paradoxes of democracy. Political Geography 24, 641 647. Barnett, C. and Low, M. (eds.) (2004). Spaces of Democracy: Geographical Perspectives on Citizenship, Participation and Representation. London: Sage.

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Bell, J. E. and Staeheli, L. (1998). Discourses of diffusion and democratization. Political Geography 20, 175 195. Benhabib, S. (ed.) (1996). Democracy and Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Braun, B. and Disch, L. (2002). Radical democracy’s ‘modern constitution’. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20, 505 511. Brown, M. (1997). Replacing Citizenship: AIDS Activism and Radical Democracy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Burgess, J., Stirling, A., Clark, J., Davies, G., Eames, M., Staley, K. and Williamson, S. (2007). Deliberative mapping: A novel analytic deliberative methodology to support contested science policy decisions. Public Understanding of Science 16, 299 322. Cohen, J. and Fung, A. (2004). The radical democratic project. Swiss Political Science Review 10(4), 23 34. Connolly, W. (1993). The Terms of Political Discourse (3rd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Connolly, W. (1995). The Ethos of Pluralization. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Connolly, W. (1999). Why I am Not a Secularist. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Dahl, R. (1970). After the Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dahl, R. (1989). Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dahl, R. (2000). On Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Derrida, J. (2005). Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dryzek, J. S. (2002). Deliberative Democracy and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dryzek, J. S. (2005). Deliberative democracy in divided societies: Alternatives to agonism and analgesia. Political Theory 33, 218 242. Dunn, J. (2005). Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy. New Delhi: Atlantic Books. Entrikin, N. (2002). Democratic place making and multiculturalism. Geograﬁska Annaler 84B, 19 25. Ettlinger, N. (2007). Bringing democracy home: Post Katrina New Orleans. Antipode 39, 8 16. Fainstein, S. (2000). New directions in planning theory. Urban Affairs Review 35, 451 478. Goodin, R. (2003). Reﬂective Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hannah, M. (2001). Sampling and the politics of representation in US Census 2000. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, 515 534. Held, D. (1995). Democracy and the Global Order. Cambridge: Polity Press. Held, D. (2006). Models of Democracy (3rd edn.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Hickey, S. and Mohan, G. (2005). Relocating participation within a radical politics of development. Development and Change 36, 237 262. Howard, D. (2002). The Specter of Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press. Johnston, R. J. (1999). Geography, fairness and liberal democracy. In Proctor, J. & Smith, D. M. (eds.) Geography and Ethics, pp 44 58. London: Routledge. Johnston, R. J., Pattie, C., Dorling, D. and Rossiter, D. (2001). From Votes to Seats: The Operation of the UK Electoral System Since 1945. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Katznelson, I. (1996). Social justice, liberalism and the city. In Merriﬁeld, A. & Swyngedouw, E. (eds.) The Urbanization of Injustice, pp 45 64. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Keane, J. (2004). Violence and Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, E. (1985). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.

Latour, B. (2004). The Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Low, M. (1997). Representation unbound. In Cox, K. (ed.) Spaces of Globalization, pp 240 280. New York: Guilford. Low, M. (2003). Political geography in question. Political Geography 22, 625 631. Low, M. (2004). Cities as spaces of democracy. In Barnett, C. & Low, M. (eds.) Spaces of Democracy, pp 128 146. London: Sage. Mann, M. (2005). The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Massey, D. (1995). Thinking radical democracy spatially. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13, 283 288. Mouffe, C. (1995). Post Marxism: Democracy and identity. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13, 259 265. O’Laughlin, J., Ward, M. D., Lofdahl, C. L. et al. (1998). The diffusion of democracy, 1946 1994. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88, 545 574. O’Neill, O. (2001). Agents of justice. Metaphilosophy 32(1/2), 180 195. Pattie, C. J. and Johnston, R. J. (2002). Political talk and voting: Does it matter to whom one talks? Environment and Planning A 34(6), 1113 1135. Pattie, C. J. and Johnston, R. J. (2003). Local battles in a national landslide: Constituency campaigning at the 2001 British General Election. Political Geography 22(4), 381 414. Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and Democratic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pettit, P. (1999). Republican freedom and contestatory democracy. In Shapiro, I. & Hacker Cordo´n, C. (eds.) Democracy’s Values, pp 163 190. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Przeworski, A. (1995). Sustainable Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pugh, J., Featherstone, D., Marres, N. and Thien, D. (2007). On the political. Area 39, 130 135. Purcell, M. (2007). Recapturing Democracy: Neoliberalization and the Struggle for Alternative Urban Futures. London: Routledge. Rydin, Y. (2003). Conﬂict, Consensus and Rationality in Environmental Planning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Saward, M. (2003). Enacting democracy. Political Studies 51, 161 179. Sen, A. (1999). Democracy as a universal value. Journal of Democracy 10(3), 3 17. Scheuerman, W. (2006). Critical theory beyond Habermas. In Dryzek, J., Honig, B. & Phillips, A. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, pp 85 105. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shapiro, I. (1999). Democratic Justice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Shapiro, I. and Hacker Cordo´n, C. (eds.) (1999). Democracys Edges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slater, D. (2002). Other domains of democratic theory: Space, power, and the politics of democratization. Environment and Planning D; Society and Space 20, 255 276. Warf, B. (2006). Voting technologies and residual ballots in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Political Geography 25, 530 556. Young, I. M. (2000). Democracy and Inclusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, I. M. (2001). Activist challenges to democracy. Political Theory 29, 670 690.

Relevant Websites http://www.democraticaudit.com/index.php Democracy Audit. http://www.freedomhouse.org/ Freedom House. http://www.opendemocracy.net/ Open Democracy.

Demography P. Rees, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Age–Time Graph The graph used to represent the age and time properties of demographic data and model variables (also known as Lexis diagram, after one of its ﬁrst developers). Cohort-Component Projection Model A model for projecting population using all the components of change for age groups in a period-cohort framework. Components of Change The population ﬂows that change the population: births, deaths, and migration. First Demographic Transition The shift from a regime of high fertility and mortality rates to a regime of low fertility and mortality rates. International Migration Migration from one country to another. Sometimes referred to as external migration. Intranational Migration Migration from one location to another within the same country. Sometimes referred to as internal migration. Life Expectancy The average (expected) length of life, free of the bias of the current distribution of deaths by age, which depends in part on the age distribution of the population at risk. The period life expectancy model assumes that current age-speciﬁc mortality rates will persist through the life of the current population. In the cohort life expectancy model, the age-speciﬁc rates are projected into the future and so life expectancies computed for each birth cohort. Life Table A table of rates of mortality, survival probabilities, and life expectancies based on a stationary population model. Long-Term Migrants Migrants who have stayed in a destination for 12 months or more (retrospective measure) or who intend to reside at a destination for 12 months or more (prospective measure). Migrants People who have migrated from an origin to a destination and survive there. Also referred to as transitions. Migration Distance The average of distances between origins and destinations weighted by the size of the migration ﬂow. Migration Expectancy The expected number of migrations that a person would experience over a lifetime, allowing for mortality. Migrations The number of relocations of usual residence that occur in a time interval. For any migration ﬂow, the number of migrations (events) will exceed the number of migrants (transitions/survivors). Also referred to as movements.

Multistate Model A model for computing the life table or for projecting the population in many states (e.g., regions and educational grades) which incorporates the movements or transitions between states. Net Migration The difference between in-migration to and out-migration from a geographical unit. Population Accounts Tables for organizing population stocks and components of change for consistency checks. Population Ageing The process through which the population becomes older over time. The mean age of the population rises and the share of the population that is old rises. The same process occurs within the older population. The process is a consequence of the ﬁrst demographic transition and becomes even more pronounced with the second demographic transition. It may be mitigated to a partial extent by the third demographic transition. Probabilistic Projections A large set of projections of the population in which the uncertainty in future trajectories of the components of change has been handled by sampling from error distributions around those trajectories. Using the set of projections, statements can then be made about the probability that the future population will lie between an upper and a lower limit. Proximate Determinants of Fertility A set of multiplicative factors which explain the level of fertility in a population. The factors involve marriage levels, use of contraception, use of abortion, the degree of natural infertility, and the maximum potential number of children. Radix The assumed stationary number of births and deaths used in constructing life tables. Typically, 100 000 births and deaths per year are used. Replacement Fertility The level of total fertility rate (TFR) needed to ensure that the population is replaced in the long run. It depends on female mortality rates in combination with age-speciﬁc fertility rates. In the lowest-mortality countries, replacement TFR has now fallen to 2.07–2.08 children per woman, close to the minimum of c. 2.05 when there are no female deaths before the end of female reproductive careers and when boys make up 51% of births. Scenario Projection A population projection which uses conditional assumptions (e.g., what if fertility rates were at replacement level) to explore special futures for the population. Second Demographic Transition The shift to a demographic regime of below-replacement fertility rates.

75

76

Demography

Short-Term Migrants Migrants who have stayed in a destination between 3 and up to 12 months (retrospective measure) or who intend to reside at a destination for 3–12 months (prospective measure). Standardized Mortality Ratio (SMR) The ratio of observed mortality in a population to the mortality that would have occurred if it had the same age-sex distribution as a standard population (e.g., European standard population). Third Demographic Transition The shift to a regime of low fertility combined with positive net migration from other countries. Total Fertility Rate (TFR) The total number of children a woman would have if she experienced the age-speciﬁc fertility rates of either a current period (period TFR) or of an estimation/projection of age-speciﬁc fertility rates for a birth cohort (cohort TFR). Variant Projection A population projection which uses assumptions about one or more of the components of change that is different from the assumptions used in a central or principal projection. Visitors Persons who have stayed in a destination for less than 3 months (retrospective measure) or who intend to reside at a destination for up to 3 months (prospective measure).

Deﬁnitions People are normally counted at their usual place of residence. By usual residence is meant the place where they spend most of their nonwork time, and from which they make journeys to work, to shop, to school, to leisure, and to holiday locations. The concept of usual residence is unproblematic for most of the population, but a sig niﬁcant minority have several places of residence, some temporary, some permanent. In many censuses, a separate record is made of people who are temporarily resident on census night, either because they are visiting or because they are working away from home. In societies where permission was needed to take up permanent residence in new places (under the Hukou registration system in China, for example), counts of the population of cities depended on whether people with temporary residence were included as well as those with permanent registrations. Many Western societies attract short term labor migrants (e.g., United Kingdom with its large intake of labor migrants from the new European Union member states in the period 2004–07), but ofﬁcial population estimates only include long term inter national migrants and not those who are short term. Temporary migration results in the population present ﬂuctuating during the year, and so resident population estimates are used. As population counts and estimates

play a crucial role in the computation of key demo graphic indicators, the user of those indicators needs to bear in mind that they are subject to a margin of error based on the uncertainty of the population stock estimate.

Population Characteristics Demography studies the groups within the population that differ in their attributes and behavior. We consider the following dimensions that differentiate the popu lation: location, sex, age, time; marital status, living ar rangements, and household membership; social and economic statuses, including educational attainment, occupation, and income class; and race and ethnicity. Location, Sex, Age, and Time All populations are distinguished by location in geo graphical space. They are usually studied at country level where national laws and boundary controls make people’s locations reasonably unambiguous. Within countries, demographic analyses are carried out for regions, local districts, and small areas. There are difﬁculties in com paring territorial units across countries (particularly when migration is considered) and across time because changes to administrative units are made. The European Union has made efforts, for example, to standardize territorial units across Europe in the Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS). Virtually, all demographic analysis distinguishes be tween the sexes both because of differences in biology and because of differences in behavior and welfare. For example, women live longer than men in virtually all countries of the world, but these differences are nar rowing in the most developed nations. A crucial variable in demographic analysis is age, which is measured as the integer number of years elapsed since birth. Mortality, fertility, and migration processes vary profoundly and in different ways by age. Age interacts with the passage of time to give rise to a number of key concepts which are displayed in Figure 1, which consists of a set of age–time graphs. The top row of graphs illustrates the concepts of age group (persons with the same ages), period (an interval of time), and cohort (persons with the same birth year who proceed together through age–time space). We can place within the age–time graph both demographic events (births, deaths, and migrations), which occur at a point in time to persons of an exact age, and demographic transitions (changes of status measured at two time or two age points, such as survival or being a migrant). There are four schemata for capturing demographic events/transitions (shown in the bottom block of four graphs): period–age (e.g., deaths in a calendar year to persons aged 80 at death), age–cohort (e.g., survivors from one birthday in 1 year to the next

Demography Age group

Period

Cohort

2

Age

Age

2

Age

2

1

1

0

1

0 2004

2005

77

2006

0 2004

Time

2005

2006

Time

Period−age space

2004

2005

2006

Time

Period−cohort space

Age

2

Age

2

1

1 Infant period− cohort

0

2004

2005 Time

2006

0

Age−cohort space

2005 Time

2006

Age−period−cohort spaces

2

2

1

1

0

2004

0 2004

2005

2006

2004

Time

2005

2006

Time

Figure 1 The age time framework at the heart of demographic analysis.

birthday in the following year), period–cohort (survivors of one age group at the start of the year to the next age group at the end of the year), and age–period–cohort (e.g., births to mothers born in year by age at maternity and year of birth). The age–cohort schema is used in the life table model. The period–cohort schema is used in the cohort component population projection model. The age–period–cohort schema is used to record demo graphic events where year of birth and age of event are both recorded. Data from this schema can be reassembled for use in either life tables or projection models. The period–age schema is used when year of birth has not been recorded for the demographic event and some as sumptions are needed in order to use these data in demographic models. Marital Status, Living Arrangements, and Household Structure A second set of population attributes which affect demographic processes concern small groups: couples,

families (living together), and households (person sharing the same living accommodation). These units take eco nomic (e.g., consumption) and social (e.g., childrearing) decisions together (at least in part). Marital status in cludes the states of being single, married (ﬁrst married, remarried), separated (married but living apart), and di vorced. In many societies, cohabitation by couples out side of marriage has become important, though the living arrangement may lead to marriage. In the future, social and demographic surveys may need also to count same sex unions where these are recognized. Social and Economic Status: Education, Occupation, and Income Class Although social and economic attributes are the focus of social geography rather than demography, demographic analysis has been usefully applied to the growth of populations by educational grade. Projections of the world’s population by educational attainment under varying scenarios demonstrate the enormous future

78

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importance of the educated labor force of China and India, for example. Race and Ethnicity Through past and present international migration, na tional populations, particularly in the developed world, are becoming more diverse in their racial and ethnic composition. The main focus of social research has been on integration/segregation of new groups within national societies, but demographers are now tracking the chan ging composition of national populations using a variety of projection techniques. Europe’s population will be come less ‘European’ and more ‘foreign’ and mixed in ethnicity over the next 50 years.

Demographic Models

migration balance is the difference between in and out migration streams. So it is useful to break down the change components further into: P t þn ¼ P t þ B t

Models of the Components of Population Change Populations of the same territory at two points in time are connected by the following ‘components of change’ relationships: P t þn ¼ P t þ N t þ M t

½1

where P t þ n is the population at time t þ n years, P t is the population at time t, Nt is the natural increase of the population in the time interval t, t þ n, and Mt is the net balance of in and out migration. Natural increase is the surplus of births over deaths in a population, and the net

½2

Mtout

where Bt, Dt, Mtin, and Mtout are, respectively, births, deaths, in migrations, and out migrations in the time interval starting at time t. However, it is normally im portant to distinguish the migration streams into those internal to a country from those crossing international boundaries, because the data sources may be different and because international migration is inﬂuenced by explicit policy measures, whereas internal migration is only indirectly and weakly affected. So the third version of the ‘components of change’ equation is P t þn ¼ P t þ B t

To understand how and why population sizes, com positions, and distributions change, we use models of the processes of population change. Although simpliﬁed from complex reality, demographic models are powerful tools for understanding population change.

D t þ Mtin

D t þ Mtin

Mtout þ I t

Et

½3

where Min and Mout refer only to internal migration and I to immigration and E to emigration. Table 1 shows a components table for one ethnic population, White males, in the UK region of Yorkshire and the Humber in the 2001–02 (mid year to mid year interval), de composed by a single year of age. Each row of the table records what happens in a period–cohort, labeled by the start and ﬁnish ages in the table. The ﬁrst row refers to the infant period–cohort, with a start stock of births and a ﬁnish stock of population aged 0. For a single population, the components of change account completely for population ﬂows into and out of the population. Population Accounting Models When many populations that interact (e.g., a set of re gions within a country) are considered together we can expand the components into a population accounts table. Table 2 shows how this is done for the components

Table 1 An example of the components of population change for period cohorts, Yorkshire and the Humber region, UK, 2001 02, White malesa Start age

Population 2001

Deaths

Outmigration

Emigration

In-migration

Immigration

Population 2002

Finish age

Births 0 1 2 3 .. . 98 99 100 þ Sum Population

24 814 24 338 25 175 26 358 26 829 .. . 123 107 142 2 274 520 2 249 706

147 23 11 8 6 .. . 42 41 142 27 056

805 691 609 559 518 .. . 2 1 0 38 451

106 92 94 86 85 .. . 0 0 0 7786

864 742 653 600 556 .. . 2 3 0 41 256

105 91 93 85 84 .. . 0 0 0 7707

24 724 24 365 25 208 26 391 26 860 .. . 81 68 0 2 250 190

0 1 2 3 4 .. . 99 100 101 þ

a Each row contains frin row contains the stocks and ﬂows for one period cohort. The sum of the Population 2001 column is the combination of the 2001 population and births in 2001 02. Source: Adapted from WHO (2007).

Demography

deﬁned as demographic events by explicating repre senting the rest of a country and the rest of the world as system states. Very similar accounts can be deﬁned using transition information, which is convenient when mi gration data derive from retrospective questions in a census or national survey. Such population accounts implicitly underpin multistate population models, widely used in population projection. The multistate framework has the key advantage of linking the population changes in one region or country to those in other regions or countries from which it receives its migrants. The ac counting framework has the key advantage of forcing the user to achieve consistency between start and ﬁnish population stocks and component ﬂows. Life Table Models/Stationary Population Models One of the most widely used demographic models is that of the life table used not only by national and inter national statistical agencies to monitor the health of populations but also by the actuarial profession and in surance industry to compute the funds needed to support population groups (ﬁrm employees and members of life assurance funds). Life table models are designed to re move from mortality analysis the effects of varying births to a population and the effect of the current age structure on cruder measures. So the life table model adopts a hypothetical population in which deaths and births are equal. Table 3 presents an abridged life table for Aus tralia using 2005 mortality data for persons. To the hypothetical stationary population are added 100 000 babies each year (row 1, column 4) and the total popu lation is just over 8.1 millions (row 1, column 7). Most Table 2

79

demographic texts give accounts of how the variables set out in Table 3 columns are computed. Mortality rates, nMx, are computed by dividing observed death counts by period–age by a mid interval or average population in the age group. Mortality probabilities, nqx, are computed from mortality rates using simple assumptions to convert to age cohorts. The complement of these probabilities, the survival probabilities, are applied to the life table radix, 100 000, to compute survivors, nlx, and to compute nonsurvivors, ndx. Life years lived in an interval, nLx, are a sum of the survivors at the end of the interval, lx þ n, plus the nonsurvivors, ndx, weighted by the length of the age interval, n multiplied by the fraction spent alive, nax. The total life years beyond age x, Tx, are a sum of the life years lived from the oldest to age x. Life expectancy, ex, is the ratio of Tx to the survivors to age x, lx. Full accounts of the life table model equations are provided in the main demographic texts. Here we com ment on features of the life table which are neglected in conventional descriptions. Although most life table models list six equations connecting the life table variables as laid out in Table 3, life expectancies beyond age x can be expressed in one sum of products equation as a function of the age intervals, n, life fractions in age intervals, nax, and mor tality rates, nMx: ex ¼

( k z X

nn ax

y k Y

) ½1

ðn Mx =ð1

n axn Mx ÞÞ

½4

y 0

k x

where z is the last age beyond which all survivors are assumed to die; k, x, and y are age indices. It is thus possible to compute life expectancies or any other life

Population accounts for a two-region system, White males, ages 1 2 End state in interval t, t þ n

Start state in interval t, tþn

Start state in 2000 01

Region (1)

Rest of the country (2)

Rest of the world

Deaths

Totals

Region (1)

R1

M12

E1

D1

P1t

Rest of country (2) Rest of world

M 21 I1

R2 I2

E2 0

D2 0

P 2t I*

Totals

P1t þ n

P 2t þ n

E*

D*

T

Period cohort: age 1 to age 2

End state in 2000 01 Yorkshire and the Humber

Rest of UK

Rest of world

Deaths

Totals

Yorkshire and the Humber Rest of UK Rest of world

24 461

609

94

11

25 175

0

0

Totals

25 208

653 93

Notes: R ¼ accounting residual for region 1 ¼ P M12 replaced and thus represents totals for the variables. 1

1t

E1

D1 etc. The asterisk (in D*, I*, E*) indicates summation over the superscript

0.1 0.4 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.45

Source Adapted from WHO (2007)

1 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 2.25

0 1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100

0.00 511 0.00 024 0.00 011 0.00 010 0.00 036 0.00 057 0.00 063 0.00 075 0.00 092 0.00 133 0.00 192 0.00 283 0.00 429 0.00 704 0.01 143 0.01 883 0.03 268 0.05 806 0.10 034 0.16 897 0.27 815 0.44 543

Period–age (nMx)

Years alive Mortality rate (nax)

100 000 99 491 99 395 99 341 99 291 99 112 98 830 98 519 98 149 97 699 97 051 96 125 94 773 92 762 89 554 84 580 76 973 65 345 48 779 29 215 12 835 3790

Exact age (lx)

Age–cohort (nqx) 0.00 509 0.00 096 0.00 055 0.00 051 0.00 180 0.00 285 0.00 315 0.00 375 0.00 459 0.00 663 0.00 954 0.01 407 0.02 121 0.03 458 0.05 555 0.08 993 0.15 107 0.25 352 0.40 107 0.56 065 0.70 471 1.00 000

Cohort numbers surviving

Mortality probability

Abr dged fe tab e for Austra a, 2005, persons

Age interval (n)

Table 3

Ages (x)

509 96 54 50 178 282 311 369 450 648 926 1352 2011 3208 4975 7607 11 628 16 566 19 564 16 379 9045 3790

Age–cohort (ndx)

Cohort numbers dying

99 542 397 735 496 841 496 579 496 008 494 856 493 371 491 670 489 621 486 876 482 941 477 245 468 838 455 791 435 335 403 882 355 795 285 308 194 983 96 936 32 519 8509

Age–cohort (nLx)

Life years

8 141 182 8 041 640 7 643 905 7 147 064 6 650 485 6 154 477 5 659 621 5 166 249 4 674 580 4 184 958 3 698 082 3 215 141 2 737 896 2 269 058 1 813 267 1 377 932 974 050 618 255 332 947 137 964 41 028 8509

Sum of age cohorts (Tx) 81.4 80.8 76.9 71.9 67.0 62.1 57.3 52.4 47.6 42.8 38.1 33.4 28.9 24.5 20.2 16.3 12.7 9.5 6.8 4.7 3.2 2.2

Exact age (ex)

Total life years Life expectancy

0.99 455 0.99 912 0.99 947 0.99 885 0.99 768 0.99 700 0.99 655 0.99 583 0.99 439 0.99 192 0.98 821 0.98 238 0.97 217 0.95 512 0.92 775 0.88 094 0.80 189 0.68 341 0.49 715 0.33 547 0.20 739

Period–cohort (nSx)

Survivorship probability

B rth 0–4 5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60–64 65–69 70–74 75–79 80–84 85–89 90–94 95 þ

Ages at start

0–4 5–9 10–14 15–19 20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60–64 65–69 70–74 75–79 80–84 85–89 90–94 95–99 100 þ

Ages at end

80 Demography

Demography

table variable without necessarily constructing the full life table, though presenting the intermediate compu tations in life table form is advisable. Life tables involve explicit assumptions about the fraction of an age interval spent alive by persons who die. This variable is labeled nax and is reported in the third column of the table. For most age intervals, an assump tion of 0.5 is ﬁne, but for the ﬁrst and second intervals it is better to substitute fractions based on a study of the detailed distribution of deaths by smaller age intervals. This leads to an adoption of 0.1 for the interval birth to age 0, 0.4 for the interval age 1 to age 5, 0.4 for the interval age 90–95, and 0.3 for the interval 95–100. The life spent beyond age 100 is computed as the reciprocal of the mortality rate and the fraction is computed for a 5 year interval. More precise estimates based on empirical information about the distributions of deaths within age intervals can be made, but do not make much difference to the computed expectations of life. It is important when computing life tables for most countries to adopt at least 100 as the highest age, as more and more people survive to that advanced age. In many countries, national statistics are already prepared for much higher ages (e.g., to 120). Under 2005 mortality conditions shown in Table 3, 50% of Australians will survive to 84.6 years. On only mildly optimistic as sumptions about continuing declines in mortality rates (2% per year), it is likely that more than half the 2006 birth cohort in the UK will still be alive at age 100. The implications of this trend for society will be profound. The column titled ‘survivorship probability’ is not usually included in published life tables. Period–cohort survival probabilities are computed as Lx þ n divided by Lx, where L is interpreted as the number in the stationary population of the life table. These probabilities can be used directly in cohort survival calculations in population projection models. Australia’s life table represents one of the most ad vanced in the world: better life expectancies are found only in Japan and Iceland. It should be stressed that these life expectancies are period speciﬁc. Cohort expectancies are likely to be considerably higher, although they will depend on forecasts of mortality into the future.

81

The main device used for population projection is the cohort component model, an expansion of the com ponent model, adding age in period–cohort form. This is conveniently organized in the following sequence of equations in single region form. For all period–cohorts from x ¼ 0 to x ¼ z (the last) and recognizing populations by gender, g, the com ponents of change equation is Pxgt þn ¼ Pxgt

Dxgt þ Mtin;xg

t Mout;xg þ I txg

Etxg

½5

with a parallel equation for the infant period–cohort (from birth to age 0) t þn t P1g ¼ B1g

t D1g þ Mtin;1g

Mtout;1g þ I t1g

Et1g

½6

This formulation assumes that people remain in the same period–cohort in a time interval, so we need to add an equation to transfer them to the next period–cohort at the start of the next time interval: t þn Pxþng ðnextÞ ¼ Pxgt þn ðcurrentÞ

½7

with the necessary addition of the end populations for the last, open ended age group t þn Pxgt þn ðnextÞ ¼ Pxng ðcurrentÞ þ Pxgt þn ðcurrentÞ

½8

The cohort component model also requires that the age and time intervals be equal in length (and preferably single years of age and annual time intervals). The equations above are simply accounting identities, which must be turned into model equations for use in projection. Occurrence–exposure rates are computed as the ratio of demographic events to the population at risk for a unit time interval. A simple assumption, used fre quently, for the population at risk is that it is a linear average of the start and end populations in an interval. Using d to represent mortality rates, e emigration rates, o out migrations rates (to the rest of a country), Min to represent in migration ﬂows (from the rest of a country), and n the age/time interval, the projection equation for the end of interval population of gender g in the period–cohort that starts in age x is projected as h Pxgt þn ¼ Pxgt 1

The Cohort-Component Model for Projecting the Population One of demography’s main contributions to societal planning is to provide projections of the future popu lation. A population projection is a future trajectory of the population and its constituent groups based on par ticular assumptions about the drivers of change, mortal ity, fertility, and migration. There are thus as many projections as there are sets of plausible assumptions.

i h i n12 d txg þ etxg þ otxg = 1 þ n12 d txg þ etxg þ otxg h i þ Mtin;xg = 1 þ n12 d txg þ etxg þ otxg h i þ I tin;xg = 1 þ n12 d txg þ etxg þ otxg ½9

Once the population that exists at the start of the interval has been survived forward to end of the interval, new borns can be projected and assigned a gender: Bxt ¼ ug n f tx 12 Pxft þ Pxft þn

½10

82

Demography

where ug is the proportion of births that are of gender g (male, female) and fx are the period–age fertility rates. Equation [9] is then used for the infant period–cohort with births rather than start population to survive and migrate newborns in the interval. This schema for computing the cohort component model avoids the need for iteration and can be easily generalized from a single region to many regions, con verting the scalar equations into matrix equations. The Multistate Demographic Model American demographer Andrei Rogers and colleagues developed the life table and cohort component models to handle many populations simultaneously. Populations of particular ‘states’ (e.g., regions) are the result of the ﬂows from and to all the other states in the system being studied. The populations of states are therefore dependent on the populations of all other states: out migrations from a region are in migrations to other re gions. It took some time for full agreement to be reached on the exact speciﬁcation of the multiregional demo graphic model (in its life table or projection forms), be cause different operational realizations were needed, depending on the nature of the migration ﬂow data available in any applied context. If migration data derive from retrospective questions in censuses, surveys, or linked registers, then a transition form of the multistate model is appropriate; if migration data derive from population or administrative registers which record ﬂows as events, then a movement form of the model is needed. But the only real difference between these approaches is the way the input multistate transition probabilities are computed. Once computed, the models are identical. The single region cohort component model has been generalized thus: h ptxgþn ¼ 1

ih i1 t 1 þ n12 Mtxg n12 Mtxg pxg h i1 t þ 1 þ n12 Mtxg ixg

½11

where ptxgþn is the column vector of regional populations for gender g and period–cohort x at the end of the time interval, ptxg is the equivalent for start of time interval populations, itxg is the column vector of immigration to regions in the time interval and Mtxg is a matrix con taining the negative of mortality and emigration rates in the principal diagonal and region to region migration rates in the off diagonal cells. The other parts of the single region model can be similarly generalized to many regions in matrix form. Of course, this brief account of the multistate demographic model cannot provide read ers with more than the basic idea, and they will need to pursue a sustained reading course to build a full under standing. Multistate methods are widely employed by

national statistical ofﬁces in their regional and local populations. They are also used by regional authorities to project their local populations and by Lutz and col leagues to project sets of world regions and countries. Ways of reducing the number of variables in the multi state model have been explored through substituting functions for the component rate age schedules or through representing the full origin–destination–age–sex array of migration rates with simpler models. Software (LIPRO) for implementing the multistate projection model is available from the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI). Other Models for Projecting the Population The models discussed so far are based on the average behavior or experiences of population groups and the number of states through which the population ﬂows is limited to the main demographic variables, location, sex, and age in combination with marital status, ethnic status, labor force status, or education status. We may wish to examine the full interplay of these variables on popu lation dynamics, but face the problem of rapidly ex panding numbers of variables and the difﬁculties of estimating transitions between states. So researchers have adopted a different model structure in which the lives of individuals are represented and then assigned events or transitions by sampling from a distribution of event rates or transition probabilities. Multistate and micro simulation projection models are closely related, and have advantages and disadvantages which suit each to particular applications. Many im portant cross sectional micro simulation models have been constructed in order to study the impact of eco nomic policy changes on households, but relatively fewer dynamic models have been built, because of paucity of good transition data. We now brieﬂy discuss the way projection models have been used, examining, ﬁrst, variant projections and, second, probabilistic projections, both attempts to cap ture and report the uncertainty inherent in projections. Variant Projections The projection considered most likely is termed the ‘principal’ and alternatives are labeled ‘variants’. A common scheme for preparing variant projections in volves deciding on high, medium, and low assumptions for each of the three components (or four if migration is split into its internal and international streams). This then generates a schema of some 27 variants (three as sumptions for each of three components). Figure 2 dis plays the principal 2004 based projection for the United Kingdom plus eight variant projections. It is also common to carry out particular ‘what if ’ or scenario projections to achieve additional understanding of the future

Demography

83

95

95 Projected 90

HP

85

85

Population (millions)

90

80

HF

80

HM 75

75 HL P

70

LL LM

65

70 65

LF 60

60 LP

55

55

50 50 1981 1991 2001 2011 2021 2031 2041 2051 2061 2071 Year LF LM LL LP

P

Low fertility Low migration Low life expectancy Low fertility, low migration and low life expectancy Principal projection

HL HM HF HP

High life expectancy High migration High fertility High fertility, high migration and high life expectancy

Figure 2 Population of the United Kingdom according to principal and variant 2004-based projections, 1981 2074. Source: Crown Copyright, ONS.

population. For example, a projection that assumed no international migration would be compared with the principal projection to assess the impact of the inter national migration assumptions on the future population.

uncertainty distributions of population: around two thirds of outcomes will lie between 24.4 and 31.8 millions, while there is a 95% probability that the 2051 Australian population will lie between 21.1 and 36.0 millions.

Probabilistic Projections

Main Components of Change and Associated Indicators

In the past 15 years several demographers have argued that users want to know what probability can be placed on a particular range of future populations or what the probability that a population will reach a particular level. A group led by Lutz at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis has pioneered techniques for producing probabilistic projections. The essence of the method is to estimate the error distribution in key component parameters (e.g., total fertility rate) and to sample from these distributions year by year in the fu ture. Each set of parameters is used to project the population into the future, and from the full set of hundreds of projections run a probability distribution of outcomes can be constructed. Figure 3 shows such an outcome for Australia. The median projection for Aus tralia sees the population growing from 20.0 millions in 2001 to 28.0 millions in 2051. Around this median are the

Much effort has been expended by demographers to describe, explain, and forecast the main drivers of population change. We consider some features of this effort, with some discussion of sources of data and of the important relationship of each component with age. Mortality Measures and Trends To measure the mortality level experienced by a popu lation, good statistics on deaths and population are nee ded. In most developed countries, deaths must be legally registered with cause(s) of death recorded by a physician. In countries with less developed vital registers, survey methods are used that ask households about deaths of members. This was the method used to estimate the very high death rate that occurred in Iraq in the 2003–06

84

Demography

period after the invasion of the country by American and coalition forces, though the method of sampling house holds has been challenged. Register or survey deaths combined with population estimates are used to compute age speciﬁc mortality rates. Table 3 displays such a set of rates for Australia in 2005. The relationship between mortality and age has the general form shown in Figure 4 (for the United Kingdom in 1998). Rates for the very young are high (because of infectious disease and malnutrition in poor countries, and because of malformations at birth in richer countries) 40

Estimates

Population (millions)

35

Forecasts

95% high 67% high Median 67% low 95% low

30 25 20 15 10 5 2051

2041

2031

2021

2011

2001

1991

1981

1971

1961

1951

0

Figure 3 The probability distribution of Australia’s future population. Used with kind permission of Wilson, T. and Bell, M. (2004). Australia’s uncertain demographic future. Demographic Research 11(8), 195 234. Online at: http://www.demographicresearch.org/Volumes/Vol11/8/, Figure 12.

and then decline quickly to a base level between ages 5 and 10. From age 10, mortality rates rise steadily in a straight line on the semilog graph, indicating exponential increase with age. The smoothness of the rise is inter rupted between ages 15 and 25 by above trend mortality rates, mainly associated with accidents and violence. Populations differ in the level of this rate–age curve. In Figure 4 we can see that female mortality rates are lower than male, except before age 5 and after age 95 when they are nearly the same. Using age speciﬁc mortality rates, it is usual to com pute standardized mortality rates which ﬁlter out the effect of the age structure of a population on the level of mortality. For comparison of mortality rates across sub national areas within a country, standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) are used in which the mortality experience of a local population is compared with that of the country which are given the value of 100. Areas with worse than the national average mortality SMRs are above 100; areas with better than average mortality experience have SMRs below 100. Life tables, discussed earlier in this article, provide the best means of comparing the mortality of different populations. Where it is difﬁcult to make good estimates of the age speciﬁc mortality rates that are the key input to the life table model, then recourse can be had to collections of model life tables. These use common pat terns of the mortality–age relationship and generate life tables for a set of given life expectancies (20, 25, y, 80,

Logged nonsurvival probabilities 1998 (series 1 = men, series 2 = women) 0 1

5

9

13 17

21 25 29

33 37 41 45 49 53

57 61 65

69 73 77

81 85 89

93 97 101

−1

Logarithm of N-S probability

−2 −3 −4 −5 −6 −7 −8 −9

Series 1 Series 2

−10 Age at start of period−cohort

Figure 4 Mortality probabilities by age, United Kingdom, 1998. Computed by the author from data on deaths and population published by the Ofﬁce for National Statistics and other UK national statistical ofﬁces (Crown Copyright).

Demography

85). However, the World Health Organization has de veloped an extensive library of country life tables, and there is now less need to use model life tables. Mortality trends have in the past six decades, in general, moved steadily downward, resulting in steady and sustained rises in life expectancies in most countries. For developed countries, the rate of improvement in life expectancy has been about 2 years per decade with higher rates of change in fast developing countries in Asia. However, there are notable exceptions such as the post Soviet transition countries which experienced a decline in life expectancy as a result of economic hard ship. Most Central and East European countries are now experiencing improving life chances. The other countries which have experienced declines in the last two decades have been sub Saharan countries, such as Botswana or Zimbabwe, which have been affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic or severe economic crises. There is a vigorous debate about the future of life expectancy, which most international and national pro jections assume will continue to improve, at least in the short run. On the one hand, 160 years of historical re cords analyzed by demographers Vaupel and Oeppen tell us that the best national life expectancies have improved at 0.20–0.25 of a year per year, with the implication that projection assumptions should, in any one country, adopt a similar linked trajectory. On the other hand, Olshansky and colleagues emphasize the threat of increasing obesity to this record of continuous improvement. This debate about longevity has considerable relevance for economic and social policies, particularly for the provision of pensions, health, and social care for the elderly. Fertility Measures and Trends To measure the fertility level experienced by a population, good statistics on births and population are needed. In most developed countries, births must be legally registered by the parents. In countries with less developed vital registers, survey methods are used that ask households about past births of mothers. From these data are com puted crude birth rates (births/population), general fer tility rates (births/females age 15–44), and age speciﬁc fertility rates or ASFRs (births to mothers by age/females by age). ASFRs are multiplied by the relevant age interval (usually single years) and summed to yield the total fer tility rate (TFR) for a population. The TFR is a synthetic indicator of women’s fertility: it is a prediction of the number of children that a woman would have if she ex perienced the current period ASFRs. Cohort TFRs sub stitute actual (past) or predicted (future) fertility rates to arrive at a better indicator of what might happen but re quire a long time series of ASFRs or a projection of them. A version of the TFR which allows for the effect of female mortality between age 0 and 45 is the net

85

reproduction rate (NRR), which is the number of daughters a woman would have by the end of her re productive life. When NRR is 1, then the population replaces itself, generation by generation. Because com puting the NRR means that the female life table must be computed ﬁrst, researchers interested in the level of fertility in relation to replacement use the concept of the replacement TFR, commonly speciﬁed as 2.1 children. The replacement TFR varies between world regions and countries because female mortality varies. In the least developed regions in 1995–2000, 2.75 children were needed to guarantee that one daughter is alive at the end of the reproductive lifetime. The replacement TFR for England and Wales has been recently computed to be 2.07 in 2001, close to the minimum of about 2.05. Trends in fertility in recent decades have been pre dominantly downward or, if low levels have already been achieved, ﬂuctuating around those low levels. In de veloping countries, the fertility transition is part of the ﬁrst demographic transition to smaller families con sequent on industrialization, urbanization, the intro duction of universal education, and a shift in the balance of childrearing costs/beneﬁts. The downward shift has been promoted by family planning programs and the development of new effective methods of contraception (the contraceptive pill, the intrauterine device, etc.). An inﬂuential framework called proximate determinants of fertility has been developed by Bongaarts and colleagues for understanding the level of fertility in countries in transition. Developed countries saw low fertility in the Great Depression years of the 1930s and the war years of the early 1940s, followed by fertility booms in the quarter century after 1945. Since 1970, most European, North American, and East Asian populations have seen fertility decline to below replacement, as women’s independence has grown through labor market entry, educational ad vancement, and female control over conception, com bined with the demise of the traditional child centered family and the rise of individualism. This fertility shift has been termed the second demographic transition. One of the factors underpinning continuing below replace ment fertility in developed countries has been the post ponement of births to older ages: mean age at ﬁrst birth is now in the 25–29 age group, and in many countries the peak fertility rate has shifted into the 30–34 age group. But if postponement ﬁnishes, then fertility decline stops. In 2000–06, half of European countries experienced small increases in TFR, while half experienced small declines. These data have been interpreted as showing two fertility regimes in Europe: northern countries from Finland to France where TFRs are around 1.8 and have risen a little since 2000, and Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe where TFRs are below 1.5 where there are both small increases and decreases. A suggested determinant of this

86

Demography

pattern is the degree of support for early childcare and reentry into the labor market after childbirth provided by the state, institutions, and the market to mothers. International Migration Measures and Trends International migration is the movement of people across international borders for the purpose of settlement. Inter national migrants change their usual place of residence from one country to another. The United Nations suggests that the degree of permanence of the migration should be measured over a 12 month period, so that shorter stays in another country are not classiﬁed as permanent inter national migration. When passengers arrive in a country, they are asked whether they intend to stay for less than 3 months, classifying them as visitors; for between 3 months and 12 months, classifying them as short term migrants; or for 12 months or more, classifying them as long term mi grants. This is a prospective measurement of migration. Alternatively, people can be surveyed at their current place of residence and asked where they were living 12 months ago. If the answer is another country, then they are classiﬁed as international migrants. This is a retrospective measure ment of migration. It is also possible to measure inter national migration by asking migrants leaving a country to register their departure and to ask a question about mi gration of those new registering in countries which maintain a comprehensive population register. All measurements of international migration are fraught with error and disagreement. Those expressing an intention to stay for more than 12 months may return home before the year has ended, while visitors may de cide to apply for permanent residence after arrival. Short term migrants may become long term and vice versa. People leaving a country frequently fail to register their departures, and in many cases they are not departing from one permanent residence but moving between one residence and another on a seasonal or periodic basis. Poulain and colleagues have documented the statistical systems used to record international mi gration between European states, and present a matrix of migration ﬂows between EU member states, from both receiving and sending country statistics. Most cells have at least one entry, though there are a few empty cells. The discrepancies between the two views can be very large: in 2002 Germany reported 78 739 people migrating to Poland, while Poland reported only 2335 arriving! In general, immigration statistics are considered more trustworthy as immigrants normally have to ﬁll in a form on entry or to obtain work, education, or healthcare. To arrive at a reasonable estimate of the migration ﬂows between European countries, Raymer had to design an ingenious and elaborate algorithm to make best use of the available data. There is also error introduced as a result of failure to count illegal migrants.

Flows within Europe, though large, are not the largest international migrations in Europe, which involve mi grations from and to the world outside Europe. In recent years, both Spain and Italy have received very large ﬂows of migrants from abroad, 2004 of 610 000 and 558 000 net migrants, respectively, compared with 204 000 into the United Kingdom, 105 000 into France, and only 82 000 into Germany, according to statistics assembled by the Vienna Institute of Demography. A team led by Kupiszewski at the Central European Forum for Migration and Population Research has re cently carried out explorations of the future population of 27 European countries under different international migration scenarios. They show that under no plausible scenario of net gains from international migration will there be much alleviation of the effects of population aging on old age dependency. The projection model interestingly divides the international migration ﬂows into two sets, those between the 27 countries which are modeled as part of a multistate population projection, and the net immigration ﬂows from outside Europe which will make the biggest impact on the future population. In effect, what was formerly international migration within Europe has become very similar to domestic or intranational migration. When we move from a European to a world canvas, it becomes even more difﬁcult to paint a reliable picture of international migration ﬂows. One attempt to do so is by Dorling and colleagues in their Worldmapper project. They have assembled statistics on the populations in each country born abroad which yields a lifetime immigration estimate, and then used that information to reconstruct the distribution of those foreign populations by origin country to yield a lifetime emigration estimate. Sub traction of emigration from immigration produces a net international migration estimate based on foreign popu lation stocks. When we compute those net balances for 200 countries, expressed as percentage of the resident population, and plot them against median male earnings, we ﬁnd a moderate positive correlation (r ¼ 0.28) be tween balance and the income variable, indicating that the higher a country’s per capita income the more likely it is that the balance of migration will be inward. Because of difﬁculties in measuring international migration in a comparable way, most work has focused on immigrant populations, and the ways in which they interact with and integrate with host populations and into sources of conﬂict and lack of cohesion. Intranational (Internal) Migration Measures and Trends Intranational migration is deﬁned as changes of usual residence within countries. Some researchers have dis tinguished between local mobility and longer distance

Demography

Table 4

87

Comparable measures of internal migration, Australia and Britain

Measure

Migration expectancy (moves per lifetime) Males Females Median distance moved (km) 38 city regions 65 Time Consistent Statistical Districts 67 counties 459 districts

Australia

Britain

1980 81

1995 96

10.7 11.1

12.8 13.6 Inter-zone 248 178

1995 96

All moves 41 41

1980 81

1990 91

6.4 6.7

6.2 6.5

1990 91

Inter-zone

All moves

94 34

28 6

Source: Adapted from Bell, M., Blake, M., Boyle, P. et al. (2002). Cross national comparison of internal migration: Issues and measures. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society A 165(3), 435 464.

migration because of the different mix of motivations at the two scales, but, in practice, is difﬁcult to compart mentalize what is a continuously varying phenomenon. Migration levels and intensities vary with the spatial scale of measurement: the more territorial units there are the greater the level of migration, when migration is deﬁned as a border crossing. This makes it difﬁcult to construct comparable measures of migration between countries, except for migration at the smallest scales of all residential moves. Long, an American demographer, has established that the new countries of North America and Australasia have much higher internal migration levels than European countries. Courgeau, a French dem ographer, proposed a simple linear model of the rela tionship between migration intensity and the logarithm of the number of spatial units used in migration meas urement be used to compare internal migration between countries, but the idea has not found favor. A full audit of measures that can be used to compare internal migration across countries has been undertaken by Bell and col leagues. They recommended adoption of measures cap turing four dimensions of internal migration: migration intensities, migration distances, migration connectivity, and migration effects or impacts. Their discussion is il lustrated by a rigorous comparison of migration in Britain and Australia using comparable measures. Table 4 re ports on migration expectancy and on median distance moved in Australia and Britain, showing Australians to be twice as migratory as the British and migrating over twice as far. However, this measurement agenda has yet to be adopted by any international statistical agency. Most applied work that compares internal migration between countries has focused on the structure and patterns using net migration, one of the impact measures. For example, a study of internal migration in ten Euro pean countries in the 1980s and 1990s identiﬁed whether internal migration was contributing to urbanization or to counter urbanization. The relationship of migration intensity and age has been studied and modeled extensively by Rogers and

collaborators over several decades. They have developed a family of models, based on combining exponential functions, which describe the schedule of migration in tensities plotted against age. Figure 5 illustrates the ways that these can be assembled. All four versions contain the single negative exponential decline during the childhood ages and the double exponential that represents rising and then falling mobility of labor market entry, career moves, followed by a settled occupation. Some migration intensity/age schedules exhibit an elderly retirement peak (another double exponential), when couples re locate after exit from the labor force. This type of schedule is found in migration ﬂows from metropolitan centers to regions of retirement living. More common are schedules with a single positive exponential after retire ment, reﬂecting migrations triggered by loss of spouse/ partner or increasing inﬁrmity. Because migration consists of a move from an origin to a destination over intervening space, a large number of spatial interaction models of migration have been de veloped that seek to explain the intensity of migration in terms of a set of origin variables, a set of destination variables, and measures of the cost of crossing the space between origin and destination. There have been a huge number of the determinants of migration ﬂows between sending and receiving regions within countries, using a variety of statistical models of migration. A recent an alysis of UK migration constructed models for 98 ori gins/destinations and 14 age–sex groups and used more than 40 potential explanatory variables.

Processes of Population Change and Their Implications This article concludes with the study of population through the lens of demography by putting the different components of change together to see what major changes have occurred or are occurring to populations in different parts of the world.

88

Demography Elderly retirement peak

0.04

0.04

0.03

0.03 Rate

Rate

Standard

0.02 0.01

0.02 0.01

0.00

0.00 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Age

Age Elderly retirement peak and postretirement

0.04

0.04

0.03

0.03 Rate

Rate

Elderly postretirement

0.02

0.02 0.01

0.01

0.00

0.00 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Age

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Age

Figure 5 The four main families of multi-exponential model migration schedules. Reproduced with the kind permission of Prof. Andrei Rogers.

The Demographic Transitions Over the past century and a half, national populations have experienced a shift in their demographic regimes from high fertility, high mortality, and low and uncertain growth to low fertility and low mortality, and uncertain growth through an intermediate phase (transition) of fertility decline and mortality decrease. This is the ﬁrst demographic transition. Because mortality decline pre ceded fertility decline and often proceeded more quickly, the result was high natural increase and rapid population growth. The demographic transition, its course in dif ferent continents and epochs, and its drivers and causes are extensively discussed in demographic texts. What is less explored is the way the demographic transition has favorable economic impacts because of the increasing concentration of the population in the working ages (fewer children, relatively, and more surviving into later working ages). Bloom and Williamson have argued con vincingly that an important factor explaining the extra ordinary growth performance in East and Southeast Asia in the past 30 years has been this concentration of the population in the productive ages. In the current and next two decades, East Asia will lose this advantage as its population ages beyond the working years. Europe’s fertility decline did not stop at replacement fertility level but moved into much lower fertility territory after 1970. This is the second demographic transition. By 1985, virtually all European countries had fertility levels below 2.1 children per woman and low fertility has per sisted since then. A range of explanations have been ad vanced to explain this new demographic regime: these

include shifts to new philosophies of individualism and careers over family for women, women’s freedom to control their own fertility through the contraceptive pill, the increase in female labor force participation (and op portunity cost of children), increased female incomes and therefore independence, the decline of marriage and the rise of cohabitation, the renewed rise in childlessness, women’s increased participation in higher education, and the failure of the state and market to provide enough early childcare support (to make possible both work and chil dren for women). Interestingly, fertility intentions (in an ideal world) seem not to have shifted in surveys from a modal choice of two children. Persistence of low fertility over several decades leads to reduced entries to the labor force and so to shortages of workers. In many European countries, this has led to renewed immigration by foreign workers and their families, which over time will begin to change the composition of the population, particularly if the immi grants have, at least initially, higher fertility than the native population. This is the third demographic transi tion. Coleman has documented this process for a number of European countries, and gathered together evidence on projection of European country populations dis tinguished by foreigner/citizen or ethnicity. This shows substantial changes in nationality or ethnicity com position of country populations taking place, with more anticipated in the next half century, although the shifts are dependent on the immigration policies in place. This population replacement process is also occurring in North America and Australasia.

Demography

The Ageing of the World’s Population The most important consequence of the demographic transitions is population aging. Population aging is the process that results in higher average ages and higher shares of the population being old. The threshold age used by the United Nations for deﬁning the old age population is 60 years. Population aging occurs because smaller new birth cohorts are born into populations as a result of fer tility decline and because more people survive to older ages with lower mortality rates. Migration redistributes both younger and older populations, and so affects the degree of aging of countries and subnational regions and localities. The United Nations report on World Population Aging makes several critical observations: (1) that popu lation aging has been a new phenomenon of the twentieth century and will be even more pronounced in the twenty ﬁrst century; (2) that aging affects virtually all countries in all continents, whether rich and poor; (3) that the pace of aging for many countries in East and Southeast Asia will be more rapid than that experienced by countries in Europe and North America, because their fertility decline in the demographic transition has been so much faster in the past 40 years; (4) that it is highly unlikely that the process will be reversed, given that it occurs under vir tually all plausible future scenarios for demographic change; and (5) that aging will have profound social and economic implications for human societies. Migration and Ageing National policy makers and employers now often ask whether the effects of aging on the labor supply and on the support available for retired workers can be mitigated by accepting immigrants from other countries. This is called the replacement migration question, and was ex plored in an inﬂuential report by the United Nations. The migration assumptions in population projections for eight developed countries far into the aging process were adjusted to achieve particular outcomes in terms of age structure. These scenario projections showed that to achieve, for example, a long run, constant old age de pendency ratio, would require immigration at completely unprecedented and unrealistic levels. The same exercise was carried out for 27 European countries by the Central European Forum for Migration Research using a pro jection model that handled migration in a more sophis ticated fashion. Again the results were that international migration into European countries could make a small impact in slowing aging, but to achieve a stable level of the old age ratio or the old age share would require huge migration ﬂows, which were demographically, let alone politically, infeasible. Aging poses huge challenges for societies affecting pension and social security systems, demand for healthcare and the needs of the inﬁrm elderly for family, social, and

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state support. Decisions need to be taken about ages of entitlement to state and occupational pensions and the length of working life, the relative responsibilities of in dividuals, families, and younger generations for support for older people. New intergenerational contracts will be needed. But population aging should be seen as an enor mous success for the societies experiencing it and one that can be coped with through new fair arrangements and through continued growth in economic productivity. The knowledge of demographic trends past and future, such as outlined in this article, provide policymakers with long lead times for taking appropriate action. See also: Census Geography; Emigration; Immigration I; Immigration II; Migration; Population Geography.

Further Reading Bijak, J., Kupiszewska, D., Kupiszewski, M., Saczuk, K. and Kicinger, A. (2007). Population and labour force projections for 27 European countries, 2002 2052: Impact of international migration on population ageing. European Journal of Population 23(1), 1 31. Bloom, D. E. and Williamson, J. G. (1998). Demographic transitions and economic miracles in emerging Asia. World Bank Economic Review 12(3), 419 455. Bongaarts, J. (1978). A framework for analyzing the proximate determinants of fertility. Population and Development Review 4(1), 105 132. Coleman, D. (2006). Immigration and ethnic change in low fertility countries: A third demographic transition. Population and Development Review 32(3), 401 446. Lutz, W., Sanderson, W. and Scherbov, S. (eds.) (2004). The End of World Population Growth in the 21st Century. London: Earthscan. Oeppen, J. and Vaupel, J. (2002). Broken limits to life expectancy. Science 296(10 May 2002), 1029 1031. Olshansky, S. J., Passaro, D. J., Hershow et al. (2005). A potential decline in life expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century. The New England Journal of Medicine 352(11), 1138 1145. Rogers, A. (1995). Multiregional Demography: Principles, Methods and Extensions. Chichester: Wiley. Rowland, D. T. (2003). Demographic Methods and Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. United Nations (2002). World Population Ageing: 1950 2050. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. New York: United Nations. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/ worldageing19502050/index htm (accessed Jun. 2008). van de Kaa, D. (1987). Europe’s second demographic transition. Population Bulletin 42(1), p64. Wilson, T. and Rees, P. (2005). Recent developments in population projection methodology: A review. Population, Space and Place 11, 337 360.

Relevant Websites http://www.who.int Data and Statistics, World Health Organisation. http://www.demographic research.org Demographic Research. http://www.coe.int Demographic Yearbook, Recent Demographic Developments in Europe, Council of Europe. http://www.popassoc.org Demography, Population Association of America.

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http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu Eurostat. http://www.springer.com European Journal of Population, Springer. http://www.ined.fr/en Institut national d’e´tudes de´mographiques (INED), Paris. http://www.census.gov International Programs Center, US Census Bureau. http://www.jpr.org.au Journal of Population Research. http://www.demogr.mpg.de Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock. http://www.nidi.knaw.nl/en Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), the Hague. http://www.popcouncil.org Population and Development Review, Population Council. http://www.jstor.org Population Index. http://popindex.princeton.edu Population Index.

http://www.prb.org Population Reference Bureau. http://www.ined.fr/en Population, Resources and Documentation, INED Publications. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com Population, Space and Place, Wiley. http://www.tandf.co.uk Population Studies, Taylor and Francis. http://www.un.org United Nations Population Division. http://www.oeaw.ac.at Vienna Institute of Demography (VID), Vienna, Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. http://www.worldbank.org World Bank. http://www.worldmapper.org Worldmapper. http://www.iiasa.ac.at World Population Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

Dependency E. Hartwick, Framingham State College, Framingham, MA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Center Point in space where power accumulates. First World Rich industrialized countries of the world. Import Substitution Industrialization Replacing imported manufactured goods with locally produced goods. Periphery Zones from which power and resources are drained. Terms of Trade Ratios at which goods are exchanged during trading. Third World Poor underdeveloped countries of the world. Uneven Development Tendency for development to occur differentially in different places.

Introduction Dependency is a basic characteristic of the operations of power in space. Under most kinds of class societies, es pecially capitalism, power accumulates at points in space, be these signiﬁcant individuals or global cities. These points, often designated as ‘centers’, exercise power over domains, or ‘peripheries’ that vary from personal space to regional and global zones. The power of centers is de rived from draining the peripheries of people and wealth. Power is exercised in a number of forms: as knowledge and discourse, as capital investment and ﬁnancial ex pertise, or as militaristic intervention and the occupation of countries. The peoples, institutions, activities, and states of the peripheries have a dependent relation to the centers – dependent meaning that their choices are constrained and their possibilities limited by their power relations with centers. While the geography of power relations may change over time as, occasionally, new centers arise from what previously were peripheries, and as the form taken by power relations shifts from one kind of dominance to another, critical theorists claim that dependency continues as a fundamental characteristic, a basic inequality in human, social existence.

Maps of the World When critical human geographers gaze at global space, they see not stretches of even development, as with the

homogeneous plains assumed by industrial and agri cultural location theory, but uneven development, regional inequality, centers dominating peripheries and inventing sophisticated legitimating ideologies that excuse their doing so. Perhaps the main tradition in critical human geography expressing this general perspective looks at relations between the global center known as the ‘First World’ and the range of dependent regions collectively known as the ‘Third World’. The discipline of human geography has long had an interest in the Third World. This interest was revived by US and British involvement in the Vietnam War, which many radical academics in terpreted as a symptom of First World imperialism. A series of articles drew on the existing stock of sophisticated radical ideas dealing with questions of underdevelopment, center–periphery relations, and imperialism to provide theoretical insight for oppositional political practice. In the best of this work, James Blaut drew on the notion of dependency to argue for a biased European and North American, First World view of the world that made it im possible for them to understand erupting global events. Conventional Western science, Blaut argued, is so closely interwoven with imperialism (deﬁned as white exploitation of the non white world) that it can only describe and justify, but not explain or control, major events like wars and in vasions. Imperialism, he said, is underpinned by Western ‘ethnoscience’, that is the cognitive system characteristic of a given cultural–linguistic universe – in this case the white, European West – that provides the system of scientiﬁc ideas with which people think and work. European ethnoscience contains a set of historical beliefs and social–scientiﬁc generalizations about the world biased in favor of whites and congruent with the interests of Western imperialism. For Blaut the European model of the world has a unicentric spatial form with a distinctive geometry, an inner European space originally closed from an outer non European space. Inside this space, ‘The West’ exercises some kind of unique historical advantage (race, environment, culture, mind, spirit) giving it superiority over all other peoples. European civilization is supposedly generated by inner processes – Europe makes history – while non Europeans play little or no crucial role in epochal events – ‘the rest of the world’ has history made for it by the progressive white people in the classic style of dependency. Non Europeans are character ized as primitive and unprogressive, barbarous and heathen, less intelligent and less virtuous than Europeans. The ex pansion of the Europeans is thought of as self generated, a ‘striving outward’, with progress diffusing from points of origin, and becoming less evident with distance from the

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center. Whenever non Europeans show evidence of pro gress, this is proportional to the European impact on their society – this amounts to a global diffusion model and the belief generalized is ‘diffusionism’ (i.e., cultural processes ﬂowing from the European center to the non European peripheries). Blaut listed 30 reasons why Europeans were supposed to be better than everyone else. These included: factors of environment, as with climate, soil fertility, land form structure, coastline shape, vegetation, the distribution of natural disasters, and the incidence of disease; factors of culture, as with inventiveness, rationality, scientiﬁc thinking, progressiveness, religion, and institutions like markets; social factors, like class structure, family, and cities; and political characteristics as with the form of the state and the rise of democracy. In Blaut’s mind, environmentalism continued to form the underlying causal emphasis behind most theories of national and regional supremacy. For radical geographers like Blaut, Eurocentrism had to be criticized because of its intellectual corruption and its arrogant dismissiveness. However, there are many ideas widely considered to be great themes of history that are utterly mistaken. Thus, additionally, Eurocentrism needed criticizing out of existence because it was dangerous to the world’s peoples. For, in its name, white people went out to conquer, control, and irrevocably change a world they fundamentally misunderstood. Time after time, the Euro peans committed genocide on peoples they never knew. Eurocentrism had to go because it was a fatal ignorance. Blaut compared this with a Third World ethnoscientiﬁc model of the world as multicentric, with centers of incipient or proto capitalism springing up at strategic points throughout the Old World. In a Third Worldist under standing, the multicentered pattern of relatively equal levels of development was disrupted by the European plunder of the New World (the European ‘discovery’ being due solely to the fact that the Iberian centers of expansion were closest to America), the ﬂood of bullion into Europe, and the re sulting commercial, industrial, and scientiﬁc–technological development. After that, the dialectic of development and underdevelopment intensiﬁed, and the world economy ﬁxed itself in place. From this perspective, Blaut argued against the notion of the ‘European miracle’ by undermining its more concrete theory of the autonomous rise of Europe. Thus: (1) Europe was not superior to other regions prior to 1492; (2) as in dependency theory, colonialism and the wealth plundered from Third World societies were the basic processes leading to the rise of Europe and the fall of Third World civil izations; and (3) Europe’s advantage lay solely in the mun dane realities of location – that is, nearness to the Americas.

Dependency Theory Blaut’s map of the world provides a good context for understanding the main line of theoretical elaboration of

the concept of dependency. The notion of dependency in development is best expressed by a school of thought called dependency theory. The basic idea of the de pendency school is that the development of Europe and North America was predicated on the active ‘under development’ of the non European world – that is, making Third World societies less developed than they had previously been. As a result, Third World countries can achieve at best forms of development that make them dependent on the First World for capital, technology, markets and, especially at times of emergency, aid, loans, and grants. Dependent forms of inequality are built into global space. These inequalities are inherent in the un even development of capitalism. They are caused by the exploitation of the peoples and societies of peripheral regions by the capitalist class of the center. Global in equality may be ameliorated by charity, but it can be eradicated only through revolutionary transformation to a new global order. Dependency theory began with criticisms by Latin American economists of the claim to universal applic ability made by classical and neoclassical economics – that is, the same economic laws applied to all countries and regions. To the contrary, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA), working during the 1950s and 1960s, found that conventional comparative advantage and trade theories expressed the experience of the industrial countries of the center, rather than the agricultural countries at the periphery of the world, and were inadequate for understanding the historical experi ence of the underdeveloped world. Instead an appreciation of the different historical contexts and natural situations of these countries, their different social structures, types of behavior, economies, and external relations required a new structuralist perspective that took basic structural differ ences among economies into account. In particular, Raul Prebisch, the most distinguished theorist working with ECLA, saw the world not in mono economic terms, as one homogenous system, but as two distinct areas, a center of economic power in Europe and the United States, and a periphery of weak countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Whereas comparative advantage theory argued that the exchange of central industrial goods for peripheral primary goods was to the periphery’s advantage, Prebisch argued that Latin America’s peripheral position and pri mary exports were exactly the causes of its lack of pro gress, speciﬁcally because a long term decline in the periphery’s terms of trade (the ratio between the value of exports and the value of imports) made international ex change work almost exclusively in favor of industrial producers. For Prebisch, the solution for Latin America lay in structural change and speciﬁcally the industrial ization of peripheral countries, using an import substi tution strategy (i.e., replacing industrial imports with domestic production, under the cover of tariff protection).

Dependency

However, the ideas of ECLA and Prebisch were later criticized by the Latin American left for ignoring class relations: state intervention in the economy, such as the protection of infant industries from foreign competition, could end up subsidizing the proﬁts of the local bour geoisie, with consumers paying higher prices – at one time the tariff on refrigerators imported into Mexico was 800%. A more radical dependendista position was pieced toge ther by writers such as Galeano, Sunkel, Furtado, Cardoso, Falleto, and Dos Santos, and popularized in the English speaking world through the writings of Andre Gunder Frank. Chains of Exploitation Frank was a leading critic of modernization theory – the notion that progressive change began in the center and spread to a periphery that was always relatively back ward. This entailed Frank’s criticism of the ‘dual society’ thesis, that underdeveloped societies had a dual structure of modern and traditional sectors, each with its own dynamic, and poorly ﬁtted together. For Frank attributing underdevelopment to traditionalism (or feudalism), ra ther than capitalism, was a historical and political mis take. World capitalism had destroyed or transformed earlier social systems even as it came into existence, converting them into sources of its own further devel opment. For Frank, the economic, political, social, and cultural institutions of the underdeveloped countries resulted instead from the penetration of capitalism, ra ther than being original or traditional. Frank focused on the metropole–satellite (or center–periphery) relations he found typical of Latin America. The underdevelop ment of peripheral capitalist regions and people, he said, was characterized by three contradictions: (1) the con tradiction of the monopolistic expropriation of economic surplus; (2) the contradiction of metropolis–satellite po larization; and (3) the contradiction of continuity in change. Drawing on Marxist analyses of the class ex propriation of surplus value, especially Baran’s version which emphasized the potential surplus which could be made available for investment under noncapitalist cir cumstances, Frank argued that external monopoly re sulted in the expropriation (and thus local unavailability) of a signiﬁcant part of the economic surplus produced in Latin America. The region was actively ‘underdeveloped’ (made less developed) by the expropriation of its surplus product (source of investment capital in Marxist theory). Using a case study of Chile, Frank described the pattern of surplus movement as a massive, geographical ex propriation system reaching the most remote corners of the region, with a surplus extraction system running through it. This chain like set of links connects the capitalist world and national metropolises to the re gional centers (part of whose surplus they appropriate),

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local centers, and so on, down to large landowners or merchants who expropriate surplus from small peasants or tenants, and sometimes even from these latter to landless laborers exploited by them. At each step a relatively few capitalists above exercise monopoly power over many below, expropriating their economic surplus. Thus at each point, the international, national, and local capitalist system generates economic development for the few and underdevelopment for the many. This idea of surplus transfer over space was further developed by Frank as a system whereby center and periphery become increasingly polarized as capitalism developed the one, and underdeveloped the other, in a single historical process. In this perspective, only a weaker or lesser de gree of metropole–satellite relations allowed the possi bility of local development. These two systems suggested a third to Frank – the continuity and ubiquity of struc tural underdevelopment throughout the expansion of the capitalist system. From this perspective on underdevelopment, Frank generated more speciﬁc hypotheses that could be used in guiding development theory and policy. In contrast to the world metropolis, which was satellite to no other region, the development of national and regional metropolises was limited by their satellite status – for example, local metropoles such as Sa˜o Paulo, Brazil, or Buenos Aires, Argentina, could only achieve a dependent form of in dustrialization. Real development thus entailed separ ation and autonomy from the global capitalist system. Similarly, in a hypothesis directly opposed to the ﬁnding of modernization geography, that development was spread through contract with the metropolis, Frank hy pothesized that the satellites experienced their greatest development when ties to the metropolis were weakest – historically during wars, geographically in terms of spa tial isolation. By extension, regions which had the closest ties to the metropole in the past were the most under developed in the present – Frank found this conﬁrmed by the ‘ultra underdevelopment’ of the sugar exporting re gion of northeastern Brazil and the mining regions of Bolivia. In summary, underdevelopment in Frank’s theory was not an original condition, nor the result of archaic institutions surviving in isolated regions, nor even did it come from Third World irrationalism. Underdevelop ment was generated by the same processes which de veloped the center; in particular, underdevelopment in the periphery resulted from the loss of surplus which was expropriated for investment in the center’s development. An immediately noticeable weakness in Frank’s theory lay in his failure to specify the economic mechanisms of surplus extraction. In some cases the mechanisms of surplus extraction were obvious – for example, when European, North American, or (later) Japanese or Chi nese corporations owning land, factories, and resources in Latin American countries and withdrawing surplus as

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Dependency

rent or proﬁt, or when the international banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or World Bank, loaned capital to peripheral states and enterprises and withdrew surplus as interest payments. But what of peasant producers, owning their own land, and producing cash crops for export to center markets, a situation typical of much of the peripheral agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Here the beginning of an answer was provided by Arghiri Emmanuel in the theory of unequal exchange. Like the ECLA economists, Emmanuel argued against neoclassical trade theory, which said that the inter national division of labor and system of trade had ad vantages for all participants. Emmanuel argued instead that trade made poor countries poorer, and rich countries richer – so that arguments for free trade were arguments for maintaining the advantage of developed countries. Emmanuel assumed the perfect international mobility of capital, but the immobility of labor between countries – hence wage rates persistently differed greatly between the two sets. Peripheral countries exported agricultural products which embodied large quantities of cheap labor and imported industrial products embodying small amounts of expensive labor. This led to terms of trade favoring the higher cost products of the center, while devaluing the lower cost exports of the periphery. Per ipheral countries were prevented from achieving devel opment because they sold their goods at prices below values (the socially necessary labor embodied in the products), while rich countries sold goods at prices above values. For Emmanuel, unequal exchange (through trade) was a hidden mechanism of surplus extraction and a major cause of the economic stagnation in the periphery. Samir Amin estimated the amount of surplus transferred from poor to rich countries via unequal exchange to be 1.5% of the product of the rich countries, but 15% of that of the poor countries, an amount, he thought, that was ‘‘sufﬁcient to account for the blocking of the growth of the periphery.’’ From the perspective of dependency theory the peripheral countries borrowed back their own surplus to ﬁnance ‘development’. The geopolitical im plications of this are enormous – debt forgiveness is justiﬁed as reparations for injuries done in the past and continuing into the present, rather than the conventional justiﬁcation, as charity for the poor. For dependency theorists, Europe’s development was based on external destruction – brutal conquest, colonial control, and the stripping of non Western societies of their peoples, resources, and surpluses. From historical processes like these came a new global geography of European First World center and non European Third World periphery. The relationship between center and periphery assumed, for the Brazilian geographer Teontonio Dos Santos, the spatial form of dependence, in which some countries (the dominant) achieved

self sustaining economic growth, while others (the dominated and dependent) grew only as a reﬂection of changes in the dominant countries. The incorporation of Latin America into the capitalist world economy, directly through (Spanish and Portuguese) colonial adminis tration, but more subtly through foreign trade, geared the region’s economies toward demands from the center. Dependence skewed the region’s social structure so that local power was held by a small ruling class which used the gains derived from exporting for luxury consumption rather than investment; real power was exercised from external centers of command in dominant (‘metro politan’) countries. Dependence continues into the pre sent through international ownership of the region’s most dynamic sectors, multinational corporate control over technology, and payments of royalties, interest, and proﬁts to external corporations, banks, and development agencies. Yet, there were other, more serious, criticisms of Frank. The Brazilian economist Fernando Henrique Cardoso found the notion of the development of underdevelop ment a neat play on words, but not helpful in concrete terms. In Latin America, he said, multinational corpor ations invested in modern industrialization, while sup posedly traditional sectors (agriculture, mining) operated in technically and organizationally sophisticated ways, and both were parts of an advanced yet still dependent cap italist development. However, he added that in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico spatial and sectoral dualisms had emerged, with space divided between ad vanced regional economies tied to the international cap italist system, and backward sectors, or internal colonies, isolated from progress. Multinational corporations were interested in at least some development for dependent countries because of the markets this prosperity provided. However, the Latin American countries remained dependent for technology on the United States. In contrast to Frank’s universalism, Cardoso wanted to look at speciﬁc situations in particular parts of the Third World, where development and dependence could be found in tandem. We might note that, on becoming president of Brazil in the 1990s, Cardoso adopted a neoliberal policy position in line with his notion of dependent development.

Exceptions to Dependency The most serious criticism of dependency in develop ment comes from the apparent ability of previously Third World countries to industrialize and achieve nondependent forms of development. Balassa argued for a stage theory emphasizing the choice of economic policy in setting a course and pushing a country through his torical phases of industrialization. Industrial development was said to begin in Third World countries as a response

Dependency

to the needs of the primary sector (processing raw ma terials, providing simple inputs, etc.). Subsequently a ﬁrst or ‘easy’ stage of import substitution, of the kind sug gested by dependency theory, entailed the local manu facture of previously imported nondurable goods, and a second stage involved the replacement of imports of intermediate goods (petrochemicals, steel), producer durables (machinery), and consumer durables (auto mobiles) by domestic production – this was undertaken in the post World War II period by the Latin American countries, some South and East Asian countries, and the East European countries. Problems such as the small size of the market (when industries are characterized by considerable economies of scale) led to the need for considerable state protection. Export oriented policies were adopted by Japan in the mid 1950s, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan in the early 1960s, and the Latin American countries in the mid to late 1960s. Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan which imple mented ‘free trade regimes’ (exporters could choose to use local or imported inputs in their manufacturing) increased industrial exports rapidly in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s and early 1970s various incentives for exporting led to further growth in manufacturing employment and higher incomes. Countries that retained inward looking strategies (India, Chile, Uruguay) re mained at the bottom of the industrial growth league. For Balassa the evidence was conclusive: countries applying outward oriented development strategies had a superior performance in terms of exports, economic growth, and employment, whereas countries which continued inward orientation encountered increasing economic difﬁculties. This view was given credence by the continuing success of the New Industrial Countries (NICs) in the 1970s and 1980s. The developed countries had economic growth rates averaging 4.8% a year in the period 1964–73 and 2.1% a year in 1973–83; the NICs (Brazil, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan) collectively had growth rates of 8.4% and 5.3% in the same periods, with the East Asian countries sustaining growth rates in the order of 10% a year often for a decade or more. In the mid 1980s a new wave of industrialization in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and (later) China seemed to conﬁrm the view that dependency theory had been killed by develop mental reality.

Dependency Reasserted The development model of the NICs retains many aspects of dependency. The NICs usually rely on foreign direct investment in their early stages. They import technology continuously from existing centers of accumulated

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knowledge, for which licensing fees have to be paid. In addition, they serve markets in the First World where competition is severe from countries like China, where labor costs are even lower. The period of 1980–2006 saw recurrent debt and other kinds of ﬁnancial crises exactly in countries like Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, and Thailand that supposedly provided the ‘exceptions’ to dependency. In such times of crisis, the NICs applied to the IMF for short term loans to see them through, and to the World Bank for longer term restructuring loans. The international ﬁnancial institutions (IFIs) are domin ated by the biggest economies in the world, as with the US, Japan, Germany, and the UK. The IFIs placed ‘con ditionalities’ on the loans, by which countries undergoing crisis had to restructure their economies in the direction of neoliberal models of development. By this means de pendency is deepened to include control over the eco nomic structure and the trajectory of development. Thus, in counterargument, the rumors of the death of depend ency have been exaggerated. Dependency is not dead. It has just changed its institutional form, and widened its application. See also: Capitalism; Colonialism I; Colonialism II; Debt; Development I; Development II; East Asian Miracle; Empire; Eurocentrism; First World; Latin American Structuralist School; Modernization Theory; Neocolonialism; Social Class;Third World.

Further Reading Baran, P. (1960). The political economy of growth. New York: Monthly Review Press. Balassa, B. (1981). The newly industrializing countries in the world economy. New York: Pergamon Press. Blaut, J. M. (1976). Where was capitalism born? Antipode 8(2), 1 11. Blaut, J. M. (1994). Colonizer’s model of the world. New York: Guilford. Blaut, J. M. (2000). Eight Eurocentric Historians. New York: The Guilford Press. Cardoso, F. and Faletto, R. (1979). Dependency and development. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dos Santos, T. (1970). The structure of dependence. American Economic Review 60, 231 236. de Janvry, A. (1981). The agrarian question and reformism in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Emmanuel, A. (1972). Unequal exchange: A study of the imperialism of trade. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, A. G. (1969). Latin America: Underdevelopment or revolution? New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, A. G. (1969). Capitalism and underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Frank, A. G. (1979). Dependent accumulation and underdevelopment. New York: Monthly Review Press. Galeano, E. (1973). Open veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent. New York: Monthly Review Press. Peet, R. and Hartwick, E. (1998). Theories of development. New York: Guilford. Prebisch, R. (1972). International economics and development. New York: Academic Press.

Desertiﬁcation C. J. Barrow, Swansea University, Swansea, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Glossary Biodiversity Biological diversity in terms of species and variation within each species. Desiccation Drying conditions (aridiﬁcation) resulting from a dry phase of climate, lasting a decade or more. Drought A period of more than 2 years with belowaverage precipitation. Dust Bowl An area stretching across several of the Midwest states of USA, where poor land management and drought led to severe soil degradation and dust storms between 1933 and 1936. This region of desertiﬁcation stimulated interest in soil and water conservation and improvement of land husbandry. Dust Bowl is sometimes applied to other regions showing similar degradation. Global Environmental Facility (GEF) Established in 1991 as a corporate venture between industrialized and developing nations it is jointly managed by the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It is intended to assist poorer countries to develop policies and programs that offer global environmental beneﬁt; for example, desertiﬁcation control; biodiversity protection; management of international waters; mitigation of global warming; reduction of stratospheric ozone depletion, and so on. Land Degradation Loss of utility or potential utility or the reduction, loss, or change of features or organisms, which cannot be replaced. This can be due to natural causes, but is more often wholly or in large part caused by human mismanagement. It can be viewed as the opposite of sustainable land use. Desertiﬁcation implies degradation toward ‘desert’ conditions, some danger of irreversibility, and more prevalent in periodically dry regions. Retrogression A regressive process whereby climax vegetation (that in ‘balance’ with local conditions) and soil reverts to a less-developed stage, which might even be bare ground. Sahel The belt of semiarid and subhumid land with variable seasonal rainfall lying south of the Sahara, extending from the Atlantic Cape Verde Islands and West Africa through the Sudan to the Indian Ocean. Salinization Land degradation and desertiﬁcation due to the accumulation of salts and sodic compounds through natural or human causes.

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Desertiﬁcation was recognized long before it gained a name from Aubreville. Over the last 40 years or so desertiﬁcation has mainly been attributed to human mismanagement, although environmental factors are sometimes wholly or partly to blame – frequently acting as a trigger. Desertiﬁcation, desiccation, and drought are often interrelated but must not be confused. As much as one ﬁfth of the global population lives in regions at serious risk from desertiﬁcation and includes some of the poorest peoples. Possibly 35% of the world’s land surface is affected (Figure 1). The extent has often been misreported, and the pro cesses causing it are not adequately understood. ‘Desert spreading’ is sometimes used to describe desertiﬁcation, which is misleading, because, while deserts may expand, much desertiﬁed land develops in situ (sometimes far from existing deserts). Poor deﬁnitions mean that re searchers may make differing measurements, giving false pictures and making it easier for agencies and policy makers to argue whether to fund countermeasures. It has been argued that desertiﬁcation should be recognized only when degradation is irreversible. However, there are regions where it has been bad and then ameliorated naturally and others where remediation has been suc cessful or may be technically possible. Although in many cases amelioration is theoretically possible, it is not af fordable or it is not practical to organize it. Desert iﬁcation occurs in rich and poor countries, where there is high or low population, in communist or capitalist states, and it can be found in quite wet and cool environments. There is no universally accepted deﬁnition; however, most recognize that vegetation and soil undergoes re gression to something more like desert. It is a process of ‘degradation of ’ land mainly ‘in arid, semi arid, and dry subhumid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variations, but predominantly human activities’. However, some feel ‘desertiﬁcation’ is a poor term and favor ‘dryland degradation’.

The Process of Desertiﬁcation Palaeo dune ﬁelds (‘fossil dunes’), desert varnish (rock encrustation indicative of past desert conditions), and ﬂuctuating lake levels show deserts ﬂuctuated before humans had any inﬂuence. Historical, archaeological, and palaeoecological evidence indicates humans started to cause desertiﬁcation in some regions many thousands of

Slight desertification Little or no degradation of plant and soil cover or salinization.

Figure 1 Deserts and areas subject to desert ﬁcat on.

Key:

Galapagos Is.

Moderate desertification 26 to 50% of plant community consists of climax species, or 25 to 75% or original topsoil lost, or soil salinization has reduced crop yield by 10 to 50%.

Cape Verde Is.

Severe desertification 10 to 25% of plant community consists of climax species, or erosion has removed practically all topsoil, or salinization has reduced crop yield by more than 50%.

Less than 10% of plant community are climax species, or there are many sand dunes or gulleys, or salt crusts have developed.

Desertiﬁcation 97

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years ago through burning, hunting, and deforestation. In the last few centuries human causation has overtaken natural, and there are fears desertiﬁcation will spread and get worse as global warming occurs. Vulnerable soils, delicate vegetation, and harsh cli mate (especially drought) make land vulnerable to desertiﬁcation and it is human mismanagement which catalyses the process. Desertiﬁcation is often described as a ‘vicious spiral’ – people degrade the land, struggle to maintain livelihoods, fail to invest in good husbandry, and cause further deterioration. However, there are situations where such a Malthusian decline is not the pattern. Once initiated there may be positive feedbacks, which reinforce the process and make recovery less easy. For example: soils lose organic matter and develop poorly permeable layers making moisture recharge less easy and increasing runoff; plant recolonization may be difﬁcult once grazing or ﬁre destroy sources of seeds; altered albedo (solar reﬂection) accelerates de vegetation and soil damage. There have been studies, which suggest desertiﬁcation can lead to more arid regional conditions; and there may be wider climate impacts through airborne dust, and reduced carbon sequestration in damaged soils. It may be difﬁcult to distinguish desertiﬁcation symp toms from causes, which can lead to misguided remedial action. Careful study should precede any attempt at management. The desertiﬁcation process may operate so slowly that people fail to note it until too late. Or, sudden drought, ﬁre, or locust attack makes it appear so suddenly that counteraction is difﬁcult. In practice poverty and civil unrest may prevent mitigation, and governments may be unaware or unwilling to acknowledge it is underway. Often the process is unfairly blamed on unforeseeable natural disaster or careless peasantry (‘poor locals’). Where the process is gradual (due to grazing, acid deposition, climate change, or whatever) it may only be apparent when a plot of land has been enclosed, also re mote sensing or aerial photography can reveal a sharp boundary between protected vegetated and damaged land where there is a fence or other divide. Desertiﬁcation, can be an episodic or gradual process (or both). It can be a treacherous process: where land use is within the assumed carrying capacity and unexpected events still trigger desertiﬁcation – a bushﬁre on adequately managed land at just the wrong moment may destroy seeds of annual plants, yet at any other time the ﬁre would be unproblematic (a mistimed bout of overgrazing could have similar effect).

Causation Desertiﬁcation is often the result of a complex chain of causation, perhaps rooted in local land mismanagement or resulting from far distant policy making and governance. For example, abandonment of Roman grain production in

North Africa was once attributed to reduced rainfall, in direct nonenvironmental causes such as the loss of cheap slave labor and free trade impacts are more likely. Factors, which alone or in combination, may trigger desertiﬁcation, include: grazing (overgrazing); precipitation changes; altered intensity of land use – such as reduction of fal lowing; vegetation changes; salinization (salt/soda buildup in soils); pest activity; bushﬁre; and fuelwood collection. Desertiﬁcation vulnerability is partly a function of the harshness of the environment and the ease with which vegetation cover and soil are damaged. Desertiﬁcation has increased since the 1950s and over this time many of the vulnerable lands have experienced marked population growth, mainly through in migration and improved health measures. Livestock herds have often multiplied in those areas (thanks to economic causes and improved veterinary care), over the same period there has often been breakdown of traditional drought coping strategies because of development. Some desertiﬁcation has happened where there is lighter population which practices intensive ranching or cultivation which degrades the land in time of low rainfall – for example, Australia. There are fears that some modern developments, such as fertilizer use, are temporarily concealing ongoing desert iﬁcation (a desertiﬁcation ‘time bomb’). Regions vulnerable to desertiﬁcation may tempt ex ploitation in wet periods; settlers are then reluctant or unable to adapt in drier times, so damage sets in. Another cause may be innovations, such as new crops or farming techniques, or tax changes and new market opportunities which can prompt unsustainable land use. Drought is fre quently seen as a trigger for desertiﬁcation; for example, in Northeast Brazil and the sub Saharan Sahel and it can di vert attention from socioeconomic causation (see Figure 2). Desertiﬁcation can be regarded as a ‘litmus’ (indicator) of land management that fails to adapt to environment. Modern management is not good at coping with ‘boom and bust’ conditions; traditional practices may be well adapted, but have often broken down through developments such as population increase or spread of cash cropping or ranching. Causes may be complex, indirect, and cumulative, so each region should be carefully researched. National or international economic forces may trigger land degradation: structural adjustment may cause cutbacks in subsidies, or the market price for produce falls – so farmers resort to damaging land use. Poverty or unavailability of affordable alternative fuel can result in catastrophic removal of vege tation (and even livestock dung) causing desertiﬁcation. The Malthusian concept that population increase overstresses environment and resources and leads to impoverishment and degradation is sometimes wrong. While such a chain of causation may operate in some situations, population increase can also drive innovation to more intensive land use that is less damaging and able to feed more. Much depends on population growth not

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SAHEL

200 400 800 800 400

200 100

NAMIBIA -KALAHARI

100 200 400

800 800

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Figure 2 Africa area suffering or at risk of desertiﬁcation. Shaded area lying between the 200 and 800 mm y probability) and the Sahel Zone south of the Sahara. Areas of Malagasy are at risk but have not been shaded.

being so rapid that it outstrips opportunities to inno vate and human willingness to change. Inadequate management of common land (not owned by individuals, but used by a number) has been seen as a cause of desertiﬁcation; each user has an interest in maximizing their gains and without ownership or adequate controls is unlikely to act with restraint or invest in sustaining production. As a group the users of common land may cause damage if not controlled by laws or the forces of the market, and such forces may be lacking. The in migration of people to desertiﬁcation risk areas is frequently a process of marginalization caused by com petition for land or warfare elsewhere. However, sometimes migrants are arriving because they perceive opportunities.

Impacts Ultimately, desertiﬁcation means lost opportunities for food and commodity production and biodiversity conservation,

1

isohyets (90%

and it is likely to mean those affected exist in less secure, as well as more impoverished conditions. Huge sums of money are wasted in countering desertiﬁcation and in the associated opportunity costs (funds might have been use fully spent on other things). Desertiﬁcation also has an impact beyond the areas actually suffering it: degraded soils sequester less carbon helping to cause global warming; silt running from damaged land may damage rivers, irrigation schemes, and lakes hundreds of kilometers away; rivers draining af fected regions may become more prone to ﬂash ﬂoods and periodic drying up. Desertiﬁcation may cause dust storms, which sweep into surrounding regions to cause damage and disruption well outside the desertiﬁed area – currently large parts of China experience these in spring. Eco refugees ﬂeeing desertiﬁcation are a growing prob lem, and one already challenging a number of countries where they congregate. Destitute relocatees cannot easily reestablish adequate livelihoods and refugee camps may cause fresh land degradation as occupants scavenge for

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food and fuel wood. Some eco refugees move further aﬁeld seeking asylum, sometimes causing problems in distant countries. Loss of productive land makes food and commodity production less secure at the world scale. Desertiﬁcation destroys biodiversity and the plant and animal species lost may have great potential for crop breeding, pharmaceutical, or other uses.

Extent Boundaries of desertiﬁed regions may not be distinct and can ﬂuctuate a lot from year to year and season to season. Estimates of extent and severity were generally inaccurate before the 1990s, and still vary wildly, being exaggerated by some governments and agencies and downplayed by others. Recent assessments suggest that (globally) losses of cultivable land to desertiﬁcation are around 12 million hectares each year (see Figure 1). The Global Assessment of Human Induced Soil Degradation (GLASOD) esti mates around 15% of the world’s total land area was seriously affected by desertiﬁcation in the early 1990s. Very dry regions attract few people so suffer little desertiﬁcation (deserts are already degraded), desert iﬁcation is most prevalent in regions with something like 600 mm average annual rainfall (average is not very meaningful where rains ﬂuctuate a lot). Africa is widely held to be worst affected – in 2002 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) claimed 45% of the continent was seriously desertiﬁed. While there was a trend toward desertiﬁcation in the 1970s and 1980s in the Sahel (Figure 2), recent studies suggest marked wide spread improvement. Sahelian farmers have replanted acacia trees and are renewing productive land use over wide areas and rains seem to have returned. In northwest China desertiﬁcation is now worsening, apparently through population increase, larger numbers of livestock, and herd improvements leading to greater fodder de mands. Northwest China and Inner Mongolia now have dust bowl conditions similar to that of 1930s USA. Desertiﬁcation can be widespread or a patchy local problem; for example, where livestock congregate and overgraze because a borehole has been provided there tends to be a teardrop shaped zone of damage facing into the prevailing wind; where a railway or road allows excessive exploitation of a region, there may be local ‘hot spots’.

Monitoring and Predicting Desertiﬁcation Caution is needed:

• • •

to ensure local scale desertiﬁcation (‘hot spots’) is not misinterpreted as indicative of widespread degradation; to check if the problem is short term or long term; to establish whether the threat is decreasing or growing;

to determine if the problem could in practice be • remedied; to provide adequate and timely warning if things are • getting worse; to conduct wherever possible, more than one type of • test to conﬁrm trends; to monitor causation in case it alters; • measurement may give a ‘snap shot’ view, limited • spatially and temporally. Real time continuous moni

•

toring is preferable; and remote sensing must be backed up with adequate ground truth studies.

Empirical formulas have been developed which give some prediction of soil degradation for a given location and land use; the most widely used being the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and its adaptations for use in nontemperate environments, such as the Revised Uni versal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE). Computer or analog simulation models may give an indication of how vul nerable a region is to various degrading processes. Re mote sensing and on the ground vigilance can also help warn of desertiﬁcation. However, it is vital to have widely agreed reliable and easily measured indicators that can be monitored. Not all of these are physical, there may be useful socioeconomic indicators that show when people are being disrupted by desertiﬁcation: sale patterns of livestock, pawning of jewelry, out migration, and so on. In addition, social studies may reveal when social capital declines and may make people more vulnerable to desertiﬁcation. In the past monitoring vegetation change has often given misleading results because it has not been carefully conducted. It is important to establish, map, and monitor clear categories of degree of desertiﬁcation from slight to severe. Uniform desertiﬁcation is unlikely; pat ches of severe and irreversible damage likely lie in areas of less severely damaged land. Some parts of the world are subject to variable pre cipitation, which may reﬂect quasi periodic phenomenon like the El Nin˜o Southern Oscillation (ENSO). If this is the case, a developing ENSO event may enable fore casting of drought in desertiﬁcation prone regions more than 12 months ahead. Locust swarm prediction and control are well developed, but in recent years have been neglected through warfare and lack of funding.

Combating Desertiﬁcation and Rehabilitating Desertiﬁed Land Between 1951 and 1962 the United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) under took a Major Project on Scientiﬁc Research on Arid Lands which helped stimulate interest in desertiﬁcation. The 1968–73 drought in the Sahel caused the death of as many as 250 000 people and prompted the UN Conference on

Desertiﬁcation

Desertiﬁcation (UNCOD) in 1977. UNCOD published a (global) Plan of Action to Combat desertiﬁcation (PACD) and called upon each affected country to implement a national PACD in the hope that within 20 years the problem would be solved. Unfortunately, UNCOD was not very successful. The 1992 UN Conference on En vironment and Development at Rio established an Inter governmental Negotiating Committee on Desertiﬁcation, augmented with a UN Consultative Group on Desert iﬁcation Control (DESCON), an Intergovernmental Working Group on Desertiﬁcation (IWGD), and a UNEP Desertiﬁcation Board. Many nations signed a 1994 Treaty on Desertiﬁcation and a UN Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation (UNCCD) and the UN declared 2006 International Year of Deserts and Desertiﬁcation. How ever, overall success has been limited. Rehabilitation may be possible if there are sufﬁcient funds, suitable techniques, and people are supportive. Locals need to be motivated or desertiﬁcation control measures will be superﬁcial, neglected, or even damaged. What appears to an outsider to be a good approach may not be attractive to locals – for example, some terracing projects take up scarce land and hinder traditional tillage and so will be resisted. Acceptable means must be estab lished to protect soil from erosion by wind or water – using windbreaks, stone lines, terraces, check dams, sur face sealant sprays, as appropriate. Ways of improving soil organic matter content are also desirable, and it may be necessary to restrict grazing and control pests. China is currently planting a 5700 km long Green Wall, a belt of trees and shrubs to combat the desertiﬁcation in its northeast. Revegetation hopefully leads to better rainfall inﬁltration, more soil moisture, and improved soil organic carbon. It requires costly inputs of fertilizer, irrigation, and labor to get such improvements. Countering desert iﬁcation is as much about motivating people as developing techniques and providing the material inputs. There are examples of land users who cooperated as long as they were paid or fed, but then abandoned maintenance. Poor people in harsh, fragile, often remote, desertiﬁed en vironments are unlikely to be able to do much to improve things without aid. Also, they must be consulted to see what they need and will support. Sometimes ‘anti desertiﬁcation’ measures are inappropriate and do little to help local people or counter desertiﬁcation; for example, export crop irrigation schemes proﬁting private business or government. Where people lack security because there is unrest, warfare, or an inadequate legal right to land they are unlikely to invest in sustaining land use or remedying degradation. They reason that someone other than themselves or their relatives would beneﬁt from any in vestment. Where there is more than one group using the same land and they fail to cooperate desertiﬁcation can arise – for example, where nomadic herders or wild game

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graze unfenced lands left fallow to recover or which have been otherwise improved by sedentary agriculturalists. Land reform and enclosure may be necessary before at tempting remediation. Grazing controls, livestock reduction, alternative feeding strategies (such as stall feeding), or rangeland improvement may be helpful. China has recently controlled goats in Mongolia and western China because ﬂocks have expanded to supply the fashion for cashmere and are damaging the land. Where fuel collection is a problem alternative energy may offer a solution, or the establishment of plantations or hedgerows may supply needs. Where inappropriate tillage is to blame, soil and water conservation techniques, irri gation, and other innovations may help. See also: Climate Change; Deforestation; Intermediate Technology; Rio Summit; Sustainable Development; Vulnerability.

Further Reading Aubreville, A. (1949). Climats, foreˆts et de´sertiﬁcation de l’Afrique tropicale. Paris: Socie´te´ d’e´ditions ge´ographiques, et maritimes. Batterbury, S. P. J. and Warren, A. (2001). Desertiﬁcation (US Geological Survey). http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/desertiﬁcation (accessed on 25 August 2007). Fairhead, J. and Leach, M. (1996). Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest Savanna Mosaic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Geist, H. (2005). The Causes and Progression of Desertiﬁcation. Abingdon: Ashgate. Glantz, M. H. (ed.) (1994). Drought Follows the Plough. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goudie, A. S. (1990). Techniques for Desert Reclamation. Chichester: Wiley. Grainger, A. (1990). The Threatening Desert: Controlling Desertiﬁcation. London: Earthscan. Mainguet, M. (1994). Desertiﬁcation: Natural Background and Human Mismanagement (2nd edn.). Berlin: Springer Verlag. Middleton, N. and Thomas, D. (eds.) (1997). World Atlas of Desertiﬁcation (2nd edn.), (1st edn. 1992). London Arnold/Nairobi: UNEP. Oldman, L. R., Hakkeling, R. T. A. and Soembroek, W. G. (1991). World Map of the Status of Human Induced Soil Degradation (revised edn.), (1st edn. 1990). Wageningen: ISRIC/Nairobi: UNEP. Stebbing, E. P. (1938). The advance of the desert. The Geographical Journal 91, 356 359. Thomas, D. S. G. and Middleton, N. J. (1994). Desertiﬁcation: Exploding the Myth. Chichester: Wiley.

Relevant Websites http://www.fao.org Desertiﬁcation, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. http://www.fao.org FAO/AGL National Soil Degradation Maps. http://www.unep.org Global Deserts Outlook, United Nations Environment Programme. http://www.unccd.int United Nations, Convention to Combat Desertiﬁcation.

Determinism/Environmental Determinism H. Ernste, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegan, The Netherlands C. Philo, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Determinism A way of thinking that assumes one ‘thing’ (situation) is determined by logically and chronologically prior causes, an approach to explanation with deep theological roots but one that has become integral to most conventional forms of scientiﬁc inquiry. Environmental Determinism A way of thinking common in academic geography, if now somewhat discredited, that supposes human existence and society, arguably including everything from settlement to language, to be determined by prior and external natural environmental conditions. Possibilism A way of thinking in academic geography that ‘softens’ the outlines of a strict environmental determinism, supposing instead that the natural environment throws up possibilities for shaping human existence and society (not iron determinations). Probabilism A claimed ‘third way’ between environmental determinism and possibilism, one stressing that the natural environment makes certain human outcomes more probable than others. Voluntarism A way of thinking about human existence and society that supposes that human beings to have some independent capacity for inﬂuencing their own worlds, rather than being fully determined by controls from without.

Introduction Etymologically, ‘determinism’ stems from Latin determi nare, meaning ‘to specify’, ‘to determine’. Determinism as a way of thinking has a very deep ancestry, certainly in Western thought, not least through entanglement with theological arguments about the primacy of an all powerful, hence all determining deity, in the face of whose ‘commandments’ it becomes an issue as to whether the ‘mere’ things of creation, humans included, possess any capacity for being and acting in a nondetermined way. From the ancient scholars, and then continually recast over centuries in the natural sciences, it has also become an epistemological strategy at the heart of con ventional approaches to scientiﬁc explanation. Here it is assumed that one situation or conﬁguration of phenom ena, when subjected to knowable changes such as the application of particular forces, will automatically and by

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necessity lead to another situation, with the phenomena now differently conﬁgured. This assumption is the basis of cause and effect thinking, positing that the phenom ena of the world consistently ‘obey’ principles or laws of causal determinism that the researcher believes either to have been proven or potentially to be provable. As a corollary, a deterministic epistemology also tends to as sume the ready identiﬁcation, delimitation, measurability, and computability of the variables comprising the situ ations in question. This determinism inevitably stands in contrast to a statistical or probabilistic position that allows chance elements to play upon outcomes, a stance that accepts a measure of nondetermination in the ‘sys tems’ under study, although for some scientists the chance element is conceived less as chance per se and more what ‘we’ do not as yet understand. It is telling to realize that in physics itself, with shifts from classical or Newtonian mechanics to relativity theory, quantum physics, and accepting ‘uncertainty’ in the calibration and prediction of certain phenomena, there has now been some retreat from, or reconceptualizing of, determinism. Hence, this article concludes with an addendum brieﬂy reviewing this changing sense of determinism in physics. Unsurprisingly, the problem of determinism has arisen most sharply for geographers at the interface, where they closely relate to the natural sciences of the external en vironment, at which point the issue becomes the extent to which human beings are determined in their consti tution, organization, and behavior by the (kinds of) causal principles reckoned to govern all environmental phe nomena. At various points in the history of geographical inquiry, efforts have been made to specify deterministic relations controlling whatever might be regarded as ‘geographical phenomena’, and a recurring theme ever since the labors of the ancient geographers have been in dispute over whether or not it is appropriate to conceive of overarching ‘geographical laws’ supposedly governing the disposition and character of these phenomena. More speciﬁcally though, when geographers think about ‘de terminism’, it is usually in the context of debating the merits and demerits of ‘environmental determinism’, the name given to a form of geographical study emphasizing how the natural environment (in the shape of climates, landforms, rivers, forests, etc.) inﬂuences, controls, indeed determines, how humans organize their lives, potentially including everything from their agricultural practices to their religious beliefs. This approach to geography, called by some ‘the geographical philosophy’, was dominant in

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the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, coinci dent with the institutionalization of geography as an academic discipline in European universities. It does have deep historical roots, though, with many branches and variations spreading through into the twentieth century, and arguably feeding through into more recent attempts as forging a new ‘environmental geography’ that (re)centralizes human–environment relations. This art icle outlines such roots and branches. Human geography has been further impacted by de terministic reasoning, however, in that, by analogy with the natural sciences, the social sciences, including ‘human’ geography, often quest for a determinism de scribing necessary and sufﬁcient causal relations between different social situations or events. The core question at stake becomes how far human behavior is determined in the same manner as is seemingly true of ‘matter’, dead or alive, and how much ‘space’ is leftover for human free will, voluntary choices, and independent agency. In this respect, it is possible to distinguish between different interpretations of determinism. On the one hand, there are the ‘incompatibilists’ who view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive, and they can be further sub divided into those who reject determinism but accept free will, called ‘libertarians’, and those who believe that free will is an illusion, called ‘hard determinists’. These different opinions reﬂect different interpretation of free will: sometimes free will is assumed to be a metaphysical truth, while sometimes it is assumed to be only a ‘feeling of agency’ that humans experience when they act. On the other hand, there are the ‘compatibilists’ or ‘soft de terminists’ who believe that the two ideas can be co herently reconciled. However framed, though, this social scientiﬁc per spective on determinism focuses directly on the prob lem of free will, with determinism at one extreme of the continuum, and ‘voluntarism’ at the other. The latter term, introduced by Ferdinand To¨nnies, the nineteenth century German sociologist, describes the assumption that it is, in the ﬁrst place, the workings of free will that determine every theoretical and practical human action. A prime representative of voluntarism before To¨nnies was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who compared the will with Immanuel Kant’s Ding an sich (‘thing in itself ’). It is the will that causes things to appear to the human individual as they do, seemingly dictating the person’s course of action, and as such will is identical to, in effect a version of, the ‘things in themselves’ (the noumena of the world, the things in the world, logically prior to the ‘phenomena’, mere ap pearances of things as perceived by the human). Will is hence a necessity, and exactly identical to what we otherwise call causality, and yet in human consciousness ‘we’ (humans) can also know and reﬂect upon, and even resist, our own will, thereby creating our ‘own’

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determinancy. By this maneuver, the distinctions be tween determinism and voluntarism arguably break down, and yet, in practice, social scientists, including human geographers, continue to grapple with the ten sions between what appear to be ‘determinations’ pressing upon human beings from without – pressures, demands, exhortations, etc., impelling them to act in a certain (predetermined) way – and what seem to be instances of humans acting otherwise, resisting external determinations, responding instead to inner impulses, convictions, and deliberations. In the long run of geo graphical inquiry, the external determinations have largely been regarded as environmental, and their de gree of control debated, but other, broadly equivalent determinations have been posited as well. The issues raised in the last two paragraphs stand in the back ground of what is discussed in this article, and is brieﬂy revisited more explicitly in the ﬁnal section.

(Environmental) Determinism in Geography: Roots and Branches Thinking along the lines of environmental determinism can easily be traced to the ancient world; it is said that Strabo, one of the earliest published ‘geographers’, was ‘fond’ of showing how the physical features of a land clearly inﬂuenced the ‘character and history’ of its human inhabitants. In his epic work from 1967, Traces on the Rhodian Shore, Clarence Glacken charts the many twists and turns of environmental thinking from Ancient Greece through to the likes of the sixteenth century French writer Jean Bodin, for whom ‘‘religion, culture, and morality were all subject to environmental control and therefore in some degree relative to the particular geographical circumstances in which they developed’’ (Livingston, 1992: 97). It is nonetheless in the writings of those celebrated (European) Enlightenment and the early nineteenth century German ‘geographers’ Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1856) and Carl Ritter (1779–1859), notably the latter in the introduction to his Die Erdkunde, that the outlines of an intellectual environmental determinism began to be sketched out. Theirs was a complex, holistic science predicated on seeing in Nature – meaning ‘all’ Nature, the whole panorama of creation – an essential unity, whereby ‘inorganic’ phenomena (rocks, soil, and water) were causally linked to ‘organic’ phenomena (plant, animals, and human beings). For instance, Hum boldt observed that: My attention will ever be directed to observing the harmony among the forces of nature, to remarking the inﬂuence exerted by inanimate creation upon the animal and vegetable kingdom. y [T]he geography of organic beings of plants and animals is connected with the

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delineation of the inorganic phenomena of our terrestrial globe. (Humboldt, 1951: 53 54)

It is vital to appreciate that this was primarily a vision of the inﬂuences running from the inorganic to the or ganic, a more expansive vision that one is only concerned with environmental controls on human beings. In triguingly, it was one echoed by the great American geomorphologist William Morris Davis (1850–1934), who spoke of geography as the ‘study of relations’ whereby the inorganic shapes the organic: ‘‘any statement is of geographical quality’’ if it elaborates ‘‘some relation between an element of inorganic control and one of or ganic response’’ (in Johnson, 1909: 10). This being said, the ingredients of a cruder environ mental determinism, basically of positing stark environ mental controls on human existence and action, still surfaced in the writings of Humboldt and Ritter. Again using Humboldt as an example, he observed that: Dependent, although in a lesser degree that plants and animals, on the soil and on the meterological processes of the atmosphere with which he is surrounded escaping more readily from the control of natural forces by ac tivity of mind and the advances of intellectual cultivation y man [sic] everywhere becomes most essentially associated with terrestrial life. (Humboldt (in Tatham), 1951: 54)

Despite possessing qualities and powers different from plants and animals, then, Humboldt did envisage human beings as shaped in large measure by the properties of ‘terrestrial life’, inorganic, ‘and’ organic, which hence served to propel humans to the fore as the ‘objects’ to be explained (seen as determined not just by the inorganic world but also by its nonhuman organic elements). Ar guably, this was a narrowing of the lens, producing what might be termed a cruder form of environmental deter minism that began to hold sway over much of the nine teenth and early twentieth century thinking (in the discipline of geography and beyond). This blunter form of environmental determinism af fected (one might say afﬂicted) many writers, but an immediate sense of what was involved can be borrowed from Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A genius, pondering over such tricky subject matters as ‘pure rea son’, ‘sense perceptions’, and the nature of time and space, he also gave lectures on geography which could include the following: Inhabitants on the coast of New Holland have half closed eyes and cannot see to any distance without bending their heads back until they touch their backs. This is due to the innumerable ﬂies which are always ﬂying into their eyes. All inhabitants of hot lands are

exceptionally lazy; they are also timid, and the same two traits characterize also folk living in the far north. y Laps, Greenlanders & c. resemble people of hot lands in their timidity, laziness, superstition and desire for strong drink, but lack the jealousy characteristic of the latter since their climate does not stimiate their passions so greatly. (Kant (in Tatham), 1951: 130)

Extremely simplistic cause and effect determinisms were thus said to run between features of the natural environment, such as hot or cold climates, as associated with quite speciﬁc attributes, such as the presence of ‘innumerable ﬂies’, and dimensions of human life within the environments so depicted. As is clear from the above quote, these determinisms readily teetered on the brink of deeply troubling negative stereotyping of certain peoples in certain parts of the world: in a word, the specters of racism and even a white supremicism were never far behind. In order to give a further taste of this really quite ‘crass’ environmental determinism, four dif ferent exponents can brieﬂy be mentioned. A rare woman academic geographer from this period, and someone who had studied in Germany with Ratzel (see below), Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932) became known as a ‘hard core’ determinist who exerted an enormous inﬂuence in the American and British human geography. At the outset of her book from 1911, Inﬂuences of Geographic Environment, she made her position un mistakably clear: Man [sic] is a product of the earth’s surface. This means not merely that he is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted him with dif ﬁculties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given him his problems of navigation or irri gation, and at the same time whispered hints for their solution. She has entered into his bone and tissue, into his mind and soul. (Semple, 1911: 1)

Another American geographer, Ellsworth Huntington (1876–1947), had a similar impact with his theses re garding the dependency of civilization on climate. He traveled widely, and in his 1907 book The Pulse of Asia – revealingly subtitled ‘The geographic basis of history’, and dedicated to W. M. Davis – he studded a record of his journeying in Central Asia with a sustained environ mental determinist refrain, concluding that ‘geography,’, as in physical–environmental conditions and changes, ‘‘especially through its inﬂuence upon [human] character, is the basis of history in a way that is not generally recognized’’ (Huntington, 1907: 402). Even some years into the twentieth century, similar tones could be heard. Thomas Grifﬁth Taylor (1880– 1963), a British geographer who spent much of his career

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in Australia and Canada, developed ‘‘theories of deter minism easier to understand but less subtle than those of earlier writers’’ (Freeman, 1961: 325). He referred to his approach as ‘geocratic’ rather than ‘theocratic’, thereby positioning geography (or the natural environment) as the driving force behind human existence in a manner analogous to how religious writers position God. In an other guise, he produced maps of ‘future’ white settle ment across the globe, identifying regions where climatic conditions were suitable for white colonization (ir respective of who might actually be living there pres ently). A less (in)famous geographer advocating a strict environmental determinism, meanwhile, was another American, Roderick Peattie (1891–1955), whose 1940 text Geography in Human Destiny assertively restated an ‘en vironmentalist’ perspective in the discipline – he called it a ‘geographic philosophy’ – and pictured human action as constrained along three axes (Figure 1) the environ mental (y), the genetic (x), and human choice (z). Peattie then delighted in locating his explanation for just about everything in the human realm as near to the y axis, and as distant from the x and z axes, as he could. He also talked about what he nicely (and one might say appro priately!) called ‘catastrophic geography’, discussing events such as earthquakes and hurricanes, and demon strating the clear ‘geographic determinism’ that would result for the humans caught up in such disasters (see Figure 2).

E

F

D

B

y G z

C

X A

O

Figure 1 ‘‘If x is increasing control by inheritance, y the environmental factor in one’s life, and z the increase of human choice in any event, any fact relating to man’s [sic] action may be plotted within the cube.’’ From Peattie, R. (1940). Geography in Human Destiny. Boston, MA: George W. Stewart.

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Science, Evolutionary Theory, and an Environmentally Determinist Human Geography Weaving through the developments noted above, in part fueling them but on occasion checking their excesses, was the effort, from the late nineteenth century, to create a more convincingly ‘scientiﬁc’ version of academic geog raphy. At this time, it can be claimed, science became the new ‘religion’, and the enormous successes of the natural sciences rendered it a model for all ﬁelds of inquiry striving to be taken seriously as ‘scientiﬁc’. At one level, this meant that there was indeed an imperative to be deterministic, to be able to excavate causal relations and underlying deterministic principles, as (supposedly) was both the goal and the accomplishment of all ‘proper’ sciences (one’s cleaving to a Comtean positivism). At another level, this meant attempts to translate ideas, models, and methods from ‘successful’ natural scientiﬁc ﬁelds into as yet less ‘successful’ ﬁelds, in which regard the work of Charles Darwin, the brilliant natural scien tist, natural historian, and sometime ‘biogeographer’, found such a huge resonance. With evolutionary theory, as codiﬁed in Darwin’s 1859 text The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, for the ﬁrst time it seemed feasible to explain all observable ‘facts’ about the living world, including human thinking and human behavior, without having to resort to some supranatural power. Human being was not the center of the world, nor the crown on God’s creation anymore, but rather the product of random effects or of sufﬁcient causes, and the natural environment was seen as the forcing house of this process of evolutionary development. Only the environmentally best adapted organisms within a species would survive, and it was this struggle to adapt, and hence to survive, that was taken to explain the different features of life as distributed across both the many species and ecological niches spread across the planet. Putting aside the many complexities about Darwinism, including its mis representation in many quarters, it is entirely un surprising that many emerging disciplines – including the likes of sociology and philosophy, with Herbert Spencer’s attempts to foster what was to become known as a ‘social Darwinism’ – sought to acquire, and to secure legitimacy from, a Darwinian cast. Given its substantive interest in human–nature re lations, academic geography was more plausibly set than some other disciplines to receive, and to rework, Dar winian materials. Environmental determinism was duly given a productive shot in the arm, a tool in its own armory, although a more systematic and rigorous bor rowing from Darwin might have enabled the discipline to ‘avoid’ some of the worst excesses detailed above (not least by recognizing, with Darwin, the complicated ‘two way’ relationship between organism and environment). A

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Tract of hired man

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House m tor

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Figure 2 ‘‘Flight diagram of victims of geographic determinism during two tornadoes, showing actual paths through the air of the victims of the storms.’’ From Peattie, R. (1940). Geography in Human Destiny. Boston, MA: George W. Stewart.

name often mentioned as a translator of Darwin into geography is that of the German scholar Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), who trained as a zoologist and early started to recognize the challenge of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. The historian of the discipline George Tatham thus suggests that: Ratzel saw man [sic] as the end product of evolution, an evolution in which the mainspring was the natural se lection of types according to their capacity to adjust themselves to the physical environment. y Ratzel ten ded to see man as the product of his environment, moulded by the physical forces that surrounded him, and succeeding only insofar as he made the correct adjust ment to their demands y. (Tatham, 1951: 64)

This being said, Ratzel was conscious that a simple environmental determinism, which derives the contours of human life ‘directly’ from the compulsions of physical– environmental spaces, would be inadequate in itself. In stead, following the lead set by Moritz Wagner’s 1868 text Die Darwinsche Theorie und das Migrationsgesetz der Orga nismen, he proposed a less direct relationship. In this view, ‘natural space’ does not directly produce human com munities and their cultures, but rather produces a natural setting for migratory and cultural movements across space, which then will lead to a spatially differentiated distri bution of human activities. Ratzel applied this thinking, mainly in the ﬁeld of political geography, where he tried to explain the emergence of states as an evolutionary ne cessity. In analogy with biology, he interpreted the state as an organism which undergoes (population) growth until the locally available resources are exhausted, at which point territorial expansion becomes a necessity for the state to survive. States need Lebensraum (living space or ‘room’) to exist, which would explain their ‘natural’ ten dency toward territorial expansion, a notion that of course could be, and likely was, mobilized to dubious ends. It is nonetheless possible to observe a discrepancy between the

strong theoretical propositions that were made by Ratzel and the careful, indeed quite nuanced, conclusions that he drew from them himself. In this context, his followers seemed to be much more dogmatic than the master himself, contributing, as with the cruder claims of Semple et al. as retold above, to the disrepute which began to befall environmental determinism in the second half of the twentieth century.

Softening Environmental Determinism Human geography, in this tradition, tried to show that the natural environment was the causal determinant of not only the spatial distribution but also the entire ‘nature’ of human endeavor: ‘‘Places vary in their natural conditions and these variations determine what people do there,’’ as Ron Johnston summed up this tradition. Put like this, environmental determinism appears as a very plausible, legitimate, and indeed incontrovertible enterprise, and it might be argued that in the hands of most geographers and others (e.g., human ecologists) who have worked within an environmentalist orbit – laboring hard, if often quite an onymously, unlike the standout but controversial ﬁgures mentioned above (i.e., Semple et al.) – a ‘softened’ version of environmental determinism was what ended up actually practiced. Indeed, what was sustained of determinism in human geography was mainly a free and ‘mild’ form of determinism, more a metaphor and an ad hoc hypothesis than a rigorous principle, as Gerhard Hard proposed in his 1973 text Die Geographie. Eine wissenschaftstheoretische Ein fu¨hrung. In this rather diffuse way environmental deter minism lived on in landscape geography and regional geography as well as in many school textbooks. To elaborate, in continental Europe, determinism early attracted serious criticisms, in both its general and its speciﬁc (i.e., environmental) forms. In Germany, the philosophy of idealism, with its convictions about both the freedom of human will and the historicity of

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personality, went through a revival, and evidently exerted an inﬂuence upon the country’s geographers. Alfred Hettner (1859–1941), for instance, proposed that, instead of talking about necessary and certain (deterministic) inﬂuences of nature on humanity, a more sophisticated conception might be one stressing how nature merely restricts the number of opportunities available for how these lives might be lived. Modifying Kant’s concept of chorography for the description of all phenomena that are found in the same place, Hettner coined the term ‘chorology’ as the scientiﬁc explanation of ‘all’ causal relationships between these phenomena. These causal relationships, in his view, were not unidirectional or hierarchical, and so nature was not seen as the sole de termining or causal power in the making of ‘real’ human geographies on the ground. The further implication was that people dwelling in any one environmental context should be conceived as having a substantial range of options from which to choose, when seeking to survive and maybe ﬂourish in that context, suggesting that the human beings here possess causal powers. In France, Bergsonian thinking, after Henri Bergson, gained inﬂuence with its focus on the unpredictable e´lan vital and the unforeseeable creative activity of human beings. Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918) probably picked up on this current, and his posthumously pub lished 1926 text Principles of Human Geography duly identiﬁed the variety of possible ‘local solutions’ which people could devise to the ‘problem of existence’ posed to them by their host natural environments. His approach came to be known as ‘possibilism’, perhaps most obvi ously in the work of the French historian Lucien Febvre. As summarized in the ‘Foreword’ to Febvre’s 1925 text A Geographical Introduction to History: Against the geographical determinism of Ratzel, [Febvre] sets the possibilism of Vidal de la Blache. ‘There is no rigid and uniform inﬂuence of four or ﬁve great geo graphical fatalities weighing on historical individualities’. The true and only geographical problem is that of the utilization of possibilities. ‘There are no necessities, but everywhere possibilities. (Barr, in Febvre, 1925: xi).

According to both de la Blache and Febvre, it was unreasonable to draw boundaries between natural and cultural phenomena; rather, they should be regarded as united and inseparable. Each human community adjusts to prevailing natural conditions in its own way, and the result of the adjustment is not one sidedly due to the natural conditions but the result of a long process of mutual adaptation. In practice, then, the terms of a debate were estab lished between determinism and possibilism as perhaps the most deep seated of controversies running through the early to mid twentieth century academic geography.

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The landmark edited collection from 1951, Geography in the Twentieth Century, was framed by this debate, and in the introduction it was stated that ‘‘the authors will take opposite sides in certain problems, as for instance in the broad question of Possibilism versus Determinism’’ (Taylor, 1951: 3). Moreover, in this introduction, Taylor contrasted the deterministic line taken by both a ‘theo cratic’ position and his own ‘geocratic’ position (see above) with the so called ‘we ocratic’ position of the possibilists, one centralizing the role played by ‘we’ humans in shaping our own worlds and destinies. He also expended much energy here and elsewhere in the vol ume to disputing possibilism, and to propounding what he called a ‘scientiﬁc’ or ‘stop and go’ determinism, the basic thrust of which is that the natural environment in a given region charts out a ‘main road’ along which hu manity will inevitably develop in that region, but that the people involved will be like ‘police ofﬁcers’ controlling the ‘trafﬁc’ along this road: that is, allowing it through, maybe accelerating the overall movement, or stopping it, decelerating the movement. In practice, however, enthusiasm for the strict en vironmental determinism favored by Taylor was deﬁnitely on the wane by the 1950s, and at the same time the de terminism–possibilism debate was itself fading from view, at least in the terms detailed above. Insofar as geographers through the later years of the twentieth century and up to the present have considered where they stand on the de terminism–possibilism axis, they would likely admit to following the softer, modiﬁed stance on environmental determinism indexed by the possibilist positions. One further contribution of note occurred in contributions from 1952 and 1957 when O. H. K. Spate (1911–2000) proposed a middle way between environmental determinism and possibilism, something that he called ‘probabilism’, em phasizing that the natural environment makes certain ‘possibilities’ (of how humans in a given environment might develop through time) more ‘probable’ than others. More recently, John E. Chappell has sought to recast the debate in terms of ‘environmental causation’, seeking thereby to avoid the excesses of an older environmental determinism, while various geographers – a prominent example is David Stoddart – have sought to reclaim a stronger sense of the natural–environmental dimension central to almost all facets of human existence, not least in a contemporary era of dramatic global climatic–environmental change (posing all manner of intractable questions for not just human ﬂourishing but also maybe the very survival of humanity on this planet). The name of ‘environmental geography’ has sometimes been attached to this latter development, not least in the context of undergraduate textbooks and teaching, but there is potential for such a rubric to en compass a variety of conceptualizations and methodologies, older and newer, around the axes of humanity and en vironment, or nature and culture.

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Determinism, Spatial Science, and Agency-Structure As noted, the determinism–possibilism debate, as con ducted around issues of ‘environmental’ inﬂuence, waned after c. 1950, not least because a very new set of concerns began, quite dramatically, to reconﬁgure all aspects of the discipline in Anglo Saxon speaking lands (and then spreading globally). These concerns arose with the ad vent of geography as spatial science, a quantitatively literate attempt to forge a properly ‘scientiﬁc’ geography able to specify foundational spatial (or morphological) laws of how phenomena (physical or human) are dis tributed across the Earth’s surface. Other articles in this encyclopedia provide more detail on this far reaching sea change in geographical thought and application, but of relevance here is how the search for spatial laws, com monly conceived through a lens of cause and effect, clearly committed the discipline to a fresh era of deter minism. Revealingly, in one of the founding statements of spatial science, Ian Burton’s 1963 paper on the ‘quanti tative revolution’, environmental determinism is treated favorably, not for its speciﬁc claims, which Burton ba sically rejects, but for the ‘ambition’ of identifying de terministic, causal, law like relations when examining geographical phenomena. There has been sustained ar gument over the validity of seeking to convert geography, particularly ‘human’ geography, into a ‘science’ akin to other conventional sciences, complete with a strong de terministic cast. Such arguments have also continued to rage over other versions of human geography that have emerged in opposition to spatial science, notably the more ‘economistic’ versions of Marxist geography, wherein deterministic laws of capitalist accumulation are advanced in the explanation of sociospatial inequalities. Realist, post structuralist, and postmodernist geographies have all questioned conventional deterministic reasoning, in whatever exact guise it has been prosecuted (en vironmental, spatial, or economistic), albeit mounting their criticisms from rather different bases, with differing levels of hostility, but not necessarily then endorsing voluntarism. Other articles in the encyclopedia ably cover the many and varied problematics involved, and so little more need be said here. What can be noted is that several commentators on disciplinary history detect the same parallels as just spelled out. Indeed, the likes of Derek Gregory posit an essential continuity between the environmental deter minism of Semple et al., the ‘geometric determinism’ of the spatial scientists and the ‘economic determinism’ of certain Marxist geographers, particularly in how they all end up allowing only scant room for human beings to be and do, to think and act, in anything other than a fashion determined for them by external compulsions. Thus, for the spatial scientists, spatial forms (e.g., a ‘central place’

hierarchy of settlements) are reckoned to be just as controlling of human behavior as are natural–environ mental contexts (e.g., a low lying, ill drained valley) for an environmental determinist. Or, for certain Marxist geographers, capital logics (e.g., the geographical transfer of ‘surplus value’) are reckoned to be equivalently con trolling of human behavior. Unsurprisingly, alternative perspectives have been advocated by human geographers unhappy about the implied negation of human freedom, free will, or, in a more recent vocabulary, agency. The result has been, as hinted earlier, the appearance within human geography of voluntarist conceptions standing in opposition to, or at least endeavoring to qualify the ex cesses of extreme, determinist thinking. Behavioral and humanistic geographers made the initial moves, demanding that people ‘as’ people, not as objects akin to rocks or rivers, nor as unthinking automata re sponding soundlessly to the determinations of environment, space, or economy, be placed center stage in inquiry. In turn, such moves were themselves criticized for being too voluntaristic, and for thereby positioning human beings as simply ‘too’ powerful, too able to shape their own destinies, when a host of constraining, if not strictly determining, inﬂuences surely did need to be taken more seriously. Here, therefore, was the fraught terrain of debate over what in creasingly became known as ‘agency’ and ‘structure’, where agency equated with ‘human’ agency (the capacity for ex periencing, decision making, acting, etc., of human beings) and structure with ‘social’ structure (potentially en compassing all manner of broader ‘ecological’, economic, and political imperatives comprising a structural ‘level’ above, below, or behind (the backs of) human being indi vidually and collectively). A diversity of theoretical man euvers were advanced in order to overcome this so called dualism, most obviously drawing from the ‘structurationist’ social theory of Anthony Giddens, an eminent sociologist, but commonly reworked to incorporate an enhanced alertness to how the ‘resources’ of time and space un avoidably enter into the recursive mediations of agency and structure (whereby agency ‘makes’ structure ‘makes’ agency, etc.). Once again, it is enough to reference other articles in this encyclopedia that chart in more detail the contours of the agency–structure debate, and how it was supposedly resolved in structuration theory and structurationist geog raphies. Nonetheless, the implications for thinking about determinism and voluntarism, a theme inevitably swimming throughout ‘all’ versions of human geography, past and present, whether or not named as such, should be obvious. In practice, perhaps akin to how most human geographers now effectively subscribe to an environmental possibilist (or maybe probabilist) line, even if rarely expressing their preference thus, it can be argued that the structurationist line on the balance between agency and structure, or be tween determinism and voluntarism, has now become a kind of ‘unspoken’ ground zero for many of us.

Determinism/Environmental Determinism

Determinism in Physics: An Addendum In classical mechanics, the situation of a system S of n mass points at time point t0 is fully known if, for each of the mass points i with 1rirn, their locations (or co ordinates) xi(t0) and their impulses (or momentums) pi(t0) at time t0 are known. Every future situation S at time t(t0 þ j) as well as every situation in the past (t0 j) can then be exactly calculated from the situation at t0 with the help of the Hamiltonian differential equation x˙i ¼

@H p˙i ¼ @pi

@H @xi

in which, the dot denotes the ordinary derivative with re spect to time of the functions pi ¼ pi(t) and xi ¼ xi(t) (called coordinates), taking values in some vector space, and H ¼ H(pi,xi,t) is the so called Hamiltonian or (scalar valued) Hamiltonian function. Therefore, given the situation at t0, with the help of the above Hamiltonian nomological hy pothesis, one can derive situation S through a deductive nomological explanation. If one interprets the initial situ ation as cause of sufﬁcient ground and every future situ ation as effect, then one accepts the theorem of Leibnitz, according to which every mechanical natural situation is uniquely determined by sufﬁcient grounds, or that the same causes will always result in the same effects. This property, however, is only true under the assumption that we can measure the situation with inﬁnite exactness, and of course, no human being has this ability, which can only reside in some supranatural creature (Laplace’s ‘demon’ or ‘omniscient calculator’). Nevertheless, it is this conception of mechanical causation, which underpins (virtually) all conventional scientiﬁc understandings of determinism. What is true for mechanical systems is also true for electromagnetic ﬁelds in combination with the Maxwell– Lorentz’ equations, while the differential equations of relativity theory describe a deterministic system. In the latter, though, the speed of light c is a limiting factor; and in the Minkowsky space of special relativity theory, two events (x1, t1) and (x0, t0) can only follow each other in time if c2(t1 t0)2 (x1 x0)2Z0. Therefore, we can also distinguish events which cannot be qualiﬁed as past or future events and thus cannot be related with other events along the time axis required by standard ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ reasoning. Otherwise, however, in relativity theory we are still dealing with a fully deterministic system. In contrast, in quantum mechanics, it has been shown, according to the Heisenberg ‘uncertainty principle’, that for a single electron ‘not’ all of the variables needed to describe its situation (location) can ever be measured at the same time. As a consequence, in the wave mechanics of Schro¨ dinger, the classical description of the situation is replaced by a c function, with which the situation of the system is not described exactly but is expressed in the form of a

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probability distribution of location (xi) and impulse (pi) at time t. With this mode of description and with the help of the Schro¨dinger equations, the c situation at t can be fully determined from the c situation at t0. The physical systems of quantum mechanics are therefore not deterministic but only probabilistic. One big implication is that the so called ‘new’ physics actually departs from conventional scientiﬁc understandings of determinism, acknowledging rather than denying the role of uncertainty, chance, and the often un expected juxtapositional effects of space–time. As Doreen Massey has explained, this realization is crucial for at least two reasons: (1) it suggests a more sophisticated version of natural science than that to which academic geography, physical and human, has all too often been deferential; (2) it thereby raises the possibility of geographers being conﬁdent to operate with, and to contribute to formulating, alternative frameworks for ‘scientiﬁc’ inquiry and explanation; and (3) it also holds open the promise of ‘nondeterministic’ con ceptions and methods derived from academic geography and related (natural and social) sciences, complete with challenging insights into the character of time–space, be coming more widely inﬂuential. See also: Behavioral Geography; Darwinism (and Social Darwinism); Ecology; Foucauldianism; Humanism/ Humanistic Geography; Positivism/Positivist Geography; Possibilism; Probabilism; Ritter, C.; Spatial Science; Structuration Theory; Structurationist Geography.

Further Reading Beck, H. (1953). Moritz Wagner als geograph. Erdkunde 7, 125 128. Burton, I. (1963). The quantitative revolution and theoretical geography. The Canadian Geographer 7, 151 162. Chappell, J. E. Jr. (1981). Environmental causation. In Harvey, M. E. & Holly, B. P. (eds.) Themes in Geographic Thought, pp 163 186. London: Croom Helm. Claval, P. (ed.) (1993). Autour de Vidal de la Blache: La Formation de l’e´cole Franc¸aise de Ge´ographie. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientiﬁque (CNRS). Febvre, L. (1925). A Geographical Introduction to History. London (esp. Foreword by Berr, H, pp v xx): Routledge & Kegan Paul. Freeman, T. W. (1961). A Hundred Years of Geography. London: Gerald Duckworth. Glacken, C. J. (1967). Traces on the Rhodian Shore. Nature and culture in Western thought from ancient times to the end of the eighteenth century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Gregory, D. (1981). Human agency and human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 6, 1 18. Hard, G. (1973). Die Geographie. Eine Wissenschaftstheoretische Einfu¨hrung. Berlin: de Gruyter. Hassinger, H. (1930). U¨ber Beziehungen Zwischen der Geographie und den Kulturwissenschaften. Freiburger Universitats Reden. no. 3. Universtat Freiburg, Freiburg. Huntington, E. (1907). The Pulse of Asia: A Journey in Central Asia Illustrating the Geographic Base of History. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifﬂin. Johnson, D. W. (ed.) (1907). Geographical Essays by William Morris Davis. New York: Dover Publications. Lewthwaite, G. (1966). Environmentalism and determinism: A search for clariﬁcation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 56, 1 23.

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Livingstone, D. N. (1992). The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise. Oxford: Blackwell. Marsh, W. M. (2005). Environmental Geography: Science, Land Use and Earth Systems (3rd edn.). London: Wiley Higher Education. Martin, A. F. (1951). The necessity for determinism. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 17, 1 12. Massey, D. (1999). Space time, ‘science’ and the relationship between physical geography and human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24, 261 276. Peattie, R. (1940). Geography in Human Destiny. Boston, MA: George W. Stewart. Platt, R. S. (1948). Determinism in geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 38, 126 132. Ritter, C. (1822 1859). Die Erdkunde im Verha¨ltnis zur Natur und Geschichte des Menschen, oder Allgemeine Vergleichende Geographie als sichere Grundlage des Studiums und Unterrichts in Physikalischen und Historischen Wissenschaften. Berlin: Reimer. Schopenhauer, A. (1819). Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig: Brockhaus. Schulz, H. D. (1980). Abhandlung des Geographischen Instituts Anthropogeographie, Vol. 29: Die Deutschsprachige Geographie von 1800 bis 1970. Berlin: Geograﬁsches Institut der Freien Universitat. Semple, E. C. (1911). Inﬂuences of Geographic Environment on the Basis of Ratzel’s System of Anthopo geography. New York: Holt.

Spate, O. H. K. (1957). How determined is possibilism? Geographical Studies 4, 3 12. Stoddart, D. R. (1987). To claim the higher ground: Geography for the end of the century. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 12, 327 336. Tatham, G. (1951). Environmentalism and possibilism. In Taylor, G. (ed.) (1953) Geography in the 20th Century, pp128 162. New York: Philosophical Library. Tatham, G. (1951). Geography in the nineteenth century. In Taylor, G. (ed.) Geography in the 20th Century, pp 28 69. New York: Philosophical Library. Taylor, G. (1951). Introduction. In Taylor, G. (ed.) Geography in the 20th Century, pp 3 27. New York: Philosophical Library. Wagner, M. (1868). Die Darwinsche Theorie und das Migrationgesetz der Organismen. Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot.

Relevant Websites http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism causal/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Causal Determinism.

Development I K. D. Willis, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK M. S. Kumar, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Eurocentrism A way of thinking which assumes that the European experience is the only or the best way of achieving something and that Europe should be the model for other parts of the world to follow. Global North A term derived from the Brandt Commission’s reports in the 1980s which divided the world into two parts: North and South. The Global North encompassed the economically richer countries of Europe, the Soviet Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States of America, and Canada. Global South The collective term coined by the Brandt Commission in the 1980s to refer to the economically poorer countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) The value of all goods and services produced within a national boundary. Gross National Product (GNP) The value of all goods and services claimed by the residents of a particular country, regardless of where the goods and services were produced. Post-Structuralism A theoretical approach which recognizes that knowledge is always partial and situated, rather than adopting singular interpretations of the world.

‘Development’ has received attention from a range of social sciences, including, of course, ‘Development Studies’ Geographical approaches to development have focused on issues of spatialities and scale, with particular attention being paid to ﬂows of ideas, capital, and people, and the exercise of power at a range of scales. Three main themes come out of geographers’ work on development: ﬁrst, how and why deﬁnitions of development vary across space and how this reﬂects, reinforces, and challenges prevailing power relations; second, a consideration of how and why development varies across space; and third, how development interventions are experienced and generated at different spatial scales. Development is a grounded process, carried out by different actors attempting to achieve a range of goals. Geographers and others have sought to examine the actions of key development actors, most notably, gov ernments (in both the Global North and Global South), individuals, and communities in the Global South, pri vate sector companies, and civil society organizations. The role of these different actors has varied over time as a range of development approaches and theories have emerged, and emphasis has been placed on particular sectors as the key routes to development. In this article, we present a largely chronological discussion of how geographers have considered devel opment. However, key questions cut across the different time periods and while we have to present a rather simpliﬁed view for the purposes of this discussion, it is important to remember that approaches and theories coexist and overlap at times.

Introduction Development as Modernization Conceptions of development and underdevelopment vary over time and space and the explanations for dif ferences in development are similarly diverse. Geog raphers have considered ‘development’ in two different ways: ﬁrst as a term encompassing ideas of economic, political, and social progress and second, as referring speciﬁcally to intentional interventions aimed at achieving such progress. The latter became much more common in the post World War II period when inter national attention turned to the situation in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, especially in the context of decolonization and the Cold War. Thus, ‘de velopment’ is often considered as a set of processes which relate purely to the parts of the world collectively en titled the ‘Third World’ or ‘Global South’.

Ideas of progress and civilization were key to the colonial projects embarked upon by European powers from the ﬁfteenth century onward. However, this was rarely framed in terms of development as a concept. The idea of development really emerged in the post World War II era when it was believed that poverty was not the in evitable destiny of humankind. This awareness was spurred by the emergent afﬂuence witnessed in the de veloped Global North. After the horrors of war and the earlier period of global economic insecurity in the 1930s, and within a context of increased decolonization as the countries of Africa and Asia moved toward independence, debates around the correct development path became more common. The other major inﬂuence for the

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emergence of development as an ‘ideal’ was the Cold War, whereby both the United States and the Soviet Union were competing to attract newly independent Third World countries to join their respective camps – capitalist or communist/socialist. They did this partly by providing development assistance and support. Development from the point of view of the ‘First World’ or capitalist world was based on the experiences of the Global North and placed a particular form of modernity as the goal. This included urbanization, in dustrialization, nation state building, and the replace ment of traditional patterns of thoughts and belief with a notion of scientiﬁc economic rationality. Development was therefore seen as a process of catching up with the Global North by adopting the policies that had been viewed as successful in North America and Western Europe. These policies were to be implemented by governments in the Global South, often with assistance or aid from multilateral institutions (such as the World Bank) and Northern governments. Economic growth was a key indicator of modern ization or development, and a range of economic indi cators were used to measure development. These included gross national product (GNP) or gross domestic product (GDP), GNP or GDP per capita, and annual changes in these measures. Other indicators used assessed the contribution of agriculture, industry, and services to the national economy or the make up of the national labor force. The assumption was that national level economic progress would be associated with improved standards of living as health and education levels im proved due to rising levels of wealth. There was also a belief that the beneﬁts of modernization would eventu ally spread throughout the entire population through processes of ‘trickle down’. Geographers became involved in mapping different levels of development (based on economic measures) at both national and subnational levels. Differences between countries were understood to represent different stages in a linear progression from ‘traditional’ or ‘backward’ so cieties to ‘modern’ or ‘developed’ ones. The solution was to follow the examples of the countries of the Global North to ensure that internal conditions were appropri ate for development. Within countries, development or modernization was assumed to spread outward from a number of core areas. Geographers represented such diffusion through map ping the spread of infrastructure, such as roads and railways, health centers, and schools. The main actors of such modernizing tendencies were national governments, external donors, and private sector companies. Policy debates ﬂowing from such analyses focused on whether the concentration of investment in key locations would exacerbate or alleviate spatial inequalities over time. Based on his research in Venezuela, John Friedmann

argued that the use of growth poles as sites of investment would eventually lead to the spread of economic devel opment out from these key sites. In contrast, Gunnar Myrdal claimed that without state intervention, growth poles would suck in investment and people, leaving more peripheral areas behind. Emphasis on economic progress came to occupy the centerstage of development in the post war period. Here economic growth as a mythically imbibed concept be came a proxy for development and economists main tained the primacy of growth of per capita income as a standard index for development. Increased production and consumption were seen as twin processes to achieve the goals of development. Indeed, distribution of wealth and assets were rarely considered appropriate in a growth obsessed society. However this focus has been criticized as being Eurocentric both in the deﬁnition of development used and the routes by which development is to be achieved.

Marxist and Structuralist Approaches to Development In the 1960s and 1970s, geographers, among others, con tinued to focus on processes of uneven development, both globally and within countries. However, rather than viewing spatial differences in development as reﬂecting variations in stages along a development path, many geographers adop ted a more radical interpretation, arguing that despite all the optimism of development there were structural factors which both explained existing patterns of development and which prevented countries in the Global South achieving development in the future. Processes of capitalism, coloni alism, and imperialism were used to explain global devel opment inequalities. As with the modernization ideas discussed earlier, development was again deﬁned largely as economic progress, which, it was assumed, would result in welfare improvements. Many geographers drew on ideas and theories coming from the Latin American experience. These included the Latin American structuralist ideas derived from the work of Rau´l Prebisch and colleagues at the United Nations Economic Comission for Latin America (ECLA or CEPAL in its Spanish acronym). In the post World War II period, Prebisch argued that Latin American countries would not be able to achieve the levels of economic development found in the countries of the Global North. This was because the global economic system was very different and unequal in the middle of the twentieth century, compared with that found in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when many European countries and the United States of America had made great economic progress. The economic power of Global North countries in the twentieth century meant that it was almost

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impossible for poorer countries to progress in the same way. For Prebisch, a key policy solution was for Latin American nations to protect their national economies, particularly infant industries, through the use of tariff barriers and other forms of protectionism. Other scholars drew on the theories of the so called ‘dependency school’ which adopted Marxist approaches to explanations of development and underdevelopment in the Global South. For example, Andre Gunder Frank’s work on economic change in Brazil and Chile since the start of European colonialism in Latin America con cluded that capitalism and colonialism created conditions of underdevelopment and exacerbated economic in equalities at a range of scales. Thus, according to de pendency theorists, global development inequalities were not just a reﬂection of different stages of capitalist de velopment, but rather were a creation of capitalist de velopment in the Global North which was partly based on the exploitation of the Global South. Geographers who interpreted capitalist development processes as the causes of global inequalities between the North and South were part of a broader ﬁeld of radical geography which developed in the 1960s drawing on Marxist theory. The inevitable outcome of such analyses was to advocate an end to capitalism.

Neoliberalism as a Route to Development Under post war modernization interpretations of devel opment and those of Marxists and structuralists, the state at national and local levels was viewed as an important actor in guiding and shaping development, although, of course, theorists differed in the extent to which they believed the state should be in overall control. By the 1970s, however, a growing body of theory, particularly in political science and economics, was emerging which was drawing on ideas from the nineteenth century and earlier about the role of the market in economic progress and development. This set of theories was termed ‘neoliber alism’. Rather than being a positive or productive force in development, neoliberal theorists argued that the state acted as a brake on growth as it was inefﬁcient and open to corruption and mismanagement. Instead, decisions about what to produce, where to produce, and how much to charge should be determined by the invisible hand of market. The central priorities for essential development were structural reform, ﬁnancial deregulation, liberal ization, and privatization. Once again the core meaning of development was economic growth, but now the agency of development shifted from the state to the market. Global economic events in the 1970s provided the conditions whereby neoliberal policies could be imple mented. Sharp rises in oil prices followed by a slowdown in the global economy and an increase in interest rates

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meant that many countries found it increasingly difﬁcult to meet their external debt payments. During the post war period, many governments in both the Global North and Global South had borrowed signiﬁcant amounts of money to fund large scale modernization and develop ment projects. With the economic changes of the 1970s, such a development approach came under threat. Fol lowing Mexico in 1982, many countries defaulted on their debt repayments. In order to gain access to foreign currency, the only option available was to approach the international ﬁnancial institutions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These organizations agreed to provide ﬁnancial sup port on condition that countries followed certain policies encompassed in ‘structural adjustment programs’ (SAPs). These were based on key neoliberal principles of re ducing state involvement in production decisions and promoting the role of the free market. The main di mensions of SAPs were privatizations, reductions in tariff barriers and import quotas, currency devaluation, and an opening up to foreign investment. Cutting back on gov ernment spending also involved the laying off of large numbers of staff and major reductions in welfare expenditure. Geographers have considered neoliberalism in the context of development in two major ways. First, they have examined how neoliberalism as an ideology and set of practices has moved around the world and been im plemented in particular places through processes of neoliberalization. While the World Bank and IMF set the conditions for SAPs and governments have few, if any, alternative options for continued ﬁnancing, there are variations in how governments and national elites are engaged in implementing the policies. The importance of certain places in the Global South in both shaping neo liberal thought and being used as exemplars of successful economic development under a neoliberal model should also be recognized. Key examples are Chile after the 1973 coup when General Augusto Pinochet implemented neoliberal economic policies based on the teachings of Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, and the East Asian economies which were held up in the early 1990s as neoliberal development successes having achieved high levels of economic growth without in creased inequality. In the case of East Asia, critics argued that the role of the state was far more important in economic growth success than neoliberals acknowledged and that the East Asian ﬁnancial crisis of 1997 was in large part a result of liberalization of the ﬁnancial sector. In Chile, Pinochet’s economic successes were achieved in the context of authoritarian rule. The second way in which geographers have examined neoliberalism within a development context is through investigating the impacts of SAP’s and associated policies on people, particularly marginal groups such as the poor

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and women. Such research has often concluded that while macroeconomic indicators may have stabilized and improved as a result of SAP’s, social and economic in equalities have increased both in the long and short term as a result of the drastic policies. Reduced workers’ rights due to changing labor legislation, the rise of informal sector working, and increases in basic food costs as gov ernment subsidies are withdrawn have often combined to increase the precariousness of everyday existence for millions of people. This is not to deny the role of neo liberal policies in job creation and improved services in some contexts, but to highlight their potential devastating effects. SAPs and the implementation of neoliberal policies in the 1980s and early 1990s were criticized for their insenstivity to cultural and social differences, presenting a set of technical solutions which could be applied re gardless of location. These critiques led to a shift toward nationally speciﬁc ‘poverty reduction strategies’ which have to include consultation with appropriate stake holders throughout the country. While this move is welcome, it is still based on an attempt to implement technical solutions rather than considering how power is exercised and experienced, that is, an understanding that development has a political dimension.

Participation and Development at the Grassroots The deﬁnitions and approaches to development which have been discussed so far have been based on ideas about development which stress the economic and lead to policies which have been imposed from the top down. This does not consider other deﬁnitions and how people at the grassroots envisage development. So called alter native forms of development have often stressed the importance of focusing at a local scale, allowing indi viduals and communities to create and agree on their own ideas of development and how it should be achieved. Such an approach is not only more effective, it is argued, because it is appropriate to a particular con text, but it is also more democratic and has the potential to transform existing power relations by encouraging participation. The focus on community and social sector develop ment, particularly since the 1980s, has promoted alter native forms of development, for example, those informed by ideas of entitlements and capabilities as outlined by Amartya Sen. Sen’s approach to development focuses on seeing individuals and communities as having agency and abilities, rather than presenting poor or marginal communities purely through the lens of ‘prob lems’ which outsiders need to solve. He also recognizes the limits which are present due to economic, social,

political, or cultural marginalization resulting in in equalities in entitlements. Sen sees development as en compassing ideas of freedom whereby individuals and communities have the choices and abilities to shape their lives as they see ﬁt. The role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has expanded with the growing focus on grassroots de velopment. NGOs are often seen as ideal institutions to support local people because they are separate from the state and they are not driven by proﬁt motivations. They are also viewed as being sensitive to local contexts and more efﬁcient as a result. While grassroots development has been presented as a contrast to other forms of top down development, they are in fact strongly linked. The growth of NGOs and a focus on community based development is not purely a reﬂection of alternative development strategies; the rise of neoliberal development thinking and policies has had a signiﬁcant effect. This is for two main reasons; ﬁrst, as governments have implemented neoliberal policies in volving cuts in government spending, services which were previously supplied by the state are either provided by the market at a cost, or are not provided. This has meant the rise of NGOs in ﬁlling the service gap for poorer communities in sectors such as housing, health, and education. The notion of ‘self help’ has often been used to describe this form of activity as governments and private sector companies are not involved. Second, a key dimension of neoliberalism has been decentralization and a discourse of greater participation. NGOs are seen as ideal institutions to facilitate such processes given their perceived effectiveness at a grass roots level and their ability to engage with a range of social and cultural groups. For both these reasons, international ﬁnancial institutions and Northern gov ernment donors have increasingly directed aid through NGOs, rather than through Southern governments. Thus, the idea that NGO spaces of operation are in herently autonomous of, or alternative to, formal neo liberal development spaces is not reﬂected in reality. The role of grassroots development and NGOs in particular in the context of participation has also been critiqued. Grassroots activities can be empowering as people who are normally left out of decision making processes are able to participate, thereby creating new active modes of citizenship and reducing dependency on the state. However, participation can vary greatly from mere attendance at a meeting where ‘participants’ are informed of development policies and projects, to meaningful participation involving active engagement in the initial development and design of projects. Add itionally, discussions of participation are sometimes based on the false assumption that ‘communities’ are internally homogenous. In reality, power relations within com munities can affect who participates and how.

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Sustainable Development In the ﬁeld of development, geographers have been particularly keen to examine the relationship between development processes and the physical environment. In the post war period and the focus on economic growth under a modernization model, the natural environment was viewed as a resource which could be exploited for human advancement. This failed to recognize the po tential for environmental destruction, especially when techniques used in the mid latitude temperate environ ments of Europe and North America were transferred to tropical zones with very different soil and vegetation conditions. Environmental awareness in Northern development circles rose greatly during the 1960s and 1970s, but it was in the 1980s, with the report of the Brundtland Com mission in 1987 and then the Rio Conference on En vironment and Development in 1992, that environmental concerns came into mainstream government and donor thinking, particularly around the concept of ‘sustainable development’. The Brundtland Commission (also known as the World Commission on Environment and Devel opment) saw sustainable development as encompassing practices which met the needs of today’s population, but did not undermine the availability of resources for future generations to meet their needs. Of course, the concept of ‘needs’ is very contested and varies over time and space and there have been highly contrasting debates around how to achieve this goal. Two main approaches to sustainable development can be identiﬁed; the ﬁrst is most widespread and can be termed a ‘technocentric’ approach, while the second is ‘ecocentric’ and involves transformations in the current forms of development. Technocentric approaches see environmental problems as something which requires a technical solution, such as a new way of generating power or traveling long distances. Under such approaches, economic growth is still viewed as important and desir able as it is market pressures which will help drive in novation. Putting a price on environmental goods, such as carbon trading, is also part of this approach. Such ap proaches have been criticized for not addressing the massive inequalities between the rich and the poor on the planet and doing too little to prevent future environ mental disasters. In contrast, ecocentric approaches place the environ ment at the heart of the discussion and see current forms of development as being unsustainable. According to ecocentric theorists and practitioners, sustainable devel opment can only be achieved if present patterns of consumption and levels of economic growth are dra matically changed. Such approaches usually advocate small scale, community based development as this will allow projects which take into account local

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environmental conditions. It may also embrace indigen ous knowledges about local environments and appro priate environmental management. However, ecocentric approaches require major shifts in current consumption patterns among the richer people of the world, and deny poorer populations the chance to enjoy standards of living which have so far been denied to them.

Postdevelopment and Postcolonialism In this article, we have highlighted the ways in which development has been deﬁned and implemented. A rec ognition of the ideological nature of development and the way in which deﬁnitions and policies reﬂect and re inforce the exercise of power has been a theme throughout. Developments in postcolonial theory and the rise of what has been termed ‘postdevelopment’ has contributed to understandings of development as a con tested and non neutral process. Postcolonial interpretations of development are that it is a largely Eurocentric product based on an unawareness of, refusal to engage with, or explicit strategy to destroy, non European interpretations of the world and what progress might be. Postcolonial approaches involve con testing ideas which are seen as ‘natural’ from a ‘European’ viewpoint, such as progress meaning economic growth and the focus on individual rights. Such approaches also challenge the Eurocentric representations of the peoples and places of the Global South as poor, uneducated, and passive. This latter point has been a major part of the set of ideas termed ‘postdevelopment’. These ideas came to the fore from the 1990s onward and involved an attack on development as an idea, arguing that it was Eurocentric and involved the mobilization of particular discourses about progress and modernity. For example, Arturo Escobar (1995) used the case of Colombia to argue that in the 1950s and 1960s the USA and the World Bank had constructed Colombia as poor, populated largely by un educated peasants and passive women who needed de velopment. This development was to be provided in the form of large scale top down projects, the beneﬁts of which would trickle down to the people at the grassroots. These discourses were often adopted and internalized by government ofﬁcials and the population more generally such that development became something desirable. For postdevelopment theorists, grassroots community based development is a much more appropriate path forward. This would allow much greater involvement of local people in determining how they want to live their lives. However, as critics of postdevelopment have high lighted, this focus on community development is some thing which has been occurring in more ‘mainstream’ development for a number of decades. The top down,

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modernization driven approach critiqued by post developmentists has been discredited in most situations. In addition, as with advocates of grassroots development, more generally, there is a need to consider how far ‘lo cally based’ projects can achieve their goals within the context of broader national and global structures. As this article has demonstrated, geographers have long been involved in challenging hegemonic ideas of development and investigating its material outcomes. However, postcolonial and postdevelopment research, as well as post structural ideas have become increasingly important since the late 1980s. This has led to a massive growth in development research which is aware of how gender, ethnicity, religion, and other forms of identity both shape and are shaped by development processes.

Summary This article has outlined the key ways in which devel opment as a concept and set of policies has been dealt with within geography and more broadly in policy en vironments mainly since World War II. There has been a clear recognition of the contested nature of the concept and how development as an ideology has been used in particular places and times with certain outcomes. Geographers’ engagement with postcolonial and post structural accounts of development and approaches to analysis have been important in this process. In addition, the general trend away from a purely economic focus has been obvious, as has been the tendency to consider grassroots and community based scales of analysis and policy intervention. This focus on the local is welcome in that it can allow for greater understanding of diverse opinions, but it should not hide the inherently political nature of development and how power relations and in equalities are embedded in the very concept. Develop ment despite its feel good factor, implies struggle and conﬂict to acquire resources and freedom of choice for the betterment of life for the majority. See also: Brandt Commission; Debt; Dependency; Development II; East Asian Miracle; East/West; Eurocentrism; First World; Globalization, Economic; Human Geography; Latin American Structuralist School;

Neocolonialism; Neoliberalism and Development; Nongovernmental Organizations; North-South; Participation; Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies; Postdevelopment; Poverty; Rio Summit; Second World; Sustainable Development; Third World.

Further Reading Baran, P. A. (1957). The Political Economy of Growth. New York: Monthly Review Press. Corbridge, S. (1986). Capitalist World Development: A Critique of Radical Development Geography. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Corbridge, S. (2002). Development as freedom: The spaces of Amartya Sen. Progress in Development Studies 2(3), 183 217. Cornwall, A. and Brock, K. (2005). What do buzzwords do for development policy? A critical look at participation, empowerment and poverty reduction. Third World Quarterly 26(7), 1043 1060. Crush, J. (ed.) (1995). Power of Development. London: Routledge. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Friedmann, J. (1966). Regional Development Policy: A Case Study of Venezuela. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kambhampati, U. S. (2004). Development and the Developing World. Cambridge: Polity. Lawson, V. (2007). Making Development Geography. London: Hodder Arnold. Leftwich, A. (2000). States of Development: On the Primacy of Politics in Development. Cambridge: Polity. Potter, R. B., Binns, T., Elliott, J. A. and Smith, D. (2008). Geographies of Development: An Introduction to Development Studies (3rd edn.). Harlow: Pearson Prentice Hall. Power, M. (2003). Rethinking Development Geographies. London: Routledge. Rahnema, M. and Bawtree, V. (eds.) (1997). The Post Development Reader. London: Zed Books. Sachs, W. (ed.) (1992). The Development Dictionary. London: Zed Books. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, G., Meth, P. and Willis, K. (2009). Geographies of Developing Areas: The Global South in a Changing World. Abingdon: Routledge.

Relevant Websites www.imf.org International Monetary Fund. www.worldbank.org World Bank. www.wdm.org.uk World Development Movement.

Development II B. Korf, University of Zu¨rich – Irchel, Zu¨rich, Switzerland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Complex Emergency Humanitarian crisis situation that is complex, combining political and natural causes that go beyond unidirectional explanations. Developmental State State as an agent that is actively promoting development in a symbiosis of the political and economic elements of statehood. Neopatrimonialism System of statehood governed through personal loyalties and reciprocal relationships of an essentially personal kind between leaders and their followers within the formal hierarchy of the state. Shadow State Proﬁts that can be made through contraband trade and smuggling have attracted state ofﬁcials who operate a parallel shadow state, while keeping control of formal institutions of statehood. Sobel Soldiers by day, rebels by night. State Collapse The crumbling of institutions, where the state’s structure, authority, law, and political order have fallen apart. State Failure It is deﬁned by the nonperformance or meager performance of speciﬁc state functions. War Economy Bush economies – with a link to global contraband trade – organized around the power realms of roving bandits, who utilize violence and suppression of local civilians as a conscious strategy of economic reward. Washington Consensus Emerged in the 1980s to describe the agreement of international ﬁnancial institutions to pursue neoliberal policies whereby the function of the state was reduced to being an arbiter of market forces.

Introduction Development and state building in postcolonial societies are twin processes. Social and economic development cannot be thought of without a state providing basic functions of welfare and security. It may be debatable what the functions of a state are, but development policy discourses commonly assume that development requires a functioning state. However, in many postcolonial so cieties, the construction of a state has been a difﬁcult and contested political process. The challenges of building a postcolonial state – often based on arbitrary territorial boundaries – have been experienced by a large number of societies that have undergone violent conﬂict, civil war, and social anomie in the last few decades.

With the end of the Cold War, the phenomenon of societies experiencing partial or complete state collapse appears to have become more pertinent as exempliﬁed in Somalia’s slide into social anomie after 1990, but there are many more countries that have followed since then, such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, and Afghanistan. Public debate has attributed this to a coming anarchy or has linked those stateless territories with the breeding of global terrorism. Some scholars have started talking of a new type of war – the new wars – that are anarchic, fought by militias and warlords and rather intrastate than interstate. In some cases, state collapse and the new wars were mainly attributed to outside interventions (e.g., Iraq), but in other situations, it was argued that the lack of international intervention had resulted in an internally driven process of social deterioration (e.g., Somalia). Although some of the implicit assumptions of the ‘new wars’ discourse are problematic, the phenomenon of state failure and collapse has been linked with many of the most appalling instances of human suffering in the modern world. It therefore poses challenging questions for develop ment theorists and practitioners alike: What makes states fail – and what does failure mean in this context? How can the outbreak, persistence, and spatial extent of social anomie and violence – the complete collapse of state (and social) order – be explained? How can the international community deliver humanitarian assistance under such conditions? And is there a way out of protracted violent conﬂict to rebuild the state in violence striven societies?

State, Violence, and Development A number of different words are used for describing phenomena that link social anomie and political violence to the state and its existence, namely state collapse, state failure, state fragility, or complex (political, protracted, humanitarian) emergencies. All those notions carry in them an implicit normative ideal, that of the Western liberal state as a rational organization with extensive powers and massive bureaucracies against which the current status of those borderland societies are measured. With the failure of the USSR as an alternative to liberal democracy, the only accepted global model of legitimate statehood is based on principles of multiparty democracy, respect for human rights, and good governance. Two conceptions of the state in development have been popular. The concept of a developmental state was based on the premise of a supportive two way relation ship between the political and economic elements of

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statehood. The developmental state was an active enabler and creator of development. South Korea is the classic example where a developmental state in the 1960s and 1970s was successful in steering a process of economic development. The second view of the role of the state is the Washington Consensus that emerged in the 1980s and reduced the role and responsibility of the state to that of an arbiter of market forces, placing the state in the role of servant of the market. In this conception, the state is the essential manager of a more or less regulated market economy and responsible for legal order, currency, in frastructure, and the provision of basic social services – or the tripartite functions of order, welfare, and security. Although both concepts differ with regard to their conceptions of the role of the state, they share the pre sumption that development is not possible without a state. Where states do not work, it is presumed that they have failed to adopt the formula of success of the liberal democratic model. The phenomenon of state collapse as the most radical form of state failure is often represented as the ‘other’ of development, modernity, and the West ern liberal state, as the irrational, barbaric instincts of the human specie coming to the fore. These metaphors contrast the opposing characteristics of order (us) and chaos (them) by juxtaposing traits of barbarity, excess, and irrationality on borderland or peripheral territories experiencing state collapse and characteristics of civility, restraint, and rationality on metropolitan, developed so cieties and territories. Fragile States – Collapse, Failure It is useful to distinguish between state collapse, which is concerned with the crumbling of institutions, where the state’s organizational structure, authority, law, and polit ical order have fallen apart, and state failure, which is deﬁned by the nonperformance or meager performance of speciﬁc state functions. State failure may be a matter of degree, not all failing states collapse, but states that fail to deliver essential functions of statehood (as deﬁned by the liberal model) without complete collapse may be termed weak states or disintegrating states, although their fac¸ade of statehood is often still intact. For example, Sri Lanka as a state fails to provide protection and security to a con siderable number of its citizens, but the state structures are still visible and functioning even in most of the civil war affected areas in the northeast, which are contested by Tamil insurgents. In the case of Rwanda, the Hutu dominated state was effectively organizing militias that conducted the killing, so the state was failing to provide security to some of its citizens, mainly Tutsi and op positional Hutu, but it had not collapsed. There are several explanations about the mechanisms that weaken state structures or bring about state failure or

state collapse. Broadly speaking, some scholars emphasize internal factors, others external factors, but depending on the speciﬁc context, the causal links between internal and external factors that make states collapse or fail may differ considerably. Processes of failure are often ex plained with the inability of a state to deliver its social, political, and economic functions. What the exact func tions are and how the nondelivery of such functions undermines the coherence and strength of statehood is subject to debate, but it is clear that the provision of these functions requires a costly social organization, which may exceed what poorer societies with scattered populations in inaccessible territories may be able to afford. Representation, identity, and loyalty

In many postcolonial societies, authoritarian rulers took power after decolonialization. In some cases, such as South Korea and Taiwan, such authoritarianism was successful in creating a common national identity, but in many other postcolonial states, this identity formation toward a nation state failed to be successful. Authori tarian regimes were often supported by the West as guarantors of political stability and as benevolent dic tators that would be better able to construct a nation than a representative system of government that may lead to political fragmentation. These authoritarian nation building projects were embedded in a mass of symbols and rituals pretending a functioning state where there was often only a shadow of it. In many countries where identity and loyalty was traditionally accorded to kinship, public institutions of statehood were subverted into private mechanisms de signed to promote wealth and power for a speciﬁc kin group. Statehood became governed through personal loyalties – reciprocal relationships of an essentially per sonal kind between leaders and their followers within the formal hierarchy of the state. Neopatrimonialism is based on short term and individual reciprocities and often builds on kinship bonds. Neopatrimonial rulers have to pay off their clients in these chains of reciprocity, which diverts resources away from public use. This can undermine the very basis of neopatrimonialism in the longer term when it leads to a shrinkage of the resource base upon which the state can draw in the future. Neo patrimonialism contradicts the pertinent liberal model of the modern state, which is based on a rational, impartial bureaucracy eager to protect the common good based on generalized reciprocity of all citizens. Neopatrimonial rulers utilized the anticolonial ideology of nationalism to cover up the cracks in the fac¸ades of common identity and statehood. This, however, created a dilemma. While the nation building narratives of postcolonial rulers triggered the expectations and demands on what the state should deliver, the neopa trimonial structures of the state undermined the basis

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upon which the state could have delivered these demands to a broader populace. This rising gap between promise and performance of postcolonial rulers undermined their credibility and legitimacy among the socially excluded parts of the postcolonial nation. Neopatrimonialism ef fectively hollowed out the capabilities of statehood in the long term and encouraged insurgent movements, ethnic conﬂict, and military coups d’e´tat.

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irrational madness, but are organized around the power realms of roving bandits, who utilize intimidation, vio lence, and suppression of local civilians as a conscious strategy of economic reward. Humanitarian aid that is distributed to the suffering civilian population has often been incorporated as resource rent in the war economies. Aid then triggers the shadow economies and structures of violence rather than supporting a ‘developmental’ state.

Wealth and welfare

The concept of a developmental state was built on the supportive two way relationship between the political and economic elements of statehood. Economic global ization and structural adjustment programs as part of the Washington Consensus, such as privatization of parastatal corporations, the reduction of tariffs, and the opening of markets, reduced the rent collecting capacities of state elites. The planning and developmental state was dis solved. This encouraged the expansion of spaces of the nonformal economy side by side with the global market economy. Territorial based and nonterritorial shadow economies involve innovative extralegal local–global networks linking local resources (e.g., drugs, diamonds, gold, and minerals) and international markets. This process of privatization that was encouraged by the metropolitan powers of the West opened new eco nomic opportunities for rulers in fragile states. Access to natural resources and their marketing through transbor der networks became a new basis of political power: The proﬁts that can be made through contraband trade and smuggling have attracted state ofﬁcials who operate a parallel shadow state, while keeping control of formal institutions of statehood (i.e., keeping their ofﬁcial job as state employees). In other cases, smuggling and transborder trade has deprived state bureaucracies of revenues, while providing a revenue base for state destroying insurgencies. These shadow, bush, and war economies have often reversed the economic logic of statehood: the economy of the bush is based on exploit ation of extralegal mining of mineral resources or culti vation of drugs and is located in rural border regions which have become revitalized as economic centers of transborder trade and exchange, whereas urban centers – the core of a nation’s statehood – are in economic decay. As those shadow economies depend on the appro priation of easily exploitable natural, mostly mineral, resources, some scholars argue that such resource abundance can become a resource curse, when it sup ports clientelist states and triggers political disinte gration. When states collapse due to insurgent violence, ethnic conﬂict, and political disintegration, such eco nomic networks are often reshaped into an economy of violence: physical force and anomic violence become strategies of so called warlords to monopolize resource rents. These war economies are not an expression of

Order and security

The territorial boundaries of postcolonial states have been largely given, deﬁned, and often arbitrarily drawn by colonial powers. The global doctrine of state sover eignty that bans interventions into internal affairs of a state made any ruler by deﬁnition the legitimate ruler of a speciﬁc country. Whenever security was threatened by external attack or internal uprising, incumbent rulers as recognized governments could often gain more external military support than their insurgent opponents and allowed the state to survive and its elites to stay in power. This external support to sovereign rulers could become counterproductive by increasing the alienation of the population or parts of the population from their rulers. It allowed quasi states to survive whose existence was guaranteed by global conventions, while their elites and rulers did not have to mobilize their own populace and to build up trusted and commonly accepted institutions of statehood. Internally contested rulers need to rely on the loyalty of their security forces. Such loyalty is often built on kinship bonds rather than generalized social and political ties between security forces and the population (in its social and ethnic diversity). In societies where loyalty to the state is secondary to kin loyalty as in many multi ethnic societies, internal insurgency tends to reinforce the commitments of security forces and their soldiers to their own kin. Similarly, insurgency groups often pri marily represent and feel loyal to their speciﬁc kin and revolutionary political ideologies are upheld for mobil izing reasons, but become secondary in the further pur suit of military contestation. In disintegrating societies, when law and order col lapse or are close to collapse, feeble governments often recruit militias to shore up their power against insurgent groups. Such militia recruitment often further corrodes the functioning of statehood, because the boundaries between government soldiers and rebels become in creasingly blurred with both terrorizing civilians for private gains, while the political course of ﬁghting gets more and more out of sight. This has created a new type of militia: the sobels – soldiers by day, rebels by night. Sobels become essentially private operators, lacking discipline or – at least at ﬁrst sight – any kind of public agenda. Child soldiers often guided by spiritual beliefs

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and under the inﬂuence of drugs, are an essential element of such disintegrating military combat. While there has been a tendency in the literature to primarily analyze the dynamics of violence and to de scribe the privatization of warfare, it needs to be kept in mind that many of those combatants have legitimate grievances and pursue related aspirations, such as se curing their livelihoods. Privatization of violence in the form of multiple armed gangs, militias, soldiers, and ‘rebels’ have undermined the state’s monopoly of vio lence. But the grievances that nurture these gangs of violence have often emerged because state elites have abandoned the public pursuit in favor of private enrichment.

privatization of violence and thus the disintegration of statehood. Whether or not resource appropriation trig gers the disintegration of statehood and how such dis integration occurs often depends on the relative location of such resources vis a` vis the power centers, ethnic minorities, and border areas and the spatial distribution of resources (diffuse or concentrated) that determines the technologies of exploitation and whether or not such exploitation requires large scale investment and man agement. However, such a link between resource location and attributes should not be understood as being causally deterministic.

Spatialities of State Failure

With the end of the Cold War and the global military domination by the US, the global ideology of state sov ereignty upheld throughout the Cold War has been weakened with large scale interventions occurring in several failing states. A new cartography has emerged that considers underdevelopment to be dangerous, for the people involved, but also for the world more broadly. This view has gained ground in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 with the global terrorism discourse. While the US led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq are prominent expressions of this new global concern, the changing attitudes in aid policy emerged prior to these developments as a response to the so called new wars in Africa and Central Asia.

The explanations of state failure and collapse thus far have primarily been functionalist – they have explained the processes that made functions of statehood disinte grate. Human geographers have emphasized the speciﬁc spatialities inherent in such disintegrating processes, which often arise from uneven development. Ethno graphic studies of organized violence have brought out this multileveled and ambivalent character that is rep resented in different governable spaces, those of kinship, ethnic community, and nation state, which are often not compatible with each other and coexist in a complex and contradictory political economy of violence and resource appropriation. This contested political and economic space produces powerful centrifugal forces that are fragmenting the state, creating multiple unstable, un governable spaces culminating in a form of civic vigilantism. The political economy of resource violence is not conﬁned to local processes, but crosses different spatial scales. The particular territoriality of many fragile states is shaped by loosely populated spaces, which are difﬁcult to control spatially, especially their remote borderlands. Although many insurgencies are fought as internal con testations within a state, they involve transborder eco nomic and military ﬂows. Insurgents often operate across boundaries, the bush, shadow, and war economies operate beyond the local and across state borders and are em bedded in global commodity chains. Therefore, a dif ferentiation between internal and external triggers of state failure is rather artiﬁcial. The new wars, the failure of the state and the global economy are two sides of the same coin – a global network economy. Political boundaries are porous – they allow the ﬂow of economic goods and persons (as refugees) across political borders. Some authors assert that a new geography of war has emerged where resource concentrations become more important than political boundaries. It has been argued that abundance of resources provides incentives for

Development and Security

Complex Emergencies In the 1980s and 1990s, in view of large scale famines linked with civil wars and disintegrating statehood in several African countries and after the Rwandan ethni cide, humanitarianism and policy discourses of aid agencies largely represented those fragile, failing, and collapsing states as complex emergencies where natural disasters often coincided with protracted political con ﬂict, thereby creating devastating humanitarian disasters for a large populace. The term complex (political or protracted) emergency highlighted that the situation was one of an emergency that had political causes and showed a social complexity that went beyond simple and unidirectional explanations and solutions. The complex emergency discourse hinted at the fact that these emer gencies probably were beyond the reach of resolution and aid was conﬁned primarily to provide basic humanitarian needs to a suffering civilian population. Aid and humanitarian agencies realized that they had, in some instances, contributed to the prolongation of emergencies by providing resources for combatants or political support to divisive political elites. Development and humanitarian aid had, it was noticed, not always been the means of alleviating underdevelopment, but could in

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some circumstances unintentionally trigger social conﬂict or allow the protracted duration of state collapse, social anomie, and political violence. Out of this recognition, donor agencies claimed to have stopped working around conﬂict (by ignoring their own role in its dynamics). Instead, they developed new policies to work in conﬂict (by avoiding to do harm when delivering aid) and on conﬂict (by actively trying to contribute to conﬂict trans formation through aid). Those discourses on complex emergencies and working in and on conﬂict, however, retained a managerial understanding of development that was limited to ﬁxing the most severe consequences of state collapse. Rebuilding the State Since the end of the 1990s and especially after 11 Sep tember 2001, this managerial understanding of aid in complex emergencies is paralleled by a much more am bitious project of state building and social reconstruction in war torn societies. The new emphasis in these policy discourses is that underdevelopment and state collapse are not only bad for the borderlands, the underdeveloped periphery, but also threaten the stability of the metro politan areas as well through terrorism and global mi gration. Development is considered as a strategy to ensure global security. In these conceptions, development aid becomes an instrument of international donors for their will to gov ern (globally) – to reconstruct complete societies after their social disintegration as part of a global project of democracy building. This new explicit linking of security with development has encouraged new collaborative engagements of development agencies with limited or full scale military interventions. Two different models can be observed. In the fully interventionist model, core metropolitan states are prepared to deploy military for ces and to engage in long term commitment and to govern these states for an interim period in the form of international trusteeship before they are handed over to newly capacitated local authorities. Examples for such type of intervention are East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In the weakly interventionist model, indigenous political groupings are induced, encouraged, and forced to attempt a peaceful settlement with some external supervision and assistance, possibly the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force, but the overall commitment of core metropolitan states is much weaker and no inter national trusteeship for the core institutions of statehood is taken on by metropolitan states. The weaker model applies to many settlements of African or Central Asian civil wars. State building, especially in the fully interventionist model, has often focused on constructing a democratic state with the Western liberal model as a template.

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Therefore, free elections for parliaments have often been considered as the cornerstone of such state building processes. This is linked with donor discourses of good governance as a precondition and trigger of social and economic development. Such conceptions disregard the different logic of reciprocity that underpins many soci eties with kin based loyalty systems. It constructs con ceptually the dichotomy of modernity, civility (the Western model) as a desirable template on the one hand and tradition, archaic customs, and kin based clientelist societies as the source of state collapse. These conceptions have few suggestions of how to integrate and combine the different logics of good governance and kin loyalty. Thus far, the experiences with both models have been disappointing and have underlined the difﬁculties in re building societies after they have disintegrated into social anomie. The case of East Timor underlines that even large scale assistance in a small country and under stable security conditions may not be sufﬁcient to build trusted institutions of statehood and heal the wounds of past conﬂict. In Afghanistan, where the US led military intervention in 2001 was followed by a large scale inﬂux of aid monies, the success of state building remains un clear. In insecure territories, the military took over a twin role as security forces and deliverers of development to local populations, thereby blurring the boundaries be tween development and security. At the same time, the weakly interventionist model has not produced very promising results either as can be seen in many African civil wars, although the successful transition process in Mozambique is a notable exception. Issues State collapse as represented in the new wars discourse is an imagined geographical space of breakdown, excess, and barbarity. Viewed from the Western liberal model of the state, state collapse is the ‘other’ of development, civility, and progress. The representation of state collapse and new wars as a failure of modernity and as a space of suffering provides justiﬁcation and legitimacy for the urge to govern – to expand the metropolitan project of development from more modest good governance models to the complete reconstruction of societies as modern, democratic states. With the new discourse of global ter rorism, this project of state building has come to dom inate the international agenda, but its success is still to be proven. The challenge will be how to reconcile different governable spaces, different logics of loyalty, and to allow alternative models of statehood to gain international acceptability. See also: Borderlands; Critical Geopolitics; Development I; Ethnic Conﬂict; Ethnicity; Geopolitics; Global Production Networks; Governance, Good; Governmentality;

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Hegemony; Imperialistic Geographies; Neocolonialism; Political Ecology; Postconﬂict Geographies; Sovereignty; State Theory; State; Terrorism; Third World; Uneven Development; Vulnerability; War; Watts, M. J.

Further Reading Anderson, M. B. (1999). Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace or War. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Bayart, J. F., Ellis, S. and Hibou, B. (1999). The Criminalization of the State in Africa. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Berger, M. T. (2006). From nation building to state building: The geopolitics of development, the nation state system and the changing global order. Third World Quarterly 27, 5 25. Clapham, C. (2002). The challenge to the state in a globalized world. Development and Change 33, 775 795. Cramer, C. (2006). Civil War Is not Stupid Thing. London: Hurst. Dufﬁeld, M. (2007). Development, Security and Unending War. London: Polity. Goodhand, J. (2006). Aiding Peace? The Role of NGOs in Armed Conﬂict. Boudler, CO: Lynne Rienner. Keen, D. (2007). Complex Emergencies. London: Polity. Le Billon, P. (2001). The political ecology of war: Natural resources and armed conﬂict. Political Geography 10, 561 584. Luke, T. W. and Toal, G. (1998). The fraying modern map: Failed states and contraband capitalism. Geopolitics and International Boundaries 3(3), 14 33. Ottaway, M. (2002). Rebuilding state institutions in collapsed states. Development and Change 33, 195 211. Reno, W. (1995). Warlord Politics and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Rotberg, R. (ed.) (2004). When States Fail: Causes and Consequences. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Watts, M. J. (2004). Antinomies of community: Some thoughts on geography, resources and empire. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29, 195 216. Wimmer, A. (1997). Who owns the state? Understanding ethnic conﬂict in post colonial societies. Nations and Nationalism 2, 631 665. Zartman, I. W. (ed.) (1995). Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Relevent Websites http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/ Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Harvard University. http://www.css.ethz.ch Center for Security Studies Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. http://www.csis.org Center for Strategic and International Studies Washington DC. http://www.crisisstates.com Crisis States Research Centre London School of Economics. http://www.unu.edu/pg Peace and Governance Programme United Nations University. http://www.prio.no PRIO The International Peace Research Institute Oslo. http://www.sfb governance.de Research Center 700 (SFB) Free University of Berlin. http://statebuilding.org Sustainable Peacebuilding Network.

Developmentalism M. Watts, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Broadly construed, developmentalism is a wide ranging and complex philosophical position – underwritten by a panoply of development institutions, discourses, and practices – that sustains the idea of ‘development’ as a normative goal. It is a distinctively modern philosophy (a philosophy at once theoretical and applied) – guided by the desire to transform (to improve, to develop, to change through planned action) those parts of the world char acterized by conditions of mass poverty – variously called the developing world, the Global South, the Third World. For much of the post 1945 period, the canonical vehicle for developmentalism is the ‘developmental state’ – the idea that developmentalism is best pursued through an interventionist, centralized, bureaucratic, and authoritarian ‘state’ apparatus that self consciously gov erns the market and shapes the process of capitalist ac cumulation, and by extension of class formation and class power. The so called ‘neoliberal’ counter revolution unleashed in the 1980s against the dominant Keynesian thinking has, however, directly challenged this notion of a dirigiste state in the pursuit of development. Whether developmentalism is in practice underwritten by a de velopmental state – as opposed to free market or civil institutions – is a historical, political, and ideological question. Developmentalism in this sense refers to a wider ﬁeld of ideas (encompassing socialist and free market strategies and ideologies) and meanings, from human freedom to economic growth. At the current moment, the hegemonic form assumed by devel opmentalism as a philosophy is neoliberalism – itself a complex ﬁeld of ideas that purports to offer a sort of uniﬁed ﬁeld theory of the economy, the state, and pol itical rights. Its most recent grand theoretician is Fried rich von Hayek, but the philosophical lineage is much deeper. At present, the struggle over neoliberal ideas and practices in development is seen vividly in the debate over foreign aid and planning; on the one side, a former World Bank economist for whom all forms of aid and planning are disastrous failures, and on the other, Col umbia economist Jeffrey Sachs (and rock star Bono) for whom the meeting of the Millennium Development Goals for impoverished parts of Africa or South Asia will require a massive expansion of foreign assistance.

Meanings and Origins To see developmentalism as a ﬁeld of related philo sophical positions is to immediately confront the word ‘development’, which is, after all, its root. Development is

one of the most complex words in the English language. In his book Keywords published in 1976, Raymond Wil liams notes that the historically complex genealogy of development in Western thinking can ‘‘limit and confuse virtually any generalising description of the current world order,’’ rather it is in the analysis of the ‘‘real practices subsumed by development that more speciﬁc recognitions are necessary and possible.’’ The history of these real practices is, however, long and their meanings unstable and labile. Development came into the English language in the eighteenth century with its root sense of unfolding and was granted a new lease on life by the evolutionary ideas of the nineteenth century. As a con sequence, development has rarely broken from organicist notions of growth or from a close afﬁnity with tele ological views of history, science, and progress in the West. By the end of the nineteenth century, for example, it was possible to talk of societies in a state of ‘frozen development’. There is another aspect to the genealogy, however, traced by Mike Cowen and Robert Shenton in their 1996 book Doctrines of Development to the eighteenth and nineteenth century notions of ‘progress’, and speciﬁcally to development as a sort of theological discourse set against the disorder and disjunctures of capitalist growth. Classical political economy, including the work of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus, is suffused with the tensions between the desire for unfettered ac cumulation on the one hand, and unregulated desire as the origin of misery and vice on the other. Development in Victorian England emerged in part, then, as a cultural and theological response to progress. Christopher Lasch in his important 1990 text The True and Only Heaven, for example, has described a late nineteenth century ob sessed by cultural instability and cataclysm. Saint Simon devoted himself in his last years to a new creed of Christianity to accompany his industrial and scientiﬁc vision of capitalist progress. Accordingly, trusteeship, mission, and faith were the nineteenth century touch stones of development. There is a body of development theory (and of developmentalism), of much more recent provenance, dominated by the profession of economics, however, which began to emerge between the two world wars. This is a complex story to tell since this theory is not simply an invention of Western economics or political economy, but has been shaped and profoundly contributed to by various Third World intellectual traditions (e.g., Maoism from China, dependency theory from Latin America, and

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Tier Mondism from Africa). To simplify an enormously complex ﬁeld, one can identify four broad conventional streams of developmentalism understood as lineages of theory: that is broadly ‘Keynesian or neo Keynesian’ which • emphasizes planning and the fundamental role of state

• • •

interventions in market operations; that draws upon ‘neoclassical economics’ and the centrality of free markets and robust property rights; that is ‘Marxist’ and turns on the critical analysis of the processes of capitalist accumulation, competitions, and class power; and that is ‘institutional’ which encompasses a number of theoretical positions (rational choice and discursive practice) but takes as a starting point the political economy of development institutions, whether the World Bank, the Grameen Bank, corporate social re sponsibility, or trade unions.

Each of these four has complex genealogies and histories which privilege the state, the market, and civil society in different ways; each is, in addition, shaped historically by the conditions to which they are made to speak. The broad outlines of these ‘conventional’ development the ories have been reviewed in a number of texts. In all of these theoretical traditions there is no common ground as regards developmental as a goal, which may mean eco nomic growth measured through gross domestic product or human development; or freedom measured through income, life expectancy, and education; or of devel opmentalism as a set of philosophical beliefs (liberal, social democratic, or socialist).

Third World Developmentalism: From Interwar to Postwar Constructions There is a sense in which Third World developmentalism – in its speciﬁc forms of state and multilateral policy harnessed to the tasks of championing economic growth, ‘catching up’, ‘improvement’, and producing governable subjects – is of quite a recent origin. It has been argued that development was invented or discovered by President Truman in his famous 1949 speech on ‘fair dealing’ and ‘undeveloped areas’. The key conjuncture is the decade after the end of World War II, in spite of the fact that the Third World was seemingly of marginal concern in relation to the reconstruction of Europe, and the reviviﬁcation of the world ﬁnancial system. The Third World – the very origins of the term lie in the 1950s with the growing clamor of newly independent states to not to be drowned by the Cold War struggles – is forged in the crucible of in dependence movements and the collapsing of European empires, a global war (1939–45), and the hardening of geostrategic and ideological tensions between communism

and capitalism. In short, the origins of development theory and practice as an academic and governmental enterprise, and of development economics as its ‘hegemonic’ ex pression, are inseparable from the process by which the ‘colonial world’ was reconﬁgured into a ‘developing world’ beginning in the 1930s, but especially in the aftermath of World War II, Africa, for example, became a serious object of planned development after the Great Depression of the 1930s. The British Colonial Development and Welfare Act in 1940 and the French Investment Fund for Economic and Social Development in 1946 both represented responses to the crises and challenges which imperial powers confronted in Africa, providing a means by which they could negotiate the perils of independence movements on the one hand and a perpetuation of the colonial mission on the other. But the process by which the co lonial crisis produces ‘‘development as a historically singular process’’ (Escobar, 1995, p. 9) requires a sensi tivity to regions, political economy, and politics: global discourse and local power, and local discourse and global power, intersect and reproduce particular regional de velopment formations. Development was necessarily Eurocentric because its origins lay in the European ef forts to deal with the essential fact of capitalism, as Schumpeter put it, and the tragedy of underdevelopment and the paradoxical unity of modernity. In the same way that Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation published in 1944 saw the later eighteenth century welfare debates in England as the discovery of the ‘social’, so the invention of development in the nineteenth and twentieth cen turies was about the ‘failure’ of free market capitalism. Within the belly of free market capitalist modernization, and its destructive effects, there lay the seed of devel opment, the notion that the destructive effects of the market would produce a reaction, a planned response to the costs of the unfettered operations of the market. Development and developmentalism, one might say, began as a form of protection – planning, self conscious directed improvement – against a liberal order. In his important book Encountering Development pub lished in 1995, Arturo Escobar begins from the premise of development as a particular sort of social imaginary. Development, in his view, ‘‘relies on setting up the world as a picture, so that the whole system can be grasped in some orderly fashion as forming a structure or system’’ [emphasis added]. His book purports to show how this image came to be held as a sort of blueprint for a panoply of institutions, a diverse community of planners, polit icians, and bureaucrats, and for a battery of technologies harnessed for social engineering on a global scale. In short, Escobar portrays how the hegemonic vision of postwar development was institutionalized and with what consequences. Escobar necessarily starts with the fun damental position occupied by economics in the

Developmentalism

knowledge and practice of development, but posits the economy as an institution composed of production, power, and signiﬁcation. The economic sphere in this rendering is as much cultural as material, and hence as much about the production of social order, truth, and forms of subjectivity as child mortality, gross national product (GNP), and high yielding varieties of rice and wheat. Arturo Escobar ﬁnds modern development discourse to be the latest insidious chapter of the larger history of the expansion of Western reason. In his diagnosis, de velopment was an invention – more properly, a ‘‘histor ically produced discourse’’ – of the post 1945 era. This discourse is governed by the same principles as colonial discourse, but has its own regimes of truth and forms of representation. Development is about forms of know ledge, the power that regulates its practices, and the forms of subjectivity fostered by its impulses. Hegemonic development discourse appropriates societal practices and meanings into the modern realm of explicit calcu lation, thereby subjecting them to Western forms of power knowledge. It ensures the conformity of peoples to First World economic and cultural practices. Develop ment has in short penetrated, integrated, managed, and controlled large parts of the globe in increasingly per nicious and intractable ways. It has produced under development, a condition politically and economically manageable through normalization, the regulation of knowledges, and the moralization and techniﬁcation of poverty and exploitation as political and material prob lems. The new space of the Third World, carved out of the vast surface of global societies, is a new ﬁeld of power dominated by development sciences replete with their own truth claims and constructed subjectivity. The pol itical technologies of development practice which sought to erase underdevelopment from the face of the Earth have, to employ Escobar’s language, converted a ‘‘dream into a nightmare.’’ Development in this account plays a similar role with respect to the making of the Global South as does Orientalism in the production of the Middle East. In keeping with a number of other Southern activists and hybrid intellectuals – perhaps most notable are those associated with the Delhi Center for Developing Societies, including Rajni Kothari, Ashish Nandy, and Shiv Vishva nathan – Escobar sees poverty as invented and globalized with the creation of a battery of transnational ‘welfare’ institutions at Bretton Woods, and in San Francisco fol lowing the signing of the United Nations charter. The discourse of national and international planning and de velopment agencies was able to constitute a reality by the way it was able to form systematically the objects of which it spoke, to group and arrange them in certain ways, and to give them a unity. Patriarchy, race, gender, and nationalism were all embraced in this discourse, at the same time that

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economists were privileged within its ranks. This rule governed system has remained unchanged at the level of practice, although the discursive formations have been unstable. In all of this modernity’s objectifying regime of visuality turned people of the South into spectacles, and the panoptic gaze of development became an apparatus of social control. Institutions such as the World Bank thus embody what has been called the ‘God trick’ of seeing everything from nowhere. Development is constructed in large part through keywords – ‘toxic words’ – which really mean something else: ‘planning’ normalizes people; re sources desacralize nature; poverty is an invention; science is violence; basic needs are forms of cyborg; and so forth. In all of this, the space that came to be the Third World was converted into a population of normalized develop mental subjects. Developmentalism in this view is a part of a global project of governmentality.

Alternatives to Developmentalism (‘Postdevelopmentalism’) There is a complex and differentiated body of work gradually emerging since the 1970s which represents an effort to imagine alternatives to developmentalism (a ‘postdevelopmentalism’), which sees development (as practice) and developmentalism (as philosophy) as a ser iously ﬂawed, many would say a disastrously failed, ‘modernist’ project. The intellectual and theoretical origins of this critique of what one might call conventional or mainstream development theory and practice – of both neoclassical economics, the new institutionalism and Marxist political economy – is complex, but sheds much light on both the imaginative geography of development, and its imaginary alternatives. In general, it needs to be said that the entire ﬁeld of post or antidevelopment stands uneasily with respect to modernity, in some cases as a reactionary antimodernism, in some cases as antimodernist cultural relativism, and in others as a celebration of ‘crit ical traditionalism’. But it is also curious that this ﬂowering of imaginative geographies of development attached to antimodernist sentiment – of thinking about alternatives, of alterity, and of otherness – occurs precisely at the apogee of two variants of what might be called ultra or hypermodernism (or fundamentalist developmentalism perhaps). One is the forging of the Washington Consensus, the triumph of the neoclassical counter revolution: that is to say, the very idea in the wake of 1989 that, to employ the language of the World Bank, there are no alternatives to capitalism and free markets. The other is the Euro American vision of modernity, the object of the post development community’s wrath, which is, in some quarters, seen to be unstable, differentiated, and internally reconstituting itself. The notions of ‘reﬂexive modern ization’ (of new and variegated modernities driven by

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industrial capitalism’s ability to undercut itself, to generate life threatening risks) and ‘post traditionalism’ and ‘post scarcity’ (globalized forms of decentered autonomy, emotional democracy, and debureaucratization) posits another sort of postdevelopment at the capitalist core. In both of these ‘alternatives’ within the West, some of the attributes which so enrage the likes of Kothari, Alvares, or Escobar – developmental linearity, faith in progress, functional autonomization, instrumental rationality, and mass politics – are themselves seen to be under threat by the very dynamism and achievements of modernization itself.

The Genealogy of Postdevelopmentalism What then is the particular genealogy of postdevelop mentalism thinking? The short answer is that it emerged from within the contradictions and failures of devel opmentalism itself. The crisis of needs in the 1970s. One thread surfaces from the 1970s’ disillusion with the world economic order and with the fact that the poorest 40% had somehow missed the boat. It is from this pessimism, disenchantment with growth, and trickle down that the Dag Hammarskjo¨ld Foundation called for ‘another development’ geared to need satisfaction, self reliance, and endogeneity Bjorne Hettne’s important book Three Worlds of Development, published in 1990, is the pivotal text in the reaction to failed modernization, and offers a rejection of the ‘Eurocentric model’ and a plea for egalitarian, partici patory ecological, self reliant, and ethnodevelopment studies. The ‘impasse’ of Marxian political economy. Another thread emerges from the debates within Marxism, and the sense that Marxian political economy had entered an epistemological, practical, and theoretical cul de sac. In order to jettison its economism, reductionism, totalizing history, and class determinism – as it were the worst sins associated with the work of French structural Marxism (Louis Althusser in particular) – political economy had to encompass diversity, agency, local initiatives, and het erogeneity. Much of this work turns to networks, local institutions, and community institutions – that is to say, to the subaltern communities and knowledges invoked by Escobar – as a way of rethinking rural development. Postcolonialism and the ‘ur’ history of development. Devel opment theory was driven in radically new directions by the post structural turn, and speciﬁcally by the twin themes of postcoloniality and discourse. In the latter, the ‘ur’ history of the doctrines of development are exca vated, and development texts examined as particular forms of text and storytelling. In the latter, post colonialism signals the proliferation of histories, tem poralities, and spatialities, and, to quote Stuart Hall, ‘‘the

intrusion of difference and speciﬁcity into the general ising and Euro centric post enlightenment grand narra tivesy.[to emphasize] the multiplicity of lateral and decentered cultural connections, movements and migra tions which make up the world today’’ (1996: 248). Rediscovering civil society and the new social movements. However, subject to hyberbole and exaggeration, the gradual ‘democratization’ of the post socialist bloc and the bureaucratic authoritarian states of the South un questionably provided a new breathing space for civil society – what has been called the ‘‘resurrection, re emergence and rebirth of civil society’’ (Cohen and Arato, 1992: 29). Indeed, the contraction of the state under (imposed) economic austerity created opportun ities for all manner of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), social movements, and associational networks to ﬂourish as never before. It is this renewed concern with civil society, with communities, popular movements, and social networks, which represents in some quarters the prospect of a new way of doing politics, and the possibility of alternative (‘grass roots’, ‘participatory’, ‘subaltern’) visions of development outside of the conventional horizon of both state and market. Indigenous knowledge and global threats. Ecological con cerns pushed the antidevelopment agenda in two senses. First, the environmental toll of rapid industrialization in the newly industrializing countries (NICs) and within the socialist bloc, coupled with potentially catastrophic forms of ‘global’ degradation (ozone depletion and global warming), fueled new concerns over the sustainability of mainstream development. Second, the growing theore tical interest within political ecology and the repositories of local knowledge (e.g., forms of ‘peasant science’ as alternatives to ‘Western expertise’ documented by Paul Richards’ foundation text Indigenous Agricultural Revolution published in 1985) reafﬁrmed the salience of subaltern knowledge and indigenous local practice, typically em bodied in the proliferation of all manner of Southern green movements, as a counterweight to big science and multilateral greening of the World Bank sort. Globalization and its malcontents. Finally, the rapidity with which the neoliberal orthodoxy was adopted, through a mixture of coercion and consent, throughout the Second and Third Worlds (keywords which themselves became increasingly inadequate as ways of classifying geographical space), inevitably triggered a counter reaction against the disruptive social, economic, and political consequences of ‘globalization’ (the dominance of market forces, the inte gration of the global economy, the genesis of worldwide consumerism and media integration, and the transforma tion of production and labor markets). To take an example, the United Nations Research Institute for Social Devel opment (UNRISD) refer to the ‘states of disarray’ pro duced by the ‘painful adjustment’ of market integration and globalization. The devastating costs in Africa of the

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structural adjustment programs of the 1980s, for example – and the global proliferation of a vast slum world of poverty and immiseration – provided a strong antidote to the tri umphalist thinking of free market globalization. Postdevelopmentalism can be understood in part, then, as a reaction to and a product of a particular congeries of theoretical development (knowledge production) and pol itical economic transformations. The e´venements of 1989, the unprecedented dislocative effects of globalization and market integration, a deepening sense of global ecological ‘crisis’, the ﬂowering of civil society and social movements intersected with what one might call in its panoply of guises. There is of course a polyphony of voices within this postdevelopmentalist community: Vandana Shiva, Wolf gang Sachs, Arturo Escobar, Gustavo Esteva, and Ashish Nandy, for example, occupy quite different intellectual and political locations. But it is striking how intellectuals, ac tivists, practitioners, and academics within this diverse community participated in a global debate. The journal Alternatives is in some sense its institutionalized mouth piece, and some sites (in India and Mexico, for example) have emerged as its intellectual ﬂagships (the Delhi Center has even been referred to as the ‘new Frankfurt School’).

enormous power on an external world system, privileges local autonomy and cultural identity, and sees sovereignty as a central plank of its own vision of development. Like dependency theory, the nature of external power is often crudely articulated in bold outline – which in Escobar’s case is ironic insofar as he employs Foucault to express an alternative theory of capillary power. Escobar’s account of the World Bank as an instrument of modernity’s power, for example, reads like Third World nationalism of old. No attempt is made to lay out the complex internal divisions within the bank or the important reversals made by the bank around some environmental and dam projects, or (on the basis of data he himself provides) the relative in signiﬁcance of World Bank resources in relation to other capital ﬂows to the South. Indeed, the antidevelopment communities’ focus on keywords and the representation of the Third World could be pulled from a cursory reading of Che Guevara’s meditation on the condition of under development (the Third World as a ‘stunted child’) penned at least 30 years ago.

Debating Alternatives

The reality is, of course, that postdevelopmentalism as critique has arisen against the backdrop of a powerful resurgence – a counter revolution – of a particular form of developmentalism, namely, neoliberalism and free market capitalism as development. David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism published in 2005 attempts to map the dismantling of the social democratic world of embedded liberalism. Harvey aims to describe and ex plain how it happened that capital’s compromise was supplanted by the regime of neoliberalism, which has ‘‘not only restored power to a narrowly deﬁned capitalist classy[but] also produced immense concentrations of corporate power in energy, the media, pharmarceuticals, transportation, and even retailing.’’ The results, tabulated in the book, have been strikingly disadvantageous, and even disastrous, for a large majority of the world’s population, not to mention planetary ecology, and this despite the promises made by the salesforce of neoli beralism. Harvey returns again and again to the notion of a ‘contradiction’ between neoliberalism (as a form of developmentalism) and the actual practice of neoliber alization on the ground, which always seems to fall short of market utopian, textbook, and ideals (as in ‘rising tide’ or ‘trickle down’). Confronted with neoliberalism’s atrocious record, Harvey understandably asks: How is it, then, that the rest of us have so easily acquiesced in this form of devel opmentalism? This suggests that neoliberalism should be approached as an ideology. Any adequate account of its rise to hegemony should not assume a pure body of

Debates over postdevelopmentalism have opened up critical avenues for the critical exploration of devel opmentalism as a philosophy and set of practices. On the one hand, it is important to examine the longue duree of development and to take seriously the ways in which what passes as development knowledge and practice are insti tutionalized and with what effects. The language of development is not neutral, and nor are its institutions. To deconstruct sustainability as one powerful aspect of developmentalism – to interrogate the assumptions of particular institutionalized visions of green development – is useful on many counts. To see how and with what consequences ‘ecological economics’ has been employed by the Global Environment Facility might shed much light on the sorts of projects funded by the World Bank and the consequences of speciﬁc types of large multilateral programs. Conducting ethnographies of development institutions, as Ferguson effectively does in Anti Politics Machine published in 1990, his account of a rural devel opment project in Botswana is singularly helpful in understanding how particular places and problems are constructed and legitimated by experts and managers. Some of these new critical approaches to develop ment ironically have similarities with earlier forms of radical development thinking, notably 1960s’ ‘dependency’ theory , a perspective largely discredited on the grounds of its simplistic theory of power and a crude sense of political economy. Like the Latin American dependentistas, it confers

Developmentalism and the Rise of Neoliberalism

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neoliberal theory ‘lurking in the wings’ of history but from the contested discursive ﬁeld of developmentalism itself, among whose keywords are ‘freedom’, ‘market’, and ‘private property’. The rise of neoliberal devel opmentalism is the rise of an unplanned form of devel opment – meaning capitalism. To this extent its great arc is the historic victory of the idea that Friedrich von Hayek laid out in The Road to Serfdom published in 1944. Hayek, a native of Vienna who trained as an economist at the feet of Ludwig von Mises but is forever associated with a largely noneconomic corpus produced at the London School of Economics (LSE) and the universities of Chicago and Freiburg between 1940 and 1980, is widely recognized as the intellectual architect of the neoliberal counter revolution. It was Margaret Thatcher after all who pronounced, at a Tory Cabinet meeting, ‘‘This is what we believe,’’ slamming a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty onto the table at 10 Downing Street. His critique of collectivism – that it destroys morals, personal freedom, and responsibility, impedes the production of wealth, and sooner or later leads to tota litarianism – is the ‘ur’ text for market utopians. Col lectivism was by deﬁnition a made rather than a grown order, that is, a ‘taxis’ rather than a ‘cosmos’. Collectivism was, Hayek said, constructivist rather than evolutionary, organized not spontaneous, an economy rather than a ‘catallaxy’, coerced and concrete rather than free and abstract. Its fatal conceit was that socialism (and social democracy for that matter) admitted the ‘‘reckless tres pass of taxis onto the proper ground of cosmos’’ (Anderson, 2005: 16). The other half of Hayek’s project was an apologia for Western civilization, conceived of as liberty, science, and the spontaneous orders that co evolved to form modern society (‘great society’ as he termed it). It is a defense of the liberal (unplanned) market order from which the preconditions of civilization – competition and ex perimentation – had emerged. Hayek, like Max Weber, saw this modern world as an iron cage constituted by impersonality, a loss of community, individualism, and personal responsibility. But contra Weber, these struc tures, properly understood, were the very expressions of liberty. From the vantage point of the 1940s, this (classical) liberal project was, as Hayek saw it, under threat. Indeed, what passed for ‘liberalism’ was a travesty, a distorted body of ideas warped by constructivist ra tionalism, as opposed to what he called ‘evolutionary rationalism’. The distance between ‘actually existing’ liberalism and Keynesianism was, on the Hayekian ac count, disastrously slight. What was necessary, as he made clear at the foundation of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, was a grand purging, a restoration of true liberalism by way of the removal of ‘accretions’. There was to be no compromise with collectivism; all the ground ceded to creeping socialism had to be regained.

In his writing and his promotion of think tanks, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs in Britain – a brains trust for the likes of Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher – Hayek aggressively launched a cold war of ideas. He was one of the quartet of European theorists (Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and Michael Oakeshott were the others) whose ideas, while in a tense relationship to one another, have come to shape a large swath of the intel lectual landscape of the early twenty ﬁrst century. Hayek was not in any simple sense a conservative or libertarian; nor a voice for laissez faire (‘false rationalism’ as he saw it). He identiﬁed himself in the individualist tradition of Hume, Smith, Burke, and Menger and provided a bridge which linked his short term allies (conservatives and libertarians) to classical liberals in order to make com mon cause against collectivism. To roll back the incur sions of taxis required a redesign of the state. A powerful chamber was to serve as guardian of the rule of law (striking all under the age of 45 off the voting rolls, for example) to protect liberty against popular sovereignty. The Long March from Mont Pelerin to the collapse of the Berlin Wall took about 40 years, by way of the ‘Chicago boys’ (a cohort of monetarist economists trained at or associated with the University of Chicago) in Chile, the World Bank–International Monetary Fund complex, and the Reagan–Thatcher dispensations. As Antonio Gramsci might have put it, there has been a Hayekian ‘passive revolution’ from above. We have witnessed what the Left’s great pessimist Perry Anderson has dubbed a ‘neoliberal grand slam’. The ‘ﬂuent vision’ of the Right, he notes, has no equivalent on the Left; embedded lib eralism (let alone something called ‘socialism’) is now, we are told, as remote as ‘Arian bishops’. In this account, neoliberalism rules undivided across the globe and is the most successful ideology in world history. The process by which neoliberal hegemony was es tablished, and its relation to forms and modes and sites of resistance, remains a story for which, even with Harvey’s synoptic survey at hand, we still have no full genealogy. The cast of characters may be lined up – from the school of Austrian economics to the Reagan–Thatcher–Kohl troika – but this explains very little, or rather it poses more questions than answers. Neoliberalism was a class reaction to the crisis of the 1970s (Harvey (2005) talks of a ‘‘restoration of class power’’): on that much Milton Freidman and David Harvey might agree. ‘Transnational capital’ and the Wall Street–Treasury nexus imposed brutal forms of economic discipline –‘structural adjust ment’, in the argot of neoclassical economics – to eradicate forever any residue of collectivism in the Third World. But beyond such descriptions, which Harvey lays out clearly enough, we are still left with many paradoxes and puzzles. Why, for example, did the LSE and Chicago – once the respective centers of Fabianism and a certain version

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of (American) liberalism under Robert Hutchins – be come the forcing houses of neoliberalism? What were the facilitating conditions that fostered the arrival of the maverick Ronald Coase in Chicago, marking a neoliberal turning point? How did the Chicago boys come to occupy the commanding heights in post Allende Chile and how did they live down the fact that their effects were, to use the language of the World Bank, ‘disastrous’? How did the World Bank – a bastion of postwar development eco nomics and, it must be said, of statism – become the voice of laissez faire? Harry Johnson, who held chairs at the LSE and Chicago, is a spectral ﬁgure in the liberalization of the World Bank, but how can we explain the capture of key sectors of the bank (often by second rate economists) against a backdrop of robust Keynesianism? How can we grasp the fact that ‘shock therapy’ in Eastern Europe was more the product of the enthusiastic Hungarian re formers than of the more reticent American neoliberal apparatchiks? It is sometimes noted that the 1991 World Develop ment Report (shaped by former US Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers) marked a neoliberal watershed in its reﬁguring of the role of the state. But was not the foundational moment a decade earlier with the 1980 Berg report on Africa, named after Elliot Berg, a Michigan economist to whom it seems nobody paid much attention for 20 years? It was Africa (not Latin America or Eastern Europe) that proved to be the ﬁrst testing ground of neoliberalism’s assault on the overextended public sector, on physical capital formation, and on the pro liferation of ‘market’ distortions by government. Under standing the rise of neoliberal developmentalism – of a market utopian vision – is one of the most important projects confronting contemporary development.

Developmentalism and Development Geography In its approach to the relations between space, environ ment, and development, development geography as a subﬁeld has inevitably been shaped by the broader the oretical and discursive turns and trends within develop ment thinking over the past half century. On the larger canvas of the rise of free market utopian thinking and the so called TINA worldview (‘there is no alternative’), much of critical development geography of late has been animated by the need to both think about alternatives – for example, the new peasants movements such as MST in Brazil or the contributions of indigenous move ments to citizenship debates – and to investigate the ways in which neoliberal practice (contemporary devel opmentalism in its various forms) have been formulated, circulated, normalized, rendered persuasive, and installed in particular institutions (say the World Bank) or

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discourses (say ‘ecological economics’ or micro ﬁnance). In general, these sorts of approaches have enervated the ﬁeld rather than signaled its ‘death by developmentalism’. In particular, both the search for alternatives and the explorations of neoliberal developmentalism as a form of rule (implying forms of expertise, forms of subjectivity, and forms of identity) have compelled geographers to deepen their ethnographic understandings of how insti tutions produce forms of knowledge, how such know ledge does or does not become hegemonic, and how counter hegemonic movements and practices can emerge from the complex articulations of the local and the glo bal. Looming in the background, of course, is the rise of two new developmental giants – China and India – characterized by enormously different trajectories and political economics but both pursuing outwardly oriented neoliberal strategies against a historical backdrop of dif fering forms of commitment to Third World socialism, colored in different ways by ‘Asian characteristics’. In the future, these two mega developmental states will draw much geographical scrutiny. See also: Aid; Civil Society; Imperialism, Cultural; Green Revolution; Indigenous Knowledges; Neoliberalism; Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies.

Further Reading Alvarez, C. (1992). Science, Development and Violence. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Anderson, P. (2002). Internationalism: A breviary. New Left Review 14, 5 25. Anderson, P. (2005). Spectrum. London: Verso. Beck, U. (1994). The reinvention of politics. In Beck, U., Giddens, A. & Lash, S. (eds.) Reﬂexive Modernization, pp 1 55. Cambridge: Polity. Berman, M. (1982). All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin. Booth, D. (ed.) (1994). Rethinking Social Development. London: Methuen. Cardoso, H. and Faletto, E. (1979). Dependency and Development in Latin America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Chari, S. (2005). Fraternal Capital. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cohen, J. and Arato, A. (1992). Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cooper, F. and Packard, R. (eds.) (1998). International Development and Social Sciences. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Corbridge, S. and Harriss, J. (2000). Reinventing India. London: Polity. Corbridge, S., Williams, G., Srivastava, M. and Ve´ron, R. (2006). Seeing the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cowen, M. and Shenton, R. (1996). Doctrine of Development. London: Routledge. Crush, J. (ed.) (1995). The Power of Development. London: Routledge. Cypher, J. and Dietz, J. (1997). The Process of Economic Development. London: Routledge. Dallmayr, F. (1996). Global development? Alternatives 21, 259 282. Davis, M. (2005). Planet of Slums. London: Verso. Easterly, W. (2007). White Man’s Burden. New York: Penguin. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Esteva, G. (1992). Development. In Sachs, W. (ed.) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power, pp 6 25. London: Zed Books.

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Ferguson, J. (1990). The Anti Politics Machine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fox, J. (1995). Governance and development in Mexico. Journal of Development Studies 34, 610 644. Giddens, A. (1994). Living in a post traditional society. In Beck, U., Giddens, A. & Lash, S. (eds.) Reﬂexive Modernization, pp 56 109. Cambridge: Polity. Goldmann, M. (2005). Imperial Nature. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gupta, A. (1998). Postcolonial Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hall, S. (1996). When was the post colonial? In Chambers, I. & Curti, L. (eds.) The Post Colonial Question, pp 242 260. London: Routledge. Harraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women. London: Routledge. Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. London: Clarendon. Hayek, F. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Herbert, C. (1990). Culture and Anomie. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hettne, B. (1985). Three Worlds of Development. London: Methuen. Hoover, K. (2003). Economics as Ideology. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littleﬁeld. Hsing, Y. T. (1998). Making Chinese Capitalism. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Kohli, A. (2005). State Directed Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kothari, R. (1989). Rethinking Development. New York: Horizons. Lasch, C. (1991). The True and Only Heaven. London: Norton. Leach, M. and Fairhead, J. (eds.) (2003). Science, Society, Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Marglin, F. and Marglin, S. (eds.) (1990). Dominating Knowledge. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, T. (2005). The Rule of Experts. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Mosse, D. (2005). Cultivating Development. London: Pluto. Nandy, A. (1987). Cultural frames for social transformation. Alternatives 12(1), 101 123. Nandy, A. (1998). Culture, state and the rediscovery of Irdion politics. Interculture 21, 2 17. Parajuli, P. (1991). Power and knowledge in development discourse. International Social Science Journal 127, 173 190. Peet, R. and Watts, M. (1995). Introduction. In Peet, R. & Watts, M. (eds.) Liberation Ecologies. London: Routledge. Pieterse, J. (1996). My Paradigm or Yours? Working Paper #229. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies. Pottier, J. B. A. and Sillitoe, P. (eds.) (2003). Negotiating Local Knowledge. London: Routledge. Polyani, K. (1944). The Great Transformation. Boston, MA: Beacon. Prasad, M. (2006). The Politics of Markets. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Preston, D. (1996). Development Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Radcliffe, S. (ed.) (2005). Culture and Development in a Globalizing World. London: Routledge. Rahnema, M. and Bawtree, V. (eds.) (1997). The Post Development Reader. London: Zed Press. Richards, P. (1985). African Agricultural Revolution. London: Methuen. Roe, E. (1991). Development narratives. World Development 19, 287 300. Routledge, P. (1994). Resisting and Shaping the Modern. London: Routledge. Sachs, J. (2006). The End of Poverty. New York: Penguin. Sachs, W. (ed.) (1992). The Development Dictionary. London: Zed Books. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Harper. Sen, A. (2002). Development as Freedom. New York: Knopf. Shiva, V. (1989). Staying Alive. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (1993). The greening of the global reach. In Sachs, W. (ed.) Global Ecology: A New Arena of Political Conﬂict, pp 53 60. London: Zed Books. UNDP (1996). Human Development Report. London: Oxford University Press. UNDP (2006). Human Development Report. London: Oxford University Press. UNRISD (1995). States of Disarray. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Wade, R. (1994). Governing the Market. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Watts, M. (1995). A new deal for the emotions. In Crush, J. (ed.) The Power of Development, pp 44 62. London: Routledge. Williams, R. (1976). Keywords. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolford, W. (2005). Edible ideology? Geographical Review 86, 475 491. World Bank (2006). Development Report. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Wright, A. and Wolford, W. Q. (2003). To Inherit the Earth. Oakland, CA: Food First.

Relevant Websites http://www.cfda.ac.in/ Center for Development Alternatives. http://www.cgdev.org/ Center for Global Development. http://www.globalexchange.org/ Global Exchange. http://www.worldbank.org/ The World Bank. http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wsf/ World Social Forum.

Devolution M. Keating, European University Institute, Florence, Italy & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Competences The policy areas in which a given level of government can act. Corporatism Government by concertation between the state and organized interests. Devolution The delegation of power to local and regional levels of government. Federalism A system of government with two territorial levels, each of which has constitutionally guaranteed powers. Meso-Level The level of government and administration between the central state and municipal government. Regional Policies State policies to reduce interregional inequalities.

What Is Devolution? Devolution is deﬁned in the Oxford English Reference Dictionary as ‘‘the delegation of power, especially by a central government to local or regional administration.’’ This encapsulates both the meaning and the difﬁculty of the phenomenon, since it implies both the transfer of power downwards and the retention of ultimate control at the center. It is for this reason that it has become a means for unitary states to recognize their own territorial diversity and to relieve pressure on the central state, while avoiding federalization, that is, the formal division of sovereign authority, with the limits that this would impose on the center. Devolution has a long history in the United Kingdom, where it was canvassed as a way of reconciling unity with diver sity from the late nineteenth century, although, apart from the special case of Northern Ireland between 1922 and 1972, it was not implemented until 1997–98 when autonomous assemblies were established for Scot land, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Even then, the program ran into the sands in 2004 when the voters in Northeast England rejected proposals for a regional assembly. From the late 1990s, the term appeared in Italy, much favored by the Lega Nord and was incorporated into the program of the 2001–06 Berlusconi government, albeit in a set ;of rather incoherent proposals designed to satisfy different wings of the governing coalition.

Why Devolution? The concept of devolution, if not the term, however, has wider application and we can usefully apply it to the rise of regional or ‘meso’ level governments since the 1960s in all the large European countries and some of the smaller ones. There are several reasons for the growth of this intermediate level of administration, policymaking, and regulation in the modern European state. One set is functional, the rise of the region as a key level for the understanding and management of economic and social change. From the 1960s, European states engaged in large scale planning and modernization projects requiring a level above the municipalities, provinces, and counties. Regional policies, the spatial complement to national Keynesianism, aimed to reduce spatial dis parities in development and bring into use idle resources in the lagging regions. Welfare state development and planning often also had a regional focus. Such policies were pursued by national governments, usually by national instruments such as the French De´le´gation a` l’ame´nagement du territoire et a` l’action re´gionale (DATAR) or the Italian Cassa per il Mezzogiorno and should not in themselves be confused with devolution, although, as we will see, they did have devolutionary implications. From the 1980s, the European Commission started to take over the regional development policy role through the ex panded and reorganized structural funds, incorporating the older European Regional Development Fund. Again, we must guard against the common tendency to confuse these regional policy initiatives with pressures for decentralization, but there were political implications. A second inﬂuence is that of state modernization and rationalization. Governments from the 1970s sought to increase their steering capacity while reducing their need for direct intervention and administration. Good examples are France and Italy, where the central state had become overburdened with local and regional demands and sought to recover its own freedom of action by ofﬂoading detailed management and administrative decisions from the center. In France, there was an effort to separate local and regional politics, to reduce the accumulation of mandates whereby national politicians simultaneously held local ofﬁce, and to cut down on the reference of decisions to Paris. In Italy, it was hoped to reduce clientelism and corruption, although the old patterns soon reestablished themselves at the regional level.

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A third inﬂuence is democratization and demands from new social forces. In states like France and Italy, the ‘Jacobin’ tradition associated democracy and equality with centralization and uniformity. By the 1970s, this was coming under question as new social movements re engaged with the local; the social democratic left adopted many of their themes and democracy was linked again with decentralization and local autonomy. Protests against centralized regional policies and their neglect of local and regional concerns crystallized into demands for constitutional change and more sensitive development programs. In Spain, the transition from a centralized dictatorship was closely linked to decentralization as had been the case in Italy earlier. In Poland, decentralization and regional government were part of the democratic agenda for some, but were contested by Jacobin forces. Here, as elsewhere, support for devolution often depended on whether a party was in government or opposition. There was also concern in many countries that the growth of a regional state in the form of agencies and boards was creating a democratic deﬁcit. Fourth, there is the question of the management of national diversity. Immediately after World War II, Italy established four (later ﬁve) special status regions in the northern border areas and the islands. From the 1960s, Belgium moved in steps from being a unitary and cen tralized state, managed by consociational accommodation at the center, to a regionalized state, and then a feder ation. Spain had experimented with autonomy for its historic nationalities under the Second Republic in the 1930s and recognition of their rights was, by the 1970s, an integral part of the democratic reform agenda. The United Kingdom had struggled over how to manage its national diversity since the nineteenth century and the issue has recurred constantly since. Central and East European countries have been very reluctant to go down this road because of the political sensitivity of the issues.

Devolution Models Devolution is not a single model of government that is then applied to individual states. It does not, unlike federalism, have a set of core features and a well developed doctrine. Indeed the term itself is used in consistently and sporadically. It should be seen, rather, as a practice, a set of instruments used by governments, but in which we can detect some underlying patterns. The weakest form of devolution is ‘administrative devolution’, as it was known in the United Kingdom, which bears a resemblance to the French concept of deconcentration. In this case, regional branches of central government are given a degree of discretion in the implementation of policy and in coordinating its various strands. Ireland was long governed by a chief secretary

who was a member of the British government, although not usually an Irish MP. In 1885, Scotland gained a secretary (of state) who was by convention always a Scottish MP as well as a member of the British cabinet. The arrangement was extended to Wales in 1965 although later Conservative governments did not have enough Welsh MPs to staff it and the secretary of state often sat for an English seat. In France, regional prefects were appointed in 1963 to coordinate national policy at the regional level, including the work of the long established prefects in the de´partements. Successive gov ernments repeatedly sought to enhance the role of prefects by strengthening their control over the ﬁeld administration of government departments and giving them more power to make decisions on their own; but local interests constantly defeated this and made their way back to Paris. More recently, the French prefectoral model has been extended to Poland, where the voivod is a central ofﬁcial operating at the regional level. A second model is that of ‘functional devolution’, that is, the transfer of speciﬁc tasks to regional agencies, with the remit of complementing and implementing national policy. An early example of this was in France, where the Commissions de de´veloppement e´conomique re´gional (CODERs) were set up in 1963 to assist in regional planning. These were corporatist bodies, comprising business, agriculture, trade union, and independent members (50%), central government nominees (25%), and local councillors (25%) and intended to communicate with local civil society, notably the forces vives, the dynamic and mod ernizing elements in the regions. In 1972, following de Gaulle’s failed referendum on regional and senate reform, these were replaced by indirectly elected re gional councils drawn from national and local politicians. Alongside these regional councils were economic and social councils representing social and economic groups. Similar arrangements existed brieﬂy in Italy and Bel gium, and in 1964, Great Britain introduced Regional Economic Planning Councils consisting of local coun cillors, central government nominees, and representatives of social and economic interests. These were com plemented by Regional Economic Planning Boards of representatives from central government departments in the regions. In the late 1990s, a similar system of func tional devolution was reintroduced for England, with government ofﬁces for the regions, regional development agencies, and regional chambers (or assemblies) drawn from local government and socioeconomic actors. Hun gary also adopted a model of development agencies alongside indirectly elected councils to manage devel opment in the 1990s. Such corporatist models of functional devolution have proved unstable and have either failed, with a lapse back to centralization, or evolved into elected regional government. They have to combine a ‘top down’ role, of

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carrying out central policy in the regions, with a ‘bottom up’ one, of providing a local input and direction. Their legitimacy, given their composite membership, is ques tionable, making it difﬁcult to take hard decisions. They were born of an age in which development policy could be presented as a technical matter, a search for the right solution, and thus effectively depoliticized. In practice, any development strategy will produce winners and losers and rapidly be repoliticized. Indeed, it seems that regional planning and regional policies, while very different in principle from regional government, do reframe political issues in regional shape and encourage mobilization around regional themes. Yet the corporatist model does not provide any obvious ways for the resulting politics to be managed. Members of the corporatist bodies in consequence rapidly become disillusioned and often resign. In Italy and Belgium, indirectly chosen regional bodies rapidly gave way to elected regional government. In the former case, this had been foreseen in the post war constitution but postponed for over 20 years for political reasons. In Belgium elected regional governments, alongside devolution to language communities, was a means of managing the twin prob lems of economic discontent and language conﬂict. French regional government took a slightly different turn in the 1970s. President de Gaulle’s regional government proposals in 1969 had aimed, among other things, to undermine the power of the old elites (notables) in the local political system by bringing in an elected regional level and reforming the Senate, which was elected from the localities. Failure in the referendum led to de Gaulle’s resignation and his successor, Georges Pompi dou, instead entrusted the regional level to precisely these notables, by having it indirectly elected from local government. The move to direct elections came only in the 1980s with the arrival in power of the Socialists, who had built up their local and regional power bases. Even they, however, postponed direct election until the very end of their term, in 1986. Hungary has proposed to move from corporatist to elected regional government, but has long postponed the transition. Britain’s experi ment in functional/corporatist regionalism ended with the failure of the National Plan in 1967 although the Regional Economic Planning Councils persisted until 1979 when they were abolished in the English regions by the incoming Thatcher government. The functional need for a regional tier of administration, however, persisted and in the 1990s the Conservative government estab lished government ofﬁces for the regions. After 1997 the Labour government set up regional development agen cies and regional chambers (which now call themselves assemblies). The ﬁnal model of devolution is the elected multi functional government at the meso level. In principle, Italian regions are a tier of general purpose government

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but in practice they have been conﬁned to rather narrow functional roles, notably in the administration of the health service. French regional councils, while directly elected, are still functionally restricted, their main tasks being planning and investment programming. Belgian regional governments were stronger and had taken on more tasks in successive rounds of constitutional reform, until Belgium was converted ofﬁcially into a federation in 1993. In Flanders, where the regional and community institutions have been largely merged, this created a strong tier of general purpose govern ment, but in Brussels and Wallonia there are weaker institutions. The Spanish autonomous communities are strong general purpose governments, which have in creased their responsibilities over time, to the extent that many observers see Spain as a federation in the making. Scotland and Northern Ireland have strong elected governments with powers over everything that it is not speciﬁcally reserved to the center, while Wales has an assembly with administrative control over a deﬁned range of functions. Poland has a directly elected regional tier of government, although its powers remain relatively weak. One advantage that devolution possesses over classic federalism is that it is much easier to design asym metrical devolution, given that, at least in principle, the central state remains in charge of the whole. It thus enables governments to respond in cases where there are autonomist demands in one part of the state, but where other parts prefer centralization. This is borne out by these cases. The United Kingdom has a highly asym metrical constitution, with different autonomist settle ments for Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales, while England, accounting for some 85% of the population, is governed from the center. Italy has special status for its ﬁve peripheral regions, without the need to generalize the model. Belgium was able to make rather different arrangements for Flanders, Brussels, Wallonia, and the German community, although its conversion into a federation has complicated matters. Even France has been prepared to make special concessions to Corsica, although not to extend these to regions of the mainland. In Spain, there is a constant tension between the historic nationalities, who insist on their distinct status, and the center, which has sought to homogenize the statutes of autonomy.

Powers and Competences The allocation of powers in devolved systems varies greatly. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, everything is devolved except that which is speciﬁcally reserved. In principle, this is supposed to be the case in Belgium but the need to indicate whether it is the regions or the

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language communities that get the residual powers means that these need to be speciﬁed. Spain has a rather confusing system in which the constitution lists competences that must be devolved, those that must be kept at the center, and those that may be devolved by individual statutes of autonomy. There is also pro vision, however, for devolving reserved powers. French, Italian, and Polish regions have those powers that are speciﬁcally devolved to them. In principle, governments try to devolve clear blocks of competences and avoid overlapping central and regional responsibilities, but in practice the nature of modern government makes this impossible. Even should a clear separation of tasks be agreed upon at one point, the shifting nature of government will soon make it redundant. In any case, governments have rarely been willing to devolve whole areas of public policy. This has been the cause of considerable confusion, when politicians in Italy and Spain have talked of giving regions ‘exclusive responsi bility’ for various functions. In practice this usually means the whole management of the ﬁeld, but within legislative parameters set by the central state. Only in Scotland and Northern Ireland does exclusive responsi bility mean that devolved governments can repeal existing state laws in the relevant ﬁelds. Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales are also unusual in that central ministers and departments cannot act or spend money within the devolved territories except in pursu ance of a reserved competence. The process of devolution and the entrenchment of devolved powers also varies. In Belgium, competences can be transferred by act of the central parliament, but cannot then be taken back. In Spain, statutes of autonomy were drawn up in the late 1970s and early 1980s for the 17 regions, within the parameters of the 1978 consti tution but each statute is slightly different. Initially there was a fast track, aimed at accommodating the three his toric nationalities (Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia) but also used by Andalucia, giving large com petences from the outset. Other autonomous com munities acquired their powers more slowly, although the intention of the central government was that eventually they would all reach the same level. Autonomous com munities can propose amendments to their own statutes and after the change in the Spanish government in 2004 a number started the process of framing new statutes. Once devolved, competences cannot be taken back by the center. French regions were not even recognized by the constitution until 2004 and their powers are transferred by ordinary law. Italian regions have powers bestowed on them by the law and the constitution and since the 1990s, there has been a long debate on giving them stronger and entrenched powers, but political divisions have meant that little has been produced. The United Kingdom represents both ends of the devolution spectrum, in that

the powers devolved are very extensive, but are subject to ordinary law and parliamentary supremacy so that, in theory, Westminster can override their laws and even abolish their institutions. In practice, a convention has been established for Scotland (the Sewel Convention) that Westminster will legislate on devolved matters only at the speciﬁc request of the Scottish Parliament. This device is used frequently for technical reasons (to do with the overlap of functions) and sometimes to enable the Scottish government to ofﬂoad difﬁcult decisions. Of course, formal constitutional guarantees to devolved governments are only one part of the story. Equally important is their political entrenchment. The Scottish parliament is, according to the Westminster doctrine, the creation of the UK parliament, which retains full sovereignty and could abolish it at will. Scottish political and public opinion, however, sees it as the product of an exercise in self determination and the representative of the Scottish nation. Any government trying to abolish it would be faced with the prospect of Scotland seceding from the United Kingdom altogether. The theoretical possibility for the Spanish parliament to override autonomous institutions, as some central polit icians have threatened in relation to the Basque Country, is subject to more legal control, requiring an absolute majority in the senate and grave conditions (which would presumably be open to review by the constitutional court). More importantly, as in the UK, it would produce a political crisis and must be considered highly unlikely. Recentralizing competences in France, Italy, or Poland, on the other hand, would be much less difﬁcult. Finance has been one of the most difﬁcult areas in devolution. True to the original devolution concept, governments have tended to try and decentralize power while retaining overall control. Initially, this usually means that they have retained taxing power at the center and transferred funds to the regions for speciﬁc purposes. This restricts the discretion of devolved governments and may make them little more than administrative agents of the center, as was the case for a long time in Italy and France. Over time, however, governments have seen the beneﬁts of converting transfers into block grants, so giving regions freedom to allocate resources in accord ance with needs and (an important political consider ation) forcing them to take responsibility for rationing. More recently, governments have been willing to decentralize tax raising powers. Again the arguments are partly to do with efﬁciency but more perhaps with politics, the consideration that the regions have enjoyed the privilege of spending money while the center has had the pain of raising it. So the Spanish autonomous com munities, the Italian regions, the French regions, and the Belgian regions and communities have gradually been given more ﬁscal autonomy. This has not yet happened in the United Kingdom. Indeed Northern Irish politicians

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insisted on removing a provision allowing for ﬁscal autonomy from a ﬁrst draft of their devolution bill, fearing that at some time the British might leave them to their own devices. It is difﬁcult to generalize about the powers that have been devolved to meso level governments, but there are some trends. The main macroeconomic and stabilization functions have been retained at state level, unlike in some federal systems. Regulatory and market integration functions have also been retained. Major redistributive services, notably cash beneﬁts, have been reserved to the center in the name of national solidarity and to maintain the widest risk pooling, although there are pressures in Flanders to decentralize the social security system. Pro motional activities, including economic development and planning, have been widely devolved. Indeed, one of the functional reasons behind devolution since the 1990s has been the move away from centralized regional develop ment policies – in which regions are integrated into na tional economies, to a decentralized mode – in which regions compete in national, European, and global mar kets. Public service provision is widely devolved, in cluding health, where there is evidence of regional divergence in priorities and instruments. Education is often devolved, although in France and Italy this refers to the maintenance of the infrastructure and planning for provision, rather than the hiring of teachers or the cur riculum, seen as matters of vital national interest. In Scotland and Northern Ireland, education is entirely devolved, with no input from London, while in Spain the division between the center and the regions has caused tensions in the historic nationalities. Social services are usually devolved, while policing is devolved in Scotland and some of the Spanish autonomous communities, and in principle, can be devolved in Northern Ireland. One area in which devolved governments have become active lies in the interface between education, training, and economic development, especially in active labor market policies, which now have a strong regional di mension almost everywhere. Relations between central and devolved governments are, in principle, regulated by intergovernmental insti tutions and procedures. These include joint ministerial committees and memoranda of understanding in the UK, sectoral conferences in Spain, and planning mechanisms in France. In practice, however, issues tend to be resolved at the political level, through partisan or personal con tacts. This is another contrast with federal systems, where institutional forms are more important. It is not surprising that foreign relations are a reserved matter everywhere, but even here there are important differences. Most devolved systems make provision for devolved governments to represent their interests in the European Union. Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Spain, in different ways, allow devolved governments

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to participate alongside the state in the council of min isters. Nearly all devolved governments have ofﬁces in Brussels; they are in the Committee of the Regions, and are active in European networks. More broadly, they are increasingly engaged in ‘paradiplomacy’, seeking to promote their interests in world markets and seeking out allies in other regions. State governments have at times sought to restrict this as an infringement on their pre rogatives, but at other times have been quite supportive, not seeing this as a challenge to classical diplomacy; it largely depends on the political relationships between the two levels. Belgium has the most far reaching arrange ments here, with regions and communities possessing external competences equivalent to their domestic ones, subject only to their not infringing Belgian foreign policy interests.

Devolution and Beyond Devolution is a concept developed in particular cir cumstances, the unitary European state, and even there it comes in many varieties. Its very openness may make it attractive at a time when the role of the state is being transformed and power is moving upwards to European and global levels, downwards to regions and localities, and outwards to the market and civil society. Devolution has been subject to two recurring criticisms. The ﬁrst is that power devolved is power retained, in that the center can always take it back. In practice, however, this depends on the political conditions. The second is that it is inherently centrifugal in that regions will con stantly be competing with each other to gain more powers. There is evidence for this in Belgium, where the process has taken on a dynamic of its own, rather than responding to public opinion and, to a lesser extent, from Spain. On the other hand, the United Kingdom shows a very different picture, with the population accepting that different parts of the state should have a different constitutional order, and voters in England rejecting devolution for themselves. A more radical version of this critique, that devolution is a slippery slope to secession, ﬁnds even less support from the evidence. Devolving systems are in permanent evolution, some heading perhaps to become stable federations, while others are asymmetrical and multinational unions. In other cases, again, devolution may fail and states revert to centralization, as happened in Italy after the ﬁrst regional reforms, or in England on two occasions. Similar processes may be seen in other parts of the world and the term devolution has been used also to refer to local government or even to decentralization within organ izations. To stretch the term too far, however, would reduce its utility and risk confusion with the broader concept of decentralization.

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The Research Agenda

Further Reading

Devolution has stimulated a new wave of academic research. At a very general level, it has reminded social scientists of the historical contingency of the unitary nation state and its constant restructuring. Geographers have drawn attention to the spatial rescaling, as functions, institutions, and policymaking have migrated to new levels. There is a lot of work on the political economy of regionalism, focusing on the changing patterns of eco nomic management, promotion, and regulation. More recently, attention has been given to welfare state re structuring as competences are redistributed and regions have to manage policies of social inclusion while main taining their competitive position and attractiveness to inward investment. There is also a large amount of research on the place of devolved regions in the decision making process of the European Union, as competences devolved to regions overlap with those taken up to the European level. Early visions of a Europe of the Regions alongside nation states have faded, but the role of regions continues to feature in discussions about constitutional reform in the EU.

Balme, R. (ed.) (1996). Les politiques du ne´o re´gionalisme. Paris: Economica. Caciagli, M. (2003). Regioni d’Europa. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino. Keating, M. (1996). Regional devolution. The West European experience. Public Money and Management 16(4), 35 42. Keating, M. (1998). The New Regionalism in Western Europe. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Keating, M. (ed.) (2004). Regions and Regionalism in Europe. London: Edward Elgar. Loughlin, J. (ed.) (2001). Subnational Democracy in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharpe, L. J. (ed.) (1993). The Rise of Meso Government in Europe. London: Sage. Swenden, W. (2006). Federalism and Regionalism in Western Europe. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.

See also: Nation; Political Geography; Political Representation; Regionalism; Sovereignty; State; State Theory.

Relevant Websites http://www.a e r.org Assembly of European Regions. http://www.devolution.ac.uk Economic and Social Research Council, Programme on Devolution. http://www.essex.ac.uk European Consortium for Political Research, Standing Group on Regionalism. http://www.cor.europa.eu European Union, Committee of the Regions.

Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism E. Swyngedouw, Manchester University, Manchester, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Dialectics It is the science of the general and abstract laws of the development of nature, society, and thought. Its principal features are: 1) the universe is not a disconnected mix of things isolated from each other, but an integral whole, with the result that things are relationally interdependent; 2) nature - the natural world or cosmos - is in a state of constant motion; 3) development is a process whereby insigniﬁcant and imperceptible quantitative changes lead to fundamental, qualitative changes. The latter occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, in the form of a leap from one state to another; and 4) all things contain within themselves internal dialectical contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, change, and development in the world. Doctrine of Internal Relations It is the philosophical view that things are constituted out of internalized relations. These relations are essential to them and the bearers would not be what they are without them. It implies that everything has some relation, however distant, to everything else. Exchange Value It is a quantitative relationship that underpins and permits the exchange of different usevalues in an economy based on generalized exchange (such as capitalism). The (exchange) value of a commodity is related to the socially necessary labour time required to produce that commodity. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher and one of the founders of German Idealism. Socially Necessary Labour Time It is the labor time required to produce a commodity under average conditions of production and performed with the average degree of skill and intensity of labour prevalent in that society. Teleology It is the view that the end state of affairs is already contained (in a deterministic) manner in the original conditions. It holds that all things are designed for or directed toward a ﬁnal result, that there is an inherent purpose or ﬁnal cause for all that exists. Use Value It is the utility of a thing and relates to the properties of a commodity. Use values are realized by use or consumption.

The river Where you set Your foot just now

Is gone Those waters giving way to this, Now this. (Heraclitus) But dialectical materialism insists on the approximate and relative character of every scientiﬁc theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the trans formation of moving matter from one state into another. (Lenin, 1972: 258)

Introducing Dialectics Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never any where has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be. (Engels, 1940: 74)

Although academic writing on dialectical thought and practice can be complex, over abstract, and arcane at times, its basic premises are rather simple and straight forward. ‘‘You can never step into the same river twice,’’ the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus maintained and this dictum has become a standard reference to ex press one of the key features of dialectics. For Heraclitus, everything ﬂowed and changed. Behind the world of things and events lie a whirlpool of change, ﬂux, trans formation, and process. This process, whereby the order of ‘being’ is turned into the process of ‘becoming’, holds both for the realm of material things (whether given by nature or made by human beings) and of ideas, dreams, or events. In other words, the world should be seen, so dialecticians maintain, simultaneously as a collection of things and a maelstrom of processes, whereby the things embody and express the dynamic relationships through which these things came into being. In sum, dialectics prioritize relation, change, openness, movement, and process over closure, stasis, condition, and ﬁxity. Such dialectical views are in fact widely held across the social and physical sciences, and often practiced in everyday life activities. Consider, for example, how bio logical evolution theory sees a particular species as the result of a historical process shaped by a combination of random events and dynamic survival of the ﬁttest within particular environmental relations. New species relate to their environment in new ways, and the dynamics of their interaction will produce new ecological conﬁgurations which, in their turn, will inﬂuence the future trajectories

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of adaptation, change, and new species generation. Levins and Lewontin, for example, very much understand biological and geoecological evolution as a dialectical process. In physics, process based approaches to explain the nature of things are now also quite common. Con sider, for example, how subatomic particles are under stood simultaneously as waves and things or, how in mechanics, the action/reaction dynamic remains one of the foundational principles to explain change and/or movement. Physicists such as A. N. Whitehead argue that ‘‘[n]ature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process’’ (Whitehead, 1985: 90), or Bohm (1983: 48), who asserts that ‘‘[n]ot only is everything changing but all is ﬂux. That is to say, what is is the process of becoming itself, while all objects, events, entities, con ditions, structures, etc. are forms that can be abstracted from this process.’’ In geology too, Sir Charles Lyell’s foundational work on the Earth’s geophysical arrange ment as historical process was welcomed as a prime example of dialectical thought by Friedrich Engels in The Dialectics of Nature. Dialectical principles are often at work in the domain of intellectual reasoning too. For the Greek philosopher Plato, in Republic, dialectics were equated with a par ticular and superior form of reasoning that combines a deconstructionist process (to attain basic principles) with a subsequent argumentative reconstruction by means of dialogical encounter, something commonly referred to as the Socratic method. This stands for the process through which understanding is achieved by means of the unfolding of argument and counter argument. Many teaching and learning environments are very much based on such dialectical methods (as are many coffee shop discussions). For Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the ﬁrst modern phil osopher to embrace dialectical thought, dialectical movement is the process through which the absolute idea could be reached and absolute freedom achieved. For him, the historical process is a dialectical one in which the mind or spirit gradually liberates itself in the dir ection of the absolute. This end state of affairs would bring about an ideal state and an ideal society. This Hegelian idealist dialectical perspective opens a set of practices that many of us are familiar with on an every day basis. When, for example, we see all manner of injustices in the world (e.g., mass hunger or poverty), our minds and creative thought can easily come up with a set of principles, ideas, and even concrete proposals that would not only remedy the situation but make it struc turally better for all involved. Of course, these ideas, although they may seem eminently reasonable and straightforward, are often very difﬁcult, if not impossible, to implement as they hit the constraints imposed by the material world. This is a classic procedure in which an idealist dialectic is at work. It is exactly this problem of

idealism (i.e., it discounts the ‘constraints’ of the ‘really existing’ world) that the materialist dialectic, mobilized in historical materialism by Marx and many Marxists, tries to deal with. For Hegel, the dialectic operates between mind and world, while for Marx the dialectic is constitutive of the world (and includes the process of thinking). Karl Marx’s materialist dialectic ‘turns Hegel on his head’ by insisting that the starting point for accurate historical–geographical understanding should not be the mind (thought in itself ), but rather the social and material relations through which individuals and their societies maintain coherence and organize change. For Andy Merriﬁeld, ‘‘[d]ialectics is both a statement about how the world is and a method of organizing the world for the purposes of study and research’’ (Merrifeld, 1993: 517). Although a materialist dialectic insists on the dia lectical nature of the world and the power of dialectical reasoning, these two are not identical to each other. Dialectical reasoning is of course something that works exclusively in our minds, while many (but certainly not all) of the dialectical processes in the material world unfold independently of thinking. This is one of the radical differences between a Hegelian and a Marxist dialectic. There is a disjuncture (or a gap) between the real of the world and the real of thought. While the world moves dialectically, that is, in a process of continuous change and transformation, dialectical thought aims at re presenting this process in thought. The latter of course can never be identical to the former. As Noel Castree (1996: 347) remarks: ‘‘theory is an abstraction in thought of a real object and this is not identical to the real.’’ This, of course, means, as David Harvey maintains, that theory (i.e., thought) ‘‘cannot hope to explain everything there is, nor even procure a full understand ing of singular events’’ (Harvey, 1982: 451). There is always an excess or remainder that escapes represen tation. It is of course from here that the possibility of the new, of the unexpected, and of a politics emerges. In what follows, we shall chart, ﬁrst, the basic contours of materialist dialectical reasoning. Second, we shall ex plore how dialectical reasoning works more speciﬁcally in the context of a historical–geographical materialist perspective. We shall then turn to interrogating the place of dialectics in geographical enquiry and provide some examples of dialectical geographical analysis.

The Dance of the Dialectic For dialectical philosophy nothing is ﬁnal, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and passing away. (Engels, 1976: 8)

Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism

A materialist dialectic insists that the human and nonhuman world is inseparable and transforms through myriad of relationships that are internally contradictory. Consider, for example, how all living organisms have to transform the material world they inhabit (like inhaling oxygen and in the process producing carbon dioxide and other chemicals). This is a process of creative destruction in which everything is continuously destroyed while new things are produced. Similarly, the computer on which these lines have been written is the end product of a series of sociometabolic processes (with socionatural properties as Marx insisted in Capital) in which parts of nature have been destroyed to produce a new bit of ‘nature’, a process that implied, among others, the mobilization of resources (nature) and machinery (socially transformed nature) procured by capitalists and the harnessing and controlling of human labor power by capital to perform a set series of procedures. While the worker was executing them, he or she could be making love or holidaying: work negates leisure; leisure negates work; the two deﬁne each other, yet they are contra dictory. In human societies, this sociometabolic process of the necessary transformation of nature in order to assure generational and intergenerational sustainability is always a social–geographical as well as a physical– geographical process. This means than the contradiction between humans and their conditions of existence is contained (or managed) through a particular set of social relations that organize the metabolic process. Put simply, the sustainability of society is predicated upon a trans formation of nature (through which existing forms of nature are destroyed while new natures are produced in the process). This transformation is always socially organized through a set of social relations which deﬁne the control over, access to, or distribution of the products of nature. These social relations can take the form of, for example, slavery, feudal, or capitalist relations. In the latter society, for example, the capitalist owns the means of production (i.e., transformed nature) while workers only possess their own nature (of which the capacity to work is the important one from the perspective of the capitalist). In order to sustain their nature, workers have to sell their capacity to labor to capitalists in exchange for a salary. The latter, in turn, permits them to get sufﬁcient (albeit this is not always guaranteed) access to the sort of natures required for their sustenance (food, shelter, etc.). Over time, these social relations change as well and new forms of social organization emerge from the debris of older ones. The materialist dialectic, as a mode of representation, starts from the real or material world as given. It accepts that a real world exists outside of the thought process that tries to make sense of that world. Yet, it also insists that the real world (as a collage of things, events, thoughts, and texts) is not transparent in itself as the dialectical

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relations and processes through which this collage comes into being are not directly visible. They have to be ‘reconstructed’ through the process of thinking. It is very much a way of approaching the world that is comparable to that of the archaeologist or geomorphologist. He or she peels away layer after layer to reveal clues about the processes that produced the things or conditions that he or she seeks to understand. These clues, in turn, are taken as starting points to reconstruct in thought the many interrelated processes through which they came into being. Knowledge, then, is a process of re presenting the realities of worldly practices and processes, whereby knowledge is never self identical to the real. The medi ation between the real (presentation) and re presentation operates by means of concrete abstractions that permit to construct knowledges about the world. These know ledges, in turn, of course matter in important ways in co shaping future processes. Consider, for example, the Marxist notion of value. Under capitalism, a commodity expresses both use value (i.e., it possesses a series of qualities some people like to enjoy) and exchange value (i.e., a monetary expression that makes the commodity interchangeable for all other commodities on a market). Although both use value and exchange value are abstract concepts, they simultaneously express two essential, yet contradictory, qualities without which the ‘thing’ could not function as a commodity. While value (as socially necessary labor time) cannot be seen, using this concrete abstraction permits us to represent a commodity as simultaneously possessing exchange and use value. Value contains and expresses the dialectical relation between use value and exchange value whose contradictory existence permits things to function as commodities. It brings out the contradictory unity of the value embodied by the commodity. Indeed, both exchange and use value cannot be simultaneously realized. More importantly, it permits showing how the simultaneous but contradictory presence of both types of value is predicated upon the existence of capitalist social relations. As Ollman (1993: 11) puts it: Dialectics restructures our thinking about reality by replacing the common sense notion of ‘thing’, as some thing that has a history and has external connections to other things, with a notion of ‘process’, which contains its history and possible futures, and ‘relation’, which con tains as part of what it is its ties with other relations.

According to Louis Althusser, a Marxist philosopher who took his cue from Antonio Gramsci and Mao Zedong, the materialist dialectic differs radically from the Hegelian or idealist dialectic in three main respects. First, the materialist dialectic is nonteleological. This means that there is no automatic inbuilt ﬁnal social state of affairs, an absolute and total (ideal) world. Although

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Marx has often been accused that he saw communism as the ﬁnal (and ideal) stage of human society, it is abun dantly clear from his writing that such stage does not appear automatically. It would come into being only through determined political struggle from the working class, a clear political strategy, and a continuous ﬁdelity to the efforts of producing a more genuine human soci ety, something that is by no means automatic or guar anteed, and once established, would not necessarily endure. On the contrary, the materialist dialectic is rad ically open ended and the future is always up for grabs. The future is the domain of myriad possibilities that are open for realization (depending on the dialectics of social struggle). Second, the materialist dialectic is not singular. This means that historical processes cannot be reduced to a singular conﬂict or contradiction that moves or powers everything else. While, of course, Marx insisted that all history is the history of class struggle (and this suggests the presence of a singular contradiction as the only operative force), later Marxists contended that any given nature–society complex expresses a multitude of tensions and contradictions in which the class relationship might be the most important one, but it is certainly not the only and, depending on the historical conditions, not neces sarily the most important one. A materialist dialectic insists simply that, for human societies at least, every process of theorizing has to begin from the dialectical relationships through which nature is socially trans formed in ways that permits the existing social order to sustain and (occasionally) transform itself. The third characteristic of the materialist dialectic is that, although it is about totalities in which everything is seen and thought to be related to everything else, it is not totali tarian. The latter refers to a condition in which one domain (say the economic) determines and shapes everything else (like the form of the state, hegemonic ideologies, even lifestyles and culture). In fact, all manner of tensions, conﬂicts, and contradictions (e.g., gender or ethnic relations) exist in any given society that renders the total ensemble of relations extraordinarily complex and variegated. In other words, the totality is multiple, it is internally heterogeneous. In fact, many Marxists insist, the dialectical movement of history produces ever more complex relations and contradictions. However, the relationships between the human and the nonhuman world and how these relationships are socially organized remain the necessary starting point. We are now in a position to outline the key principles of materialist dialectical reasoning. First, dialectics em phasize the study of ﬂux, process, and change over that of things, structures, or ensembles. Dialectics are a strictly relational perspective. As Harvey contends (1996: 49), ‘‘dialecticians in effect hold that elements, things, struc tures, and systems do not exist outside of or prior to the processes, ﬂows, and relations that create, sustain, or

undermine them.’’ The world, consequently, consists simultaneously of things and processes. A personal computer (PC) is the product of a wide range of socio physical relations that made it possible to exist and to be sustained as a PC. This thing, in turn, enters in a new set of relationships through which this text becomes con stituted as both an intellectual achievement (at least the hope/desire is it does) and an economic commodity (the author gets paid for it and readers have paid for reading it – or they may have subverted this by making an unauthorized copy!). Relation and contradiction are mobilized in order to perceive change. Contradiction is the principal feature of dialectics; it may be understood as some kind of incompatible development or movement of different elements within the whole whereby each part within a relationship simultaneously supports and undermines the other. Consider, for example, how the capital–labor relationship simultaneously deﬁnes workers and capital ists, while pitting their material interests against each other. Second, all contradictions are part of a relational assemblage that relate everything to everything else. This also means, as Ollman (1990: 38) puts it, that ‘‘each part is viewed as incorporating in what it is all its relations with other parts up to and including everything that comes into the whole.’’ If one is interested in dams, for example, materialist dialectics would interrogate the multiple contradictory relationships through which a dam becomes constituted and subsequently sustained (or not as the case may be). This would include eco logical processes, social, economic and political relational dynamics, and so forth. Third, it follows from the above that ‘‘parts and wholes are mutually constitutive of each other’’ (Harvey, 1997: 53). For example, the integrity of our body is constituted through the relationships that are forged with parts of the ‘external (to the body)’ environment while the latter is co shaped by our bodily processes (e.g., all manner of excrements). This leads to an extremely important fourth principle, namely the interchangeability of subject and object, of cause and effect. From a materialist dialectical perspective, there are no one way determinations or cause–effect relation ships but rather mutually interactive dynamics that shape the coming into being of new conditions, assemblages, and possibilities, while others whither away. Fifth, as change is central to dialectics, the foundational question of dialectical thinking is about how, when, and into what ensembles change. This, then, leads us to the most for midable contribution of dialectics, namely the force and importance of imagination. Given that the future is undecided a priori, exploring possible other worlds is an integral part of dialectical reasoning. Since, by virtue of the multiple contradictory relations that constitute a given situation or ensemble, a wide variety of possible avenues open up in the interstices of such contradictory

Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism

processes. It is in these spaces that the real possibilities for social transformation reside. Authors as diverse as Slavoj Zizek, Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Neil Smith, Vladimir Lenin, Guy Debord, or Andy Merriﬁeld have explored the formidable possibilities of creative materi alist imaginations for changing the world toward a more humane condition. And of course, myriad workers’ and other social movements around the globe have and continue to ﬁght for a better life and for more just and equitable sociospatial relations.

The Dialectics of Place and Space: A Historical–Geographical Materialist Perspective Nothing lasts long under the same form. I have seen what once was solid earth now changed into sea, and lands created out of what was ocean. Ancient anchors have been found on mountaintops. (Pythagoras of Samos)

We have explored above the theoretical and epistemological thinking on dialectics. Historical– geographical materialism mobilizes a dialectical per spective to understand the production of nature and space and to propose possible emancipatory geographical transformations. Merriﬁeld (1993: 7) summarizes a dialectical perspective on place and space as follows: Social space must be posited as material process. This process represents the rootless, ﬂuid reality of material ﬂows of commodities, money, capital and information which can be transferred and shifted across the globe. y From this standpoint, social space y represents simul taneously a network of exchange and a ﬂow of com modities, communication, energy and resources.

Similarly, space as a thing acquires meaning, signiﬁ cance, resonance, and even a particular geographical form in and through the multiple relations with which it is infused and through which it becomes produced. For example, the making of the built environment or the cutting down of the Amazon rain forest is realized in and through sociospatial processes of appropriation, of capital accumulation, of the imagineering and scripting of peo ples, places, and natures. It has been the staple of Marxist geography to disentangle the sociospatial processes through which, particularly – but not exclusively – under capitalism, spatial conﬁgurations are produced (in their economic, political, social, cultural, and ideological in stances) and transformed. Places or concrete geographies become then a moment in the perpetual dialectical dynamics of sociospatial processes. In other words, historical–geographical materialism turns all geography into a historical socio environmental geography (not just of the past, but also of the present and the future).

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Geography, then, can be understood from the vantage point of the above dialectical and historical–geographical materialist perspective. Production, deﬁned as the social metabolization of nature, is the starting point. The dynamics of the particular social relations under which this takes place in a capitalist market economy are associated with a particular temporal and spatial organ ization of society. This territorial structure of capitalism is contradictory (that is full of tensions and conﬂict), and the sociospatial dynamics of capitalism are inherently unstable. These socioeconomic geographical dynamics are always inscribed in a historically produced insti tutional, political, ecological, ethnic, and cultural landscape. This produces territorial conﬁgurations or coherences that are highly differentiated and give the geographical landscape its sweeping diversity, hetero geneity, and difference. Therefore, from a materialist dialectical perspective, social processes are both space dependent and space forming. Through contradictory sociospatial dynamics, actual places and concrete geog raphies (social and physical) become constructed/ produced. These historical geographical dynamics are shaped by continuous and diverse social struggles, in which the class struggle for control over and ownership of (produced) nature is the central one. All of these struggles are always infused by a myriad of non class based cleavages and conﬂicts such as ethnic, gender, or territorial conﬂicts or by conﬂicts outside the realm of production, and take outspoken geographical forms.

Doing Dialectics in Geography Dialectic, in fact, is the only procedure which proceeds by the destruction of assumptions to the very ﬁrst principle y. When the eye of the mind gets really bogged down in a morass of ignorance, dialectic gently pulls it out and leads it up. (Plato, The Republic)

The ‘dialectical turn’ in geography has taken a great number of twists and turns over the past four decades or so. William Bunge was certainly an early pioneer of a more radical geography. The pages of the journal Antipode were also largely devoted, at least during the 1970s, to alternative and often highly debated readings of spatial ized dialectics. Authors as diverse as David Harvey, Gunnar Olsson, Doreen Massey, Richard Peet, Edward Soja, Costis Hadjimichalis, and Alain Lipietz contributed to the exploration and formulation of a sociospatial dialectical approach, one that would be able not only to transform the discipline of geography, also but more importantly, to transform the world in an emancipatory and more just manner. While Lipietz, Massey, and others were inspired by a spatialized structural analysis that drew on Althusserian interpretations of Marxism, Harvey

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and Ollson pursued a dialectical investigation more akin to Henri Lefebvre’s or Bertel Ollman’s view of dialectics as constituted through internal relations. From the 1980s onward, these perspectives would spiral out in a variety of directions, embracing more nuanced relational per spectives. In particular, David Harvey would articulate a fully developed dialectical perspective in a series of pathbreaking books, starting with Limits to Capital. In Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, he would propose a more systematized dialectical approach to sociospatial processes. During the 1970s, dialectical analysis in geography tended to focus on spatialized political–economic ques tions and problems, such as urban and regional change or processes of global uneven development. More recent work has embraced socioecological transformations, variable sociocultural formations, ethnicity and gender, and the thorny issue of the dialectic of language, repre sentation, and sociomaterial change. While Marxism and dialectics have received con siderable and often critical attention in geography, it is surprising that relatively few empirical geographical studies have been published by geographers that ex plicitly or implicitly explore the world from a dialectical historical–geographical materialist perspective. Doing dialectical materialist research requires a painstaking and theoretically informed reconstruction of the contested making and remaking of human and nonhuman geo graphical landscapes. While not pretending to be ex haustive in any way, there are a number of monographs that explore geographical conditions and conﬁgurations from a decidedly dialectical perspective. They may give some pointers as to how a historical–geographical ma terialist and dialectical geography might be practiced. Great dialectical urban monographs would include Mike Davis’ City of Quartz, David Harvey’s majestic study of nineteenth century Paris (Paris, Capital of Modernity), Andy Merriﬁeld’s Dialectical Urbanism, Matthew Gandy’s Concrete and Clay, and Maria Kaika’s City of Flows. Exciting socioecological studies would include Richard Walker’s The Conquest of Bread, Michael Watts’s Silent Violence, or Judith Carbey’s Black Rice. The author would also single out George Henderson’s California and the Fictions of Captial, Don Mitchell’s The Lie of the Land and the author’s own Social Power and the Urbanisaton of Water as dialectical historical–geographical materialist studies. Great Marxist studies of globalization by geographers would include Neil Smith’s work on globalization and David Harvey’s inspiring analyses of imperialism and neoliberalism. While the above books all explore the difﬁcult path ways of dialectical reasoning in geographical studies, they also share a passion and commitment to exploring pos sible Spaces of Hope as David Harvey likes to call them,

and to thinking about a politics that would turn the actually existing perverse geographies of exploitation, domination, hunger, and war into a genuinely human izing spatial practice. See also: Critical Theory (After Habermas); Geopolitics; Harvey, D.; Historical-Geographical Materialism; Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Radical Geography; Smith, N.; Social Movements; Structural Marxism; Structuralism/ Structuralist Geography.

Further Reading Althusser, L. (1965). For Marx, Brewster, B. (trans.). [Reprinted 1969, London: New Left Books.] Balibar, E. (1993). The Philosophy of Marx, Turner, C. (trans.). [Reprinted 1995, London: Verso.] Berman, M. (1983). All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity. London: Verso Books. Bhaskar, R. (1993). Dialectic. London: Verso Books. Castree, N. (1996). Birds, mice and geography: Marxisms and dialectics. Transactions Institute of British Geographers NS 21, 342 362. Debord, G. (1967). The Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press. Engels, F. (1940). Dialectics of Nature. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Engels, F. (1976). Ludwig Feuerback and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. Harvey, D. (1982). The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1984). On the history and present condition of geography an historical materialist manifesto. The Professional Geographer 36, 1 11. Harvey, D. (1985). The geo politics of capitalism. In Gregory, D. & Urry, J. (eds.) Social Relations and Spatial Structures, pp 128 163. London: Macmillan. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lefebvre, H. (1974). The Production of Space. [Reprinted 1989, Oxford: Blackwell.] Lenin, V. I. (1972). Materialism and Empirio Criticism Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy. Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 14. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Levins, R. and Lewontin, R. (1985). The Dialectical Biologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Marx, K. (1990). Capital Volume 1. Harlow: Penguin Classics. Marx, K. (1993). Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin Classics. Merriﬁeld, A. (1993). Place and space: A Lefebvrian reconciliation. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers N.S. 18, 516 531. Merriﬁeld, A. (2002). Dialectical Urbanism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Ollman, B. (1993). Dialectical Investigations. London: Routledge. Ollman, B. (2003). The Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx’s Method. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Smith, N. (1984). Uneven Development. Oxford: Blackwell. Swyngedouw, E. (1999). Marxism and historical geographical materialism: A spectre is haunting geography. Scottish Geographical Magazine 115, 91 102. Swyngedouw, E. (2006). Circulations and metabolisms: (Hybrid) natures and (cyborg) cities. Science as Culture 15, 105 122. Tse Tung, M. (1957). On Contradiction. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. zˇizˇek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Dialogism (After Bakhtin) J. Holloway, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK J. Kneale, University College London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Carnivalesque Popular cultural practices and representations that are critical of or subvert ofﬁcial culture. Ambivalent images and rituals that emphasize renewal and the cyclical nature of time are central to the carnivalesque (e.g., images of birth accompanied by those of death). Chronotope The temporal and spatial matrix through which narratives and notions of subjectivity are organized – the inseparability of time and space in life and representation. Dialogism A central Bakhtinian term suggesting that all language and existence are relational and responsive. Each speech or communicative act is dialogical through its responsiveness to other past, present, and future speech acts. Grotesque Realism Central to the carnivalesque, grotesque realism principally involved practices and images with an exaggerated emphasis on the lower bodily regions, thus inverting the ofﬁcial legitimacy of the idealized body. Heteroglossia A term used to describe the multiplicity and diversity of discourses in the social world – literally, many languagedness. Heteroglossia refers to heterogeneous and centrifugal forces which exist in constant ideological tension to the centripetal or monological forces which seek to unify the linguistic sphere. Monologism An ideological force in culture and society which seeks to unify the diversity of heteroglossia. Any attempt to order or homogenize linguistic diversity can be described as monological. Novelness A term used to describe the constant renewal and change characteristic of heteroglossia. Bakhtin identiﬁed the novel as the literary form which best reﬂected the unceasing change and diversity inherent to language and speech. Polyphony Literally, many voices, polyphony refers to the dialogical encounter where each voice has equal value and standing. Speech Genre A relatively stable form of language incorporating shared style, intonation, and content. Certain speech genres seek to ideological ascendancy and thus attempt to monologize heteroglossia. Utterance The basic unit of communication in dialogism, utterances vary in length and are separated by a change in the speaking subject. The utterance is

formed in a dialogical encounter through responding to past and anticipating future utterances.

Introduction The work of Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) continues to inspire and inﬂuence in a variety of ways across a diverse range of disciplines, including literary theory, history, cultural studies, anthropology, and human geography. Bakhtin’s writings, from the early philo sophical works of Towards a Philosophy of the Act and Art and Answerability to the studies of folklore and medieval popular culture in Rabelais and his World, contain both varied and recurring themes. For some, especially Tzvetan Todorov, an early proponent of his work, the inherent unsystematic nature of Bakhtin’s work is a problem that needs to be addressed. Yet it seems apposite that Bakhtin’s work shows signs of both consistency and diversity. For, as we shall see, Bakhtin argued that the social world is simultaneously composed of hetero geneous/centrifugal forces and centripetal forces that seek homogeneity. Furthermore, when one tries to categorize Bakhtin’s ideas, politically or theoretically, one is faced with a diversity of labels that never seem to coalesce: Is Bakhtin a Marxist? A post Marxist? Is he a liberal thinker or an early post structuralist? Once again, it seems appropriate that a thinker, who, as we shall see, repeatedly interrogates ideas of becoming and unﬁnalizability, should never be compartmentalized. Thus, any attempts to systematize or complete Bakhtin’s ideas disavow the very philosophy and politics he valued. After studying classics and philology at the University of Petrograd (1913–18), Bakhtin moved to Nevel in western Russia to work as a schoolteacher for 2 years. During this time and after relocating to Vitebsk in 1920, Bakhtin engaged with a group of intellectuals that in cluded (among others) Valetin Voloshinov and Pavel Medvedev. Voloshinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language and Freudianism: A Marxist Critique, as well as Medvedev’s Formal Method in Literary Scholarship are often attributed to Bakhtin himself. This ‘authorship dispute’ has never been and is unlikely to be settled. Instead, it is common to use the shorthand the ‘Bakhtin Circle’ to register the mutual inﬂuence and interaction among these writers in these ‘disputed texts’. Less in dispute is

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Bakhtin’s arrest in 1929, under one of the numerous Stalinist purges of unorthodox intellectuals, and his exile in Kazakhstan. During this period, he wrote his important essays on the novel and Rabelais. Bakhtin defended the latter as a doctoral dissertation at the Gorky institute in 1941. However, this award was delayed and downgraded by both World War II and its controversial content. After exile, Bakhtin moved to Saransk University and became the head of the department of Russian and world literature. It was during the 1950s that Bakhtin was ‘rediscovered’ by a number of graduates from Moscow, who managed to persuade him to update his book Prob lems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and make him known to a wider and, in the 1960s and 1970s, Western world. Mikhail Bakhtin suffered all his life with the crippling bone dis ease, osteomyelitis (he had a leg amputated in 1938), and due to his ill health he moved back to Moscow in 1969, where he died in 1975.

Inspecting Bakhtin’s Key Concepts Dialogism and the Utterance One of the key aspects of Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism is its opposition to structuralist theories of language. For structuralists, especially those inﬂuenced by Ferdinand Saussure, language can be divided in two ways: langue, which is a set of normative rules which govern language, and parole, the implementation of these rules in any given speech or linguistic act. Parole therefore comprises the inﬁnitely multiple and everyday ways we talk and communicate. Due to the inﬁnite diversity of everyday speech, Saussure argued that parole should be ignored in favor of langue. Bakhtin and Voloshinov took the opposite view and argued that rather than seeing the multiplicity and particularities of speech in its everyday performance as something accessory to the rules which govern and structure language, we should seek to in terrogate the situated and historical utterances of everyday life. Bakhtin and Voloshinov described the arguments of structuralists as abstract objectivism and monologism (which we will return to). They argue that this abstract objectivism sucks the life out of language as it is used and evolves in everyday life. Moreover, the unﬁnished and alive language of everyday life eludes all systems and laws through its incessant change. Yet, Bakhtin and Voloshinov also dismissed what they call theories of individual subjectivism where language is purely the product of individual consciousness, ab stracted and isolated from the wider social world in which we make meaning and sense. In distinction to these two theoretical trends, Bakhtin and Voloshinov advanced their theory of dialogism. With its focus on language in its everyday and social context, the key unit of communication in dialogism is the

utterance. This varies in size and length – it can be a single word or a novel – and is delimited by the change to another speaking subject. In fact, the role of this other, whether this is another speaking person or a written response, is crucial to understanding the nature of the utterance. This is because the utterance simultaneously looks forward to the response it partly shapes and backward to the utterances it responds to. The utterance is double voiced and is responsive to past, present, and future utterances that mold its development. Meaning is therefore always constructed between utterances and speaking subjects. Shared understandings and cultural meanings are created at the boundaries and borders be tween utterances. The emphasis here again is on the lived and concrete construction of meaning, rather than ab stracted rules and governing systems of language. Moreover, the individual utterance is part of a long chain of other utterances. Consequently, meaning can never be ﬁnalized or its origins found: language for Bakhtin and Voloshinov is a constantly generative and open ended activity, full of potentiality for words and utterances to take on new meanings through time. The dialogical ut terance is thus formulated both synchronically and dia chronically, and always has the potential, among and in conjunction with multiple other (past, present, and fu ture) speech acts, to generate new and unforeseen meanings. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism is thoroughly ethical. He argued we do not choose whether or not to enter into dialogical relations with others, their utterances, or the world, because we are continually and unavoidably responding to the world and others around us. Each of us occupies a unique and particular position in the world, which we must seek to actualize, and thus we are always already bound to respond to the others and the world. As such, in responding to the world, we have a responsibility to the world and other people: we must address the world and the world (must) address us. Bakhtin argued that this state of responsibility or addressivity is inescapable. This ethical stance is once again derived from the actual, concrete, and lived event, rather than through systems and structures. In Towards a Philosophy of the Act, Bakhtin disputed Kant’s ethical imperative (the need for ethical principles that govern our responses and actions) and argued that ethics can only be located in particular acts as we respond and address to those events as they happen. If it were possible to abstract and represent what those reactions should or would be, then we could know what existence would be in advance. Likewise, ethical relativism, which leads to a state of nonresponsiveness to the world, is impossible in Bakhtin’s schema. As we cannot know life in advance of its happening nor can we escape ethical responsibility, once again Bakhtin stressed the lived actuality of events and argues that ethical actions are unavoidably a result of

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the unﬁnalizability of practice in the world and toward others. Speech Genres, Heteroglossia, and Polyphony Bakhtin and the ‘Bakhtin Circle’ sought to trace a middle path between structure and system on the one hand and individualism and relativism on the other. Another way this was achieved was through Bakhtin’s notion of the speech genre. Speech genres are deployed in utterances through typical and common forms of intonation, style, content, and composition. For example, we might talk in a different style and about different things in the pub than we do in the workplace. Or we might give different intonation to our speech and discuss different subjects when speaking to a close relative or lover instead of a casual acquaintance. Therefore, the utterance is achieved through the deployment of different conventional and generic ways of talking, which allow it to become double voiced: that is, to register past and future speech acts, speech genres act as a force of ordering and form on the utterance (without being ﬁnalizable). Importantly, speech genres reveal the social context of talk and speech acts in that utterances are always enabled by and reproduce socially shared ways of understanding. Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism makes it clear that all ways of talking and communicating are social, value laden, and consequently ideological. Language is thus saturated and stratiﬁed by power. The deployment of different speech genres registers social hierarchies and differences, and each utterance is ideologically accentuated. The early work of the British Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies found Voloshinov’s nonstructuralist theory of language attractive for this reason. Shaped in anticipation and response to past and future speech, enabled by, and reproducing speech genres, the utterance is a living and concrete speech act that is thoroughly social and ideologically permeated. Dialo gism then recognizes the performance of language and discourse as everyday, open to change, and subject to wider socio ideological forces. The multiplicity of socio ideological discourses, languages, and speech genres that penetrate and are performed through the utterance Bakhtin named heteroglossia. Each utterance is formed in and through heteroglossia – the multilanguagedness of the social world. Referring to the juxtaposition of different languages, speech genres, and dialects, hetero glossia is a term Bakhtin used to describe both the multiplicity of different ways of speaking and the nature of the relations between different languages. Reﬂecting once more upon the ideological nature of language, the heteroglossic context of different discourses and speech genres, diachronically and synchronically forms the double voiced utterance. Therefore, the context of the utterance is always dialogized heteroglossia.

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The relation between the different discourses is often one of discord and struggle, and therefore relations of power infuse heteroglossia. Bakhtin argued that certain speech genres seek dominance and ascendancy, and thus seek to homogenize the heterogeneity of heteroglossia. These centripetal tendencies Bakhtin called the forces of monologism or monoglossia. In opposition to the centrifugal and diverse forces of dialogized heteroglossia, monological forces seek to unify the socio ideological linguistic sphere. Indeed, Bakhtin saw structuralist the ories of language, which make accessory the living world of everyday speech, as monological through their attempt to discover the unifying rules of language. The hetero glossic forces of the living utterance always relativize monologism: the diversity of heteroglossia undermines monoglossia. This does not mean that heteroglossia represents some form of linguistic anarchism: Bakhtin argued that there must be some form of order to the heteroglottic sphere (principally through the relative unity of different speech genres), or else meaningful communication would be impossible. However, this order is always open to change and mutation. Besides reserving criticism for the abstract objectivism of structuralism, Bakhtin and other members of the Bakhtin Circle most particularly Medvedev, heavily criticized Russian formalism. This movement in literary theory rejected the everyday linguistic sphere and fo cused on the rules governing language in poetry (which they saw as the privileged site for meaning generation and true creativity). Bakhtin and Medvedev rejected this as another form of monologism abstracted from the di versity and creativity of heteroglossia. Indeed, Bakhtin championed the novel as the literary form that reﬂects or has the potential to reﬂect the diverse heteroglot lan guages of dialogism. In particular, Bakhtin argued that Dostoevsky’s novels (such as Poor Folk) were important as they reﬂected the different ideological discourses of dialogized heteroglossia, and thus presented a multi plicity of different voices in dialogical relation. Moreover, Bakhtin argued that in Dostoevsky, we see not only the interaction and interpenetration of diverse ideologies and discourses, but also that these voices remain on an equal footing, with no one voice being privileged over another. This Bakhtin termed polyphony: an artistic orchestration of multiple and diverse discourses where none become dominant or seek to monologize another. The novel is given privileged status in Bakhtin’s the ories: he argued that in the novel the centripetal forces of heteroglossia are artistically fully realized. These diverse and multiple languages are, as we have seen, never ﬁnalized and are always open to metamorphosis. Indeed, the incessant becoming of heteroglossia and the forces which pull apart monologism represent what Bakhtin deemed novelness – a constant force of renewal in the world. As such novelness, which characterizes the

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centrifugal power of dialogized heteroglossia, is seen as a normative project – through novelness, all centripetal tendencies and monological utterances are pulled apart and turned upside down. Yet, here we see a slight contradiction in Bakhtin’s work. For if dialogism is a universal of all communication – the utterance is un avoidably double voiced and unﬁnalized – then how can dialogism and novelness be something we must work toward? Ken Hirschkop argues that this tension (dialo gism as simultaneously universal and normative) is cen tral to Bakhtin’s work.

Carnival and the Carnivalesque One of Bakhtin’s most famous contributions to the social sciences is his study of carnival and the carnivalesque. Bakhtin explored carnival images and carnival practices in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics and in his essay on the chronotope, but their most lengthy and detailed dis cussion is presented in Rabelais and his World. This major work explores medieval folk practices and humor as represented by the sixteenth century French humanist scholar Francois Rabelais (c. 1494–1553). Rabelais’ series of ﬁve books, Gargantua and Pantagruel, recorded and praised medieval folk culture at the juncture of the Renaissance and the beginnings of modern humanist thought. Bakhtin read these texts as revealing a persistent force of subversion and parody of all that is held as ‘high’ or ‘sacred’ in ofﬁcial or, more speciﬁcally, monological culture. Many critics have read the Rabelais book as a veiled attack on the Stalinist context in which it was written, although this hardly exhausts its meanings. The carnivalesque represents the practices of un ofﬁcial popular folk culture that subverts the practices and decrees of ofﬁcialdom. The world of labor and feudal relations, as well as the Church and its proclamations of ‘cosmic terror’, are mocked and subverted. The carni valesque is both a series of representations and rituals that turn the world upside down: a critical inversion of all high culture, normalized behavior, and accepted cat egories, everything that is held to be reﬁned, ordered, serious, or principled is laughed at and ridiculed through the carnivalesque. As such, the carnival was a time and space that existed in a state of constant tension with the ofﬁcial. More speciﬁcally, the carnivalesque is performed in a dialogical relation to ofﬁcial culture through its heteroglossic and centrifugal dismantling of the centri petal forces of monologism. All those forces which seek to homogenize and bring into stasis the heterogeneous and unﬁnished sociocultural world are scorned, derided, and reversed. The carnivalesque is a force of novelness and thus renewal, through what Bakhtin called the grotesque realism of carnival images and practices. Here,

exaggerated images of the body become a means of de facing the intellectualist and spiritual transcendent forms of the ofﬁcial. Instead of the closed, smooth, or idealized body, the grotesque body values the lower bodily regions, and, in so doing, subverts their denial in ofﬁcial culture. In particular, Bakhtin argued that the focus on oriﬁces in carnival culture revealed the grotesque body as open to the world, or more speciﬁcally, as existing in an un ﬁnished and dialogical relation with others and the world around it. Once again, the border zones of openness and contact with the social world, the social world of dialo gical relations, are given preference over closed and monological tendencies. The carnival was a thoroughly social space and time where no distinction was made between audiences and performers. Moreover, the gro tesque body is thoroughly social in that the carnivalesque image of corpulence, excess, and protuberances is the body of the people rather than the individualized body. As the body of the people, the carnivalesque is a social phenomenon – through images and practices of birth and renewal, the social world dies and is born again. This devouring/devoured, open/closed, grotesque body points to the endless reproduction of the world. The time of carnival is thus a cyclical time, where popular folk culture values the continuous reproduction of life through a focus on birth and death, destruction and re newal, instead of teleological temporalities, visions of the end times or the certainties of the ﬁnal word. The gro tesque body was accompanied by modes of carnivalized language or speech. Again, Bakhtin focused on those speech genres which performed an open and dialogical relation to the social world – in particular ‘Billingsgate’, the language of the marketplace, the street, and the public square. This profaning and cursing speech genre is simultaneously full of ironic praise and excessive cele bration – it is Janus faced. Indeed, the carnival and the carnivalesque are characterized by this deep ambivalence: praise is always accompanied by ridicule; images of birth are always associated with death. For some commentators and critics, Bakhtin’s em phasis on the social rather than the individualized body denies the historical realities of carnivalesque spatialities and temporalities. For example, it was often speciﬁcally the female body which was the object of ridicule and abuse. Similarly, images of women appear throughout Rabelais and His World, but their voices remain unheard and thus Bakhtin could himself be accused of monolo gism. In addition, there is some debate between com mentators as to whether carnival survives today. This is partly due to Bakhtin’s own rather ambiguous discussion; throughout the Rabelais book he argues that the eight eenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the weakening of the rejuvenating powers of folk laughter, yet he also suggested that carnival is indestructible. In parallel, some have argued the carnivalesque was both episodic and

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licensed by ofﬁcialdom, and consequently its revo lutionary potential was or is negated. In this interpret ation, the fact that carnival proper was (and is) restricted in a historical time and place, taking place at set times of the ritual calendar and in the public squares and streets of the city, marks it out as a ritual staging of symbolic protest, a fundamentally empty gesture but one which allows the expression of a culture’s social and psychic tensions (and thus a legitimated ‘safety valve’ in culture and society). Yet, one need not see carnival as somehow ﬁxed in time and space, but instead an ever present force of potentiality and renewal in the everyday. This we would argue is complementary to some of the common themes we have identiﬁed in Bakhtin’s work: the social and cultural force of the carnivalesque lies in its dis orientating, regenerative, and unﬁnalizable becoming in, and not sequestrated from, the dialogical practices of the everyday. The Chronotope The ﬁnal idea of Bakhtin’s discussed here is the chron otope, which literally means the inseparability of time and space. In particular, Bakhtin used the notion of the chronotope to explore the relation between time, space, and subjectivity or the self as it is aesthetically expressed in literature. Thus, the carnivalesque can be seen as form of chronotope in literature: it expresses a relation be tween subjectivity as part of a communal social body, an artistic expression of time through the notion of cyclical and regenerative time, and a spatiality of the public square, street, or tavern. Moreover, the chronotope of the carnival is such that we cannot separate time from space or vice versa – both are intrinsically and inseparably fused in its artistic and literary expression. Bakhtin explored how chronotopes, represented in literature, have changed over time. For example, he ex plores how the Greek Romances of the second to sixth centuries AD differ in their representation of time–space and self, to those of the nineteenth century novel. In discussing these sources, we see how chronotopes anchor the narratives of different forms of literature. In the Greek literature, which Bakhtin collectively deems ad venture novels, it is the chronotope of the road which allows the tying together of a narrative, especially in the form of encounters (random or otherwise) between characters. However, chronotopes are not only of interest as formal properties of text and narrative: Bakhtin argued that texts can also be read chronotopically to reveal ideological values regarding the relationship between space, time, and self. As such, different chronotopes in literature reveal the social, cultural, and political context of the time (and place) in which they were written. This move allowed Bakhtin to explore the decline of particular types of chronotope – for instance, the development of

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ideas of the self in ancient autobiography, or the ‘sticky’ time–space of Flaubert’s provincial town or Tolstoy’s noble estates. In other words, the chronotope allows us to trace the construction of time and space in different time periods and in different spaces.

Dialogism and Human Geography Despite the value and potential application of Bakhtin’s ideas for human geography, there has disappointingly been little uptake of his work in the discipline. Yet, this ﬁnal section brieﬂy reviews how Bakhtin has been util ized in human geography and applied to human geo graphical concerns. Broadly these applications fall into four categories. First, dialogical relations of meaning creation have been utilized by human geographers. For example, in a paper on the role of women in NGO led development, O’ Reilly explores how women are placed in contradictory positions (as both central to NGO development and excluded from total participation) through contested dialogical relations in different spatial contexts. Here, dialogism is explicitly spatialized to show how different sites, locations, and places affect the meanings and ways of speaking available to differently gendered actors. The focus on the everyday and con tested nature of meaning, and dialogism’s key notion that language is a form of practice, is also a central to Thrift’s focus on Bakhtin. As such, language is not concerned only with representation, but is also part of how space is continually ordered and transformed through practice. In a similar move, Painter focuses on the everyday and practical constitution of the state – what he deems stateness. Painter is keen to show how the state is not an abstract structure or reiﬁed concept by drawing upon Morson and Emerson’s idea of Bakhtinian prosaics. In this way, for the state to have effects on its citizens (his example being the implementation of the so called ‘Anti Social Behaviour Orders’ in the UK) requires a whole host of actors and quotidian actions to be assembled, maintained, and performed. Painter draws upon Bakhtin to reveal how the everyday world (and the state’s action in it) is unﬁnalizable, instable, and uncertain, as well as analyzing government documents to show how their meanings are constructed through the multiple overlap ping and interacting discourses of heteroglossia. The unending forces of heteroglossic dialogical relations is also drawn upon by Folch Serra, whose paper remains one of the most sustained inspection of Bakhtin’s work in human geography. She argues that dialogism is a counter to centripetal and monological forces previously at work in human geography as a discipline (such as the math ematical reﬁnements of the quantitative revolution) in that it pulls apart grand narratives in favor of multiplicity and heterogeneity. In addition, Folch Serra values the

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shifting relations to Otherness found in dialogism and explores this process in terms of the ethnographic encounter. The utility of dialogism in relation to how human geographers research and write about the human world is further explored by Sutherland in her discussion of the politics of ﬁeldwork, by Chatterton in his exam ination of encounters between activists and oil reﬁnery workers, and by Crang in his analysis of polyphony and the construction of human geographic texts. In a different manner, alterity and the unavoidable responsibility to Otherness, detailed in Bakhtin’s early work, is taken up by Holloway in a study of embodiment and the sacred rural landscapes in Glastonbury, UK. Second, those interested in textual and literary geographies have drawn upon Bakhtinian theory; Marc Brosseau explores the representation of the city in John Dos Passos’ novel Manhattan Transfer. Brosseau shows how, in content and form, the novel expresses urban life, such that the text becomes a city text. In particular, Manhattan Transfer emulates the experience of city life through the temporality (e.g., fragmented chronologies, a sense of simultaneity, and the ‘here and now’) and spa tiality (e.g., the contingency of place and urban diversity) of its composition. Here, Brosseau explicitly explores the chronotope of modern urbanity as it is expressed in this particular novel. This chronotopic analysis is also de veloped in Kneale’s study of the horror ﬁction of H. P. Lovecraft, particularly the chronotope of the threshold, and speciﬁcally the graveyard and grotesque body as thresholds (sites of connection between outside/inside, or life/death) in Lovecraft’s The Unnamable. Folch Serra again provides another utilization of the idea of chronotope, by combining Bakhtinian concepts to understand landscapes, regions, and place as produced and reproduced through dialogical forces. Here the idea of chronotope is understood as constructed through the relative weight and impact of both centripetal monological and centrifugal dialogical forces. As such, landscapes, places, and regions are constructed through socio ideological conﬂict. Third, Bakhtin has been evoked in geographer’s explorations of the cultural politics of carnivals everyday life and language. For example, Peter Jackson has written about Bakhtin and cultural politics in relation to London’s Notting Hill carnival and Gavin Brown has compared the emancipatory potential of the carnival esque, antidogmatic, and antiauthoritarian spaces created by both the anticapitalist movement ‘Reclaim the Streets’ and through sites of public (homo)sex and sexual pleas ure. A fourth way in which Bakhtinian ideas have been used to consider human geographical concerns involves notions of movement, exile, and hybridity – especially in postcolonial theory. For example, Gilroy’s enquiry into the ‘double consciousness’ of the Black Atlantic looks at how the chronotope of the ship, traveling between sites in

the colonial world, brought forth different dialogical, asymmetrical, and hybridized encounters between iden tities and spaces. This application of Bakhtinian ideas to movement and exile is further adopted in DeSantis’ study of migrants to the US. Through highlighting some of the struggles over identity these exiles face, DeSantis argues that their stories are understood as dialogically generated and thus migrant’s experiences are endlessly produced through different centrifugal and centripetal tensions. See also: Becoming; Body, The; Cultural Politics; Discourse; Festival and Spectacle; Ideology; Jackson, P.; Language; Literature; Medieval Historical Geographies; Popular Culture; Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies; Public Space; Self-Other; Semiotics; Space-Time; Structuralism/Structuralist Geography; Text and Textuality; Text, Textual Analysis; Thrift, N.

Further Reading Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1984). Rabelais and His World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1990). Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1993). Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Burke, P. (1994). Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot: Scolar Press. Brosseau, M. (1995). The city in textual form: Manhattan Transfer’s New York. Ecumene 2, 89 114. Brown, G. (2004). Sites of public (homo)sex and the carnivalesque spaces of reclaim the streets. In Lees, L. (ed.) The Emancipatory City? Paradoxes and Possibilities, pp 91 107. London: Sage. Chatterton, P. (2006). ‘Give up activism’ and change the world in unknown ways: Or, learning to walk with others on uncommon ground. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 38, 259 281. Crang, P. (1992). The politics of polyphony: Reconﬁguration in geographical authority. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10, 527 549. DeSantis, A. D. (2001). Caught between two worlds: Bakhtin’s dialogism in the exile experience. Journal of Refugee Studies 14, 1 19. Folch Serra, M. (1990). Place, voice, space: Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical landscape. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 8, 255 274. Gilroy, P. (1993). The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Hirschkop, K. (1999). Mikhail Bakhtin: An Aesthetic for Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hirschkop, K. and Shepherd, D. (eds.) (1989). Bakhtin and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Holloway, J. (2003). Spiritual embodiment and sacred rural landscapes. In Cloke, P. (ed.) Country Visions, pp 158 175. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Holquist, M. (2002). Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World (2nd edn.). London: Routledge. Jackson, P. (1988). Street life: The politics of carnival. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6, 213 227. Jackson, P. (1989). Maps of Meaning. London: Routledge.

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Kneale, J. (2006). From beyond: H. P. Lovecraft and the place of horror. Cultural Geographies 13, 106 126. Medvedev, P. N. (1985). The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morris, P. (ed.) (1994). The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov. London: Edward Arnold. Morson, G. S. and Emerson, C. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. O’Reilly, K. (2004). Developing contradictions: Women’s participation as a site of struggle within an Indian NGO. The Professional Geographer 56, 174 184. Painter, J. (2006). Prosaic geographies of stateness. Political Geography 25, 752 774. Sutherland, E. (2004). In the ﬁeld politics: Multiple voices of outworkers and researcher. Australian Geographer 35, 161 168. Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Todorov, T. (1984). Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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Vice, S. (1997). Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Voloshinov, V. N. (1973). Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Voloshinov, V. N. (1976). Freudianism: A Marxist Critique. New York: Academic Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.geocities.com//CollegePark/Campus/8297/bakhtin.html/ An online Bakhtin bibliography, Geocities. http://www.shef.ac.uk The Bakhtin Centre at the University of Shefﬁeld (include useful analytical database for searching works on or about Bakhtin). http://www.utm.edu The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on the Bakhtin Circle, The University of Tennessee at Martin.

Diaries (Video, Audio or Written) P. Meth, University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Diary A product of recording (either in written, video, audio, photographic, or illustrative format) the views or experiences of an individual usually in chronological order. Solicited An account or recording produced by a research participant at the request of a researcher. Unsolicited An account or recording produced for personal reasons and not at the request of a researcher or other party.

diaries in their work – although the use of historical ﬁlm, art, and music (nondiary in form) is growing in popu larity. Less commonly discussed within geography is the use of solicited diaries for research purposes, although this is rapidly proving an interesting way of gaining signiﬁcant and current data. The following considers in more detail some of these issues, and aims to offer geographers advice when selecting this particular method.

The Dominance of Written Contributions and the Rise of ‘Alternative Techniques’ Introduction The term ‘diaries’ covers a broad range of methodo logical choices and outcomes for geographers; indeed, the term can be quite deceptive in itself, and a range of approaches are often described generically as ‘diary methods’. This article will help readers to distinguish between solicited and unsolicited diaries, as well as diary methods which are explicitly qualitative in approach versus those that are explicitly quantitative in focus – and all the approaches in between! A common characteristic and advantage of using the diary method is its longitudinal rather than singular snapshot view. Written or recorded over a period of time diary keeping is discontinuous and thus allows for variation and ﬂexibility in the entries that are provided. Changes or consistencies in participants’ experiences and records can be observed allowing a researcher to understand the complexities of life more fully. Diary keeping also takes advantage of the currency of recording, thus proving to be more accurate than retrospective methods which rely on memory. Diary keeping is usually chronological in form – although assumptions about chronological ordering may prove false with cross cul tural research and it is important to be aware of this possibility. Given these features and despite their recent rise in popularity, the use of diaries (written, video, audio or blogs, etc.) as a methodological technique within human geography is a relatively poorly discussed subject. Much of the discussion of diary usage refers to the use of historical and often unsolicited diaries where the per sonal diaries of particular individuals (usually deceased) are used to explore and reﬂect on socio cultural and political trends of their time. These diaries are largely handwritten and we see very little evidence of geographers making use of historical audio or video

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Within the social sciences more generally there is a strong reliance on written material rather than audio or video recordings, both as a source of data as well as a preferred academic output. With respect to diaries his torically, this reﬂects the technologically determined trend of handwritten personal diary writing, producing discrete paper based ‘books’ by particular authors, and the current associations linked to diary writing remain tied to this technique. Current written diaries do not have to conform to this handwritten approach and can make use of word processors instead – if suitable for the diary writers. The author used the latter approach with international PhD students in a qualitative methods course and it certainly gets around the issue of transcription very nicely! The use of alternative diary techniques has recently grown within the social sciences more generally. These alternative techniques refer to video, audio, photography, illustration, and blogs and are discussed in turn in the following sections. Video Diaries Video can be used in different ways but primarily the distinction is between how and where the equipment is utilized and the purpose of the method. One approach is to provide participants with a self managed or supervised video recorder which they take home with them (or take elsewhere) and record diary entries in their own time. Participants are provided with tape, or with digital re corders and are expected to return the equipment and data to the researcher. This method may be suitable with a range of participants but particularly with children who might ﬁnd this a user friendly method that allows their voices to be heard. A second approach is to establish and designate a ‘diary room’ in a ﬁxed location whereby participants visit the room and are ﬁlmed within the

Diaries (Video, Audio or Written)

conﬁnes of that space. Again, although appropriate for a variety of participants, the TV show ‘Big Brother’ style of this approach may chime with children and teenagers’ sense of purpose. This approach has the advantage of providing a pre given and ‘private’ location, but would be less useful for research which required data on other places. Geographers should consider the purpose of using video technology for diary entries and reﬂect on the advantages of using a video camera in both public and other private spaces, such as at home, or on the bus, or at work. Given our disciplinary intrigue with the complex human environment, using video diaries outside of a prescribed research setting may be very fulﬁlling – this all depends on the nature of your research aims. Audio Diaries Like video, audio diaries can be used in various ways to suit the aims of the research. Here participants are pro vided with a digital or tape based recording device which they can either take with them, and record their verbal thoughts over a period of time, or they can attend audio recording sessions in a ﬁxed location (e.g., an interview room) and record diary based entries in this manner. This technique can be used to explore participants’ perceptions of events, people, or places and offers them the ﬂexibility of using a fairly discreet device at any time they choose. This approach also offers relative anonymity for the participant, although some may feel uncomfort able verbalizing their thoughts. It does however resolve issues associated with literacy which occurs with written diaries. Photography The use of photography within geographical research is rising. Photograph taking does not necessarily perform the role of ‘diary making’ in itself, although it could do, but rather photography can be used in conjunction with written or other diary making. Photography is particu larly useful when one is researching the nature or ma teriality of place or the signiﬁcance of what a place, object, or person looks like for the participant. In add ition, photography can provide the researcher with valuable visual data and insight into areas inaccessible to researchers, possibly because of privacy issues (like a home) or dangers associated with the setting (such as violent informal settlements). Key to the success of this technique is providing the participants (photograph takers) with the opportunity to explain and describe their photographs after they have been printed. These verbal or written explanations can then be used to further il lustrate the meanings of the photographs. Whether or not photography in this sense can strictly be described as a diary technique is open to debate and really depends on

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what one understands a diary to be. But certainly photographs can be used to further stimulate or replace written diary accounts and may provide participants with opportunities for creative expression previously denied to them. Participants may also ﬁnd this technique more enjoyable than other diary methods. Illustration-Based Diaries Like photography, the use of drawing within geography has growing respectability, particularly within social, cultural, and development geography. Drawings can be used as pictoral diaries in themselves, or as illustrations informing and elaborating on written or other diary ac counts. Drawings are commonly used with children (but deﬁnitely not exclusively) as a way of encouraging them to communicate their stories and interpretations about events, people, and places. The issue of analysis of il lustrations is key here and it is important, as with pho tography, to encourage participants to explain and describe their interpretation of their illustration. In addition, it is crucial for the researcher to have a strong awareness of the context within which the illustrations were made. A lack of awareness of context may mean that a researcher over analyzes the signiﬁcance of particular illustrations and, in doing so, neglects other interpret ations. This is an important reminder indeed for all diary methods, not simply illustrations. Blog-Based Diaries A very recent form of diary keeping is that of blog writing. Blogs are websites which are generated by the user (i.e., anyone who chooses to do so) and entries are written or placed in a journal style and normally dis played in reverse chronological order. A brief history of blogs on Wikipedia reveals that since their ﬁrst use in the mid 1990s their popularity as online diaries has dra matically escalated since this time with Technorati (a search engine) tracking approximately 60 million users by the end of 2006. The commentary of many blogs is highly geographical in nature with many focusing on recent political concerns and local news. Although most blogs are largely written, many users also contribute blogs in other formats such as video, audio, and pho tography. Evidence of the use of blogs for geographical diary research is not widely available in published jour nals, but given its popularity it is likely to form a very useful methodological tool in the future. Students who are interested in using blogs in their work should run a search on the internet viewing the range and possibilities of blogging. A key advantage of using blog based diaries is that users can be scattered across the globe, they can maintain their anonymity, and the resultant text usually will not need transcription as it will already

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be typed. Relying on computers is however highly exclusionary.

Issues Arising Out of Using Different Techniques It is all too easy to be seduced by the beneﬁts of tech nology without thinking through the implications care fully. All diary keeping techniques have pros and cons attached to them and geographers must consider very carefully the consequences of the choices they make in terms of sampling, the experience of the diary keeper, and the form of data produced. As explained above substantial numbers of potential participants will be excluded from techniques such as video, blogging, and word processed diary keeping be cause of issues of cost, access to electronic equipment, and technological skill competencies. All of these issues are particularly relevant when researching or working with participants on low incomes or in areas of high poverty and low technical skills or access such as the global South. In these contexts using handwritten diaries with participants is a very cheap and accessible method as it simply requires the purchase of a cheap paper booklet and a pen or pencil on behalf of the researcher. However, written diaries may prove more costly for the researcher during analysis and transcription, as typing up diary entries is very time consuming. Barriers of cost, access, and ability can be overcome and participants can be taught to use different technologies. It is up to the researcher to factor in and invest time in the training of participants to use the equipment. Equipment can also be purchased by the researcher to cover the costs and hence broaden the scope of individuals who could be involved. The cost of disposable cameras for example is not that signiﬁcant and training participants in their use is fairly straightforward. Alternative technologies hold advantages too. Blog ging may allow a researcher access to diary keeping over a potentially global scale, broadening ones understanding of processes dramatically (although possibly narrowing the depth of understanding). Video, audio, illustrations, and photography may provide participants with literacy concerns an alternative means of expression which they may ﬁnd very empowering. Literacy as an issue should be taken seriously and not just in the global South. Re searchers must assess their participants’ abilities carefully and be sure to support and offer advice on ways of ‘getting around’ literacy concerns without humiliating their participants. Illiterate or semi literate participants could be encouraged to use alternative technologies (such as audio diaries) or they could make use of a friend or family member to complete their writing for them – this obviously requires a level of trust between

participant and scribe, and may compromise the privacy and thus openness of diary entries.

Solicited or Unsolicited? A Crucial Distinction All diaries whether written or other can be separated into unsolicited or solicited diaries. They are quite distinct from each other and each form presents a host of ad vantages and concerns. Unsolicited Diaries Within geographical research, unsolicited diaries, or diaries which were not written at the request of a re searcher or other party are often historical in nature. These diaries were often written for private purposes and have been made available (often long after the writer is deceased) for academic interest or general consumption through publication. There is a strong tradition with geography of using historical diaries in research and students interested in this form of research should con sider the work of historical geographers for inspiration and guidance. Historical unsolicited diaries can provide exceptional insight into the daily lives, experiences, and thoughts of a range of participants allowing the re searcher exclusive insight into life at that point in time. This has been very popular with feminist geographers who have broadened and challenged the discipline’s understanding of its own history by bringing the accounts of female travelers and explorers into the disciplinary domain. With unsolicited diaries, similar concerns are raised as when using archival material. Researchers may require permission to use historical diaries and access may be restricted, costly or delayed. Ethical issues also arise when using material speciﬁcally intended for private use. However, historical diaries are intensely rich sources of material, offering a unique insight into lives and contexts where little is known. In general, unsolicited diaries are usually highly qualitative in nature with diary writers using a handwritten format to express often rather poetic prose. Solicited Diaries These types of diaries require a researcher to speciﬁcally request the production of a diary (written, video, audio, illustration, photography, or blog) from a participant or group of participants. In other words, the person writing or making the diary account is doing so in full knowledge that the ﬁnished product is for external consumption. The production of the diary is thus negotiated between the researcher and the diary maker. Furthermore, be cause the diary has been requested by a researcher it is very likely that its content will reﬂect the concerns that

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the researcher wishes to read, for example, a researcher might ask participants to keep diaries of their daily travel patterns or of their weekly leisure activities, or of their experiences of violence. Because of this it is important to remember that the diary is not necessarily evidence of a participant’s total point of view or of their interpretation of what is and what is not most signiﬁcant to them. Rather the diary reﬂects the focus that the researcher has re quested. If left up to the participants they might have written about their experiences of eating or their child hood memories rather than their experiences of violence. Because of this the diary that is produced for the re searcher is not a private document. It may contain some private thoughts but it has been written for a researcher to read and this will explicitly shape what the participant chooses to write. As a result of this process, solicited diaries embody the subjectivities of both the producer and the researcher. Forms of Solicited Diaries Solicited diaries are growing in popularity within geo graphical research; however, their forms are highly var ied. If one views solicited diary keeping as a continuum, the forms of diaries vary from ‘strictly chronological brief entries’ (a more quantitative form) to ‘loose prose verging on personal story writing’ (a more qualitative form). At the quantitative end of the spectrum, diaries are often used to research people’s travel patterns or their daily or weekly activities such as medicine taking, social habits, or use of particular places or facilities. Researchers using this approach would provide high levels of information and ‘instructions’ to participants to ensure that the cor rect and required information was recorded. These diaries are usually recording factual information, al though they may provide some space for reﬂective re cording too. At the opposite end of the spectrum, more qualitative diaries are used for recording participants’ thoughts, feelings, views, and experiences of a range of concerns, such as violence, health, sense of identity, sense of place, etc. These diaries can be highly unstructured or semi structured in style and may include a range of narrative strategies (or ways or writing or recording). For example, participants may write in a story format, or even use poetry to articulate their thoughts. Geographers should select the form of diary most appropriate to their respective research aims. Researcher Diary Keeping A third type of diary is that of researcher’s keeping their own personal diaries during or throughout their research projects. Again this is a poorly documented activity. Personal diary keeping for researchers may be motivated by a range of reasons such as keeping records of research activities, or recording personal feelings and emotions

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experienced as part of the research process. The former is really covered by what we term ‘ﬁeld note taking’, whereas the latter is often an activity undertaken for personal and cathartic reasons. Researchers who adopt a strongly ethnographic and reﬂexive approach to their project may ﬁnd personal diary keeping an essential part of their research project, and indeed may make use of their diary entries in their analyses and publications. The use of this material in publication or academic output may include the diaries of both researchers and research assistants. These diary accounts often provide important insights into the methodological practices shaping the overall argument of the research, for example, why par ticular methodological choices were made and not others.

The Politics of Diary Keeping – The Potential for Empowerment? Diaries, particularly unsolicited personal diaries, are typically assumed to provide empowering and cathartic relief to their writers, as so many of those who have kept a personal diary would understand. It is also possible for solicited diaries to provide their writers/diary makers with therapeutic beneﬁts as well as forms of empower ment. The likelihood of this happening is more common when the production of a diary allows the participant to experience one of two things. First, it may allow the participants to share and thereby relieve themselves of the burden of memories associated with events which may have been painful for them and which they have not shared with any or many others. Examples here may include experiences of trauma, such as violence, un employment, eviction, public shame, or events over which they feel deep guilt or embarrassment, such as theft, failure to follow advice, etc. A second experience which may facilitate empowerment is when the diary production reinforces or illustrates for the participant the fact that they are achieving or managing an event or issue more successfully than they had realized. For example, if a participant is asked to record in a diary their patterns of sociability, and they begin the project feeling reclusive and socially deskilled, a consistent record of interaction and efforts to make interaction may prove that indeed they are more socially able than realized. This may have a positive impact on their sense of self. Diary keeping then can be employed by geographers who have an explicit agenda for empowering their par ticipants by offering them the opportunity to express and explore often deeply hidden thoughts and feelings. As celebrated by feminists, qualitative methodology which both gives participants a voice as well as empowers them offers a unique method for practicing progressive re search. However, empowerment is not a simple quest in research and should be thought through very carefully.

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Geographers should make use of feminist texts which outline the principles of feminist research and what it means to empower before embarking on this approach. In addition, the complexities associated with ‘progressive research’ must be carefully understood well before re search begins. These relate to the researcher’s skills and the potentially destabilizing implications of enacting re search which can have impact on participants socio political lives. Geographers should also not assume that using diaries is necessarily an empowering technique. If research methods can be emotionally progressive then so too can they be emotionally regressive. Diary keeping may indeed prove to be highly destabilizing and upsetting for participants, and researchers should reﬂect carefully on the ethics of causing unnecessary distress. Distress may also be experienced upon receiving, reading, viewing, or hearing individuals’ diary accounts. Essentially, one is gaining a window into someone’s life and it is thus not surprising that this can reveal highly emotive material.

Combining Diaries with Other Methodological Approaches Geographers and other social scientists often use diaries in conjunction with other methods and there is good evidence that combining methods is intellectually pro ductive. Various researchers combine diary keeping with interviewing and there is evidence that combining so licited diaries with focus groups, individual interviews, and photography can prove insightful. Diary keeping can also be used in conjunction with more quantitative techniques such as GIS or statistical analysis so that in formation recorded in diaries can be correlated with ei ther spatial or numerical references. Diaries can be used to explore in far more detail issues raised in focus groups for example, or alternative tech niques such as photography can be used to illustrate or deepen diary entries. Different methods can be used to explore related but different research questions within a single project, or the different methods can be used to support each other and further validate the ﬁndings. In deed, combining methods in this way is not exclusive to diary use, and the beneﬁts for triangulation of using a mixed methods approach are well documented. From a participants point of view, different methods often pro vide them with more or less comfortable (or interesting) forms of engagement between which their responses can vary quite widely. Researchers should bear in mind however that diary keeping can be very time consuming for participants and this effort must be considered care fully. In some projects, payment for diary keeping may prove necessary.

Interpretation and Analysis Analysis of data is often overlooked in methods dis cussions. There can be no single prescription for ana lyzing diaries because the form of analysis entirely depends on the form of diary used, its original purpose within the broader research project, and the theoretical approach of the research. Written diaries which fall under a more ‘qualitative’ label are more likely to be analyzed (once transcribed) using a textual analysis approach whereby themes and narrative trends are coded (by hand or using packages such as Nudist or NVivo). After cod ing, interpretation occurs and coherent stories are de rived from the material. An appreciation of the context within which the diary was produced is fundamental to the analysis and the researcher recognizes their sub jective role in the meanings derived from the material. Qualitative diary keeping – particularly written – raises some very real issues around truth. How does one assess the ‘truth’ of what the participants have written? This is a very difﬁcult issue to gauge within social science in general and the advice would be to aim to triangulate research wherever possible so that stories and events can be checked. Using a combination of techniques is often helpful here. This is however not simply a problem for diary analysis, but all methods in general – how can one ever know if the participant is telling the truth. In some situations what participants do not say or write, can be equally revealing. Diary material which is visual in form, such as video, photography, or illustrations, requires the use of carefully thought through techniques of analysis. Fortunately, there is very useful advice available to geographers about how to proceed with such analysis and researchers should seek the work of visual geographers to take this further. The interpretation and analysis of more quantitative diary forms normally make use of basic descriptive statistical techniques to facilitate understanding. Diaries can be subjected to an auditing procedure where par ticular events, places, or people can be counted (such as forms of public transport used in a week, or visits to a hospital). Unlike more qualitative diaries, researchers using quantitative diaries need to carefully explore their sampling procedures and techniques of analysis before drawing conclusions. However, all researchers using diaries must be critically aware of the ways in which they are analyzing their data, what (and who) is omitted or excluded from their data, and recognize the limitations of their arguments as a result. Indeed, feminist geographers would stress that the very choice of what sections of a person’s diary a researcher chooses to include in their writings and what is excluded is a political decision in itself and this is a clear example of how diaries are constructed both by the writer and, through research and analysis, by the soliciting researcher.

Diaries (Video, Audio or Written) See also: Archives; Autobiography; Auto-Photography; Ethical Issues in Research; Feminist Methodologies; Longitudinal Methods (Cohort Analysis, Life Tables); Mental Health; Mixed and Multiple Methods; Participatory Video; Representation and Re-presentation; Subjectivity; Time-Space Diaries; Transcripts (Coding and Analysis).

Further Reading Bell, L. (1998). Public and private meanings in diaries: Researching family and childcare. In Ribbens, J. & Edwards, R. (eds.) Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research: Public Knowledge and Private Lives, pp 72 86. London: Sage Publications. Blunt, A. (2000). Spatial stories under siege: British women writing from Lucknow in 1857. Gender, Place and Culture 7(3), 229 246. Dodman, D. (2003). Shooting in the city: An autophotographic exploration of the urban environment in Kingston, Jamaica. Area 35(3), 293 304. Elliott, H. (1997). The use of diaries in sociological research on health experience. Sociological Research Online 2(2). http:// www.socresonline.org.uk/2/2/7.html (accessed on February 2008). Kwan, M. P. (1999). Gender, the home work link, and space time patterns of non employment activities. Economic Geography 75(4), 370 394.

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McGregor, J. (2006). Diaries and case studies. In Desai, V. & Potter, R. (eds.) Doing Development Research, pp 200 206. London: Sage. Meth, P. (2003). Entries and omissions: Using solicited diaries in geographical research. Area 35(2), 195 205. Meth, P. and Malaza, K. (2003). Violent research: The ethics and emotions of doing research with women in South Africa. Ethics, Place and Environment 6(2), 143 159. Noyes, A. (2004). Video diary: A method for exploring learning dispositions. Cambridge Journal of Education 34(2), 193 209. Punch, S. (2001). Multiple methods and research relations with children in rural Bolivia. In Limb, M. & Dwyer, C. (eds.) Qualitative Methodologies for Geographers: Issues and Debates, pp 165 180. London: Arnold. Rose, G. (2006). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (2nd edn.). London: Sage Publications. Thomas, F. (2007). Eliciting emotions in HIV/AIDS research: A diary based approach. Area 39, 74 82. van Blerk, L. and Ansell, N. (2006). Imagining migration: Placing children’s understanding of ‘moving house’ in Malawi and Lesotho. Geoforum 37, 256 272.

Relevant Websites http://www.shef.ac.uk Clare Rishbeth at Walking Voices, ESRC Project, University of Shefﬁeld.

Diaspora K. McKittrick, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Creolization Creolization describes the coming together of diverse cultural traits or languages. Often the consequence of contact, violence, and colonialism, creolization identiﬁes a new or different (rather than subordinate/dominant) cultural practice that encompasses the social and political ‘relations’ of two or more ethnic groups. Unlike hybridity (see below), creolization identiﬁes the renewed sociospatial consequences of a violent past. Displacement The process of being removed, exiled, or marginalized. Geographically, displacement often refers to expulsion from a region, nation, or community. In social theory, displacement can occur due to racism, sexism, homophobia, or other acts of discrimination and violence that subordinate particular communities, even though these communities may not have the means to escape the discrimination. Homeland A territory to which one belongs was born in, or is tied to ancestrally. Also understood as a ‘country of origin’, a homeland couples ethnic groupings to a particular nation that has hosted their community in the past or the present. Hybridity Used in social theory to challenge essentialism, hybridity denotes the ways in which different cultures, ethnic groups, and geographic regions enmesh to produce a ‘mixed’ or ‘fused’ identity, place, culture, or area. Migration, Migratory Subjects Any movement of humans from one location to another. Migratory subjects points to the experiential tenets of migration that, in diaspora theory, can refer to forced expulsions, colonial displacements, or economically induced movements – all of which tend to be long migrations. Nation Often used to demarcate the geographic location of a particular ethnic group, nation refers to a social, political, economic, and historic territory that a government manages and protects.

Introduction to Diaspora: Exiles and Displacements Derived from Greek verb diasperien, ‘to sow over’ or a ‘scattering or sowing of seeds’, diaspora is used to refer to the scattering of people across spaces, borders, and na tions. Historically, ethnic and racial traumas, as well as geographic losses, have underwritten the forced or

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induced movement of people. Speciﬁcally, diaspora in dicates that particular groupings of people have been violently forced to leave their homeland because they are racially, ethnically, and/or religiously different from those in power; forced expulsion might be coupled with ethnic cleansing. Jewish exiles, for example, have been regarded as forced scatterings instigated by anti Semit ism, genocide, and war. Indeed, the Jewish diaspora spans several centuries due to ongoing, and global, anti Semitic intolerances and ethnic struggles, including but not limited to: expulsion from Palestine in roughly the third century BC; the Crusades; the Spanish Inquisition; pogroms inside and outside of Eastern Europe; the holocaust and Shoah; and historic and contemporary conﬂicts over Israel and its attendant regions. In addition to physical violence that targets and expels a particular ethnic group, diaspora points to the question of home, nation, and location. Lack of a stable nation space and geopolitical independence, and transnational dispersals, can shape the possible desire to establish and secure a location that can replace former geographic losses. In the twentieth and twenty ﬁrst centuries, par ticularly after World War II, Shoah, and the creation of Israel in 1948, both Jewish and Middle Eastern com munities experienced violence and dispersal, which also instigated assertive claims to home, nation, and ethnicity. Importantly, the establishment of an Israeli homeland and the subsequent conﬂicts have also initiated a Middle Eastern diaspora, with communities from regions such as Palestine and Lebanon enduring violence, war, and dis placement. At the same time, forced exile and the loss of homeland must be understood alongside the region wherein the diasporic subject relocates. In the case of the Jewish diaspora, for example, formal and informal links with Israel, or former European communities occupied and lost during Shoah, are frequently developed within new spaces of settlement in North America, Africa, Australia, South America, and Asia. Holocaust/Shoah memorials, which have been constructed in various sites internationally, are evidence of how the violent dis placement and genocide that occurred during World War II are remembered vis a` vis multiple diasporic locations. Questions of home, nation, ethnicity and violence have also been used to clarify the African or black diaspora. Between the ﬁfteenth and nineteenth centuries, African peoples were violently exiled during the trans atlantic slave trade. Expulsion and bondage had black subjects sold and transplanted into the Americas and Europe, and geographically disconnected from their

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former African homelands. Indeed, under transatlantic slavery, forced geographic displacement was coupled with sociocultural ruptures: languages, family geneal ogies and lineages, religious practices, and cultural, pol itical, and economic norms were intended to be, and in many cases were, eroded and expunged from the lives of African slaves. Like the Jewish diaspora, the history of black diaspora is entangled with centuries of violence wherein the question of homeland and geographic loss shapes how belonging and nationhood are experienced within the new region of relocation. More speciﬁcally, diaspora carries with it the experience of human removal, death, and displacement; settling after such exile carries with it, rather than completely erases, the history of re moval, death, and displacement. For African or black subjects, relocation in the Americas is, at times, under stood through their diasporic relationship to the middle passage, the continent of Africa and/or transatlantic slavery. While debates over this history and the experi ence of enslavement have changed over time – some details forgotten, some memories too unbearable to re turn to, some generations rethinking the past and their relation to it – it is a history, some black subjects argue, that should not be forgotten. While forced removal, exile, and resettlement struc ture the aforementioned histories, additional com munities have also taken up the term diaspora to better understand displacement and international migrations. The Armenian community has experienced a long his tory of displacement and exile. Centuries of ethnic and religious subordination, culminating in the massacres of 1915–16, reveal that the Armenian diaspora must be understood alongside mass genocide and displacement. Discrimination, war, poverty, colonialism, ethnic cleans ing, and violence have removed and moved Irish, Asian, South Asian, Caribbean, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern groups from their countries of birth; these movements are often, but not always, to regions such as North America, Australia, and Central Europe. Indeed, the violence of colonialism in many nations triggered diasporic exiles as the homeland, reimagined and man aged as a colonial space, was rendered unfamiliar to its indigenous communities. These processes – war, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, and various genocides – paved the way for thinking about diaspora more broadly. Further more, recent investigations into gay, lesbian, transgen dered, and bisexual communities have considered the possibility of queer diasporas: those displaced from a homeland, as well as spaces of resettlement, due to homophobia and heterosexual gender conventions. As queers are always already outside the heterosexual na tion, queer diasporas explore the ways in which ethnic migratory struggles intersect with sexual tenets of dis placement, home, and nation.

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Additionally, economic migrations between over developed regions – Australians to Central Europe, to give just one example – have also been labeled diasporic cultures, albeit with much debate regarding whether or not the economic privilege and the individual (rather than collective) travels of the migrants constitutes a ‘real’ diaspora scattering. Regardless, recent discussions of diaspora, it has been argued, do not always replicate the histories and experiences of Jewish and black com munities in that mass genocide and/or collective exile are not necessarily instigating travels. Often coinciding with post World War II and postcolonial global migra tions, these dispersals have shown that diaspora can be voluntary, involuntary, or both. The context of these migrations underscores the ways in which globalization and transnationalism inform and complement – but do not twin – diaspora experiences. Unlike transnationalism and globalization, which encompass broad economic global ﬂows, such as the cross national and international movement of technologies, economies, ideologies, con sumer products, as well as people, diaspora centers on the condition of those humans who are displaced. Put simply, diaspora is a ‘human phenomenon’ whereas transnation alism and globalization bring into focus multiscalar economic patterns. This is not to suggest that diaspora does not have an economy, but rather that diaspora mi grations are folded into, but do not replicate, processes of transnational globalization. Implicit to the human emphasis on diaspora migra tions are returns. The process of returning, whether imaginary, real, ﬁlmic, or ﬁctional, distinguishes diaspora activities from other migratory processes. Thus, in what ways do diaspora communities return to their former homes and nations and in what ways are returns possible? Do diaspora cultures return through travel, remem brance, imagination, remittances, yearnings, stories, or songs? Are past cultural practices retained upon re location and do these cultural practices carry in them the history of violence, dispersal, and memories of home? As noted above, the creation of Israel in 1948 geographically marked a homeland that some Jewish subjects could, and do, return to. In the African or black diaspora, homelands in Liberia and Ethiopia, as well as the ‘door of no return’ on Goree Island (the site where African subjects were kept in bondage before crossing the middle passage), have been imagined and returned to through travels, writings, music, and ﬁlms. Political ideologies such as Afrocentrism, Negritude, and Pan Africanism produce links between and among global black cultures. Many diasporic communities return through economic remit tances: from the nation of relocation, funds are sent ‘home’ to assist family and friends or to secure future departures. Additionally, many returns arise through cultural production: ﬁlms that take up departures or violence; novels that remember slavery; poetry that

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explores forced human migrations; Internet sites that map holocaust memorials and record the lives of sur vivors; songs that sample the music of Bob Marley, and are then played on local radio stations, globally; live performances of Ghidda in the UK or Canada. These processes illustrate an expanding understanding of dias pora as complex exchanges between former colonies, migratory subjects, and new areas of settlement are maintained. Diasporic returns can therefore be real, im aginary, political, economic, and creative. These texts, memories, politics, and economic activities foster what has been called ‘imagined communities’: vacations, tra vels, and permanent returns can be understood alongside novels, letters, media, memories, ﬁlms, songs, economic remittances, fashions, and foods, that cross borders and contribute to the meaning of homeland for those living outside its borders. All of these processes – migrations, memories, textual invocations of home and nation – also reveal that diasporic subjects make implicit or explicit connections among those who have been dispersed. If diaspora fundamentally centers on the movement of people, are not all traveling cultures diasporic? If de parture is voluntary, or individual rather than collective, is this a diasporic process? Do all diasporic subjects re turn to their homeland? While all diasporas are histor ically contingent to the speciﬁcities of time and space, and therefore differentially experienced, four geographic themes arise through which diaspora can be con ceptualized and expanded upon which distinguishes it from simply describing a multitude of traveling cultures and individuals: 1. Exile of a substantial population based on ethnicity, race, religion, or difference that is often coupled with violence and/or genocide. 2. Loss of or displacement from homeland. 3. The mutual construction of identity and place as they are understood by migratory communities. 4. Returns. These four themes, together, impart what is referred to as the ‘routes and roots’ of diaspora experiences. Routes explicate the forced exile, formal and informal con nections generated among those dispersed, and imagin ary and real links to homeland; roots identify former homelands, collective histories, and the relationship be tween identity, nation, and ethnicity. Diasporic cultures are not simply traveling and mi grating with ease. Rather a particular event or events – poverty, violence, war – has initiated ﬂight and this movement is difﬁcult psychically because it is wrapped up in loss and different types of return. These experi ences are collective, often creating explicit or unspoken ties between and among the group that has been exiled. This is not to suggest that all diasporic subjects can or do return to their country of birth, or that they cling to the

emotional moment of past violent exile; nor does it suggest that all diasporic cultural practices are embedded with nostalgia for homelands and psychically relying on the lives of others exiled to understand their history and selfhood. Rather, diaspora can be a powerful migratory process through which exiled communities formulate their collective identities not as victims, but rather as subjects who negotiate, transgress, and fracture the boundaries of and between nation, territory, and culture. Diaspora movements and cultural practices give rise to very difﬁcult human migrations and border crossings that inform how exile and territorialization (the jurisdiction and regulation of land and its citizens by a particular government) underscore alternative understandings of modernity, nation, identity, and place. Herein lie the complexities of diaspora theory, migrations, and cultures: they delineate exiles and travels but do not assume a clear or stable ‘beginning’ and ‘end’; they site and cite human violence, but do not explicitly locate a region of liberation or freedom at the end of diasporic travels; they are con cerned with nation, but are critical of borders, national ism, and the limits of the nation state citizenship; they imagine homelands and returns, but do not assume that ‘home’ is either returnable or innocent; they take seriously the links between identity and place but, because dia sporic subjects are migratory, put forward that identity and place are neither stable nor naturally entwined. Modernity While different theorists have conceptualized modernity in different ways, in terms of the diaspora, this epoch signals transnational ﬂows beginning in the ﬁfteenth century (colonial expansion, exploration, transatlantic slavery, indenture) which were crystallized in the seventeenth century during European Enlightenment when multiscalar social hierarchies began to shape eco nomic, political, cultural, and social systems inside and outside imperial nations. European imperial expansion, the shift away from feudal political systems, the devel opment of the modern nation state, and new inter national economic proﬁts illustrate some of the ways in which systems of knowledge became increasingly based on categorization in the name of rationality, progress, and democratic liberalism. These systemic changes en trenched a corporeal hierarchy based on sexuality, race, ethnicity, phenotype, and gender wherein the white man symbolically came to represent and embody democracy and rationality. Concurrently, empirical analyses and inventories of plants, insects, animals, women, the poor, and the insane were conducted as were positivist map pings of European, indigenous, and colonial physical and human geographies. It follows that the underpinnings of transatlantic slavery, and the various colonial projects in the Americas, Asia, South Asia, and Africa were, in part,

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either classiﬁcation missions designed to ‘discover’ and ultimately transform ‘primitive’ or ‘nonrational’ cultures or ‘enlightened’ justiﬁcations for racial–sexual subordin ation. This kind of classiﬁcation, of bodies and cultures, stabilized racial differentiation; white and nonwhite ways of knowing bifurcated while encoding the world ac cording to Eurocentric ideologies. Modernity starkly draws attention to colonialism, genocide, and transatlantic slavery and the racial, sexual, and economic exploitation of subaltern subjects. The movement of African subjects to large and small plan tations in the US, Canada, and the Caribbean; the tech nological underpinnings of the Holocaust/Shoah during WWII (trains, gas chambers, work camps); the colonial displacement and disappearance of Aboriginal cultures; imperial educational requirements in the colonies. These are just some events that suggest that modernity is a violent project. Thus, some of the central arguments brought forward by diasporic (and Aboriginal) com munities are regarding the violence of modernity. What is at stake, they ask, when bondage, genocide, violence, and colonialism are equated with progress, enlightened rea son, democracy, and egalitarianism? In what ways do diasporic subjects negotiate modernity if, in its various implementations, it negates their worldview and ﬁgures, even preﬁgures, them as irrational, uncivilized, and wor thy of expulsion and bondage? And ﬁnally, if modernity often instigates diasporic ﬂight and exile, what do these migratory communities bring to bear on the formation of the nation state? These critiques and understandings of modernity accentuate the tensions between identity and place, in particular the complex understandings of nation, identity, and location that diasporic subjects impart. Nation While modernity is often equated with democratic citi zenship, technological progress, and new ways of organ izing the world, these geographic, political, economic, and intellectual shifts also validated the expulsion of particular groups from their country of origin. As noted above, the question of violent displacement reveals that diaspora is entwined with the expulsion from homelands or home nation. The nation is central to theorizing diasporas in that it clariﬁes the ties between migrations and the production of space. That is, forced dispersal carries with it the idea of ‘displacement from’ somewhere and ‘displacement to’ somewhere, and these travels necessarily effect how diasporic communities understand themselves in relation to the nation. While the formation of modern nation states often coincides with the production of ethnic communities and racial identities within a prescribed country or region (Viet namese live in Vietnam, Germans live in Germany, Al gerians live in Algeria), diaspora experiences illustrate

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the ways in which the nation, as a political bounded entity that safely houses and supports its citizens, is constantly being breached. This occurs in two ways. First, the homeland or nation through which expulsion takes place (displacement from) discloses that some citizens are not, in fact, welcome or at ease within the boundaries of their country of birth. Second, arrival in the nation of relocation (displacement to), as a refugee, economic migrant, or exiled subject, is often fraught with ambiva lence due to barriers such as immigrant/refugee status, noncitizenship, and racism or other acts of discrimination. What these two points suggest to diaspora theorists is that the nation and nationalism are limited geographies, ideologies, and processes. More clearly, the nation that expels particular communities because they do not ‘ﬁt in’, and the nation that scrutinizes new immigrants and refugees, reveals that nationalism and the production of the nation state are determining the meaning of citi zenship, culture, sexuality, and race in exclusionary ways. It follows that diasporic subjects who exit and enter dif ferent nations on a global scale, and whose travels are underwritten by discrimination, poverty, and/or violence, have a sense of nation and homeland that is complex and shifting rather than stable and permanent. To put it an other way, diasporic subjects are not attached to the na tion in any straightforward way. Indeed, while nation and homeland are crucial to conceptualizing the diaspora, the ambivalent relationship to these particular geographic regions reveals that diaspora subjects do not necessarily embody an essential attachment to their country of birth or nation of relocation; rather diasporic subjects, are constantly challenging and transforming ideologies that assume an uninterrupted connection between nation, ethnicity, and identity precisely because they come to express their shared histories and exiles through het erogeneity and difference. This does not position dia sporic subjects outside of modernity. Rather, these migratory and displaced subjects are demonstrating the contours of the modern project and their intellectual contributions to this epoch. Diaspora theorists insist that the experiences of removal, travel, and returns are indi cative of how roots and routes – indeed diaspora spaces – intersect with, and therefore are indicative of, modern geographies. A concrete example of this intersection can be illustrated through the black diaspora: people of African descent, living in, say, Britain, arrived in this nation due to transatlantic slavery, colonialism, and/or induced (economic) migration; they maintain ties with other global black communities, experience discrimin ation and success within Britain, and also call into question the naturalness of a white/British nation space. Together, these processes of displacement, outer national ties, and settlement demonstrate the workings of mod ernity and the modern nation not as bounded or un changing, but as a territory that is inﬂected with difference.

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Identity Identity refers to one’s self afﬁliations, speciﬁcally one’s culture, nation, gender, sexuality, class, and so forth. Diasporas bring into focus the ways in which identity is produced in relation to collective histories, migrations, modernity, and nation. These themes and afﬁliations are developed in three ways. The ﬁrst conception of identity centralizes collective histories. As noted above, dis crimination and violence push some groups outside their country of birth. These diaspora migrations are indicative of a common history, wherein particular groups under stand themselves and their community in relation to a traumatic past. In this case, identity is secured to the social and cultural codes that initiated expulsion, as well as the region through which the displacement occurred. Identity brings into focus both difference and continuity. Understood in this way, a two way process that is bound up in modernity arises: categorization and expulsion of subaltern communities; reunifying diaspora cultures through exploring their commonalities and collective experiences of expulsion. Identity in this formulation attempts to recuperate or restore a broken past. During anticolonial struggles, for example, theorists, artists, and novelists in or from South Asia and the Caribbean brought forth representations of difference that explored violent displacement (transatlantic slavery, indenture ship, colonialism) and also considered how masses of people might, together, relate to this history vis a` vis their common identities and contemporaneous political struggles against oppression. In short, diaspora identities were and are soldered as a counternarrative to Euro centric modernity and the nation state that regard some cultures as absolutely ‘other’ or wholly different from the hegemonic class. The second conceptualization of identity is a much less stable or unifying theorization and considers the ways in which diaspora identities change from moment to moment and place to place. It is precisely the historic and geographic break that refuses an easy relationship be tween identity and place for diaspora cultures. The ori ginal geographic loss, what some refer to as the moment of traumatic rupture, cannot be fully recovered because the implementation of modern Eurocentric social sys tems work to deny and dislodge, rather than recover, the past. At the same time, diaspora cultures are developing their identities according to the exclusionary citizenship policies within the nation of relocation, sometimes using counternarratives to develop a unifying cultural critique of modernity. Both of these processes suggest that the production of a diaspora identity can only be understood as ﬂuid and changing: there is no satisfactory relationship with historic regions of displacement; it is difﬁcult to fully belong in a nation of relocation. It is useful, then, to consider that diasporic cultures are geographically

migratory and that this shifting spatialization produces complex identities that are unsettled. Even exiles that occurred during transatlantic slavery can be understood as migratory in that this brings into focus the ways in which black diaspora cultures continue to develop their identities simultaneously through and away from the continent of Africa and/or moment of rupture even as they continue to experience discrimination within the nation of relocation (racial proﬁling, segregations, in carcerations, poverty). Understanding diaspora identities as ﬂuid and shifting, but also as developing imaginary coherences across time and space, allows for analyses of how migratory cultures impact upon the meaning of modernity and nation. Neither outside modernity nor the nation, diaspora identities are often conceptualized as hybrid or creolized. Both of these terms are attempts to clarify cultural identities that are, through their displacement, negoti ating the surroundings of their region of relocation and their ethnic ties in complex ways. The third con ceptualization of identity thus considers the ways in which collective histories, migrations, and ethnic differ ences are embedded in, and evidence of, modernity. Through diaspora identity, it is not possible to separate European and non European versions of modernity. Hybrid or creolized diaspora identities enmesh different cultural practices, intellectual histories, social norms, that cannot be traced to a unitary ethnic homeland or nation or a pure ethnicity. Instead, diaspora identities combine and creolize multiple points of identiﬁcation, thus em bodying and asserting how diversity and difference are lived and experienced as a process of entanglement. To give a few examples: Indo Caribbean men and women educated at Oxford University; African American in tellectuals theorizing Sigmund Freud and Frederick Neitzche alongside Frantz Fanon, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison; dragon boat races in Toronto, Canada. Importantly, this particular production of diaspora identity is not a one way process, with subaltern subjects borrowing and absorbing the dominant culture. Rather this formulation also points to the ways in which diaspora cultures impact upon their surroundings and other dia sporic cultures: white, Aboriginal, and Asian youths wearing hip hop fashions; black feminists embracing Latina feminism; queer dragon boat races. Diaspora and Geography While discussions of diaspora have been fostered in cultural studies, literary criticism, and critical race studies, human geographers have, in the last two decades, begun to integrate this ﬁeld into their analyses. Diaspora is, many human geographers have noted, a fundamentally geographic process as it is underwritten by exiles, dis placements, and regional speciﬁcities. Many geographic

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investigations use the term diaspora as a descriptor for movement. Rather than exploring questions of identity, modernity, violent exile, collective histories, and am bivalent nation making, diaspora is simply synonymous with migration and immigration. However, those geog raphers interested in the ways in which critical race theory, trauma, displacement, and identity shape and are shaping the production of space, have engaged the work of diaspora theorists outside the discipline of human geography in order to advance a unique conceptual ization of what is often called ‘diaspora spaces’. The major critique of diaspora and diaspora studies is focused on the highly metaphoric understanding of this migratory experience. Because diaspora is primarily theorized through the production of identity, rather than a materiality of displacement, many geographers have noted that questions of hybridity, imagined communities and returns, and collective histories lack geographic speciﬁcity and political economy. Indeed, some geog raphers are frustrated with the unrepresentability of the psychic themes in diaspora studies. Thus, these human geographers have worked on spatializing the theoretical paradigms that are debated in diaspora studies. Close attention is therefore paid to the material production of home and nation in order to clarify how diaspora spaces might be produced within and beyond the nation of re location; details, for example, regarding how diaspora subjects talk about home and nation – in their three dimensionality and geographic speciﬁcity – are coupled with emotional and psychic processes. Some human geographers also investigate the materiality of modernity, speciﬁcally positivist mappings, and consider how this process initiates difﬁcult spatial conditions of which diasporic exile is a part. Homeland, therefore, is theo rized as simultaneously material and metaphoric in order to bring into focus how diaspora spaces are produced through violence. Additionally, human geographers have paid close attention to the ways in which some global migrations are also diasporic: housing and immigration patterns, school curricula changes that include subaltern histories, racial proﬁling, ‘multicultural’ food distribution, ethnic enclaves, are just some examples of the ways in which diaspora cultures impact upon the materiality of local life. It has been argued, however, by diaspora scholars that this critique of the unrepresentability of

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diaspora experiences is hasty. Some diaspora scholars insist that questions of memory, psychic attachment, past exiles, and collective histories always carry in them the materiality of displacement. That is, through the lan guage of diaspora, one must always imagine the three dimensionality of expulsion in order to fully grasp the assertion that diaspora is a human phenomenon. See also: Ethnic Conﬂict; Memory; Migration, Historical Geographies of; Race.

Further Reading Anderson, B. R. O. G. (1983). Imagined communities : Reﬂections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, England: Verso Editions/NLB. Anthias, F. (1998). Evaluating ‘Diaspora’: Beyond ethnicity. Sociology 32(3), 557 580. Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of diaspora: Contesting identities. London: Routledge. Blunt, A. (2003). Geographies of diaspora and mixed descent: Anglo Indians in India and Britain. International Journal of Population Geography 9, 281 294. Carter, S. (2005). The geopolitics of diaspora. Area 37(1), 54 63. Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology 9, 302 338. Cohen, R. (1997). Global diasporas: An introduction. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Davies, C. B. (1994). Black women, writing, and identity: Migrations of the subject. London: Routledge. Gilroy, P. (1993). The black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: A Harvard University Press. Gopinath, G. (2005). Impossible desires: Queer diasporas and South Asian public cultures, perverse modernities. Durham: Duke University Press. Hall, S. (1990). Cultural identity and diaspora. In Rutherford, J. (ed.) Identity: Community, culture, difference, pp 222 237. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Habib, J. (2004). Israel, diaspora, and the routes of national belonging. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lowe, L. (1996). Immigrant acts: On Asian American cultural politics. Durham: Duke University Press. Patton, C. and Sa´nchez Eppler, B. (2000). Queer diasporas. Durham: Duke University Press. Shilav, Y. (1993). Ethnicity and geography in jewish perspectives. GeoJournal 30(3), 273 277. Walcott, R. (2000). Pedagogy and trauma: The middle passage, slavery, and the problem of creolization. In Simon, R. I., Rosenberg, S. & Eppert, C. (eds.) Between hope and despair: Pedagogy and the remembrance of historical trauma, pp 135 151. Rowman and Littleﬁeld: Lanham. Yeoh, B. S. A. and Willis, K. (1999). ‘Heart’ and ‘wing,’ nation and diaspora: Gendered discourses in Singapore’s regionalisation process. Gender, Place and Culture 6(4), 355 372.

Dicken, P. J. V. Beaverstock, The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dicken, Peter (1947–) One of the world’s leading economic geographers, Peter Dicken spent nearly four decades teaching and researching the geographies of industrial restructuring and regional change from a global perspective, based in the University of Manchester’s School of Environment and Development. In 1988, he was awarded the personal title of Professor, followed by several distinguished awards, including a Fellowship of the Swedish Collegium for Advance Study in the Social Sciences (1999), the Victoria Medal of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (2001), and an honorary doctorate of phil osophy from the University of Uppsala, Sweden (2002). During his long reign at Manchester, he has been an academic visitor at universities in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, Singapore, Sweden, and the US. From the mid 1980s onwards, with the publication of Global Shift: Industrial Change in a Turbulent World, Dicken can be credited for putting economic globalization ﬁrmly on the map in geographical thought. His inﬂuence has sub sequently become apparent in studies of economic and employment change in major global industries (such as automobiles, electronics, textiles, pharmaceuticals, and logistics); industrial restructuring and organizational be havior in transnational corporations through the analysis of foreign direct investment ﬂows and business strategy; and global production networks and territorial re development. In short, Dicken’s research and writings have brought a ‘global perspective’ to studying the geography of industrial restructuring and territorial redevelopment at the regional and local scale. Summarizing, Yeung and Peck suggest that there are four very distinctive contributions that Dicken has made to the study of human and economic geography, and glob alization. The ﬁrst of these concerns ﬁrm spatial decision making – externalization of control and regional devel opment. In this respect, Dicken was highly inﬂuenced by a ‘behaviorist turn’ in economics and management sciences in the early 1970s. Dicken began to put the action of the ﬁrm and its externalities of control under the microscope to explain the geography of location and regional devel opment. But, perhaps the most profound step in Dicken’s reputation was the analysis of multinational enterprises (nee corporations) decision making activities in location and industrial restructuring. Dicken’s work became an exemplary for studying the behavior of multinational and transnational corporations in the context of the world

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economy recession of the post 1973 era, where external ities of control and the branch plant phenomenon were dominant structures of economics in the rapidly changing industrial world. During the 1980s, Dicken’s second contribution – and probably most signiﬁcant contribution to human geog raphy – was the ﬁrst edition of Global Shift: Industrial Change in a Turbulent World. Since 1986, there have been a further four editions of this book published (1992, 1998, 2003, and 2007). Global Shift remains one of the key textbooks in economic geography. The 1986 edition introduces and discusses the economic geographies of industrial change in the world since the end of World War II from the global scale perspective. Dicken argued that the global shifts that occurred in many industrial sectors of the world economy were produced by three signiﬁcant intertwining processes, namely: the rapid growth, proliferation, internationalization, and geoeco nomic power of transnational corporations worldwide; the changing role of national government through pat terns of international trade, investment, regional devel opment policies, and macroeconomics; and the impact which informational and communication technologies have had on transport (e.g., containerization), the or ganization and geography of production, employment practice, and ﬁrm locational strategy. Global Shift as a textbook has been of paramount im portance for students of economic geography. It ex plained the processes of international restructuring through the actor of the transnational corporation in several key sectors of the world economy: textiles and clothing; iron and steel; motor vehicles; and electronics. The four subsequent editions of Global Shift have added new sectoral chapters on contemporary topics, such as the internationalization of services, distributive indus tries, and agro business. But moreover, Global Shift was viewed by the wider academy as ‘one of the pioneering globalization texts’. Dicken skillfully advocated the glo bal–local dialectic through an exploration of ‘global’ interconnectedness in economic processes and resultant uneven development in different geographical time– spaces. Dicken’s third major contribution to geography con cerns his analysis of ﬁrms, nation states, and global net works. Indeed, through the 1980s and beyond, Dicken continued to research and publish widely on the inter relationship between the transnational corporation and the nation state in making the economic geography of

Dicken, P.

regions and the locale. Dicken continued to argue that national governments did advocate agency in global ization in their interrelationships with ﬁrms, regulators, and other actors. This actor focused approach to explain the processes and patterns of global economic re structuring and change intersected very much with the economic sociologists notions of embeddedness and so cial action. Dicken was very quick to highlight the ‘webs of enterprise’ that made up embedded, relational inter and intraﬁrm organizational networks in contemporary transnational corporations. Dicken, therefore, was highly inﬂuential in bringing the study of transnational cor poration’s organizational networks onto the agendas of economic geography from the early 1990s. Fourth, and into the new millennium, Dicken with colleagues in his own department, at Manchester Busi ness School and the National University of Singapore, brought to the attention of geographers, economists, and sociologists, the theoretical framework associated with relationality and global production networks to explain territorial redevelopment brought about by transnational corporations’ inter and intraﬁrm networks of relation ships. The notion of the ﬁrm–place relationship is central to Dicken’s thesis on global production networks, where such relationships are essentially wrapped around four processes of relationality: intraﬁrm; interﬁrm; ﬁrm–place; and place–place. Concepts of social action and economic embeddedness are very important facets of these rela tionships especially when theorized in the scalars of globalization, from the local to the global. A ﬁnal and very important point to make in summing up Dicken’s contribution to the academy is that his work is fundamentally interdisciplinary in scope and scale. Dicken’s seminal work, Global Shift, makes interventions in the worlds of organizational studies, strategy, and political economy. But, moreover, Global Shift, in com bination with his latter work on Global Production Networks, makes a signiﬁcant contribution to understanding the complexities and unevenness of globalization per se. Dicken is not only a signiﬁcant economic geographer of

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our time, but is also a respected commentator on globalization. See also: Economic Geography; Foreign Direct Investment; Global Production Networks; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Globalization, Economic; Industrial Location.

Further Reading Coe, N., Hess, M., Yeung, H. W. C., Dicken, P. and Henderson, J. (2004). Globalizing regional development: A global production networks perspective. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29, 468 484. Dicken, P. (1971). Some aspects of the decision making behaviour of business organizations. Economic Geography 47, 426 437. Dicken, P. (1976). The multiplant business enterprise and geographical space. Regional Studies 10, 401 412. Dicken, P. (1980). Foreign direct investment in European manufacturing industry. Geoforum 11, 289 313. Dicken, P. (1986). Global Shift: Industrial Change in a Turbulent World (1st edn.). London: Harper Row. Dicken, P. (2004). Geographers and globalization: (Yet) another missed boat. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29, 5 26. Dicken, P., Kelly, P. F., Olds, K. and Yeung, H. W. C. (2001). Chains and networks, territories and scales: Towards a relational framework for analysing the global economy. Global Networks 1, 99 123. Dicken, P. and Miyamachie, Y. (1998). From noodles to satellites: The changing geography of Japanese sogo shosha. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23, 55 78. Dicken, P. and Thrift, N. (1992). The organization of production and the production of organization: Why business enterprise matter in the study of geographical internationalisation. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 17, 101 128. Lloyd, P. E. and Dicken, P. (1972 and 1976). Location in Space (1st and 2nd edn.). New York: Harper Row. Yeung, W. C. H. and Peck, J. (2003). Making global connections: A geographer’s perspective. In Peck, J. & Yeung, W. C. H. (eds.) Remaking the Global Economy, pp 2 23. London: Sage.

Relevant Websites http://www.sagepub.co.uk SAGE publications: Global Shift. http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk School of Environment and Development, The University of Manchester: Peter Dicken, geography staff.

Difference/Politics of Difference T. Jazeel, University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Assimilationist Policies or political strategies that promote the merging and absorption of traits from previously distinct groups into a dominant civil group. Citizenship Commonly conceived as a condition bestowed upon individuals considered as a member of a particular society or nation-state, wherein social rights, privileges, and duties are bestowed upon that individual. Diffe´rance Concept derived by the French poststructural theorist, Jacques Derrida, that describes how the meaning of a (linguistic) sign is always deferred through other signs in relationships of irreducible relationality and intertexuality. Identity Commonly regarded as a sense of self or community, providing sameness, continuity, and collective membership over time and at different geographical scales. Liberalism A modern social and political theory founded on beliefs in the natural goodness of humans, autonomy of the individual, civil and political liberty, and freedom from tradition. Subaltern Commonly used to refer to a person or proposition in a position subordinate to a dominant. In social theory used in conjunction with a body of work that outlines non-Euro-American modes of political resistance and knowledge.

Introduction Difference and sameness are most commonly evoked in Human Geography in relation to identity theory. Over the last three decades or so, post structural theory has challenged Marxist analyses that read the production of difference through notions of the class and class consciousness alone that Marxists believe fall out of the different stages of society’s economic development. In stead, post structural theory has inﬂuenced social the orists to explore a broader range of registers through which human difference is produced, and through which politics are lived and mobilized, for example, gender, race, sexuality, and disability. Post structuralism has also reasoned that the politics of identity and difference exist in conditions of relationality to one another. For there to be something that people/communities at any scale can identify with, there must be a constitutive outside. Sameness requires difference. Geographers’ particular contributions have been to explore the particular

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spatialities and spatial languages that difference and the politics of difference not only occur in, but also are central to their very production. That difference relies on a geography of sorts emerged strongly in Edward Said’s work on Orientalism in the late 1970s. For Said, the two geographical sectors known as the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Occident’, or ‘West’ and ‘East’, are not only human and discursive (imperial) productions, they are geographical imaginations that support and to an extent reﬂect each other. The rela tionship of the ‘Orient’ to the ‘Occident’ is constitutive, that is, the ‘Occident’ is produced through the difference posed by that designated and simultaneously produced as ‘Orient’. Difference then is a fundamentally spatial re lationship. Geographers working in the wake of Said have helped to destabilize any sense of a straightforward re lationship between place and identity by pointing to the differences within as well as between spaces and places. The development of a vocabulary of ideas around dias pora, transnationality, borderland, hybridity, centers and margins, and third spaces have helped to variously tease out just some of the multiple spatialities through which difference is produced at different scales, and through which a politics of difference is mobilized.

Liberalism, Difference, and the Politics of Difference Post structural understandings of difference commonly work from particular understandings of the liberal pol itical subject and its relationship to collectivity. The neutral citizen of liberal theory Iris Marion Young argues is coded white, male, bourgeois, able bodied, and het erosexual. It is this pervasive coding of the liberal citizen that marks modes of non white, female, disabled, or homosexual subjectivity as different within liberal dem ocracies. But as stressed above, these modes of difference themselves help (re)produce the liberal templates of normal citizenship. The one depends on the other as a condition of dynamic relationality. In his early theories of post structural deconstructivism, Jacques Derrida fam ously referred to this relationship as ‘diffe´rance’. The word, derived from the French verb ‘diffe´rer’ which can mean to either differ or to defer, is used to covey a sense that meaning is always merely the product of the dif ference between signs. Meaning is always deferred, elsewhere, like in a dictionary, or indeed this encyclo paedia. In identity theory then, difference can only be understood in relation to the normalizing codes of liberal

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citizenship and vice versa, but importantly ‘diffe´rance’ posits this as a relationship without end, never complete. Subject positions are always being made and remade relationally. Within liberal democracy the play between the nor malcy of liberal citizenship and its constitutive outside has produced powerful narratives and politics of the emancipation or assimilation of minorities. Assimilation to the liberal norms of European citizenship emerged as a conduit for rendering different modes of subjectivity transparent, legible, and safe. Within colonial encounters, for example, this kind of assimilatory politics of differ ence emerged as colonialism’s emancipatory pretension to ‘civilize the native’. In contemporary identity politics, state authority and the principles of reasonable govern ance can be seen to promulgate emancipation or as similation through debates over the ‘tolerant’ or ‘good’ society, or even through culturalist understandings of state sponsored and ordered cosmopolitanism. However, both these models of emancipation and assimilation have never meant the dissolution of forms of difference in liberal culture. Far from it. Crucially, in terms of theorizing the politics of dif ference, for many minority groups the effacement of difference through ‘emancipation’ has never been a pol itical objective, and for many social theorists it has never been a realistic (let alone ethically desirable) political aim. Instead, for minority groups the politics of differ ence evokes the struggle to mobilize forms of resistance to the social exclusions suffered as a result of the group’s difference. In relation to colonial encounter speciﬁcally, Homi Bhabha’s inﬂuential body of work has exposed the contradictions inherent in colonial discourse itself. For Bhabha, the assimilationist or emancipatory effort within colonial encounters produces spaces and subjectivities in which borders are straddled, edges and horizons are blurred, and where differences bleed into one another, ultimately producing subversive and hybrid newness. The traces of irredeemable and recalcitrant difference pose immanent threats to colonialism’s (or more gener ally, liberal political culture’s) capacity to contain and naturalize difference as minorities appropriate the nor malizations of ‘civility’, ‘liberty’, ‘citizenship’, ‘progress’, and ‘development’. Difference always remains as a space of political resistance and/or trace within liberal political subjectivities. That difference does not exist a priori has led scholars to explore a wide and wavering net of interlocking yet speciﬁc historical and cultural processes through which it is (re)produced. For human geographers the spaces and spatial interconnectedness through which difference is produced have become the subject of a rich seam of scholarship over the last few decades. Perhaps most ob viously, difference has been explored in relation to na tionalism, broadly conceived as feelings of collective

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identity which may be associated with the nation state or other regional scales in connection with ‘national’ and territorial formations. But geographers inspired by the post structural manoeuvres sketched above and by feminist theory have also moved to reject forms of ter ritorialized essentialism in their spatial explorations of difference. In addition to the (usually) territorial spaces of national belonging, they have also explored the ‘in between’, interstitial and metaphorical spaces through which identity and difference are produced, and through which the contours of a politics of difference are dis cernible. Geographical work on these marginal spaces and subjectivities has also emerged as an effective way of understanding the forms of power that emerge from the heart of liberal social and political cultures and systems. The spatial production of race, gender, sexuality, and disability are perhaps the most common and effective registers through which human geographers have ex plored the spatial politics of difference, and it is to a discussion of these that this entry now turns. But the effort of doing so should not be taken as an inscription of race, gender, sexuality, and disability as discrete or es sential categorizations through which identity politics and subjectivity can be understood. Rather contemporary geographical research has focused on understanding how each category of difference emerges through particular social and spatial relationships, and how they intersect with one another through lived experiences that resist essential categorization. Race The value of race as a scientiﬁc concept has long been repudiated, but it continues to be deployed as popular marker of human difference based on bodily character istics: skin color, hair type, nose shape, and muscular deﬁnition. It is also used commonly to refer to people who share cultural or historical backgrounds. Despite these popular usages of the concept, critical social re search has more or less come to the conclusion that the division of human beings into discrete races is not in any sense natural, but rather a social, political, and cultural construction. Equally, attempts to implant racial hier archies within and across societies have been regarded as inseparable from cognate political projects (like coloni alism or nationalism) rather than any kind of decoding of the natural world. Indeed, racial theorizations and in stantiations of difference have underpinned some of the most repressive political regimes and violent geopolitical contestations in recent history (Nazism, Apartheid, civil war in Sri Lanka, genocide in Rwanda, for example). These developments in ways of critically engaging the concept of race have seen geographers over the last 30 years or so turn from mapping the distribution and segregation of raced groups across space, to critical

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explorations of the processes involved in the racialization of particular people or groups. In other words, the mainstay of contemporary critical geographical engage ments with race has focused on the different spatialities through which the logic of race comes to be lodged in the body. These kinds of explorations have treated race as the lingering aftereffect of racist gazes; racism, as a violent set of representational practices, precedes race in this an alysis because racism in its various forms constitutes ways of mapping the body. By mapping the body, geographers have referred to the ways that racist acts, representations and policies (Social Darwinism, anti semitism, apartheid) inscribe the biological illusion of race onto the body. The range of spatialities that geographers have iden tiﬁed with the mapping of raced bodies varies immensely, from landscapes, parks, and other spaces of nature; through diasporas, border regions, and transnational spaces; news media, entertainment, and cinematic spaces; to the institutional spaces of genealogical research, DNA code identiﬁcation, and territories and ﬂows regulated by the increasing prevalence of biopolitical technology. These kinds of explorations are likely to increase in scope and diversity as theorizing racialization demands that geographers confront the plethora of everyday and socially embedded spaces through which the materialities and politics of racial difference percolate and structure our world. Such research has shown that while race’s value as a scientiﬁc concept has been widely rejected, it continues to wield signiﬁcant and constitutive power as a structural force in the world today. Importantly, it is not just the non white, non European or non North American body/community that has been theorized in such work. Human geographers have also paid attention in recent years to ‘white ness’ as a speciﬁc racialized and relational category that is itself produced through social, political, and communitarian discursive practices that have their own spatial formations. Recent critical geographical research since the de struction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent ‘Global War on Terror’ has also noted a politics of difference increasingly divided po lemically and ideologically between a (neo)liberal ‘West’ coded white, secular and civilized, and a global Islamic nation coded non white, sacred and – according to the recurrence of pervasive enlightenment logic – ‘uncivil ized’ and violent. In addition to the tendencies to fold difference into distance in ways remarkably consistent with Said’s Orientalizing discursive practices, geog raphers and other social theorists drawing lessons from Auschwitz during World War II have noted the existence of ‘exceptional’ spaces within the ‘West’ (Guantanamo Bay, for example) or ‘Western’ enclaves (Abu Graib) in which bodies are routinely interned without due legal process on the very basis of their religious and perceived racial difference, and in which all human and legal rights

to the equal and humane treatment of human beings are suspended. Here, amidst the ‘Global War on Terror’, the performative symbolism of this type of spatiality of ex ception maps the Muslim body as potential terrorist, in turn marking the Muslim body as different, as always outside the codes of liberal, Western political subjectivity and collectivity. The essential logic of these kinds of practices cannot be operationalized without enabling forms of neo imperial and neo liberal, geopolitical power relationships, which reminds us that racialized practices of marking out human difference always walk hand in hand with power. Gender Despite a rich history of feminist activism and scholar ship across the world, gender roles and relations as markers of human difference grounded in biology con tinue to be commonplace ways of conceptualizing re lations within and across societies. In Western European philosophy, the gendered distinction between masculine culture and feminine nature that has been mapped onto man/woman predates Cartesian dualism, and can be found in Pagan and Christian beliefs in women’s attu nement with the natural world through their child bearing capabilities or menstrual cycles. But feminist scholars point to Descartes’ sixteenth century declar ation, ‘‘I think, therefore I am’’, as the birth of scientiﬁc, rational and cultural man whose mastery over nature (matter) also entailed controlling and subverting women. The social and political effects of objectifying women along with nature have subjugated women in society more generally, be it through pornography, women’s subordination in the workplace, or the relative inequality of political opportunities available to women and men. Contemporary feminist identity politics then seeks to articulate understandings of the social and patriarchal production of gendered relations of human difference by teasing out the discursive and performative instantiation of dominant types of femininity and masculinity. Femi nist geographers have accordingly tended to move away from explorations of gender roles for fear of re essen tializing the difference between feminized and mascu linized categories of reproductive and productive labor, respectively. Instead, they have moved toward explor ations of how relations between men and women are constructed through the spheres, and moreover, spatial ities of everyday life. Over the last 20 years or so, there has been a rich seam of feminist geographical scholarship that has explored the problems that inhere in the di chotomous and gendered relationship between a mas culine public sphere of economic labor, most often equated with formal notions of Politics, and a feminized private sphere of cultural reproduction implicitly coded as apolitical. Space – particularly those distinctions

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between notionally public and private spaces – therefore emerges as a central register through which the gendered production of human difference must be understood. In addition to problematizing the authority of this gendered and sexist binary geography, this work has also reclaimed the political dimensions of unpaid, ‘feminized’ labor in the private sphere. More broadly, however, this effort to remove women from nature and place them within culture has often entailed the strategic conceptual separation of sex and gender. In other words, if gender is a cultural production, then logic dictates that sexually humans can be bio logically differentiated into male and female. The prob lem with this maneuver is what to do with sexual difference. Treating gender and sex as separate in this way repeats the problem of a nature/culture binary by re essentializing sexual difference just as gender is emancipated through theories of its cultural production. Here, Judith Butler’s early work has been particularly inﬂuential among post structural and feminist geog raphers. She argues that regarding heterosexuality as a regulatory regime is key to understanding how the body, sexed categorically as either male or female, is brought into being. That in between male and female sexes cannot exist in Western society without signiﬁcant psy chological trauma is not so much a biological fact as it is an effect of the power of the discursive regulatory regime of heterosexuality within society. Neither gender nor sex then are ontological pre givens according to Butler. Our designations as male or female emerge from discursive categorizations, and gender becomes an effect of one’s stable (discursive) sexual identity as either male or fe male that is iteratively reinscribed on the body through performances that themselves are gendered as either masculine or feminine behavior. For geographers these insights have facilitated the exploration of a whole host of activities that occur in public and private spaces re spectively that (re)inscribe gendered and sexualized understandings of difference. Sexuality The theoretical links between gender and sex mean that the two are commonly discussed together. However, geographical research on sexual identity and difference, while not exclusive of heterosexuality, has developed to pursue sophisticated explorations of the relationships between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered space and subjectivity. Early gay and lesbian activists emphasized the au thenticity of their stable, core sexual identities, therefore rooting their modes of sexual difference within biology. This intuitive hostility to constructionist accounts of identity and difference emerged not just from feelings that many individuals could not have been anything but

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gay, but also from distinctly strategic concerns around how to mobilize an effective homosexual politics of dif ference within hegemonically straight society and space. Biological explanations of sexuality for some still offer the best form of defense against forms of homophobia that suggest gays can voluntarily change their sexually ‘immoral’ behaviors. The emergence of queer theory, and its incorporation as queer geography within the discipline, represents a paradigm shift and reaction against this uncritical early work on stable lesbian and gay identities. Challenging notions of biologically ﬁxed hetero or homosexual iden tities, queer theory and queer geography adopts Butlerian ideas on the iterative and performative, sexualized sub jectivities and gendered relations that normalize and sta bilize sexual identities. Particularly important to the queering of understandings of sexual as opposed to gen dered difference, however, is Michel Foucault’s work on the History of Sexuality, which famously points to the nor malization of heterosexuality as a regulatory regime in Western society since the seventeenth century. Instead of the repression of talk about sex and sexuality within an ostensibly conservative society, Foucault’s rigorous his torical research demonstrates the proliferation of talk and scientiﬁc investigation into the right type of (hetero normative) sex. Out of this discursive proliferation and production of scientiﬁc inquiry into and about the right types of reproductive and hetero orthodox sex, (homo)sexual minoritization emerges as stigma, abnormality, immorality and confession. Crucially, homosexuality emerges as differ ence only through the normalization of heterosexuality. The application of these ideas through spatial registers has allowed geographers to explore how sexual difference is produced through particular spatializations of hege monic discourses of sexual virtue, respectability, and re productive coupling. Geographers have explored how the geographical theaters of everyday life constitute crucial technologies that effectively discipline the sexualized body, regulate sexual desire, and safeguard hetero normative maculinities and feminities. Queer emerges as a social positioning against these muted backdrops of the proper. Similarly, queer spatialities and spatial metaphors, like ‘the closet’ for example, emerge in irreducible connection to these dominant hetero normative spatialities. In terms of theorizing a sexual politics of difference geographers have also explored how gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgen dered people’s subversive treatment and negotiation of forms of hetero normative spatiality constitute forms of resistance, or attempts to erode the terms of ‘proper’ space that produce heterosexuality and queerness. Disability Despite the predominance of medical models of disability within the medical profession, in social theory the trope

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of social construction has become increasingly common place in theorizations of human difference rooted in physical and/or mental impairment. Within human geography speciﬁcally, scholars have emphasized the importance of understanding disabled people’s geo graphical experiences as a way of understanding how disablement is produced through the impaired body’s negotiation of social and spatial norms. These social and geographical models of disability have theorized disability as the societal, attitudinal, or spatial restrictions placed on physically or mentally impaired people, to the point where they become marked as different because of their inability to fully integrate themselves in liberal societies. Access to, and mobility through, built and natural environments emerges as central to the geographical study of disability. For example, Rob Imrie’s work on the relationships between disability and the city has effec tively shown how building and home design continue to oppress physically and mentally impaired peoples’ rights to the city. And others have shown that it is not just building design that produces disability as human dif ference. There are a dense network of institutions and agents within liberal socio political structures that con dition disabled people’s experiences of their immediate environments. Geography emerges as a constitutive part of disabled people’s oppression and marginalization in society. What emerges from much of this contemporary geo graphical work on disability is an implicit sense of the pervasive presence of da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’ as the structuring motif, the building block, within the cultural and political organization of liberal, Western society. It is unsurprising then that the body has emerged as central to this ﬁeld of enquiry, and in this sense explorations of human difference marked as disability have enabled productive connections with feminist scholarship. One of the effects of this conversation has been the broadening out of what modes of difference can conceptually be referred to through the rubric of disability if social ex clusion results from degrees of difference from an un marked liberal and masculine, bodily norm. The liberalization of culture and space in public places like the shopping mall or cinema, for example, has been shown to produce pregnant or ‘fat’ bodies as a form of disablement because of the relative difﬁculty with which those bodies are able to negotiate such environments. Given the predominance of social theories of dis ability within human geography, it would be wrong to suggest that medical theories of, and treatments for, various forms of physical and mental impairment have become irrelevant. Yet, in terms of the politics of dif ference disabled people have been just as involved in efforts to change the social norms that pervade their built and natural environments, as they have in seeking med ical treatment and assistance for impairment. The

overriding concern has been that disabled people’s needs are catered for and they can enter society fully no longer marked as different. Philosophically, however, in terms of the politics of difference, there is a tension between charitable approaches to disability that attempt to ob literate, or emancipate, disability as difference, and dis abled rights conceived as access to society. The struggle for disabled people to enter fully into society as citizens, it is argued, should not be confused with any need to eradicate disability as a marker as difference. The former is a human, social, and political right, whereas the latter reﬂects a liberal society’s inability to deal with any form of human difference. Crucial here then is the physical agency required for disabled people to bring themselves into representation.

Difference and (Geographical) Knowledge Any discussion of difference and the politics of difference as it has been worked through the (Western) academy must rub up against the academy’s own encounters with difference and the important epistemological and polit ical questions that these encounters have generated. The main body of this entry has discussed markers of differ ence that have emerged through geography’s theoriza tions of the production of identity. If, in this respect, post structuralist theory has challenged the singularity of the politics of class difference that emerges with Marxist analysis, then post structuralism and other forms of critical thinking have also posed important challenges to a rigid and formulaic Marxism’s encounters with differ ent ways of being, knowing and doing beyond its epi stemological and geographical comfort zone. In the 1980s, scholars within the ﬁeld of South Asian historiography, now known as the Subaltern Studies collective, became vocally dissatisﬁed with orthodox European Marxist theory’s economic determinism as it was thought through South Asia and elsewhere beyond the West. Although these intellectual battles were not fought within the discipline of Human Geography, they were extremely geographical because they involved thinking and working the politics of difference across a planet marked with what the Subaltern Studies scholars collective insisted are irreducibly ‘different’ histories, literacies and formations. In short, the Subaltern Studies movement contended that difference theorized through orthodox Marxism not only marks groups apart within a particular society on the basis of class alone, but its in tellectual premise could not help but theorize global difference through developmentalist, progressivist nar ratives that ground history in the unity of capital, and subsequently unreﬁned Marxism is wholly unable to account for the dynamic and improvisational modes of peasant political agency within South Asia.

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In response, from 1982 onwards Subaltern Studies scholarship sought out self conscious breaks from the economic determinism of much Marxist scholarship by attempting to write histories from ‘below’ where sub altern classes are conceived as subjects in the making of their own history. But the Subaltern Studies movement never sought wholesale rejections of the purchase of an anticolonial, Marxist politics. Instead, by developing so phisticated theories of hegemony and power it sought revisionist perspectives that brought ‘native’ knowledge in South Asia into focus as a form of difference with its own distinct politics of resistance. In doing so, it also drew attention to the subjugating effects of Eurocentric and universalizing Marxist theory culture that folds dif ference into historicism. What emerged across the social sciences and the humanities then was a fecundity of otherness not just in terms of difference conceived as the diffe´rance of multiple subject positionings vis a` vis identity explored in the ﬁrst sections of this entry, but also the politics of difference conceived as the epi stemological challenge posed by the philosophical cer tainty of irreducible alterity elsewhere. Within geography these maneuvers have had profound effects on explor ations and theorizations of, for example, regional mod ernities, subaltern cosmopolitanisms, or ordinary cities. Subaltern Studies itself, however, by attempting to allow the subaltern to speak, remains the subject of an important critique from within its own conceptual ter rain. Speciﬁcally, and in terms of political activism, Gayatri Spivak has questioned whether the subaltern ﬁgure can speak, so ventriloquised and caught in trans lation are they by the postcolonial (migrant) investigator. As she poses, the moot decipherment by another in an academic institution (or as she puts it, ‘‘a knowledge production factory’’) must not be too quickly identiﬁed with the ‘speaking’ subaltern. For Spivak, once the native informant comes into representation through the ﬁrst world intellectual, once difference is rendered transparent as knowledge, subalternity moves elsewhere; the subaltern subject is irretrievably heterogenous. Philosophically, in terms of a politics of difference this poses the

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enormous challenge that there is always difference be yond that which our (or any) discipline can grasp. Per haps grasping that ungraspability is key to securing progressive and humble future research into the politics of difference. See also: Body, The; Citizenship; Cosmopolitanism; Diaspora; Disability and Chronic Illness; Gay Geographies; Gender, Historical Geographies of; Hybridity; Identity Politics; Poststructuralism/ Poststructuralist Geographies; Queer Theory/Queer Geographies; Racism and Antiracism; Self-Other; Subaltern.

Further Reading Bell, D. and Valentine, G. (1995). Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. London: Routledge. Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Brown, M. (2000). Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe. London: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. London: Routledge. Butler, R. and Bowlby, S. (1997). Bodies and spaces: An exploration of disabled people’s use of public space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15, 411 433. Derrida, J. (1967). Writing and Difference (trans. Bass, A. 1978). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Foucault, M. (1976). The History of Sexuality I: An Introduction (trans. Hurley, R. 1979). London: Allen Lane. Guha, R. (ed.) (1982). Subaltern Studies 1: Writing on South Asian History and Society. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Imrie, R. (1996). Disability and the City: International Perspectives. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Jackson, P. and Penrose, J. (eds.) (1993). Constructions of Race, Place and Nation. London: UCL Press. Longhurst, R. (1998). (Re)presenting shopping centres and bodies: Questions of pregnancy. In Ainley, R. (ed.) New Frontiers of Space, Bodies and Gender, pp 20 34. London: Routledge. McDowell, L. (1999). Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Said, E. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage. Spivak, G. (1999). A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present ch. 3. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Young, I. M. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: University of Princeton Press.

Diffusion L. A. Brown, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Culture Trait A single phenomenon seen as representative of a particular, typically ancient, culture which, as data, is used to trace the extent or inﬂuence of the culture. Examples include pottery as represented by pot shards, Bronze Age artifacts, cowry shell, counting systems, and tillage tools. Diffusion Diffusion involves the propagation of a phenomenon in a manner such that it spreads from place to place, leading to maps of the phenomenon that differ from one time to another. Diffusion or Simultaneous Invention in the Formation of Cultural Landscapes A point of contention for cultural geography, simultaneous invention posits that societies evolve through a similar set of stages, not unlike human beings going through childhood, adolescence, middle age, and old age whereas the diffusion approach argues that societies evolve by intermixing, cross-fertilization, and often, dominance or empire building. Distance Decay or Friction of Distance Effect An effect which recognizes that interactions over space are generally attenuated according to the distance separating two bodies such that there is more interaction at closer distances and less at farther distances. Empirical Regularities of Diffusion These include an S-shaped curve for diffusion over time, a neighborhoodor contagion-effect for diffusion across undifferentiated space, and a hierarchy effect for diffusion through an urban system. Enabling Innovations An innovation that facilitates the diffusion of another innovation, or is required by another innovation. The gasoline station, for example, enabled adoption and diffusion of the automobile, and the adoption of battery-powered vehicles is inhibited by the lack of charging stations. Innovation A new product, new idea, new technology, new organizational structure, new way of doing things, or a new phenomenon. In this context, new means new to a particular place by way of adoption, not necessarily that the innovation was created in the near past. Innovation Diffusion, Adoption versus Market and Infrastructure Perspectives Adoption focuses on demand for the innovation, emphasizes a communications process, and assumes that all individuals have an equal opportunity to adopt. Market and infrastructure perspective emphasizes marketing and infrastructure creation as the process by which innovations are differentially made available to various

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population segments, focus shifts from the adopter to the structure within which individuals operate, and adoption is seen as a choice within a constraint set. Mean Information Field (MIF) A component in Hagerstrand’s Monte Carlo simulation model which is comprised of probabilities that represent the likelihood of information traveling from the center cell of a 5 5 grid to surrounding cells, and a representation of a local network of social communications. Monte Carlo Simulation A computational algorithm that, having established conditions under which certain outcomes occur, relies on random numbers to determine how those conditions manifest themselves and the resultant outcomes. Relying on the law of large numbers, the exercise is repeated a multitude of times in order to better calculate expected outcomes. Applications date at least to the 1930s by physicists. Resistance to Adoption It reﬂects an individual’s hesitancy to embrace an innovation; it may stem from values that are inconsistent with adoption, that is, ‘social’ resistance, or it may stem from practicalities which make adoption difﬁcult or impossible, that is, ‘economic resistance’.

In human geography, diffusion involves the propagation of a phenomenon in a manner such that it spreads from place to place, leading to maps that differ from one time to another. Generically, the phenomenon is considered to be an innovation – a new product, a new idea, a new technology, a new organizational structure, a new way of doing things, or a new phenomenon. In this context, new means new to a particular place by way of adoption, not necessarily that the innovation was created in the near past. Hence, introduction of clean drinking water or as pirin to a remote Latin American village is considered to be an innovation in that context, even though these items have long been commonplace in Europe and North America. Further, phenomena studied under the rubric of diffusion cover an exceedingly wide range that includes the automobile and other transportation modes, broad cast and cable television, credit cards, cultural practices, epidemics or disease, family planning, farming techni ques, frontier development, Internet and broadband availability, modernization in Third World settings, pol itical movements, production practices such as the as sembly line or just in time inventorying, shopping centers, urban ghettoes, and urban areas themselves.

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While geographers have studied diffusion processes throughout most of this century, the focus of that effort has shifted over time, mirroring the broader concerns of the discipline as a whole. Many of these shifts have en tailed dramatic departures from the prevailing norm of diffusion research and a change in the course of study. As a consequence, diffusion studies of the cultural geog rapher early in this century are hardly recognizable as being of the same genre as more recent studies which focus on the role of entrepreneurial agents in the dif fusion of innovation. This article provides a historical perspective on our study of diffusion, giving particular attention to devel opments set in motion by the work of Torsten Hager strand in the early 1950s. Six major sections frame the discussion. The ﬁrst deals with the cultural geography tradition of diffusion study, an antecedent of the article’s central focus. Attention then turns to the work of Torsten Hagerstrand, wherein both his operational and con ceptual contributions are summarized. The next three sections trace research trends in the 25 plus years since Hagerstrand, focusing initially on efforts related to op erational models of diffusion; then on Third World de velopment as a diffusion process; followed by efforts related to the conceptual model of diffusion. The sixth section takes a broader view of spatial diffusion research in terms of a philosophy of science perspective and the overall trends of the geography discipline. A skeleton sketch of the ensuing discussion is presented in Figure 1,

which summarizes the progress of diffusion research in geography.

The Cultural Geography Tradition of Diffusion Research Diffusion has been the subject of geographic enquiry for most of the twentieth century, if not earlier. The spread of a phenomenon, idea, or technique throughout a population or region incorporates basic geographic elements of distance, direction, and spatial variation, and thus forms a valid ﬁeld of geographic interest. The most immediate approach from which present day work de scends was generated within the context of cultural geography, whose research goal was to identify environ mental features characteristic of a given culture and if possible to discover what role human action plays or has played in creating and maintaining given geographic features. ‘Culture’ and the human or cultural ‘landscape’ are the main concerns, and diffusion studies are relevant insofar as they clarify questions concerning cultural ori gins, the spatial conﬁguration of cultural areas, and cul ture related or culture inﬂuenced features on the Earth’s surface. Carl Sauer is generally recognized as the central ﬁgure in this approach, which tended to be closely aligned with and complementary to concerns of anthropology.

Economic geography

Anthropology and cultural geography Sauer tradition of diffusion studies

Propagation of innovation waves (Hagerstrand, 1952)

Innovation diffusion as a spatial process (Hagerstrand, 1953)

Operational model

Sociology

Conceptual model

Empirical regularities

Developments in the mathematical portrayal of diffusion processes

Applications of Hagerstrand's operational model to phenomena other than innovation diffusion

Link with urban systems

Applications of Hagerstrand's operational model to innovation diffusion

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Studies of components of Hagerstrand's operational model

Employment of Hagerstrand's conceptual model which points out inconsistencies between that model and observed reality

Link with Third World development Indicates linkage between diffusion themes.

Figure 1 Diffusion research in geography: Themes and their interrelationships.

Modification or Technological diffusion extension of Hagerstrand's conceptual model and/or conceptual alternatives

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Many studies within this framework were formulated within the context of the controversy regarding the relative importance of ‘diffusion’ or ‘simultaneous in vention’ in the development of the cultural landscape. They demonstrate a strong bias toward an empirical, inductive approach with emphasis upon landscape de velopment in prehistory and over a considerable period of time. Often, the investigation considered a single phenomenon, which is seen as a ‘cultural trait’, and at tempted to explain its observed spatial distribution as the outcome of a process unfolding over space and time. A typical procedure was to examine a phenomenon’s spatial distribution at different times or its frequency of occur rence at different locations at a single time. From these observations, inferences are drawn regarding origins, means, and routes of dispersal of both the observed phenomenon and the culture traits, ideas, or techniques for which it is a surrogate. To illustrate the point of contention here, simul taneous invention posits that societies evolve through a similar set of stages, not unlike human beings going through childhood, adolescence, middle age, and old age. Concerning society overall, for example, Hans Bobek posited (1) a food gathering stage; (2) specialized col lectors, hunters, ﬁshermen; (3) clan peasantry, pastoral nomadism; (4) organized agrarian society; (5) early urbanism and rent capitalism; and (6) productive capit alism, industrial society, and modern urbanism. By contrast, the diffusion approach argues that soci eties evolve by intermixing, cross fertilization, and often, dominance or empire building. The culture trait provides evidence of this occurrence. It might be a type of pottery that directly links with one culture and not another, as evidenced by pot shards; a Bronze Age pin with a double spiral head found in Europe and Western Asia but traced to Troy and the Aegean Islands; cowry shells used for currency in West Africa which trace to Egyptian inﬂu ences, counting systems, or tillage tools. In stressing the role of diffusion in the development of the human landscape, many studies within the cultural geography tradition proceeded further to consider the indirect effects of the culture trait innovation on the physical and cultural environment. A notion basic to their discussion is that the diffusing item is both a stimulus to new innovation and itself subject to modiﬁ cation as it spreads from its point of origin. The relation between diffusion, the item being diffused, and the human landscape is therefore complex and subject to continual change. One result of this view was an em phasis on describing these ever changing relationships, rather than upon understanding the speciﬁc processes by which the item moves from one location to another. Later in the twentieth century, this tradition came to focus on more contemporary society, but cultural arti facts remained in focus. Examples include studies of

place names, house or barn types, language differences, and religion. Differences in each category were related to the dominance, or passing through of one societal group versus another. Considering language differences in the Northeast United States, for example, there are place to place differences in whether a running narrow body of water is referred to as a creek, brook, run, kill, lick, or stream; similarly, house types in Louisiana included built in porch, attached porch, open passage double log pen, single log pen, Midwestern, shotgun, bungalow, trapper, and oysterman types.

Hagerstrand on the Diffusion of Innovation Sauer’s counterpart in the research of primary concern to this article is Torsten Hagerstrand, whose work of the early 1950s initiated a shift in focus toward the generative processes underlying diffusion. Since this focus is not inconsistent with Sauer’s conceptualization of diffusion, it is interesting to speculate why it was not a major topic of research at an earlier date. One reason may be that the identiﬁcation and deﬁnition of speciﬁc processes con trolling locational change are less feasible in the sparsely documented situations studied by cultural geographers. Second, and perhaps more important, the main impact of Hagerstrand’s work was on researchers trained in eco nomic and urban geography who were primarily con cerned with location and locational processes rather than landscape. Whatever the reason, the shift was extensive. Illustrative of this is Peter Haggett’s classiﬁcation of re search under the Sauer School as predominantly ‘land scapist’ or ‘ecologist’ and research under the Hagerstrand School as ‘locationalist’. Hagerstrand’s research focused on the diffusion of manufactured innovations, unlike work under the Sauer tradition. His earliest English language publication, The Propagation of Innovation Waves (1952), is an evident con tinuation of the earlier cultural geography tradition (Figure 1) by its use of a primarily inductive approach and its concern with diffusion patterns rather than dif fusion processes. However, empirical study at a somewhat later date led Hagerstrand to observe that ‘‘The spatial order in the adoption of innovations is very often so striking that it is tempting to try to create theoretical models which simulate the process and eventually make certain predictions achievable.’’ This statement is indicative of a change of emphasis in Hagerstrand’s work from description and inductive gen eralization to a more deductive approach focusing on generative processes. Concomitant with this we observe a willingness to draw broad, general conclusions from one or a few empirical examples that did not characterize the cultural geographers. The basic work in this shift is

Diffusion

Hagerstrand’s PhD dissertation, completed in 1953 and translated into English under the title Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process (Figure 1). Hagerstrand made three contributions that played a role in ongoing research activities for three decades and contributed signiﬁcantly to shaping the discipline as we know it today. These are (1) a conceptualization of the diffusion of innovation process, (2) development of a technique for operationalizing that conceptualization, and (3) the identiﬁcation of empirical regularities in diffusion. Brief consideration is given to each of these contributions. Hagerstrand’s Conceptualization of the Diffusion Process The basic tenet of Hagerstrand’s conceptualization of the spread of innovation across the landscape is that the adoption of an innovation is primarily the outcome of a communications process by which the potential adopter learns of the innovation. This implies that factors related to the effective ﬂow of information are most critical and, therefore, that a fundamental step in understanding the process is to identify the spatial characteristics of infor mation ﬂows and resistances to adoption. In Hagerstrand’s conceptualization, (Figure 2), in formation originates as messages from the existing adopters or from an external source such as the mass media. He posits that the destination of the personal messages depends on the sender’s network of inter personal contacts or his ‘network of social communi cations’, and the conﬁguration of this network is

primarily dependent on the presence of various social and terrestrial barriers which impede, divert, and/or channel communications. Particular attention is given to terrestrial barriers such as lakes, forests, difﬁcult terrain, and the geographic distance separating two potential communicants. The conceptualization further recognizes that resis tance levels differ from one individual to another, as a function of both personal and group characteristics, and that higher levels of resistance require more information for adoption to occur. Hagerstrand’s discussion leads to a dichotomy of resistance either as stemming from values that are inconsistent with adoption of the innovation (‘social’ resistance) or stemming from practicalities which make adoption difﬁcult or impossible (‘economic’ resistance). Finally, to address the problem of diffusion at differ ent geographical scales, a hierarchy of networks of social communication is posited. As an example, one network may operate locally and another regionally. The ﬁrst of these would control diffusion among farmers in a single locale, whereas diffusion at the central place level of aggregation might utilize a regional network comprised of persons in different central places that communicate with one another. The superimposition of these two levels would provide a comprehensive picture of dif fusion in the area represented (Figure 3). In summary, Hagerstrand’s conceptualization pro poses a transformation of the population from one with a low proportion of adopters to one with a high proportion of adopters by means of information dissemination through interpersonal contact or from an external source

Personal communications

Network of social communications f (barriers such as distance, other terrestrial barriers, and social structure)

Media communications

Message about innovation received

Adoption occurs

Innovation made available through market system

Innovation not available

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Receiver already adopted ⎯ message ineffective

The market system (public and private sector based)

Persuasion to adopt occurs ⎯ message effective

Resistance level too high ⎯ message ineffective, but resistance level is lowered

Figure 2 A ﬂow diagram of the adoption perspective on innovation diffusion. From Hagerstrand with modiﬁcations reﬂecting more recent work on the market and infrastructure perspective. Dotted lines and shaded boxes indicate aspects of the matter and infrastructure perspective.

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National

Regional

in time t þ 1. If the message passes over a water or forest barrier, it is either nulliﬁed or a new random number drawn, depending upon the nature of the barrier. This procedure is repeated for every adopter and for every time interval. If a previous adopter receives a message, the message is lost; that is, it has no effect and is not repeated. If a message is received by a nonadopter who, owing to his/her resistance level, requires more than one message before adoption, the message is stored until sufﬁcient messages for adoption are accumulated (Figure 2). Empirical Regularities in Diffusion

Local

Figure 3 Schematic portrayal of diffusion at different spatial scales and their interconnection.

such as the media. In a spatial frame of reference, the principal mechanisms of this transformation are networks of social communication which are characterized by biases and distortions that are reﬂected in the spatial patterns of innovation diffusion. Hagerstrand’s Methodological Framework To implement his conceptualization, Hagerstrand used Monte Carlo simulation. Several models of varying complexity were developed. The one he ultimately set tled on, and which received the widest attention, focuses on interpersonal communications. Adoption takes place after a speciﬁed number of messages are received, the speciﬁed number varying according to an individual’s resistance to adoption. Time is treated in discrete units of equal interval, and each past adopter sends a message in every time interval. The destination of each message is dependent on the probability of contact between teller and potential receiver. This probability is a function of the distance between them unless water or forest barriers intervene. For the case in which distance only is con sidered, a ‘distance decay function’ is employed to compute the probabilities of interaction between each of 25 cells in a 5 5 grid and the center cell of that grid, using the centers of each cell to compute the intervening distance and specifying probabilities such that all within the grid sum up to one. The resulting grid of probabilities is termed the ‘mean information ﬁeld’ (MIF). It is employed with a map that is gridded in a similar manner, but with many more than 25 cells. The 5 5 MIF is centered over a map cell containing an adopter of the innovation at time t, and a random number is drawn to determine which of the 25 surrounding map cells receives a message to adopt

Three patterns generally have been associated with dif fusion processes (Figures 4a–4c). Over time, a graph of the cumulative level of adoption is expected to ap proximate an S shape. In an urban system, the diffusion is expected to proceed from larger to small centers, a re gularity termed the ‘hierarchy effect’. Within the hin terland of a single urban center, diffusion is expected to proceed in a wave like fashion outward from the urban center, ﬁrst hitting nearby rather than farther away lo cations, and a similar pattern is expected for diffusion in a rural area. This third regularity is termed the ‘neigh borhood’ or ‘contagion effect’. While Hagerstrand was not the ﬁrst social scientist to identify these regularities, he is credited with introducing the concepts to the geography discipline. He also pro vides a framework which makes evident the inter relationships among these regularities. For diffusion in a central place or urban system context, this posits three phases: a ‘primary’ stage during which the initial diffusion centers are established; a ‘diffusion’ stage during which neighborhood type diffusion occurs in areas near dif fusion centers and secondary diffusion centers are es tablished in lower order urban places; and a ‘condensing’ or ‘saturation’ stage during which ﬁlling in occurs and diffusion eventually ceases (Figure 4d). The framework thus illustrates the complementarity of the hierarchy and neighborhood effects and their temporal positioning within the diffusion process. It also implies that, if the locales of adopters were tabulated, higher order urban places would characterize the left tail of the S curve of adoption; lower order urban places would characterize the middle, sharply rising portion of the S curve, along with rural hinterlands in proximity to urban centers; and remote rural hinterlands would characterize the right tail of the S curve (Figures 4e and 3).

Diffusion Research since Hagerstrand: Efforts Related to the Operational Model Hagerstrand’s operational model coincided with the ‘quantitative revolution’ in geography, but it also

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The S-curve for diffusion through time Diffusion in an urban setting (Hagerstrand, 1952)

Cumulative proportion of the population adoption

Hierarchy effect initiated Time

(a) The neighborhood effect for diffusion in space

(b)

1. Primary stage

Primary centers established

Hierarchy effect 2. Diffusion continues; neighborhood stage effect added

Secondary centers established; spread into the hinterlands of both the primary and secondary centers

Random spatial pattern

Filling in

3. Condensing or saturation stage

(d) The hierarchy effect for diffusion in space

+

+ (c)

Stages of diffusion Cumulative proportion of the population adopting (e)

Diffusion

Saturation

Origin Time

Figure 4 Empirical regularities in diffusion. Note in (e) the congruence of the schema with that of Hagerstrand in (d).

provided a unique contribution in going beyond conventional social science statistical procedures. Further, owing to its empirical regularities (Figure 4), diffusion is readily modeled by mathematical procedures. Accord ingly, the topic became a centerpiece of geographers’ efforts at the then new frontier of quantiﬁcation, primarily focused on operational models of diffusion. Most atten tion was given to the Hagerstrand model itself, but new models for different situations also were proposed. Four types of research are evident (Figure 1): Studies of components of Hagerstrand’s operational model, appli cations of Hagerstrand’s operational model to innovation diffusion, applications of Hagerstrand’s operational model to phenomena other than innovation diffusion, and de velopments in the mathematical portrayal of diffusion processes. Each of these is now considered. Studies of Components of Hagerstrand’s Operational Model The MIF is the component of Hagerstrand’s operational model that received most attention. Perhaps this is be cause the MIF embodies the spatial dynamics of the model, being the mechanism by which diffusion impulses are relocated from a point of origin to a point of des tination. One set of concerns was mechanistic, focused on the procedures for creating an MIF from raw data, on the best mathematical function to represent the attenuation of spatial interaction with distance or the ‘distance decay

effect’, and on estimating the goodness of ﬁt between a simulation produced by the MIF and its real world counterpart. Conﬁguring an MIF was done through data representing the distance between interactions, drawing on the generality that fewer interactions occur at greater distances and more interactions at closer distances. There is a greater probability, for example, that the origin and destination of migration, the stores at which one shops, or the pre marriage home locations of husband and wife (marriage distances) will be closer rather than farther apart; and expressing this empirical regularity might be done with a negative exponential function. Other surro gates explored include telephone calls, acquaintances, commuting, and shopping distances. Computer programs for running the Hagerstrand model also received attention. These programs made the Hagerstrand model readily accessible and account in part for its widespread use. Also enhanced by programming developments were efforts to examine in an experimental setting the various diffusion patterns that result from different initial or ongoing conditions. A set of these efforts was concerned with geographic barriers, other than distance, which shape the MIF and distort its sym metry. Two properties of barriers deemed relevant were their shape (for example, parallel barriers, bar barriers with end gaps, bar barriers with a center gap) and their permeability (for example, absorbing, reﬂective, per meable). Directional distortions also were investigated, particularly for urban contexts where a bias would be

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Diffusion

introduced by the location of an urban place or the central business district. Application of Hagerstrand’s Operational Model to Innovation Diffusion The extent of attention given to particular aspects of Hagerstrand’s model is reﬂective of its importance and utility in the geography discipline of the 1960s. Not surprisingly, then, there are many examples of its appli cation, both to the diffusion of innovation and to other diffusion or diffusion like situations. Examples of application directly to innovations in clude the diffusion of a community healthcare plan within Detroit, Harvestore storage systems in northeast Iowa, strip cropping in southwestern Wisconsin, irri gation wells in the Colorado High plains, and agricultural innovation in Mysore, India. To illustrate the approach of this line of research consider the irrigation wells study. This employed both a local communications ﬁeld, based on distances traveled to attend a free barbeque in Yuma, Colorado, and a re gional communications ﬁeld, based on long distance telephone calls from Yuma. These were combined to form a single MIF, of circular rather than square shape, with possible contacts ranging from 1 to 40 miles. In addition, there was a ceiling on adoption, or a saturation level, of 16 wells per township. Expect for these minor variations, the model used in this study is virtually identical to that of Hagerstrand. Further, ﬁt of the simulated diffusion pattern with the actual one was quite good, enabling the researcher to project the future adoption of irrigation wells and estimate the rate of de pletion of groundwater resources – a demonstration of the practical utility of the Hagerstrand model. Applications of Hagerstrand’s Operational Model to Phenomena Other than Innovation Diffusion In applying the Hagerstrand operational model to phe nomena other than innovation diffusion, there was rela tively little modiﬁcation, certainly not enough as to constitute a signiﬁcant alteration. Phenomena examined in this way include migration in Australia, Ohio, and south central Sweden; spread of the Negro ghetto and growth at the urban fringe, both in Seattle Washington; spread and growth of urban centers in southern Sweden, a settled area; spread of urban centers in frontier areas of northern Sweden and Israel; and intra urban travel and transportation network growth in North America. As a critique of these efforts, most applied the struc ture of Hagerstrand’s operational model directly to their own problem, without signiﬁcant modiﬁcation to reﬂect the peculiarities of the process being studied. As a result, relatively little was learned about the particular structure

of each situation or processes governing it. The models contained sufﬁcient parameters to allow a reasonable ﬁt between the simulated and real world diffusion patterns, and allow the conclusion that the suggested structure provides a plausible explanation of the actual process, albeit in retrospect, not a persuasive one. Indeed, the research ﬁndings would be of greater interest today were attempts made to determine if alternative structures are also plausible in the sense that they can be made to ap proximate the real world patterns. In essence, then, applications of the Hagerstrand model, either to innovation or to other diffusion phe nomena, were accomplished without raising the question of whether the substantive assertions of the model – for example, that the process involved information ﬂow or spatial interaction – were in conformance with the sub stantive reality of the processes being modeled. Developments in the Mathematical Portrayal of Diffusion Processes In the mathematical portrayal of diffusion processes some efforts were concerned with the operational model of Hagerstrand. Looking toward a more mathematically formal statement of the model, these generally involved the borrowing or restatement of models developed in the physical or biological sciences. The use of neural net models from mathematical biophysics is an example. The majority of efforts, however, focused on diffusion in volving urban places, putting forth models that differ in operational structure from that of Hagerstrand, while leaving unaltered the tenets of his conceptual model. More generally, modeling efforts were guided by an approach that emphasized pattern over substantive pro cess and had a strong attachment with the precepts of ‘general systems theory’. The latter perspective is illus trated by the observation that many different phenomena involving movement – for example, innovation, migra tion, travel, trade, industrial movements – can be exam ined within a diffusion framework. This would be based on the ‘isomorphism’ that all such situations consist of six basic elements an area or environment within which movement occurs; a temporal dimension; an item being diffused; places in which the item is located at the start of a time interval, or nodes of origin; places in which the item is newly located at the end of a time interval, or nodes of destination; and paths of movement, inﬂuence, or relationship between origin and destination places, referred to abstractly as edges. The last four elements are represented as a dynamic graph set in a temporal geographic space (the ﬁrst two elements). This is illustrated in Figure 5 for ‘relocation type diffusion’, in which some members of the population change their locations from time t to t þ 1, and for ‘ex pansion’ or ‘contagion type diffusion’, in which new

Diffusion

177

Relocation - type diffusion Time t

Time t + 1

Expansion - type diffusion Time t

Time t + 1

Indicates a potential location of the diffusing phenomenon Indicates an actual location of the diffusing phenomenon during the time indicated Indicates that during the indicated time a stimulus passed from the node at the origin end of the arrow to the node at the destination end, and resulted in location of the diffusing phenomenon at the destination node Indicates that the stimulus represented in previous to the one indicated

passed during a time period

Figure 5 Diffusion portrayed as a dynamic graph.

members are added to the population between times t and t þ 1 and located so as to alter the population’s lo cational pattern. The point here is to link disparate phenomena by a set of common structural characteristics that then give rise to general principles, thus providing a basis for a general theory of spatial diffusion or movement. In a more concrete approach, different phenomena were seen to share some common and some distinct elements, leading to another set of models. The usual procedure was to take one or more of the empirical re gularities as given and then create a model which, as at least one outcome, would reproduce that regularity. Such regularities include an outcome that replicated the S shaped curve, produced the neighborhood effect in a wave model of diffusion outward from an urban center, and, for diffusion in an urban system, utilized the hier archy effect regularity or combination of hierarchy effect and neighborhood effect (Figure 4). Taken together, these efforts moved the study of dif fusion toward a much greater integration with work on

urban systems more generally. Thus, the newer models incorporated concepts of central place hierarchies, the rank size rule, spatial interaction, and the gravity model, as well as the friction of distance and barrier concepts associated with Hagerstrand’s work. In the context of central place theory, for example, the ‘order of good’ concept indicates that higher order innovations would be limited to a particular portion of the urban system, unlike lower order innovations which could be found through out the urban system. Similarly, the variance in possible outcomes is considerably increased if interurban contact in not assumed to follow a gravity model formulation, a modiﬁcation well supported by communication devel opments over the last quarter of the twentieth century. And models in this genre link space and time by, for example, ﬁtting a logistic function to the S curve of diffusion, and then employing the latter to generate the number of adoptions for any given real time interval such as a single year. In summary, Hagerstrand’s model began as an offshoot of the cultural geography tradition that was dominant

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Diffusion

pre World War II, but by the 1980s it had morphed into a far more complex undertaking that both brought it into the broader realm of urban systems and regional devel opment and also fueled developments in that realm which led to its preeminence through the end of the twentieth century.

Diffusion Research since Hagerstrand: Third World Development as a Diffusion Process With its strong regional dimension, geography also car ried the diffusion paradigm into African, Asian, and Latin American settings. This took several different forms. Formal models of development can be divided into three phases that differ in their perspective: (1) stages of growth, modernization, and dual economy models which are aspatial, even though those dimensions are implicitly there; (2) core periphery and growth center frameworks which are explicitly spatial; and (3) dependency and Marxist frameworks which give more emphasis to forces that inhibit or block transformation. Central to these frameworks, albeit less so for (3), is the notion that Third World settings are comprised of traditional and modern sectors, and that development consists of, or necessitates, transforming traditional to modern – whether the focus is individuals, families, groups, economic sectors, infra structures, landscapes, regions, etc. Taken together, models of development divide Third World landscapes into dynamic, propulsive, modern cores, and traditional peripheries; development is represented by transforma tion and expansion of the modern; and this occurs through mechanisms such as information and capital ﬂows, human capital improvement, migration, learned behaviors or imitation effects, infrastructure expansion and upgrading, and the like. Spatially, these transforma tions are seen in terms of two categories – backwash effects, whereby the core is strengthened at the expense of the periphery or hinterland, and trickle down effects, whereby core growth expands outward and stimulates periphery or hinterland development. Geographers made relatively little contribution to the modernization, dual economy, and stages of growth frameworks but were highly involved in formulating core periphery, growth center, dependency, and Marxist approaches. Despite this difference, in that innovation diffusion was seen as integral to the social and economic change needed for transformation, geographers and many other social scientists became involved in this Third World project. One approach involved choosing an index of devel opment and tracing its spread across the landscape – in some sense an unwitting restoration of culture trait studies from the Sauer tradition. Such indices included

agricultural cooperatives, banking, communications in frastructure (telegraph, telephone), educational facilities, electricity, employment patterns across economic sectors, governance structures, medical services, police organi zations, postal agencies, transportation modes (roads, rail), urbanization, and other artifacts of a market economy. In this enterprise, then, diffusion becomes a segue way into tracking development, its extent and paths of spread from one place to another, and the spatial integration of a region or nation. While these studies discuss the factors underlying diffusion, they generally do not interrogate them in a manner that moves forward our understanding of diffusion as a process or, perhaps, even development. One example is a study of the expansion of the trans portation system in Ghana as an index of development. While excellent at the time, and highly cited to this day, in hindsight we see that the transportation network really represents the spread of the colonial system and, de pending on one’s perspective, may or may not represent real development. In large part, the aforementioned blind spot was a product of the 1960s and 1970s era, one that was shared by most social scientists, not simply geographers, and one wherein a Eurocentric, often mechanistic, view of de velopment was the norm, as noted by James Blaut. In this regard, it is relevant that a later study uses the co operative movement in Sierra Leone as an index, but on behalf of a conceptual move forward that better linked development and diffusion frameworks, not simply to trace the spatial characteristics of development. Similarly, later studies of frontier development in the United States, Ecuador, and Brazil led to signiﬁcant increases in our substantive understanding of the processes underlying this particular diffusion – ones that revolve around capital generation and control; migration, travel, and trade interactions; the role of particular economic sectors such as banking and wholesaling; and transportation linkages.

Diffusion Research since Hagerstrand: Efforts Related to the Conceptual Model Prior to the 1980s, geography research on diffusion and related topics, such as urban dynamics and Third World development, tended to focus on models and modeling techniques. While the contributions of these efforts were considerable, and certainly an important step forward, the increase in our substantive knowledge was, at best, modest. Hence, in 1975 the accepted conceptual model of innovation diffusion was still that of Hagerstrand, proposed 25 years earlier. Since then, however, there has been a dramatic shift toward substantive and conceptual concerns (Figure 1), a shift that is documented in this

Diffusion

section. The ﬁrst topic is empirical research which pointed out a number of inconsistencies between ob served reality and the Hagerstrand model. Attention then turns to work that addressed those inconsistencies and proposed conceptual alternatives and/or modiﬁcations to the diffusion paradigm. Finally, a brief look is given to technological diffusion which has become a major con cern since the mid 1980s. Inconsistencies between Observed Reality and the Hagerstrand Model Efforts related to the operational model of Hagerstrand, described earlier, led many to expect coalescence in the work of geographers studying diffusion and those studying the dynamic aspects of other phenomena. This occurred to some degree, but an unanticipated outcome was to point out inconsistencies between reality and the model(s). One strand of the coalescence is comprised of work that employs diffusion theory in another, usually a broader context such as growth pole and regional de velopment processes, spatial decision making, and urban system development. To illustrate, the diffusion of technical innovations and of entrepreneurial or other organizational entities was seen as an important element underlying differential growth rates among urban areas. This led to accounting for, and modeling, evolution of the urban landscape by drawing on the conclusion that hierarchy and neighborhood effects characterize the diffusion of entrepreneurial and other organizational entities; that information transfer is a critical element underlying these diffusions; and that models incorpo rating population and distance components, such as the gravity model, sufﬁce to account for the patterns of spread. But in weighing such a formulation against reality, it was concluded that the simplistic population and distance notions of traditional diffusion models were not adequate to account for the diffusion underpinnings of landscape evolution. Instead, looking toward the or ganizational decision making process, which often in volves turning to the unique institutional setting in which such decisions are made, was deemed to be necessary. A second strand of the coalescence in the work of diffusion researchers and that of geographers studying the dynamic aspects of other phenomena stems from the ‘time geography’ of Hagerstrand and research associates of the 1970s such as Tommy Carlstein. In that innova tions affect the use of resources in space and over time, some innovations serve to increase capacity and thus release a particular resource(s), while others require additional inputs of human time, settlement space, water, energy, and so on – resources which are available only in certain time–space locations. Accordingly, an ‘activity systems’ perspective was advocated wherein adoption is

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viewed in the context of time budgets and the social, economic, and personal resources characterizing the milieu or locale of the potential adopter(s) – and the innovation’s impact on, or congruence with, these re sources is a critical element in diffusion. From the time geography perspective, then, that a potential adopter knows about the innovation is a necessary but not suf ﬁcient condition; and diffusion research of the past was overly, or inordinately, narrow in its focus solely on communication processes related to adoption and single, rather than a composite of, innovations. Examples that illustrate the preceding point include the following. The introduction of formal schooling to an agrarian society is a ‘time demanding’ innovation that takes children away from their tasks in the village pro duction process, so that acceptance should be inhibited. However, if electric light, which is ‘time expanding’ in that it extends the day, also were introduced, the school would compete less with the scarce production time resource, and acceptance would be more likely. Alter natively, grinding mills, which replace manual grinding of grain into ﬂour, also are time expanding in that they allow completion of other tasks by freeing up daytime light. Also important is both the ‘synchronization’ and ‘synchorization’ of resource inputs related to an innov ation, that is, resource inputs must be available both ‘when’ and ‘where’ they are needed. Finally, some in novations, such as the motorcar, create ‘ﬂexibility’ in time and space, which increases their likely impact on time– space systems. A third strand of coalescence in the work of diffusion researchers and that of geographers studying dynamic aspects of other phenomena stemmed from empirical research on diffusion itself. This ﬁnds a number of situ ations for which Hagerstrand’s conceptual model is, at best, a partial explanation, and ultimately leads to con sidering factors other than information ﬂows. One question was whether interpersonal communications or transportation is more important in accounting for in novation diffusion at the regional scale in India; later, a Mexican example concluded that infrastructure is more important. Others, drawing on empirical examples from Canada, Britain, North America, Southern Asia, and Sweden, noted that the communications process in dif fusion is not spatially patterned in the way suggested by Hagerstrand’s conceptualization; also that the shopping trip behavior of potential adopters and the locational behavior and marketing strategies of propagators of the innovation are more important determinants of diffusion patterns at the regional scale. We even ﬁnd interrogation of spatial regularities in diffusion. It was noted, for ex ample, that ‘hierarchical ﬁltering’ or ‘trickle down’ could result from a market searching process in which an ex panding industry exploits market opportunities in a lar ger to smaller sequence, or when an activity faced with

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Diffusion

rising wage rates in larger cities moves to smaller ones in search of cheaper labor; and that ‘imitation’ effects could result from entrepreneurs in smaller centers mimicking the actions of those in larger cities. Together, these raised voices arrive at the conclusion that diffusion patterns are, in large part, better explained by entrepreneurial behavior rather than social inter action. This point is embodied in the market and infra structure perspective articulated by Lawrence Brown. Market and Infrastructure Perspective: Extending and Changing the Conceptual Model Hagerstrand’s formulation, and those of the many other social scientists studying diffusion from the 1950s on ward, took an atomistic view of society as individuals with free will, any of whom could adopt an innovation. Thus, the onus of adoption was on individuals, who were classiﬁed on a scale ranging from innovator to laggard, with the social meaning, or signiﬁcance, that each term implies. This is termed the adoption perspective, focus ing primarily on the demand side of innovation diffusion. The market and infrastructure perspective focuses on supply or availability of the innovation. Rather than assuming all have an equal opportunity to adopt, this is seen as purposely and egregiously unequal, so that adoption represents a choice within a constraint set; government, nonproﬁt, and entrepreneurial institutions establish these constraints; and attention is given to the process by which innovations and conditions for adoption are made available to individuals, households, or ﬁrms. In general, then, focus is on the access to innovations or the way in which innovations are differentially made avail able to various population segments, and focus shifts from the individual to the structure within which individuals operate, paralleling realignments in social science overall. Nevertheless, the market and infrastructure perspective is put forth as complementary, not contradictory, to the adoption perspective. Broad outlines of diffusion are shaped by where (and to whom) innovations are (made) available, but within those outlines, more detailed vari ation in diffusion patterns reﬂects adoption behavior (Figure 2). Central elements of this perspective include the propagator of the innovation, the entity behind its dif fusion; diffusion agencies (outlets) through which in novation is distributed to the population at large; and diffusion strategy, which is designed to encourage adoption and includes decisions on agency location, pricing, advertising, population segments targeted by promotional efforts, etc. Hence, the locations and tem poral sequencing of diffusion agencies determine where and when an innovation will be available and provide the general outline of the diffusion pattern. Diffusion strat egy further deﬁnes the pattern by creating different levels

of access depending on a potential adopter’s economic, locational, demographic, and social characteristics. The ﬁnal pattern occurs via adoption behavior, the last stage of the process. Interacting with these factors are infra structures such as transportation and utility networks that may be an artifact of diffusion strategy, but more generally are independent of the innovation propagator and diffusion agencies. Further, in so far as such infra structures facilitate diffusion, they are generically seen in their own right as enabling innovations. Hence, the market and infrastructure perspective emphasizes the marketing aspects of diffusion, especially strategies for market penetration which have a distinct spatial dimension. Whether the propagator is proﬁt or nonproﬁt motivated, broad acceptance is a common goal, and a strategy will be designed to accomplish this, that is, to best penetrate the market. This also is true whether propagation involves centralized decision making, de centralized decision making with a coordinating prop agator, or decentralized decision making without a coordinating propagator, although such distinctions do affect procedures by which diffusion occurs. Similarly, diffusion agencies may be represented by salespeople or agricultural extension agents, but either should be guided by the marketing strategy and, accordingly, selective decisions should be made regarding which potential adopters will be contacted or cultivated, which not, and to what degree. In this context, then, that Iowa was the ﬁrst state to have widespread adoption of hybrid corn in the 1930s is not necessarily because Iowans were more innovative; rather, they were targeted by a combination of agricultural extension agents(cies), seed companies, im plement dealers, and other entities comprising the agri cultural industrial complex of the time. Considering the role of infrastructure, broadcast tele vision stations were needed before television sets dif fused. Today, cable, satellite, and broadband services vary enormously from place to place, affecting innovation availability, an occurrence acknowledged by terms such as ‘digital divide’. Enhanced accessibility through com munication or transportation improvements increases the market areas of diffusion agencies, and renders innov ations more attainable by potential adopters – an extreme example is e shopping in the twenty ﬁrst century. Con cerning enabling innovations, irrigation infrastructure is generally critical to the success of high yielding variety seeds in agriculture; expansion of the transportation system in Ghana, discussed earlier, can be seen in the same light. Finally, the market and infrastructure framework calls into question empirical regularities such as the hierarchy and neighborhood effects because, from a marketing perspective, relevant factors are often not arranged in that manner. The diffusion of cable television in Ohio, for example, occurred initially in small, more remote places

Diffusion

where broadcast signals were weak or nonexistent, be cause cable was a means of enhancing television recep tion and, thus, sales by appliance stores. Technological Diffusion Agricultural technology has been a major focus of dif fusion studies. Beginning in the 1930s, and accelerating thereafter, rural sociologists and agricultural economists, working through agricultural experiment stations and extension agents, carried out an enormous number of studies focused on farm innovations such as hybrid corn, fertilizers, silage methods, high yielding varieties, and the like. Until recent industrial agriculture, the adopting unit was the farm household, thus joining this effort with diffusion research concerned with consumer innovations. However, manufacturing ﬁrms that are well beyond household size, also adopt technological innovations, as do service and retail ﬁrms. This has been studied ex tensively, but rarely joined with the body of diffusion research described previously. Rather than emphasizing communications, studies of ﬁrm adoption gave more attention to characteristics of the ﬁrm and innovation itself. Also signiﬁcant is the fact that innovation replaces an older technology with a newer one, highlighting comparative costs, beneﬁts, and risks; and factors such as relative proﬁtability, investment, sunk costs, and the like. There also is greater emphasis on innovation as a continuous process; one that might be tailormade for a particular ﬁrm or ﬁrm setting, rather than as a singular, unchanging phenomenon; and one that involves more intimate and ongoing relationships be tween the innovation supplier and user. Issues such as competition among ﬁrms and relative factor prices, favoring one technology over another, also play a role. As these factors indicate, economic perspectives have been important to investigating the diffusion of techno logical innovations among ﬁrms. But spatial consider ations enter in two ways. First, there was a tendency to assume that larger ﬁrms in larger urban agglomerations are earlier adopters, giving rise to a self reinforcing, ‘cumulative and circular causation’, hierarchy effect pattern of diffusion. Alternatively, other research pointed out that earlier adopters are just as likely to be in less than the largest size urban areas, which might correlate with aggressiveness and innovativeness of management. It also was noted that there might be a spatial order to innovative change, such that newer economic regions are favored, leading to regional rotation or spatial succession; Silicon Valley provides an example. The second way spatial considerations come into play is that the study of technological innovation has become closely intertwined with understanding regional development and regional economic change, and this shift emphasizes an entirely different set of factors such as regional production

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complexes, entrepreneurship, research and development infrastructures, government policy, agglomeration econ omies, and the like. Hence, the questions may not be inherently geographic in terms of process, but very geographic in outcome.

Diffusion Research in Geography as a Mirror of the Discipline That the shifting focus in diffusion research coincides with broader trends in the discipline has been noted several times in this entry. For example, the Hagerstrand model was an important medium of the quantitative revolution, and the subsequent focus on the conceptual model of diffusion coincided with a disciplinary shift toward a concern with substantive reality, relevance, and societal utility. These shifts and their manifestation in day to day research are the concern of this section. To elaborate the point, it is useful to employ Kuhn’s view of paradigms and their importance to normal sci ence. These foster a coherent tradition of scientiﬁc re search by suggesting which experiments or intellectual exercises are worth performing, by directing research toward given goals, and by providing both a set of rules or standards for scientiﬁc practice and a consensus that eliminates the unproductive work of dealing with con troversy about the legitimacy of a paradigm. But of course, the existence of a paradigm also implies barriers to the development of alternative paradigms which may be seen as illegitimate, irrelevant, or metaphysical; as the concern of another discipline; or as too problematic to be worth one’s time. A paradigm might also insulate the community from socially important problems that are not reducible to the puzzle form because they cannot be stated in terms of the usual concepts and tools. How, then, does change occur in science? The paradigm in corporates a mechanism for its own replacement or al teration by providing expectations. Challenge occurs when these are not borne out by research, and as the anomalous ﬁndings, or anomalies, multiply, a new para digm is created, often one in which the anomalous be comes the expected. In this context, the quantitative revolution, embracing the tenets of logical positivisms, may be seen to represent a paradigm about research procedures which dictated matters pertaining to research tools, the questions asked, and substantiation required. On a lesser scale, the Hagerstrand model may be seen to represent a paradigm pertaining to a segment of substantive reality. The Sauer School also embraced a paradigm concerning the ques tions asked, methods used, and conceptualization being addressed. To illustrate such shifts, Table 1 compares research epitomizing the Sauer tradition, the transition from that

182 Table 1

Diffusion

A comparison of the major paradigms of diffusion research in geography Sauer tradition of diffusion

Transition (Hagerstrand 1952)

Hagerstrand tradition of diffusion research (Hagerstrand 1953, 1967)

Market and infrastructure perspective on innovation diffusion and adoption (Brown 1981)

Type of situation studied

Ancient; e.g., the grid-pattern town, domestication and spread of crops and animals, pottery styles, language, architecture

Contemporary; e.g., the automobile, radio, technical and social innovations

Contemporary; e.g., state-subsidized pastures, bovine tuberculosis vaccine, soil mapping, postalchecking services, automobile, telephone

Contemporary; e.g., ice cream retailing, credit cards, cable television, family planning, agricultural practices in the US, agricultural products in Mexico and Kenya, Third World development

Research methods employed

Qualitative analysis of archaeological data, archival documents, cartography, ﬁeld work central to the endeavor

Cartography, graphs

Cartography, graphs, statistical analysis, mathematical modeling, Monte Carlo simulation

Qualitative analysis via case studies, cartography, statistical analysis, economic analysis, mathematical modeling

Type and generality of ﬁndings

Findings pertain to both diffusion pattern and diffusion process, but applied only to the phenomena being considered

Findings pertain to diffusion pattern only, but seen to apply in general to innovation diffusion in urban systems

Findings pertain to both diffusion pattern and process; seen to apply in general to innovation diffusion at all spatial scales

Findings pertain to both diffusion pattern and process; seen to apply in general to innovation diffusion at all spatial scales

Dominant process posited

None, but motivated by process of cultural change in society as either simultaneous invention or stages of evolution vs. diffusion, crossfertilization, and intermixing

None

Communications

Market and infrastructure development, expansion, penetration

to the Hagerstrand tradition, the Hagerstrand tradition itself, and the market and infrastructure perspective. The critical change, illustrative of paradigm shift on the substantive level, is in the dominant process posited, discussed in earlier sections of this article. But changes representative of the methodological shift of the discipline also have occurred, and are manifest in the research methods employed and the type and generality of ﬁndings. There also are shifts in the type of situation studied.

Without Kuhn’s view of normal science, and with the beneﬁt of hindsight, the extensive work embracing the Hagerstrand model might be deemed myopic and ill directed. But the effort seems eminently reasonable when viewed as an elaboration of the dominant paradigm, which required the discovery of an anomaly, between that model and substantive reality, before the research dir ection could be altered. One example of recognizing the anomaly is trying to apply Hagerstrand’s conceptual model to diffusion of

Diffusion

television sets at a regional scale. In that context, it was recognized that there needed to be a consideration of the shopping trip behavior of potential adopters and distri bution policies of propagators since it was necessary to know whether the market utilized by households was one chosen as a distribution point by the propagator – elements not a part of Hagerstrand’s model. Sometime later, in examining spread of the artiﬁcial insemination of cattle, it was observed that the speed of information transfer, the central element of Hagerstrand’s model, did not coincide with the spatial extent of the diffusion wave. Nevertheless, it was at least 6 years after the obser vation of anomaly that the market and infrastructure perspective came to be accepted. In Kuhn’s terms, this period would represent the extended exploration of anomaly step of the paradigm shift process, and over coming resistance to change. However, this period also corresponded with a broader shift in disciplinary focus from the quantitative revolution to a concern with rele vance, societal utility, and substantive reality. Thus, the market and infrastructure model can be seen to play a role in the focus of the discipline in the late 1970s/early 1980s, just as the Hagerstrand model was a medium of the quantitative revolution. Arguably in fact, such congruence was a prerequisite to the wide spread acceptance of either model; that is, that the ex tensive elaboration of the market and infrastructure paradigm would not have occurred without the con comitant shift in disciplinary focus. Reﬂecting a further shift in disciplinary focus, Derek Gregory provides a highly nuanced essay that begins with components of Hagerstrand’s diffusion model, re phrases the usual interpretation, and uses it as a launch pad to advocate a broader and deeper understanding of social processes, including the role of inequality, class, and the social milieu within which adoption/diffusion occurs. This leads to extensive elaboration on Hager strand’s time geography, described above, and provides a basis, in Gregory’s view, for contemporary social theory. More recently, under another shift in disciplinary focus, Mei Po Kwan and Harvey Miller have taken the time geography concept into the realm of contemporary techniques by developing methods for GIS based geo computation and 3D geovisualizations based on Hager strand’s time–space prism idea. Another consideration is illustrated by the shift from the cultural geography paradigm of diffusion to that of Hagerstrand. As noted, this had less to do with the study of innovation adoption per se than with advent of the quantitative revolution, but interestingly, serendipity also played a role. In March through June 1959, Hagerstrand spent an academic term at the University of Washington with William Garrison and his students, William Bunge, Michael Dacey, Arthur Getis, Duane Marble, Richard Morrill, John Nystuen, and Waldo Tobler, among others.

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These were economic and urban geographers who would later be largely responsible for the quantitative revo lution. In this context, one might speculate what would have happened to diffusion research, and the revolution, had Hagerstrand instead visited Berkeley, the seat of cultural geography and largely substantively oriented diffusion research. Finally, in this section and throughout this article there has been a tendency to refer to various models or perspectives as though they were discontinuous and mutually exclusive of one another, the earlier being re placed by the latter. While this is convenient for ex pository purposes, in reality the process of change is more one wherein there is considerable overlap between the new and the current. See also: Anthropology and Human Geography; Berkeley School; Berry, B.; Bobek, H.; Chicago School; CorePeriphery Models; Dependency; Development I; Development II; Disease Diffusion; Distance; Economic Geography, Quantitative; Economics and Human Geography; Epidemiological Transition; Garrison, W.; Hagerstrand, T.; Industrialization; Innovation; Local Economic Development; Modernization Theory; Networks; Quantitative Revolution; Regional Development Theory; Regional Planning and Development Theories; Retail Geographies; Sauer, C.; Simulation; Spatial Expansion Method; Systems Theory; Technological Change; Technology and Regional Development; Telecommunications; Third World.

Further Reading Blaut, J. M. (1993). The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: Guilford. Brown, L. A. (1981). Innovation Diffusion: A New Perspective. New York: Methuen. Brown, L. A. (1991). Place, Migration, and Development in the Third World, ch. 2. London: Routledge. Brown, L. A. (1999). Change, continuity, and the pursuit of geographic understanding, Presidential Address. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89, 1 25. Carlstein, T., Parkes, D. and Thrift, N. (eds.) (1978). Timing Space and Spacing Time, volume 1: Making Sense of Time, volume 2: Human Activity and Time Geography, volume 3: Time and Regional Dynamics. London: Edward Arnold. Gregory, D. (1985). Suspended animation of the stasis of diffusion theory. In Gregory, D. & Urry, J. (eds.) Social Relations and Spatial Structures, pp 296 336. London: Macmillan. Hagerstrand, T. (1952). Lund Studies in Geography; The Propagation of Innovation Waves. Lund: Gleerup. Hagerstrand, T. (1967). Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (translation into English of Innovationsforloppet ur Korologisk Synpunkt. Lund: Gleerup). Haggett, P. (1965). Locational Analysis in Human Geography. London: Edward Arnold. Haggett, P., Cliff, A. D. and Frey, A. (1977). Locational Analysis in Human Geography (2nd edn.). London: Edward Arnold. Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The Structure of Scientiﬁc Revolutions (3rd edn.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kwan, M. P. (2002). Methods, models, and GIS: Feminist visualization: Re envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geographic research.

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Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92, 645 661. Malecki, E. J. (1997). Technology and Economic Development: The Dynamics of Local, Regional, and National Competitiveness (2nd edn.). Essex: Longman Scientiﬁc. Miller, H. J. (2005). A measurement theory for time geography. Geographical Analysis 37, 17 45.

Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th edn.). New York: Free Press. Sauer, C. O. (1952). Agricultural Origins and Dispersals. New York: National Geographic Society. Sauer, C. O. (1969). Agricultural Origins and Dispersals; The Domestication of Animals and Foodstuffs. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Digital Data, Historical Geography and H. Southall, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Digital Imaging It is the creation of a digital surrogate via scanning or digital photography. Dublin Core It is the best-known metadata standard in the cultural heritage ﬁeld, but limited because it is built around a minimal subset of content, linking cataloging standards used in the libraries, museums, and archives sectors. Extensible Markup Language (XML) It is a text format for deﬁning formal representations of information, such as Dublin Core or TEI. Gazetteer Service A system that receives place name enquiries over the Internet and sends back locations and other information. Metadata It is data about data. Traditionally, it is a library catalog and other ﬁnding aids, today usually computerized and represented as XML. Ontology It is a formal representation of a set of concepts and their relationships. It can be used to deﬁne some aspects of localities without coordinate data. Optical Character Recognition It is the processing of a digital image of text to create editable and searchable text. Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) It is an XML-based standard for capturing the meaning as well as the structure of text. Thesaurus It is a hierarchic list of words identifying preferred and alternate terms, that is, synonyms. A gazetteer can be represented as a thesaurus. Vectorizing It is the creation of a mathematical representation of lines on a map, from either a digital image or, using a digitization table, directly from a paper map.

Digitization Before discussing these potentials, three distinct mean ings of digitization of historical sources must be under stood: (1) To most librarians and archivists, and probably to the generality of historians, digitization means digital imaging, that is, making pictures of documents. (2) In geographical information systems (GIS), especially as applied in human geography, digitization usually means recording the contents of maps as sequences of coordinates representing points, lines, and polygons. This work is more precisely described as vectorization. (3) Transcription re creates sequences of characters and

numbers inside a computer, either by manual re typing or using optical character recognition technology. Digital imaging is a much cheaper process than transcribing text or vectorizing maps, but the resulting ﬁles are much larger, and substantial collections only became practical in the 1990s as computer storage prices fell: maps should usually be scanned in full color at a resolution of 400 dots per inch (d.p.i.), or 300 d.p.i. as a minimum, resulting in ﬁles of 250 Mb upward per sheet. Digital photography is far less likely to damage historical documents than scanning, as it involves neither intense light nor physical contact between the document and the imaging equipment. However, it is much harder to avoid distortion, and even the largest digital cameras struggle to achieve the necessary resolution for large maps. In practice, there may have to be a trade off between pre serving the information in a document, via digitization, and preserving the document itself. Digitization projects led by librarians and archivists generally create collections of digital images organized like the original collection of documents or books, held in a content management system which is generally a nonhierarchic database holding the images and associated metadata. ‘Preservation metadata’ records the type of image, the size, the color depth, etc.; the GIF and JPEG formats are most widely used for dissemination, but compression leads to some loss of information and the TIFF format is generally preferred for archiving. ‘De scriptive metadata’ enables users to discover and identify digital resources. The best known descriptive standard, the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, was designed to allow integration of catalogs from libraries, museums, and archives. Its 15 elements include ‘coverage’, deﬁned as ‘‘the spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant.’’ However, most Dublin Core implementations are limited to the standard elements found in library catalogs: author, title, date, and place of publication, etc. Most digital collections of historical maps therefore consist of images of the separate sheets, the only clearly identiﬁed item of geographical information being the place of publication, with the actual area covered pos sibly being identiﬁed somehow within the title. This is still far more detailed than the cataloging of books simply because there is a catalog entry for each ‘page’, that is, map sheet. Edinburgh University’s Geo X Walk project showed that it was possible to ﬁnd maps of, for example, ‘Kent’, by accessing standard online library catalogs using

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the Z39.50 protocol but employing a central knowl edgebase which ‘knew’ that, say, ‘Dover’ and ‘Maidstone’ were the names of settlements within ‘Kent’.

Gazetteers Few historical documents contain lists of geographical coordinates; even historical gazetteers more usually give relative locations: ‘‘Colwall, par. and vil. with ry. sta., SE. Herefordshire, 312 miles NE. of Ledbury’’; ‘‘Ledbury, market town and par. y, Herefordshire, y 120 miles NW. of London’’ (examples from Bartholomew’s Gazetteer of the British Isles, 1887). The ﬁrst priority in making more effective geographical use of digitized historical docu ments is not adding coordinate data but exploiting the abundant geographical names they and associated meta data contain. The Dublin Core standard comments on the ‘coverage’ element: ‘‘Spatial topic may be a named place or a location speciﬁed by its geographic coordinates. y A jurisdiction may be a named administrative entity or a geographic place to which the resource applies. Recom mended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the Thesaurus of Geographic Names. Where appro priate, named places y can be used in preference to numeric identiﬁers such as sets of coordinates.’’ The most basic controlled place name vocabulary would be simply and literally a list of names, deﬁning which strings of characters are allowed in the coverage element of a metadata record, or allowing text analysis programs to identify geographical references within text. In practice, all such lists are also gazetteers and provide some form of locational information. This may be abso lute locations such as latitude and longitude; relative locations like those above; or hierarchical locations such as ‘in Herefordshire’. This is because geographical names are constantly re used across the Earth’s surface, so some additional information is needed to disambiguate par ticular places: Worcester, England, versus Worcester, Massachusetts. In this sense, some of the earliest docu ments of interest to geographers can serve as gazetteers: medieval taxation lists generally order parishes within counties, while a major source for the China Historical GIS are the administrative gazetteers from the Han dynasty (206 BCE–CE 220) onward. Recent years have seen extensive research into architectures for digital gazetteers, although involving few geographers. The Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), developed by the Getty Information Institute and referenced by the Dublin Core standard, is organized primarily as a thesaurus: Stoke ‘on’ Trent should be used instead of Stoke ‘upon’ Trent; ‘Stoke on Trent’ is within the ‘United Kingdom’ which is within ‘Europe’. The TGN includes a single point coordinate using latitude and longitude for each entry – even the United Kingdom – but does no mapping.

The Encoded Archival Context (EAC) initiative, sponsored by the Research Libraries Group, has created a standard which is even more purely textual, making no provision for coordinates at all. It is mentioned here because it is the emerging standard for ‘archival name authorities’, including geographical names. As previously discussed, most cataloging systems in libraries and mu seums do not systematically record locations, but some archives do index by place. More speciﬁcally, British local record ofﬁces generally index documents by the ‘ancient parish’ of origin. This requires a source which lists what parishes existed, each with an agreed spelling of its name. ‘Ancient parishes’ are not loosely deﬁned ‘places’ but legally deﬁned administrative units, and standards such as EAC treat such units as corporate bodies, like companies; but geographers would note that unlike companies, their boundaries are a fundamental part of their legal deﬁn ition and without boundary information, documents such as the deeds of a house cannot easily be assigned to the appropriate parish. Two other standards for digital gazetteers are more geographical in their approach. The Open Geospatial Consortium’s ‘gazetteer service proﬁle’ is an extension to their ‘web feature service’ standard, enabling a collection of geographical features to be searched by name, and hold information on variant names. The Alexandria Digital Library’s (ADL) family of gazetteer standards deﬁnes the content of digital gazetteers, the types of feature they can contain, and a protocol by which networks of gazetteer servers can be queried over the Internet. Each entry in a minimal ADL compliant gazetteer has four elements: a unique identiﬁer; a name, which is not necessarily unique; a ‘feature type’, such as ‘fortiﬁcations’ or ‘mountains’; and a locational ‘footprint’, which can be a point coordinate, a bounding box, or a full boundary polygon. However, optional extensions to the ADL gazetteer content stand ard allow an entry to include detailed information on changing names, identifying names in different languages, and providing citations; information on complex hier archies of relationships between geographical entities; multiple polygons tracking changes over time, with dates of varying precision. Even a minimal ADL entry may demand too much of historical sources. A source may simply tell us that some geographical feature was ‘in Herefordshire’, although one approach is simply to associate a bounding box for Herefordshire with the feature. Other ‘geographical fea tures’ referenced in historical sources may not necessarily exist; for example, and in a British context, should we include ‘Camelot’ and ‘Avalon’ in a gazetteer? The ADL standard also requires that every geographical feature be assigned a feature type, but this is to deny the concept of a ‘place’. The particular feature type thesaurus developed by the ADL project is heavily inﬂuenced by the set of features identiﬁed on United States topographic maps,

Digital Data, Historical Geography and

and terms like ‘correctional facilities’ and ‘badlands’ are not widely used elsewhere. The audience for place name based online resources is at least as great as that for the statistical mapping which has preoccupied most historical geographers focused on digital technology. Even researchers studying nineteenth century sources will encounter many place names, notably for parts of towns, which have since gone out of use; and researchers studying earlier periods have also to deal with large numbers of names which differ substantially from their modern form; for example, Celia Fiennes writing in the early eighteenth century refers to both Norwich in Norfolk and Northwich in Cheshire as ‘Norwitch’. Further, archivists and other catalogers need reliable name authorities if records are to be searchable by locality, and very large numbers of genealogists have speciﬁc requirements of gazetteers.

Geo-Referencing Some would describe the products of digitizing historical documents as ‘digital surrogates’, but the digital version of the document should include all the information in the original while opening up new potentials. For the geog rapher, the most important of these is geo referencing: directly associating parts of the document with the real world locations they refer to. The most obvious appli cation is to maps, but the term has rather different meanings with statistical information and text. The starting point is a digitized map, most obviously an image created by scanning but it could be the result of tracing a paper map using vector graphics software such as Adobe Illustrator, which understands only the ‘local coordinates’ of a piece of paper. Conversely, geo referencing is only possible within software which under stands real world coordinates like latitude and longitude. The precise method depends on the software, but some literally involve overlaying the map to be geo referenced, rendered semitransparent, over a map that is already geo referenced, aligning matching features in the two maps. If the map that is already geo referenced is a modern map, its publisher may well be able to claim a copyright in the geo referenced historical map. Even if the historical map is published by the same national mapping agency as the modern map, it should not be assumed that they use the same map projection. For example, Britain’s Ordnance Survey originally used the Cassini projection, and established a different prime meridian for each county. Only in 1931 did they begin to use the Transverse Mercator projection used in modern British maps. However, experiments with geo referencing First Series Ordnance Survey one inch maps from the mid nineteenth century showed that basic inaccuracies in the surveying were a larger problem than technical

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differences between map projections. Historical maps from before the nineteenth century are generally so topographically inaccurate that geo referencing them has little meaning, and researchers need to manually transfer speciﬁc features from them onto a more recent map, and geo reference that. This approach was used, for example, to construct an atlas of London in the 1690s, combining contemporary street maps with the earliest large scale Ordnance Survey maps from the nineteenth century. The majority of historical documents are not maps, and ‘geo referencing’ them means identifying and giving meaning to the geographical names they contain. Stat istical reports are considered separately because they have been the focus of intensive study, especially by historical demographers working with censuses and vital registration data, and because such statistics almost always relate not to a point or vague ‘place’, but to a clearly delineated area and usually to an administrative area, such as a parish or a county. Census reports consist mainly of tables with se quences of geographical names down the left hand side; but while these names may have some immediate mean ing, as the names of modern towns or localities, these may well mislead. For example, English administrative geog raphy before 1974 featured units called ‘rural districts’ which were usually named after market towns but did not contain those towns, only the surrounding rural area. An extreme example is Portage County, Wisconsin, which was originally created in 1836 around Portage City in the south of the state, in the mid 1840s stretched all the way north to the Michigan border, and is now in the middle of the state based on Stevens Point. In practice, geo referencing historical statistics means constructing a historical GIS, as discussed below, or at very least linking the data to a systematic record of what units existed, that is, a kind of authority list. What needs to be noted here is that establishing the boundaries of the reporting units used in a particular set of statistics may be a major project, even without any attempt to construct a GIS. For example, the ﬁrst British census to clearly document its reporting geography was that for 1971. The records of early American county boundaries take the form of textual descriptions of boundary lines held in county courthouses, while our knowledge of the ancient parish boundaries of England has had to be pieced together mainly from tithe and enclosure maps of indi vidual parishes. Geo referencing text means identifying geographical names within digitized texts, and if possible marking them up so as to associate them with other information about the same places. The ﬁrst problem has been addressed as a branch of computational linguistics, the main conclusion being that holding a large body of information on what geographical names exist is more important than de veloping especially sophisticated algorithms. Even then, the complexities of human use of language may defeat the

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smartest computer systems. Consider this sentence from Boswell’s account of his tour of the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson: ‘‘Simpson said, he would willingly go for Col, if young Col or his servant would undertake to pilot us to a harbour’’; the ﬁrst reference to ‘Col’ refers to an island, and the second to a person, the laird of that island. The best developed system for marking up geo graphical names within texts has been developed by the Text Encoding Initiative, although most projects which have implemented the TEI guidelines have not imple mented the section relating to geographical names; the most striking exception is the Perseus Project. The guidelines specify a place name tag, the simplest form of which is: oplaceName > Norwitcho=placeName4

However, additional attributes can be added to the tag to standardize spelling, and to disambiguate: oplaceName reg ¼ Tidenham cnty ¼ Gloucestershire4 TudenamoplaceName >

Research in this area is poorly developed, and in particular the current TEI guidelines make no attempt to capture the ‘role’ of geographical names within text. This example actually appears in the guidelines, but the fact that ‘Babylon’ appears as a metaphor is ignored. In this case, it refers to New York but other writers from the same period use exactly the same soubriquet for London: After spending some time in our oplaceName key ¼ NY14 modern. oplaceName key ¼ BA14 Babylon o/placeName4 oplaceName key ¼ NY14 New York o/place Name4, I have proceeded to the oplaceName key ¼ PH14 City of Brotherly Love o/placeName4

Historical GIS: Principles This article has explained how historical documents in cluding maps can be digitized, and how such digitized documents can be enhanced to link them to the real world and to other digital information. GIS technology enables a wide range of historical information to be brought together into a single system, and creates a po tential for broad reconstructions of historical environ ments. However, GIS systems are not the only way of combining historical sources, and existing commercial GIS solutions impose undesirable limitations on how we work with those sources. It has already been noted that most library led digitization projects hold their images in content man agement systems which are essentially ﬂat ﬁle databases, but designed to hold extensive descriptive and

preservation metadata. Here there is no attempt to re construct past landscapes, and digital map libraries held in this form tend to emphasize the history of cartography, not the territory being mapped. However, much geo graphical research is concerned as much with people as with places, and prosopographical databases, usually constructed using relational database software, may be more useful to many historical geographers than GIS. Mainstream commercial GIS software, and especially ArcGIS and MapInfo, appear well suited to mapping historical census data and similar statistics, and the problems ﬁnding suitable base maps to be digitized have already been discussed. The most obvious problem is that GIS packages provide much weaker support for re cording dates than do conventional database programs. One approach is to construct separate coverages for each date, which works well for ten yearly censuses but less well with vital registration or data in economic distress: the data may well be available quarterly or monthly, so if boundaries change constantly a very large set of very slightly different coverages need to be created and managed. For this reason, the original Great Britain Historical GIS, discussed below, instead constructed a database of boundary line segments, or ‘arcs’, and used a large body of custom code to manipulate dates and as semble boundary polygons valid for speciﬁc days. An alternative view is that the largest problem facing historical GIS speciﬁcally is not including a time di mension, but the large uncertainties surrounding histor ical information, and the consequent need to document sources in great detail. In particular, the whole approach of mainstream GIS assumes that locations are known with at least as much certainty as all other information, so that a set of geographical objects – points, lines, and polygons – become the central framework to which all other knowledge is added as attributes. Conversely, with historical sources we often know geographical names with far greater certainty than we ‘know’ the associated locations: locations may be conceptually problematic, as with Camelot and Avalon; real but unknowable, as with now defunct villages appearing in a medieval tax listing; known only approximately because the only maps are inaccurate; or simply known only approximately because the very expensive task of researching and computerizing accurate historical boundaries is yet to be funded. The cost of historical GIS projects is rarely discussed other than in the context of the failure of particular funding bodies to support particular projects. However, projects such as those discussed in the ﬁnal section generally cost more than academic projects working with modern GIS data, because the latter generally work with digital data created elsewhere, by national mapping or space agencies. Further funding can possibly be obtained if projects aim to serve wider nonacademic audiences, but they impose new requirements. The needs of archivists

Digital Data, Historical Geography and

and the generality of local and family historians certainly require much greater attention to geographical names, and it is notable that the websites of some major histor ical GIS projects simply cannot be searched by place name. The cost becomes still greater if a wider range of geographical information is included. One obvious ex tension beyond administrative boundaries is the inclusion of transport routes, but if the system is designed to trace changing geography over time it needs to record the detailed process of route construction and, sometimes, closure. This is possible for railway systems, although very extensive archival research may be required, and is arguably impossible for roads. The need for such extensions should be very carefully assessed, as building complex historical GIS systems often becomes a goal in itself, like assembling an evermore complex model railway. This is visibly a problem with urban historical GIS projects, which generally take one town and trace its development over time: ideally, such a system needs to record each building, in three dimensions, as the built form evolves, together with roads, railways, and so on. An obvious problem with a GIS which records only one type of feature, be it administrative boundaries or railway lines, is that it is hard for users to orient them selves: the map lacks context. Adding additional layers of features is almost always possible but very expensive. However, an alternative approach is much cheaper and at least as effective. Methods for geo referencing scanned images of historical maps have already been discussed. The Great Britain Historical GIS has created multiple sets of such one inch to one mile maps of Great Britain, for different dates, plus broadly comparable less detailed maps for the same dates and for the rest of Europe. The resulting collection of scanned maps is effectively a his torical GIS in its own right, allowing users to zoom in and out to see different amounts of detail, and to change date. It is then used to provide underlays beneath stat istical mapping, which are sufﬁciently transparent for town names, railway lines, and so on from the scanned maps to show through. The GIS ﬁeld has generally developed around pro prietary software, notably ArcGIS and MapInfo, and the ﬁle formats they deﬁne. This tends to make GIS a closed environment, not interacting with other digital content. However, the Open Geospatial Consortium has de veloped a suite of standards allowing web based col laboration. The scanned map server developed by the GBH GIS, described above, supports the OGC Web Map Server standard, enabling other websites to use the server as a source of base maps. More advanced OGC standards, especially those of web feature servers, are yet to be implemented by historical projects, but would provide polygon base maps and support place name enquiries.

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Historical GIS: National Systems Even excluding archaeological GIS, there are many dif ferent kinds of GIS that have been constructed to support historical research, or to aid in the presentation of past environments. However, technical developments have been led by systems tracing the development of whole countries, generally focused on presenting historical census data. The ﬁrst such projects were in the United States. The Atlas of Historical County Boundaries began in the late 1970s as a collaboration between the University of Wisconsin’s Automated Cartography Laboratory and Chicago’s Newberry Library, but technical difﬁculties led to the project at the Newberry Library reverting to traditional methods. The Great American History Machine, despite its name very much a GIS, was developed independently by David Miller and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University. Again pre dating commercial GIS software, it was built on top of the Andrew Toolkit, a pioneering windowing system. This severely limited the hardware it would run on, and a Microsoft Windows version was developed but never released. Much more recently, the US National Historical GIS project at the University of Minnesota has constructed sets of GIS coverages at census tract level and assembled and documented all existing computerized transcriptions of historical aggre gate census data. European projects have developed largely independ ently. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, national GIS systems were constructed for Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Sweden. They were generally based on specially programmed systems, including the time dimension by various methods. More recently, they have been converted to work with commercial GIS software. Conversely, the Great Britain Historical GIS began somewhat later and worked with Arc GIS, but has moved to a different architecture based on ontologies implemented within an object relational database. De velopments outside North America and Europe have been generally more limited because of cost and more limited sources. However, the China Historical GIS covers a much longer time span than any European system. See also: Digital Earth; GIS and Cartography; GIS and Society; GIScience and Systems; Spatial Ontologies.

Further Reading Berman, M. L. (2005). Boundaries or networks in historical GIS: Concepts of measuring space and administrative geography in Chinese history. Historical Geography 33, 118 133. Besser, H. (2003). Introduction to Imaging (revised edn.). Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute. Fitch, C. A. and Ruggles, S. (2003). Building the national historical geographic information system. Historical Methods 36, 41 51.

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Goerke, M. (ed.) (1994). Coordinates for Historical Maps. Gottingen: Max Planck Institut fur Geschichte. Gregory, I. N. (2003). A Place in History: A Guide to Using GIS in Historical Research. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Gregory, I. N. and Southall, H. R. (1998). Putting the past in its place: The Great Britain Historical GIS. In Carver, S. (ed.) Innovations in GIS 5, pp 210 221. London: Taylor and Francis. Hill, L. L. and Janee, G. (2004). The Alexandria Digital Library Project: Metadata development and use. In Hillmann, D. I. & Westbrooks, E. L. (eds.) Metadata in Practice, pp 117 138. Chicago: American Library Association. Knowles, A. K. (ed.) (2002). Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History. Redlands: ESRI Press. Knowles, A. K. (ed.) (2008). Planing Histroy: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS and Changing Historical Scholarship. Redlands: ESRI Press. Miller, D. and Modell, J. (1988). Teaching United States history with the Great American History Machine. Historical Methods 21, 121 134. Smith, D. M., Crane, G. and Rydberg Cox, J. (2000). The Perseus Project: A digital library for the humanities. Literary and Linguistic Computing 15, 15 25. Southall, H. R. (2008). Visualization, data sharing and metadata. In Dodge, M., McDerby, M. & Turner, M. (eds.) Geographical Visualization: Concepts, Tools and Applications, pp 259 275. Chichester: Wiley.

Relevant Websites http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk A Vision of Britain through Time (GB Historical GIS).

http://www.alexandria.ucsb.edu/gazetteer Alexandria Digital Library Gazetteer Development. http://www.newberry.org Atlas of Historical County Boundaries (US). http://www.fas.harvard.edu China Historical GIS. http://www.davidrumsey.com David Rumsey Map Collection. http://dublincore.org Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. http://www.ecai.org Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. http://www.hgis germany.de HGIS Germany. http://www.hgis.org.uk Historical GIS Research Network. http://www.opengeospatial.org Open Geospatial Consortium. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu Perseus Project. http://www.tei c.org Text Encoding Initiative. www.getty.edu/research/conducting research/vocabularies/tgn Thesaurus of Geographical Names. http://www.nhgis.org US National Historical GIS.

Digital Divide T. Unwin, University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK G. de Bastion, Deutsche Gesellschaft fu¨r Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Eschborn, Germany & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Broadband Broadband is a high data-transmission rate Internet connection. DSL and cable modem or wireless local area network (WLAN) services are typically capable of transmitting 256 Kbps or more, starting at approximately four times the speed of a modem using a standard digital telephone line. Generally, it is deﬁned as a transmission capacity with sufﬁcient bandwidth to permit combined provision of voice, data, and video. DSL Digital subscriber line. DSL is a technology, which brings high-bandwidth information to homes and small businesses over ordinary ﬁxed telephone lines. Typically, the download speed of DSL ranges from 128 to 24 000 Kbps depending on DSL technology and service level implemented. ITU International Telecommunication Union, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, is an international organization within the United Nations system where governments and the private sector co-ordinate global telecom networks and services. Internet Backbones The Internet backbone refers to the main connections of the Internet. It is made up of a large collection of interconnected commercial, government, academic, and other high-capacity data routes that carry data across countries, continents, and oceans. Wireless Generic term for mobile communication services which do not use ﬁxed line networks for direct access to the subscriber. WSIS The World Summit on the Information Society, the ﬁrst phase of which took place in Geneva in December 2003, with the second phase in Tunis in November 2005.

Introduction The notion of a digital divide emerged during the mid 1990s, initially to refer to the differences between com munities in their access to computers and the Internet. Since then, it has been used more widely to refer pri marily to differences in the global distribution of digital technologies and content, not only computers and the Internet, but also mobile telephony, radio, television, and software. Moreover, the term refers both to absolute

presence or absence, and also to the quality of access that people have to hardware and software. The digital divide can usefully be examined at a variety of scales, from the global to the regional, national, and indeed local. Furthermore, attention to the trans formatory concept of ‘bridging the digital divide’ forces us to confront moral agendas about the rights and wrongs of digital differences, and the potential beneﬁts that poor and marginalized communities can gain from digital empowerment. The increasingly hegemonic notion of ‘development’ that has come to dominate international agendas during the ﬁrst decade of the twenty ﬁrst cen tury has drawn its legitimacy from the twin rhetorics of the free market and liberal democracy. Information and communication are central to these agendas. Thus, there has been widespread interest in the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in ‘develop ment’, and whether or not digital divides can indeed be ‘bridged’. Central to these concerns has been the com mitment made by the United Nations in 2000 in the form of the Millennium Development Goals, the eighth of which includes the aspiration: ‘‘In cooperation with the private sector, make available the beneﬁts of new tech nologies – especially information and communications technologies.’’

Spatial Representations of Digital Inequality Interpreting Digital Inequality Digital inequality refers not only to spatial differences in the distribution of particular digital phenomena, but also to issues of social differences, access, political control, and cultural differences. Moreover, it is important to consider precisely what is meant by the word ‘digital’ itself. Often, it is used primarily to refer to hardware and infrastructure, but a more comprehensive deﬁnition in cludes the information and communication ﬂows that are enabled by such technologies. Thus, the notion of digital inequality is concerned just as much with the ways in which people communicate by mobile/cell phone, as it is with digital content accessible via television, and access to information about local or national government practices through the Internet. The social and political dimensions of the ‘digital divide’ are particularly appar ent through the varied access that people from different backgrounds and with different skills have to such digital content.

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Global Digital Divides There are marked inequalities between the ICT infra structures and services available across the world. Inter national Telecommunication Union (ITU) statistics indicate that in 2004 Africa averaged 1.74 PCs per 100 inhabitants, whereas Oceania averaged some 50.84; 14% of the world’s population live in the G8 countries, but these account for 34% of the world’s total mobile phone users; and on average there are 11.50 telephone sub scribers per 100 inhabitants in Africa, compared with 32.98 in Asia, 76.66 in the Americas and 111.72 in Europe (see Figure 1). In addition to these spatial differences, global inequalities are also reﬂected socially. Female Internet users thus ranged from 51% of the total in the USA and Canada in 2001–02, compared with 43% in Argentina, Norway, and the UK, but only 37% in Germany and Italy, and 35% in Malaysia. Figures for Africa are even lower, with only 19% of Internet users in South Africa and 12% in Senegal estimated to be women. There is some evidence that at a global scale the ‘digital divide’ shrank between the mid 1990s and the mid 2000s. ITU statistics again thus indicate that in 1994 the ‘de veloped world’ had 73 times as many Internet users, 11 times as many telephone lines per 100 inhabitants, and 27 times as many mobile telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants as had ‘developing countries’, but by 2004 these differ ences had fallen to only 8 times as many Internet users and 4 times as many telephone lines and mobile sub scribers per 100 population. Regional Differences The above statistics emphasize that Africa is by far the least well served part of the world in terms of ICTs. But even within Africa there are huge differences, both

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between countries and also between rural and urban parts of the continent. All ICT indicators across Africa indicate that a few places, notably the island territories of Mauritius, Re´union, and the Seychelles have vastly higher connectivity than the remainder. In 2003, Re´union had 198 times the number of telephone lines per 100 inhabitants as did countries such as Uganda or Niger. Spatially these differences are clearly revealed in Figure 2, which indicates that countries such as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, and Niger, all only had about one Internet user per 1000 inhabitants in 2003. Such regional differences are equally encountered across Asia and Latin America. Local Divides Digital divides are not only evident between rich and poor countries, but also within the developing world. Even in the world’s richest countries there remain deep social and spatial divides in terms of digital access to information and communication. In 2005, the UN e Government Global Readiness Report noted that the UK was the highest ranking country in the world in terms of e participation. However, as Figure 3 highlights, broadband access to the Internet varied enormously across the country in 2005. Dense middle class suburbs, where both cable and DSL are available had the highest proportion of households with broadband. More than 40% of households, though, did not even have access to the Internet. This is widely seen as accentuating socio economic differences, particularly for its effects on educational usage by young people. Such inequalities can be even starker in poorer countries, where access to ICTs, and the Internet in particular, are highly differentiated. In the third quarter of 2005 alone, China added some 3.6 million new broadband lines (far more than the

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Figure 1 Telephone subscribers per 100 inhabitants in 2004. From ITU (2005) World Telecommunication/ICT Development Report 2006: Measuring ICT for Social and Economic Development.

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0−10 1.1−2.0 2.1−4.0 4.1−10.0 over 10.0

Figure 2 Internet users per 100 inhabitants in Africa, 2004. ITU Africa ICT Indicators.

2.7 million new lines in the USA, or the 1.2 million new lines in the UK during the ﬁrst two quarters of 2005), but these are heavily concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, with rural areas, especially in the west, re maining much less connected.

Shaping the Digital Divide The above section has emphasized the ways in which it is possible to visualize the digital divide a range of scales. Here we highlight the main structural factors that shape such divides. Connectivity The digital divide is above all shaped by the presence or absence of appropriate infrastructure to enable the use

of digital technologies. The availability and quality of ICT infrastructure, including both IT hardware and telecommunication networks, particularly the Internet, is referred to as connectivity. The term subsumes issues ranging from the global distribution of Internet back bones to the problem of the ‘last mile’ – actually con necting the individual to the Internet. The numbers of ﬁxed lines, mobile telephones, or PC owners are just some of the ways in which disparities in connectivity can be measured. The advance of mobile technologies and wireless Internet has facilitated affordable connectivity in remote and rural areas, especially through the spread of cellular/mobile telephones and prepaid phone cards. In 1999, Africa had a total of 2.2 ﬁxed line and 1.0 mobile subscribers per 100 inhabitants. By 2004, the number of mobile subscribers had increased to 8.8%, whereas the ﬁxed line subscribers only rose to 3.2%.

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Household Takeup % of households with broadband 25.5 to 37.8 (113) 23.2 to 25.5 (117) 21.5 to 23.2 (108) 19.4 to 21.5 (113) 2.4 to 18.4 (118) Source: Point Topic Broadband Neighbourhood

Figure 3 Broadband use in England and Wales, 2005. Reproduced from Point Topic (2005) Broadband, the Internet and the Election, with permission.

Accessibility Although the physical access to ICTs remains unevenly distributed, the preoccupation with connectivity has less ened in recent years. The deﬁnition of the digital divide has been expanded to include the gap between those who have access to, and can effectively use ICTs, and those who cannot. In this context, the digital divide can be seen as a reﬂection of broader socioeconomic inequalities. Ac cessibility encompasses social, cultural, political, and economic factors that enable or prevent people from using digital technologies. Disparity in resource distribution is crucial in determining accessibility; income, occupation, and education all inﬂuence the extent to which people can use digital technologies. The signiﬁcance of economic factors, particularly cost, can be seen in the correlation between levels of income and Internet usage, as well as the cost of access and Internet penetration rates. Likewise, the level of education, gender, age, and disability all determine the levels of access to ICTs. Literacies The emergence of ICTs has transformed the way in which we think about literacy. As ICTs become

increasingly important for communication in the broad est sense, the inability to use them can disadvantage entirely new groups of people who previously thought of themselves as ‘literate’. The elderly often, for example, ﬁnd themselves marginalized by their inability to understand and use new communication technologies. However, ICTs also have the potential to enable previ ously ‘illiterate’ people to communicate effectively. Voice recognition software can thus help people to send written documents to others, even if they are unable to write themselves. Thus, the digital divide is fundamentally about the ways in which technologies are used to serve the needs of different people and communities. Content and Information The access to digital technologies can be meaningful only with the availability of relevant and affordable content and hence can become an integral part of peo ple’s lives. One important aspect of relevance is language. In general, digital technologies were ﬁrst introduced and disseminated as mainly monolingual media, utilizing the language of the producers and not the consumers. Most were dominated by European languages, primarily

Digital Divide

English. Due to the emergence of a multilingual char acter code standard during the 1990s, the number of languages being supported by major ICT desktop plat forms has now increased. Although efforts to provide both open source and proprietary localized software are increasing, few Asian and African languages are yet catered for, with of course the major exception of Chi nese. The use of local knowledge and adaptation of software to meet local demands is a prerequisite in utilizing ICTs effectively for educational, economic, or political purposes. With continued commodiﬁcation of digital resources, affordability has also become an in creasingly relevant issue, especially in education. There is a fear that the gap will widen between those who can afford to pay for, or have access to, such content and those who cannot. Networks and Communication Digital technologies, such as the Internet, have not only opened new channels for the distribution of information, but also have created new means of communication and transaction that facilitate different levels of networking, both interpersonal and through mass communication, irrespective of geographical location. Economic global ization processes and technological developments en abling and reducing the costs of information sharing and communication have resulted in what Manuel Castells calls ‘networked societies’. Organizational structures have been created that no longer conform to spatial centrality and conventional decision making hierarchies. Whilst in theory global participation in these networks is possible, in reality their participants are mainly found in the urban centers of the economically dominant nations. Enabling the usage of digital technologies is therefore not just about passive reception but includes active participation in the exchange and creation of knowledge and the ability to network and communicate freely using digital technologies, be it for educational, business, or political purposes.

Making a Difference Having summarized the key aspects of the digital divide, we now focus on ways in which different types of or ganization have sought to reduce the inequalities that exist in access to, and use of, ICTs. Global Agendas The potential of ICTs to make a signiﬁcant difference to the lives of poor people has been widely recognized at the international level. Initiatives such as the G8’s Digital Opportunity Task (DOT) Force (established in 2000), the UN ICT Task Force and most recently the World

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Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held at Geneva in 2003 and at Tunis in 2005, have all sought to help create a global information society that will enable all people to beneﬁt from the potential offered by ICTs. Whether they will achieve these ambitious objectives remains to be seen, especially at a time when many of the richer countries of the world are also seeking to re main ‘competitive’ knowledge economies. Nevertheless, UNESCO’s work in the ﬁeld of cultural diversity and social aspects of the digital divide, as well as initiatives such as the UN’s Digital Diaspora Network, designed to promote development in Africa, through the mobilization of the technological, entrepreneurial, and professional expertise and resources of the African diasporas in the ﬁeld of ICT, do have the potential to help bridge the digital divide. One of the key issues of contemporary global discussion is Internet Governance, which gained particular prominence at the 2005 phase of WSIS. This has led to an agreement to develop a more participatory approach to control the Internet and the creation of a forum, which will address issues such as connectivity, Internet backbones, and multilingualism. Role of National Governments Above all, the role of national governments is to provide regulatory and policy frameworks that enable the pro vision of affordable and accessible infrastructure, ser vices, and content. This requires addressing issues ranging from trade and commerce, to security and in formational freedom. Governments are expected to re duce digital inequalities, for instance, by providing ICT access to underprivileged groups within their territories. When telecommunication markets were liberalized in Europe, The German government guaranteed universal service to reduce the risk of people with low incomes losing access, by ensuring telecommunication services are provided to all households at affordable prices, including those in rural and remote locations. In developing countries, this concept is rarely adopted, due to lack of ﬁnancial resources. Village computers and telecenters are examples of initiatives taken to provide connectivity al ternatives in remote and rural areas in developing countries. Furthermore, national governments carry the responsibility of employing ICTs in administration and service provision, in order to increase efﬁciency, trans parency, accountability, and opportunities for partici pation. Donor country governments are funding a number of such initiatives as their engagement has shifted from a technology driven approach to a focus on main streaming and accessibility issues in developing coun tries. Engagement to promote capacity building has increased, as has the integration of ICTs into speciﬁc sectors, such as education, healthcare, trade, and com merce. Beyond sector support, the assistance in policy

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formulation is also considered a central area of devel opment cooperation.

undertaking rigorous monitoring and evaluation studies of ICT4D if the digital divide is indeed to be bridged.

Private Sector

Partnerships in ICT4D Practice

The private sector has a signiﬁcant role to play in both bridging, and yet also in shaping, digital divides. It is a key partner in the provision of ICT infrastructure, ser vices, and applications, and through its ability to create competitive markets, lower prices, and increase the range of available options for citizens and organizations it can indeed help to bridge the divide. In total, tele communication projects accounted for 6% of foreign direct investments in low income countries in 2003. Latin America and the Caribbean attracted one half of those investments, whilst Eastern Europe and central Asia received a quarter. However, due to lack of proﬁt ability, market driven private sector initiatives have nevertheless tended to neglect rural or remote areas in developing countries in preference for urban centers, and this often increases local digital inequalities. Multi stakeholder and public–private partnership initiatives have sought to encourage private sector engagement in addressing such underserved communities. As well as the generation of additional ﬁnances, one of the rationales behind private sector involvement in development ini tiatives is to increase economic growth and sustainability. Their aim is to open new markets with programs targeted at lower income groups. The Grameen Village Phone program in Bangladesh and Uganda, for example, pro vides mobile phones, ﬁnanced by loans from the Gram een Bank, to individuals who in turn, sell their use on a per call basis. This business model aims to make mobile phone usage affordable and proﬁtable in rural areas.

These illustrations have all emphasized that the digital divide cannot be ‘bridged’ by one community or sector alone. The ubiquity and diversity of ICTs means that complex partnerships that combine different interests and expertises need to be shaped, bringing together marginalized communities, governments, civil society, the private sector, and academic institutions, to help poor people use ICTs to help transform their life experiences.

Civil Society and the Academy The role of civil society is also important in delivering ICT access at the community level, in addressing the needs of citizens in policy formulation processes and in monitoring the rollout of such policies. This was recog nized by the UN in both phases of the WSIS and civil society organizations were formally involved in the pre paratory meetings as well as in the proceedings of the summit. The establishment of the international Civil Society Bureau for the second Preparatory Committee meeting represented a new approach in UN policy, in sofar as, for the ﬁrst time, civil society was granted structural mechanisms to ensure effective participation at the decision making level of an UN summit. Issues concerning human rights, people centered sustainable development, and access to global knowledge were high on the agenda of civil society representatives partici pating in the WSIS and other international forums. Universities and research institutions also need to be involved in developing policy frameworks and

Solutions in Search of a Problem Many ICT projects designed to use innovative methods to ‘bridge the digital divide’ have failed, often because they have been designed in a top down and supply driven manner; often primarily serving the external interests of donor organizations or the private sector. There is a critical need to shift the balance toward a needs based approach, so that poor and marginalized communities are themselves involved in designing and shaping the implementation of such initiatives. However, two further issues must also be addressed if the un doubted beneﬁts that ICTs can bring are to be realized. Knowledge Societies in a Competitive World The concept of a knowledge based society and economy suggests a focus on the development of an individual’s capacity as a carrier of professional knowledge and as a member of institutions and society, in which knowledge needs to be effectively acquired and shared. ICTs are the medium through which individual and institutional knowledge can be stored and retrieved, transferred, and communicated. Whilst the attainment of equity in the distribution of digital technologies and resources is a goal on the agenda of the international development com munity, leading producers of hardware and software, as well as content distributors also carry an interest in maintaining their competitive advantage. Bridging digital divides can also be a way of opening up new markets and creating new consumers. Disputes in the scientiﬁc pub lishing sector are just one example of how the interests of commercial publishers and content producers conﬂict with the ideal of an open networked society in which relevant knowledge can be shared and accessed freely, especially in developing countries. Digital Commons From its inception as a medium through which knowledge could be exchanged ‘freely’, the Internet has now evolved to incorporate market forces with commercial providers

Digital Divide

charging for content, particularly through licensing fees. This is part of a wider trend in which knowledge is be coming increasingly commodiﬁed. The growing Free and Open Source Software community, the Open Access movement, and Creative Commons are all expressions of rising tensions between the protectors of ‘proprietary’ and supporters of ‘free’ digital content. The relevance of such alternative approaches to resource acquisition in developing countries has now become of particular pertinence. In comparison with the acquisition of propri etary content, the promotion of Open Source software communities and its uses in the public and private sector, civil society, and academia are increasingly considered to provide more sustainable development opportunities. The academic world has also reacted to the commercial monopolization of intellectual property with the initiation of the Open Access and Open Educational Resource movements, as well as by pursuing the creation of free to end user, and global access to scientiﬁc literature.

Conclusions There are many digital divides – social, economic, political, spatial, and even ideological. However, it is not the technology that has created these, but rather the ways in which people have chosen to use ICTs to gain economic advantage, propagate a particular political message, or reinforce social divisions, that have forged the unequal digital world that we experience today. These technolo gies, though, have immense potential to help transform the lives of poor and marginalized communities. They can open up a whole new world to people with visual and hearing impairments. They can transform the lives of people with physical disabilities, and can enable young people who are unable to attend school to gain learning experiences of relevance to their lives. Whether or not they are indeed used to transcend existing digital divides, and to create a truly shared world of information and communication opportunities depends on the political will and the economic capacity of global partnerships to help poor and marginalized communities to deliver sustainable solutions through which they can be empowered. See also: Civil Society; Empowerment, Foreign Direct Investment; Knowledge Economy.

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Further Reading Castells, M. (2000). The information age: Economy, society and culture (2nd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell. Gelbstein, E. and Kurbalija, J. (2005). Internet governance Issues, actors and divides. Malta and Kuala Lumpur: DiploFoundation and Global Knowledge Partnership (http://textus.diplomacy.edu/ textusbin/env/scripts/Pool/GetBin.asp?IDPool ¼ 641). Grameen Technology Center (2005). Village phone replication manual Creating sustainable access to affordable telecommunications for the rural poor. http://www.infodev.org/ﬁles/ 2868 ﬁle VillagePhoneReplicationManual.pdf Greenberg, A. (2005). ICTs for poverty alleviation: Basic tool and enabling sector. Stockholm: Sida. InfoDev (no date). Open source software Perspectives for development. Washington DC: InfoDev (http://www.infodev.org/ ﬁles/837 ﬁle Open Source Software.pdf). ITU (2005). World telecommunication/ICT development Report 2006: Measuring ICT for social and economic development. http://www.itu.int/ITU D/ict/ Norris, P. (2001). Digital divide: Civic engagement, information poverty, and the internet worldwide. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OECD (2005). Financing ICTs for development Efforts of DAC members, review of recent trends of ODA and its contribution Report to the UN Task Force on Financial Mechanisms for ICT for Development (TFFM). Paris: OECD, Development Assistance Committee (DAC). http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/41/45/ 34410597.pdf Paolillo, J., Pimienta, D., Prado, D. et al. (2005). Measuring linguistic diversity on the internet. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO. Point Topic (2005). Broadband, the internet and the election. http:// www.point topic.com/content/dslanalysis/ UK%20election%20guide.htm Schware, R. (ed.) (2005). e Development: From excitement to effectiveness. Washington DC: The World Bank Group. Unwin, T. (2005). Partnerships in development practice: Evidence from multi stakeholder ICT4D partnership practice in Africa. Paris: UNESCO for the World Summit on the Information Society. Weigel, G. and Waldburger, D. (2004). ICT4D Connecting people for a better world. Berne and Kuala Lumpur: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and Global Knowledge Partnership. World Bank (2006). 2006 Information and communications for development (IC4D): Global trends and policies. Washington DC: World Bank. WSIS Declaration of Principles (2003). Building the information society: A global challenge in the new millennium. Geneva: UN Summit of the Information Society (Paragraph 28, Paragraph 22 (C7, b). http:// www.itu.int/dms pub/itu s/md/03/wsis/doc/S03 WSIS DOC 0004!!PDF E.pdf).

Relevant Websites http://creativecommons.org Creative Commons Developing Nations License. http://www.itu.int ITU statistics. http://www.itu.int WSIS statistics.

Digital Earth G. A. Elmes and D. Weiner, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA C. D’Alessandro-Scarpari, Universite´ Lumie`re Lyon 2, Lyon, France & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary DERM The Digital Earth Reference Model, templates for the standards and speciﬁcations to enable Digital Earth interoperability. Digital Earth A virtual, multiresolution, threedimensional (3-D) representation of planet Earth that enables a person to explore and interact with natural and social information at many scales of resolution. Discrete Global Grid A set of areal cells that form a partition of the Earth’s surface, usually represented by some form of topologically equivalent approximation such as a sphere, a spheroid, or a geoid. Framework Data A set of interoperable spatial data themes forming the basic content for a geographic information system (GIS). Usually includes geodetic control, cadastral, elevation, hydrology, administrative units, transportation networks, and orthoimagery. Geobrowser A program or tool allowing visual, spatial, and other searches for precise geographical data. Geographic Information System (GIS) An organized collection of computer hardware, software, geographic data that allows spatial or geographically referenced data to be captured, stored, updated, manipulated, and displayed. Geolibrary A digital collection of text, maps, images, and other materials, cataloged and searchable on a geographical basis, that is, by location. Georeference To establish a relation between coordinates on a map and real-world coordinates. Interoperability The ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. Metadata Information relating to another set of data (‘data about data’). Microsensor A miniature electronic device that detects information about a speciﬁc variable. Open Systems Open systems entail hardware and software in a system that meet standards enabling them to be replaced with that of another vendor. Open source code is available to the public, it does not necessarily meet open standards. Remote Sensing The science of acquiring information about the Earth’s surface by sensing and recording reﬂected or emitted energy and processing, analyzing, and applying that information.

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Spatial Data Infrastructure The technology, policies, standards, and people necessary to permit geospatial data sharing among users. Spatial Multimedia The combined use of georeferenced media, such as movies, music, speech, CD-ROMs, and the Internet, as for education or entertainment.

Introduction As initially envisioned, Digital Earth (DE) is a virtual, multiresolution, 3 D representation of our planet that enables a person to explore and interact with the vast amounts of natural and social information gathered about the Earth. Both a metaphor for the representation of the planet and an intellectual driving force for the endeavor to map the planet comprehensively and seamlessly, Digital Earth is an integrated storehouse and source for many forms of geographically referenced information. Eventually Digital Earth is predicted to be for geospatial data what html and Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) are for the World Wide Web. The various efforts for realization of Digital Earth have profound technological, social, political, environmental, and economic implications. At one level, Digital Earth is a 3 D graphic user interface or geobrowser to a distributed geographic in formation system (GIS). High speed, broadband networks linking software and hardware bring together and process georeferenced data from multiple sources. An interactive, immersive interface grants users access to a represen tation of the Earth, which assimilates numerical data, text, images, and maps, along with the relationships be tween them and models of their underlying processes. From another perspective, Digital Earth is a less formal amalgam of multiple innovations, some cooperative, some competitive, which bring geospatial and other infor mation to broad audiences. Yet, as the product of the shifting convergence of rapidly changing technology and computational capabilities, Digital Earth is mutable, and while its current manifestations range from giant globes to Internet browsers, it is difﬁcult to predict exactly what new versions will emerge in future. Digital Earth has an intellectual history that draws on deep seated conceptions of space, scale, and place. Themes of technological signiﬁcance include standards, visualization, and spatial analysis of global data.

Digital Earth

The implications of universally available global data on human scale relationships and society at large are diverse and distributed unequally among the human population. Foremost among these human scale questions are issues relating to the ethics of surveillance, privacy, power, and consent.

An Intellectual History of Digital Earth The ﬁrst use of the term Digital Earth is generally at tributed to US Vice President Al Gore, although the history of the idea is much older. In a much cited speech published in 1998, Gore deﬁned Digital Earth as a multiresolution, 3 D representation of the planet, into which we can embed vast quantities of georeferenced data. One antecedent to the concept is common to car tography in many cultures, an endeavor to represent the Earth as a geometric solid, usually a sphere, taking the Earth’s surface as an organizing metaphor for information about places. A second antecedent is the goal to make information ubiquitously available as an essential com ponent of democracy, and also in attempts to manage the global environment, and create sustainable economies. A third contribution is the aspiration to create tools which are able to represent and analyze data across multiple scales from the global to the local (see Figure 1). Inputs to this goal stem from radical transformations in com puting that have resulted in massive capabilities for data sharing and processing across networks; the ability to combine data of many different types from multiple, distributed sources; and search engines (web browsers) that are able to ﬁnd and link information about any particular location on the planet.

Figure 1 Early NASA Vision of Digital Earth. Courtesy of NASA.

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The nature of spatial data as a dyad of location and attributes is a deﬁning feature of GISs. The concept of a Digital Earth emerged within cartography, and from political, environmental, educational, and technological initiatives. The globe is one locational metaphor for re cording information about places. Terrestrial and celes tial globes have been known since antiquity. Celestial globes serve as an aid to astronomy whereas terrestrial globes serve as a demonstration of mathematical and geographical hypotheses. Martin Waldseemu¨ller was probably the ﬁrst to use printed gores for recording cartographic information in 1507. Both aspects of or ganizing framework and content are present in the globe as a model for representing the Earth’s surface. The innovations of the industrial age enabled the size and scale of representations of the Earth to increase dramatically. Constructed in Paris in 1826, Charles Delanglard’s Georama was a 10 m diameter globe that could be entered as an immersive environment. A similar Great Globe, 20 m in diameter, was designed and built in Leicester Square in London by James Wyld, and stood as a tourist attraction from 1851 to 1862. Accurate geo graphical information, showing physical and cultural features, was imprinted on the concave interior surface. In the quest for ultimate accuracy, the French geographer Elise´e Reclus proposed a globe, to the scale of 1:100 000, which would have necessitated the construction of a sphere nearly 120 m in diameter. The step from increasingly accurate, large scale physical renditions of the Earth to electronic ones was proposed by Buckminster Fuller as early as 1947. He envisioned the Geoscope, a 200 ft diameter geodesic sphere or hemisphere, suspended 100 ft above the ground. A computer was to control the intensity of

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electric light bulbs that entirely covered the exterior and interior surfaces. The number and arrangement of the bulbs was such as to produce the visual resolution of a ﬁne screen halftone print, or that of a cathode ray tube picture. Had it been built, Geoscope would have pro vided an immersive media in which to discover vast amounts of geospatial information. As a tool for Earth stewardship revealing formerly invisible patterns, it was designed for forecasting and planning. Images of Earth’s sphere were ﬁrst made available by extraterrestrial ﬂight in the 1960s, followed by the widespread dissemination of the analogy of Earth as a blue marble, notably in a historic series of NASA photographs. The launch of a sequence of LANDSAT remote sensing satellites was instrumental in transform ing the visual image of Earth to limitless quantities of renewable geospatial data. Along with the source of digital imagery, the Eames’ 1977 ﬁlm, Powers of Ten, was an intellectual milestone in the conceptualization of Digital Earth. Powers of Ten depicted the relative scale of the universe from 10 18 to 1025 m. The ﬁlm zooms out ten times for every 10 seconds from the image of a sleeping man at 1 m resolution (1 0 0) to the scale of the universe (1025) and back to the resolution of an atom (10 18) illustrating a continual seamless transition across scales. In 1992 David Gelernter’s Mirror Worlds extended the analogy of the microscope and telescope from ﬁlm to massive computerized information systems and models of complex geographical realities, such as cities and other social phenomena. Mirror Worlds put forward computer based viewing tools focused not on the hugely large or small, but on the human scale, social world of organ izations, institutions, and machines; promising the same microscopic and telescopic increase in depth, sharpness, and clarity illustrated in Powers of Ten. Advancing these data visualization tools required the acquisition of multiple types of data from many remote locations, integrating them and making them accessible to the public through networks. Global representation, visualization, transformation, and resolution across scales, increasing demand for accurate large scale data, and computerization form the intellectual threads that lead to the Digital Earth initiative as articulated in 1998.

although the US Earth Observation System and satellites from many nations perform similar, if not identical functions. The 3 D immersive interactive environment element has proved robust (see Figure 2). As in a con ventional GIS, Digital Earth provides for the integration of geospatial and statistical data, with the additional ability to integrate, simulate, and analyze knowledge of human and physical systems in an interactive interface. Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth are con temporary representatives of several prototype 3 D geobrowsers that have been developed and implemented on the Internet. Technical Foundations The Interagency Digital Earth Working Group (IDEWG) identiﬁed areas of knowledge and technology as foundations for the Digital Earth project and was subsequently adopted by international teams. The ﬁelds are computational science, mass storage, satellite im agery, and other georeferenced data, broadband networks, interoperability, and metadata. Computational Science Today’s computers integrate and analyze huge quantities of raw geospatial data and simulate complex phenomena and processes that cannot otherwise be measured dir ectly. High performance machines integrate data from numerous sources to create forecasts, scientiﬁc under standing, and outcomes of nonlinear, dynamic, even chaotic processes. The continued operation of Moore’s Law (the doubling of the number of transistors on inte grated circuits every 18 months) is a rough measure of the exponential increase in computer processing power which is expected to continue as nanotechnology is im plemented. For example, high resolution spatial and temporal modeling of geophysical and earth science

Digital Earth and Technology The development of the Digital Earth has proceeded from ‘vision’ to several demonstration prototypes and practical implementations in less than a decade. When originally proposed, Digital Earth had two elements: (1) a satellite based remote sensing platform directed at the daytime face of the Earth, and (2) an immersive en vironment for exploring Earth’s societies and environ ment. The speciﬁc satellite component has disappeared,

Figure 2 Desktop 3D interface.

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processes at a global scale has been the ostensible reason for building the Earth Simulation Model in Japan, one of the fastest computers on Earth in the ﬁrst years of the twenty ﬁrst century.

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data infrastructure are based on the exchange of innov ations in best practice at forums such as the Where 2.0 Conference. Metadata

Mass Storage and Imagery Mass storage capacity is increasing rapidly and simul taneously becoming cheaper, but a fully implemented Digital Earth will require the storage of petabytes (1015 bytes). Goodchild estimated that one petabyte is required to store a seamless satellite image of the Earth at 1 m resolution. NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth alone gen erates a terabyte of information each day and 1 m reso lution imagery or better has become routinely available from a number of commercial satellites. On the basis of regular updates from high resolution satellite and aerial imagery, cartographic framework data, such as land cover classiﬁcations; road and river networks, are derived and kept current. Satellite imagery and other environmental data, acquired by large number of organizations and in creasingly sampled at very high temporal and spatial resolution by distributed microsensors, require broad band networks to connect data producers to servers and thence to users. Networks and Interoperability These data do not reside in one huge database. Servers, connected by high speed broadband networks, permit the transmission of data objects and visualizations. At the leading edge of technology 10 gigabit per second net works have been tested, carrying data streams up to 1000 times larger than is currently available using the World Wide Web. Public access to the network for transmission, interaction, and collaboration is proliferating. Ease of access to the World Wide Web has succeeded because of the emergence of interoperability through widely agreed upon, simple practices, such as the IP. GIS researchers and developers address many of the issues surrounding spatial data transmission and sharing through the Open GIS Consortium and the development of formal inter national standards. For example, the technical committee of the International Standards Organization (ISO) TC211 establishes a set of standards for information concerning objects or phenomena that are directly or indirectly as sociated with a location relative to the Earth. TC211 standards specify, for geographic information, methods, tools, and services for acquiring, processing, analyzing, accessing, presenting, and transferring such data in digital/electronic form between different users, systems, and locations. One reality and drawback of the generation of formal standards is their slow pace of development and implementation. In the fast paced highly competitive environment that characterizes the computer industry, less formal, de facto mechanisms for creating the spatial

Data about data, or metadata, are vital for georeferenced information to be usable from one computer, application, or jurisdiction to another. The name, location, source, date, data format, resolution, and accuracy are categories of information necessary for the meaningful and reliable combination and use of geospatial data. Technology is also advancing for the fusion of different data types from multiple sources, automated interpretation of imagery, and the deployment of intelligent computer programs (agents) to seek, gather, and integrate information based on a locational footprint. Valid outcomes of these func tions depend on the availability of complete metadata. At the same time, developments in location based mobile and ubiquitous computing, in spatially enabled radio frequency identiﬁcation (RFID), and other sensors are creating real time sampling over large areas; creating a digital microgeography, which can be seen as the equivalent of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed axial tomography (CAT) scans in medicine. These developments place ever greater requirements on technological advances in storage, transmission, inter operability, and metadata.

Development and Realization of Digital Earth Following Vice President Gore’s statement, the IDEWG organized the initiative in the US. Representatives from 17 federal agencies, together with industrial and aca demic advisors, investigated topics related to visual ization, data access and distribution, standards, education, and others. Political change in the US, however, has re sulted in change in leadership for Digital Earth. Since 1999, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ (CAS) Institute of Remote Sensing Applications (IRSA) has led inter national collaboration on the Digital Earth concept and the 1st International Symposium on Digital Earth was held in Beijing. In cooperation with a growing community of international agencies and NGOs, the Chinese govern ment continues to sponsor international symposia and projects. Today, the International Society for Digital Earth (ISDE) fosters the international Digital Earth community. Following the meetings in Beijing, there have been three further international symposia on Digital Earth; in Canada, the Czech Republic, and Japan. The 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth was held in Berkeley, California in 2007. Three major projects involving global data and standards are in progress: The Global Map, Global

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Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI), and Digital Earth. Global Map is a product of the International Steering Committee for Global Mapping (ISCGM). Initiated by the Geographical Survey Institute of Japan, the devel opment of Global Map resulted from Agenda 21, the document calling for global data that was an outcome of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). A global cartographic framework database is planned, consisting of elevation, vegetation, land use, drainage systems, transportation, and administrative boundaries layers. The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) is deﬁned as the policies, organizational remits, data, technologies, standards, de livery mechanisms, and ﬁnancial and human resources necessary to ensure that those working at the global and regional scale are not impeded in meeting their object ives. The work of GSDI is accomplished by represen tatives of national mapping agencies, NGOs, and standards organizations. The success of the Digital Earth project is directly related to Global Map, and other global database and infrastructure programs as outlined in the GSDI Cookbook. Digital Earth provides a vision that is tied to the maturation of the Global Map, GSDI, and associated programs. A useful scheme for deﬁning the major development communities and concentrations necessary for the real ization of Digital Earth has been identiﬁed by Foresman and others as follows: 1. Visualization and exploration: the hardware, software, data, and methods for viewing and exploring Digital Earth. 2. Advance prototypes: the projects, test beds, and fa cilities through which the Digital Earth is tested and promoted. 3. Science and applications: the community that de velops and validates Digital Earth content and outcomes. 4. Standards and architecture: the community that en sures the infrastructure and interoperability protocols for a sustainable Digital Earth. 5. Data access and distribution: the gatherers, producers, and distributors of georeferenced data. 6. Education and outreach: the users of Digital Earth. Digital Earth is dependent upon the cross referencing and coordination of technical innovations in the six areas of concentration. The Digital Earth Reference Model (DERM) was created to provide operational standards to enable these areas to work together. The DERM was the result of a public and private partnership to deﬁne the standards and architecture guidelines of Digital Earth. As an efﬁcient approach to a rapidly changing, technology driven ﬁeld, the successors of DERM, for example, the Geospatial Interoperability Reference Model (GIRM),

remain signiﬁcant reference tools for rapid prototyping. By 2002, a number of 3 D visualization prototypes be came available, and although the formal role of NASA as lead agency had ended, commercial and international interests took up the initiative. For example, Keyhole Inc. was a private venture, based on DERM and supported under the auspices of IDEWG that became the ﬁrst widely available 3 D geobrowser. It is now available as Google Earth. For political, technological, and economic reasons, the concept of Digital Earth has evolved in different forms than originally proposed. Arguably the strongest research initiatives have been associated with distributed geoli braries: including the NCGIA’s Alexandria Project, (NCGIA – National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis), NASA’s Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center, which includes the Earth Observing System Data and Information System, and the discrete global grid initiatives, such as the 2nd International Conference on Discrete Global Grids. Other practical developments have been realized by the Federal Geo graphic Data Committee (FGDC) in the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). In the private sector, SRI International’s, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored Digital Earth project in corporates Gore’s vision of a connected suite of tech nologies with the vision of enabling a massive, scalable, and open model of the planet where millions of users can interact with vast quantities of geographically referenced data over the Web. SRI’s stated goal is to create an open infrastructure that allows anyone around the globe to publish or to search for data based upon a speciﬁc lo cation, however, SRI is a major military contractor, so the real motivation for the effort may well be hidden. Most recently in the face of competition from web based computing, notably from Google, Microsoft has launched Virtual Earth. Currently various examples of Digital Earths are ﬂourishing. The vision is indeed reality, albeit in as yet partial and immature form.

Space and Scale in the Context of Digital Spatial Information One approach in human geography encourages the critical examination of the roles and effects of technology within society. As with all landscapes, the landscapes of Digital Earth are socially produced and contested; their meanings are layered, variously hidden and revealed, apparently neutral and objective, but in fact subjective, ambiguous, and complex. One direction of critical inquiry is the consideration of representation and its limits. Language is also key to the production and control of, and access to, spatial information. The politics of space and scale are expressed in control and censorship; in what is chosen to

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be represented in Digital Earth, and by what is omitted. Scale reproduces, reinforces, and reﬂects power; con versely power enforces scale. Many of these concerns have emerged from the debate on GIS and society. Digital Earth and Society Since 1995, a lively GIS and society debate on the im plications of geographical technologies has lead to inquiry into the relationships between science, technology, and human beings in the broad context of Digital Earth. As with all technology, the creation and effects of Digital Earth on society are seen to be diverse, contested, am biguous, and contradictory. Within the GIS and society perspective, an institutional theme focuses primarily on the effectiveness, efﬁciency, and equity of the implemen tation and use of geospatial information in public settings. The institutional focus emphasizes the positive economic, educational, and political contributions of the knowledge economy, sharing geospatial information, and the dem ocratizing power of increasing accessibility to information of all types. Digital Earth viewed from this aspect will be a major contributor to economic development; a technology that ﬂattens the Earth and provides a more even playing ﬁeld for global competition. A second GIS and society theme, grounded in the various concerns of critical social theory, approaches Digital Earth from a more reﬂective and circumspective point of view. Critical social theory imparts a political economic focus on the production and control of digital spatial information. Understanding the many dimensions of political and institutional frameworks by and through which data are produced and distributed is a key to this method of analysis, including the appreciation of the ability to control, manipulate, and possibly subvert, Digital Earth data and subsequently generated information. To date, one common aspect of the various initiatives has been to make global data available through a single portal. There is vigorous competition to become the primary Digital Earth portal which may be interpreted as one effort to exercise control. Numerous private ﬁrms (Glo beXplorer, Google, Informix, and Microsoft corporations, among them) and some government (NASA) and non government organizations (United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP) are positioning themselves to be come principal distributors of Digital Earth data. Inter nationally, China, Japan and other forces seek to inﬂuence the direction of development. A third theme in GIS and society examines how access to digital spatial information at multiple scales inﬂuences the relationships of power between creators and users and how, in turn, power relations inﬂuence access and participation. Individuals and groups may become spatial actors through the mediation of Digital Earth technology, or may be excluded, inadvertently or otherwise. Case

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studies of the Digital Earth project encompass social and environmental processes at multiple scales of represen tation and analysis. This global and globalizing technol ogy presents inﬂuential and apparently ofﬁcial and authoritative information to users in local contexts. The interface of global and local raises potential conﬂicts between global and locally inscribed data and knowledge. The inscription and inclusion of local knowledge is a key element in participatory and community GIS, issues that must be resolved in Digital Earth, if it is to make a contribution to the economies and societies of developing nations and is not to aggravate marginalization. Much of the core spatial data for Digital Earth is produced by national mapping organizations (NMOs). In this guise cartography, has long been employed by the state for territorial control and private ownership. The decision to create or not to create data, its accuracy and attribution, and to disseminate it, is a political and eco nomic one. For example, data created for military pur poses may ﬁnd its way on to Digital Earth only in censored, generalized forms, or long after it was acquired. While digital spatial data are produced by states, regional organizations, counties, municipalities, and grassroot or ganizations, the reasons and purposes for its creation may not be apparent or well documented. A view currently presented on Google Earth provides little information on the lineage of the data. Many people consider the images and information to be in real or near real time. Others are surprised at the great variations in spatial resolution available from one location to another. If people do not understand the origins of the data and their subsequent lineage, the value of the information pre sented is substantially reduced, if not totally undermined. Scientiﬁc visualization in Digital Earth privileges tangible information that is easily rendered over in tangible data of phenomena, processes, and relationships. Terrain is easily depicted in four dimensions; human beliefs, feelings, experiences, and interactions are not. The emphasis on the visual serves to strengthen positivist and objectiﬁed conceptualizations of the world and human activity at the expense of the daily practices of life. In assessing digital places, Curry and others have spoken eloquently about the limits of representation and of language in geographic information technologies. The power of the visual, coupled with the potential of spatial analysis and modeling for public and private decision making, reinforces the capacity of Digital Earth for in corporating unseen, deliberately introduced inaccuracy, and the opportunity for misuse of analytical results and predictions. An occidental view and interpretation of the world is an inevitable result of current Western scientiﬁc hegemony and the predominance of the English lan guage. As these globally available data are mediated through locally contingent applications, they produce, conﬁrm, or challenge particular spatial representations

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and imaginary landscapes. There are a multitude of di verse participatory GISs in use today, but few of them readily admit local understandings of environment and place on an equal footing with traditional spatial data derived from ‘expert’ sources. With the emergence of mashups in the Google Earth environment (a mashup is a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated practice), and the Open Source standards of NASA’s World Wind, the incorporation of diverse types of local information within Digital Earth is becoming easier and, superﬁcially, more accessible to the population at large. However, the necessary access to high performance personal computers and broadband access to the Internet is denied to the vast majority of people, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Although access to the Internet is considered ubi quitous in the industrialized world, this is a patent oversimpliﬁcation of the reality. Gender, class, ethnicity, education, all mediate access to computers; hence access to Digital Earth, even in the developed world, is similarly constrained. A growing digital divide determines access, and lack of access continually accelerates and exacerbates the division of knowledge and information. In this regard, Digital Earth is simultaneously part of the problem and of the solution. See also: Critical GIS; Geodesy; Imperialistic Geographies; Local-Global; Mapping, Cyberspace; Remote Sensing; Scale.

Further Reading Cosgrove, D. (2001). Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Curry, M. R. (1998). Digital Places: Living with Geographic Information Technologies. London: Routledge. Elmes, G., Epstein, E., Sheppard, E. and Tulloch, D. (2004). GIS and society. In McMaster, R. & Usery, L. (eds.) Research challenges in GIS, pp 287 312. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Foresman, T. W. (2003). Digital Earth: The status and the challenge. In Proceedings of the Global Mapping Forum. Ginowan, Okinawa: International Steering Committee for Global Mapping, Japan Geographic Survey Institute. Foresman, T. W. (2004). Digital Earth visualization and web interface capabilities utilizing 3 D geobrowser technology. In Proceedings of the 20th ISPRS Congress, Commission IV, pp 885 889. Istanbul: IRPRS.

Foresman, T., Walker, S. and Zimble, D. (2003). Mandate for Digital Earth Geobrowsers: Status and Recommendations. First International Digital Earth Workshop, July 2003, http:// www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/digitalearth/3DGeobrowser/ﬁles/mandate 2003.pdf (accessed on 18 July 2007). Fuller, R. B. (1962). Education Automation: Freeing the Scholar to Return to his Studies. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Gelernter, D. (1992). Mirror Worlds: The Day Software Puts the Universe in a ShoeboxyHow it will Happen and What it will Mean. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gore, A. (1998). The digital earth: Understanding our planet in the 21st century. California Science Center, Los Angeles, California, January 31, 1998. http://www.isde5.org/al gore speech.htm National Research Council (1999). Distributed Geolibraries: Spatial Information Resources, Summary of a Workshop, Mapping Science Committee, Commission on Geosciences, Environment and Resources. Washington DC: National Academies Press. Nebert, D. D. (2004). Developing Spatial Data Infrastructures: The SDI Cookbook, Version 2.0. Reston, Virginia: Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association. Seigfried T. (2000). Machines and Metaphors. In The bit and the pendulum: from quantum computing to M Theory The new physics of information. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Relevant Websites http://www.isde5.org 5th International Symposium on Digital Earth. http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov Blue Marble, Visualization of Remote Sensing Data. http://www.ncgia.ucsb.ed Digital Earth 3D Geobrowser. http://www.discreteglobalgrids.org Discrete Global Grids. http://www.earthscope.com EARTHscope. http://www.gsdi.org Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association. http://earth.google.com Google Earth. http://local.live.com Microsoft Virtual Earth. http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov NASA, World Wind. http://www.opengeospatial.org OGC, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. http://www.powersof10.com Powers of 10 CD and online multimedia site for Charles and Ray Eames’ 1977 ﬁlm ‘‘Powers of Ten’’. http://www.ai.sri.com Digital Earth, SRI. http://www.geosphere.com The GeoSphere Project, The Earth Imagery. http://edcdaac.usgs.gov The Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC), Earth Observing System (EOSDIS).

Disability and Chronic Illness R. Wilton and J. Evans, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Ableism It is a term used to name the systematic oppression faced by disabled persons as a minority population in a society where the ‘able-body’ occupies a position of privilege. Embodiment The notion that disability as a lived phenomenon is, by its very nature, experienced through the body. This concept is used to move beyond the impairment/disability binary of early social model formulations. International Classiﬁcation of Functioning, Disability, and Health It is a conceptual scheme used by the World Health Organization to describe and compare people’s ability to function physically and socially while living with an array of different health conditions and impairments. Participatory Action Research The research that questions traditional researcher/participant roles and requires researchers to involve participants in the design, implementation, and analysis stages of a project. Emphasis is placed on conducting research of immediate relevance to the participant population, and using ﬁndings to facilitate social change. Social Model of Disability A conceptual approach to disability that emphasizes the oppressive character of the social and built environments as a primary cause of disabled people’s inability to participate in mainstream, everyday life.

Human geographers have made numerous theoretical and applied contributions to current understandings of disability and chronic illness. These contributions have engaged with many different impairments and disability experiences, employing a number of spatial theories and techniques in the process. In what follows, we review and reﬂect on disability and chronic illness research in human geography. We begin with some basic deﬁnitions and key concepts encountered within social scientiﬁc discussions of disability and chronic illness. We then move on to summarize the diverse geographical approaches taken by human geographers in recent years. Finally, we reﬂect on the multiple challenges encountered when carrying out disability research and the research gaps that remain to be examined.

Deﬁnitions and Key Concepts The way we deﬁne disability and chronic illness has fundamental implications for how we make sense of the human geographies of people living with a diversity of conditions, including hearing impairment, intellectual disabilities, and illnesses (such as arthritis and ﬁbro myalgia, spinal cord injuries, and epilepsy). Broadly speaking, we can distinguish between individualized medical deﬁnitions of disability and chronic illness, and those that emphasize the social, cultural, and/or political character of these conditions. Medical conceptions of disability and chronic illness tend to focus on the spe ciﬁcs of the ‘problem’ confronting an individual’s body or mind. The following excerpt is from a neuroscientist describing the nature of a spinal cord injury: Take, for example, a person who has had a burst fracture of the C5 vertebral bodyy Due to edema (swelling of the spinal cord), the biceps (C5) may be initially weak but should recover. The wrist extensors (C6), however, should remain weak and sensation at and below C6 should be severely compromised. (Young, 2002)

Here, the ‘burst fracture of the C5 vertebral body’ produces a series of outcomes including the loss of the use of the individual’s legs. Appropriate responses may include surgical interventions to maximize existing movement, efforts to deal with changes in the body’s capacity for bladder and bowel control, and a process of rehabilitation to assist the individual in learning to live with a spinal cord injury and trying to return as much as possible to a ‘normal’ life. Conceptually, this individual ized conception of disability begins with the impact of an injury – or a congenital defect or chronic illness – on the functional capacity of an individual, with particular at tention to the ways in which medical specialties might repair and/or rehabilitate the body. To the extent that medical interventions are possible, individuals may be able to return to ‘normal’. Where unsuccessful, indi viduals are disabled by their diminished functional capacity. Given the status of biomedicine in Western society, this conception of disability and chronic illness as stemming exclusively from the individual body has had the status of commonsense in the twentieth century. However, several other ways of conceptualizing disability have emerged over the past 40 years that challenge the medical conception. While distinct, they share three things in common. First, they are explicitly collective in

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orientation, making sense of disability not as something localized in the body of a single individual but as something common to, and experienced by, a group of people in society. Second, to varying degrees they chal lenge the centrality of medicine in making sense of the meaning of disability. Third, to varying degrees, these conceptions emerge from activists and scholars within the disabled population. It is useful to comment on three of these conceptual approaches here. Minority Group Model The ﬁrst of these conceptual approaches is a ‘minority group’ model of disability. Here, disabled persons are conceived collectively as an oppressed group within so ciety. This conception does not necessarily question or critique the underlying assumptions about the nature of disability as deﬁned in the medical model. Rather, it uses the experience of disability as the basis for a collective political identity, arguing that recognition of the rights of disabled people is essential for their fair treatment in a society where the able body is a privileged norm. An important variation of the minority group model is the development of ‘Deaf culture’. Proponents reject dis ability as an identity, arguing instead that deaf people constitute a minority with their own language (sign language), culture, and traditions, and should be recog nized as such by the broader society. Proponents call for the development of separate institutions to sustain and enrich the traditions of this cultural minority. Social Model A second model, and arguably the most inﬂuential in recent decades, has been the ‘social model’ of disability with origins in both the Disability Movement of the 1970s and in scholarship by writers such as Vic Finkel stein and Michael Oliver. Unlike the minority model, the social model explicitly challenges the fact of functional limitation as the basis of disability by distinguishing conceptually between impairment and disability. The following deﬁnitions, from the British Council of Or ganizations of Disabled People, make this clear: Impairment is the functional limitation within the indi vidual caused by physical, mental or sensory impairment. Disability is the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in the normal life of the community on an equal level with others due to physical and social barriers. (Barnes, 1991)

This approach separates the impairment experienced by an individual from ‘problems’ the individual may confront in society. To take the example of paid em ployment, a medicalized conception of disability would explain high rates of unemployment and low levels of

labor market participation in terms of the limited func tional capacities of individuals. By contrast, the social model posits that exclusion from paid employment is principally a function of barriers in the social environ ment (e.g., physical barriers at work and in the public transit system, marginalization of disabled people in the educational system, the negative attitudes of employers, and so on). Within the social model tradition, Finkelstein and Oliver linked the oppression of disabled persons in Western societies to the rise of industrial capitalism. Oliver paid particular attention to the development of the factory system that demanded a speciﬁc nonimpaired norm, the introduction of individual wage labor, and the rise of medicine and associated professions to deal with ‘problem’ groups excluded from the system of pro duction. The association of ‘independence’ with partici pation in paid work and the resulting stigmatization of dependency held fundamental implications for disabled people. Cultural Model A third model emerged partly in response to the social model. Informed by post structural and feminist theories, proponents of what might be broadly termed a ‘cultural model’ of disability took the issue with the materialist emphasis of social model scholars. The social model had little to say about discourse or cultural representations, and the crucial role that such representations might play in the construction of people as disabled or chronically ill. Take, for example, the social model’s opposition of im pairment and disability outlined above. While politically potent in its capacity to identify the ‘disabling’ character of the social environment, this formulation leaves the category of impairment as a largely unquestioned and medicalized fact that always already exists beyond its social interpretation. As Shelley Tremain has argued, the social model fails to question how ‘people with impair ments’ are produced as subjects by speciﬁc forms of power/knowledge. By contrast, a Foucauldian analysis directs attention to the practices through which ‘impair ment’ comes to stand as a prediscursive and supposedly natural category, and the ways in which this category is itself productive of governmental practices. An equally important contribution of this approach has been to insist on the importance of the body to conceptions of disability and chronic illness. Social model scholars challenged medicine’s preoccupation with the pathologies of the individual body but, in so doing, they risked removing the body from their theoretical formu lations. This move was critiqued for several reasons. While the distinction worked well for some conditions (e.g., people with paraplegia using wheelchairs who maintained good health following their injury), it was much less appropriate for others. Scholars discussing

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chronic physical illnesses argued that the social model erased the realities of pain and fatigue that played a central role in shaping daily geographies. In response, writers have argued for a return to the body, not just as an object of medical analysis but as a site of cultural in scription and contestation. For this reason, qualitative accounts of life with disability and chronic illness have come to the fore, both to validate individuals’ embodied experience and as a means to challenge dominant nar ratives of disability as personal tragedy. Collectively, efforts to move beyond an individualized medical conception of disability have had important implications beyond the academy. In 2002, the World Health Organization replaced its International Classiﬁ cation of Impairment, Disease and Handicap with the International Classiﬁcation of Functioning, Disability and Health, making explicit reference to the social model in recognizing the capacity of the environment to disable and/or enable people. Over the past decade and a half, many Western countries have enacted comprehensive disability rights legislation calling, at least on paper, for the removal of barriers to full participation in social life for persons living with a multiplicity of impairments.

Disability/Chronic Illness Research in Human Geography Several geographic approaches to research on disability and chronic illness can be discerned. To some extent, these approaches both reﬂect and contribute to the broader developments in social science scholarship on disability and chronic illness outlined above. The earliest geographical engagements with disability were positivistic in approach and utilized quantitative spatial analysis methods. Quantitative approaches pro vided objective descriptions of the spatial distribution of impairment and chronic illness in society, often in re lation to existing patterns of service provision. Studies were primarily concerned with mapping the locations, movement, and demographic attributes of persons cat egorized as physically or intellectually impaired, or diagnosed with chronic illness. These studies relied on prevailing biomedical categorizations of impairment and disease. Today, quantitative approaches to disability and chronic illness are less common, leaving a gap in know ledge with regard to current locational characteristics of impairment. Exceptions include Robert Gant’s work on the mobility and accessibility needs of disabled people in public spaces, as well as research by Howard Foster on the spatial ecology of illnesses such as Multiple Sclerosis and Alzheimer’s. Another way that geographers have engaged with disability is by using behavioral approaches to identify the ‘internal’ processes that persons with impairments use

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in the course of everyday interactions with their en vironments. Similar to quantitative approaches, be havioral approaches adopt an individualized conception of disability as a form of personal constraint. A majority of behavioral research has involved blind and vision impaired persons, and has taken a more practical focus emphasizing cognitive mapping and spatial mobility. Through exploring the spatial abilities of individuals with vision impairments, behavioral geographers have been at the forefront of developing an array of assistive tech nologies for accessing geographical information and ne gotiating the built environment. Work by Reginald Golledge has been foundational for the development of technologies like tactile maps, electronic ‘haptic’ tools, and GPS navigation devices, all of which have been used to assist vision impaired persons to travel independently. Similarly, Mark Blades and colleagues have explored the production and use of tactile maps by children and adults, demonstrating that vision impaired people are able to develop cognitive maps of an unknown area and navigate routes between places by using hard copy maps that are interpretable through touch. A third approach encompasses geographic scholarship engaging with the social model of disability. Broadly materialist in orientation, this scholarship has sought to elucidate the spatial dimension of disability oppression, with particular attention to the process of ‘disablement’ speciﬁc to the capitalist mode of production. A key conceptual contribution to this literature has been pro vided by Gleeson’s Geographies of Disability, which advances an analytical framework based on historical– geographical materialism. Gleeson uses empirical data to trace how evolving processes of labor commodiﬁcation and urbanization in modern capitalist societies produced exclusionary physical and social environments that de valued workers with impairments and facilitated the marginalization of impaired people. Gleeson’s work il lustrates how standardized forms of industrial production in the space of the factory were organized around, and presupposed the normality of, the able bodied worker, producing a ‘disabling division of labor’. This division of labor has had an enduring inﬂuence on labor market experiences of people with impairments and chronic illnesses. For example, the growth of ﬂexible work prac tices in postindustrial economies has been suggested as a possible source of employment opportunity for people who are unable to ﬁt a standard nine to ﬁve workday. However, recent research by Robert Wilton has shown that ﬂexible work environments continue to be organized around a nondisabled norm. In these contexts, the beneﬁts of ﬂexibility accrue primarily to employers. Focusing on disablement and the urban environment, Rob Imrie has offered an analysis of the socioinstitutional and political practices that perpetuate what he calls ‘ableist’ spaces: material environments that propagate

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powerful physical and social barriers to participation in ‘normal’ everyday activities. In particular, Imrie has shown how embedded socioinstitutional practices in volved in the production of the built environment sys tematically overlook bodily differences and thus deny accessibility and mobility to those with impairments, a state he calls ‘architectural apartheid’. Inaccessible public and private spaces are produced through the intersection of economic forces, architectural design traditions, and urban planning practices, resulting in the exclusion of disabled people from ‘mainstream’ community activities. Broken and uneven streets and sidewalks, building architecture with inaccessible stairs or doorways, and housing designs that presume an able body combine to produce an exclusionary physical environment, re stricting the ability of disabled people to carry out daily activities such as shopping or socializing with friends. Rob Kitchin and Robin Law offer a striking example of the exclusionary nature of urban space in their study of access to public toilets. They found that poor design and lack of provision constrained the spatial behavior of people with physical impairments. These everyday ex periences with essential services speak to the spatialized and ableist ‘power geometries’ that reproduce the ex clusion of disabled people within social spaces. Alongside geographers’ interest in spatializing the so cial model, there has also been recognition that other theoretical perspectives are essential for understanding the complex geographies of disability and chronic illness. In recent years, strands of post structuralism and feminist theory have been the most inﬂuential. Geographers, for example, have used post structural theory to consider disability in terms of the sociospatial production of ‘dif ference’. Work has examined the power of discourse to divide or partition ‘normal’, ‘healthy’, and ‘able’ bodies from ‘abnormal’, ‘unhealthy’, and ‘disabled’ bodies. From this perspective, discursive processes of boundary making shape social reactions to impaired persons, contributing to landscapes of (in)tolerance and exclusion, a process Mike Dorn has called ‘politico moral territorialization’. In this way, social space is disabling not only in a physical sense, but has also come to symbolize the deviation of impaired bodies from able bodied norms. Rob Kitchin, for example, has argued that unaccommodating built environments are social texts which inscribe certain bodies as ‘out of place’. Such environments reﬂect and reproduce the privilege of an able bodied norm, while at the same time perpetuating the ‘Otherness’ of disabled bodies. Elsewhere, Robert Wilton has used psychoanalytic theory to argue that the construction of impaired bodies as ‘Other’ triggers psychosocial anxieties that in turn motivate efforts to exclude visibly disabled people from social space. This work offers a cultural complement to earlier studies that emphasized the material bases of exclusion (e.g., that NIMBY reactions to housing and

services for disabled persons are sourced in concerns about property values). In a context where the fact of human mortality is disavowed and where forms of ‘body maintenance’ are readily available to those able to pay, visible impairment challenges taken for granted as sumptions about our ability to control the body. Also in the post structural tradition, Louise Holt has used the work of Judith Butler to explore the ways in which learning (dis)ability among children is constituted through per formance in school classrooms. She draws attention to the ways that ‘disability’ can be enacted in quite different ways within the context of different classrooms, reﬂecting the discourses and spatial practices adopted by teachers and students. Others geographers have used a feminist materialist perspective to examine the spatiality of chronic illness and impairment in the everyday lives of women. The work of Isabel Dyck and Pamela Moss is well known here. Focusing on sites such as the workplace and the home, Dyck and Moss have investigated the intersection of the material and the discursive in the formation of identity. Their work has carried forward a concern with notions of difference, by examining the ways in which dominant biomedical discourses are applied to dis tinguish between healthy and unhealthy bodies. These inscriptions are contested by women as they renegotiate place speciﬁc identities and corporeal changes associated with illness. For example, Dyck has shown how, as women experience chronic illness, the workplace can become a place of risk where taken for granted identities are fragmented and destabilized. A key issue for many women is disclosure, a moment of intense risk and anx iety. With disclosure, the body is ‘marked’ as disabled, an identity that is devalued within the workplace. As men tioned earlier, the workplace is normatively understood to be a place for ‘healthy’, able bodied workers. Thus, it is often the case that women manage disability, and issues around disclosure, through ‘concealment strategies’, that minimize symptoms and visibility. A major accomplish ment in the work of Dyck, Moss, and others using feminist materialism has been to demonstrate that the body is simultaneously a material and discursive product.

Ethics and Empowerment in Disability Research As geographers have engaged in research on the geog raphies of disability and chronic illness in recent years, they have also had to confront difﬁcult questions about the ethics and politics of this academic inquiry. As part of asserting the rights of disabled people to speak for themselves, disability movements have come to regard academic experts (especially nondisabled academics) with some suspicion. Activists have questioned the

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motivations of academics, pointing to the ways in which existing scholarship has been used to classify disabled people and, in some instances, to legitimate their mar ginalization. Expressions like ‘Nothing about us without us’ signaled resistance to more traditional research rela tionships where nondisabled academics decide what is an appropriate topic, and retain the authority to speak for study populations. For some activists, research by nondisabled academics has little or no place in the pol itical project of the disability movement. Others argue not for a complete exclusion of researchers, but for a restructuring of the relationship between researchers and participants. A key development in this vein has been the call for participatory or ‘emancipatory’ research, where people with disabilities and chronic illnesses ﬁgure not just as respondents but as active stakeholders with inﬂuence over the research questions, the kinds of knowledge produced, and the uses to which study results are put. Geographers such as Brendan Gleeson and Vera Chouinard have advocated for the adoption of this ap proach, with explicit attention to the ways that research does or does not help to challenge forms of oppression faced by disabled people. In the late 1990s, Rob Kitchin outlined two approaches to emancipatory research. On the one hand, projects can remain guided by a pro fessional model of research, where an academic is re sponsible for conducting the research but where participants monitor the process of research and offer feedback and criticism throughout. On the other hand, there can be an explicit effort to move toward a par ticipatory model where people are involved in the entire process of research. While these approaches have the capacity to challenge inequalities characteristic of more traditional research, there is a danger of romanticizing participatory projects. For example, a move toward increased participation as sumes that people have the time and the energy to be involved in the entire research process. Finding innova tive ways to both train and remunerate disabled people as research workers may help to avoid these pitfalls, and foster greater inclusion. At the same time, scholars have cautioned that a participatory approach may effectively exclude some groups. Ed Hall and Robin Kearns argue that for people with learning (intellectual) impairments, a lack of edu cation, social isolation, control by caregivers, and as well as the individual’s intellectual capacities may make par ticipatory research difﬁcult. This draws attention to the need for a range of innovative approaches to research that maximizes opportunities for meaningful input from people while recognizing both embodied constraints and social barriers to participation. In practice, much recent geographical research has not been fully participatory in nature. However, recent debates about power relations

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within research have meant that geographers are now more willing to question how their studies address the interests and opinions of disabled persons in the design, implementation, and outcomes of studies. Beyond the design of research projects, questions have also been asked about the extent to which the academy itself constitutes an inclusive environment for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. While physical access on college and university campuses has improved, progress in other areas is mixed. Blind and visually im paired students, for example, continue to face challenges in accessing alternative format texts, while students and faculty with impairments confront enduring prejudices in their search for accommodation.

Future Directions Recent years have seen a signiﬁcant growth of work on, and interest in, the economic, political, social, and cul tural geographies of disability and chronic illness. On the one hand, this is cause for optimism. Geographers have produced a wide, perhaps somewhat disparate, range of research on disability and chronic illness, forging con nections with a larger population of disability scholars in the social sciences and humanities on the one hand, and with communities of disabled and chronically ill persons on the other. Despite this progress there is still cause for concern. For one thing, it is not yet clear whether dis ability and chronic illness will be taken seriously in the discipline and the curriculum beyond the conﬁnes of medical/health geography. Notwithstanding the work of the geographers discussed above, disability – as a di mension of oppression and a subject for inquiry – does not have the status of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the broader subﬁelds of social, cultural, urban, economic, or political geography. This is despite the fact that dis abled persons constitute a signiﬁcant – and growing – minority of the population in Western countries and they continue to confront and struggle against manifold bar riers to full participation in, and access to, housing, paid employment, political participation, public space, social lives, and cultural representation. At the same time, existing studies have painted only a partial picture of the geographies of disability. The majority of work is from the developed world, while impairment, disability, and chronic illness are global realities. More work is needed to examine the com plexities of these experiences in non Western contexts. For example, globalization has shifted economic pro duction to poorer nations, with implications for the social and economic geographies of disabled and nondisabled persons alike. At the same time, structural adjustment programs often require developing nations to cut or forestall social spending to receive international loan

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assistance. Such cuts have implications for the incidence of impairment as well as the ability of disabled persons to access even basic services in these contexts. Finally, many questions surround the applicability of theories such as the social model of disability beyond the Western in dustrialized contexts in which they originated. See also: Body, The; Ethical Issues in Research; Feminism/Feminist Geography; Golledge, R.; Health Geography; Historical-Geographical Materialism; Medical Geography; Mental Health; Participatory Action Research; Psychoanalysis; Social Geography; Social Justice, Urban.

Imrie, R. (1996). Disability and the City: International Perspectives. London: Paul Chapman. Kitchin, R. (1998). ‘Out of place,’ ‘knowing one’s place’: Space, power and the exclusion of disabled people. Disability and Society 13(3), 343 356. Kitchin, R. and Law, R. (2001). The socio spatial construction of (in)accessible public toilets. Urban Studies 38(2), 287 298. Oliver, M. (1990). The Politics of Disablement. London: Macmillan. Tremain, S. (ed.) (1998). Foucault and the Government of Disability. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Wilton, R. (2004). From ﬂexibility to accommodation? Disabled people and the reinvention of paid work. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 29(4), 420 432. Young, W. (2002). Spinal cord injury levels and classiﬁcation . Sci Info OPages http://www.sci info Pages, http://www.sci info pages. com/levels. html (accessed 11 September 2008).

Further Reading

Relevant Websites

Barnes, L. (1991). Disabled People in Britain ande Discrimination: A Case for Anti discrimination Legislation. London: Hurst, in association with the British Council of Disabled People. Blades, M., Ungar, S. and Spencer, C. (1999). Map use by adults with visual impairments. Professional Geographer 51(4), 539 553. Butler, R. and Parr, H. (1998). Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability. New York: Routledge. Chouinard, V. (1997). Making space for disabling differences: Challenging ableist geographies. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15(4), 379 387. Dyck, I. and Moss, P. (2002). Women, Body, Illness: Space and Identity in the Everyday Lives of Women with Chronic Illness. New York: Rowman & Littleﬁeld. Gleeson, B. (1999). Geographies of Disability. London: Routledge. Golledge, R. (1993). Geography and the disabled: A survey with special reference to vision impaired and blind populations. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 21(2), 63 85. Hall, E. and Kearns, R. (2001). Making space for the ‘intellectual’ in geographies of disability. Health & Place 7, 237 246. Holt, L. (2005). Children with mind body differences: Performing disability in primary school classrooms. Children’s Geographies 2(2), 219 236.

http://www.adapt.org ADAPT (US disability rights organization). http://www.disabilitystudies.ca Canadian on Disability Studies. http://isc.temple.edu Disability and Geography International Network (DAGIN), Temple University. http://www.dawncanada.net Disabled Women’s Network (DAWN) Canada. http://www.rehab international.org Rehabilitation International. http://soundscapes.geog.ucsb.edu Research Unit on Spatial Cognition and Choice (University of California Santa Barbara). http://www.bcodp.org.uk United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council (formerly the British Council of Disabled People). http://www.who.int World Health Organization’s ‘International Classiﬁcation of Functioning, Disability & Health. http://www.wid.org World Institute on Disability.

Discourse T. Cresswell, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Epistemological Concerning how we know the world. Ideology Meanings that tend to support existing relations of domination. Representation A likeness or image of something that can be textual, visual, or even performed. In a representation something is ‘re-presented’ or presented again.

Deﬁning Discourse Discourse is a term used with increasing frequency since the late 1980s in social, cultural, and political geography. Its use, however, is far from consistent. Often it is used to vaguely refer to spoken and written language while at other times it includes all forms of representation and refers quite speciﬁcally to theories derived from the work of post structuralism in general and the work of Foucault in particular. Foucault’s theory of discourse approaches epistemological questions of how we know what we know, where such knowledge comes from, who is au thorized to profess it and how, ultimately, ‘truth’ is established. In everyday speech discourse usually refers to either spoken or written communication. More speciﬁcally it is often used to refer to an organized spoken or written text about a particular subject. An example of this would be Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on political economy (1755). These general meanings for the word discourse are often used in geographical literature to loosely refer to a more or less organized set of words about something – ‘the discourse of devolution’ or ‘rural discourse’ perhaps. These uses, however, are frequently confused with a more precise theoretical use of the word discourse that ori ginates, predominantly, from the work of Michel Fou cault. In his theoretical and substantive work Foucault sought to show how linguistic and other elements are combined to shape and delineate particular kinds of objects of knowledge (madness, illness, the pathological, etc.), new sets of concepts and categories, new claims about what can be said and what must remain unsaid, and a new set of subject positions (the mad, the criminal, the deviant as well as the expert, the psychologist, etc.). In this sense discourse is no longer simply about words (written or spoken) but about a whole set of words, actions, institutions, and infrastructures that are more or less logically coherent and produce new regimes of truth.

Foucault’s use of the term discourse was far from con sistent. He admitted that sometimes he used it to refer generally to all statements, often quite small and indi vidual in conception. At other times he used it to refer to an overarching and organizing set of regulating principles that helps to account for the production of a multitude of statements at a smaller scale. He also used it to refer to statements in between these two poles. An example of the later would be the discourse of perversion or the dis course of criminality. Foucault’s most famous book (at least to geographers) is Discipline and punish. In this book he shows how the criminally deviant individual was transformed in the late eighteenth century through the growth of a disciplinary society which had at its center a set of legal and penal discourses which produced a new kind of criminal subject. This new kind of person had its own sets of practices, heredity, medical diagnoses, and other characteristics. New forms of punishment and surveillance arose hand in hand with these new subject positions as did new kinds of practice (in science, in law, in politics, etc.). These dis courses were not simply sets of spoken or written words (as suggested by general deﬁnitions of the meaning of discourse) but constellations of words, practices, insti tutions (such as the prison), and things. Neither are they clearly ‘about something’. Whereas common uses of the word discourse assume that words refer to something that preexists the words, the more precise formulation origi nating in the work of Foucault suggests rather the op posite – that new ‘truths’, new possibilities of being, emerge out of particular discursive formations. Discourses can thus be seen as establishing new networks of meaning and practice which delineate, produce, and reinforce re lations between what it is possible to think, say, and do. Objects and subjects are not external to this process but are thoroughly constituted through it. The more technical and Foucauldian use of the term discourse thus has two primary differences from its more everyday use. First, discourse is considerably more than spoken and written words (it includes all forms of rep resentation and, in some readings, institutions, objects, and practices) and, second, discourse is not simply ‘about’ something (politics, illness, sexuality, etc.) but brings these things into being. In the sense that discourses produce reality they are performative. Discourse does not simply describe something that preexists it, rather it brings it into being. In this sense it is more than a re ﬂection of ‘reality’ that can be true or false but is in fact performing ‘reality’ and producing ‘truth effects’.

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One way to specify the Foucauldian meaning of dis course is to compare it to the concept of ideology. Dis course is, in some ways, close to the term ‘ideology’. There are, however, important differences. Ideology, like discourse, considers the relations between meaning, power, and truth. Most theorists of ideology deﬁne it as sets of meanings in the service of the relatively powerful – meanings which reinforce already existing power relations. Discourse differs from this in important ways. While ideology relies on some notion of truth and objectivity (‘real interests’, for instance), that is external to it, discourse produces truth. Foucauldian discourse analysis is not concerned with separating out the truthful and the objective from the rest but with showing how historically ‘effects of truth’ are produced discursively. In addition, ideology (at least in its Marxist formulations) is always part of a superstructure which is caused by some other realm of human interaction – usually the world of political economy. Discourse has no such ‘base’ to appeal to or that can be used to explain it. Truth, in other words, is not in some other place but is within discourse itself. Finally the idea of ideology rests on the notion of a knowing and intentional subject – it is fundamentally humanist in its conception. Foucault’s notion of disourse rejects humanism and, in particular, the humanist notion of the subject at the center of the universe. The subject in Foucault is not unitary and knowing but fragmented and decentered – produced discursively through the process of subjectivization. An example would be the ways vari ous medical texts, beliefs, and practices, as well as the construction of the physical environment, produce the ‘disabled’ subject who is both marginalized and endowed with particular forms of competence. Discourse analysis is thus very different from the analysis of ideology. While the analysis of ideology (and ‘critical theory’ in general) seeks to peel away obfuscation to reveal the ‘truth’ of a situation, the analysis of dis course tries to deﬁne not what is concealed by a discourse but what is produced by it – the rules of the discourse itself and the new regimes of truth that it enables.

Discourse and Sexuality Perhaps the clearest delineation of discourse provided by Foucault is in the introduction to his History of sexuality. Here he describes a predominant approach to sexuality he calls the repressive hypothesis. According to this, sexuality has been repressed since the seventeenth cen tury when sexual activity was free of hang ups. Between the seventeenth century and Victorian times, the hy pothesis goes, sexuality was gradually repressed, made invisible, and submerged. It became embarrassing. This repression coincided more or less with the advent of industrial capitalism and the rise of a bourgeois order. In

fact capitalism and its attendant work imperative became an explanation for the repression of sexuality. This, however, is not Foucault’s approach. Rather than looking for economic explanations he turns to discourse. In this time of supposed repression, he points out, there has been a surfeit of discourse on sex. The question for Foucault is not why are we repressed but why do we say (so often and so loudly) that we are repressed? Why has sexuality been so widely discussed, and what has been said about it? What were the effects of power generated by what was said? What are the links between these discourses, these effects of power, and the pleasures that were invested by them? What knowledge (savoir) was formed as a result of this linkage?yThe central issue then (at least in the ﬁrst instance), is not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex, whether one formu lates prohibitions or permissions, whether one asserts its importance or denies its effects, or whether one reﬁnes the words one uses to designate it; but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said. What is at issue, brieﬂy, is the over all ‘discursive fact’, the way in which sex is ‘put into discourse’. (Foucault, 1990: 11)

So far from being repressed, Foucault suggests, sex and sexuality is being discursively produced through an excess of things said. The point, he underlines, is not to ﬁnd the truth behind the discourse (as an ideological analysis might do) but to ﬁnd the truth produced within the discourse. Power here is not repressive but productive.

The Example of the Tramp Take the example of the tramp in the United States in the period following the Civil War. A careful observer would have noticed increasingly frequent references to tramps in the pages of the New York Times from the 1870s onward. In fact they would not have seen any references to tramps before February 1875. It would have been as though they did not exist. A year later the ﬁrst ‘tramp law’ came into being in New Jersey. A picture was beginning to emerge both in the press and in the deﬁn itions provided by law of what a tramp was. Apparently idle, without work, and frighteningly mobile – able to be in New York one day and in California two weeks later thanks to the recently completed transcontinental rail road. In the early 1890s the New England reformer, John McCook, was writing sympathetic columns about tramp life which resulted from extensive questionnaires and interviews with tramps. By 1899 all kinds of books were

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appearing either about or by these tramps. Indeed a new academic discipline, sociology, was dedicating a large amount of time to recording the lives of these people and further classifying them into different kinds of tramps, as well as distinguishing them from hobos and bums. One such ‘sociologist’, Josiah Flynt, spent a year dressed as a tramp and traveling with them. He reported his adven tures in the popular magazine Atlantic Monthly. All kinds of theories about these disorganized people began to emerge from the new Chicago School of Sociology. In the early twentieth century the sociologists were joined by the medical profession and, particularly, by eugenicists, who suggested that the tramps suffered from an inherited predisposition to wander endlessly. Tramps also became central to other new forms of knowledge. Cartoonists frequently featured tramps in cartoon strips in the daily paper as ﬁgures of fun. Vaudeville performers made fun of the tramp’s hygiene and work aversion. The new silent movies were to put the tramp at center stage as Charlie Chaplin used his ‘little tramp’ to poke fun at conventional society. The practice of documentary photography was producing picturesque portraits of tramps in New York’s back alleys. Given that our careful observer would never have seen the use of the word tramp as a noun until 1875 it is surely remarkable that such an array of words, images, charts, movies, diagnoses, treatment, and punishments should have been brought to bear on this previously invisible and un named character. It should be noted that sociology, newspaper cartoons, documentary photography, vaude ville, silent movies, and eugenics were also new to this period. It was as if they had arisen hand in hand with the tramp. There are clearly at least two ways to think about this. The conventional way would be to say that a new phe nomenon has arisen – a new thing in the world – the tramp – and that, once noticed, knowledge had to ac count for it. The second way would suggest that with the construction of new discourses (sociology of deviance, vaudeville humor, etc.) it became possible to be a tramp. In this second sense the tramp was ‘made up’ discursively. Importantly this is not simply to say that new ideas and images of the tramp were produced culturally (this would hardly be controversial) but that tramps were literally brought into being – it became possible to be a tramp. And with the arrival of the tramp came new possibilities for practice, new punishments, new medical diagnoses, new spaces and places.

Geographies of Discourse So what is geographical about discourse? There are four principal ways in which geographers either have or po tentially could engage with discourse.

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First, the idea of discourse places a great deal of importance on context. Knowledge, texts, truths, prac tices, and realities are all products of particular times and spaces. They are not universal but contextual. Clearly, then, discourses have a distinctive spatial character. The work of Foucault, for instance, is often grounded in particular times and places and the knowledge that arises there is speciﬁc to that context. His studies of madness and discipline, for instance, were clearly set in France and the setting impacted upon the discourse. Discursive knowledge is not universal but particular. Its truths are not general but speciﬁc. Second, and more important, discourses have very speciﬁc sites where they arise. Laboratories, clinics, uni versities, and asylums are all micro geographies which are both the context for and part of discourse. Most clearly, perhaps, modern discipline is unthinkable without the modern prison as famously represented by Bentham’s panopticon. However, all kinds of discourse require au thority for someone to be able to use it and produce truth effects. Part of this authority comes from the place from which discourse was produced by the author. Third, geographical knowledge itself can be subjected to discourse analysis. Geography departments and soci eties are sites from which discourse is produced, as well as material parts of discourses themselves. Somewhere like the Royal Geographical Society, for instance, is a site where geographical discourse constituted particular kinds of colonial and imperial subjects and produced particular kinds of colonial and imperial truths. Geography has its own discourses and some of them have been historically powerful as, for instance, Felix Driver has shown. Fourth, discourse is implicated in the production of places and, in particular, in the judgment of people’s practices within places. What counts as acceptable, ap propriate behavior, for instance, if often determined by a nexus of place and discourse. Subjects are not simply constituted anywhere but on a particular terrain. The discourse of urban planning, for instance, is implicated in the production of the ‘ghetto’. The ghetto then histor ically became a site associated with particular people (often racially coded) and particular kinds of practice. These different aspects of geographies of discourse have, in one form or another, circulated through geo graphy’s subdisciplines since the mid 1980s. Cultural geographers, with their interests in textuality and rep resentation, began to invoke the notion of discourse quite loosely alongside literary concepts such as metaphor and rhetoric. The general ‘cultural turn’ in human geography saw the migration of discourse analysis, and particularly the Foucauldian version of it, into other subdisciplines such as political geography and economic geography. Critical geopolitics, for instance, often accounts for pol itical power on the international stage through analysis of a range of discourses from the popular media to ofﬁcial

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governmental policy. Rather than considering geopolitics as an objective form of knowledge about the world, critical geopolitics considers them as discursive con structions of the political world constructed from par ticular places by particular people with the authority to speak. Critical geopolitics thus considers all manner of representational forms from ofﬁcial documents to news paper cartoons as elements in the formation of the pol itical landscape. The historical geographer, Matthew Hannah, con ducted a particularly intensive discursive analysis of the development of the census in the United States alongside a new statistical discourse which brought the new cat egory of the ‘population’ into being. This analysis involved an understanding of the places from which statistics emerge, as well as how particular people are given the authority to speak the discourse of statistics about popu lations. Census statistics, it turns out, are not simply about populations – they create them. Once populations are invented all kinds of statistical practice (and other kinds of practice) can be exercised on and through these popu lations. All of this is intensely geographical.

Lines of Critique The Foucauldian notion of discourse is not without its critics. A number of important critiques have been made of discourse and discursive analysis, both by left wing commentators (mainly upset by the challenge to theories of ideology for instance), and by right wing critics who despair at what they see as the relativism and antirealism of Foucault’s thought. An important ontological question, for instance, is ‘what lies beyond discourse?’ A strong reading of Foucault would seem to suggest that nothing lies beyond discourse. A sceptic might point to the hardness of rocks or the laws of gravity and say that such things are clearly not created discursively. Indeed, a supporter of Foucault, Ian Hacking, has gone to great pains to suggest that there is something importantly different about a ‘tramp’, for instance, and a ‘waterfall’. While it is true that a waterfall would exist with or without our apprehending it, a tramp is literally made up through our knowledge about it and our representations of it. However, even a waterfall has to be apprehended and, a Foucauldian might argue, our understanding of waterfalls only happens through discourse. So here we have a weaker discourse theory that acknowledges things beyond discourse but says there is no way to know such things except discursively. Among the more thought provoking critiques of dis course theory is the observation that if objects are internal to discourses (i.e., are constituted by them) then how are we to judge that discourse has constructed its object ap propriately, validly, or justly? Or to put it more

straightforwardly, how is it possible to be right or wrong? This question is both an ontological one and a moral– political one. Unlike the theory of ideology, for instance, there does not seem to be a place from which to judge a discourse and the truths it constructs. How, for instance, could we say that Nazi discourse, or racist discourse, or homophobic discourse is wrong? On what grounds could we seek to change it? Related to this is the suggestion that Foucault’s discursive approach leaves little room for re sistance to domination except through yet more discourse. Finally theories of discourse are subject to the general critique of representation articulated by nonrepresenta tional theory. Nonrepresentational theory suggests that a focus on representation (and discourse is heavily repre sentational) ignores the world of emotion and affect that forms a central part of existence (human and otherwise). The suggestion that there is nothing (that can be ap prehended) beyond discourse suppresses and marginal izes these important aspects of life on Earth. See also: Foucauldianism; Ideology; NonRepresentational Theory/Non-Representational Geographies; Performativity; Representation and Representation; Sexuality.

Further Reading Barnes, T. and Duncan, J. (eds.) (1991). Writing worlds: Discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape. London: Routledge. Cresswell, T. (2001). The tramp in America. London: Reaktion. Dalby, S. (1991). Critical geopolitics: Discourse, difference, and dissent. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 9(3), 261 283. Driver, F. (1992). Geography’s empire: Histories of geographical knowledge. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10, 23 40. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1981). The order of discourse. In Young, R. (ed.) Untying the text: A post structuralist reader, pp 48 79. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality, vol. 1: An introduction. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1991). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hacking, I. (2002). Historical ontology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hannah, M. (2000). Governmentality and the mastery of territory in nineteenth century America. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mele, C. (2000). The materiality of urban discourse: Rational planning in the restructuring of the early twentieth century ghetto. Urban Affairs Review 35(5), 628 648. Mills, S. (1997). Discourse. London: Routledge.

Relevant Websites http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/about Discourse Analysis Online. www.eng.fju.edu.tw/crit.97/Foucault/Foucault.htm#power Discourse, Power, Subjectivity.

Discourse Analysis L. D. Berg, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Discourse This term is often confusing because it is used in two ways. Linguists tend to use it for particular passages of speech and writing. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, social theorists use it in a broader fashion to refer to the taken-for-granted, and most often, hidden, frameworks of ideas that structure both knowledge and social practice. Discourses are thus sets of ideas ‘and’ practices that give statements, texts, rhetorics, and narratives particular kinds of meanings. Somewhat enigmatically, Foucault argued that ‘‘discourses are practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.’’ Many complex and often contradictory discourses can be in circulation at any one time, but one discourse is usually hegemonic, and thus it tends to constitute the general conditions under which dominant members of a society ‘know’ their world. Episteme The historical formations of knowledge that sets the conditions of possibility for how we understand our social life. An episteme can be seen to share many characteristics with ‘zeitgeist’, in that it provides a structure of feeling about a speciﬁc era or epoch. Similarly, and as the term suggests, it shares certain characteristics with the term epistemology, in that it relates closely to how we come to understand things. However, both zeitgeist and epistemology tend to ignore the power relations that structurally contain and enable such processes, whereas the idea of the episteme is designed to directly confront the circulation of power in societies, and the ‘productive’ character of such power (i.e., its ability to create both subjects and objects of power). Power/Knowledge In order to better understand the relationship between power and systems of knowledge, Michel Foucault coined the term power/knowledge. He argued that power and knowledge could not be separated analytically, as ‘‘there is no power relationship without the correlative constitution of a ﬁeld of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations.’’ Importantly, Foucault does not see power as operating top-down, but, instead, he sees power as infusing all social relations and operating to produce subjects and objects (rather than operating between pregiven subjects and objects). Power/knowledge has become an important concept for geographers interested in understanding the complex relationship between knowledge, space, and power.

Subjectivity/Subject Position All of us work with some kind of theory of the subject, that is, what it is to be a sentient being and to live, act, and have relationships in the world. For many years, geographers drew on a relatively ﬁxed notion of the subject exempliﬁed by the term ‘identity’, and involving identiﬁcation as, for example, a male, a female, a heterosexual, or a disabled person. Key to the concept of identity is attachment to the existence of some essential, natural, or central core qualities. More recently, post-structuralist and feminist geographers have drawn on the concepts of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘subject positions’ to understand what it is to ‘be’ a sentient being and engage in relations with other subjects and objects. Unlike the notions of relative ﬁxity associated with identities, subjectivities are seen as always in-the-making, they are often contested, and in many cases they incorporate contradictory elements. Geographers have become key theorists of subjectivity because of the important role that space and place play in subject formation and thus subject ‘positions’ in social and spatial relations.

Introduction In his inaugural lecture of 2 December 1970 at the Colle`ge de France, – a unique institution of higher education in that its classes are both free and open to anyone who wishes to attend, and its professors are elected to their posts by an electorate of France’s leading scholars – Michel Foucault set out to explain one of his most important concepts, namely, that of ‘discourse’: y in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality. (Michel Foucalt, 1984: 109)

Since that time, Foucault’s notion of discourse has in formed much theorizing about the relationship between power and knowledge in the structuration of society and space. Critical geographers, particularly feminist, anti racist, and postcolonial geographers, have begun to focus on the role of language and discourse in the maintenance of political arrangements of domination and oppression. Much of this work is informed, implicitly if not explicitly, by a post structuralist sensibility. This sensibility is based

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on the argument that language does not mirror some preexisting reality, but instead language constitutes the conditions under which we ‘know’ reality. Indeed, much of the post structuralist argument concerning the status of truth centers on language because of ‘‘the realization/ belief that language lies at the heart of all knowledge.’’ As Simon Dalby suggests, this is a shift from positivist ap proaches and epistemological concerns that: y involves conceptualizing social existence as human practice. Social life is active creation, albeit within cre ated frameworks of custom, economy, power and lan guage. Social life is understood in and through language, and hence the structures of language reﬂect and create social life. (Dalby, 1990: 5)

The centrality of language in meaning production has meant that discourse analysis tended to focus on ‘text’ as an object of analysis. Following Roland Barthes, however, text is conceived broadly, and thus discourse analysis has focused on all sorts of social and cultural productions from printed words, paintings, maps, landscapes to social, economic, and political institutions. Such texts at once are created by, impose, and maintain particular discursive formations that involve speciﬁc epistemological claims, circumscribe legitimacy, and ‘‘provide the intellectual conditions of possibility of particular institutional and political arrangements.’’ This article attempts to link Foucauldian notions of discourse, with a more ‘practical’ guide to the practice of discourse analysis. The ﬁrst half of the article begins with an introduction to Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of discourse, then moves to a discussion of its relationship to power, continues with a discussion of some of what Foucault termed the ‘rules’ of discourse, and then con cludes with a brief introduction to Foucault’s ‘methods’ of discourse analysis. The second part of the article at tempts to link Foucault’s somewhat abstract approach to method to a more grounded understanding of ‘doing’ discourse analysis in human geography. It is important to note at the outset, however, that geographers have rarely explained in detail their discourse analytic method, so the article relies on a few key sources to elucidate some ‘methods’ of discourse analysis.

Foucauldian Conceptualizations of Discourse Discourse as a Concept Discourse is a difﬁcult concept, primarily because there exist a large number of sometimes conﬂicting and often overlapping deﬁnitions formulated from various theo retical, methodological, and disciplinary standpoints. Nonetheless, two broad ‘understandings’ of discourse can be identiﬁed. Linguists tend to use discourse to refer to

extended examples of either spoken or written language. On the other hand, while recognizing the centrality of language and text to discursive analysis, social theorists tend to view discourse in a much broader fashion. In much social theory, and particularly that based on the work of Michel Foucault, discourse refers to ways of structuring knowledge and social practice. Following this latter approach, discourses can be characterized as ‘‘frameworks that embrace particular combinations of narratives, concepts, ideologies and sig nifying practices, each relevant to a particular realm of social action.’’ Discourse is somewhat like grammar, in that it is not a thing to be seen and touched, but instead an implicit ‘‘set of capabilities, an ensemble of rules by which readers/listeners and speakers/audiences are able to take what they hear and read and construct it into an organized meaningful whole.’’ Discourse is not merely reﬂective of dominant social values, but is also consti tutive: ‘‘different discourses constitute key entities (be they ‘mental illness’, ‘citizenship’ or ‘literacy’) in different ways, and position people in different ways as social subjects.’’ Accordingly, discourse can be seen more as a set of unspoken rules which govern, control, and produce knowledge in a culture. Discourse and Power One key aspect to Foucault’s notion of discursive power is that such power is not just ‘repressive’ in the sense that it prevents action or controls existing agents and outcomes, but that it is also ‘productive’ in that it creates new ac tions, events, agents, and outcomes. A number of feminist theorists have explored the productive role of power, and two metaphorical concepts are key here: the panopticon and the confessional. The panopticon is a metaphor for people’s internalization of the perspective of a usually hegemonic Other that produces a self monitoring subject. Force is rarely required to ensure conformity, for the (subordinate) subject ensures its own conformity to dominant norms. For example, business people may conform to a certain ‘norm’ of dress and personal grooming, despite their own personal beliefs about such matters. The confessional is a metaphor for the ‘‘social urge to explain, justify and seek forgiveness for intimate feelings, decisions and actions.’’ Played out in numerous settings – the church, the doctor’s ofﬁce, therapy sessions, the ofﬁce – the confessional is ‘‘the liberational antithesis of power.’’ In these ways, both knowledge and cultures are ‘constructed’ by the power inscribed in discursive practices. As social constructions, discursive formations have institutional origins and commitments; they are embodied in technical processes, institutions, and pat terns of general behavior. Thus, discourses are ‘‘both reinforced and renewed by whole strata of practices, such as pedagogy y and the system of books, publishing,

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libraries; learned societies in the past and laboratories now.’’ Their knowledges are political products, bound up with power; they are thus both the product and medium of power. A second important concept associated with discursive power is the way that its relation to the subject is con ceptualized. In this regard, Foucault conceptualizes power as operating everywhere, and thus he does not see a need to theorize an agent of power. Perhaps more im portantly, subjects are constituted in and through the power of discourse. This is distinctly different from other critical theories, such as Marxism, which tends to view power as operating top down, from a pre given subject (the ruling classes, who hold power) to another pre given subject (the working classes, who are relatively ‘power less’). This is an important theoretical move that helps to understand power when it is at its most effective – when power is exercised by everyone, yet by no one in par ticular. Power works best when it is anonymous, and in such cases, it would be misguided attempting to identify a speciﬁc agent of power. Instead, discourse analysts are much more interested in coming to understand not only which social groups beneﬁt from discursive power, but also, how group and individual identities (subjectivities) are constituted in power relations. Rules of Discourse Foucault suggests that discourse may be identiﬁed by the existence of certain ‘rules’ which he calls ‘practices’. Such discursive practices systematically form for the discourse ‘‘groups of objects, enunciations, concepts, or theoretical choices.’’ For example, as Foucault suggests with refer ence to medicinal practices, such rules govern modes of speaking or ‘enunciations’ by deﬁning the answers to questions such as ‘‘who, among the totality of speaking individuals, is accorded the right to use this sort of lan guage? Who is qualiﬁed to do so?’’ Similarly, they govern the institutional ‘sites’ from which the medical prac titioner makes such enunciations, and from which this discourse derives its legitimate source and point of application. Discourses or discursive formations are complex systems of signiﬁcation governing the production and use of knowledge and meaning in cultures. Cultures them selves are established through the complex inter dependent relationships formed between, in, and through discursive practices. Such practices are governed by rules that circumscribe the objects of discourse, the speakers of discourse, and the forms of discussion that may take place in particular discourses. Discourses are governed exter nally, internally, and through control of access. Discourses are governed ‘externally’ through prohibitions of speech, divisions between reason and madness, and oppositions of truth and falsehood. They are also

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‘internally’ policed through the application of commen tary and ritualized discussion. Finally, ‘access’ to dis course is controlled via speech rituals, societies of discourse, doctrine, and social appropriation. These ‘rules’ for discourse interlock in intricate ways that are constantly shifting and regrouping, such that discursive practices themselves are also constantly transforming and changing in complex ways that are not easily traceable because they cannot be characterized merely as a para digm shift or change in zeitgeist, collective attitudes or state of mind. The transformation of a discursive practice is linked to a whole range of usually complex modiﬁcations that can occur outside of its domain (in the forms of production, in social relationships, in political institutions), inside it (in its techniques for determining its objects, in the ad justment and reﬁnement of its concepts, in its accumu lation of facts), or to the side of it (in other discursive practices). (Foucault, 1977: 200)

Nevertheless, it is possible to trace the effects of these discursive relationships, and it is to Foucault’s ‘method’ for doing so that I now turn. Foucault has utilized his concept of discourse to analyze, among other things, the discursive practices of psychiatry, medicine, penal institutions, and regimes of sexuality. He has illustrated the ways in which madness is created as the antithesis to reason, diseased to healthy, delinquent to reformed, and deviant to normal. In so doing, Foucault has illustrated the way that discursive practices delimit their objects of study (or surveillance, discipline, etc.) and then deﬁne the legitimate perspective for the knowing subject. Accordingly, he has focused his analysis on the way a dominant identity that is self deﬁned as ‘normal’ is usually structured in opposition to some external Other deﬁned (by members of the dom inant group) in contradistinction to the dominant iden tity as ‘abnormal’. This division between the normal and the abnormal is a key theme in Foucault’s analysis of society. When a judgement cannot be framed in terms of good and evil, it is stated in terms of normal and abnormal. And when it is necessary to justify this last distinction, it is done in terms of what is good or bad for the individual. These are expressions that signal the fundamental duality of Western consciousness. (Foucault, 1977b: 230)

Foucault’s analysis of the normal/abnormal dualism is founded in the work of Nietzsche who analyzed the ‘fundamental duality’ of Western society in terms of three types of questions that have been described as ‘objective’, ‘subjective’, and ‘functionary’. In objective terms, Nietzsche asked under what conditions were the value judgments, good and evil, constructed. Foucault,

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translating Nietzsche’s questions into a secular society, focused not on good and evil but on normal and ab normal. This examination of the political economy of normality and abnormality is evident in all of Foucault’s substantive works, which are devoted to examining the ways that judgments of normality and abnormality have been constructed. In subjective terms, Foucault has ex tended Nietzsche’s notion of religious discourses causing an ‘inner split’ in the subject. Foucault suggests that [w]here religions once demanded the sacriﬁce of bodies, knowledge now calls for experimentation on ourselves, calls us to the sacriﬁce of the subject of knowledge. The desire for knowledge has been transformed among us into a passion which fears no sacriﬁce, which fears nothing but its own extinction. (Foucault, 1977c: 163)

The will to know about oneself and to study one’s psyche produces a split subject/object, whereby the subject’s own subjectivity becomes an object for the will to truth. Foucault asks how this inwardly divided self has come about, and who has beneﬁted from its construction. His (partial) answer is that the oppositional discourse of truth and falsehood is somehow implicated in this process, and much of his substantive work attempts to illustrate the way this occurs in speciﬁc places and times. Finally, in functionary terms, Foucault extends Nietzsche’s questions about the role of the ‘ascetic priest’ in promoting the divisions and dualisms that have come to dominate human thinking in Western societies. Writ ing in a secular era, Foucault asked what role the ‘intel lectual’ (the educated elite, not necessarily academics) played in the construction and elaboration of the social divisions between true and false, normal and abnormal. How were social divisions created? What power interests were served by these divisions? Having discussed in some detail Foucault’s conceptualization of ‘discourse’, and his somewhat vague methods for analyzing discourses, it is now possible to focus attention toward how geographers might be ‘doing’ discourse analysis.

‘Doing’ Discourse Analysis Discourse Analysis as a Difﬁcult-to-Deﬁne Method Social scientists (and others) have inherited from Foucault some reticence for explaining discourse analytic ‘methods’. Clearly some of this reticence comes from Foucault’s own distaste for outlining his methods, but it also comes from a post positivist sensibility that is itself wary of the idea of a simple list of methods that can be applied to discourse analysis. As Jonathan Potter and Margaret Wetherell observe, ‘‘one of the difﬁculties in writing about the process of discourse analysis is that the very category ‘analysis’ comes from a discourse

developed for quantitative positivist methodologies.’’ The result is that few social scientists write about methods in discourse analysis. In a recent review of discourse ana lysis as method, Gordon Waitt notes that: discourse analysis is positioned as a ‘craft skill’ (Potter 1996, p. 140), the researcher’s ability ‘to customise’ (Phillips and Hardy 2002, p. 78), ‘rigorous scholarship’ (Gill 1996, p. 144), or ‘human intellect’ (Duncan 1987, p. 473). The maxim is ‘learning by doing’. Through practice, discourse analysis is typically held to become intuitive. Scholarly passion seemingly underpins critical textual analysis. The methodology is often left implicit rather than made explicit. Undermining the very basis of discourse analysis is research that is too systematic, mechanical, and formulaic (Burman and Parker 1993) (emphases and citations in original). (Gordon Waitt, 2005: 179)

Human geographers have perhaps been even less forthcoming about their discourse analytic methods. In a recent discussion of a series of special sessions focused on discourse analysis in urban geography held at the Asso ciation of American Geographers 2003 conference, Loretta Lees observed that ‘‘out of sixteen papers, not one outlined in any detail how they had gone about their particular discourse analysis.’’ In a similar review of discourse analysis in policy research Yvonne Rydin notes ‘‘the lack of methodological detail in many accounts of discourse analysis.’’ Two review essays are emblematic of the tendencies in human geography. Henry Yeung undertook a methodological review of ‘new economic geography’, and in spite of the fact that part of the focus of the review was on the analysis of economic (and noneconomic) discourses, he never mentioned any of the actual methods of discourse analysis. Similarly, in his recent review essay, Keith Jacobs sets out, in part, to provide ‘‘an evaluation of its [discourse analysis] strengths and weaknesses as a method’’, but then does not actually discuss the speciﬁcities of the ‘methods’ of dis course analysis, focusing instead on the epistemological concerns of the papers that use discourse analysis. The point here is not to single these two authors out for such failures, but instead to point out how they represent the standard practice in human geography. Clearly, there is more at work here than straight forward opposition to the discussion of methods, and in part, the nature of discourse analysis itself poses prob lems for those who attempt to describe it. Indeed, it is clear that many human geographers have taken their cues from writers such as Margeret Wetherell and Jonathan Potter , who argue that ‘‘much of the work of discourse analysis is a craft skill, something like bicycle riding or chicken sexing, that is not easy to render or describe in an explicit or codiﬁed manner.’’ The result is that human

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geographers have taken an eclectic and often ‘intuitive’ approach to analyzing discourse, and that few of their speciﬁc methods have been recorded or discussed in a systematic manner.

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or reinforced in the text? What role does space play in the constitution of subjectivities and subject positions? These are all difﬁcult questions to answer, and they often require speciﬁc theoretical knowledge in order to do so.

Doing Discourse Analysis Recognizing the shortcomings inherent in an approach with no written canon of methods, Gillian Rose set out to explicitly deﬁne seven key methodological components to discourse analysis of visual materials. Gordon Waitt has adapted these to the wider analysis of discourse in other geographical objects, and the following discussion attempts to summarize the seven key methodological issues discussed by these authors. Suspending preexisting categories

Given that one of the key components of any discourse analysis is to attempt to identify hegemonic discourses in action, it is especially important for a discourse analyst to step outside hegemonic discourses. This can be seen as part of an attempt to examine a text ‘‘with fresh eyes and ears.’’ It is also part of the process of engaging in reﬂexive analysis, where the analyst examines their own position in the discourse, and how that position helps to constitute particular understandings of the issues under analysis. Interestingly, immersing oneself in readings in critical social theory is perhaps the best way to gain the skills to step outside hegemonic discourses such as liberalism. Absorbing oneself in the texts

It is especially important for any discourse analyst to absorb themselves in their objects of analysis. This in volves becoming fully familiar with the texts that one is studying, and beginning, through the process of ‘reading’ and ‘re reading’, to identify any particular themes that arise in the reading of texts. Coding Themes

Once familiar with the objects of analysis, it is time to start to ‘code’ for particular themes. Coding can take many forms, but it usually involves some form of cat egorization of particular aspects of the objects of an alysis. It is important at this juncture to pay particular attention to the ways that the producer and consumer of a text is positioned by the text. It is also important to come to understand how objects discussed in the text (people, places, and things) are also positioned textually. Some questions one might ask include does the pro ducer use third person narrative, distancing themselves from their text? How is the author of a text explicitly or implicitly gendered? Is the text written from a ‘mascu line’ or ‘feminine’ perspective? Is the reader assumed to occupy a particular social class? Are people in the text racialized? Are there particular stereotypes drawn upon

Identifying ‘regimes of truth’

All discourses rely on particular knowledge that deﬁnes the legitimacy of any particular statement of narrative in terms of truth/falsehood, normal/abnormal, moral/im moral, etc. It is useful to try to understand the mech anisms by which a particular discourse is seen to have both validity and worth. What patterns of ‘truth’ can be discerned? What experts are called upon to pronounce truth? In a pathbreaking analysis of news media dis course, Stuart Hall refers to a repetitious construction of ‘‘a world at one with itself ’’ in news stories. This process involved a cyclical story starting with a crisis, a response to the crisis, and then a recourse to government re assurances that the crisis would never happen again. Time and again, Hall noted, government experts or se nior ministers were called upon to let the reader know that all was again well in the world. Similarly, Bruce Braun identiﬁed a series of ‘buried epistemologies’ that underpin discussions of forest management in British Columbia and act to exclude any discussion of aboriginal rights and title to lands in question. Identifying inconsistencies

Hegemonic discourses are always contested by sub ordinate discourses and all discourses are characterized by inconsistencies, contradictions, and paradoxes. It is theoretically important to identify these inconsistencies, and it is equally important to identify how such in consistencies might contest or reinforce the dominant meanings constituted in a given discourse. Perhaps more importantly, these inconsistencies and disruptions allow for the creation of new subject positions and identities in discourse. It is important for the discourse analyst to be aware of these kinds of processes, especially when undertaking a genealogical or historical analysis of dis cursive changes over time. Identifying absent presences

Discourses often rely on silences for their power and it is important for discourse analysts to identify these silences and to theorize how they operate to create particular subjects (and how they might erase others). Nationalist discourse provides a particularly telling example of the work that silence does. In the case of Canada, for ex ample, there exists a dialectic of remembering and for getting that: is expressed through efforts to tell stories of the ‘long history’ of white settlers and their place in the nation,

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along with two concomitant silences: the ﬁrst silence elides the brutality of colonial settlement, especially the conﬁscation of land and subsequent placement of the ﬁrst inhabitants y on reserves (Harris, 2002); the second si lence hides the relative recentness of colonial settlement. In this way, white Canadians construct a story of ‘‘European settlers as bearers of civilization, while si multaneously trapping Aboriginal people in the pre modern’’ (Razack 2002: 2), thus excluding them from participating in modern life. (Berg et al., 2007)

In this way, aboriginal people occupy discussions of the Canadian nation as an absent presence that reinforces white Canadians’ sense of superiority and self. Identifying social contexts

Finally, it is especially important to identify the social context within which discourses arise, or that may be constituted in and by discourses. While this may seem like a simple task, it is important to remember that the key goal here is to attempt to link the production of discourse with the production of key subject positions (audience, reader, writer, producer, etc.), and to think about how power operates in these contexts to (re)produce social relations and subject positions for social actors.

Summary While human geographers have drawn upon a range of inﬂuences, it would be fair to argue that the predominant approach to discourse analysis today takes its cues from the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault’s reticence to explain his methods in any thoroughgoing fashion has resonated with subsequent generations of discourse analysts, and human geographers have rarely provided any explicit explanations about how they go about ‘doing’ discourse analysis. In part, this is because discourse analysis itself operates outside hegemonic discourses of ‘research method’. Accordingly, and while there are now a few discussions of methods, including helpful works by Rose and Waitt, it is clear that discourse analysis remains a difﬁcult ‘craft skill’, one that takes some time to learn and one that is always fraught with the very problems it seeks to deﬁne. See also: Discourse; Foucauldianism; Poststructuralism/ Poststructuralist Geographies; Text and Textuality; Text, Textual Analysis.

Further Reading Bannet, E. T. (1989). Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent. Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan. London: Macmillan. Barnes, T. J. and Duncan, J. S. (eds.) (1992). Writing Worlds. Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape. London: Routledge.

Barthes, R. (1973). Mythologies (trans. Lavers, A.). St. Albans: Paladin. Berg, L. D., Evans, M., Fuller, M. D. and the Okanagan Urban Aboriginal Health Research Collective (2007). Special issue of ACME: Ethics, hegemonic whiteness, and the contested imagination of aboriginal community in social science research in Canada. In Pain, R. & Kindon, S. (guest eds.) Participatory Research Ethics. ACME: An international e journal for critical geographies. http:// www.acme journal.org/vol6/LDBetal.pdf (accessed Jun. 2008). Cooper, D. (1994). Productive, relational and everywhere? Conceptualising power and resistance within Foucauldian feminism. Sociology 28, 435 454. Dalby, S. (1990). Creating the Second Cold War. London: Pinter. Dear, M. (1988). The postmodern challenge. Reconstructing human geography. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers NS 13, 262 274. Deleuze, G. (1983). Nietzsche and Philosophy (trans. Tomlinson, H.). London: Athlone. Derrida, J. (1976). Of Grammatology (trans. Spivak, G. C.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Fabian, J. (1983). Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1965). Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1970). The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1972). The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1973). The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1977). History of systems of thought: Summary of a course given at Colle`ge de France 1970 1971. In Bouchard, D. (ed.) Language, Counter Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, pp 199 204. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, genealogy, history. In Bouchard, D. (ed.) Language, Counter Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Reprinted from Hommage a` Jean Hyppolite, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), pp 139 164. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1977). Revolutionary action: ‘Until now’. In Bouchard, D. (ed.) Language, Counter Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Reprinted from Actuel, vol. 14, Nov. 1971), pp 218 233. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality, Vol. I: An Introduction. London: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1980). Truth and power. In Gordon, C. (ed.) Power/ Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972 1977, pp 109 133. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (1984). The order of discourse. In Shapiro, M. J. (ed.) Language and Politics (Reprinted from Robert, Y. (ed.) (1981). Untying the Text. Boston, MA: Routledge), pp 108 138. Oxford: Blackwell. Hall, S. (1973). A world at one with itself. In Cohen, S. & Young, J. (eds.) The Manufacture of News: Social Problems, Deviance and the Mass Media, pp 85 94. London: Constable. Jacobs, K. (2006). Discourse analysis and its utility for urban policy research. Urban Policy and Research 24(1), 39 52. Johnson, B. (1981). Translator’s introduction. In Derrida, J. (ed.) Dissemination, pp vii xxxiii. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Mills, S. (1997). Discourse. New York: Routledge. Nietzsche, F. (1967). The Will to Power (trans. Kaufmann, W. and Hollingdale, R. J.). New York: Random House. Nietzsche, F. (1969). On the Genealogy of Morals (trans. Kaufmann, W. and Hollingdale, R. J.). New York: Vintage.

Discourse Analysis O´ Tuathail, G. and Agnew, J. (1992). Geopolitics and discourse: Practical geopolitical reasoning and American Foreign Policy. Political Geography 11, 155 175. Patton, P. (1994). Foucault’s subject of power. Political Theory Newsletter 6, 60 71. Potter, J. and Wetherell, M. (1994). Analyzing discourse. In Bryman, A. & Burgess, R. G. (eds.) Analyzing Qualitative Data, pp 47 66. London: Routledge. Rose, G. (2001). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. London: Sage. Rydin, Y. (2005). Geographical knowledge and policy: The positive contribution of discourse studies. Area 37(1), 73 78. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. London: Penguin. Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Waitt, G. (2005). Doing discourse analysis. In Hay, I. (ed.) Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography (2nd edn.). pp 163 191. Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. Wetherell, M. and Potter, J. (1992). Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. New York: Columbia University Press. Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S. J. (2001). Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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Willems Braun, B. (1997). Buried epistemologies: The politics of nature in (post)colonial British Columbia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87(1), 3 31. Yeung, H. W. C. (2003). Practicing new economic geographies: A methodological examination. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93(2), 442 462.

Relevant Websites http://users.utu.ﬁ/bredelli/cda.html Brett Dellinger’s Critical Discourse Analysis’. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html Daniel Chandler’s ‘‘Semiotics for Beginners’’. http://extra.shu.ac.uk/daol/editorial/ Discourse Analysis Online. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/resources/links/da.html Loughborough University Department of Social Sciences Discourse Analysis. http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~palmquis/courses/discourse.htm University of Texas Discourse Analysis.

Disease Diffusion A. Schærstro¨m, Kometva¨gen, Ta¨by, Sweden & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Carrier An infected but symptomless individual. Case Fatality The percentage of a group affected by a certain disease ending with death. Contagious 1. (about diseases) Infections which are directly transmissible between humans or between animals and humans. 2. (spatial diffusion) Diffusion by proximity. Determinant A factor or circumstance that does not directly cause a certain kind of ill health but triggers or promotes the development of disease. Disease A particular, medically deﬁned condition of bad health, usually deﬁned in terms of causes, signs, and symptoms, which are described in the ICD. Disinsection Spraying aircrafts against insects. Endemic A disease being continuously present in a certain place is said to be endemic. Epidemic Outbreak and extensive spread of an infectious disease. Epidemiological Transition The shift from a stage of predominant, infectious, parasitic, and nutritional diseases to a stage characterized by ‘man-made’ diseases. It is also an essential component of the demographic transition. Epidemiology The scientiﬁc study of the extension, causes, and processes of diseases. Epizootic The rapid and extensive diffusion of an animal disease, corresponding to an epidemic. Etiology The cause or causal circumstances of a disease. Habitat The natural living environment of a species. Host The organism that is infected by a pathogenic agent. ICD International Classiﬁcation of Diseases issued and regularly revised by the World Health Organization. Illness Often understood as the subjective perception of being in poor health cf. disease and sickness. Incidence The number of individuals who fall ill (i.e., new cases) during a period of time compared with the population at risk (usually expressed as cases per 1000 or 10 000), cf. prevalence. Infection A disease caused by a microorganism. Intermediate Host An organism that is necessary for a pathogenic organism at some stage of its life cycle, cf. host. Lentivirus Virus with delayed effects causing symptoms a long time after infection. Nosocomial Infection originating in a hospital environment.

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Osteoporosis Bone fragility. Pandemic Epidemic spreading globally. Pathogen A factor which may actually cause a disease, for example, bacteria, viruses, carcinogenic substances, toxic compounds. Pathogenesis The process that leads to pathological changes in a living being. Prevalence The frequency of a disease at a certain point in time, usually expressed as a ratio between the number of cases and the population at risk (such as cases per 1000 or 10 000), cf. incidence. Reservoirs Animal populations in which pathogenic microorganisms can survive and circulate between outbreaks among humans. Sickness Often the socially accepted perception of being ill, the concept used for administrative purposes, like sick-listing, cf. illness and disease. STD Sexually transmitted diseases. Time Geography A theoretical and conceptual framework, ﬁrst conceived by Torsten Ha¨gerstrand, based on the axiom that everything has a location and an extension in time as well as in space, supported by a particular visualization technique. Vector 1. An animal that transmits the actual pathogen from one individual to another, also between animals and humans, such as ﬂeas, mosquitoes, snails, or ticks. 2. Arrow indicating movements, for example disease diffusion routes, in maps. Zoonose A disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans under natural conditions.

Introduction It is obvious with many diseases – and with health status in a wider sense – that their geographical distribution tends to change, that is, the spatial occurrence or ex tension of diseases varies through time. So does the in tensity of a certain disease, calculated as incidence, prevalence, mortality, or case fatality. As diseases – and health status in general – are largely functions of indi vidual properties, behavior, and environmental circum stances, their spatial distribution will tend to change over time as individuals come and go and as the physical and social environment changes. Infections will spread with people, animals, and things moving from place to place. The distributions of noninfectious diseases will change too, and ostensibly these redistributions will appear as

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spatial diffusion and waning, but the character of the process will depend on the type of the disease and a multitude of geographically different physical and social circumstances. With increasing mobility and environmental change, disease diffusion is an urgent public health issue on local, regional, national, and global levels. Recently several infectious diseases, which have been more or less under control or even eradicated from large parts of the earth, have reemerged, while ‘new’ diseases have appeared and noninfectious ones have expanded in numbers and spatial distribution. Along with epidemiology, concepts and methods from geography and cartography can be useful for under standing, describing, and analyzing the processes leading to new spatial patterns of ill health, but current epi demiological trends call for methodological and theore tical development.

Disease Occurrence – Disease Distribution Basically, disease distribution or occurrence can be per ceived in two different ways. On the one hand, it can be thought of as the places where cases (i.e., affected indi viduals) are found. On the other hand, it could be per ceived as the locations where the necessary circumstances for causing illness are prevalent, for example, the mi crobes or living conditions that constitute health hazards. In the ﬁrst view, disease is seen as an outcome which can be observed, like any state of health, in an individual. In other words, information about disease occurrence is linked to the individuals. This view is a basis for epi demiology, which measures incidence and prevalence in search of correlations with circumstances that might clarify the etiologies of diseases. The occurrence of disease could thus be considered equivalent with the individuals themselves and from this perspective geographical dis tribution can be understood as a number of more or less mobile points with varying lifetimes, sometimes ap pearing in clusters or within more or less clearly distinct regions or zones. This notion has led to important dis coveries and progress in epidemiology and medical geography, most notably John Snow’s mapping of cholera in Soho (Figure 1). The alternative view focuses on the causes, which means that disease occurrence is associated with an area where some potential health hazard prevails. Pathogenic factors may be around, but cases actually occur only when susceptible individuals are exposed to them. This perspective is the basis for identifying risk areas often visualized on maps in vaccination clinics. Consequently, there are also two main ways to understand disease diffusion – either as the diffusion of cases or as the diffusion of the causes and hazards.

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Since every spatial observation is valid at a certain point or period in time the notion of disease diffusion is a spatial–temporal concern. In a formal sense disease occurs when a case is dis covered, diagnosed, and registered, making it available for research and statistics. In a more real and personal sense disease occurs once an individual feels ill, which often but not necessarily happens before the diagnosis is made. It is also possible that a disease (e.g., cancer in its early stage) is discovered at a routine screening before the patient has noticed any symptoms. In a wider per spective, a pathogenic process may begin with exposure to circumstances that may eventually lead to a disease. Between exposure or the start of a pathogenic process and the onset of symptoms lies a period of incubation or latency. With inﬂuenza, the incubation time is a matter of days, whereas AIDS, which is caused by a lentivirus, has an incubation period of months or years and hepatitis C might cause only mild or no symptoms and therefore remain undetected for decades. With noninfectious dis eases, such as cancer and neurological disorders, the la tency period may be not only years, but even decades. In the meantime, the affected individuals may have moved, which means that the exposure or pathogenic onset may have happened in a different place and a different en vironment than the place where the case is eventually recorded. This time–space lag complicates the notions of disease occurrence and diffusion. Mapping disease diffusion must account for the spatial changes in the time dimension. Thus, cartographical methods have included vectors, isopleths (isochrones), map sequences, and time geographical visualization.

Diffusion Process While medicine focuses on causes, exposure, transmis sion of pathogens, and the ensuing pathological outcome, geographical issues concern the locations and numbers of cases plus the directions and pathways that diseases ap parently follow to reach new victims as well as the means and geographical circumstances that favor or inhibit the spatial spread of ill health. Spatial diffusion theory makes a main distinction be tween the dispersal and the structural dimension of a diffusion process. Whereas the dispersal aspect of the diffusion concerns the routes of the movements, the structural dimension refers to the reciprocal relationships between the locations along the route. The dispersal dimension is designated either con tagious (contact) or hierarchical while the structural di mension is characterized as either expansion (expansive) or relocation. The word contagious is used as a metaphor in diffusion theory. When it is used in connection with disease diffusion it does not necessarily refer to infections

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Figure 1 During a cholera epidemic in London 1853 54, Dr. John Snow mapped every death on a map and found that they clustered around one of the public pumps. This observation supported the hypothesis that cholera was spread by water.

that are literally transmitted from individual to indi vidual. Thus, drug abuse and its health consequences might spread from a metropolitan area to neighboring suburbs because of their proximity before spreading to

regional centers and towns further down the urban hierarchy. In this context, contagious means that some thing tends to spread by proximity – to nearby places, whereas hierarchical diffusion takes place in a stepwise

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manner – from one, usually more central, location to the other, not necessarily nearby, locations from which the diffusion may proceed. Considering the different ways of deﬁning disease occurrence, this typology is not unconditionally applic able to disease diffusion. Medical geography has largely concentrated on the diffusion of infections, but the oc currence of noninfectious disorders displays similar trends. Epidemics/epizootics and pandemics spread as microorganisms and vectors move over distances and through time – just like goods, travelers, innovations, information, or habits. As to noninfectious diseases, the actual diffusion process may be more complex and con stitutes a methodological challenge. Increasing numbers of cases, as such, reﬂect a diffusion process, but the spatial process may take very different shapes. First, diffusion might imply that more individuals are taken ill within unchanged outer spatial limits, that is, a condensation but no spatial expansion of cases takes place. Second, diffusion could imply that more individuals are affected within a wider area (i.e., the outer limits of a core area are widened and the process is expansive), for example, as drug abuse spreads from the inner city to the suburbs. Third, diffusion could mean that individuals in other places fall ill. In the latter case, different types of dif fusion may be more or less distinguishable. If an epi demic affects one country or continent after another, the extension of the disease is enlarged as more individuals in new places fall ill. Eventually the disease might subside in the locations where it struck ﬁrst, which would appear as a relocation of the disease, but the individual cases are not relocated. Relocation of cases would imply that af fected individuals have moved to other places. This, however, is conceivable with genetically conditioned disorders. A crucial issue in epidemiological geography is to what extent the observed cases of disease in a certain place are caused there as a result of selective migration, that is, individuals with a certain predisposition have moved to that place. For example, it has been suggested that persons with poor mental health or risky behavior (e.g., abuse) would tend to move to cities (drift), which would imply a relocation of health problems. Alter natively, physical and psychosocial stimuli in the urban environment would cause (breed) ill health. Sometimes, this issue is referred to as the breeder and drift hypotheses. The diffusion process involves numerous events on all spatial levels from intercontinental transport and climatic variations down to households, workplaces, and hospitals. Geographically speaking, besides what is being spread, a diffusion process involves a place of origin (a source), one or more receiving places, the pathways of spread, and a force driving the diffusion.

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1. The potential for spatial diffusion depends on the character of the causative agents, such as their trans mission modes, mobility, reach, and viability, as well as various determinants. Exposure (i.e., the contact be tween causes and susceptible individuals) is crucial for transmission and the start of a pathological change in a human or other living being. Contagious diseases (e.g., inﬂuenza or STDs (sexually transmitted diseases)) may be transmitted either directly to a susceptible person through in timate contacts with infected humans and animals or indirectly by a vector (e.g., ticks – tick borne en cephalitis (TBE) and Lyme disease; mosquitoes – malaria). The pathogen may also enter a human body through the air as droplets, with blood, food, and water as well as by surface contacts with objects. The viability of pathogenic agents and their vectors is a crucial factor with infectious diseases. Unless they ﬁnd a suitable host soon enough they will perish, no transmission will take place, and the diffusion will stop. Noncontagious diseases may be caused or triggered by some physical, chemical, or even social exposure. Some diseases may be the outcome of genetic pre dispositions, either inevitably caused by genes or triggered by external circumstances. The reach of noninfectious pathogens (such as radioactivity or pollutants) is closely related to the medium which carries them, for example, winds and waters. 2. Like other geographical objects, sources of disease diffusion may assume point, line, area, or diffuse shapes. Point sources may be infected wells or pol luting anthropogenic plants, such as incinerators. Line shaped potential sources could be polluted riv ers, heavily trafﬁcked roads, or high voltage cables. Area sources of disease diffusion may be endemic regions and natural reservoirs or places with high radon content in bedrock or buildings. Finally, diffuse sources could be certain behaviors, habits, and practices. 3. Next, no infectious diffusion can become apparent (in terms of cases) unless the pathogenic inﬂuence reaches a place with a population including suscep tible or vulnerable individuals. 4. The courses of diffusion are guided and shaped by available routes and nodes as well as barriers. Throughout history, contagious diseases have fol lowed people and animals along rivers, roads, rail roads, and caravan trails. Eventually railways, steamships, trucks, buses and, not least, airlines have altered the modes, velocity, and routes of disease diffusion. Winds and water also play a role for the transportation of organisms and vectors. Thus, foot and mouth disease has probably been spread by winds from farm to farm without any direct contact between

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infected and susceptible animals. Cholera diffusion may have been inﬂuenced by wind directions. Diffusion of contagious diseases may also follow social routes without obvious physical manifestations. Such diffusion has been mapped, for example, HIV in personal networks. Noninfectious pathogens, such as radiation, chem ical emissions, and toxic compounds from volcanic eruptions may be carried by winds and waters. Nodes of diffusion are places where people fre quently meet. Typical nodes for the transmission of contagious diseases are urban centers, ports, refugee camps, marketplaces, trading towns, and border towns. Due to poor sanitary and crowded conditions refugee camps are high risk areas for infections. Thus, in African refugee camps diseases like AIDS and other STDs, cholera, dysentery, plague, diphtheria, Ebola and Lassa fever have been reported. Other nodes are large workplaces, shelters for homeless, schools, and prisons. Likewise, not only permanent localities, but certain occasions such as local festivities and similar social events may increase transmission risks. For ex ample, haymaking in the summer has probably been an occasion for spreading measles in Iceland, con tributing to characteristic seasonal waves. On the contrary, disease diffusion may be stopped or deﬂected by permanent or temporary barriers. Physical barriers, such as vast spaces of water, mountain chains, or large ice sheets, can be effective against ‘contact’ diffusion (to nearby places). Diffusion may be stopped or slowed down by biological barriers such as widespread immunity and habitats unsuitable for agents or vectors. Further, social barriers involve cultural practices, habits, and knowledge. Thus, dis ease diffusion may be precluded by public health interventions and precautions, such as quarantine procedures, disinfection, disinsection, and vaccination campaigns, or by widespread knowledge about per sonal protection. 5. Finally, diffusion depends on micro scale events that bring individuals in contact with health hazards. Humans, animals, transport networks, vehicles, and various objects may be involved in the process. Oc cupational conditions, daily personal routines and attitudes may be decisive for exposure. Sexual and other cultural practices play an important role for either spreading or barring the spread of STDs – for example, promiscuity versus ﬁdelity, polygamy, cir cumcision and other rites. Key groups for infectious transmission are highly mobile people like migrants (such as migrant la borers), refugee populations, truck drivers, and com mercial sex workers and their clients. In situations of armed conﬂicts, troops often appear as another key group.

In reality, it is not unusual to see different epidemic waves of a certain disease behaving differently or to ﬁnd both ‘contagious’ and hierarchical phases simultaneously or sequentially as parts of a larger diffusion process. Also, new geographical conditions affect the diffusion routes. For example, cholera epidemics swept across the United States and Russia several times in the nineteenth century and it has been ascertained that in the later part of the century both diffusion routes and velocity were affected by the growing railway networks. Instead of advancing slowly to the most nearby places the disease would leap from place to place along the lines (Figure 2). Political circumstances sometimes affect, indirectly, disease diffusion in different ways. Thus, the South African apartheid regime seems to have impacted the spread of HIV in the region in two ways. As the regime imposed restrictions on nonwhites’ movement within the country, the diffusion was inadvertently constrained. Then large numbers of opponents went into exile in neighboring countries where HIV was more prevalent, thus becoming exposed and later bringing the disease to South Africa when they returned after the change of regimes. In all, the conditions for disease diffusion are rooted in complex ecological circumstances and chains of causes and determinants. Proximal determinants (sometimes called downstream factors) are involved with the actual transmission, such as commuting and sexual behavior, whereas distal determinants (or upstream factors) cover micro and macro scale, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions, like migration, poverty, urbanization or religion.

Epidemiological Landscapes The geographical context of health and disease can be thought of as an epidemiological landscape or a landscape of exposure. The pathogenic complex with a similar concept distinguishes natural bio or eco pathogenic complexes from two types of man made complexes. Whereas socio pathogenic complexes refer to potentially harmful social circumstances, such as standard of living, occupational environment, food habits, and other cultural phenomena, techno pathogenic complexes are associated with technical products, by products, or waste. Conversely, the term therapeutic landscape has been suggested for places that exert a healthy inﬂuence. Several concepts are used to designate areas with certain disease ecological characteristics. Natural focus refers to a landscape associated with biotic and abiotic factors which are vital for the pathogens and other factors involved in the ecology of a particular disease. Natural nidus (plural. nidi) is deﬁned as a micro scale region constituted of a living community where a disease agent

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continually circulates among the individual members and the habitat conditions are necessary to maintain the disease system. Nosochoros and urban risk cells are other concepts with similar meanings. Landscapes are dynamic, that is, their contents and extensions will change over time with consequences for health and disease. This change is closely connected with the process known as epidemiological transition.

Epidemiological Transition and Future Prospects Throughout history, epidemics and pandemics of in fections have repeatedly swept across the earth from their endemic areas to vulnerable populations and places. The era of European discoveries brought people and in fectious diseases from the Old World and other contin ents in contact with each other. However, disease ecology has gone through an epi demiological transition which implies that diseases caused by infections, parasites, and poor nutrition eventually have been mastered, more or less, but superseded by others, usually called chronic, degenerative, or man made diseases. This transition, which started in the nineteenth century with a protracted process in England and some other European countries, has eventually reached other

parts of the world, where the process has tended to be faster. This transition might appear as a spatial diffusion of diseases, but is rather the outcome of changing bio logical as well as geographical preconditions for disease diffusion, including diffusion of determinants. First, social and structural changes have altered the ecological landscapes. Large scale urbanization and new lifestyles provide new opportunities for transmission and exposure. Further, as demographic structures are chan ging, susceptibility and vulnerability assume new spatial patterns. Second, the conditions for diffusion have been rad ically altered by increasing spatial connectivity – modern transportation systems as well as increasing and diversi ﬁed mobility. Migration and other types of mobility ap pear in many shapes with complex effects on the diffusion and distribution of health and disease. The notion of a ‘healthy migrant effect’ is based on the as sumption that persons in good health are more likely than others to migrate. However, ‘forced migration’ is a common effect of natural disasters, enduring violence, and adverse living conditions, which might induce people in poor health to move. Also, elderly or persons already suffering from poor health may move to healthier places or closer to healthcare. Thus, migration entails large scale relocation of health related factors. Commuting entails regular exposure to different environments, while

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tourism and other long distance traveling bring people in occasional contact with unfamiliar risks. Third, global and local environmental changes alter the health prospects. In the future, the living conditions for agents and vectors involved in disease ecology might change in the wake of climatic change, just like prevalent winds and weather conditions might favor or disfavor the diffusion of a particular epidemic.

In all, the present global panorama of health and disease includes new, emerging, and reemerging diseases as well as increased frequencies of chronic disorders. Infectious epidemics continue to change the distribution of health in short and long time perspectives, but non infectious health issues are also sometimes said to assume epidemic proportions, for example, smoking, overweight, and obesity as well as drug abuse and its health

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consequences. However, smoking, obesity, etc. are ac tually not diseases per se but rather health hazards. Several infectious diseases had been perceived as new when they had been discovered in human population but had probably been circulating in animal populations (reservoirs). Thus, AIDS, now a major public health concern, was perceived as a new disease in the 1980s. Later examples include the ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’ (SARS), the West Nile virus, and Ebola. While infectious and parasitic diseases are often suc cessfully combated, degenerative – often ‘man made’ – disorders are gaining ground as a consequence of altered physical environments, pollution, and occupational haz ards as well as new lifestyles and disruption of social networks. It has been suggested that the epidemiological transition leads to a situation where patterns of mortality by causes differ signiﬁcantly between countries that have reached the same stage in terms of general morality. Such

Cases of salmonellosis (date of onset of symptoms) October 18th October 19th October 20th October 21st October 22nd October 23rd October 24th Without symptoms

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geographical differences might reﬂect underlying na tional and cultural inﬂuences but remain to be explored.

Changing Conditions for Old Diseases The distribution and diffusion of infectious diseases is affected not only by (micro) biological changes, but also by social and structural changes in societies. Since some organisms remain unchanged, infection and survival will yield future immunity, whereas mu tations will prevent immunity. For example, inﬂuenza virus regularly appears in new strains, preventing lifelong immunity, while measles virus remains stable. Current health threats are mutations giving rise to new varieties and drug resistant forms of causal organisms, for ex ample, methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and tuberculosis (TB).

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Figure 4 Salmonella diffusion in a local context. The diffusion of salmonella is a complex chain (network) of farming, food processing, and transportation, retail, and central kitchens. In October 1995 an outbreak of nosocomial salmonella was discovered at a university hospital, affecting nine buildings, including several clinics, a kindergarten and the central kitchen. Data about the infected staff, patients, and children, the internal logistics, and a retrospective analysis of meal preparation on the day of the outbreak were georeferenced and analyzed in a high-resolution GIS. The source of the salmonella diffusion was found in the kitchen, where vanilla pudding was prepared in the spatial vicinity of defrosting poultry and the pudding was probably contaminated by thawing water. From Kistemann, T. et al. (2000). GIS-supported investigation of a nosocomial salmonella outbreak. International Journal for Hygiene and Environmental Health 203, 117 126.

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Figure 5 Transmission exposure diffusion: time geographic outlines. Transmission and diffusion happens on any scale from the individual (micro) to the global and often in complex chains. The ﬁgures are based on time-geographical visualization principles. The vertical lines in the ﬁgures represent life-paths (trajectories) of individuals. (a) In the most obvious kind of disease diffusion, pathogens are transmitted from one individual to another susceptible individual. One contact may be enough. (b) Sometimes, only one infected person is sufﬁcient to introduce a communicable disease to another area with a virgin population and to start an epidemic. In fact, highly mobile individuals carrying a communicable disease may be in a position to spread the pathogen widely to one person after another and even one place after another. Healthy individuals are represented by full-drawn lines while persons carrying diseases are represented by dashed lines. (c) Short-term relocation and occasional exposure, say during a holiday, when susceptible individuals expose themselves to risks, like excessive sunlight, unfamiliar food, unfamiliar microorganisms, temporary sexual contacts, etc. (d) Diffusion by relocation of vector or artifact. Another type of transmission and diffusion occurs when pathogens are relocated from place to place, between spatially separate populations, without any direct human involvement but with a vector, for example, malaria transmitted by a mosquito. In a similar way, hepatitis and HIV can be transmitted if a syringe is ﬁrst used by a carrier and then by a noninfected person. (e) The

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population in a certain place may be exposed to a sudden and temporary insult, such as radioactive fallout after a nuclear accident (thick black horizontal line). The cohorts living in the place at the time will probably carry the effects of the incident during the following years (dashed area). Children born in the place might be affected by lingering effects or genetic damages (shaded area). Out-migrants will bring relocate their health effects, while in-migrants from other places will be unaffected. Similarly, external factors may exert an insult on a whole population for any length of time or just a certain group, for example, schoolchildren or infants. Likewise the population or certain groups can be affected by health-promotion intervention. (f) Diffusion by relocation of predisposed individuals. Further, people may carry conditional ‘predispositions’ for diseases when they move. Predispositions are not communicable but congenital genetically inherited or individually inborn. This situation in turn opens two alternatives. The predisposed individual will develop the disease either in any case or only under a certain environmental inﬂuence. In diffusion terms, a relocation of the disease takes place (cf. Figure 5d). The diffusion may proceed further as a genetically inherited disorder eventually becomes predominant in an isolated population. Generally, large groups of migrants are needed for major changes of the gene frequency in a population but one migrant can be sufﬁcient to spread a dominant, potentially pathogenic gene to another area and another population. (g) Pathogenic diffusion by innovation spread. Finally, just like innovations of any kind are diffused, lifestyle stimuli may reach a place and a population from outside. Subsequent health effects may produce the impression of disease diffusion or the reverse, that is, the disappearance of ailments. In fact, the epidemiological transition has largely been due to such changes.

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Measles epidemics in Iceland illustrate the effects of changing conditions for diffusion. Measles is not endemic in Iceland, since the country is topographically isolated and its population is too small for the virus to remain in circulation. Thus, each epidemic is introduced from abroad, usually from Scandinavia or Britain. Mapping all epidemics of measles in Iceland from the 1870s has re vealed several changes of diffusion, probably reﬂecting structural modernization. Since 1945 measles epidemics have become more frequent and always started in the capital region, close to the international airport, whereas some previous epidemics started in harbor villages along the coast. The spread within the country became faster during the century, probably as a result of increasing urbanization, improved transportation, and a shift from an ambulatory school system in rural areas to ﬁxed schools (Figure 3). In the wake of increasing intercontinental mobility, infectious and vector borne diseases are returning to Europe, North America, and other parts of the world where they have been absent or conﬁned for decades. TB and malaria provide examples of ‘reemerging’ diseases with different geographical characteristics. Globally, TB has never been overcome. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the current prevalence is some 14 million worldwide and some 1.6 million deaths per year can be ascribed to TB. Incidence and mortality are highest in the African region, while prevalence is highest in Southeast Asia. The ‘return’ of TB in Europe and the American continents is a consequence of mi gration, microbiological changes, and social conditions. TB now appears in drug resistant forms such as multi resistant (MDR TB) and extensively resistant (XDR TB) forms. As for malaria, not only do tourists visiting malaria endemic areas return infected, but persons who have never been there have been diagnosed with so called ‘airport malaria’ after being bitten by odd mosquitoes that have been relocated by international ﬂights and survived for some time at the destination on higher latitudes. Certain intercontinental ﬂight routes have been identi ﬁed as particularly risky and the majority of cases have been found in France, Belgium, and United Kingdom. This development can be put down to international mobility, but even nosocomial cases have been found, when patients have received transfusions of infected blood. Although the phenomenon is rare – since the ﬁrst conﬁrmed case was diagnosed in 1977, on average two cases annually have been recorded – it is a potential future risk. If global warming induces ecological changes, new habitats for malaria might emerge. An even more imminent hazard associated with intercontinental air transportation is the risk that malaria is re introduced in regions which are currently free but provide favorable conditions for the disease.

Tools for Understanding Disease Diffusion Understanding the geographical diffusion of diseases is highly important for long term prediction and contain ment of diseases. Adequate surveillance is necessary for public health intervention in emergencies. Many conventional maps of disease distribution are crude and inaccurate, but tools have been developed for monitoring, surveillance, simulation and prediction, based on better understanding of the spatial and tem poral behavior of diseases. Geographic information systems (GIS) can be very useful for surveillance, simulation, and analysis, provided that cases and risk factors can be registered with high spatial and temporal accuracy. GIS has also proved efﬁcient for tracing the sources of infection in a micro scale context, such as salmonella diffusion in a hospital area (Figure 4). Re mote sensing can be used for surveillance of ecological conditions and habitats for disease agents and vectors. GIS supported simulation has been used to forecast the diffusion of HIV/AIDS and TB as well as the spread and health outcome of air pollution and radioactivity. With sufﬁciently accurate data, simulation can be applied on any level down to blocks and workplaces. Early warning is important for national security in case of serious infectious epidemics, whether natural or deliberate, terrorist induced attacks. RODS (Real time outbreak surveillance) is a type of software which can be used for early detection of epidemics. If cases are re ported immediately to the system it can discover signs of epidemics which individual physicians are unable to see from their limited perspective. Growing understanding that exposure in early life may have health effects in adult or advanced age has inspired the insight that similar exposures in different places and environments might lead to similar health outcome, in different locations. Therefore, a life course approach to epidemiology has been suggested to take into account such early exposures. Time geography, which offers a similar approach with a more explicit spatial dimension, has also been suggested as a method for detecting similar life paths and exposures of individuals who do not belong to spa tially contiguous populations. The time geography ap proach can also be used to visualize and clarify various epidemiological processes (Figures 5(a)–5(g)). In spite of accumulated knowledge about disease diffusion, current epidemiological trends still call for methodological and theoretical development. See also: Diffusion; Mental Health; Migration; Psychotherapy/Psychotherapeutic Geographies; Radical Geography; Simulation; Time and Historical Geography; Time Geographic Analysis.

Disease Diffusion

Further Reading Bentham, G. (1988). Migration and morbidity: Implications for geographical studies of disease. Social Science and Medicine 26(1), 49 54. Cliff, A. D. and Haggett, P. (1988). Atlas of Disease Distributions. Analytic Approaches to Epidemiological Data. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA, USA: Blackwell. Cliff, A. D., Haggett, P., Ord, J. K. and Versey, G. R. (1981). Spatial Diffusion. An Historical Analysis of Epidemics in an Island Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gatrell, A. (2002). Geographies of Health. Oxford, UK and Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell. Gatrell, A. and Loytonen, M. (eds.) (1998). GIS and Health. GISDATA 6. Taylor & Francis. Haggett, P. (2001). The global burden of disease. In Haggett, P. (ed.) Geography A Global Synthesis, ch. 20. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Kawachi, I. and Wamala, S. (2007). Globalization and Health. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kistemann, T., Dangendorf, F., Krizek, L., Sahl, H G., Engelhart, S. and Exner, M. (2000). GIS supported investigation of a nosocomial

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salmonella outbreak. International Journal for Hygiene and Environmental Health 203, 117 126. Krieger, N. (2001). Theories for social epidemiology in the 21st century: An ecosocial perspective. International Journal of Epidemiology 30, 668 677. Meade, M. and Earickson, R. J. (2000). Medical Geography (2nd edn.). New York and London: Guilford. Selinus, O., Alloway, B., Centeno, J .A. et al. (eds.) (2005). Essentials of Medical Geology. Burlington, MA; San Diego, CA; London: Elsevier. Thomas, R. (1992). Geomedical Systems. Intervention and Control. London and New York: Routledge.

Relevant Websites http://www.cdc.gov Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.ecdc.europa.eu European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. http://www.who.int World Health Organization.

Disease Mapping T. Koch, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Maps as a Medium for Medical Science Nobody maps health. We have no atlas of healthy per sons; we make few maps of nonsick, mundane folk. But since the seventeenth century, there have been many thousands of maps (and map collections) of disease in cidence in local, regional, national, and international populations. Just as marine cartographers have always charted shoals and rocks that impeded harbors, students of disease have used the map to identify the location of this or that disease in order to study its possible cause or to devise better treatment plans. It is not that wellness lacks a geography that can be located in the two di mensional (2 D) plane of the map but that, compared to chronic illness and epidemic disease, the healthy subject lacks urgency, and thus interest. To map health is to focus on the absence of illness or disease, to focus on a state that, most believe, needs little attention. Mapping the single, rare case of an unusual disease serves no purpose. Mapping an afﬂicted cohort in a community deﬁnes a local health problem and, ideally, contributes to its resolution. Mapping a group of cases over time often reveals environmental characteristics that promote this or that disease in place, resulting in not only simply knowledge of a speciﬁc condition but also sug gesting a potential for its interdiction. In the map, lists of mortality and morbidity are transformed into classes of incidence that argue a density of occurrence whose lo cation provides at once an argument for care and a site for research. This is what maps do: they distill data (e.g., mortality reports) into event classes to argue a proposition about the nature of a disease in place and within a population. There can be monsters there, the old marine charts said. Look out. In medicine, the monsters ‘are’ disease symp toms, either the frightful, physical manifestations of epidemics that decimate populations or the chronic conditions that limit the lives of individuals. Central to the enterprise of understanding this or that individual disease, and disease processes in general, has been the map whose technologies of production and distribution both deﬁned and reﬂected the increasing arsenal of technologies that have permitted the development of ever more precise approaches to disease through pro gressive attempts to formulate a medical science that can understand both their cause and effect. While medical mapping includes a wide array of projects, from the location of hospital service areas to the

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creation of catchments for disease reportage, these ad ministrative approaches are inherently responsive, re sulting from a theory of disease and how best to develop responses to disease incidence. Here, the focus is on the construction of disease theories through maps and the method in which those theories have been ﬁrst inscribed and then tested in disease maps. Disease studies are a fundamentally ecological en terprise, an attempt to understand the nature of the monsters that affect our communities through a study of the environments that promote monster growth or inhibit monster presence. To slay the dragon, or at least hold it at bay, demands we craft zones of safety where danger, and death, are previously held dominion. This in turn requires that we understand disease states as a shared domain in which the microbial agent and the host are conjoined in place, the environmental elements pro moting their union identiﬁed. From the start, scientiﬁc interest reﬂected in cartographic studies is not the rare case but rather in the disease agent that affects us gen erally, in groups.

Yellow Fever: Valentine Seaman An early example of this disease mapping is Valentine Seaman’s late eighteenth century mapping of a yellow fever (see Figure 1) outbreak in the New Slip area of New York City. Among the most feared diseases of that century, in the 1890s yellow fever decimated the bur geoning coastal American cities of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. Some believed the disease was im ported in trading ships from tropical areas where yellow fever was known to exist. Were this true, the logical re sponse would be quarantines that constrained shipping and trade. Others, however, believed yellow fever arose from the foul odors of the human and animal wastes that accumulated in the unsanitary, nineteenth century city. Were this the case, no restraint of trade would be ne cessary and the best response would be in developing urban sanitation. To test the later theory Seaman ﬁrst mapped the lo cation of cases of yellow fever occurring in the New Slip area. Numbering the cases, in the map, Seaman dis tinguished between fatal and nonfatal cases with different symbols. In his writing, he lamented the paucity of cases (how did he show ‘mild’ as opposed to ‘severe’ cases in the map?) and the difﬁculty of including all cases in his map.

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Figure 1 Valentine Seaman’s map of yellow fever in New York City, 1989 sought to argue the disease was generated in urban waste sites. Image courtesy: the National Library of Medicine.

Still, the result was a map that showed a concentration of cases in the Water Street area. In a second map, Seaman then located local odiferous waste sites that he believed gave birth to the disease. Comparing the two maps Seaman saw congruence between the greatest concen tration of deaths and the location of the malodorous sites. Proximity, he reasoned, implied causality. Seaman instantiated in the map what Wood and Fels would describe as a logical, ‘if–then’ argument that is the conceptual heart of all mapping. First, he created from mortality reports a class of events, ‘yellow fever’ in which the individual cases together created a range of disease. ‘‘This,’’ the map said, ‘‘is here, on the mapped streets. We know it.’’ In a separate map Seaman created a second event class composed of local waste sites whose odor he perceived and located in the copperplate map. Con sidering both maps together he then argued that ‘if ’ yellow fever originated in the foul odors of urban wastes ‘then’ this should result in congruence between the area of yellow fever cases and of odiferous sites. The congruity that resulted proved, Seaman believed, the yellow fever outbreak originated in the waste sites of the neighborhood. Seaman was right. Proximity ‘did’ suggest causality although the process, we now know, was more complex than he assumed. Seaman also reported that the mosquito population was extremely heavy in the area of waste sites where cases of yellow fever were strongest. These were, for him, extraneous nuisances and not critical vectors of disease diffusion. It was only at the end of the nineteenth century that disease researchers identiﬁed mosquitoes as the yellow fever vector. It was through their bite, rather than the odor of the areas where they swarmed, that the disease spread. Mapped arguments in medicine typically have this ‘if– then’ form to propose one of three distinct but

related forms: taxonomic, topographic, and statistical. Taxonomies deﬁne diseases by location, fusing areas of incidence with either geographic or political boundaries to create a catalog of ‘disease states’ based on location. The logic of the map that resulted permitted areas of unusual disease occurrence to be identiﬁed at typically coarse scales of analysis in a manner permitting a more detailed, topographic analysis in situ. Finke’s 1792 Practical Medical Geography, with its now lost ‘Nosological map of the world’, for example, attempted to argue a taxonomy of then known diseases in Western Europe as well as the native plants and resources that might serve to treat them. In so doing Finke transposed the evolving political geography of Europe into a medical geography in which the boundaries of states became the borders of disease areas. Inherent in Fink’s approach was the proposition, argued graphically, that disease is an outcome of local environmental conditions for which remedies might be found within areas of greatest incidence. Where diseases arouse, then, nature would provide a natural remedy that might serve to protect local populations.

Taxonomies and Topographies Mapped taxonomies were precursors to nineteenth century topographies that sought to establish a rela tionship between the incidences of disease and suspected causal factors that promoted the occurrence of disease in place. It was through mapping that the idea of environ mental disease agents within areas of incidence was ﬁrst and best explored. A. K. Johnston’s 1856 map of ‘Health and disease in connection with chieﬂy natural phenom ena’, published in his The Physical Atlas of Natural Phe nomena, is a good example of the transformation of

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Figure 2 Johnson’s world map of diseases also argued the relation between areas of similar disease and their potential transmission along trade routes. Here, yellow fever is shown to occur in the Caribbean and southern United States along general trade routes, marked in red. From Koch, T. (2005). Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. Courtesy: National Library of Medicine.

taxonomic to topographic mapping. In it the incidence of disease is lodged in nations or national regions where different diseases were reported by travelers and local authorities. At one level, the map explored a traditional disease taxonomy that perceived ‘tropical’ versus ‘tem perate’ diseases, conditions common to lowland as op posed to Alpine airs. The result was a global landscape of disease districts (the province of goiter, the state of ca tarrh, and the city of leprosy) whose effect was sum marized in ‘Value of life’ charts on the map’s lower right side comparing life quality and disease incidence for speciﬁc populations. The ideas embedded in the mapping were twofold. First, that a disease taxonomy could be spatially presented in a manner permitting the identiﬁcation of speciﬁc geographies where one or another condition dominated the landscape. Second, that the effect of a disease in place could be quantiﬁed precisely in terms of life quality and life years. The greater the local incidence of a disease, the less likely it is that life quality will be maintained. Johnston’s map also presented a ‘topographic’ argu ment proposing a potentially causal relationship between disease incidences among different regions. Lines along navigation routes joining the Caribbean to the southeastern United States show the apparent progress of

yellow fever from south to north (Figure 2). Lines from Europe to the Americas tracked the apparent progress of cholera from England and Europe to North America. The result made the argument, then debated, that chol era traveled from ‘here’ to ‘there’, along the land and sea routes that deﬁned the emerging globalization of com merce and migration.

Topographies of Disease To investigate the nature of an individual disease and its causes typically required a ﬁner resolution and a more focused scale of address. Such studies in the nineteenth century proposed a relatively simple topographic rela tionship between intensity of disease in a metropolitan region or city district and local factors that were assumed to promote its occurrence. These studies, relying on in creasingly comprehensive and broadly available public health statistics, related disease incidence in an area to climatic, geographic, and socioeconomic. In the ﬁrst dec ades of the nineteenth century, such mapped propositions increasingly employed a broad, urban scale of address. In 1849, for example, William Grainger proposed a geographic relationship in which proximity to the

Disease Mapping

low lying, central Thames River correlated positively with greater cholera incidence (Figure 3). In his density map cholera mortality reported in local registration districts was aggregated to argue an inverse relationship between cholera mortality and altitude above sea level. The result deﬁned cholera as an area of lowland, river areas where bad airs were typically found. At higher al titudes, the air was believed to be healthier, and thus to serve as a barrier to disease incidence. Where small outbreaks occurred at higher altitudes Granger mapped potentially complicit wells, cesspools, or swamps whose odor polluted the air and promoted disease. At a very different scale, John Snow famously created a map of a cholera outbreak (see Figure 4) in his St. James neighborhood in 1855 to argue that cholera was in fact waterborne rather than airborne. In mapping what he called ‘the most terrible outbreak of cholera which ever occurred in this kingdom’, Snow identiﬁed 578 cases of cholera occurring in August and September of 1854. These deaths, each symbolized by a bar, were mapped on the streetscape with the principal water sources that served the neighborhood district. ‘‘It might be noticed,’’ Snow wrote, ‘‘that the deaths are more numerous near to the pump in Broad Street.’’ The density of cases prox imate to Broad Street, he argued, insisted upon that pump as a source of the outbreak.

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Like Seaman and Grainger before him, Snow created from mortality reports two classes of events – one of mortality and the other of suspected disease agents. Like them, he argued, the proximity of disease incidence to mapped environmental elements, in this case a water source, demonstrates a causal theory of a disease. In making this argument Snow and his predecessors relied on what today is known as Tobler’s law, or the ‘ﬁrst law of geography’: ‘‘everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.’’ In ap plying this principle Snow had to account both for areas near the pump that seemed cholera free, for example, at local workhouse, and those areas where cholera occurred in areas nearer to other water sources. He did this through interviews with local residents, pursing a ‘shoe leather epidemiology’ of local interviews still employed today.

Modern Dot Maps Some argue that all this is old hat and that nineteenth century methodologies do not serve the twenty ﬁrst century needs. Maps may serve as illustrations, repre sentations of statistical analytics, but not as primary tools of disease exploration. And yet, in local, regional, and national health ofﬁces, hundreds of diseases are mapped

Figure 3 William Grainger mapped the relative intensity of cholera across London registration districts. Red numbers represent altitude above sea level while black numbers and letters identify individual districts. From Koch, T. (2005). Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press.

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Figure 4 This section of John Snow’s map of the St. James, Westminster cholera outbreak of 1854 in London demonstrates his central argument of a relation between cholera density and the water pump at the apparent center of the outbreak. From Koch, T. (2005). Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. Courtesy: National Library of Medicine.

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Figure 5 A series of interlocking buffers centered on suspected food sources was used to identify likely sources of a salmonella outbreak in Greater Vancouver in 2001. For the sake of clarity the number of suspected sources (blue squares) and cases (red dots) are reduced in this map. Source: Author.

to promote an understanding of their occurrence and, in some cases, the pattern of their diffusion. The methods employed have reﬁned the nineteenth century approach but retain the basic spatial argument inherent in disease maps by his time. For example, in 2001, a brief outbreak of food poisoning affected persons in Greater Vancouver, Canada (Figure 5). The assumption was that the out break was a form of food poisoning but there were concerns that work on local sewers might somehow have contaminated the area’s water supply. More than 60 persons were diagnosed during the outbreak and, epi demiologists learned, those persons had purchased food at any of 24 stores and restaurants. To demonstrate contemporary disease mapping pro cedures the location of the reported cases and, separately, the food outlets where patients had eaten prior to the onset of their symptoms were mapped. A series of hier archical buffers were then used to develop a weighted center to the outbreak, narrowing the likely sources down to two or three food outlets located at the epicenter of the outbreak. A major highway serving the Richmond– Vancouver corridor bisected both buffers, suggesting a

possibly portable source of the outbreak. Of the three food outlets at the center of the southern buffer was one company providing a product sold on site and to other restaurants in the area. Later testing by bacteriologists showed this was indeed the source of the outbreak.

Disease as Mapped Statistic With the migration of mapping and statistics from paper to computer media a number of changes have occurred in both the analysis of disease and the distribution of dis ease related studies. With off the shelf programs, those who previously would have relied on professional map makers may now themselves use the mapped environ ment to store data on disease incidence and location, on the one hand, and manipulate that data electronically, on the other. Simultaneously, computer advances have en abled a series of progressively sophisticated statistical programs that permit increasingly robust, and certainly more rigorous, data manipulation than was possible even 30 years ago. Graphic and statistical media are not

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distinct, but related, with maps more and more fre quently serving as a medium for data manipulation, storage, and the presentation of results. Computerized mapping technologies and the digita lization of data have enabled a vastly more complex approach to disease studies at every scale. Cancer inci dence, for example, appears to be causally related to a complex of behavioral, environmental, and genetic fac tors. Where behavioral and especially environmental conditions exist, these may be related to socioeconomic factors determining, for example, housing location. What is required is a methodology that identiﬁes areas of greater disease incidence and then considers potential disease contributes in situ. One difference between twentieth century and early nineteenth century studies is that contemporary mapped studies typically consider not simply incidence counts but incidence as a function of population. By the mid nineteenth century, it was common to express epidemic disease as a function of cases (and more speciﬁcally deaths) per 10 000 or 100 000 persons. In exploring dis eases in modern populations this approach has become the norm. In considering multiple risk factors it has also become common to use increasingly sophisticated stat istical measures in the mapping to ‘smooth’ data across a broadly mapped, geographic region and to argue

probabilities of relations between suspected variables and identiﬁed clusters on the basis of the result. Mapping of breast cancer is an example of the com plexity of the resulting work (Figure 6). Several ideas are inscribed in the accompanying map of breast cancer in cidence in the USA. At one scale the incidence of disease is proposed as a national issue in which variable disease rates in US county populations argue for the focus of investigations in those county areas with disease inci dence. Second, the map distinguishes breast cancer from all other cancers as a unique disease rather than one of a complex of potentially related cancer types. Variations in incidence across the map argue for speciﬁc studies of environmental and social factors in areas of greatest relative incidence. It was in part this type of study, and an analysis of the results, that led to the now famous Long Island Breast Cancer study, an intense investigation of a single cancer concentration. While the analysis was statistical, seeking positive correlations at a signiﬁcant level, it was also cartographic: the work was carried out in the medium of the map and its electronic database in which data were stored and results presented. While the enabling technologies permit a graphic and statistical rigor unimagined by Seaman, Grainger, or Snow, the basic thinking remains the same. By identifying areas where disease occurrence is greatest, one can focus

Cancer mortality rates by county (age-adjusted 1970 US population) Breast: white females, 1970−94

US = 28.80/100 000 20.33−50.75 (highest 10%) 27.50−20.32 26.10−27.49 24.01−26.17 23.00−24.00 22.75−23.79 21.50−22.74 20.00−21.00 17.00−30.07 8.57−17.97 (lowest 10%) Speed data (151 countries: 0.11% of death)

Figure 6 Variations in rates of breast cancer within US county populations argued for intense investigations of potentially causative factors at a ﬁner scale. From National Cancer Institute, National Cancer Atlas.

Disease Mapping

on environmental elements that may be generative or, at least, may contribute to disease incidence. Having map ped those areas one then identiﬁes their proximity to the potential contributors and seeks to conﬁrm or reject the argument of a causal relation.

Conclusion To the extent that the mapped argument becomes gen erally accepted, it becomes knowledge that could be applied by those in society whose responsibility is the social weal. From its earliest beginnings medical mapping has served both a scientiﬁc and a public function. For those involved in the study of speciﬁc diseases, maps of incidence and of possible causal factors have served to test propositions about the nature of a disease and the reasons for its incidence. Where casual factors are iden tiﬁed they are used to argue for the public containment or elimination of those factors. ‘If ’ we can demonstrate a concentration of breast cancer cases in a neighborhood or region, ‘then’ we seek to assure that both treatment and diagnostic centers are available in those areas. We locate the area of best location in the map. ‘If ’ we can dem onstrate a community at risk from, say, inﬂuenza, ‘then’ we locate ﬂu vaccination centers at the locations that are most likely to serve the largest possible number of per sons at risk. ‘Where’ we ﬁnd the greatest number of automobile crashes on a city street, we then may put in a trafﬁc light or add an ambulance to the local district to assure faster medical treatment. The nature of such mapped propositions is of the same type as those used for the study of disease incidence

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itself. These spatial propositions are the heart of the science of disease studies and of administrative responses to accident and illness. From both perspectives, the map is a critical medium in which the experience of disease is transformed into a study that develops spatially grounded data in an applicable fashion. See also: Cartography, History of; Chronic Disease; Disease Diffusion; Mapping, Philosophy; Maps; Medical Geography.

Further Reading Adamski, R. K. and Brunton, H. (2003). Developing and maintaining an enterprise GIS: An in depth look at the LI GIS. International Medical Geographers Symposium July 7. Johnston, A. K. (1856). The Physical Atlas of Natural Phenomena. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood. Koch, T. (2005). Cartographies of Disease: Maps, Mapping, and Medicine. Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. Koch, T. and Denike, K. (2004). Medical mapping: The revolution in teaching and using maps for the analysis of medical issues. Journal of Geography 103(2), 76 85. Koch, T. and Denike, K. (2007). Aaron’s solution, instructor’s problem: Teaching surface analysis using GIS. Journal of Geography 106(2), 69 77. Pickle, L., Mungiole, M., Jones, G. K. and White, A. A. (1999). Atlas of United States Mortality. Hyattsville, MD: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Seaman, V. (1798). Inquiry into the cause of the prevalence of yellow fever in New York. Medical Repository 1(3), 314 332. Snow, J. (1855). On the Mode of Transmission of Cholera (2nd edn.). New York: The Commonwealth Fund. Wood, D. (1992). The Power of Maps. New York: Guilford Press. Wood, D. and Fels, J. (2008). The Natures of Maps. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wood, D., Kaiser, W. L. and Abramms, B. (2005). Seeing through Maps: Many Ways to See the World (2nd edn.). Amherst, MA: ODT.

Distance G. H. Pirie, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Distanciation The process of distancing or separating places, people, or things from one another.

Introduction Distance is one of the key elements of the world. Dis tances on our planet are in some senses deﬁnitive: they are the way we get to know it, speak about it, associate with it, and navigate our way around it. The Earth’s size is measured not by mass but by circumference, con ventionally at the equator. Referring to distances across continents and oceans, and between cities, is a popular way of registering where we live and work, how close or how far we are from other places, and how big an undertaking some journey may be. Place and distance are mutually constitutive. The distance we are from events elsewhere is often a measure of how seriously we take them; places that are out of sight are often out of mind. The distance that people traverse is an indicator of their mobility; the distance that places are from us is a clue to their accessibility. The (f)actuality of distance is undeniable, yet as this chapter argues, distance is also an idea. Personal ex periences of distance are varied. The diverse ways in which distance has been used, worked with, and thought about in human geography also indicate that it is not a simple, one dimensional phenomenon. Like other terms that we take for granted and seldom interrogate, distance refers to an elusive phenomenon. It is more or less visible and it has a concrete identity, but it is also an abstract notion whose nature, dimensions, and meaning are dif ﬁcult to pin down. Arguably, the concept of distance is one of the key building blocks of human geography. Yet, whereas many people would readily associate geography with contin ents, countries, and hemispheres, with ocean currents, national capitals, and mountain ranges, few would quickly identify distance as geography’s stock in trade. The observation suggests that distance does indeed have an abstract quality. Professional geographers are more likely than members of the public to nominate distance as a core concept: geographers would regard distance as complementing other fundamentals such as scale, place, region, and boundary. Starting a half century ago, several geographers have argued that distance is one of geography’s basic elements.

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In his inaugural address as Professor of Geography at the University of Edinburgh in 1954, J Wreford Watson went so far as to assert that geography was a discipline about distance. His presentation actually made a better case for the notions of extent, reach, spread, and distribution being at the heart of the discipline. Distance, Watson suggested, was a useful surrogate indicator of the extent to which objects have adapted to or dominated the en vironment. In geography, he noted, the emphasis on distance was an emphasis on extent. In Watson’s view, geography mapped humanity’s success or failure to ex tend ideas, ways, numbers, and control. In the ﬁnal an alysis, he wrote, geographical distances were the distances of the human spirit. In the age old conception of geography as a discipline that deals with regional diversity and dissimilarity (even uniqueness), distance presented itself as something that could account for difference. The argument that distance was a central plank in human geography received a boost in the 1960s when a new scientiﬁc geography was being formulated and championed. At a time when young geographers were eagerly injecting scientiﬁc rigor into their work, the standardized and mathematically meas urable properties of distance were very attractive. In the hunt for law like patterns and principles of spatial or ganization, quantiﬁable distance was an entity that re search scientists could use to explain similarity and difference. Several American geographers working in the new spatial paradigm stressed the importance of distance to their subject. William Bunge’s 1962 book on theoretical geography claimed that nearness was the cardinal prob lem in geography. In 1968 John Nystuen reasoned that distance and separation were fundamental geographical properties. The following year Waldo Tobler argued that the ﬁrst law in geography was that nearby places and phenomena were more similar than those far apart. Emphasis on the centrality of distance to human geography faded after the 1960s. However, as if con ﬁrming that geographically informed conversation, an alysis, and speculation is impossible without some notion of distance, the d word continues to thread through all geographical discourse. This does not amount to a ﬁeld of study. The term distance seldom appears in any keyword or subject search among geographical research papers. Even dictionaries of human geography take the view that the deﬁnition of distance is self evident. The subject areas in which distance remains a deﬁning topic are at a scale quite different to that at which geography operates. Astronomy and space science are at

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the one extreme. These disciplines deal with the greatest conceivable physical distances. Estimating, measuring, and assessing the signiﬁcance of the vast spaces between planets, stars, and even galaxies remain a major scientiﬁc challenge. At the other extreme are the miniscule inter vals that fascinate and bewilder engineers and physicists. At a rather larger scale are the culturally variable inter personal distances tolerated during personal interaction such as greeting, sitting, standing, and talking. These psychosocial distances are the subject of proxemics rather than human geography. This chapter is about distances that are part of everyday human public experience – these distances deﬁne and occur in the public rather than the private spaces that human beings occupy, confront, and move across. In human geography the distances of interest are those between places on Earth, and those that involve more than a few steps of travel in outdoor spaces. Put another way, geographers’ distance currencies are miles and kilometers rather than stellar parsecs, distances to do with eye contact, speech audibility or human intimacy, or micro distances ranging from hair’s breadth microns to yoktometers. Geographical distance is also generally horizontal as opposed to the centimeters and meters (or inches and feet) that measure the height, width, depth, length, and breadth of visible objects.

Discourses of Distance The many literal and ﬁgurative references to distance in spoken and written language conﬁrm the hold that it has had on everyday life. Among the explicit references to distance in English are phrases to do with stamina and additional effort. The coinage ‘go the distance’ refers to completing a metaphorical journey: boxers who fail to go the distance have been knocked out, counted out, or thrown in the towel. To ‘go the extra distance’ means doing more than is necessary or expected. Here the reference is often to a particular unit measure of distance, as in ‘go the extra mile’. A place said to be miles away means it simply feels far. To say that a miss is as good as a mile indicates that the magnitude of shortfalls or gaps is irrelevant. Judging something miles better than another is a colloquialism that has nothing to do with actual dis tance. Similarly, running a mile means taking steps to avoid a personal pest. To speak of a proposal not having much mileage in it refers to the absence or presence of advantage; conversely, getting a lot of mileage out of something means putting something to good use. The persistence of these mile based phrases reﬂects the tenacious link between the English language and im perial distance measures. The admonition ‘keep your distance’ is a recom mendation or warning not to get unduly or inappropriately

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close to some person or event. Close parallels are ‘stay away’, ‘know your place’, and ‘respectful distance’ – phrases loaded with geographical innuendo. No precise distance is speciﬁed; it is assumed that the ‘right’ distance is known intuitively or (can be learned) experimentally. Animal growls and hisses are warnings about getting too close; humans have their own repertoire of gestures about crossing an imperceptible line and invading personal space. Indirect references to distance in everyday conver sation are possibly more plentiful than direct references. At least in English, notions of distance are wound into a rich spatial vocabulary. At its very simplest, distance is implied in some unspeciﬁed distinction between ‘here’ and ‘there’. In its idiomatic use, the phrase ‘neither here nor there’ is corrupted to mean indifference or that something (often a choice) does not matter. Taken lit erally the phrase implies that distance does not differ entiate and is of no consequence; locating at one point rather than another is of no moment. Some notion of distance is also contained in a range of English nouns such as close, near, far, remote, and hori zon – and in modern colloquialisms such as ‘close in on’. To zoom in and zoom out are contemporary ways of speaking about telescoping, or artiﬁcially bringing close what is actually far, and vice versa. Metaphorical phras ings to do with nearness and remoteness obviously trade on notions of distance. ‘So near but so far’ is an ironic saying that parallels (and universalizes) ‘a miss is as good as a mile’. The reference to missing a target – being wide of the mark – works on encouraging people to ﬁnalize tasks and work with precision. To stop short is to fail. These expressions resonate with geographical references to journeys, destinations, and distances. In these con structions of success and fulﬁllment, getting there is the thing rather than the journey itself. Similarly, to judge that a presentation or performance is good as far as it goes is to condemn with feint praise. The implication is that the activity has not succeeded as well as it might have; it goes some way, but not a long way, and certainly not far enough. Here, distance is again invoked as ac complished journey. A similar linguistic operation is at work in saying that a performer is far and away the best in a group. To outdistance the competition is to win. Terms that are less self evidently related to distance than are ‘far’ and ‘near’ can still be difﬁcult to conceive or comprehend without some prior notion of distance. Ex amples are proximity, range, reach, centrality, neighbor, core, and periphery. Concepts of distance are also em bedded in language about spatial processes such as movement and diffusion. The clinical neutrality of these references to distance contrasts with more profoundly valued notions of distance embraced by the terms exile, banishment, deportation, marginalization, and alienation. Here distance has negative connotations. Enemies who are not far enough away, and lovers who are too far apart,

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also attest to distance being a thing to which value can be attached. Children, swimmers, hikers, and strangers in a town are warned not to venture too far. There is not just a vocabulary of distance; there is also a rhetoric of distance. The references to distance in everyday English occupy a spectrum from bland to emotionally charged. The var iety suggests that even outside professional geographical circles distance can be matter of fact (as in a street map or atlas), but can also be indeterminate and individualistic. Up to a point, distance is what people make of it; it may be as complex and nuanced as one wishes. Physical distance is perhaps its simplest expression. The artifacts of physical distance include the stage posts that were positioned adjacent to animal drawn carting and coaching routes in the days of premotorized land transport. These stone or wooden distance markers measured the passing of deﬁned stages of a journey, such as halfway. They also might have doubled as indicators of the stages at which teams of horses needed resting or changing. Watering points, stables, and inns that were established at such places replaced the knee high road side markers. Milestones were an equivalent but more formal measure of location on a route, and a pointer to both the distance traversed and remaining. Physical markers are now part of what might be termed distance heritage. Yet the importance and fascination of marking distance tra veled remains: today’s children still want to know with irritating frequency how far it is to a holiday destination. Airline passengers knocked senseless by stress and boredom ﬁnd comfort gazing at representations of their ﬂight progress on screen displays in passenger cabins: real time maps show the approximate location of the airliner and digital records measure the distance (and time) ﬂown and the distance (and time) remaining to destination. More poignantly, one imagines that dis placed people and refugees ﬂeeing famine and war register acutely their distance from origin and their distance to safety. The notion of a milestone marking progress is cap tured by its adaptation as a ﬁgure of speech that relates to people’s careers. Long after travel distance could be ‘clocked’ independently by a milometer inside a motor vehicle, and long after road signs erected at junctions would indicate distances in fractional units to people traveling in multiple directions, people still benchmark personal advancement and critical steps in a life and a career by referring to milestones. Attaining a university degree is one such. Becoming a parent is another. Suc cessfully completing a ﬁrst 2 m high jump would be a milestone in an athlete’s career. Facing up to an awkward telephone call rather than avoiding it would be a mile stone in a shy person’s personal development. A parallel speech form would involve talking about a person having come a long way.

Linguistic instances of distance give some insight into the history of dealing with the phenomenon, and also into its complexity. A good example is contained in the word speed. Although the reference to distance is hidden, it is one of two crucial constituents – the other is time. Speed is a measure of the time taken to travel a speciﬁed distance. An element of distance is intrinsic to the con ception and measure of speed, and to its derivatives, namely, acceleration, deceleration, and momentum. In human geography, the idea and metaphor of a shrinking world is inconceivable without some preconception of distance and speed. The link between distance and time is articulated in other common speech forms such as phrasings that gauge distance in time units: a friend may be said to live a 10 min drive away. The statement may reveal ignorance of actual distance. It also presumes that a listener will understand the re codiﬁcation by virtue of having been a private vehicle driver or passenger. Timing distance is an effective way of combating the difﬁculty of sensing dis tance on journeys that involve disorienting twists and turns. It is also an effective way of gauging the length of walking journeys made without access to a vehicle mil ometer or a clear map scale. Referring to travel time instead of physical distance is perhaps the most common translation of distance; questions about how far places are apart are often answered in time units. Another instance of distance translation occurs in the context of family trees: a distant relative may be genetically remote, but may live close by. Distance can indeed be ambiguous, both ﬁgurative and real.

Dimensions of Distance For most of human history distances have been appre hended, sketched, written, and spoken about in vague terms. There is little research on pre literate represen tations of distance in cave wall paintings and hieroglyphs, but it appears that distance was a practical concern, a matter for travelers and not a common reference point or a form of general knowledge. Being mobile, or imma nently mobile, was the reason to discover or inquire about distance. Measures of distance might be gauged by the reported possibility of reaching a destination before sunset, or by the number of times one slept on a journey. The crudity of these measures resides in the vagueness and individuality of journey speed, and the difﬁculty of accounting for short nights of sleep that lengthen day light travel. As modern travelers know, discomfort may indeed index length of journey, but it is not necessarily a reliable or shared measure. Short journeys can be worse than long; traveling the identical distance in different fare class accommodation can be a very different experience. Other primitive measures of (travel) distance also revert to time as a base. Historically, distance was also

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recorded in terms of the number of days spent on horseback or the number of weeks spent at sea. In these cases imprecise measurement lies in the variability of equine performance and in the vagaries of wind, currents and sailing technique. Measures of distance were relative rather than absolute, and were imprecise but useful re ﬂections of orders of magnitude. Impressionistic, individualized, and subjective meas ures of distance have dominated much of human history, notably in pre literate societies. In the West, efforts to attain a standardized, mathematized, and more or less precise measure of distance date at least from Roman times. A Roman unit of distance (called a mile) was de ﬁned as the equivalent of 1000 paces. Variable length of stride would have made the measure an imperfect and unstable standard. Fractions of a Roman mile were simple to calculate but not always expressed simply: the unit of distance named a stadium was the eighth part of a Roman mile. This was the equivalent of 600 Roman feet (of in determinate size). In time, the Roman mile became an English mile; a stadium was then made the equivalent of 220 yards; conversions could be approximations and quite arbitrary. The adoption of the statute mile addressed the need to standardize discrepant mile measures in various countries: it was deﬁned as 1760 yards, longer than the approximately 1618 yards that constituted the English and Roman miles. Not only have units of length baring the same name varied according to period and locality, but human his tory is also littered with locally unique and purpose speciﬁc distance measures. A furlong (still used on horse racing tracks) was originally equivalent to the length of a furrow in a common ﬁeld, a site equivalent to a square of 10 acres. The persistent problem of internal cross ref erencing is clear: the length of one thing depends on another length that also requires deﬁnition. Similarly, a furlong was denominated in poles, being equivalent to 40, laid end to end. Like the exact length of a pole, the length of each of the 20 measuring rods that constituted a chain could be quite variable. Benchmarks could be quirky, yardsticks less so. Minor differences do not always matter: the base line precision sought by surveyors, machine engineers, rocket scientists, and surgeons is certainly not required by human geographers. For them it is academic that, since 1983, the international standard measure for a meter has been the distance traveled by light in a sealed vacuum in a speciﬁed fraction of a second. Despite unitization and standardization, there is still no single universal measure of geographical distance. Metric measures (meters and kilometers) ﬁrst adopted in late eighteenth century France had the important feature that they were part of a scale of easily divisible numbers. The elegant system has since been adopted in many countries, but geographic distance is still measured in the

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clumsier imperial system in countries such as the UK and the USA. Other anomalies exist. The universal measure of distance at sea is the nautical mile. Equivalent to 1852 m (6087 feet), it is sometimes called a geographical mile and is precisely the length of one degree of arc at the equator. Conventionally, across the globe, ship speeds are measured in knots, and ﬂying and cloud altitudes are recorded and represented in feet. Effective Distance Despite the curious and amusing historical geographical variations in measuring distance, and despite persistent anomalies and inconsistencies, the measurement of geo graphical distance is simple. There is also a high degree of certainty about the accuracy and comparability of distance measures. Public faith in the measures is high, and they are seldom if ever controversial. But simple distance measures can be misleading. The notion of effective distance adds a layer of complexity that is ne cessary in some contexts. Effective distance distinguishes between actual geographical line distance (whether straight line or on a circuitous route) and the distance that is effectively embedded in a transport network or in a series of journeys. Effective distance is a combined measure: examples are passenger miles and ton miles. These compound measures should not be confused with the trademark airline passenger loyalty reward scheme branded as air miles. The need to combine distance with a measure of quantity arises most obviously when measuring prod uctivity in the transport industry, especially comparative performances across different networks and organiza tions. A transport operator, A, whose 100 vehicles tra verse 1 million km in a year may appear to be making more efﬁcient use of them than operator B whose ﬂeet of 100 vehicles cover less distance. But B, who operates an urban transport service, carries more freight and more passengers: multiplying distance by load will show that B may outperform A (who operates long distance intercity services) in terms of passenger miles and freight ton miles. Effectively, B delivers commodities a greater distance than A; the effective distance covered by A is less. Whereas they are intended to present a faithful pic ture of haulage actually accomplished, combinatorial measures involving distance are also open to misunder standing and manipulation. Corporate reporting can show impressive ton mile (ton km) or passenger mile (passenger km) statistics whose meaning is difﬁcult to grasp intuitively and will always be opaque without any corresponding raw data on distances actually traveled or absolute loads. An impressive ton mile ﬁgure may reﬂect low loads carried long distances or large loads carried short distances.

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Route miles are another common measure of effective distance in the transport industry. In the case of ﬁxed line transport by rail and tram, for instance, it is often useful to distinguish between track length and route length: the length of single track infrastructure is half that of a parallel double track installation but the route length is identical. Comparing only the track lengths of train or tram operators can give a misleading impression of the geographical extent of their services. Track conﬁguration and density is also germane: 1000 km of densely packed double track may service a smaller area than 500 km of single track.

Relative Distance Indexes of effective distance emphasize that although line distance is easy to measure and comprehend, it is a simplistic measure. The notion of effective distance also indicates that distance needs to be and can be measured in relation to other elements. Physical distance – some times called absolute distance or engineering distance – most certainly does exist, but not all distance is a mere attribute or property of the physical world itself or of its mappings. Relative distance is similar to effective distance, al though it is more intuitive and more widely adopted. The idea that distance is relational does not contradict the sheer physicality of distance. The two can coexist. The direct or crow ﬂy distance between two points is a measure of uninterrupted, straight line distance. The distance by bus or underground train between the same two points is likely to be longer because roads and track wind round or under buildings. In this case, length of route and length of journey exceed the direct distance. The cyclist who cuts across ﬁelds and down narrow lanes creates a journey of even shorter distance between the identical two points. These various distances are medi ated by the mode of transport; journey length is relative to the type of transport used. In a deltaic or wetland area, the river journey between two villages might be 5 km whereas the overland journey is 20 km. Whether walking, riding on horseback, or motoring, people who choose to use a road between two points are traveling a distance that is route mediated. This denaturalized distance is an attribute of the built environment not the natural environment. Route distance has been the norm for so long in human affairs that it is seldom referred to. The habit contrasts with the unspeciﬁed rule for measuring distance as the shortest straight line interval between two points. But crow ﬂy distance is never used in tables of distances in road atlases; instead they measure (the most direct) route distance. If route distance has to all intents and purposes become our basic human register of distance, it

cannot be said that this is an absolute distance. The point about anything absolute is that it is stable. Route dis tances change, reﬂecting the construction of new route infrastructure such as a motorway. Route distance is only one instance of relative dis tance. Other types of relational distance that fall under the umbrella of technologically mediated or machine distances are better known. In 1954, Watson referred to the human factor in distance rather than to any techno logical consideration, but the distinction is slight. The two best known and most commonly used instances of relative distance are cost distance and time distance. The two indexes are not combinatorial like effective distance. Rather, they are a measure of distance expressed in cost or ticket price on the one hand, and in elapsed journey time on the other. Time Distance The time taken to cover distance is an extremely com mon measure of separation or journey length. Time may even be a more common register of geographical distance than physical length. The innumerable occasions on which people refer to a place being a few minutes away, or within an hour’s drive, or about a 20 min walk, or an overnight ﬂight away, reveals a more or less universally understood gauge of distance. Precision is not required or expected in such conversations – estimates sufﬁce and orders of magnitude matter most. Units and fragments of time, it appears, are better understood than units of distance; time is visible (on a wristwatch or cell phone), whereas distance can be hard to see and its passing harder to monitor. Distance is easily denominated in minutes and hours. The re registration of distances as time is a little surprising given that they are not homologous. Except under controlled conditions, it will seldom if ever be true that some ﬁxed unit of distance traveled invariably equates exactly to a ﬁxed unit of time traveled. Public transport schedules show different travel times for identical journeys: some are nonstop express services, others are all stops. Variable speeds are also due to variable degrees of trafﬁc congestion and bad weather. Even under the most favorable conditions, topography can mean that the evening bike ride from town takes longer than the morning bike ride into town along the identical route. There is no single time distance between two places, whereas there is a single straight line physical distance. Like other relational distances, time distance is tech nologically mediated. Generally speaking, advances in transport and telecommunications technology have ef fectively reduced the geographical distances between places. Over the centuries successively faster forms of transport have moved people and cargos more quickly

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between places. In the sailing ship era, the trans Atlantic journey was longer than in the succeeding steamship era. Steaming across the Atlantic made it seem less wide, and New York and London appeared closer. Edinburgh and London became less far apart in terms of time when railway transport became an alternative to overland coaching or coastal sailing. On long range, one stop jet service over the North Pole, contemporary ﬂights from Britain to Australia track an entirely different great circle course and take fewer hours than the number of days consumed when banished prisoners were transported by sailing ship round Africa. Similarly, improvements in each distinctive mode of transport have lessened the time taken to reach outlying towns from a city, and vice versa. Transcontinental ﬂights by jet brought Chicago closer to Los Angeles in time space than when they were served by propeller engine service on the same route. Distances, it appears, are plastic. It is relatively easy to verbalize and graph the effect of faster transport on time distance, but it is less easy to represent on one map the time distance convergence between all places. Graphing time space compression between Paris and one other French town over a century is not difﬁcult. Nor is it hard drawing an isoline map showing how many more places in France were access ible within a 2 h journey from Paris in 1990 than in 1950. But these illustrations cannot simultaneously also show time space compression between Lyon and Marseilles. Irrespective of scale, the visualization and depiction of multiple time space compressions is difﬁcult. The sophisticated cartographic transformation re quired is not unlike that involved in redrawing the world map of countries according to their relative population sizes or wealth, for instance. The difﬁculty in compiling such cartograms is keeping the shape, borders, and relative location of countries more or less congruent and recognizable. Distance transformation is equally un wieldy and problematic, and was not resolved until the 1970s. Since then, a powerful computer based statistical technique called multidimensional scaling has enabled representation of relative distances between all places in a set. The technique analyzes and methodically re sorts data in a way that expresses the strength of their interrelationships. The output from multidimensional scaling of time distances is a new mapping of the location of places relative to one another in time space. Places 1 h apart are remapped as closer than places that are close together on the ground but 2 h journey apart. Two towns 50 km apart but connected only by irregular air service via a remote third town would appear further apart on a time space map than on a normal map. Map bearings are absent from this newly conﬁgured space and the absolute (real world) locations of places are unrecognizably distorted. Al though the transpositions are striking, they are not easily

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understood, so production of time space maps has been slight and sporadic. No world atlases publish such radical reviews of the world. Cost Distance Sometimes called economic distance, this measure of relative distance is not as common as time distance. There are certainly no linguistic expressions in English which convey distance in terms of cost. People are not heard conversing about places being 2 dollars distant, 5 pounds closer than another place, or 3 euros further on. One good reason may be the (unpredictable) asymmetry between the price of travel and the distance covered. Ticket pricing on public transport is structured in (in creasingly) opaque ways that are not one to one or in any other stable ratio to actual journey length. Variable terminal charges, ﬂat zone charging, backhaul charging, and clever marketing are partly responsible. Budget air lines, for example, charge different fares for outbound and inbound ﬂights, and some promotional fares on one leg of a long haul ﬂight are pitched at less than for a few stops on urban transit. The extent to which cost distance calculations enter into locational decision making, commodity delivery, and personal travel behavior is not well researched. Com mercial travelers, and businesses and corporate divisions that specialize in logistics, presumably have regard for transport distance conﬁgurations that are costly and those that are less so. And it is not inconceivable that private individuals who have detailed knowledge about public transit fares may decide where to rent accommodation or buy a home by costing annual and decade long savings by living one side of a fare zone boundary rather than at the next station down the line in another fare zone. The introduction of innercity road user charging schemes in cities such as Singapore and London will have made motor vehicle users more conscious of cost distances. Effort Distance Effort distance is a little used construction that may have referred initially only to the physical energy required to move some distance. Over time, the amount of physical energy needed to carry, push, pull, paddle, and cycle has been diminished by motorized transport. Nevertheless, there remain many places in the world where consider ation of the bodily energy required to move might re main a consideration – where choice of destination is made according to which journey taxes the human body or animal carriers least. The idea of effortless travel punted by airlines and railway and shipping companies clearly takes no account of the irretrievable energy ex pended in making the vessels and vehicles, or the energy sunk in transport infrastructure.

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The criterion of minimizing effort distance was ele vated into a locational principle long before the con temporary alarm and anxiety about depleting energy stocks and the need to conserve energy. The principle might have even more traction now when companies and private individuals seek to minimize their use of fossil fuels and their ecological footprint by traveling less often or less far. In an age of bureaucratized and congested hyper mobility the notion of effort distance might also be broadened to encompass the bother and emotion ex pended on moving between two points. Effort distance re calibrates real distance against the fuss and strain in volved in crossing it. However popular it may be to measure frustration distance, the multiple subjective and experiential variations involved in measuring and com paring inconvenience render standardization and in telligibility almost impossible. By contrast, expenditure of time and money is more objective. Cognitive Distance Whereas distance measured relative to time, cost, and irritation emphasizes the negative aspects of crossing the known physical distance, the notion of cognitive distance brings into question even the salience of true or absolute distance. In keeping with the behavioral revolution that swept through their subject in the 1970s, human geog raphers queried the assumption that real physical dis tance (or perfectly known linear distance) was a major consideration in personal or corporate location and travel decision making. As opposed to omniscient and rational actors in some theoretical universe, real people – so it was observed and suggested – took decisions in relation to their perception of distance to a visible destination, or their cognition of distance to an unseen destination. Exaggerated or underestimated, if either such distance stood in a constant ratio to actual distance, the concern would be immaterial. But interpersonal variations are highly likely; they would probably express socio economic variations. People with access to private transport may sense distance quite differently to people who are captive users of bus transport and whose urban travel routes meander through suburbs. Both young and elderly people are likely to sense distance from world views unique to their generation: small children from innocence of distances longer than those at home, old people from memories of transport and travel in a bygone era. Differences between cognitive and actual distance can emerge through directed interviewing or incidentally through conversation and sketch mapping. The mental maps on which people choreograph their daily activities may lack ﬁdelity, but they do show how accumulated knowledge and limited activity ﬁelds distort scale. Under and overestimates of distance occur on least

traveled routes. On the fringes of behavioral human geography and psychology there is interest in how people acquire and respond to the mind maps that they have of places and of spatial relationships. Research into cogni tive mapping provides some insight into how people apprehend and estimate distance, and how mental yard sticks form and change. Imagined distance cannot emerge from nothing. Affective Distance Felt distance is a close relation of cognitive distance. The difference is that this measure carries an emotional charge. The affectation is mostly the creature of a past and wider world in which the distances that separated people were more signiﬁcant than in an age of jet travel and voice and image connectivity via telephony and the Internet in real time over long distances. Distance mat tered more in the past; separations at railway stations and harbors were often permanent and were emotionally taut events. Writers knew the weight of distance, and in classical literature there are frequent references to dis tancing being associated with lovers missing each other and pining. The ﬁrst syllable of the word longing is redolent of distance. The cliche´ about absence making the heart grow fonder approximates some of the classical allusions. The condition of not being present has qualities of time distance; unusually, however, distance becomes ambiguous, at once despised and welcomed. Social distance is another kind of felt distance: it measures the gap between social classes. The social divide between blue collar and white collar workers cannot be measured with a ruler. Similarly, the differ ences between the lives of poor, middle income, and rich people are only notionally related to distance. The width and intensity of the barrier between immigrants and locals is gauged better by expressions of xenophobia than by sheer physical distance between the places where they congregate. Yet geographical distance can index social distance. In apartheid South Africa, for example, the distance that the state put between different races by forced residential separation was intended to reinforce and ﬂag social distance. The distances between spon taneously formed ethnic and religious clusters in all cities reﬂect something of the degree of social division. Dis tance differentiates.

The Signiﬁcance of Distance The experience of distance as an expression of absence and social difference gives it considerable pungency. These personal registers of distance in public spaces are not ones that have roused many human geographers; their dominant treatment of distance is as an obstacle and a deterrent.

Distance

Celebrations of distance as a positive phenomenon are rare. The ﬁrst syllable of the word even has a negative connotation and, like dislocation and disease, distance is generally unwelcome. Yet there are instances of inten tional distancing to attain freedom, progress, and peace. Voluntary relocation can be positive, as in putting dis tance between an aggressor or oppressor and a victim. Many young people choose to escape the conservative and constricting inﬂuences in a small town. Isolation is actively sought by some writers and artists and retirees. Self imposed exile is another instance of regarding and embracing distance as a protective shield. Instances of positive distanciation aside, the ascription of negative effects to distance is overwhelming. Distance is almost entirely regarded and presented as some thing that enervates action and that attenuates spatial interaction: people lose contact with distant friends and traders focus on nearby markets. The undesirable, en ergy sapping effect of distance is captured in the classic but unattributed reference to the friction of distance. The nod to physics suggests that distance has some natural, inherent properties. But physics also teaches that friction can be overcome by judicious lubrication and design engineering. Attributing frictional properties to distance invites solutions to overcoming something unwanted. Viewing distance in negative terms aligns with bombastic terminology about smashing it. On the human stage, where personiﬁcation of nature is common, the negativity of distance has been captured most strikingly by allusions to the tyranny of distance. The historian Geoffrey Blainey adopted the phrase as the title of his 1966 book about a key condition of and in ﬂuence on Australia’s past. Five years previously a set of public lectures had reﬂected on the meaning of and public consciousness about the remoteness and isolation of New Zealand. The notion of tyranny resonates with oppressive power and arbitrary force. The implication is clear that remoteness generates adversity, disadvantage, and myopia, and that the requisite travail (the struggle of overcoming distance) is ﬁnancially costly and can take its toll on human health and life. Arguing that the destiny of a people and a continent was wrapped up in its antipodean location, Blainey felt able to track Australian development only to the point where distance had been tamed rather than conquered. Efﬁcient transport (which he termed the enemy of dis tance) had altered much in Australia, but not everything. Distance had been tamed less in people’s minds than on maps, he suggested. Some attitudes still belonged to a more isolated era. Blainey’s remark that Australians still lived in one of the world’s billabongs could cut two ways. Either they continued to behave as if they were still settlers in a land far from British inﬂuence, or Australians were in denial of distance and conscientiously repro duced British ways of life in their diasporic community.

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By the time he wrote the preface for a revised edition of his book in 1982, Blainey noted that the tyranny of distance had become a catchphrase in Australian political and economic debate. During the last quarter century of globalization, improvements in transport and communi cations will have shifted feelings and attitudes of re moteness. Reorientation of Australian affairs and afﬁnities into the Paciﬁc world will have lessened its geographical isolation if not the feeling of isolation. There may be some pride, after all, in accepting and approving the distance that is deﬁnitive of a country and a culture. Distance Decay Possibly the most familiar proﬁling of distance in human geography has been in studies of its attenuating effects. The term distance decay has long been used to capture diminution due to distance. An example of distance decay is the declining level of aircraft noise away from an airport. In the absence of some other remote source, the occurrence of lead poisoning decreases away from a motorway. Fewer migrating birds reach their destination than started out. Species diversity intensiﬁes away from the species core; exoticism is about distance. As in nature, so too in social affairs the effect of distance is to reduce the intensity of phenomena. More commuters travel short distances than long distances. Attendance at cinemas falls off the further away people live. The degree to which Celtic is spoken and understood diminishes as distance from Ireland, Scot land, and Wales increases. The empirical observation of distance decay is nothing new. Mapping the incidence of cholera in Victorian London showed clustering round one contaminated water source. In the mid nineteenth century an American psychiatrist and statistician noted that use of a medical facility declined with the distance it was away. In the 1930s research into the selection of marriage partners showed that most people met and married people from nearby. A wag once reported moral decay among British expatriates living far from the restraining inﬂuences of family, peers, and church. As a ﬁnal example, a shrinking and reconﬁgured world has always featured in writing about the effects of aviation. Observation and analysis of numerous instances of distance decay became something of a cottage industry in human geography in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Numerous studies were conducted of the rates of spread and adoption of things such as agricultural practices, of innovations such as television, and of the spatial diffusion of disease by contagion or other means. Instances of distance decay are no longer clear cut in a globalizing world being changed by cheap travel, tel ephony, and the Internet. In the past it would have been

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easier to claim that radio station listener and newspaper reader numbers taper off from the source of broadcast and publication, that fewer long distance telephone calls are made than short distance calls, and that more ham burgers are eaten in the USA than on other continents. Nearby things are no longer always more similar than things far apart. The number of spectators at Wimbledon still falls off rapidly as distance from London increases, but the ratio of Londoners to outsiders and foreigners has probably altered signiﬁcantly. Certainly, the number of people round the world who watch the tournament live on television exceeds the number of Londoners who do so. Time of day of live broadcast in far off countries (time zone distance rather than time distance) affects viewer numbers more than distance from the event. Scientiﬁc study of the way diffusion declines with distance from a source, or how distance lessens spatial interaction between two points, uses mathematical no tation and modeling to express attenuation. Starting in the 1960s human geographers drew on Newtonian physics to relate the intensity of trade or movement between an origin and destination to the inverse of their distance apart. In gravity models, distance appears as the denominator in the equation; it is a variable that reduces the volume of interaction between two points whose at traction is measured by the numerator. In keeping with molecular physics, when calibrating a gravity model against observed trip volumes, the distance denominator is generally adjusted by raising it by a power. Typically, physical distance is squared so as to capture the geo metric rather than the additive effect that incremental units of distance have on deterrence: people are more than twice as unlikely to travel 40 miles as they are 20 miles. How people regard and weigh distance may be at least as important as sheer physical distance itself. Powering distance mathematically honors the power of (cognitive) distance. Like most arguments that work with distance as an explanatory variable, gravity models imply that people know distances accurately and are inﬁnitely sensitive to their small variations. Tying behavior to estimated dis tance – even to distances ranked on a scale of closest to furthest – may capture more accurately how people consider distance. A new grocery store built 100 m closer to a housing estate than an existing store will not necessarily deﬂect customers. Loyalty and anger over the new commercial development may outweigh slight savings in time, shoe leather, and petrol. However ir rational it appears from an economic point of view (especially if prices at the new store are lower), emotion, habit, and reluctance to investigate a new option may mean consumers do not attempt to minimize effort dis tance, cost distance, or time distance. The marginal beneﬁts, tested or guessed, real or perceived, might just be too small.

Decaying Distance The term distance decay refers to decay by distance and not to the decay of distance. Yet claims do erupt peri odically about the demise of distance. Cognizant of the shrinking world, it is reasonable to argue that distance has for some time had diminishing signiﬁcance in human affairs. In ancient history, when technologies of transport and communication were rudimentary, distance had extra ordinary signiﬁcance. In nonindustrial societies, distance was an almost insurmountable barrier and, in con sequence, mythical qualities were ascribed to distance. To travel beyond the visible horizon was not just to journey a long distance, it was to reach the conjunction of earth and sky. There, elite politico religious adventurers were believed to have either encountered the past (be ginnings and ancestors) or to have seen and experienced the future (utopias, afterlife). Observers and travelers alike vested distance with symbolic power. Cosmological distance was associated with mystery and the super natural, and long distance travel with the acquisition and exercise of power and knowledge. Distant lands and people were sources of esoteric knowledge and exotic material wealth. The ability to overcome distance was a sign of power, ability, wisdom, and work; to conquer distances was to obtain religious grace. The contemporary world retains little faith in such meaningful distances. The demystiﬁcation of distance has been followed by its romanticization. Tourism discourse, for example, advertises that the grass is greener else where, that the beaches are whiter, the sun warmer, and time less pressured. In a virtual world, references to distance are ﬁgurative rather than literal, and the debate now is not about the signiﬁcance of physical distance but about its insigniﬁcance. In a globalizing world that ap pears to be shrinking, distance cannot retain the same force it did 10 years ago, let alone a century ago or 1000 years ago. Technologies of transportation and com munication have created a global village where every thing seems close and nothing far. Notices about the death of distance echo populist claims about the end of geography, the annihilation of space, and the ﬂattening of the world. These catchy assertions work with notions of relative distance rather than absolute distance and do not claim that the Earth itself is shrinking. There is no contention that absolute distance does not exist, but it is argued that distance is not entirely elemental. The claims about the shrinking world point to the passing of distance as a material consideration in human affairs. The claims move away from the presumption that distance is merely a property of and an object embedded in the physical world. The objectiﬁcation and reiﬁcation of distance in the nat ural world is countered by a different paradigmatic view

Distance

in human geography which stresses that distance (and proximity) is a relational entity. But geographical distance is not just a technical determination either, fabricated by and in thrall to the speed and price of (virtual) mobility. Post positivist geographers regard distance as being a human construction, endlessly fashioned and shaped by human agency and not just by machines. As the pre industrial case shows, and as cognitive mapping demon strates, distance is also an idea. And, in the new mobilities paradigm, distance is coming to be problematized as a residue of codiﬁcations, activities, experience, imagin ation, and memory. Any universalizing and standardizing of distance strips away its rich cultural, personal, and institutional associations. Reductive and essentializing representations of distance may strip away its abstraction and bafﬂing complexity, but they denude it of meanings that are socially constructed, negotiated, and contested. In addition to concealing layers of distance making, catchy claims about the demise of distance fail to deal with the nuances of contemporary spatial reconﬁgur ation: the world is not shrinking uniformly, and de distanciation is accompanied by re distanciation of places in plastic spaces. Not all communities feel the taming of distance let alone its destruction. The aptness of the shrinkage metaphor is open to question when it is so uneven; instead, the world map might be regarded as bending and twisting. A contorting world is moulding new global peripheries. Marginalization occurs at places that are eclipsed despite being relatively near the world’s economic hubs. Forty years after being written, the ﬁnal sentence in economist Wilfred Owen’s book on ‘distance’ and ‘development’ may be truer than ever. Resorting to a common expression that uses ﬁgurative distance to con vey degree, he concluded that distance and isolation went a long way to explaining the poverty and stagnation of 80% of humanity.

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See also: Maps; Mobility; Scale; Space I; Space II.

Further Reading Blainey, G. (1966). The Tyranny of Distance. Melbourne: MacMillan. Cairncross, F. (1997). The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press. Ewing, G. (1974). Multidimensional scaling and time space maps. Canadian Geographer 18, 161 167. Falk, T. and Abler, R. (1980). Intercommunications, distance and geographical theory. Geograﬁska Annaler (Ser. B), 62, 59 67. Friedman, T. L. (2006). The World is Flat: The Globalised World in the Twenty First Century. London: Penguin. Gattrell, A. C. (1983). Distance and Space: A Geographical Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon. Helms, M. W. (1988). Ulysses’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographical Distance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Janelle, D. G. (1973). Measuring human extensibility in a shrinking world. Journal of Geography 72, 8 14. Kitchin, R. and Freundschuh, S. (2000). Cognitive Mapping: Past, Present and Future. London: Routledge. Leyshon, A. (1995). Annihilating space?: The speed up of communi cations. In Allen, J. & Hammnet, C. (eds.) A Shrinking World? Global Unevenness and Inequality, pp 11 54. Oxford: Oxford University Press. May, J. and Thrift, N. J. (2001). Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. London: Routledge. Miller, H. J. (2004). Tobler’s ﬁrst law and spatial analysis. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, 284 289. Olsson, G. (1965). Distance and Human Interaction: A Review and Bibliography. Philadelphia, PA: Regional Science Research Institute. Owen, W. (1968). Distance and Development. Washington, DC: Brookings. Sinclair, K. (ed.) (1961). Distance Looks Our Way: The Effects of Remoteness on New Zealand. Auckland: University of Auckland Press. Ward, R. G. (1995). The shape of tele cost worlds in the Paciﬁc island case. In Cliff, A. D., Gould, P., Hoare, A. & Thrift, N. (eds.) Diffusing Geography, pp 221 240. New York: Blackwell. Watson, J. W. (1955). Geography: A discipline in distance. Scottish Geographical Magazine 71, 1 13.

Dudley Stamp, L. D. Linehan, University College Cork, Cork, Republic of Ireland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dudley Stamp, Lawrence (1898–1966) Lawrence Dudley Stamp was born in London in 1898 and admitted to King’s College at the age of 15 to study botany and geology. Following graduation he joined the Royal Engineers and served brieﬂy in France during World War I. Illustrating his exuberance for the subject and his phenomenal work rate, he gained his doctorate in geology in 1921 while simultaneously taking the London BA in geography. He was then employed as a geologist in Burma (Myanmar). While stationed there, he was ap pointed as the ﬁrst professor of geography in Rangoon in 1923, where he taught until 1926. In Burma, Stamp ﬁrst specialized in tropical geography. In one of his ﬁrst books – The Vegetation of Burma from an Ecological Standpoint – he enrolled researchers from of the Indian Forest Service to collect data and adopted a classic chorographic method to describe the country. Drawing upon the ecological theories of A. G. Tansely and a model for the systematic classiﬁcation of natural regions developed by the geographer A. J. Herberson, his tech nique examined the causes and the interrelations of phenomena in the landscape, primarily in terms of cli mate and geology. While he would continue to innovate – he was among the ﬁrst geographers, for example, to promote the use of aerial photography – this approach to the analysis of land use and resource management would characterize his career. His land use survey technique and representation ﬁrst developed in Burma, was later scaled up to encompass Britain in the 1930s, and underwrote his ideas for a world land use survey spon sored by United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) he directed in the 1960s. A postcolonial reading of Stamp’s work in tropical geography can align his interests with the demands of the colonial state. His paper on Burma published in 1933 in The Geographical Review concluded that the country’s ‘wasteland’ – which he depicted as unoccupied – was open for further colonization: ‘‘Upcountry one is struck by the immense areas of cultivable land which remain waste for want of cultivators’’ (Stamp, 1933: 87). He could also indulge his reader with a dash of adventure and hint of the exotic: ‘‘The Salween still indulges on the quiet in the time honoured practice of head hunting and their territory has been placed out of bounds to Europeans’’ (Stamp, 1933: 83). Most of Stamp’s work, however, was very applied in orientation. This was well reﬂected in his

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stewardship of Commercial Geography which he inherited from the economic geographer G. G. Chisholm. This is not so much a book but a database of commodities and the ever expanding resource frontier required by a co lonial empire. At this time, it is arguable that Stamp – notably with his work on the ‘colonial soil’ – participated in a school of Western intellectuals who mobilized sci ence in an attempt to guarantee the effective manage ment of imperial sources. In 1926, Stamp returned to England to take up a post at the London School of Economics (LSE). The LSE positioned him in a metropolitan network that supported a career at home and abroad. During this period, Stamp consolidated his activities as a successful author of popular geography textbooks. For example, he collabor ated with his wife Elsa Rea to produce an innovative New Age series for junior schools, based around photographs taken during his world travels. The World, ﬁrst prepared for the school market in India in the mid 1920s, was adapted widely throughout the British Empire and, over 40 years, sold over a million copies, running to some 17 editions. His work on school textbooks for both the na tional and colonial marketplace enhanced his association with the Geographical Association which he used to build support for the ﬁrst Land Utilisation Survey of Great Britain. The idea of a land use survey of Britain had been an objective of the Royal Geography Society from the late 1880s, when the survey ‘‘ywas regarded as a project of Imperial importance’’ (Stamp, 1931: 42). Drawing upon his work in the tropics, Stamp mobilized a chorographical technique to devise six categories of land use for the purpose of the survey: meadow and per manent grass, arable land, heath land, and moor land or rough hill pasture forests and woodland, gardens, and unproductive agricultural land. This survey – which began in 1930 – was a huge undertaking but by framing it in the context of both geographic and civic education, Stamp was able to enrol school children and their tea chers to collect primary data on land use, and transfer this data by hand onto 600 to 1 mile paper maps. The results are summarized in The Land of Britain: Its Use and Misuse. H. C. Darby concluded it was the greatest achievement of British geography. The survey success and its immediate value for agricultural and physical planning during World War II and after was Stamp’s entre´e into public service in Britain. As questions around physical planning and issues of environment and habitat management have intensiﬁed in

Dudley Stamp, L.

Britain, Stamp’s work on the Land Utilisation Survey remains highly regarded. But as one of the stalwarts of regional geography, the paradigm shifts in the 20 fol lowing this death – ﬁrst toward quantiﬁcation and then to radical geography – have often undermined his repu tation among contemporary geographers. In 1974, when David Harvey characterized geography’s history as a shift from a concern with empire into ‘‘ythe technics and mechanics of urban, regional and environmental man agement guided by a principles of benevolence and reformismy’’ Stamp could well have been his model (Harvey, 1974: 20). Ron Johnston argued that Stamp’s promotion of applied geography deﬁned geographers ‘‘yas information gathers and synthesisers who stood outside the political process within which planning goals were formulated and pursued’’ (Johnston 1979: 30). Even one of his warmest observers H. C. Darby conceded that his approach to geography was ﬁrmly pragmatic: ‘‘yit was said that he had a tidy mind and a passion for facts’’ (Darby 1983: 20). These summaries are more problematic than ﬁrst as sumed. In its various forms, versions of ‘applied geog raphy’ had always been central to the activities of the state. They came into their ascendancy in post war Britain, when the increased state intervention in the economy and environment presented geographers with innumerable opportunities to identify practical appli cations for geographical techniques and expertise. In this context, Stamp saw applied geography as the application of geography for the public good. Any claim that Stamp saw geographers as ‘outside’ the political process cannot be sustained. Stamp was part of a group of intellectuals in the 1930s that included Max Nicholson, Vaughan Cornish, and Julian Huxley who foresaw the role science would play in the planning and reconstruction of Britain. Geography for Stamp was a matter for action and intervention. During World War II, he served as vice chairperson of the Scott Committee, which set out the framework for the establishment of the town and country planning policy. He was also employed as Chief Adviser in Rural Land Utilisation at the Ministry of Agriculture. In the post war period Stamp served a member or chairperson of four major ofﬁcial committees – Land Use in Rural Areas, Nature Conservancy, Common Land, and National Resources. Undoubtedly he played a key role in shaping the post war spatial settlement in Britain. It is also clear in this period that he revised his perspective on the Global South. His work in tropical geography turned from a concern with colonial interests to issues related to the ‘developing world’. His collaboration with the International Geographical Union (IGU) and UNESCO in particular presented him with new challenges and in their own way are reﬂected in clear pleas for global re sponsibility in Geographies of Life and Death and criticism of neocolonialism in his book The Developing World.

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Toward the end of his life, Stamp reacted strongly against quantiﬁcation which he saw a major challenge to applied and regional geography. As president of the In stitute of British Geographers (IBG), he controversially compared Peter Haggett to a theosophist and concluded that ‘‘Quantiﬁcation has many points in common with Communism: it has become a religion to its devotees, its golden calf in the computer’’ (Stamp 1965: 18). Rather than this path, he argued for public engagement over academic specialization. He also saw geography as a holistic discipline, the uniﬁcation of the physical and human worlds. Despite the growing challenge then emerging from spatial science, Stamp’s proﬁle as Britain’s foremost public geographer was assured. In 1965 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. This honor extended to an invitation on to the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) ﬂagship radio program ‘Desert Island Discs’ where guests are asked to imagine which music and texts they would take with them as if cast away on a tropical island. As he had done with audiences all his life, Stamp charmed the public with a discussion on his work with the world land use survey, the demographic pressure on land resources, the use and abuse of toxic chemicals in intensive farming, the possibilities of land reclamation, and marveled at the possible future cultivation of the sea’s harvests. The radio show conﬁrmed his vivid interests in environmental issues and his wide geo graphical imagination. It seems that throughout his life Stamp epitomized the motto of his old regiment, the Royal Engineers – Ubique (everywhere). In spite of the turn toward continental social theory in Anglo American geography, Stamp’s contribution to geography remains more central to the discipline than often realized. Stamp exempliﬁed a philosophy about geographical knowledge which located it at the interface of pubic service, education, and civic responsibility. He understood the central role that geography played in the organization of social, environmental, and economic life and was able to articulate those ideas to broad and mixed constituency: school children, the general public, and policymakers. He helped create a geographical discourse which continues to frame many debates about the role of the discipline, particularly those concerning the appli cation of geographic information system (GIS), remote sensing, and land use studies to matters of public policy. See also: Colonialism I; Colonialism II; Regional Geography I; Tropical Geography.

Further Reading Anker, P. (2001). Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895 1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Darby, H. C. (1983). Academic geography in Britain: 1918 1946. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 8(1), 14 26.

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Hoskins, W. G. and Stamp, L. D. (1963). The Common Lands of England and Wales. London: Collins. Stamp, E. C. and Stamp, L. D. (1930). The New Age Geographies. London: Longmans, Green. Stamp, L. D. (1925). The aerial survey of the Irrawaddy delta forests (Burma). The Journal of Ecology 13(2), 262 276. Stamp, L. D. (1925). The Vegetation of Burma from an Ecological Standpoint. Kolkata: Thacker, Spink and Company. Stamp, L. D. (1931). The Land Utilization Survey of Britain. The Geographical Journal 78(1), 40 47. Stamp, L. D. (1933). Burma: An undeveloped monsoon country. Geographical Review 20, 86 109. Stamp, L. D. (1938). Land utilization and soil erosion in Nigeria. Geographical Review 28(1), 32 45.

Stamp, L. D. (1940). Southern margin of the Sahara: Comments on some recent studies on the question of dessication in west Africa. The Geographical Review 30, 297 300. Stamp, L. D. (1948). The Land of Britain: Its Use and Misuse. London: Longmans, Green. Stamp, L. D. (1960). Applied Geography. London: Penguin Books. Stamp, L. D. (1965). The Geography of Life and Death. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Stamp, L. D. (1966). Ten years on. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 40(2), 11 20. Tansely, A. G. (1923). Practical Plant Ecology. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Dutch Human Geography H. Ernste and L. Smith, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Action Theory An approach within the social sciences which was introduced in human geography by the Swiss geographer Benno Werlen. This approach systematizes the until then rather eclectic humanist geography to a full- ﬂedged action theoretic approach within human geography. Later on this was developed further in a language pragmatic way by Wolfgang Zierhofer and introduced by Huib Ernste in Dutch human geography. Ecological Complex A term introduced by the Dutch geographer Christian van Paassen, with which he tried to build on the ideas of the American Geographer Philbrick to designate the complex relationships between human activities and values, resources, built environment, institutions, and their external relationships. This idea was translated in terms of system theory by the Dutch geographer Jan Lambooy and made popular by Gerard Hoekveld through his famous ‘Cube of spheres’. Sociography A school of thought within Human Geography, which tries to combine Sociology with Human Geography. The highly descriptive sociography approach within human geography, focused on comparative and differential analysis formed the basis of the Amsterdam School of Sociography established by Sebald Rudolf Steinmetz. in the ﬁrst half of the 20th century. Later on this approach phased out by the increased use of quantitative methods in human geographical research.

which the practices of geography are embedded,’’ nor from the history and geography of the academic insti tutions in which human geography developed. On the one hand, this supports the tradition of describing the history of the human geographic discipline from the speciﬁc national context as deﬁned by a nation state or language area. On the other hand, one can criticize this position, because it already implicitly assumes a speciﬁc geographical structure and neglects possible other as pects and relationships. Here we focus on ‘Dutch’ human geography as it was established and developed further in Dutch universities. ‘Dutch’ in this sense is therefore understood as a speciﬁc (national) institutional context. The development of Dutch human geography is, how ever, also closely related to the development of geog raphy as a discipline in secondary education and to the emergence of a strong geographical professional praxis in the Netherlands. Societal ‘needs’ for human geographic knowledge therefore played a crucial role. The devel opment of human geography in the Netherlands is, at the same time, also linked to human geographic practices in other parts of the world. As we see, it is especially in this respect that Dutch human geography indeed takes a special position in continental European human geog raphy. In this article, a short outlook on human geog raphy in other Dutch speaking areas is also presented, although the links with ‘Dutch’ human geography are very limited.

Development of Dutch Human Geography Introduction Human geography as a discipline focuses on the con textuality and spatiality of human activities; as such it is evident that the activities conducted in the framework of this discipline can be related to the speciﬁc context in which they take ‘place’. The Dutch geographer Max Heslinga therefore concluded that it would be impossible to write a ‘single’ history of ‘the’ geography. Rather one had to differentiate speciﬁc ‘national’ geographies. This view is also reinforced by David N. Livingstone in 1992, when he states that: ‘‘[y] geography has meant different things to different people in different places’’ and by David Harvey in his Historical Materialist Manifesto with respect to the history and condition of geography, where he writes: ‘‘The history of our discipline cannot be understood independently of the history of the society in

The Establishment of Dutch Human Geography in Academia For the establishment of Dutch human geography, the Royal Dutch Geographical Society (KNAG), founded in 1873 in Amsterdam, played a crucial role. At that time, the Netherlands was still a strong colonial power and was exploring the unknown parts and resources of the Dutch colonial empire. Motivated by the promising returns of these colonial endeavors, the Royal Dutch Geographical Society, with the support of the Dutch government, ini tiated a number of expeditions to the Dutch colonies in which not just valuable knowledge of unknown areas was collected, but also the sphere of inﬂuence of Dutch government in the colonies was strengthened. At that time, geography was not represented at Dutch uni versities, instead ﬂourishing outside universities in the form of applied knowledge of the colonies and applied geographical knowledge of the Netherlands as

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concerning its regional diversity and continuous struggle against ﬂooding. The origins of Dutch human geography therefore have to be sought in different ﬁelds of the nineteenth century professional practice, ranging from (colonial) trade, commerce, shipping, land registry, civil and hydraulic engineering, and law to (colonial) administration. Geography was ﬁrst introduced as a subject in high school in 1863. As a logical next step, the Royal Dutch Geographical Society lobbied in 1874 for establishing independent chairs in geography at universities, mainly for the certiﬁcation of geography teachers for high schools. In 1877 they were successful, as the city council of Amsterdam – the city with the strongest colonial interests – decided to transform the local Atheneum into a Communal University of Amsterdam (UvA) and ap pointed Cornelius Marius Kan (1837–1919) as the ﬁrst professor in human and physical geography, including the geography and cultural anthropology of the Dutch East and West Indies. Kan mainly focused on educating geography teachers. As he had the conviction that physical and human geography were too distinct for them to be dealt with by one and the same person, notably because they both required close cooperative ties with neighboring disciplines, Kan, at his retirement, suggested that he would be succeeded by two professors, one for the ﬁeld of physical geography and one for human geography. This suggestion had long lasting ef fects, providing the basis for what later was to become one of the speciﬁc features of Dutch geography, namely, the disciplinary separation of physical and human geography. Thus, upon the retirement of Kan, Euge`ne Dubois (1858–1940) and Sebald Rudolf Steinmetz (1862– 1940) were appointed as professor for physical geography and human geography, respectively. The Amsterdam School of Sociography

Steinmetz energetically pushed forward the development of human geography. He perceived human geography as a science with a very strong social–scientiﬁc orientation and founded what later came to be known as the Amsterdam School of Sociography. At that time, human geography and economics were the only sciences at the university to deal with society in which it was also pos sible to do a major, as sociology and anthropology only became major subjects for study at universities in the Netherlands after World War II. Sociography, deﬁned by Steinmetz as comparative and differential sociology, fo cused on nations, peoples, or other human groups, and not so much on countries or regions. Steinmetz also sought to avoid reducing scientiﬁc explanations of human activities to those aspects which could be directly related to the physical environment. In his view, other factors, such as institutions, personality, cultural heritage, etc., also needed to be taken into account. At the same time,

Steinmetz emphasized the need for detailed and in depth empirical knowledge. For him, there was a division of labor between the more concrete and descriptive, in ductive sociography and the more abstract and theoret ical and deductive sociology. After the retirement of Steinmetz, his chair was divided up into a professorship in ethnology, for which Johannes J. Fahrenfort, a lector who continued Steinmetz’s anthropological legacy, was appointed, and a professorship in sociography, for which Steinmetz scholar Henri Nicolaas ter Veen (1883–1949) was appointed. Under ter Veen’s aegis, a series of descriptions of villages, towns, and regions were produced. These descriptive studies were devoid of generalizations, abstraction, and theory, and they incited a number of sociographers, with more theoretical ambitions, to defect to sociology after World War II. They moved away from the inductive approach of ter Veen, pressing instead for a more nomothetic approach with a consistent theoretical framework. They found inspiration for this in the struc tural functionalism of Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. The Emergence of Applied Human Geography

Around the 1920s, the position of human geography in Dutch universities also changed. In addition to the tra ditional ﬁelds of application of human geography knowledge in the Netherlands, namely, the colonies and high school teaching, a third ﬁeld developed in the form of socioeconomic policy and spatial planning. Thus, ter Veen’s PhD dissertation provided a sociographic de scription of the reclamation and colonization of the Haarlemmermeer, now the location of the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, and he treated social facts as expla nations for the success or failure of colonization pro cesses. In 1918, the Dutch government had just decided to start the reclamation of the Zuiderzee, making ter Veen’s study highly relevant for steering this colonization process. This also chimed well with the political current of those days, in which the liberal political philosophy was gradually replaced by a welfare state based on Christian and social democratic principles. The world economic crisis of the early 1930s further stimulated this tendency toward an intervening government. The Dutch government was very willing to develop policies for public welfare and for spatial planning, partly also in spired by the Tennessee Valley Authority, as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal. In consequence, many of the Amsterdam sociographers became involved with gov ernment policies and civil services, founding a number of government related institutions for practical sociospatial research in the process. During the same period, various sociographic agencies were established by municipalities. These had the objective of monitoring local sociospatial developments.

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In 1901, with the implementation of the ﬁrst law for public housing, a start was made with systematic urban planning at the local level, soon followed by general spatial planning at the regional level in the 1920s and at the national level in the 1930s. In 1941, under German occupation, a central agency for national planning was established. This created many new job opportunities for sociographers and human geographers and provided a ﬁrm foundation for the applied character of human geography for which Dutch human geography continues to be known to this day. This propensity toward applied human geographic research found its parallel in the de velopment of the Utrecht School in human geography. The Utrecht School of Human Geography

In 1908, the Dutch government felt that the time was ripe for setting up a full ﬂedged, well equipped geography department and of the three state universities – Leyden, Groningen, and Utrecht – the last was chosen to host this department. The applied geographer, generalist, and schoolteacher, Jan Frederik Niermeyer (1866–1923) was appointed as chair of ‘political, economic, and general geography’, while the German Karl Oestreich (1873– 1947) was appointed chair of physical geography at this department. Niermeyer strongly opposed the ‘at that time dominant’ German inﬂuence on Dutch geography. He argued against the dogmatism of the physical deter minism of Friedrich Ratzel (1848–1904) and conducted a fundamental discussion with Oestreich’s main source of inspiration, Albrecht Penck (1848–1945). In the frame work of this debate he argued for a human geography in which physical determinism was replaced by the possi bilism of the French school. The genre de vie and the pursuit of a livelihood were most important in his view. Niermeyer also strongly focused on the economic aspects of the man–land relationship, which also led to the call for a part time professorship in economic geography at the School of Economics (now Erasmus University) at Rotterdam in 1913. This emphasis placed Niermeyer in a clear counterposition to the Amsterdam Sociographic School, although he shared their preference for inductive empirical descriptive research. Niermeyers’ pronounced positioning had far reaching consequences for human geography at the University of Utrecht, which continued to remain strongly inﬂuenced by the French school well into the 1960s and which, to date, continues to emphasize economic geography. When Niermeyer died in 1923, he was succeeded, initially by Willem Boerman (1888–1965), thereafter, from 1927 onward, by Louis van Vuuren (1873–1951). van Vuuren was a colonial civil servant who had not enjoyed tertiary training. Perhaps this also explains his deﬁnition of human geography as a ‘concrete science’. The relation ship between human beings and their physical environ ment, in his view, was realized through the production

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process, which he considered to be culturally determined. The cultural landscape therefore formed the starting point for his description of the human pursuit of afﬂu ence. Under the leadership of van Vuuren, human geography at the University of Utrecht expanded its commitment to applied research. In a paper published under the title of ‘Practical geography’ he formulated his geographical creed: ‘‘Nothing inspires love for a subject as much as it practical application. Even the most dedi cated tuition fails to do so.’’ In consequence, he super vised, during the 1930s and early 1940s, the publication of a number of regional monographs and collected cases (polygraphs). van Vuuren was convinced that applied regional geography should give a descriptive overview of characteristics, problems, and potentialities of an urban or rural area, and that these inventories should provide a basis for the spatial planning of that area. These applied studies clearly showed the inﬂuence of the French school and also had typical Dutch traits. Thus, by way of ex ample, van Ginkel wrote with regard to the social con ditions and open economy of the Netherlands, how these studies contrasted with the containment of the physical historical regional entities that was so characteristic for the French concept of ‘pays’. In addition, stimulated by the general economic crisis of the 1930s, the studies conducted in the framework of the Utrecht School also had a clear focus on welfare issues. These studies were often contracted and ﬁnanced by the government and were intended to serve policies focusing on distress relief or spatial planning toward developing the economic potentialities of regions. Scientiﬁcally, the monographs of both the Amsterdam Sociographic School and the Utrecht School did not amount too much. In both cases, these were purely local descriptions that were without theoretical ambitions or reﬂections. Some of the polygraphs, however, were more thematic and contributed more to the Dutch scientiﬁc debate about the conceptualization of ‘welfare’ long be fore ‘welfare’ became an issue in international geo graphical literature. Thereby, some of van Vuuren’s scholars stressed the economic component of welfare (e.g., H. J. Keuning), while others (e.g., G. J. van der Berg, Chr. van Paassen, and W. Steiginga) advocated a broader social scientiﬁc interpretation of welfare as ‘social justice’. After World War II, van Vuuren withdrew from his position as rector of the university, as he was discredited for his attitude toward the German occupants during World War II. Initially he was succeeded by Jan Otto Marius Broek (1904–74), who was strongly inﬂuenced by Carl Sauer following his stay in Berkeley for some time. This also led him to introduce American literature in the human geography curriculum – a major turn from the dominant French and German streams in Dutch human geography. Under his aegis, applied geography lost its

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dominance for some time. However, when Broek left the Netherlands to take up a position at the University of Minnesota, the tradition of regional studies, established by Niermeyer and van Vuuren, was reinvigorated by his successor, Adriaan de Vooys (1907–93). 1945–70 In the period following World War II, Adriaan de Vooys dominated human geography, together with Christiaan van Paassen (1917–96). Until 1973, when de Vooys retired from Utrecht University, the view remained dominant that human geographers should study the ways in which socioeconomic groups made a living in their local geo graphical setting. In maintaining this perspective, de Vooys did not refrain from going into a heated debate with Hans Dirk de Vries Reilingh (1908–2001), who had succeeded ter Veen in Amsterdam in 1950, with regard to an article which de Vries Reilingh had published on ‘human geography as discipline of the humanities’. In this article, de Vries Reilingh accused the Utrecht human geographers of focusing too much on economic aspects, thereby largely neglecting cultural, political, and social aspects. However, de Vooys obstinately stuck to his view that economic geography formed the core of human geography. In the same way, he also defended the de scriptive approach to human geography taken at Utrecht against alleged competitors from the side of sociology. Sociology, as it grew out of the sociographic tradition, contrasted the Utrecht approach by focusing much more on theory and model building, thereby position itself as a ‘real science’. Only upon the retirement of de Vooys, in 1973, did a younger generation, led by Marc de Smidt, appointed as professor for economic geography in Utrecht (1977 onward), self consciously head into new directions. Christiaan van Paassen was the other dominant human geographer scholar. Appointed in 1965 in Utrecht for the chair of human geography and spatial planning, van Paassen inspired his scholars with his personal involve ment, theoretical inclination, and visionary views. Therein he was especially inspired by the philosophy of science which the German philosopher Theodor Litt (1880–1962) had developed and the phenomenology and existentialist schools. van Paassen argued that, in essence, human geography is a cultural science that needs to maintain a close relationship with the historical sciences. Hence, in contrast to de Vooys, he emphasized the cul tural aspects of human geographic phenomena. In his well known article on ‘geographical structuration and ecological complex’, which was published in 1962, he provided a ﬁrm theoretical basis for his views. Never theless, his approach did not ﬁnd much resonance in Dutch human geography, as his theoretical work was difﬁcult to understand and diverted substantially from

the mainstream approach in the Netherlands at that time. Especially with respect to his ideas of embodied spaces, he was far ahead of his time and his views were only picked up again by Huib Ernste (1957–) when expressed in his 2001 inaugural lecture at the Radboud University of Nijmegen. Competition in the ﬁeld of human geography in creasingly also came from within the discipline, when new geography departments were established at various other universities across the Netherlands. This was a direct response to not only a growing demand for human geographers in the ﬁeld of urban and regional planning, but also a growing demand for geography teachers. Furthermore, the subdiscipline of spatial planning took on a decisive own course. Most of the ﬁrst chairs in spatial planning in the Netherlands were taken by scholars of van Vuuren, such as Willem Steigenga (1962, Amsterdam), Christiaan van Paassen (1965, Utrecht), Gerrit Jan van den Berg (1968, Groningen), Gerrit Wissink (1962, Radboud University, Nijmegen), and Jaap Buit (1972, Free University of Amsterdam), continuing the focus on applied and integral approaches to planning. In 1949, Hendrik Jacob Keuning (1904–85) was ap pointed as professor in economic geography at the new Faculty for Economics at the University of Groningen. One year after his appointment, he had already estab lished a new curriculum for human geography. In the beginning, this curriculum mainly served to provide education to geography teachers, and only in the 1970s did human geographic research fully unfold in Gro ningen. As a scholar of van Vuuren, Keuning ‘exported’ the orientation on the French school and the focus on economic issues to Groningen. In his research he applied a functionalistic view, whereby only those phenomena were taken into account which he considered to be human geographically relevant, that is, which played a functional role in the human pursuit of making a living. These functional relationships were initially described separately by sector. Later, during the 1950s, Keuning increasingly also explored the horizontal relationships between different sectors. Regions continued to be the main focus for human geographic research in Groningen, but Keuning deﬁned regions much more as dynamic human constructs and as the product of human tech nologies and functional structures. Thereby, he diverged from the conceptualization of regions as pregiven natural entities, which was still rather common in both the Amsterdam Sociographic School and the Utrecht School. In 1964, a second chair was created for human geography at the University of Groningen. This was ﬁrst taken by Johan Winsemius (1910–64), who may be considered exemplary for the transition of Dutch human geography from a colonial science to a science serving the welfare state. He was soon succeeded by Rob Tamsma (1922– 2005). Tamsma mainly concentrated on educating

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geography teachers. In 1973, Piet Lukkes, formerly a researcher at a real estate developing company, was ap pointed on the new chair for methods and techniques of geographical research, at the University of Groningen. He expanded the focus on economic issues, such as spatial organization of ﬁrms, project development, mar keting, and investment and also formulated a concept for regional analysis (‘regiologie’) which was directed more toward applied nomothetic analyses of regions, inclining toward generalizable knowledge and reliable predictions. This strong focus on commercial aspects of geography of space is still a prominent characteristic of current human geography at the University of Groningen. In 1958, Ruud Cools (1908–87) was appointed as the ﬁrst professor for human geography at the (Catholic) Radboud University in Nijmegen. He was also a scholar of van Vuuren and was strongly inﬂuenced by the French school. In his PhD thesis, he analyzed the contribution of one of the most remarkable representatives of the French school, Jean Brunhes. He set up the Nijmegen curriculum along the lines of the French human geography. In 1970, the interest for methodologically more sophisticated human geographic research approaches resulted in the appointment of Piet Kouwe (1928–97) at the Radboud University, as professor for methods and techniques of human geographic research. Together with Christiaan van Paassen and Gerrit Wissink, he had conducted a seminal research project on the formation of different residential milieus in the Haarlemmermeer. In this study, they deliberately avoided the usual method of regional mono graphy, instead focusing on processes of integration and differentiation. In this way, the road was paved for a more process oriented human geography. In 1971 following the resurgence of interest for the relationship of the Nether lands with former colonies around the world, a profes sorship was created in the ﬁeld of ‘geography of development’, to which Jan Kleinpenning was appointed. The establishment of a department of human geog raphy at the Catholic Radboud University in Nijmegen led the Protestant Free University of Amsterdam to es tablish a ﬁfth academic educational program in human geography in 1961, not wanting to lag behind. The de Vooys scholar, Max Heslinga (1922–) was appointed for this chair. He specialized in historical geography and the history of the geographic discipline. He was soon assisted by Gerard Hoekveld, who would develop urban geog raphy and ensured that human geographical knowledge was made more accessible to geography teachers. Espe cially signiﬁcant was his translation of the theoretical concepts introduced by Christiaan van Paassen into a ‘framework of action’ (‘handelingsverband ’), schematized in his ‘Bollenkubus’. This displayed the relationship be tween the framework of action and sociospatial structures and artiﬁcial morphological patterns. In doing so, he opened a window of exchange between Anglo Saxon and

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Dutch human geography. In addition to Helsinga and Hoekveld, Jan Lambooy was appointed for the chair of economic geography and Ad de Bruyne for the geog raphy of underdeveloped areas. Jan Lambooy contributed strongly to the development of economic geography with his popular standard textbook of 1981 and his active discourse with regional economics. However, in terms of student numbers, the department at the Free University of Amsterdam remained one of the smallest. This made it vulnerable to budget cuts at the Ministry of Education. Indeed, in 1984 this program had to close down due to such government measures, and most of the staff was transferred to the University of Amsterdam and the University of Utrecht. At the University of Amsterdam, the establishment of sociology and anthropology as separate educational programs meant that human geography was, more or less, squeezed in between sociology and the more eco nomically oriented human geography in Utrecht and Groningen. de Vries Reilingh, therefore, initiated a re orientation and chose an approach that focused on the spatiality of human activities, without thereby losing the emphasis on social and cultural factors. Furthermore, a large contract research project for the municipality of Amsterdam on the development and functions of the inner city of Amsterdam enforced a theoretical reorien tation on urban geographic research. During this phase, Willem Heinemeyer (1922–99), who was appointed as professor for human geography at the University of Amsterdam in 1969, also in close cooperation with the successor of de Vries Reilingh, Christiaan van Paasen, introduced the socioecological approach to spatial problems, which came to dominate Dutch urban geog raphy for a long time. The Amsterdam urban geography chair has continued to maintain its focus on Amsterdam and its metropolitan region, thereby specializing in the labor market, the housing market, and the position of ethnic minorities. The observation by Dietvorst et al., that the complexity of the big city formed a lasting research theme for human geographers at the University of Am sterdam, continues to apply today. 1970–Present The 1960s and 1970s can be characterized by a growing number of students and, concomitantly, a growing number of chairs in human geography and, thereby, a growing range of specializations. More specializations and more staff also implied more differentiation and less clear cut local ‘schools of thought’. New generations of human geographers were clearly also much more open to new developments in the international ﬁeld of human geography. Especially developments in Anglo Saxon and Swedish human geography were readily absorbed, al though Christiaan van Paassen observed that the

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appreciation of new geographical ideas was rather slight, not least in Utrecht, with the biggest human geography department. This related to a number of causes. First, most departments in the Netherlands still have a strong tendency to concentrate on local environments. This is partly not only due to the strong regional recruitment of students, but also due to the strong tendency toward applied contract research, for which commissioners often stem from the direct surroundings. Finally, appointment policies, even at present, show a strong inward looking tendency. Especially in a small academic community like that of the Netherlands, this results in a situation in which most new appointments involve persons who are also intellectually socialized in the same community, and consequently often do not have strong innovative in clinations for Dutch human geography. Thus, traditional local specializations are much more rigid than one would expect from, otherwise fairly dy namic, academic institutions in the Netherlands. In 1984, this led Christiaan van Paassen to write how: ‘‘‘the new professional guard’ did not change that [the bipolar structure based on Amsterdam and Utrecht] [y] despite the challenges to academic traditions from changes within society and competition from other rapidly expanding social sciences.’’ Thus, Amsterdam has maintained its close proximity to sociology, with specializations in ﬁelds such as political and cultural geography, while Utrecht has continued to prefer the study of economic phenom ena, favoring a geographical orthodoxy. Groningen, as an offspring from the Utrecht school, can also still be typiﬁed by its strong economic focus on spatial investment and real estate policies. Nijmegen has developed along the same lines, although recently various radical changes have taken place (see below). These strong local characteristics can also still be observed in the latest self studies put together by the respective departments for the accredit ation of the human geography curriculum in 2007. Not withstanding these rigidities, from the late 1960s onward, Dutch geography has become increasingly inﬂuenced by Anglo Saxon ideas. Along with international developments the 1970s also featured ﬁerce, ideologically tinted scientiﬁc debates, mainly in relation to theoretical issues. Christiaan van Paassen thus reports how: ‘‘at Nijmegen, involved in the spiritual and political turmoil within the Roman Catholic world, a conference on ‘critical geography’ was organised in 1973; the ‘Positivismusstreit’ was discussed, and Habermas and Popper compared.’’ In 1976, the KNAG organized a conference discussing theoretical reﬂections on the course of geography. At this event, Jansen in 1976 introduced the concept of policy oriented geography and van Paassen outlined his existentialist anthropological viewpoint. It was also Jansen who criticized work on centrality and hierarchies by Buursink, and Buit and Nozeman and advocated a phenomenological approach.

Following the development of a spatial analysis ap proach in human geography, the methodological so phistication of human geographic research increased substantially. The appointment of Piet Kouwe in Nijmegen and Piet Lukkes in Groningen for methods and techniques of human geographic research had al ready been mentioned. In Utrecht, Joost Hauer was ap pointed as the professor for human geographic research methodology in 1975, while Frans Marinus Dieleman (1942–2005) was appointed as professor of methods and techniques of geographical research at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1978. Not only methodological sophistication, but also the productivity was raised substantially and special izations, such as economic geography (Utrecht, Nijmegen, Groningen, and Free University of Amsterdam), geog raphy of development (Utrecht, Nijmegen, Free Uni versity of Amsterdam, and University of Amsterdam), and political geography (University of Amsterdam), began to ﬂourish. The increasing numbers of chairs and staff, and the growing differentiation, also brought an end to the long standing Amsterdam–Utrecht rivalry, although they continued to maintain their own orientation. A number of developments that have taken place since the 1970s have led to new changes in the Dutch human geographic praxis. First of all, the welfare state, which was so important for emergence of applied human geography, is on its retreat since the 1980s. The direct implication was a cutback on government spending on policy related research. At the same time, in many ﬁelds where the government reduced its activities, private companies, such as consultancy ﬁrms, commercial re search agencies, developers, institutional investors, and media, stepped in, providing new work for geographers. Second, in the 1980s, the number of students enrolled in the human geography programs almost halved. As a direct consequence, several newly created human geo graphic specializations were closed or merged, some majors were turned into minors, and in 1984 the de partment of human geography at the Free University of Amsterdam was disbanded altogether. From 2000 onward, the number of students seems to have stabilized. How ever, fading disciplinary borders, increased dynamics in the landscape of human geography, and related programs in other disciplines following the introduction of the bachelor–master system, imply that it is difﬁcult to pre dict trends in the number of students. Latest data show a slight increase in student numbers, especially in newly created master programs at the interface between human geography and other disciplines, such as development studies in Amsterdam and Utrecht and conﬂict manage ment in Nijmegen. Under the pressure to increase output (‘publish or perish’) Dutch human geographers increasingly resort to less problematic and easier to publish mainstream

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research and also, notably in comparison with other continental European countries, publish extensively in English language periodicals. Notwithstanding the high presence of Dutch geographers in English language journals, their impact has remained modest. The ten dency toward the mainstream also makes it increasingly difﬁcult to identify speciﬁc trends. Hence, de Pater and de Smidt conclude how: ‘‘Sharply honed polemics are hardly heard anymore in this more businesslike than lofty discipline.’’ Thus, the broad mainstream is best typiﬁed as comprising geographers who combine modest forms of spatial analysis with behavioral geography. Starting in the 1980s and culminating at the end of the 1990s, various counter currents, inclining especially toward post positivist approaches, seem to be gaining support. Thus, at the University of Amsterdam, critical geopolitics has emerged as a ﬁeld in which the social construction of political spaces through discourse is studied. Partly this is due to the invitation of prominent foreign geographers and social scientists to lecture and write on the Dutch capital (e.g., Manuel Castells, John Loughlin, Edwars Soja, Lyn Loﬂand, Paul Claval, Ulf Hannerz, Donald Olsen, and John Mollenkopf). It is also through new appointments that such changes can anchor. In the case of the Radboud University of Nijmegen, the appointment of Huib Ernste, who had been abroad for almost 17 years, as the successor to Jan Buursink, provided opportunity to reinvigorate an interest in theory building and fundamental research in Nijmegen, in divergence to the long Dutch tradition of applied human geographic research. Thus, Ernste intro duced the phenomenologically based action theoretical approach, elaborated by Benno Werlen in German speaking human geography. This approach was then developed further in a language pragmatic fashion and contrasted with post structural approaches in a new ‘multiparadigmatic’ curriculum for human geography. In his inaugural lecture Ernste also tried to bridge the gap between these different paradigms by making use of the philosophical–anthropological approach of Helmuth Plessner, which resembles the anthropological approach of Christiaan van Paassen formulated 26 years earlier. To substantiate this theoretical orientation also the state of the art Alexander von Humboldt lecture series were initiated, whereby prominent geographers and social scientists are invited to Nijmegen. His interests also helped to establish the theory driven Centre for Border Research in Nijmegen, one of the main innovations of Dutch human geography, in the last decade. In the case of the University of Utrecht, the reshufﬂing of the economic geography section partly in relation to the creation of a new school of economics and some new appointments such as Ron Boschma and Oedzge Atzema on the one hand initiated a research program in the ﬁeld of evo lutionary approaches in economic geography which

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strengthened its status in the international academic community, and on the other hand continued the line of more applied economic geographic research. Otherwise new emphases in the ﬁeld of human geography in the Netherlands are rather modest, notwithstanding the fact that the Dutch university landscape is characterized by high institutional dynamics. These institutional dynamics also did not result in a substantial increase of the number of women appointed on chairs for human geography in the Netherlands. In this sense, Dutch human geography clearly lags behind. One of the other major driving forces of changes in human geographic curricula and research programs in the Netherlands are the regular external evaluations by an independent agency, the Quality Assurance Nether lands Universities (QANU). The research is assessed according to a protocol developed by the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), the Netherlands Orga nization for Scientiﬁc Research (NWO), also known as the Science Foundation, and the Association of Uni versities in the Netherlands (VSNU). The results of these evaluations are not directly related to the funding of research or education, but indirectly, through the process of forced self reﬂection in the course of providing self studies as the basis for the external evaluations and through voluntary self reﬂection on the basis of the as sessment results; they do result in increased quality and quantity of research output and they do lead to high standards in teaching. Independent of these assessments also the changing structure of Dutch research funding leads to some shifts in emphasis. As Jan van Weesep re ported, research funds are increasingly being made available through the National Science Foundation on the basis of increasingly large scale programs. Another typical Dutch feature in human geographic research, which ﬁts the traditional strong focus on applied re search, is the big share of large scale programs with mixed research funding, where research funds are partly provided by private parties such as private companies and government agencies as well as by the National Science Foundation and Universities themselves. Together this has led to a tendency toward less academic freedom and more mainstream and less curiosity driven innovative research. Development of Human Geography in Flanders Dutch human geography is also linked to human geog raphy in Flanders, the Dutch speaking area of Belgium. However, the development of the Belgian universities clearly also followed a different path. Human geography is taught at three Dutch speaking Belgian universities, namely, the University of Gent, the Catholic University of Louvain, and the Protestant free university of Brussels. At all three universities, however, in contrast to the

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Dutch universities, geography is still taught as an inte grated discipline, comprising both physical and human geography. In general, geography at the Belgian uni versities in Flanders is less specialized than is the case in the Anglo Saxon countries, in the Northern European countries, or in the Netherlands. Partly as a result of a highly and centrally regulated curriculum until the be ginning of the 1990s, these three Belgian universities are very similar in their approach. They all use the natural sciences and mathematics as the backbone of the cur riculum which is then gradually enhanced with social scientiﬁc subjects. Human geographic research therefore is also very often focused on issues at the interface be tween physical and human geography. It therefore is also understandable that some of the best known Flemish contributions to the ﬁeld of human geography stem from researchers who are active in other disciplines such as urban sociology or urban history and that there are not many sources to be found on speciﬁc schools of thought or on the historic development of human geography in Flanders (the main source being the Belgian geographic journal Belgeo). Flemish human geographers traditionally play an important role for Dutch human geographers in the role of peer assessors in the Dutch evaluation system. Finally, as Flemish human geographers also cooperate substantially with the French speaking human geog raphers, the Flemish human geographers embody a window between Dutch and French schools of thought in human geography.

Addendum Introduction South Africa’s human geography features a number of speciﬁc historic developments which relate strongly to changes in the political context in which it has often found itself to be strongly embedded. The most salient change, obviously, was the gradual manifestation of Apartheid over the course of the twentieth century, and its formal demise in the early 1990s. South Africa’s human geography ﬁeld follows this trajectory in its manifestations to some extent. In relation to Dutch geography the immediate connection is that of language; with Afrikaans having its roots in the Dutch language while, at present, it still shares many similarities. In the past Afrikaans was a medium used for teaching and research in human geography at various universities across the country. Therein a differentiation needs to be made between the formerly ‘black’ and ‘white’ uni versities (or, alternatively: ‘formerly advantaged’ versus ‘disadvantaged’ universities, respectively), with the for mer based in the former homelands while the latter were located in those parts of the country designated as being ‘for whites only’. In a very general sense it might be

argued that in the past geography departments at ‘black’ universities maintained an applied nature in their teaching and research, in line with the general objectives of these universities to train a black administrative elite for the governance of the homelands, while geography departments at former ‘white’ universities maintained a more heterogeneous curriculum and research agenda. The second differentiation concerns the difference between the former ‘white’ English and Afrikaans speaking universities. At present four universities still maintain Afrikaans as a primary language of communi cation, albeit that there is variation in the extent to which this policy is implemented. These four universities are: Stellenbosch University, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, University of Pretoria, and the University of the North West (Potchefstroom). At other universities Afrikaans is not given such priority, and there English is usually the preferred mode of communication. Hence, although South Africa does note a volume of academic work in Afrikaans within the ﬁeld of human geography, there is little to argue that it is fundamentally different enough for it to be described as a separate geographical school from other practices of human geography in South Africa, notably in relation to more global practices. Thus, in the text that follows, a general, nonlingual differentiation is made of the most salient developments for human geography in South Africa. The Origins of Human Geography in South Africa Regarding the origins of the discipline in South Africa, Crush, Reitsma, and Rogerson note that, in essence, human geography constituted a ‘colonized’ discipline with a strong Euro American bias in its theoretical out look. This origin, in their view, is of signiﬁcance for two main reasons. The ﬁrst concern relates to the origins of human geography and the very applicability of its ‘expatriate’ Euro American theoretical framework for explaining processes in South Africa. In essence this implied that social formations in South Africa were adapted to this framework, rather than the framework emerging from social formations. Yet it took until the 1980s for sufﬁcient momentum to be built up to culminate in a new school of critical, postcolonial, post Ford human geographers. The second issue raised by Crush et al. regards the essentially colonial origins of human geography for providing a scientiﬁc rationale for economic, social, but also geographic, differentiation between races in South Africa. This was the case during the nineteenth century under British colonial administration and thereafter under Apartheid policies of various white governments. Segregation in geography studies was not only

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manifested in the focus of research but also achieved through a differentiation between White and Black Universities. Not only did this institutionalize funda mentally different orientations, leading to a steadily in creasing rift in the ﬁeld, it also marginalized the role of non white geographers. In reaction to these develop ments South African geographers found themselves in creasingly excluded from international geography exchanges. Post-Apartheid: Toward a New Human Geography Approach In the wake of the political turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s, human geography began to take on an increasingly critical political, even activist, stance, committing itself increasingly to the concerns of the indigenous, that is, black, majority of South Africa, doing so through its ‘geographies of protest’. The 1990s sees the rise of a number of parallel de velopments. Thus, one substantial group of human geographers take on positions of an applied nature, using multidisciplinary, multifaceted approaches in their work to study changes effectuated by governments, but also those brought about by social movements such as labor unions, civic and other community based organizations, urban and rural. Other geographers, notably historical geographers, have taken on a postcolonial research agenda, following structuralist Marxist paradigms to take critical distance from their predecessor geographers’ liberal historical stance. One of the most prominent liberal historical geog raphers of the past was A. J. Christopher. While generally praised for his pioneering work of the 1970s, mapping racial segregation and exclusion throughout South Africa, Christopher was also heavily criticized. This mainly re lated to his neutral, liberal stance toward the extent to which South Africa’s government had succeeded in seg regating its population along racial lines, privileging its white population while marginalizing and oppressing others. Thus, Crush argues that Christopher, and other historical geographers of the same period, failed to en gage with the radical changes brought about in South Africa, instead producing: ‘‘antiseptic landscapes of much existing historical geographic writing.’’ Future Prospects for South African Human Geography Concerning the road ahead for human geography in South Africa, Rogerson, an eminent human geographer at Witwatersrand University, calls on his fellow geographers to engage in a concerted effort to critically explore contemporary social and economic reconstruction pro cesses and the developments these produce, notably the reconﬁguration of economic and social spaces in relation

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to the rural–urban divide. Thereby human geography will also need to engage with other disciplines, notably development studies, building on their efforts. The focus advocated by Rogerson is presently ﬁnding increasing impetus and is, for instance, reﬂected in the work of Brij Maharaj, who studies entitlement conﬂicts in the muni cipality of Durban. In response to the need for a critical South African human geography and a truly post Apartheid situation black human geographers will need to be stimulated to take on a stronger role. At present they are strongly underrepresented in scholarly output. Thus, Sumner ﬁnds that of all scholarly output from South African geographers only 22% features black authors (with 69% of these publications having a black author as ﬁrst or single author). In addition, there is also general consensus that South African geographers need to also expose their work more at a global level. This, for instance, re quires them to more present at global forums and international conferences, and to publish more outside local journals, notably the South African Geographical Journal (SAGJ). See also: Francophone Geography; German-Language Geography.

Further Reading Beavon, K. S. O. and Rogerson, C. M. (1981). Trekking on: Recent trends in the human geography of southern Africa. Progress in Human Geography 5, 159 189. Boerman, W. E. (1960). Vijftig jaren economische geograﬁe. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe (TESG) 51(4/5), 85 89. Bosman, J. and de Pater, B. (1998). The international position of Dutch human geography: A quantitative exploration. GeoJournal 45(1 2), 85 96. Bremen W.J. van den De Nederlandse geograﬁe van 1850 tot 1950. In Dietvorst A.G.J., Ginkel, J. A. Van, Kouwenhoven, A. O., Pater, B.C. (eds.) Algemene sociale geograﬁe: ontwikkelingslijnen en standpunten, pp 160 174. 1984 Weesp: Romen. Brink, P. P. W. J. and Moree, P. (1996). Met kapmes en kompas. Vier eeuwen Nederlandse ontdekkingsreisen en reisverslagen. The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Buit, J. and Nozeman, E. F. (1976). De Gewenste Spatiering van het Voorzieningenapparaat. Amsterdam: Geograﬁsch en Planologisch Instituut, Vrije Universiteit. Buursink, J. (1971). Centraliteit en Hierarchie. Assen: van Gorkum. Buursink, J. (1977). De Hierarchie van Winkelcentra. Groningen: Geograﬁsch Instituut, Universiteit Groningen. Buursink, J. (1998). Nederland in geograﬁsche handen. Honderd jaar regionale geograﬁe van Nederland. Utecht: Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (KNAG). Crush, J. (1986). Towards a people’s historical geography for South Africa. Journal of Historical Geography 12(1), 3. Crush, J. (1991). The discourse of progressive human geography. Progress in Human Geography 15, 395 414. Crush, J. (1992). Beyond the frontier: The new South African historical geography. In Rogerson, C. & McCarthy, J. (eds.) Geography in a Changing South Africa: Progress and Prospects, pp 10 37. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Crush, J., Reitsma, H. and Rogerson, C. (eds.) (1983). Special Issue: Decolonizing the Human Geography of Southern Africa. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geograﬁe Lxxiii, 4.

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de Pater, B. (2001). Geography and geographers in the Netherlands since 1870s: Serving colonialism, education, and the welfare state. In Dunbar, G. S. (ed.) Geography: Discipline Profession and Subject since 1870. An International Survey, pp 153 190. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Dieleman, F. (1998). Research progress Dutch style. Environment and Planning A 31, 191 195. Dietvorst, A. G. J., van Ginkel, J. A., Kouwenhoven, A. D., de Pater, B. C. and van den Bremen, W. J. (1984). Algemene sociale geograﬁe: Ontwikkelingslijnen en standpunten. Weesp: Romen. Ernste, H. (2002). Transgressing borders with human geography. Inaugural Speech. Radboud University, Nijmegen, 27 June. Ernste, H. (2004). The pragmatism of life in poststructuralist times. Environment and planning A 36(3), 437 450. Ernste, H. (2007). The international network university of the future and their local and regional impacts. In Scott, A., Harding, A., Laske, S. & Burtscher, C. (eds.) Bright Satanic Mills: Universities, Regional Development and the Knowledge Economy, pp 69 92. Aldershot: Ashgate. Fairhurst, U. J., Davies, R. J., Fox, R. C. et al. (2003). Geography: The state of the discipline in South Africa: A Survey, 2000/2001. Report Compiled for the Society of South African Geographers. Ginkel, H. van (1996). Professional practice and the development of modern geography in the Netherlands. In Berdoulay, V. & van Ginkel, J. A. (eds.) Geography and Professional Practice. Nederlandse Geograﬁsche Studies, vol. 206, pp 31 45. Utrecht: KNAG. Ginkel, H. van and Smidt, M. de (eds.) (1983). 75 years of human geography at Utrecht. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe (TESG) 74(5), 313 406. Giraut, F. and Maharaj, B. (2002). Contested terrains: Cities and hinterlands in post apartheid boundary limitations. GeoJournal 57, 39 51. Harvey, D. W. (1984). On the history and present condition of geography: An historical materialist manifesto. The Professional Geographer 36, 1 11. Heinemeyer, W. F. (1971). Reilingh en de sociale geograﬁe. Geograﬁsch Tijdschrift 5(4), 291 303. Heslinga, M. W. (1978). Geography and Nationality. The Estyn Evans Lecture 2. Belfast: Department of Geography, The Queen’s University. Heslinga, M. W. (1983). Between German and French geography. In search of the origins of the Utrecht School. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe (TESG) 74(3), 317 334. Heslinga, M. W. (1999). Grondleggers. In de Pater, B. (ed.) Een tempel der kaarten. Negentig jaar geograﬁebeoefening aan de universiteit Utrecht, pp 34 73. Utrecht: Faculteit der Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen, Universiteit Utrecht. Jansen, A. C. M. (1977). Over Armoede van Distributie Planologisch Onderzoek. E.G.I. paper No. 14. Amsterdam: Economisch Geograﬁsch Instituut, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Jansen, A. C. M. (1980). Een fenomenologische orientatie in de ruimtelijke wetenschappen. Geograﬁsch Tijdschrift 14, 99 111 and 324 329. Keuning, H. J. (1955). Mozaı¨ek der functies: Proeve van een regionale landbeschrijving van Nederland op historisch en economisch geograﬁsche grondslag. The Hague: Leopold. Knippenberg, H. and van Schendelen, M. (eds.) (2002). Alles heeft zijn plaats. 125 jaar Geograﬁe en Planologie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Amsterdam: Aksant. Lambooy, J. (1973). Economic and geonomic space. Papers of the Regional Science Association 31, 145 158. Lambooy, J. (ed.) (1978). Beleidsgeorienteerd Onderzoek ter Diskussie. E.G.I. Paper No. 17, Amsterdam: Economisch Geograﬁsch Instituut, Universiteit van Amsterdam. Lambooy, J. (1981). Ekonomie en ruimte: Inleiding in de ekonomische geograﬁe en de reginale ekonomie. Assen: van Gorkum. Lester, A. (2003). Space, place, landscape and identity: Historical geographies of southern Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies 29(3), 595 613. Livingstone, D. N. (1992). The Geographical Tradition. Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise. Oxford: Blackwell. Musterd, S. and de Pater, B. (2003). Eclectic and pragmatic: The colours of Dutch social and cultural geography. Social and Cultural Geography 4(4), 549 563.

Ormeling, F. J. (1974). In memoriam Prof. Dr. Jan O. M. Broek. Geograﬁsch Tijdschrift 8(5), 403 406. Pater, B. de (2002). R. H. A. Cools vertolker van de Franse geograﬁe. Geograﬁe 11(1), 16 17. Pater, B. de and de Smidt, M. (1989). Dutch human geography. Progress in Human Geography 13(3), 348 373. Paassen, C. van (1962). Geograﬁsche structurering en oecologisch complex, een bijdrage tot sociaal geograﬁsche theorievorming. Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 79(4), 215 233. Paassen, C. van (1976). Human geography in terms of existential anthropology. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe (TESG) 67, 324 341. Paassen, C. van (1984). Human geography in the Netherlands. In Johnston, R. J. & Claval, P. (eds.) Geography since the Second World War. An International Survey, pp 214 234. London: Croom Helm. Pellenbarg, P. (1999). Vijftig jaar geograﬁe in Groningen. Geograﬁe 8(1), 43 44. Pirie, G. H. (1985). Geography in South Africa. Professional Geographer 37(4), 479 482. Rogerson, C. M. (1990). A new South Africa a new South African geography? GeoJournal 22(3), 227 229. Rogerson, C. M. (1993). South African geography and post apartheid construction. GeoJournal 30(1), 5 7. Schrader, R. (1974). Honderd jaar Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 1973 1973. Geograﬁsch Tijdschrift. Nieuwe Reeks 8(4), 1 164. Smidt, M. de (1983). Dutch economic geography in retrospect. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe (TESG) 74, 344 357. Steinmetz, S. R. (1900). Classiﬁcation des types sociaux et catalogue des peuples. L’anne´e sociologique, 43 144. Steinmetz, S. R. (1913). Die Stellung der Sociographie in den Geisteswissenschaften. Archiv fu¨r Rechts und Wirtschaftsphilosophi: mit besonderer Beru¨cksichtigung der Gesetzgebungsfragen 6(3), 492 501. Sumner, P. D. (2006). On the nature of southern African geographical publications, 2000 to 2004. South African Geographical Journal 88(22), 213 218. Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Raad (ed.) (2002). De Onderwijsvisitatie Geograﬁe. Een onderzoek naar de kwaliteit van de opleidingen Geograﬁe aan de Vlaamse universiteiten. Brussels: Vlaamse Interuniversitaire Road. Vries Reiling, H. D. de (1961). De sociale aardrijkskunde als geesteswetenschap. Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 78, 112 122. Vuuren, L. van (1924). Practische geograﬁe. In van Balen, C. L. (ed.) Geograﬁsche bijzonderheden. Anniversary Volume for the 70th Birthday of R. Schuiling, pp 346 353. Groningen: Noordhof. Weesep, J. van (1987). Academic urban geography in the Netherlands. Urban Geography 8(1), 65 76. Weesep, J. van (2006). Research assessment in the Netherlands. In Castree, N. (ed.) Research assessment and the production of geographical knowledge. Progress in Human Geography 30(6), 747 782. Wellings, P. (1983). Review of ‘decolonizing the human geography of southern Africa’. Journal of Modern African Studies 21(2), 360 364. Werlen, B. (1988). Society, Action, and Space. An Alternative Human Geography. London: Routledge. Werlen, B. (1995). Sozialgeographie allta¨glicher Regionalisierungen. Band 1: Zur Ontologie von Gesellschaft und Raum. (Social Geography of Daily Regionalisations. Vol. 1: Ontology of Society and Space.) Stuttgart: Steiner. Werlen, B. (1997). Sozialgeographie allta¨glicher Regionalisierungen. Band 2: Globalisierung, Region, und Regionalisierung. (Social Geography of Daily Regionalisations. Vol. 2: Globalisation, region, and regionalisation.) Stuttgart: Steiner. Werlen, B. (ed.) (2007). Sozialgeographie allta¨glicher Regionalisierungen. Band 3: Ausgangspunkte und Befunde empirischer Forschung. (Social Geography of Daily Regionalisations. Vol. 3: Assumptions and results of empirical research.) Stuttgart: Steiner.

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Wusten, H. van der (2005). Sebald Rudolf Steinmetz 1862 1940. In Armstrong, P. H. & Martin, G. J. (eds.) Geographers. Biobliographical Studies, vol. 24, pp 109 123. London: Thoemmes Continuum. Zierhofer, W. (2002). Speech acts and space(s): Language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social. Environment and Planning A 34, 1355 1372.

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Relevant Websites http://fmg.uva.nl/home.cfm University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences http://www.rug.nl/ University of Groningen http://www.uu.nl/ University of Utrecht

Dwelling O. Jones, CCRI, Cheltenham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Affect The vital systems of life beyond or pre rational, reﬂexive thought and language use. Agency The capacity to act creatively. Becoming A view of life as always in creation and thus always in motion and only possessing immanent and emergent form rather than static, predetermined form. Embodiment An approach which takes bodies seriously as against the mind–body dualism. Hybridity The understanding that much of life is only possible through routine interconnections of differing types of things and the idea that bodies themselves are not singular and pure but multifaceted in form, origin, function, and identity. Taskscape Landscapes and places made by the repeating actions of organisms over time.

Introduction Dwelling approaches life as a process of being in the world which is open to the world. Human and nonhuman life is read as an immediate, yet also enduring, relational process of bodies in environment (space and place) which are (with variation) mobile, sensing, engaging, responding, exchanging, making, using, remembering, and knowing. This process based, vitalist view of life is closely linked to phenomenology, and stands in oppos ition to dualized, rational Cartesian based approaches. As Tim Ingold suggests when setting out Heidegger’s foundational work on this concept, dwelling encompasses the whole manner in which one lives one’s life on the Earth; thus ‘‘I dwell, you dwell’’ is identical to ‘‘I am, you are.’’ For Heidegger, to be a human means to be on the Earth as a mortal. It means to dwell. This offers an alternative to Descartes’ cogito – ‘I think, therefore I am’ – the foundation of rationalism which helped set up/ reinforce a series of persistent, related dualisms including those of mind–body, subject–object, society–nature, and human–nonhuman. These, some argue, are impediments to understanding the relational nature of life, not least in terms of important questions of humans in nature/en vironment/place, and environmental sustainability. Dwelling is thus offered as an alternative ground from which human and nonhuman life can be rethought. Given its focus on the body, which is inevitably in place and at the center of its own space, it has been an im portant theme within geography for those thinking about

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space, place, and landscape, and within related disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, archaeology, and land scape studies, which also address questions of society, nature, and environment. In recent times, there has been an upturn of interest in dwelling as various disciplines seek to develop richer, relational, process based notions of life in terms of ecological relations, hybridity, affect, posthumanism, performativity, and nonrepresentation. Dwelling differs from social construction approaches to life/nature through its stressing of the physical, the relational, the senses, the orchestration of body and space/environment. It has more afﬁnity with other re lational process views such as actor network theory (ANT). It differs in that it retains a topographical interest in space as place and the space that moves with and around bodies, whereas ANT takes a more techno grammatic, topological approach to unfolding life. Dwelling takes an ecological view of how humans and other animals make and inhabit ‘life worlds’ through registers of speciﬁc bodily practice. It can be used to consider places and landscapes as temporal extensions and entanglements where all manner of beings, things, and processes come into speciﬁc relations and settle out into the varied patterning that marks the world.

Foundations The genesis of the concept, as discussed here, can be precisely located in Heidegger’s (Figure 1) essay Building

Figure 1 Martin Heidegger (1889 1976).

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Dwelling Thinking. This was one of the seven essays in the work Poetry, Language, Thought, but the notion of dwelling captures much of the ambitions in Heidegger’s later work. It was thus part of the so called ‘turn’ (Krhre) in Heidegger’s thought through which he moved away from some aspects of the position of Dasein set out in his earlier work. Dasein, as is dwelling, is essentially a conception of being in the world and being inseparable from the world. It attempts to create a new ontology of being which more or less reverses and reconnects the way in which the self engages with the world as presented by Cartesian ontology. In the later work the lived, temporal, mortal nature of being continues to be a central theme but the focus is more strongly on how being, and its spaces as places, are always ‘emergent, relational processes’ and thus continuous or chestrations of body, environment, culture, and time. The turn to the ‘dwelling perspective’ is often ex plained in comparison to the ‘building perspective’. The latter stands accused of seeing human thought and action as somehow isolated from the world and thus in a pos ition to impose on the world, to, in some cases, literally build upon it ideally generated blueprints. The dwelling perspective points out that any form of life emerges from the world and there is never a gap, or break, in which thought and practice can completely free itself. Any building, including rational thought and knowledge, emerges from dwelt life. The subject–object dualism is scrambled and objective ‘views from nowhere’ impossible. The continuities of dwelt life can be seen in Heidegger’s most famous illustration of the concept. This describes a 200 year old peasant farmhouse in the German Black Forest. It is built on the lee of a hill, facing South, near meadows and a spring which supply sus tenance. The form of the roof (pitch and overhanging eves) is shaped to shelter the house from winter snow and storms. The interior, with its rooms, artefacts, beds, tables, cots, and shrines, is expressive of the lived lives. Dwelt life is articulated and practiced though continu ities of elements, bodies, processes, materials, artifacts, and actions. Nigel Thrift suggests that turn to dwelling can be understood as a turn from thinking about space as an abstract, a priori ground to be ﬁlled by life, to thinking about place, in which relational transactions bring spaces, always speciﬁcally articulated, into being. These alter native views of space as spacing are of obvious interest to geography and reﬂect divisions that have, and still do exist within it. Things are critical to dwelling, and in a sense have their own being. They ‘gather or unite’. To illustrate this, Heidegger uses another oft cited example of a bridge, which, he suggests, does more than simply connect two banks of a river. Rather it creates a place, and rear ticulates the spaces and places, and the lives therein, around it. This quite literal example should not obscure

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the idea that all things are connectors and assemblers, Heidegger reminds us that the old German word for ‘thing’ meant as such. The plethora of things which ﬁll the world are tools by which selves create dwelt lives. Other key elements are the decentering of the modern human subject and a concern for nature and the en vironment as an active ﬁeld. Heidegger states that the Earth is the serving bearer, blossoming and fruiting, spreading out in rock and water, rising up into plant and animal and should be ‘spared’. This sparing of the Earth, or of the things of the Earth, is letting something be the way it is in itself. Such a letting be is sharply contrasted to the modern domination of things/nature. Not by controlling or ruling, but by respectful sparing, can we be open to the Earth appearing in its gifts. Here, we see a proto version of radical ecology, and indeed, some en vironmental philosophy does make speciﬁc connection to Heidegger’s work. Heidegger’s notion of dwelling has poetic and spiritual dimensions, seeing continuities of dwelt life as preserving ‘the foursome’ – the unity of Earth, sky, gods, and mortals. Heidegger’s desired authentic life requires these mystical elements which are best expressed and judged by poetic and spiritual vision. Dwelling is to be on the Earth as a mortal, cultivating, constructing, and cherishing, but this needs to be framed, judged, and given meaning by and within the vastnesses of time, Earth, sky, and gods. Heidegger considered that modernity, in the form of industrialized capitalism, consumerism, and the spec tacular society, forcibly detached the self from of the world and thus stiﬂed true dwelling. He was highly critical of the technological age and its conception of, and use of, things. Think of the contrast between craft, say a carpenter – working with well honed tools and skills to make things out of an intimately known material, in a process where skilled movement, material quality, and technology are harmoniously orchestrated and expressed in the process and the outcome – with industrial mass production where workers might do repetitive, possibly unskilled, isolated (from the wider process/outcome) tasks. The poetry, soul, and (harmoniously) dwelt life is missing from the latter. As we will see, later adaptations of his ideas rejected this split between authentic (dwelt) life and inauthentic (detached) life yet retained the central idea of being in the world.

Post-Heideggerian Dwelling. Temporalities, Landscapes, Taskscapes, and Politics Heidegger’s ideas have been hugely important in (re) shaping ontologies of life and in understandings of how life is lived in space, place, and landscapes as they have been carried forward in various disciplines. Signiﬁcant

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developments in anthropology, archaeology, and soci ology have been underpinned by the work of Tim Ingold, Barbra Bender, and others. Ingold’s inﬂuential work on dwelling is set out in two main articles ‘The temporality of the landscape’ and ‘Building, dwelling, and living’, and four other related articles, all now collected together under the heading ‘Dwelling’ in a collection of his pub lished works. Ingold takes Heidegger’s notion of dwelling and combines it with the related phenomenology of Merleau Ponty, elements of ecological physiology, and Bordieu’s theory of practice. For Ingold, dwelling is a perspective that treats ‘‘the immersion of the organism person in an environment or life world as an inescapable condition of existence.’’ The world continually comes into being with and around the inhabitant, and its constituents take on signiﬁcance through their incorporation into a regular pattern of life activity. There is an overt continuation of Heidegger’s dwelling, but there is also an important difference. In Heidegger, dwelt life was considered to be eroded to the point of extinction by modernity. For Ingold, ‘‘dwelling is the inevitable form of life. All living things dwell, thus it becomes universally applicable to human and nonhuman life.’’ The qualities of each dwelt life might be markedly different, but it is not a case of dwelt or undwelt life. All of life and its skills and practices stem from an ecology of action which is emergent, relational, and extended through ‘hybrid’ articulations of bodies/materials/prac tices. Life and its spacings are always unfolding. We grow up in the world and inevitably it enters us. Ingold describes how human children, like the young of many other species, grow up in environments furnished by the

Figure 2 The Harvesters; Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

work of previous generations, and as they do so they come to carry the forms of their dwellings in their bodies – in speciﬁc skills, sensibilities, and dispositions. Ingold’s primary concern has been to move under standings in archaeology and sociocultural anthropology from the ‘building perspective’ to the ‘dwelling per spective’. To do this, Ingold considers the buildings/ architecture of humans and nonhumans as extensions of Von Uexku+ll’s life worlds, which suggest that each life form dwells in a distinctive way and from this, practices and forms (of whatever kind) stem. In doing so, the gulf between human and nonhuman life, for example in terms of architectures, is erased. Both emerge out of lived life and are ongoing processes (albeit articulated in solid material form). As it is centered on ongoing emergence and its resi dues, dwelling inevitably brings temporality and process to the center of considerations of places and landscapes which are most obviously understood as spatial for mations. Only by engaging with the temporal dimension of practice can one begin to understand the natures of current landscapes and how they are immanent to their emergence rather than expressions of some ﬁxed pre formation. Speciﬁcally situated practice is all there, and there is no generality apart from that. Ingold illustrates his arguments with an analysis of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting The Harvesters (Figure 2). In the foreground of the painting is a pear tree. Around it some people are harvesting a ﬁeld of grain, while others eat and rest in its shade, or are moving to and fro along a path. A church stands half concealed in the background. A vista of landscape stretches away from

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the high on a hill vantage point. Other distant churches (markers of villages), ﬁelds, and woods can be seen. Ingold considers the painting from the perspectives of time, actions (repeated), and the speciﬁcity and the re lational agency of the actors (human and nonhuman) depicted. In effect, Ingold treats the landscape in the same way that Heidegger considers the peasant house in the Black Forest, thinking about how (dwelt) life ﬂows in and through the elements in the scene. Agency is distributed between the humans and non humans depicted. There is an ongoing interplay of re lations between elements, bodies, and time. The people make the landscape through their bodies, treading the path by repeated walking. The landscape marks them and their practices, such as their walk being shaped by the pull or push of the hill as they move to and fro, or the actions of swinging a scythe. The shape of one moment of the social that the painting depicts – the seated group eating – is deﬁned by the pool of shade made by the relationship of the earth, the tree, and the sun. Although life is emergent, a becoming in the ever ongoing moment of the present, this takes place within the (material, emotional, cultural) accretions of past moments thickened and made enduring in various ways. The emergent life of the tree is mapped in the precise conﬁguration of its branches. Like the churches in the background, the tree not only embodies and marks the temporal depth of the landscapes, it makes or gathers the place/space around it. Dwelt life is thus both in the now and in deep(er) time where past and present are blurred together, not least through materiality, memory, and (habitual) embodied practice. Heidegger’s example of a peasant house and then Ingold’s use of this picture has seemingly rendered dwell ing as an expression of authentic rustic (past) life. This has obscured its relevance to other forms of life which, on the face of it, seem markedly different (e.g., contemporary urban life which is addressed later in this article). To capture the relational, emergent, creation of landscape, Ingold coins the term ‘taskscape’, where the spatiotemporal patterns of the environment take settled physical form. But this is to make the point that all landscapes (and places) are taskscapes (both human and nonhuman) – the distinction between them (landscape and taskscape) is ultimately dissolved. Cities, country sides, wildernesses, etc., are all ‘hybrid’ taskscapes where human and nonhuman are bound into speciﬁc relational, dwelt, spatiotemporal patterns. Recent eminent sociological approaches to nature and landscape have made this post Heideggerian form of dwelling the theoretical hub of understanding of nature– society relations as articulated in contested landscapes; Macnaghten and Urry suggest that dwelling helps over come the conﬂicts between ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ ap proaches to nature and environment. They emphasize

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that it is speciﬁc, dwelt, social practices which produce and transform different natures and different values. These are spatially and temporally distributed tasks; the past is continually redeﬁned in terms of the present and landscapes are never completed but are always subject to contestation and renegotiation. This highlights the important point that although Heidegger and Ingold illustrate ideas of dwelling in ap parently harmonious, authentic, rural settings, this does not mean that power, contestation, economy are neces sarily excluded. A political economy analysis is also possible of the Bruegel painting, and obvious questions of power, ownership, unjust labor conditions might well arise, but these do not negate the relationships that Ingold highlights; however, these questions might make them more complex, multiple, and contested. Ingold has recently acknowledged that his development of dwelling lacked overt political analysis and seeks to address this in more recent articles. Drawing upon Macnaghten and Urry’s work, Adrian Franklin places dwelling at the heart of a new anthro pology of nature which breaks through obstacles in structuralist approaches to nature which ignored prac tice, practical knowledge, things, technologies, and em bodied sensual experience. Franklin seeks to push dwelling toward a more animated, turbulent vision of the world unfolding in a burgeoning, far reaching (in time and space) interfolding of processes. He stresses the material and the technological as woven into ‘social’ fabrics and concludes that the world looks different this way and to see it and sense it requires a more active study of engagement with the world. The basic building blocks of this new anthropology are unmediated perceptual knowledge, practical experi ence and knowledge of the world, the technologies that link humans and nonhumans, the aesthetic and sensual composition of experience, and the cultural choices that are made in reference to these. These kinds of interpretations and uses of dwelling link into current interests in geography in affect, performativity, and nonrepresentation which are considered below. So, through the deployment of dwelling, nature and the social (understood in an embodied, affective sense) are refolded into relational co constituting patternings where the emergent territorializations become places which are physically manifest topographical patterns, but which remain open to the surrounding world and to culture, politics, and economy. As we have seen, ideas of Heideggerian and post Heideggerian dwelling have often been discussed and illustrated through and in relation to ideas of rural landscapes, home, nature, localness, and rootedness. This sits uneasily with the apparently mobile, speeded up, stretched out urbanized nature of much of con temporary life. But in such life, embodied emersion in an

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environment, and time/space deepened experience re mains inevitable. New forms of repeated practices and encounters still abound, such as commuting to work, which may be seen as urban taskscapes. Examples of life without place(s) (home, work, cities), rhythm, and repe tition are rare or non existent in large part because of the very nature of our nature. Ideas of human and nonhuman dwelling which center on the life worlds made by body in environment seem to be applicable to contemporary urban life as anywhere else.

Dwelling and Geography Heideggerian and post Heideggerian dwelling has inﬂu enced various strands of human geography over the last half century or so. The former has been deployed in ongoing streams of phenomenological and humanist geographies; both in more recent geographies seeking to develop posthuman geographies informed by post structuralism, ANT, relationality, nonrepresentation emo tion, and affect. Both these streams are seeking to establish alternative ontologies and epistemologies of being on which geographical understandings of life are based. In addition to this, and more speciﬁcally, Heideggerian and post Heideggerian dwelling have offered very different approaches to landscape to those within mid–late twen tieth century geography, but now, in conjunction with the above, these are coming together in exciting new accounts of landscape as described below. Humanistic Geography and Phenomenology From the 1970s onwards, humanistic geography sought to develop understandings of social life embedded in sub jectivity, space, place, and everyday life. In part, this was to counter the prevailing geometric paradigm with its concerns for abstract spatial relations which largely ig nored subjective human experience and the emergent nature of knowledge/practice. Some geographers, for example John Pickles, turned to phenomenology to underpin the approach, drawing particularly on the work of Husserl, while others turned to Merleau Ponty and elements of existentialism. This shared much with Heidegger’s approach centered on being in the world and focused very much upon how the world makes itself known, and how it can be made known through study. There are differences between Husserl’s and Heidegger’s positions and some geographers sought to base their phenomenological approaches more directly on Heidegger, suspicious of the desire to reveal a universal and a priori nature of the life world, in the former. Place became a central focus of some key expressions of phenomenological and humanist geographies. Seamon and Mugerauer’s Dwelling, place and environment published in 1989, refers back to Heidegger, Bachelard, the

phenomenologist architecture of Christian Norberg Schulz, and pioneering geographers in this ﬁeld – Yi Fu Tuan, Anne Buttimer, and Edward Relph for whom nature, place, and architecture were key experiential milieu of human life. Within these broad aims, various foci were to be found: Seamon sought to understand the experiential and contingent character of place through movement (anticipating the movement in Ingold’s account of tasks cape); Relph deployed Heidegger’s dwelling to escape from crude notions of place as location; Tuan’s highly inﬂuential work explored distinctions between space and place and notions of ‘topophilia’ – the affective bond between people and place which shared much with Heidegger’s idea of dwelt life. These, and other, approaches of place have been usefully summarized by Tim Creswell. Geography and Landscape Heideggerian and post Heideggerian dwelling shares some traits with the Sauerian approaches to landscape which were prominent in mid twentieth century geog raphy in that both are interested in interrelations be tween humans and the environment. However, whereas Sauer developed an approach aimed at scientiﬁc mapping of the transformation of natural landscapes into cultural landscapes, dwelling sees the production of landscape as more thoroughly relational, and not on some uni directional trajectory of nature to culture. This is a dualism in which dwelling does not even acknowledge. Later cultural geographies of landscape, which ‘read’ landscapes as constructed texts and expressions of power (colonial, gender, economic, ideological), differ from dwelling in that they do not focus on the emergent coming into beingness of landscape in which the prop erties, vitalities, agencies, trajectories, and velocities of humans and nonhumans (rocks, weather patterns, plants, animals, people, technologies) combine to produce a unique chemistry out of which particular patterns of landscape, place, and life form. In recent works, new geographical approaches to landscape and place have merged with wider ontological and epistemological questions which have adopted dwelling as part of their theoretical armory. This is be cause the latter are interested in bodies in place/space and bodies in ongoing relational action ‘as central elements of being’ and thus have often been discussed in the context of rethinking landscape and place. Ecologies of Places and Landscapes Dwelling is being deployed within poststructuralist and posthumanist geographies to counter, or develop, cultural approaches which were deemed too constructionist and too centered on the narrowly deﬁned social. In some cases, these deployments of dwelling have harked directly back to the work of Heidegger, but they have also drawn

Dwelling

upon post Heideggerian dwelling, notably that of Ingold. There has been a good deal of exchange between geog raphy, sociology, and landscape studies as these new conﬁgurations have developed. Nigel Thrift and others frequently return to dwelling to remind us of the basic principle of life being an em bodied, embedded, relational unfolding process. This manoeuvre is included in recent attempts to rejuvenate ideas of place in geography in which a move from the building perspective to the dwelling perspective is cen tral. Thrift discusses ecologies of place, where places are performed inter being/material processes which coalesce into known/knowable spatial forms but remain fully wired into the ﬂux of the wider world. Dwelling also brings the past, memory, ‘hauntings’, and the contin gencies of shared life into understandings of everyday life/space, which more topological approaches, such as ANT, ﬁnd hard to pick up. For David Harvey the im portance of Heidegger’s notion of dwelling is that it re minds us of how places are constructed in our memories and affections through repeated encounters and complex associations, and how place experiences are necessarily time deepened and memory qualiﬁed. These new dir ections are important because the very idea of place has come under critical scrutiny in some poststructuralist/ ANT based geographical thinking and under pressure from ideas of globalized ﬂows, and yet, they remain a critical aspect of everyday life, not least because of the way in which life is dwelt life. Geographies based upon Heideggerian dwelling (e.g., David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer) tried to show that dwelling can deal with interconnection and ﬂows in and out of ‘place’ as well as connections within place, and the newer deployments of dwelling continue in this vein. In work on places and landscapes where trees are present, Cloke and Jones address a number of questions within the dwelling perspective. First, they problematize the dwelt/ authentic–undwelt inauthentic life dualism which is present in Heidegger and, to some extent, subsequent accounts of dwelling, by showing that the taskscape of an orchard is a highly complex, hybrid assemblage of old and new practices/technologies, material, and imagina tive presences. Second, they problematize the dualism between bounded space and network, by showing how the orchard is simultaneously articulated in both senses and could only be understood as such. Third, they challenge the idea of landscape as a ﬁxed/framed view by placing the embodied (moving) witness within the ever changing landscape of movement, sound, light, and smell. Dwelling implies being in the landscape and once that is allowed, then there is all the business of the mo ment to consider; for example, the dynamics of weather and light, as well as the inevitable momentum of the past, and this goes for all who experience the landscape – visitors, workers, owners, and researchers.

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Performativity and Nonrepresentation Dwelling has much afﬁnity with artistic, poetic, and lit erary mappings of being in place/landscape, as the wri ter Jonathan Bate shows, and thus will be of interest in relation to the increasingly evident intersections of geographical and artistic interests. Recently some geog raphers have developed a more performative account of dwelling. David Crouch, referring to Ingold’s practical ontology in the world, feels that understandings of the production of nature (in the form of gardening) need to focus more strongly on the performative practice of doing. More emphasis is placed on the moment of emergence rather than on the ﬁeld of emergence. John Wylie suggests that Ingold’s approach offers a potentially fruitful means of reconﬁguring cultural geographies of landscape within the ambit of embodied practice and performativity but that it needs adjusting in three ways. First, the temporal aspects of dwelling need to take more account of ﬂeeting and mobile experiences, as well as stressing known, habitual landscapes. He suggests that dwelling as a form of phenomenological ontology should be the milieu for material cultures and ways of being that are productive of multiple spatialities and temporalities, longstanding and momentary, rural and urban, ﬁxed and mobile, coherent and imaginary. In particular, it must enable the register of the transient and the ﬂeeting as well as the enduring. Second, attempts to move away from the visual as the way of engaging with/reading the landscape need to be tempered with the idea that the visual – the gaze – is itself an embodied practice. Third, geography needs to develop methods appropri ate to a scripting and interrogation of embodied experi ences. These developments, along with Harrison’s recent exploration of Levinas’s view of dwelling with a concern for its ethical resonances, mean that ideas of dwelling within geography have again a renewed momentum. Nonhuman Dwelling One very interesting and important development in no tions of dwelling is the use of the concept to consider the lives of nonhumans. These often draw upon Von Uexku+ll’s idea of life world to stress the ‘intelligences’ of dwelt animal life, how they are markedly various, and how they intersect; all this with the view of under standing human dwelling. Sarah Whatmore and Steve Hinchcliffe in their work on cities which are ‘habitable’ (for humans and nonhumans alike) consider animals and their urban dwellings as more than human agents exer cising unbidden, improvised, and sometimes, disruptive energies. A recognition of dwelt animal life worlds has signiﬁ cant implications for understanding the being of animals.

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As the philosopher Raimond Gaita points out, an ani mal’s intelligence is entirely active, its understanding entirely practical. In other words, animals practice em bodied, practical, enacted knowledges – as self, being, and ‘voice’. This challenges anthropocentrism and an thropomorphism. We all dwell, and there are common alities which can be considered. It also links directly to questions of animal welfare. It is of note that organiza tions such as Compassion in World Farming see the Cartesian architecture of modern knowledge as culpable for denying animal rights. The appeal for domesticated, zoo, and companion animals to be able to express their natural behavior as much as possible is, in effect, an appeal to let them dwell in their environment, and thus create their life worlds and practice their enacted being. Such arguments have been developed by Jones as a way of countering ANT ideas of symmetry and purely re lational identity in which the dwelt becomings of animals might get lost.

Final Points It is the recognition in dwelling of the rich, intimate, creative ongoing togetherness of beings and things, the recognition of agency other than human, the recognition of time deepened processes, embodied experience, the experience of rootedness, the richness of things together over time, and the recognition of speciﬁcity, which makes it such a potent approach in posthumanist geography. Dwelling is one conceptualization amongst others at work in human geography that together are trying to build a fuller account of the complex processes of life, which does not divide off and privilege the ‘social’ in narrow terms, and see the social just in reﬂexive, rational, language based terms. Doreen Massey is critical of Heidegger’s notion of place as being too rooted but, she adds that in principle his reformulation of space as place seems to point in the right direction. See also: Actor-Network Theory/Network Geographies; Affect; Becoming; Ecology; Emotional Geographies; Humanism/Humanistic Geography; Hybridity; Landscape; Non-Representational Theory/Non-Representational Geographies; Performativity; Phenomenology/ Phenomenological Geography; Place; Posthumanism/ Posthumanistic Geographies.

Casey, E. S. (1998). The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cloke, P. and Jones, O. (2001). Dwelling, place, and landscape: An orchard in Somerset. Environment and Planning A 33, 649 666. Creswell, T. (2004). Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Franklin, A. (2002). Social Nature. London: Sage. Gaita, R. (2003). The Philosopher’s Dog. London: Routledge. Harrison, P. (2007). The space between us. Opening remarks on the concept of dwelling. Environment and Planning D 25, 625 647. Harrison, S., Pile, S. and Thrift, N. (2004). Patterned Ground: Entanglements of nature and culture. London: Reaktion Books. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Heidegger, M. (2001). Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Perennial Classics. Hofstadter, A. (2001). Introduction. In Heidegger, M. (ed.) Poetry, language, thought, pp x xxv. New York: Perennial Classics. Ingold, T. (1993). The temporality of landscape. World Archaeology 25, 152 174. Ingold, T. (1995). Building, dwelling, living: How people and animals make themselves at home in the world. In Strathern, M. (ed.) Shifting contexts: Transformations in anthropological knowledge, pp 57 80. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment. Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2005). Epilogue: Towards a politics of dwelling. Conservation and Society 3(2), 501 508. Jones, O. (2003). The restraint of beasts: Rurality, animality, actor network theory and dwelling. In Cloke, P. (ed.) Country visions, pp 450 487. London: Pearson Education. Macnaghten, P. and Urry, J. (1998). Contested Natures. London: Sage Publications. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage. Massey, D. and Thrift, N. (2003). The passion of place. In Johnston, R. & Williams, M. (eds.) A century of British geography, pp 275 299. Oxford: Oxford University Press/British Academy. Pickles, J. (1985). Phenomenology, Science and Geography: Spatiality and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Relph, E. (1976). Place and Placelessness. London: Pion. Seamon, D. (1980). Body subject, time space routines, and place ballets. In Buttimer, A. & Seamon, D. (eds.) The human experience of space and place, pp 148 165. London: Croom Helm. Seamon, D. and Mugerauer, D. (1989). Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World. Haven: Yale University Press. Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Thrift, N. (1999). Steps to an ecology of place. In Massey, D., Sarre, P. & Allen, J. (eds.) Human geography today, pp 295 352. Oxford: Polity. Thrift, N. (2005). From born to made: Technology, biology and space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 463 476. Tuan, Y. F. (1971). Geography, phenomenology, and the study of human nature. Canadian Geographer 15, 181 192. Tuan, Y. F. (1974). Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Villela Petit, M. (1996). Heidegger’s conception of space. In Macann, C. (ed.) Critical Heiddegger, pp 134 158. London: Routledge. Vycinas, V. (1969). Earth and Gods: An Introduction the Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Wylie, J. (2003). Landscape, performance and dwelling: A Glastonbury case study. In Cloke, P. (ed.) Country visions, pp 136 157. Harlow: Pearson.

Relevant Website Further Reading Bate, J. (2001). The Song of the Earth. London: Picador. Buttimer, A. (1976). Grasping the dynamism of the life worlds. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66, 277 292.

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu Place and Space in Geography, Environment, Environmental Ethics, Ecology, Research on Place and Space; Pegasus, University of Central Florida.

E East Asian Miracle C. Dixon, London Metropolitan University, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Conditionalities The conditions attached to loans, particularly from such agencies as the IMF and World Bank, but bilateral donors also make conditional loans. Policy conditionalities have been particularly associated with ‘structural adjustment programs’, ﬁnancial rescue packages, and the neoliberal agenda of liberalization, privatization, and reduced state activity. East Asia A group of countries to the east and southeast of the Eurasian landmass. Sometimes referred to as Paciﬁc Asia or Asia-Paciﬁc or separated into two regions, East Asia and Southeast Asia. GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) From 1947 until the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO), GATT provided the institutional focus for world trade. The East Asian Miracle The World Bank is usually attributed with coining this term in the report of that name published in 1993. However the term ‘miracle’ was applied much earlier to individual Asian economies, for example, by Chalmers Johnson in MIT and the Japanese miracle and Haﬁz Mirza’s description of Singapore as ‘a miracle by design’ in Multinational corporations and the growth of Singapore.

Introduction The label ‘miracle economies’ has been applied to a group of East Asian economies that since the early 1960s experienced high rates of economic growth, associated with low levels of income inequality and improved living standards. These economies have been frequently pre sented as comprising a series of waves or generations, each characterized by high rates of growth of GDP (Table 1) and exports of (initially) low tech/low skill manufactured goods. The lead was taken by Japan in the 1950s, followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea (the Newly Industrializing Economies,

NIEs) in the 1960s and 1970s, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand (sometimes termed the new NIEs) in the 1980s, and China and Vietnam (the Asian Transitional Econ omies, ATEs) starting in the 1990s. These developments have been depicted by Japanese economists as a ﬂight of geese, with growth spreading from Japan, driven, at least in part, by progressive relocation of lower tech activities in the face of cost pressure and the upgrading of tech nology and skills. Such processes were accompanied by Japanese and later NIE based companies going transna tional on a regional basis. This form of organization was also followed by Western companies looking for low cost export platforms in East Asia. This disaggragating of production at the regional scale, taking advantage of cost, technological and skills levels had by the mid 1990s, produced a complex pattern of production networks and associated trade and investment ﬂows, such that these countries were increasingly trading with and investing in one another. A very dynamic process of informal regional integration was operating behind which lay a series of nested regional divisions of labor (Figure 1). By the early 1990s it was generally expected that the miracle would spread and deepen, with projections of extraordinary growth of wealth and markets, but it was also considered that the strength and increasing region alization of growth would insulate East Asia from events in the rest of the world. However, some commentators were beginning to have doubts over the sustainability of the miracle. Thailand was showing signs of overloaded infrastructure, rising costs, and an inability to move to more skill and technology based production. The US based economist Paul Krugman questioned the extent to which the miracle was based on the additions of labor and capital rather than increased productivity. Such views were very much in the minority and refuted from an International Monetary Fund (IMF) perspective by, for example, Michael Sarel (an economist with the South East Asian and Paciﬁc Department of the IMF). As late as March 1996 the IMF was endorsing the economic health and prospects for the sustained growth of such economies as Thailand and South Korea. However, in July 1997 a

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3.5 6.5 5.1 8.2 8.8 – 10.0 8.5 9.2 –

7.7 7.6 6.3 7.2 8.8 – 9.3 9.5 8.0 –

1960–69 1970–79 4.9 4.7 2.0 6.8 6.8 4.6 6.6 6.8 7.8 9.2

7.0 8.6 0.0 7.9 6.7 6.0 3.9 8.4 7.0 7.2

1980–89 1991 6.3 7.8 0.1 7.2 6.0 8.6 5.0 4.8 7.0 12.0

6.6 8.5 1.7 7.9 9.8 8.1 5.9 4.5 6.0 10.2

1992 1993

Annua average percentage rate of growth of GDP, 1960–2006

Provisional Source World Bank

*

ndones a Ma ays a Ph pp nes Tha and S ngapore V etnam Hong Kong S. Korea Ta wan PRC

Table 1

7.0 8.6 4.5 8.8 6.8 8.8 4.9 6.3 6.2 11.0

7.2 9.2 5.6 8.6 8.3 9.5 5.0 9.2 6.6 9.9

1994 1995 7.8 8.6 5.7 6.7 6.9 9.3 5.0 7.1 5.7 9.6

4.6 7.8 5.2 0.4 7.8 8.6 5.3 5.5 6.8 8.8

1996 1997 –15.0 –7.0 0.3 –7.0 1.3 4.0 –5.5 –5.9 4.9 7.8

1998 0.8 6.9 3.3 4.4 6.8 4.1 3.4 9.4 5.4 7.1

1999

4.9 8.0 4.5 4.8 9.7 6.8 10.2 8.5 5.9 8.0

3.5 0.3 4.5 2.1 –1.0 6.9 0.5 3.8 –2.2 7.5

2000 2001

4.4 4.1 4.4 5.3 4.0 7.1 1.8 7.0 4.2 9.1

4.7 5.5 4.9 7.1 2.9 7.3 3.2 3.1 3.4 10.0

2002 2003

5.1 7.2 6.2 6.3 8.7 7.8 8.6 4.7 6.1 10.2

5.6 5.2 5.0 4.5 6.4 8.4 7.5 4.0 4.0 10.2

2004 2005

5.4 5.9 5.5 4.6 8.4 7.7 6.8 5.1 4.3 10.5

2006*

East Asian Miracle Japan………………..

Old NIEs…………………

Integration

New NIEs……………………. ATEs...…………………………………………....... Competition

There is very considerable complementarity between the groups but significant competition within them for markets and investment.

Figure 1 Nested regional divisions of labor.

Pre-crisis Growth economies Miracle economies Highly performing Asian economies Open economies Correct policies Market friendly policies Low levels of price distortion Models for the rest of the Third World

Post-crisis Government interference Closed economies Restrictions on trade, finance, and foreign ownership Inadequate regulation Corruption Casino capitalism Incorrect policies Warnings to the rest of the Third World

Figure 2 Changing views of the East Asian economies.

major ﬁnancial crisis emerged in Thailand, spreading rapidly through the region, reﬂecting the close trade, investment, and currency linkages that had developed. The most seriously affected economies, Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand (Table 1), had to seek the assistance of the IMF, which provided rescue packages of US$23 billion, US$21 billion, and US$3 billion, respectively. The crisis produced a most extraordinary about face on the part of the majority of commentators and international agencies (Figure 2). Subsequently, major debates have ensued over the nature of the East Asian economies, their success, and the causes and impact of the 1997 crisis, adding to the long term disputes between what might be broadly called the neoliberal and developmental state positions outlined below.

The World Bank and the Selling of the East Asian Miracle From c. 1980, what is sometimes termed the neoliberal counter revolution in development orthodoxy, focused attention on national policy and the manner in which economies dealt with the international system. Successful

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development was depicted as the result of open econ omies, free markets, and limited state intervention. In creasingly, the East Asian economies were presented as the product of such policies. These were at the root of long term growth of these economies and the very lim ited extent to which they were affected by the unstable international trading conditions of the 1970s, the Third World debt crisis, and the recession that characterized the early 1980s. There are two key elements in the neoliberal pack aging of East Asian development. First, prior to the rise of neoliberalism, there were Western geopolitical and ideological Cold War imperatives for successful eco nomic reconstruction and growth in such economies as South Korea and Taiwan to be presented as the product of Western free market capitalism acting on previously disrupted and backward economies. Hence, the ten dency to ignore both the importance of pre 1940s de velopment and the role of US aid. Post 1945 both Taiwan and South Korea became enmeshed in a system of American hegemony which brought economic and military aid on an unheard of scale. Between 1945 and 1980 US nonmilitary aid amounted to US$5.6 billion for Taiwan and US$13.0 billion for South Korea, com pared to US$6.9 billion for the whole of Africa and US$14.8 billion for Latin America. Indeed, it can be argued that in terms of economic and military assist ance and access to Western markets, all the pro West ern East Asian economies received highly preferential treatment. Second, concerns over retaliations through General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) procedures made the East Asian economies wary of making subsidies, protection, and other distortion to the market too obvious – this was strikingly the case in South Korea. However, the highly protected nature of the East Asian economies and their subsidizing of key sectors and exports did become an issue for many Western trade associations who lobbied their govern ments for action. Resultant negotiations and com promise trade deals suggest an element of doublethink among the advocates of East Asia as the showpiece of neoliberal policies. As the East Asia success cases moved central to the neoliberal blueprint for the Third World as whole, they become associated with a series of slogans: get prices right; get the basics right; and sound macroeconomic policies. That is, limited price distortions while ensuring low inﬂation, high levels of domestic saving and invest ment, low or nonexistent budget deﬁcits, and low levels of international debt. It is certainly the case that by and large the East Asian economies did follow such policies, with the notable exception of price distortions. Indeed, in 1994 Alice Amsden suggested that the success of the East Asian economies reﬂected the extent to which (in neo liberal terms) they got prices wrong.

276

East Asian Miracle

In 1993 The World Bank brought the various neo liberal views of the East Asian economies together in The East Asian miracle. This study focused on the seemingly miraculous growth of Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, terming them the ‘Highly Performing Asian Economies’ (HPAEs). This study had its origins in a project ﬁnanced by the Japanese government, aimed at promoting the Japanese form of development as an alternative to the World Bank’s neoliberal model. However, in the event it appears that the World Bank was not prepared to coun tenance the promotion of an alternative to its established position. In addition, the malaise that characterized the Japanese economy from c. 1990 seriously undermined the Japanese case. Thus, the ﬁnal version of the study high lighted the ways in which the HPAEs had achieved their success through sound neoliberal policies, with limited state intervention and signiﬁcant investment in education and training. Where the state had intervened this was described as ‘tailored’ to deal with speciﬁc market and sectoral weaknesses, with the state operating a system of rewards and penalties that replicated the market. How ever, the details and contribution of state intervention do not emerge clearly. The authors suggest that it is im possible to test the importance of state activity, dismiss ing this aspect of the HPAEs’ development with the speculation that if there had been less state intervention then perhaps growth would have been even more mi raculous. Other countries were warned that while state intervention was a feature in some of the successful East Asian economies, this did not mean that it should be attempted elsewhere, nor used as an excuse to resist market oriented reform. Not surprisingly there has been considerable debate over this aspect of the study, par ticularly from those that had long been critical of the neoliberal position and viewed the East Asian miracle as a product of high levels of state intervention (see below). The later position, referred to in the World Bank study as the ‘revisionist position’, is dismissed in less than two pages (out of 389). The study has also been heavily criticized for ignoring historical, geopolitical, and cultural factors, glossing over continuing poverty, high levels of environmental damage, abuse of human rights, and the limited development of civil society, while lumping eight extremely diverse economies together under the HPAE label. For many critics the attempt to reduce East Asian development to a single model with wide application is the study’s most basic ﬂaw.

The Developmental State View From the early 1980s a series of studies of East Asia emphasize the central role of the state. Among the most

inﬂuential were Johnson’s 1982 study of Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the growth of Japan, Alice Amsden’s 1989 account of South Korea, and Robert Wade’s 1990 exposition of market governance and the developmental state. For Johnson, Japan was a developmental state which prioritized industrial policy and managed domestic industry so as to improve inter national competitiveness. Latter writers have broadened the scope of the developmental state concept to include the management of social transformation. For such wri ters as Gordon White and Richard Wade this involved pervasive political controls, ideological mobilization, and social engineering. To be effective a developmental state needs a high level of capacity to formulate and implement long term goals. This in turn necessitates a degree of autonomy, that is, a state able to resist interest groups and prioritize long term goals over short term advantage. A critical element in this is an effective bureaucracy that can im plement policies. However, there are very considerable debates over the origins of developmentalism, its oper ation, and the nature of the concept as a whole. It is sometimes argued that developmentalism comes out of periods of major domestic upheaval and external threats, with authoritarian rule been legitimized through economic growth, improved living standards, and de fending the state. At the general level, this could be seen as the background to the development of a number of the East Asian states, notably Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. However, many states have faced such disruption and threats and become highly authoritarian without becoming developmental. Thus, the question of devel opmentalism in East Asia (and its absence elsewhere) cannot be understood outside of the particular (and perhaps unique) series of interactions between the his torical, cultural, and geopolitical contexts of a very varied group of East Asian economies. If a successful developmental state has to be highly autonomous, this implies a separation from society, which poses interesting questions over effective information gathering, policy formulation, and implementation. Robert Wade, however, sees the critical relationship being between business and the state, which comprises various authoritarian–corporatist forms. Harder authori tarianism in Taiwan and South Korea and a softer form in Japan are providing the basis for the effective operation of the centralized bureaucracy in order to gather infor mation and implement policies. Other writers, for example, Joel Migdal, have stressed the importance of a strong state which has the capacity to penetrate and regulate society, and to extract and ap propriate resources, but is ﬁrmly embedded in society. Under this view, there is constant and intense interaction between the state and the society. This is an argument that Peter Evans takes this further. While stressing the

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embedded autonomy of such organizations as MITI, in terms of establishing policy, he gives equal weight to the networks that link the bureaucracy to society and the market. This interaction enhances the effectiveness of the bureaucracy. In this context lobbying by various interest groups can be a positive part of the process. There is here a question of balance between autonomy and capacity that has perhaps not been sufﬁciently re searched. Linda Weiss has also seen these linkages as critical to a state’s capacity and adaptability. However, it is apparent that there is considerable variation in the level of interaction, its impact, the level of capacity, both within and between states, how it is exerted, and the degree of authoritarianism. A further variation on the developmental state ap pears to be emerging in China and Vietnam. These have been termed developmental party states and have de veloped in the wake of economic reform and re en gagement with international capital. In both cases intensive business state linkages are developing, par ticularly at the local level, which are taking various corporate forms. In China the local state has become a critical element in growth, policy formulation, and im plementation. Signiﬁcant conﬂicts between the local and the central state are occurring – a situation that is also emerging in Vietnam – as the state attempts to accom modate new social forces and establish effective infor mation gathering and regulatory structures. The extensive literature and related debates over developmentalism concentrate on Japan and the NIEs, with some recent work on China and Vietnam. In com parison, little discussion has taken place over Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The World Bank labeled them HPAEs and until 1997 they were seen as the next NIEs, but to what extent could they be considered develop mental states? Certainly some key elements of devel opmentalism are present and they do contrast markedly with the Philippines, where the failure to participate in the Asian miracle is generally seen as a result of state failure. However, in terms of historical experience, social and economic structures, and developmental problems they have little in common with Taiwan and South Korea. In Thailand a critical role was played by the techno cratic core of the Thai bureaucracy, particularly in the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB), the close state business linkages, and the in formal linkages with the banking system. However, this has to be set against the lack of coordination of policy among the rest of the bureaucracy, lack of strategy and capacity in education, training, and infrastructure. There is here a partial developmental form, though one that in growth terms has shown considerable consistency and resilience. Malaysia could be considered a more effective and adaptable form and Indonesia rather less so.

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While a signiﬁcant level of state intervention appears, in different ways, to have been signiﬁcant in all the cases of successful development in East Asia, generalization is difﬁcult, even misleading. Indeed, in that sense any at tempt to produce a uniﬁed developmental state model is at least as unsound as any general neoliberal model. While the state led view is much closer to the reality of East Asia, it is important to see success in the context of particularly (and probably unique) internal and external circumstances. While the East Asian miracle may con stitute a major challenge to neoliberalism, it does not provide a replacement blueprint for the rest of the Third World.

The Impact of the 1997 Crisis Most commentators have followed the neoliberal view that the causes of the 1997 crisis were internal. Blame was directed at national governments, elements of domestic capital, and their interrelationships. The IMF called for the dismantling of an economic system based on col lusion between state, banks, and business and in the conditionalities attached to the rescue loans, stipulated rapid liberalization. Such positions imply that either the pre 1997 neoliberal view of the East Asian economies was wrong, or the economies had changed or had failed to adapt to changed global circumstances. In addition, such internalizing of the causes diverts attention from the operation of increasingly liberalized global ﬁnancial markets and the lending policies of the international banks. Overall, for the most seriously affected economies, there was a lack of the state capacity necessary to deal with the liberalized ﬁnancial sector and the changed circumstances (see Figure 3). To a degree, this reﬂected political change, particularly in Thailand and South Korea. In the former, progressive democratization, com bined with the weaknesses of the electoral system in which vote buying was rife, produced a series of coalition governments. These were weak, unduly inﬂuenced by business groups, and unable to address the problems of declining competitiveness, overloaded infrastructure and skill shortages, or the regulatory issues that had emerged following the liberalization of the ﬁnancial sector. In addition, there was a politicization of key technocratic posts within the bureaucracy – notably in the Bank of Thailand and the Ministry of Finance – that further limited the effectiveness of regulation and policy im plementation. When the crisis broke, there was a measure of policy paralysis. While the crisis had some impact through East Asia, many economies emerged relatively unscathed (Table 1). Generally this reﬂected the capacity to take effective action to deal with currency values, current account

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A decline in export growth which reflected: Loss of international competitiveness, resulting from currency adjustments, notably the appreciation of the US dollar to which most East Asian currencies were linked Large inflows of FDI which tended to push up wages and other costs, further reducing competitiveness Competition from China and Vietnam − in 1996 hourly labor costs in the textile sector were reported as US$1.49 in Thailand and US$0.49 in China Reduced markets following the establishment of NAFTA and the EU single market Glut in the international electronics sector – in 1996 50% of South Korea’s export earnings were from electronics Related current account deficits which drained foreign reserves and put serious downward pressure on currency values Liberalization of financial regimes which gave the private sector easy access to large volume of comparatively cheap international funds Poor investment decisions by many domestic banks The emergence of high levels of private sector short-term debts which had fuelled stock markets and property asset bubbles

Figure 3 Factors behind the 1997 ﬁnancial crisis.

deﬁcits, and levels of corporate debt and counter re cession with tax cuts and public expenditure. Most striking was the rapid, decisive, and effective response in Singapore, one of the world’s most internationalized economies, though perhaps most attention focused on Malaysia’s reimposition of capital controls. Such action was reinforced by lower levels of exposure (Malaysia), more limited integration with the international system (China and Vietnam), and less ﬁnancial liberalization (Taiwan). There has been considerable criticism of the IMF for not detecting the warning signs, particularly the dramatic decline in export growth and competitiveness during 1995–96, the stock and property asset bubbles, and the levels of short term debt and ﬁnancial movements. To be fair, no one else noted the dangers inherent in these factors, least of all the international banks and other in vestors. However, there is considerable evidence that the IMF made the situation worse by misreading the nature of the crisis, applying uniform structural adjustment programs (SAP) like prescriptions aimed at restoring macroeconomic balance, and insisting on the closure of ﬁnancial institutions. Indeed, subsequently the IMF ad mitted that mistakes had been made. The IMF conditionalities stressed: the opening up of economies to foreign ownership and competition; pri vatization; corporate reform; reform and regulation of the ﬁnancial sector. Particular attention focused on the banking sector and the high levels of debt–equity ratios – frequently 3:1 or more, when in the West an approach to 1:1 is considered a cause for concern. This practice combined with the close links between corporations and banks to facilitate the rapid raising of capital without recourse to the equity market. For the IMF and the Western ﬁnancial regulators this form of funding is one of the root causes of the ﬁnancial crisis. However, while

there clearly was some unsound lending – as there was on the part of the international banks – it is also the case that the banking corporate linkages were central to the ﬂexible and rapid responses to market opportunities that characterized the successful East Asian economies. The basic aim of reform is to make the Asian cor porate structures, governance, and regulation more like those of the West. From a neoliberal perspective, this was deemed necessary for sustained recovery and limiting the possibility of further crises. However, in so far as reforms are effective, they may undermine those features that were key to East Asia’s long term dynamism. On the other hand, it may be that a combination of liberalization, globalization, and political change has made some of the key elements outmoded.

Rethinking the Miracle The rapid recovery that most East Asian economies made from the 1997 crisis confounded most commen tators. To considerable extent, the recovery must be seen as the result of the efforts of the states themselves, rather than just general improvements in global trading con ditions. Given the dynamism and adaptability that the successful East Asian economies have exhibited over the last 40 years perhaps the recovery should not be so surprising. For all their faults these economies have achieved remarkable results and it might be more fruitful to ask why there had been so few major crisis. Similarly, rather that stressing the downsides of state business re lations, corruption, cronyism, lack of transparency, and banking business linkages, it might be more useful to focus on the positive elements of such interaction. The 1997 crisis revealed the very different geo political position that the East Asian economies have

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come to occupy since the end of the Cold War. In the initial stages of the crisis there was an expectation of US assistance and the sort of comparatively benevolent treatment from the IMF and World Bank that was ex perienced during the early 1980s. In the event, there was no US assistance, a blocking of attempts to put in place a regional ﬁnancial institutional structure and rescue op eration, and some harsh conditions were attached to the IMF loans. The East Asian economies ceased to have any role as showpieces for Western capitalism in the Third World and had become directly at odds with, in par ticular, American interests and ideology. However, the rapid recovery of East Asia (Table 1), the generally limited impact of reforms, and the rise of a new state led form in China and Vietnam, suggest that the region continues to provide a major challenge to neoliberalism. See also: Developmentalism; Economic Crises; Economic Geography; Export Processing Zones; Foreign Direct Investment; Global Production Networks; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Human Rights; Investment Promotion; Neoliberal Economic Strategies; Neoliberalism; Neoliberalism and Development; Paciﬁc Rim; Spatial Division of Labor; Structural Adjustment; Trade Blocs; Transitional Economies; Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries.

Further Reading Amsden, A. (1989). Asia’s next giant: South Korea and late industrialization. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Amsden, A. H. (1994). Why isn’t the whole world experimenting with the East Asian model of development: Review of the East Asian miracle. World Development 22, 627 633. Berger, M. T. and Beeson, M. (1998). Lineages of liberalism and miracles: The World Bank, the East Asian trajectory and the international development debate. Third World Quarterly 19, 487 504. Brodsgaard, K. E. and Young, S. (eds.) (2000). State capacity in East Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, P. (1995). Embedded autonomy: States and industrial transformation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Johnson, C. (1982). MITI and the Japanese miracle: The growth of industrial policy 1925 1975. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Krugman, P. (1994). The myth of Asia’s miracle. Foreign Affairs 73, 62 78. Migdal, J. (1988). Strong states and weak states: State society relations and state capacity in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mirza, H. (1986). Multinationals and the growth of the Singapore economy. London: Croom Helm. Page, J. M. (1994). East Asian miracle: An introduction. World Development 22, 615 625. Sarel, M. (1996). Growth in East Asia: What we can and what we cannot infer from It. Economic Issues. Number 1. Washington: International Monetary Fund. Stiglitz, J. and Yusuf, S. (eds.) (2001). Rethinking the East Asian miracle. Washington: World Bank. Wade, R. (1990). Governing the market: Economic theory and the role of government in East Asian industrialization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wade, R. and Veneroso, F. (1998). The Asian debt crisis: The high debt model versus the Wall Street Treasury IMF complex. New Left Review 228, 3 23. Weiss, L. (1998). The myth of the powerless state. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. White, G. (1988). The developmental state in East Asia. London: Macmillan. World Bank (1993). The East Asian miracle: Economic growth and public policy. New York: Oxford University Press. World Bank (2000). East Asia: Recovery and beyond. Washington: World Bank Publications.

East/West A. Bonnett, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Asian Values The notion, developed in political and cultural circles in East Asia from the 1970s onwards, that the indigenous cultures of (East) Asia encourage hard work, thrift, strong family ties, and social solidarity. Bolshevism A variety of Marxist political activity associated with the ideas and practice of Lenin. Occidentalism Stereotypes of the West; a set of interconnected representations that act to construct a vision or imaginary geography of the West. Orientalism Stereotypes of the East; a set of interconnected representations that act to construct a vision or imaginary geography of the East. Western Supremacism An ideology that claims the superiority and inevitable triumph of the West.

Historical Context ‘East’ and ‘West’ are contemporary geopolitical and geocultural designations. Yet they have come to us through many centuries and must be approached his torically before their modern signiﬁcance can be appreciated. Our ability to locate ourselves in relation to the physical and human world demands ‘orientation’. Oriens is Latin for east, derived from the verb, oriri ‘to rise’. The word contains a clue to one of the universal material realities that shapes the geographical imagination, the arc of the Sun, its rising in the east and setting in the west. The Sun’s daily journey provides us with our most basic sense of orientation. Literally speaking, ‘orientation’ means to face the east. Medieval maps of Christendom were drawn with Jeru salem at the center and/or top. In this way maps were made to face east, or orientated. For the same reason, some early maps of the island of Britain had Wales at the bottom and East Anglia at the top (as seen on Richard Gough’s map, from 1360). There is a particular Christian reason why nations should turn toward Jerusalem. But Christian orientation drew from a much wider and older tradition of veneration for the rising Sun. The positioning of buildings toward the east and south can be traced back to pagan structures, such as Stonehenge. Conversely, the fact that the west is the place where the Sun goes down has ensured its enduring association with death. The west has been seen as a site of life’s ending and, by extension,

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of completion, maturity, and mystery. In the late fourth century AD, the Christian theologian Bishop Severian of Gabala (in Syria) explained why God had placed the Garden of Eden in the east, ‘‘in order to cause [man] to understand that, just as the light of heaven moves towards the West, so the human race hastens towards death.’’ These symbolic associations may also be traced from Egyptian deities of death and the west, through to no tions of the west as a site of imperial culmination and rebirth in sixteenth century Europe. In fact, the con nection between death and the west has numerous lines of ascent, many of which have led toward feelings of suspicion and dread of the west. The fact that white is the traditional color of death in some East Asian and African societies, when conjoined with the spectacle of ‘white’ conquerors coming from the west, the direction of death, produced a fearful connotative concoction. Unsurprisingly, it is in China, a country with a vast amount of contiguous land to its west, that we ﬁnd the oldest heritage of discovering and interpreting western horizons. Accounts of ‘traditions regarding Western countries’ became a regular part of dynastic histories from the ﬁfth century AD. From early accounts of ex plorations as far west as Syria and beyond to ‘the western terminus of the world’, through to depictions of the modern West, one can identify a continuous tradition of Chinese commentary on the exotic lands of the setting Sun. The notion of light and of life rising in the east and setting in the west appears to be a universal form of human orientation. However, even such basic ideas are subject to change as new geopolitical realities arise. The historical lineage of the modern geopolitical West is traditionally chartered from the breakup of the Roman empire, into western and eastern parts. The disinte grating western empire gradually came to be drawn together into what was later termed ‘Western Christen dom’, a diverse community centered on Rome and Papal authority. Following schisms with the Eastern Church in the eleventh century and the mutual excommunication of the leaders of the two faiths in 1054, ‘Western Chris tendom’ achieved a clearer identity. The sacking by ‘western’ crusaders of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Church, in 1204, reinforced a sense of suspicion between the two Christian traditions. The early history of ‘Western Christendom’ provides us with vague geographical parameters for the West. But it contains precious few indications of the emergence of the kind of wider, political and cultural, understanding of

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the West that we are familiar with today. If we want to ﬁnd early associations that contain echoes of con temporary usage, we must look ﬁrst to the rapidly changing world of sixteenth century Europe. For it was then that the unity of ‘Western Christendom’ was chal lenged by the Protestant Reformation. Protestantism created a new schism in the Christian world, a split that provoked the use of the secular term, ‘West’, as a non contentious category for what was once called ‘Chris tendom’. It was a word that papered over the cracks in Western Christianity. This secular usage was overlaid and complicated by the geography of the Reformation. For Protestantism was ﬁrmly associated with Northern and Western European countries and Catholicism with the South. Thus ‘the West’ began to be adopted within Protestant lands as a self designation, one that carried speciﬁc religious connotations. However, a third connotation was also emerging. For a westward looking, colonial project was developing among those European powers facing the Atlantic. The ‘West ernization of Europe’ followed as the New World came to shape Western Europe’s geopolitical horizons. Combined with its Protestant connotations, the notion of an im perial and colonial West might be imagined to have se cured the status of ‘the West’ as the key geopolitical term both of the ages of discovery and Enlightenment. Yet it remained surprisingly peripheral: its usage largely pro saic and ideologically unelaborated. The West was, at best, a supplementary expression, used when talking about Europe. As this implies, it was ‘Europe’, not ‘the West’, that replaced ‘Christendom’. However, the ground had been laid for the emergence in the late nineteenth century of ‘the West’ as the key geopolitical category of the modern world.

The Rise of the West The West is an old word, but is also a modern idea. The assumption that being Western means being law governed and socially and technologically advanced is relatively re cent. It was only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that the idea of the West acquired the role and range of meanings that are familiar to Westerners today. Moreover, the West’s West has been changing ever since. The rise to power of ‘the West’ is signiﬁed in a number of ways. One of the least obvious, because so taken for granted, is that the western rump of the Asian landmass has been awarded the status of being a continent, namely Europe. Another is that the West has come to signify the ﬁnished point of civilization. Hegel gave an inﬂuential ﬁllip to this notion when, in the early nineteenth century, he outlined his Occidentalist vi sion of Enlightenment. In a famous passage from The Philosophy of History (ﬁrst delivered as lectures in 1822)

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Hegel explained that ‘‘[t]he History of the World travels from East to West, for Europe is absolutely the end of History.’’ The notion that human freedom cannot exceed its modern, Western incarnation emerged from Hegel’s asso ciation of Protestantism with rationalism. The Reformation was ‘the all enlightening Sun’, ensuring that ‘‘[t]he German Spirit is the Spirit of the new World.’’ When Hegel talked about History traveling to the West, it was toward a Prot estant horizon that he saw it going. However, despite elaborating at length on the Oriental world, Hegel had little to say about the West as a unity. When he turned to the Occident in The Philosophy of History he promptly frag mented it into three distinct civilizations (Greek, Roman, and German). Hegel had little use for any explicit or overarching sense of Western identity. Similarly, in Britain, throughout the early to mid nineteenth century there appears to have been little serious interest in elaborating the idea of the West or imagining something called ‘Western civilization’. Nevertheless, the association between the West and social dynamism and progress can be witnessed developing into a stereotype. The phrase ‘the Western world’ is used by Marx in 1853 when commenting upon British colonial policy in Asia. The same context, if different political conclusions, occasioned the use of the term by Macaulay 18 years earlier, in 1835. These were not merely de scriptive usages. Cliche´s of Eastern social rigidity and conservatism and Western dynamism had already be come ﬁrmly entrenched. It is a stereotype to the fore in Marx’s depiction, in Capital, of Asiatic ‘unchangeable ness’. The radical British member of parliament, Joseph Cowen summed up these stereotypes pithily in a speech to the House of Commons (4 September 1880) when he depicted ‘the conﬂicting civilizations of East and the West – the one iconoclastic and progressive, the other traditional and conservative’. By the mid nineteenth century ‘the West’ is a word and an idea of growing but still unclear power and po tential. It carries traditional religious and political con notations and these were, ﬁtfully, being put to use to interpret Europe’s rise to global power. But why, from the late nineteenth century, and particularly from the ﬁrst two decades of the twentieth, did the West, became a ‘central’ idea, a ubiquitous category in the articulation of the modern world? The notion that Western society is a unity, with its own discrete history; that it is, moreover, a ‘perspective’, an ethno cultural repertoire, is a creation of little more than the last 100 years. The modern West is a relatively recent idea that absorbs and exceeds the term’s older meanings. The development of this contemporary idea of the West can be explained in terms of the impact of speciﬁc events. The Bolshevik revolution, the rise of US hegemony, and the loss of colonial power are the most important of these; each acting to make the modern idea of the West seem more important, more necessary. A

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little of the complexity of this process by reference to the ﬁrst of these events, the Bolshevik revolution, shall be indicated here. Communism between East and West Bolshevik communism in the USSR/Russia began as a project of Westernization. For Lenin and Trotsky Russia was ripe for Westernization; it was something that needed to happen not merely for the revolution to succeed but for it to be thinkable. In his typically imperious style Lenin decreed in 1918 that, it is our task y not to spare dictatorial methods in order to hasten the copying of Westernism by barbarous Russia even more than did Peter [the Great], not shrinking from barbarous methods of struggle against barbarism. (Lenin, 1965: 340)

The Bolshevik’s association of barbarism and slavery with the East was, in part, a reﬂection of their faithful reading of Marx, who expressed similar views. However, it also represented the continuation of the views of the Russian elite. The conviction that progress was Western and conservatism Eastern was mapped onto an existing imaginative geography of the West being modern, en lightened, and civilized and the East being the antithesis of all three. ‘Asianism’ (Aziatchina) represented every thing that was old and rotten, everything that needed to be ripped out of both Russia and her colonies. Mixing images of political reaction, with those of decay and in festation, Trotsky looked forward to the development of a clean, new Western civilization. ‘‘The revolution’’ he wrote in 1923, ‘‘means the ﬁnal break of the people with Asianism, with the 17th century, with holy Russia, with ikons and cockroaches y an assimilation of the whole people of civilisation.’’ However, the ‘moral support’ for the Soviet state offered by some Western workers did not compensate for the brute fact that the revolution did not spread to the West. The Bolshevik project was premised on inter nationalism; more speciﬁcally, on revolution in the West. It was thought impossible for a communist state to sur vive in the midst of hostile capitalist powers. The absence of revolution, or even genuinely popular mass revo lutionary movements, to materialize in the West, changed the nature of Soviet politics. It allowed Stalin to turn his back on the West and develop a form of nationalist so cialism in which Russia was proclaimed to be the home of world revolution. ‘‘The whole world now admits,’’ Stalin declared in 1930, ‘‘that the centre of the revolutionary movement has shifted from Western Europe to Russia.’’ This attitude encouraged an almost phobic withdrawal from the West. In The Captive Mind (ﬁrst published 1953), Czeslaw Milosz explained that,

The ofﬁcial order is to evince the greatest horror of the West. Everything is evil there: trains are late, stores are empty, no one has money, people are poorly dressed, the highly praised technology is worthless. If you hear the name of a Western writer, painter, or composer, you must scoff sarcastically, for to ﬁght against ‘cosmopolitanism’ is one of the duties of a citizen. (Czeslaw Milosz, 1985: 43)

With the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Russia and its former colonial possession sought once again to redeﬁne themselves in relation to the West. The outcome of this process is still not clear. Con temporary Russian governments like to deploy both pro Western and anti Western rhetoric. The latter is, in part, a response to the ability of the West, notably the USA, to proclaim ideological victory in the global battle for ideas. Western Supremacism Over the past two decades a muscular self conﬁdence has taken hold of the Western media. This self conﬁdence has led to a distinctly partial way of judging non Western representations of the West. Open contempt for ‘their’ atavistic refusal to acknowledge ‘our’ superiority is widespread. The collapse of communism is the most important cause of this new mood. However, the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001 consolidated the trend and have come to shape a new popular idea that Western civilization is pitted and deﬁned against Islamic extremism. Thus Victor Davis Hanson, who completed his book Why the West has Won in 2000, was embellishing an established narrative when, in 2002, he wrote his article, ‘Occidentalism: The false West’, for The National Review. In this piece Hanson argues that ‘the East con tinues to stereotype the West, with not a clue about its intrinsic nature’. He mockingly portrays non Westerners as bafﬂed by a ‘mysterious Western paradigm – the freedom to speak freely’. Turning up the rhetorical heat to full blast, Hanson tells us that the most unaware and ignorant American knows more about ‘what his own culture is and is not, about; what the Arab world stands, and does not stand, for’ than the ‘most sophisticated’ intellectual of Middle Eastern origin. In January of the same year another article titled ‘Occidentalism’ appeared making a similar point. For Margalit and Buruma, writing in The New York Times Review of Books, Occidentalism ‘‘is a cluster of images and ideas of the West in the minds of its haters.’’ They add that what is really hated about the West, by those who only know it from afar, is its secularity and rationalism: ‘‘Occidentalists extol soul or spirit but despise intel lectuals and intellectual life.’’ In a recent book (The Idea of the West, 2004) the author has challenged these repre sentations of Occidentalism. For the historical and international evidence suggests that the idea of West is

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used in multiple ways. Across the world stereotypes of ‘the West’ are employed to construct both pro Western and oppositional identities and pathways through mod ernity. Western supremacism makes it difﬁcult to ap preciate this diversity.

Light from the East Edwin Arnold’s hugely popular epic poem The Light of Asia, a panegyric on the life of Buddha, was published in 1879. This work, along with Arnold’s version of the Hindu epic the Bhagavad Gita, impressed and inspired Gandhi during his time spent studying law in London in 1888–91. On a less elevated plane, the assertion that Asia constituted a racial and political unity, ‘a comity of Asia’, was central to Meredith Townsend’s Asia and Europe, which Nehru was later to cite as one of the inﬂuences upon his political imagination. Over the past 50 years, the way Westerners have rep resented and stereotyped the East has been an object of fascination for Western critics. As we have just seen, the notion that the West played a part in the ‘invention’ or ‘construction’ of the East offers a partial truth. It is a partial truth that appears to attract Western intellectuals who cast themselves as critics of Western power. Hence, the idea of ‘Asia’ and the ‘East’ is persistently represented as something supplementary: as an idea dependent on and derivative of the all powerful (and all corrupting) ur continent of Eur ope. Yet this formula overlooks the ambiguous, transcultural origins of notions of Orient and Occident, Asia and Europe, both in premodern and modern Asia. It is increasingly clear that an obsession with Western representations of ‘others’ is symptomatic of an Euro centric and increasingly dated insistence that the West is the deﬁning center of world history. Two examples are offered here to develop this point. The ﬁrst refers to Tagore’s and Okakura’s ‘invention’ of the East and West within their mission to imagine a nonmaterialist Asian modernity. The second example turns Tagore’s and Okakura’s hopes on their head for it introduces the contemporary attempt to construct the West as lazy and decadent compared to the hardworking, productive cul tures of Asia.

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The Japanese art critic Kakuzo Okakura (1862–1913), along with his friend the Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), claimed to detect such an essence in spiritual traditions that stretch across a greater portion of the con tinent, most notably in Buddhism. Yet to even begin naming commonalties immediately opens the implausible nature of attempts to see Asia as a single entity. Buddhism, after all, is a minority religious current in Asia. Moreover, its ab sorption into regional cultures, from India to Japan, has taken very different paths. Thus any claim of contemporary solidarity based upon Buddhism becomes an act of histor ical retrieval, a reclamation, and reinvention of a distant past. More general afﬁnities, which might seem plausible to many Westerners, such as the idea that Asia, as a whole, is more religiously inclined than the ‘secular West’, are also highly dubious. Formal religious observance in the USA remains today, as it was when Tagore was alive, a far bigger part of everyday life than it is in East Asia. Indeed, the deeply rooted nonreligious philosophical traditions of East Asia might make us wonder how Westerners ever managed to claim secularism as one of their deﬁning characteristics. Tagore wanted to break the association between mod ernization and Westernization. ‘Modernism is not in the dress of the Europeans; or in the hideous structures, where their children are interned to take lessons’ he argued: ‘‘These are not modern but merely European’’ (Tagore cited by Hay, 1970: p70). ‘‘True modernism,’’ he continued, ‘‘is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action, not tutelage under European school masters. It is science, but not its wrong application in life.’’ However, although Tagore claimed to ﬁnd a ‘creative unity’ between East and West, his dialectical logic was constantly interrupted by the stereotypes of both East and the West he had worked so hard to develop. What this means is that, because Tagore’s West was a place of instrumentalism and soulless anomie, it was also a place quite unsuitable for ‘creative unity’. It was a civilization that did not want real contact with others and that was, at root, destructive: ‘‘The dominant collective idea of the Western countries is not creative.’’ Tagore asserted, ‘‘It is wholly wanting in spiritual power to balance and har monise; it lacks the sense of the great personality of man.’’ The Economic Ascendancy of the East

The Ideals of the East It is difﬁcult for us to sense the excitement and political provocation contained in the opening words of Kakuzo Okakura’s The Ideals of the East (which ﬁrst appeared in 1904), that ‘Asia is one’. Yet, what a stupendous and im probable idea it is. The notion that there is some shared essence between all the different cultures of this vast space – or, at a more particular level, between, for ex ample, ‘Indian culture’ and ‘Japanese culture’ – is an imaginative leap of considerable proportions.

In the late twentieth century, Tagore’s concern with soulless and mechanical Westernization was turned on its head. Eastern leaders began to accuse the West of in efﬁciency, decadence, and laziness. The East, in East Asia and, increasingly, in India, came to be associated with entrepreneurial endeavor and hard work. The West’s ‘undoing’ is not merely a favorite topic among advocates of Eastern or ‘Asian values’ but a ‘deﬁning’ theme: with out ‘Western decadence’ the notion that real or good Asians are devoted to wealth creation would be

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incomprehensible and easily rendered as a shallow and materialistic subversion of Asian identity. In 1998 the Singaporean ambassador to the United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani, offered a typical account of Western decline: Only hubris can explain why so many Western societies are trying to defy the economic laws of gravity. Budgetary discipline is disappearing. Expensive social programs and pork barrel projects multiply with little heed to costs. The West’s low savings and investment rates lead to declining competitiveness vis a` vis East Asia. The work ethic is eroding while politicians delude workers into believing that they can retain high wages despite becoming internationally uncompetitive. Lead ership is lacking. Any politician who states hard truths is immediately voted out. (1998: 97)

The twin themes of the work shy West and the self indulgent, ‘out of control’ West can be found throughout Asian values narratives. It is an interpretation of Western decay that carries a historical judgment. For it shows, as Singapore Prime Minster, Goh Chok Tong, put it during his National Day speech on 21 August 1994, that ‘soci eties can go wrong quickly’. US and British societies have changed profoundly in the last 30 years. Up to the early 60s they were disciplined, conservative, with the family very much the pillar of their societies. Since then both the US and Britain have seen a sharp rise in broken families, teenage mothers, illegitimate children, juvenile delinquency, vandalism and violent crime. (cited by Sheridan, 1999: 72)

Traditionally, both Asian Westernizers and Eastern critics of Western soullessness saw themselves as under the thumb of the West, as reacting against its crushing force. In this context one can read a certain pleasure in between Goh and Mahbubani’s lines: ‘‘they are recording that the tables have been turned, that it is now ‘we’ who can pat ronise and lecture ‘them’.’’

Yet however sweet and, given the historical record, temperately expressed, this revenge must seem, a number of persistent ironies sour its enjoyment. The over zealous way that antisocial behavior is presented as Western offers a glib despatching of the sins of modernity. Goh’s and Mahbubani’s attitude toward the West represents a geographical ‘othering’ of internal problems. It is a pro cess of puriﬁcation of the nation and of the East that sanctions and demands strict protection and self discip line as well as the perpetuation of an image of the decadent Westerner as a spatially displaced ‘folk devil’. See also: Asia; Europe; Modernity; Orientalism.

Further Reading Arnold, E. (1879). The Light of Asia. New York: A.L. Burt. Bonnett, A. (2004). The Idea of the West. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Carrier, J. (ed.) (1995). Occidentalism: Images of the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hanson, V. (2001). Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam. London: Faber and Faber. Hanson, V. (2002). Occidentalism: The false west. National Review May 10. Hay, S. (1970). Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China, and India. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hegel, G. (1991). The Philosophy of History. Amherst: Prometheus Books. Huntingdon, S. (1997). The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of the World Order. London: Simon and Schuster. Lenin, V. (1965). Collected Works, Volume 27, February July 1918. Moscow: Progress Publications. Mahbubani, K. (1998). Can Asians Think? Understanding the Divide between East and West. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press. Margalit, A. and Buruma, I. (2002). Occidentalism. The New York Times Review of Books January 17. Milosz, C. (1985). The Captive Mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Okakura, K. (2000). The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan. New York: ICG Muse. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism: Western Representations of the Orient. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sheridan, G. (1999). Asian Values, Western Dreams: Understanding the New Asia. St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin. Townsend, M. (1905). Asia and Europe. London: Archibald Constable.

e-Business and e-Commerce K. E. Corey and M. I. Wilson, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Business-to-Business (B2B) Activities utilize information and communications technologies to facilitate transactions involving intermediate goods and services. Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Transactions use information and communication technologies (ICT)enabled systems linking businesses and their customers for delivery and payment of ﬁnal goods and services. Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) Interaction is ICTenabled links between consumers for the purchase or exchange of goods and services. e-Business Is the use of ICT to facilitate the operations of an organization through the purchase or exchange of goods and services, customer service, or provision of information. e-Commerce Uses ICT for transactions online, and is a subset of e-business. e-Government Is the use of e-business approaches to the delivery of public services. Government-to-Consumer (G2C) Transactions are a form of e-business using ICT to link government and its citizens.

Introduction Electronic business, or e business, is a wide ranging col lection of functions and activities that are facilitated by digital and electronic means. The ultimate goal of e business is to establish an online presence for an organi zation and to provide as much interactivity and func tionality as possible. e Business relies on information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve and ex pand the operation and functions of an organization, such as a business, government agency, or nonproﬁt organi zation. e Business is a recent phenomenon, lagging several years behind the initial popularity of the Internet in the early 1990s, and today with less than a decade of common presence in the most advanced economies. While often used as a synonym for e business, e commerce is a more speciﬁc concept associated with ICT enabled ﬁnancial transactions. Other concepts associated with e business and e commerce include online interactions by business, government, and between individuals. This article frames and discusses the concepts of e business and e commerce and many of the

interdependent relationalities among these economic and societal functions. In addition to the characteristics of ICT enabled business, these activities also have different geographies or spatial and locational patterns. From the fundamentals and knowledge introduced in this article, the reader may be motivated to consider engaging in e business, thereby taking advantage of the new oppor tunities that are offered by digital and electronic technologies. The past 50 years have witnessed the development and merger of computers and communications technol ogies. The power of these combined technologies created the Internet, which offers new possibilities for efﬁcient and low cost electronic interaction for organizations and individuals. The existence of ICT and the Internet, however, does not guarantee the presence of e business functions. Effective and successful e business requires three elements. First, access to and use of the Internet, which includes the ability to go online for a reasonable cost by local standards, and the knowledge and skills needed to operate a computer and to navigate cyber space. Second, a developed ﬁnancial services sector that allows electronic payments for goods and services, through banks, credit cards, invoicing, or third party banking equivalents. The third element is an efﬁcient delivery system through postal or transportation services to complete the transaction. The absence of one or more of these elements makes the conduct of e business dif ﬁcult if not impossible. Countries with well established e business sectors have sophisticated Internet, ﬁnancial services, and delivery systems to support online business. There are many reasons for adopting e business practices, with several of the leading factors listed next. Use of ICT often allows organizations to reduce costs through labor savings (automated systems, users enter data, offshoring), reduced transaction costs, more efﬁcient delivery (electronic vs. ground/air/mail), and better tracking of operations. Organizations may provide im proved services, such as recent and greater information to customers by ﬁrms or citizens by government. New markets may be served, as the global reach of the Internet offers a far larger market than possible previously, al though the larger market may also carry greater com petition. Consumers may prefer online sources as they have 24 h access, reduced or no travel times, and the ability to rapidly survey the market for lowest prices or best conditions. The many advantages of an e business strategy also needs to be considered in terms of initial greater costs, not just in terms of establishing a web

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presence, but the possible need to re engineer organ ization or back ofﬁce practices to function electronically.

Scope and Scale of e-Business With over 1 billion people online globally, the potential now and in the future for e business activities is sub stantial. Estimates of the scale of e business activities are limited, as measurement lags behind this phenomenon, and the tendency for organizations to see data as a trade secret to be denied to competitors. In the 25 member European Union in 2005, the European Commission (2006) reported 91% of ﬁrms using the Internet, with 61% of ﬁrms having a web presence and almost a quarter of ﬁrms engaging in business to business (B2B) transac tions online. At the national level, many countries cal culate the level of online business. For example, in 2004, the United States Census Bureau (2006) cited over US$130 billion in online retail trade, with B2B e com merce exceeding US$1.9 trillion. e Business is often characterized by the parties in volved in an online transaction, between and among business, government, and consumers. This section will brieﬂy summarize common forms of e business. The most easily recognized form of online activity is business to consumer (B2C) transactions, which link businesses and their customers for information, purchase, delivery, and payment of ﬁnal goods and services. Success with B2C occurs for ﬁrms that beneﬁt from cost savings through electronic products and content that do not in volve physical movement (airline and hotel reservations, music and video downloads, etc.). Also successful are businesses that avoid local legal constraints (online gambling and adult content) and activities that can pro vide a wide selection at competitive prices (books, music, electronic goods, etc.). Despite the popularity of B2C commerce, it is only a small part of total online business. In the United States, B2C is only 7% of total e commerce. The largest component of e business, and most powerful economically, is B2B. B2B utilizes ICT to fa cilitate transactions involving intermediate goods and services. B2B activities include online purchasing and distribution, supply chain management, and automated trading. The challenge for analysts of B2B e commerce is that B2B systems are an important competitive element for a ﬁrm, and system design and data are often con sidered proprietary and not publicized. A subset of B2B includes B2G when ﬁrms sell to governments. e Government has several elements of e business, such as government to consumers or citizens (G2C), as well as government services to business (G2B). Govern ment is an important source of information, often at no charge, and the Internet is a powerful tool for the

dissemination of public data and reports. Many organ izations rely upon government for business and demo graphic data, legal decisions, information about public policy, weather and climate, and access to forms. Gov ernment also transacts business online, such as for taxa tion, licenses and permits, and payment of ﬁnes. One developing function is electronic voting, which repre sents a complex intersection between technology, privacy, equity, and accuracy. As ﬁrms often found a need to re engineer for e business, government also found that the structure of government, with deﬁned roles in speciﬁc departments, did not easily translate into cyberspace. The best government websites are those that address the needs of the user, designing the site to feature needs (taxation, travel, children, etc.) rather than force visitors to search across many departments to identify the in formation they need. A ﬁnal, and rapidly growing, dimension of e business is transactions among consumers (C2C). The most common formats are auction websites that allow indi viduals and businesses to buy and sell products and services online, such as eBay. These are third party websites that link consumers in a form of electronic ﬂea market that also is emerging as a force for commercial sales and the auctioning of intermediate goods and ser vices. Somewhat related to the C2C format is peer to peer (P2P) online interaction, although this form tends not to use third parties to avoid legal implications associated with downloading of copyrighted material, such as music and video.

Functions and Content of e-Business As a force that has had signiﬁcant inﬂuence on the ways we live, work, learn, and entertain ourselves, e business is barely a human generation old, from electronic ﬁnancial transactions 40 years ago to Internet enabled commerce only a decade old. However, during this relatively short life span e business has evolved from infancy to maturity, and e business functions are continuing to develop. These functions have evolved from consisting principally of simple commercial transactions on the Internet to include also informational exchanges that draw on myr iad technologies that transform the ways that we go about the business of living and of doing business. These transformations impact the economy, society, culture, polity, environment, geography, and time. The deep penetration of and growing reliance on e business and e commerce have resulted in the blurring of the lines between the physical worlds and the virtual online worlds. For the purposes of the conceptual framework being introduced here, it means that the contemporary concept of e business is a blend of material and elec tronic functions. Increasingly, it means that today,

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e business is a complementary mixture and partial in tegration of electronic technology supported business and physical business functions. Over time, the pro portion of this mix is shifting increasingly to the elec tronic enabled end of this electronic to material spectrum. Given the increasing complexity and diversity of e business functions, it is useful to frame them for clearer understanding and for use in business strategizing. Given the contemporary forces of information technology and globalization, these various e business functions should be conceptualized within the context of the global knowledge economy and network society. In this context three major e business activities may be identiﬁed and framed in a spectrum of business and economic functions and factors. These include: production functions; con sumption functions; and quality of life and amenity fac tors. These three general sets of functions are linked and networked by means of such electronic technologies as the Internet and other telecommunications with multi media content delivered via cable, telephone line, wire less, and satellite broadcasting. Production Functions Production may involve the generation of an innovation, such as an idea, the creation of a service, or the making of a good. These outputs in turn may or may not be de veloped further into a commercially marketable item. These outcomes may be electronic or material, but they were produced as a result of being electronically enabled. Examples include: basic research conducted in a uni versity laboratory that produces an innovative scientiﬁc idea that has preliminary attractiveness for venture cap ital investment; a research and development department within a company tests and further demonstrates the commercial viability of life science process to be used in medical care, and it buys majority equity in its further development; production functions also include business and producer services whereby one ﬁrm provides special services, such as legal or accounting or advertising ser vices to other ﬁrms; and public institutions such as gov ernments provide producer services, as in the case of weather forecasts, taxes, and regulations. Consumption Functions (or e-Commerce) Consumption involves the use of a process, service, or good. Consumption may or may not require the exchange of money such as in the cash purchase of an automobile; this is an e commerce example. Further, e commerce may involve the exchange of information in order to gain access to services or to be more informed as in the ex ample of searching many e government functions. As in the cases of the various production functions, in con sumption functions there is not necessarily a sharp

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distinction between the electronic world and the material world. As e commerce deepens and matures, there often is better integration between online consumption and traditional physical retailing. For example, it is more common today to be able to make a purchase over the Internet and retrieve it or return it at a physical location such as the ﬁrm’s store. Quality of Life and Amenity Factors In a global economy, where in many advanced national and regional economies, commercially value added knowledge and innovative services are creating more jobs than manufacturing industries. In such places, the needs of knowledge workers must be addressed, if such workers are to be grown locally and other such workers are to be attracted to the locality. Consequently, human capital development, a long recognized factor of production, may be more strategically framed as a factor of quality and amenity so that it is instrumental in nurturing and retaining a knowledge economy workforce for a par ticular region. This is an e business factor that can confer competitive advantage on a locality. In addition to human capital, quality of life and amenity factors such as a nearby attractive natural environment and creative and cultural assets are elements that enrich and reinforce the knowledge economy e business advantage of a place. Further, in a global economy labor market where high demand knowledge workers have virtually unlimited mobility, a local climate of tolerance, and a creative culture are critical factors that complement all the other e business functions noted throughout this article. e-Business Spectrum In sum, e business may be framed by a conceptual framework encompassing the principal economic, social, cultural, environmental, and spatial organizational factors that shaped development in a global knowledge economy. These functions are connected and linked by ﬂows of information and knowledge that result in geographies of ﬂows and content. The principal challenge empirically in engaging locally the study and/or the initiation of e business and e commerce is overcoming data and in formation availability – or lack of it. Frequently, mar keting data may be available, but without the locational speciﬁcity and geographical breakdown needed for maximizing business decision making.

Spatial Organization of e-Business Geographies of e-Business The geography of e business has many elements and dimensions depending on the aspects addressed. At one level is the spatial pattern of ICT infrastructure, decided by the location of ﬁber optic and telecommunications

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networks that carry telecommunications and the Internet, and the nodes that direct and focus ﬂows of electronic information. Patterns of infrastructure are evident at a number of scales, with leading and lagging cities, regions, countries, and continents. e Readiness indices based on ICT data show that the leading continents are North America, Europe, and Asia, and leading countries are Denmark, the United States, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Least ready to engage in e business are Africa and Latin America. More concentrated than Internet infrastructure is the location of Internet hosts for e business, which tend to be found in the most advanced economies and leading cities. At its most advanced, the pattern of global e business consists of ﬂows among the world’s leading urban economies, with cities such as New York, London, and Tokyo playing core roles in this phenomenon. Among the spatial factors that shape e business are language and culture, local and national laws, regional tastes and preferences, currencies, and privacy regu lations. Scaling up from the local to regional or national to international level means e business operations face a far more complex and nuanced market than previously. The three elements of e business noted at the start of this article – access, transaction, and delivery – all have spatial dimensions that need to be considered by pro ducers and consumers. New Geographies in an Era of Digital and Intelligent Development The reader should not be misled into thinking that business and commerce, enabled by ICT has eliminated distance or geography. Location and proximities still matter a great deal and they affect the ways that we behave and conduct business. These technologies, and our growing reliance on them and our expectations for their continuous improvement, have inﬂuenced and are changing the ways that we think about and perceive distance and the spatial organization of our new in creasingly networked worlds. While there are patterns of convergence of electronic technologies and interconnectedness, and there is grow ing ubiquity of these technologies globally and locally, there remain many areas of the world, peoples, busi nesses, and institutions that are not networked or con nected or if connected, are poorly so. Therefore, even in this widely discussed networked society and global economy, there is a great deal of unevenness in the dis tribution of information and digital infrastructure and/or access to such technologies. Cities and city regions function as principal locations where trade and e business converge. In the global knowledge economy city regions serve as hubs where networks and e business ﬂows of transactions come

together. These highest order urban places, in the con text of the global knowledge economy, host globally dominant ﬁnancial services and complementary func tions such as world class cultural institutions in the arts, higher education, and corporate headquarters, among other business related and business supported assets. The overarching business functional context of the global knowledge economy and network society is de velopment. In this context, economic development and economic growth alone are not sufﬁcient for being competitive in an era of technology induced global ization. Development in the global knowledge economy, while driven by economic development and progress, recognizes the importance also of civil societal ad vancement, including material and environmental ad vancement and equity promotion for a majority of the populations of city regions. The economic development component of this comprehensive development frame work in the global knowledge economy is driven by the e business spectrum and its production, consumption, and quality of life and amenity factors. Because of spatial unevenness, there frequently needs to be a parallel public policy priority for equity to counter the inexorable mo mentum and movement toward development inequities and disparities. In the current era of ICT facilitated globalization, two additional types of development require explication: digital development and intelligent development. Digital development involves ensuring that high speed broad band Internet infrastructure is distributed equitably and provided throughout a city, region, or country’s settle ment space. Given the continuous improvement and pervasive competitive environment of the global econ omy, ensuring an initial distribution of ﬁrst generation digital infrastructure may not be sufﬁcient to ensure ongoing comparative advantage; consequently, constant upgrading and modernization of ICT infrastructure is required. In addition, the business and government interests of an area must recognize and operate with complementarity, usually in some form of alliances or partnerships, and from a position of intelligent develop ment. Intelligent development is digital development that is informed by effective market data and empirical re search, combined with the application of cutting edge and tested theory and conceptual frameworks that reﬂect best practices and benchmarking for monitoring business innovations and evaluation of the implementation of the selected business model. Intelligent development in the context of effective e business practice involves attention to the geography of digital development and intelligent development pat terns. Areas that are underserved by digital infrastructure have less business potential and opportunity. These are places that represent gaps and disparities in the spatial organization of development; such areas can retard the

e-Business and e-Commerce

competitiveness and intelligent development trajectory of a city region, thereby slowing the entire region’s growth and advancement. Policies of equitable development and private–public partnerships are means that can be em ployed to address the need for widespread intelligent development.

What Does the Future Hold for e-Business? The bursting of the dot com bubble in the year 2000 demonstrated that doing business and conducting com merce electronically did not exempt us from the need to adhere to the fundamentals of sound investment prin ciples and the best practices of planning and doing business. The relatively short life span of e business has been characterized by experimentation, learning, and change. No longer are these increasingly pervasive electronic facilitated economic and societal functions new to our individual and collective experience. These functions have evolved and can be expected to continue to be dynamic and continuously changing well into the foreseeable future. As computers and Internet access move from being optional to being a necessity in most advanced econ omies, we confront the signiﬁcance and implications of ubiquitous computing. Once access is assumed rather than an option, it means that lacking access, as an indi vidual, organization, community, region, or country, carries with it exclusion from the leading form of eco nomic interaction. Also, the ability to shift production to low cost areas suggests a world of new centers and per ipheries, where the centers are the leading urban nodes in the network society and the peripheries are those lo cations that cannot or will not engage with the new technologies. The equity implications and spatial con trasts such outcomes suggest may reshape the nature of the knowledge economy and network society. As e business and e commerce evolve we can expect further melding of the electronic and material worlds by means of such activities as social networking, for ex ample, Second Life. This site reveals a virtual world that is three dimensional; it consists of a digital continent that includes a wide spectrum of economic and social activ ities where participants can create and construct mar ketplace and other e realities that involve trading and the use of currency. Increasingly, there are spillovers from and to the virtual and physical worlds. Second Life has attracted nearly 3 million inhabitants from around the world. Social networking has been attributed to stimu lating new interest in e commerce. The concepts and the conceptual frameworks intro duced in this article should enable the reader to earn an initial understanding of the complexities and

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evolutionary changes that are inherent in e business and e commerce. Given the individual and personal scal ability of these two functions, this article may serve as a stimulus for readers to consider initiating and engaging in e business and/or e commerce. See also: Business Services; Capital and Space; Capitalism; Civil Society; Competitiveness; Digital Divide; Entrepreneurship; Global Production Networks; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Information Technology; Knowledge Economy; Knowledge Intensive Business Services; Local Economic Development; Uneven Development; Venture Capital.

Further Reading Acs, Z. J. and Armington, C. (2006). Entrepreneurship, geography, and American economic growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Albrechts, L. and Mandelbaum, S. J. (eds.) (2005). The network society: A new context for planning? New York: Routledge. Beinhocker, E. D. (2006). Origin of wealth: Evolution, complexity, and the radical remaking of economics. Boston: Harvard Business School. Clarke, S. E. and Gaile, G. L. (1998). The work of cities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Corey, K. E. and Wilson, M. I. (2006). Urban and regional technology planning: Planning practice in the global knowledge economy. New York: Routledge. European Commission, Enterprise and Industry Directorate General (2006). The 2006 European E Business Readiness Index. http:// ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/ebi/ebi 2006 sh prel data rep.pdf (accessed Sep. 2007). Fletcher, R. G., Moscove, B. J. and Corey, K. E. (2001). Electronic commerce: Planning for successful urban and regional development. In Williams, J. F. & Stimson, R. J. (eds.) International urban planning settings: Lessons of success, pp 431 467. Amsterdam: JAI. Friedman, T. L. (2006). The world is ﬂat: A brief history of the twenty ﬁrst century. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Gottmann, J. (1983). The coming of the transactional city. College Park, MD: University of Maryland Institute for Urban Studies. Huggins, R., Izushi, H. and Davies, W. (2005). World knowledge competitive index 2005. Pontypridd: Robert Huggins Associates Ltd. Kellerman, A. (2002). The internet on earth: A geography of information. Chichester: Wiley. Leinbach, T. R. and Brunn, S. D. (2001). Worlds of e commerce: Economic, geographical and social dimensions. Chichester: Wiley. Murdoch, J. (2006). Post structuralist geography: A guide to relational space. London: Sage Publications. Rogers, E. M. (1976). Communication and development: The passing of the dominant paradigm. Communication Research 3, 213 240. United States, Census Bureau (2006). E Stats. http://www.census.gov/ eos/www/papers/2004/2004reportﬁnal.pdf (accessed Sep. 2007). Yeung, H. W. C. (2005). Rethinking relational economic geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 37 51.

Relevant Websites http://www.americasnetwork.com America’s Network. http://www.topics.developmentgateway.org dgCommunities, Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration Worldwide. http://www.forrester.com Forrester Research.

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http://www.lboro.ac.uk GaWC Globalization and World Cities, Loughborough University. http://www.globaltechforum.eiu.com Global Technology Forum. http://www.InsidePolitics.org Inside Politics, Darrell West of Brown University. http://www.internetworldstats.com Internet Usage World Stats Internet and Population Statistics. http://www.jupiterresearch.com JupiterResearch Market Research, Analysis, and Advice. http://www.itu.int Market Information and Statistics (STAT), International Telecommunication Union.

http://www.oecd.org Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development (OCED). http://www.pewinternet.org Pew Internet and American Life Project. http://www.secondlife.com Second Life: Your World. Your Imagination. http://www.census.gov The 2007 Statistical Abstract, US Census Bureau. http://forum.maplecroft.com World Economic Forum Global Health Initiative, Maplecroft.

Ecological Fallacy D. Sui, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Ecological Fallacy The fallacy of making inferences about individuals using aggregate data. Ecological Inference The process of using aggregate data to infer relationships at disaggregate/individual levels. Modiﬁable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) Analytical results often change when the scale or the areal boundary used in the analysis changes. Multilevel/Cross-Level Analysis Analyses that conceptualize and analyze associations at different levels of aggregation, ranging from individual to areabased data. These analyses typically entail the use of variance component models to partition the variance, and to examine the contribution of factors measured at these different levels to the overall variation in the outcome.

The so called ecological fallacy refers to the inferential mistake that relationships observed for groups also ne cessarily hold for individuals. It is a logical fallacy in making inferences from group, aggregated data about individual behavior. Ecological fallacy is closely related to ecological inference (EI), which refers to the process of using aggregate (i.e., ‘ecological’) data to infer discrete individual level relationships of interest when indi vidual level data are not available. Ecological fallacy is a manifestation of the so called modiﬁable areal unit problem (MAUP), which refers to the fact that statistical results are often contingent upon how data are aggre gated using different areal units or scales. Analysis based upon a single set of areal unit or scale does not always warrant a reliable conclusion. For example, a geographer may be interested in the level of development for countries in the world. One indicator one may consider using is per capita income at the country level (it could also be regional or municipal or local level). The per capita income for country A is $45 000. To state that the average income for residents in country A is $45 000 is true and accurate. The ecological fallacy occurs when one infers, based on the per capita data, that citizens in country A earn about $45 000. In reality, earnings by each individual in the country can vary a great deal, from a few thousands to a few millions. As a general rule, one should keep in mind that as sumptions made about individuals based on aggregate data are always vulnerable to ecological fallacy. In other

words, the relationship between two variables at an ag gregated level can be purely due to aggregation effects rather than to any real association. Another reason for the ecological fallacy is that there often exists a series of confounding factors that may cause the relationship be tween two variables to change drastically when moving from individual to aggregated analysis. Geographers have studied this issue quite extensively, especially under the banner of the MAUP, but the problems related to EI and ecological fallacy can be traced back to Durkheim’s study on differential suicide rates in Europe. Durkheim noticed that suicide rates were higher in countries where there were a large per centage of Protestants, and he speculated that suicide was promoted by the social conditions of Protestantism. This is often regarded as one of the earliest examples of EI as Durkheim used aggregated data but tried to make in ferences about the relationship between suicide and re ligious faith. The issue of EI was more formally discussed by Ogburn and Goltra in 1919, who sought to know how women, who were about to have the vote nationwide, would decide to cast their ballots. The secret ballot and the EI problem prevented analysts from distinguishing the votes of women from the remaining (male) votes in the same electoral precincts. In 1950, Robinson further raised the scholarly community’s awareness on the issues related to ecological fallacy by demonstrating that rela tionships existing at the individual level can in fact be the inverse of aggregate level relationships – an observation that has been consistently conﬁrmed across a variety of disciplines. Traditionally, the ecological regression technique (techniques for estimating regression parameters using aggregated data when disaggregated data is not available) has been the most frequently used method for making EIs. Another deterministic method of EI is the method of bounds, which uses the limited information that is known with certainty from the cross tabulated aggregated data. However, the method of bounds only produces a range of possible values for the individual level relationships; thus, it does not really provide a solution to the EI problem. Following these earlier pioneering works, statisticians have developed many other approaches to handle EI. Among the methods developed so far are: the maximum entropy method, the aggregated compound multinomial (ACM) model, the ecological logit model, the Lupia–McCue partitioning approach, the neighborhood model, double equation regression, and quadratic context effect models.

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Widely claimed as one of the major methodological advances in social science during past 25 years, Gary King’s book A Solution to the Ecological Problem: Re constructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data has re ceived intense interdisciplinary scrutiny and is perhaps one of the most important progresses in addressing the problems related to ecological fallacy. By combining the method of bounds with the least squares regression, Gary King developed a new solution to the EI problem. In his book, he not only proved that various versions of the aggregation problems are mathematically equivalent, but also developed several software packages that implement the statistical procedure (via random coefﬁcient model ing), diagnostics, and graphics so that researchers can apply his method in practice. King also empirically tested his statistical method with datasets of groups for which individual behaviors were known. He made more than 16 000 comparisons from ﬁve datasets between his esti mates and individual’s behavior. Despite the current efforts in data mining to discover patterns using data collected at the individual/disaggre gate level (the opposite problem of EI), EI is still required in social science research when individual level surveys are unavailable (as in local electoral politics because of the secret ballot), unreliable (as in racial politics, respondents do not always report opinions), inaccurate/insufﬁcient (as in a vast political geography), unfeasible (such as questions relating to historical times), inaccessible (due to privacy concerns), or simply too expensive. In addition, due to legislations regarding individual privacy in many coun tries, aggregation across spatial units is the only way to ensure conﬁdentiality for much of the socioeconomic and public health data collected by the government. The process of aggregating data often conceals the variations within the dataset that are visible at the dis aggregate level. However, being vigilant about ecological fallacy does not entail that identifying associations be tween aggregate data is necessarily erroneous. It also does not necessarily mean that any inferences drawn about associations between the characteristics of an aggregate population and the characteristics of subunits within the population are absolutely wrong either. Otherwise, we could commit what some scholars call the ecological fallacy, when in fact individual level models are not ne cessarily better speciﬁed than those at the aggregate level. Schwartz further elaborated on the validity approach, which examines all studies in terms of internal and external (construct) validity problems for cross level inferences. Because aggregate data are more easier to obtain than data on individuals and many decisions in the real world are based upon administrative units (based upon which various social, economic, and public health data are often collected), ecological analysis is unavoidable and more often than not is a necessity. In addition, ecological

analysis can offer help clues about individual behavior. Under many circumstances, EI is often the only alter native in the absence of individual data. In the context of public health and epidemiology, population level studies often play a very important role in deﬁning the most important public health problems to be tackled, and in generating hypotheses as to their potential causes. It also has been increasingly recognized that some risk factors for disease genuinely operate at the population level. Thus, only through ecological studies can these types of risk factors be detected. Due to the low likelihood of statistically resolving confounding effects and aggregation bias, multilevel an alysis techniques (also known as hierarchical linear modeling) have been widely used and tested for nested datasets. Based on regression analysis, multilevel methods enable researchers to model the associations between a dependent variable and independent variable measures at different hierarchical levels, such as the individual, household, and neighborhood levels. Multilevel analysis allows researchers not only to examine how variability changes among levels, but also to model directly the effects at speciﬁc levels – that is, effect of state level Medicaid policy on access to health, or effect of school district expenditures. Multilevel analysis, when used in conjunction with these EI techniques, can help us better understand the complex relationships among many dif ferent variables operating at different levels. At a broader theoretical level, ecological fallacy and EI are closely related to the debate regarding structure and agency in social sciences or the contextual and compositional factors in epidemiology. The structure– agency debate has been revolving around the complex and subtle relationship between knowledgeable and capable human agents, and the wider social systems and environmental structures in which they are implicated. The theoretical insights gained from the structure– agency framework have often been translated into com positional (involving human agents at the micro level) versus contextual (involving social/environmental structures at the macro level) factors in empirical studies. Deeper insights can be gained if empirical studies using EIs can be closely linked to these theoretical contexts. Only then can we possibly see the spider in the complex web of causation among the phenomena we are studying using a combination of individual and aggregate data. See also: Modiﬁable Areal Unit Problem; Regression, Linear and Nonlinear.

Further Reading Achen, C. H. and Shively, W. P. (1995). Cross Level Inference. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Amrhein, C. G. (1996). Searching for the elusive aggregation effect: Evidence from statistical simulations. Environment and Planning A 27, 105 119. Anselin, L. (2000). The alchemy of statistics, or creating data where no data exist. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(3), 586 592. Bickel, R. (2007). Multilevel Analysis for Applied Research: It’s Just Regression! (Methodology in the Social Sciences). New York: Guilford. Blakeley, T. A. and Woodward, A. J. (2000). Ecological effects in multi level studies. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 54, 367 374. Brown, P. J. and Payne, C. D. (1986). Aggregate data, ecological regression, and voting transitions. Journal of the American Statistical Association 81, 452 460. Cho, W. (1998). If the assumption ﬁts: A comment on the king ecological inference solution. Political Analysis 7, 143 163. Cleave, N., Brown, P. J. and Payne, C. D. (1995). Evaluation of methods for ecological inference. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, General 158, 55 72. Diez Roux, A. V. (1998). Bringing context back into epidemiology: Variables and fallacies in multilevel analysis. American Journal of Public Health 88, 216 222. Duncan, C., Jones, K. and Moon, G. (1998). Context, composition and heterogeneity: Using multilevel models in health research. Social Science and Medicine 46, 97 117. Duncan, O. D. and Davis, B. (1953). An alternative to ecological correlation. American Sociological Review 18, 665 666. Durkheim, E. (1897). Le Suicide. (English transl. Spalding, J. A., 1951. Toronto: Free Press/Collier MacMillan). Paris: F. Alcan. Freedman, D. A. (2001). Ecological inference and the ecological fallacy. International Encyclopedia for the Social and Behavioral Sciences 6, 4027 4030. Freedman, D., Klein, S., Ostland, M. and Roberts, M. (1998). A solution to the ecological inference problem. Book Review. Journal of the American Statistical Association 93, 1518 1522. Freedman, D. A., Klein, S. P., Sacks, J., Smyth, C. A. and Everett, C. G. (1991). Ecological regression and voting rights. Evaluation Review 15, 673 711. Gelman, A. and Hill, J. (2002). Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. New York: Cambridge University Press. Goodman, L. (1953). Ecological regression and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 18, 663 664. Gould, P. R. (1970). Is ‘statistix inferens’ still the geographical name for a wild goose? Economic Geography 46(supplement), 439 448. Greenland, S. and Robins, J. (1994). Invited commentary: Ecologic studies biases, misconceptions, and counter examples. American Journal of Epidemiology 139, 747 760. Grofman, B. (1995). New methods for valid ecological inference. In Eagles, M. (ed.) Spatial and Contextual Models in Political Research, pp 127 149. London: Taylor and Francis. Johnston, R. J., Hay, A. M. and Taylor, P. J. (1982). Estimating the sources of spatial change in election results. Environment and Planning A 14, 951 961.

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Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. (2001). On geographers and ecological inference. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(2), 281. King, G. (1997). A Solution to the Ecological Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Krieger, N. (1994). Epidemiology and the web of causation: Has anyone seen the spider? Social Science and Medicine 39(7), 887 903. Lohmoller, J. B., Falter, J., Link, A. and de Rijke, J. (1985). Unemployment and the rise of national socialism: Contradicting results from different regional aggregations. In Nijkamp, P. (ed.) Measuring the Unmeasurable, pp 357 370. Martinus Nijhoof: Den Haag. Lupia, A. and McCue, K. (1990). Why the 1980s measures of racially polarized voting are inadequate for the 1990s. Law and Policy 12, 355. Morgenstern, H. (1995). Ecologic studies in epidemiology: Concepts, principles, and methods. Annual Review of Public Health 16, 61 81. Ogburn, W. F. and Goltra, I. (1919). How women vote: A study of an election in Portland, Oregon. Political Science Quarterly 34, 413 433. Openshaw, S. (1984). Ecological fallacies and the analysis of areal census data. Environment and Planning A 16, 17 31. Owen, G. and Grofman, B. (1997). Estimating the likelihood of fallacious ecological inference: Linear ecological regression in the presence of context effects. Political Geography 16, 675 690. Robinson, W. S. (1950). Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 15, 351 357. Schwartz, S. (1994). The fallacy of the ecological fallacy: The potential misuse of a concept and the consequences. American Journal of Public Health 84(5), 819 824. Sui, D. Z. (1999). GIS, environmental equity, and the modiﬁable areal unit problem (MAUP). In Craglia, M. & Onsrud, H. (eds.) Geographic Information Research: Trans Atlantic Perspectives, pp 41 54. London: Taylor & Francis. Sui, D. Z. (2000). New directions in ecological inference. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(3), 579 606. Thomsen, S. R. (1987). Danish Elections 1920 1979: A Logit Approach to Ecological Analysis and Inference. Arhus: Politica. Williams, G. H. (2003). The determinants of health: Structure, context and agency. Sociology of Health and Illness 25(1), 131 154. Withers, S. D. (2001). Quantitative methods: Advances in ecological inference. Progress in Human Geography 25(1), 87 96. Wrigley, N., Holt, D., Steel, D. and Tranmer, M. (1996). Analyzing, modelling, and resolving the ecological fallacy. In Longley, P. & Batty, M. (eds.) Spatial Analysis: Modelling in a GIS Environment, pp 25 40. Cambridge: GeoInformation International.

Relevant Websites http://www.Gking.harvard.edu Garry King.

Ecology P. McManus, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Abiota The nonliving parts of an ecosystem, including soil, water, and air. Adaptation Speciﬁc changes that enable a species to survive and/or thrive in a speciﬁc setting. Balance of Nature The concept that all life is interrelated and inherently in equilibrium. This idea is rejected by scientiﬁc ecologists who recognize that Nature is dynamic, but not in balance. The idea forms the basis for a number of radical environmental philosophies that critique human society and its impacts because of its destruction of the balance of Nature. Biota The plant and animal life of an ecosystem, popularly known as ﬂora and fauna. Biotic refers to the living parts of an ecosystem. Ecosystem Any unit that includes all of the organisms in a given area interacting with the physical environment so that a ﬂow of energy leads to an exchange of materials between living and nonliving parts of the system. Environment The surroundings of an organism, both living and nonliving, that potentially affect the organism. Organisms All living things, including people, plants, animals, bacteria, and fungi. Radical Ecology The term used to cover a range of environmental philosophies that reject incremental changes in political systems and cultural values, but favor more fundamental changes to save or improve the environment. This is sometimes known as radical environmentalism. Restoration Ecology The establishment on disturbed and/or degraded sites of former plant and animal communities which existed there. This may involve establishing appropriate conditions, thereby creating a trajectory for Nature to continue the restoration. Succession A sequential change in vegetation, often prompted by changes in other abiotic and sometimes biotic conditions. A concept applied to sequential changes in human populations in an area.

Introduction Ecology is a branch of science devoted to the study of living organisms and the relationships between organisms and their environment. Other deﬁnitions of ecology have concentrated on the patterns in Nature, how they

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originated, how and why they change in space and time, and the vulnerability of those patterns. The term ecology was coined in 1866 as oekologie by Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), a Prussian biologist and zoologist. It is derived from the Greek terms oikos, meaning household, and logos, which translates into study. The Greek word oikonomia is the root of both economy and ecology. The former term means management of the household, and the term ecology means the science of the household. Ecology is a plastic term. It is used in a scientiﬁc, or professional, sense but it is also used in other ways. In the scientiﬁc sense, ecology is a discipline that is practiced by ecologists. Applied ecology is concerned with the management and conservation of habitats, including potentially degrading factors such as pollution. Ecology sometimes constitutes a subdiscipline of biology, al though, even in scientiﬁc ecology literature, there is an argument that ecology is the culmination of all the sci ences. This is because it integrates the various sciences that are concerned with the physical and chemical con ditions of what are constructed as components of ecology. In other uses, the term ‘ecology’ is intentionally meant to be more holistic. Within scientiﬁc ecology there are subareas, including marine ecology and population ecology. In other ﬁelds there are important debates about the role of science versus overtly value driven ap proaches, in ecology. This debate exists within restor ation ecology, and is captured in the tension as to whether restoration ecology is a subarea of ecology, or whether it should be termed ecological restoration, which is more inclusive and to which scientiﬁc ecological knowledge is only one, albeit an important, contributor. Ecology has been called the broadest of the life sci ence disciplines, and therefore, the most indistinct. This is the case both within scientiﬁc ecology, and the use of the term in other contexts to mean an environmental philosophy or as a pseudonym for environment. It has been claimed that no other discipline seeks to achieve what ecology does, that is, to explain a variety of phe nomena at a number of levels. This broad coverage within scientiﬁc ecology has probably contributed, per haps indirectly, to its use in general conversation, further broadening its use but making it even more difﬁcult to deﬁne. Ecology may be used in general conversation to mean how any organism relates to its environment. In everyday language, it is sometimes a synonym for the environment. In some approaches, ‘ecology’ is used in a nonscientiﬁc sense to highlight the importance of

Ecology

connections, in contrast to environment, which are understood as surrounds. It may also be used in place of the term environmental philosophy to describe different political or philosophical movements concerned with the environment. Sometimes ecology is constructed as a more radical concept, as in approaches such as deep ecology, political ecology, or radical ecology. In other approaches it is used as a way of linking Nature with other systems, for example, in the concept of industrial ecology, human ecology, and social ecology. The con temporary politicization of ecology can be traced to the late 1960s, when ecology was reinterpreted by some authors as no longer being a scientiﬁc discipline but ra ther an attitude of mind or the philosophy of a social movement. It is, however, part of a longer tradition of ecology as a natural science engaging with, and being engaged by, social and political thought. In this article these approaches are identiﬁed collectively as normative ecology and their similarities and differences are highlighted. The use of the term ‘ecology’ in ways that may be considered nonscientiﬁc may arise for a number of rea sons, but could indicate a particular critique about sci entiﬁc ecology. This critique centers on the supposed apolitical nature of scientiﬁc knowledge and/or the limitations inherent in the application of scientiﬁc pro cesses to Nature. ‘Ecology’ is not being employed loosely, as some scientists may argue, but critically to identify the shortcomings of the scientiﬁc world view. In summary, ecology may simultaneously become the attitude of mind (i.e., reverence for the Earth, ecological processes, and communities), the normative project (i.e., protection for the Earth, ecological processes, and com munities), and the scientiﬁc justiﬁcation that is con sidered necessary for the normative project.

History The Nineteenth-Century Foundations of Ecology Prior to Haeckel coining the term ‘ecology’, a number of prominent scientists contributed to the development of knowledge that would form the foundations of the sci entiﬁc discipline. In the early nineteenth century, Alex ander von Humboldt identiﬁed relationships between organisms and their environment, including relationships between plant species and climate, in what he considered would be a future plant geography. In 1807, he recom mended that in the great chain of causes and effects no thing and no activity should be regarded in isolation. Unlike other scientiﬁc disciplines that attempted to isolate particular phenomenon from their context, ecologists attempted to understand phenomenon through their relationships. This connectivity was captured by

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Arthur Tansley, who in 1934 coined the term ‘ecosystem’ to link ecology and system. Well before this step was taken, there were similarities between ecologists and nineteenth century naturalists, but the development of ecology as a science, and the rapid growth of scientiﬁc ecology knowledge, meant that a comprehensive general knowledge moved beyond the scope of an educated person. Ecology developed as an organized, scientiﬁc activity that classiﬁed knowledge about Nature in par ticular ways. There was substantial debate among scientists in the nineteenth century about Nature, God, evolution, how to study these phenomena and who should be studying these phenomena. The work of Charles Darwin is crucial in the mid nineteenth century, because he developed the notion that the interaction of various organisms with their environment was essentially the struggle for ex istence. This was the process of natural selection, a term which became modiﬁed in social and economic lan guages to become the survival of the ﬁttest. While Darwin did not use the term ‘ecology’, his research on the relationships between living things and their en vironment is generally recognized as being at the core of ecology. His work inﬂuenced Haeckel, whose deﬁnition of ecology initially appeared in a book that was de veloping Darwin’s notion of competition in Nature. While German in origin, Haeckel’s works were widely translated into English and were inﬂuential in the English speaking world. The roots of ecology may be found in physiology. According to Haeckel, ecology was the practice of tak ing physiology from the laboratory and into the ﬁeld. The focus of this research was largely on the abiotic environment. Ecologists, however, tended to emphasize the biotic environment. This meant a split between ecology and physiology, and a split between laboratory based research (which included zoos) and ﬁeld research where species were studied in their natural surround ings. This raised important methodological questions, particularly the importance of a species’ environment in inﬂuencing its behavior. Was it possible to study animal behavior and derive meaningful conclusions if the ani mal was isolated in a zoo or laboratory and deprived of the stimulation and community in its natural surroundings? The emphasis on the biotic environment within ecology has been challenged in recent years, largely due to signiﬁcant changes in the abiotic environment. Models, such as the interactions between biotic and abiotic factors shown in Figure 1, are important in developing an understanding of how ecosystems work, and how they are likely to respond to changes in parts of the system. Importantly, many of these changes have been caused, if not entirely then certainly in large part, by humans. Ecology cannot continue to exist as a

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Figure 1 (a) A schematic diagram outlining the abiotic and biotic pathways present in a shallow lake ecosystem. (b) A simpliﬁcation of (a), depicting the dominant biotic interactions between higher trophic levels in lakes Sorell and Crescent.

discipline that studies organisms in relation to each other and their surroundings without taking into ac count the modiﬁcation of environmental conditions by humans. This includes changing the biotic environment (e.g., by disrupting food chains, or by intentionally or unintentionally introducing new species into an eco system) and the abiotic environments (human induced climate change).

Tensions in Ecology Scientiﬁc ecology claims to be objective. It follows tra ditional scientiﬁc approaches to knowledge, such as quantiﬁcation and experimentation. Normative ecology is an attitude of mind that focuses on reverence for the Earth. This reverence comes from intimate contact with the Earth as subject. Ontologically, scientiﬁc ecology

Ecology

perceives both competition and cooperation, but often implicitly emphasizes competition for food, habitats, and light. Nature is generally perceived to be dynamic, with no sense of balance. Ecologists in the scientiﬁc ecology approach often present the ﬁndings of scientiﬁc studies to political decision makers. In contrast, normative ecologists often identify a bal ance of Nature, although it is recognized that Nature is dynamic. Normative ecologists generally critique polit ical institutions, and are more likely to take direct action against existing institutions to achieve their normative project. This approach stems largely from an ontological position that believes Nature is based largely on co operation, with competition occurring within limited domains. The cooperation in Nature includes humans cooperating in political action. These tensions partly reﬂect changes in ecology over time. The ﬁrst generation of white American ecologists, such as Frederic Clements, understood natural systems as progressing towards a climax. Once achieved, this was the balance of Nature that humans should not disturb. This approach to ecology underpins some normative ecology positions, but it has been thoroughly critiqued from a scientiﬁc ecology basis by A. G. Tansley, who coined the term ‘ecosystem’, and more recently by Daniel Botkin and the nonequilibrium thermodynamic ecologists who stress dynamism and change in ecosystems. The quest for order in early scientiﬁc ecology, and in some normative ecologies, is predicated on the notion of balance, and the concept of thresholds in a system that is out of balance would attempt to revert to a balanced state. This is ap parent in many human ecology approaches to the issue of population, whereby studies on overshoot among animal species are used as a warning for what is likely to occur if the human population exceeds the capacity of the Earth to support this population. These tensions between normative and scientiﬁc ecology, and within various normative ecologies, are deep divides based on ontological and epistemological differ ences, perceptions of Nature, and normative projects. Within these tensions is the question of the similarities between processes and structures in human society and those of animals, plants, and the Earth. Geographers potentially have an important role in moving debates beyond environmental determinism, and dualisms of human and Nature, to focus on the ongoing processes that constitute humans as part of Nature. There is another tension that derives from ecology’s perceived lower positioning within the hierarchy of sci entiﬁc disciplines. While this entire concept is open to challenge, there is some degree of consensus among scientists that certain branches of science, notably physics and chemistry, are more worthy of the title science than other disciplines, notably ecology and biology. This has been attributed to the normative uses of the term

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‘ecology’, with other science disciplines keen to distance themselves from particular political agendas. It is also due to the debate about whether ecology has laws, similar to physics and chemistry. If ecology cannot produce such laws, is it really a science? At best it can be seen as a soft science, in relation to the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry, or as some ecologists would argue, in the process of reﬁning hypothesis through scientiﬁc research in order to develop laws of ecology. Debates have cen tered on the deﬁnition of a law in science, and whether it allows exceptions, is explanatory, is predictive, and whether it invokes an idealized situation. In this regard, some writers within ecology argue that ecology should be seen as similar to other scientiﬁc disciplines such as physics. Tensions around ecology as a science, and its en gagement with nonscientiﬁc endeavors, are highlighted in the debate about the use of either ecological restoration or restoration ecology. Ecological restoration has been deﬁned as an ensemble of practices that constitute the entire ﬁeld of restoration. These include restoration ecology plus the participating human and natural sciences, politics, technologies, economic factors, and cultural dimensions. By way of contrast, restoration ecology means the scientiﬁc practices that, together, constitute a subdiscipline of ecology. In order to simplify the deﬁnition, ecological restoration has been deﬁned as the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. This raises questions about so called natural ecosystems and human involvement in the degradation and repair of ecosystems. Some authors challenge the explicit lack of value rec ognition in ecological restoration, accusing it of being an overly scientiﬁcally oriented activity. They highlight that values are crucial in deciding which ecological processes or attributes of a landscape should be restored. This work is similar to many of the tensions between human geographers and scientiﬁc ecologists, and while these tensions may not come to a head in debates (although in the past they have done so), this means that certain ecological approaches are not incorporated into human geography and knowledge which is generally recognized in human geography can be absent in ecological analysis.

Normative Ecology – Sub-areas Within what may be termed the normative ecology ap proach, there are a number of approaches that range from left to right on the traditional ideological spectrum, al though many proponents would reject this ideological spectrum and place ecology above, beyond, or in front of it. The range may also be understood as being from strongly anthropocentric to ecocentric, from romantic to technocratic, and from anarchist to authoritarian. The

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following approaches are indicative of some uses of the term ‘ecology’ in ways that differ from scientiﬁc ecology. Some geography literature is claimed as being repre sentative of more than one tradition, hence highlighting the ﬂuidity of the categories and the search for articu lations between some of the approaches discussed below. Cultural Ecology This approach to integrating ecological concerns with human geography is gaining inﬂuence, particularly, in relation to the issues of biodiversity and the establish ment and maintenance of protected areas. The approach is a critique of environmental management approaches that do not adequately consider the impact of environ mental decisions on the livelihoods of people, nor do they consider the importance of local peoples’ knowledge and participation in contributing to positive environmental outcomes. It is a critique of environmental decision making at a distance. The concept of scale employed in this approach is a relational concept of scale, unlike some scientiﬁc ecology approaches that predetermine the scale and then attempt to work within this limitation. Having said this, the approach favors the scale of the household, and is noticeable in that it differs from political ecology which has been understood as concentrating on the political, economic, and social impacts of resource related developments but not necessarily at the micro level of the household. The cultural ecology approach shares similarities with many other environmental approaches that favor decentralization of decision making and with feminist ecological approaches that focus on the micro scale of the household. Deep Ecology This is a radical environmental philosophy which argues that Nature has inherent rights to exist, that humans are part of Nature, and that our ecological awareness comes from experiencing ourselves within Nature. The term emerged in 1973 when the Danish philosopher, Arne Naess, distinguished between shallow ecology (techno centric, anthropocentric, and reformist) and deep ecol ogy. Deep ecology was popularized in North America in the 1980s, and led to the emergence of activist groups, including Earth First! Deep ecology values all life as being intrinsically important, not simply as being of use to human beings. It is ecocentric. Deep ecology advocates dismantling the dominant socioeconomic systems through which humans appropriate Nature and argues for biocentric equality so the desire by humans to dominate Nature is eliminated in favor of humans, as one species, living in Nature. Humans, like other species, must respect Nature’s limits and thresholds in order for all forms of life to live on a sustainable basis. The quality of life, rather than the quantity of life, is emphasized.

Deep ecology has been critiqued as romanticism, fun damentally ﬂawed in its conception of nonhuman parts of Nature having intrinsic value, and antihumanist in its approach, for its inability to distinguish between different parts of humanity (men and women, rich and poor, dif ferent cultural beliefs and practices) and its celebration of outdoor experiences in Nature. This approach has been inﬂuential in the environmental movement, but has had little impact on human geography to date. Feminist Political Ecology This approach draws on both feminist ecology and pol itical ecology. It has been inﬂuential in human geography, perhaps more so than many other feminist ecological approaches. Ecofeminism is the lens through which many feminist geographies of Nature have been produced. While recognized as a broad church, this approach does not necessarily draw on ecology. Feminist political ecology questions the construction of identity, particu larly as a basis for situating the researcher in relation to the research being undertaken. It recognizes multiple subjectivities and seeks to combine traditional geo graphical research techniques with feminist approaches of participatory mapping and oral histories. The ap proach also recognizes the gendering of environments. Recent work within this tradition has also noted the rural bias within political ecology, and attempted to address this issue. Global Ecology This approach is the radical political critique of global and international institutions and events that are per ceived as reformist environmentalism. Scale is crucial here because although these authors adopt a global focus, they are very concerned with the links between local and global representations and impacts. Other uses of this term tend to assume a more physical, and less overtly political, approach, and include the study of the inter actions among the Earth’s ecosystems, land, atmosphere, and oceans to understand how these interactions shape the behavior of the earth system. It is global in the sense that the Earth is seen as a single unit. The approach is not favored in human geography because of the emphasis on multiple scales and the recognition of heterogeneity ra ther than a single system. Human Ecology Human ecology studies the relationships between people and their social and physical environments. It is an ex tension of concepts drawn from ecology to the social realm. The human ecology approach developed in the second decade of the twentieth century, but was made famous in the 1920s by the Chicago School of socio logists, including Park, Burgess, Thomas, and Wirth.

Ecology

These sociologists imported concepts and analogies from ecology (such as community, competition, disturbance, climax equilibrium and invasion, and succession) to de velop theories and models on human society. They were not explicitly concerned with Nature, but they saw similarities in the processes of conﬂict and adjustment undertaken by waves of immigrants to the mid Western cities of the USA to the struggle for existence that Charles Darwin had seen in Nature. The term came to geography via sociology, when a University of Chicago geographer, Harlan Barrows in 1923, deﬁned geography as the science of human ecology. This deﬁnition gave the term a different sense than that used by the sociologists. Barrow’s focus was on human adjustment to physical environments. It was seen as deterministic, and was not favored by geographers and sociologists. The term was used less in geography until the early 1970s, following the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Stockholm 72), when it became more inﬂuential as geographers responded to research agendas about the human environment. In the latter versions of human ecology, humans were not perceived as being different from other species because of their ability to adapt to new environments and environmental change through the use of culture; instead, humans were one species among many that interact with bounded en vironmental conditions. The re emergence of human ecology was critiqued within geography. As early as the 1970s, human ecology was seen by some geographers as being a futile attempt to regain something natural. With the rise of Marxist geography in the early 1970s, geo graphers tended to look more towards political and economic structures, rather than natural processes, to explain changes in a range of environments. Contemporary human ecology, in contrast to the work of geographers nearly 90 years ago, understands the Earth as being ﬁnite but not a closed system, that people must use Nature to survive and that humans, unlike other species, regulate their environment not just through physical measures such as temperature control, but also through symbolic constructions and understandings. The recent use of the term in geography has been somewhat limited, possibly resulting from various interacting fac tors, including the vagueness of the term through use in many disciplines and its connotations with ideas that were popular earlier in the twentieth century.

Industrial Ecology Industrial ecology is an approach that applies the eco system metaphor and model to suggest that industrial systems should be restructured in order to make them compatible with the way natural ecosystems function. It is promoted as an approach to close industrial production

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loops and reduce waste, thereby making better use of resources and preventing the overuse of raw materials. In this approach, corporations should optimize the consumption of energy and materials, minimize waste generation, and use the efﬂuents of one process as the raw material for another process. The existing industrial systems are seen as being antithetical to Nature in that they have linear throughput, whereas in Nature there is roundput as loops are closed. Terms such as ‘roundput’, ‘closing the loop’, and ‘industrial symbiosis’ are used to distinguish industrial ecology from existing throughput systems of industry that are materially open and rely on nonrenewables. This approach has been used by some leading environmental thinkers to offer critiques of capitalist and socialist modes of economic production as being expansionist and linear and therefore non sustainable. The industrial (eco)system is seen as analogous to a natural ecosystem, where there is no waste. This ap proach has been somewhat inﬂuential in engineering, chemistry, and other scientiﬁc and technological discip lines, but has been both lauded and critiqued by urban planners and geographers for its selective use of eco logical metaphors and its inadequate treatment of social and political–economic processes. The tensions between ﬁrms in competition in the marketplace, and ﬁrms co operating to develop industrial ecology processes, is under theorized in the industrial ecology literature. Work by human geographers on trust has added an im portant perspective beyond the technical literature or unexamined assumptions about the nature of competition and cooperation. Political Ecology This is a term that has been used by both anarchist and Marxist inspired authors in international development. The latter use of political ecology has been more in ﬂuential within geography, but has moved somewhat from its Marxist origins and is often the subject of tension be tween the politics and the ecology. Political ecology is seen as being at the intersection of a number of disciplines (see Figure 2), including human geography. Within pol itical ecology there is emphasis on understanding power relationships, and how these relationships are constituted, perpetuated, and changed through engagements with na ture. The use of political ecology approaches to the understanding of issues such as water allocations, land management, deforestation, and so on, has increased in recent years. Calls for a Third World political ecology have emphasized the importance of environments in de veloping countries – their discursive construction being different than that of environmental discourses in de veloped countries – and the political–economic systems that connect developed and developing countries that

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Ecology

The environment, history and power Environmental sciences

Legal-Institutional Terrain

Culture and civil society Social conditions; Environmental law

Managerialism, policy and planning

Eco-philosophy, environmental values & ethics

1. 2.

3. Political Ecology 4.

Ecological design and the built environment

Utopianism, anarchism, and bioregionalism

Ecological economics

Economy and technology

Environmental history and human geography/ecology

Figure 2 The sustainable development literature located within its four intersecting spheres of concern. The numbers locate the four intersecting challenges of political ecology: (1) holism, (2) empowerment and community-building, (3) social justice and equity, and (4) sustainable production and reproduction.

contribute to environmental impacts. This has been in ﬂuential in human geography, particularly with the rec ognition that meso and macro scale political and economic forces establish a context for local environ mental engagements. These engagements concern both humans and the ecology of nonhuman systems, thereby bringing in nonhuman actors.

Nature is a web of life. It is believed that human dom ination of Nature will persist as long as hierarchies within human society are maintained. The term ‘social ecology’ has been used in human geography, largely to denote an approach that builds on the work of the Chicago School but looks at the processes of formation and succession through an understanding of political economy, the div ision of labor, structuration theory, and housing markets.

Social Ecology This approach is most closely associated with the eco anarchists. In this approach, there are no hierarchies in Nature that serve as a natural foundation and justiﬁcation for the existing hierarchies in human society. Instead,

Urban Ecology Urban ecology applied many of the concepts of human ecology to the urban realm. The city was understood as an ecosystem wherein areas within the city experienced

Ecology

processes such as invasion and succession. This applied to the movement of migrant populations, particularly, in regard to a portion of the city being the location of successive waves of groups from different backgrounds moving through an area. The study of urban ecology grew in importance fol lowing the Habitat Conference in Stockholm in 1972. Some uses of the term ‘urban ecology’ are premised on the balance concept, as in the ecological city being a city that is in balance with Nature. Urban ecology, as it has de veloped in the human geographical literature, goes beyond the traditional human ecology in that it recognizes populations, technology, organization, and environment as important variables to be employed in the study of people in cities. Importantly, the concept of environment drawn from ecology is premised on the city being an open system rather than a closed system and therefore is not moving towards a state of equilibrium. This means that there is not a balance of Nature in the social aspects of the city. Urban ecology in the 1970s, inﬂuenced by Marxist geography, recognized the important role of ideology and values in shaping ecological processes. Ecology as scientiﬁc, im plying freedom from values, was rejected in favor of an ecology that was about inﬂuencing ecological systems, but being aware of the values promoting, and being promoted by, changes made by humans. Urban Political Ecology Urban political ecology combines elements of urban ecology and political ecology. It seeks to expose the complex socioecological relationships that shape urban environments. It can be understood as a political economy of urban systems, but focusing on the environmental as pects of the city. In this sense, it builds on a long tradition of academic research into human–Nature relationships that have led to the construction of urban environments. Within urban political economy there is a focus on power and how it is exercised in shaping the city and the lives of people, and other species, in the city. This involves both structures and individual actions. The political ecology background is predominantly Marxist, or at least Marxist inspired, and builds on earlier Marxist urban geography. There are many different and sometimes overlapping approaches within urban political ecology, including those that emphasize urban metabolisms, those that challenge neoliberalism as a system of governance, and those that focus on a particular issue, such as water, poverty, or transport.

The Inﬂuence of Ecology in Human Geography Ecology has been inﬂuential in many other disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, and geography. It has

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inﬂuenced both human and physical geography in dif ferent ways, and at differing times in the history of the disciplines. Some of this inﬂuence is identiﬁed above, in relation to speciﬁc applications of ecological thought within particular normative ecological approaches. Physical geography drew upon the work of geologists and of evolutionary biologists as it emerged as geomorph ology and biogeography. In relation to human geography, ecology has been identiﬁed as a link between the natural and the social scientists. This is because of its content, its language, because of issues of scale, and because the methodologies used in the study of ecology are more closely aligned with social sciences than are other sci entiﬁc disciplines. This is partly due to the origins of ecology in philosophical debate, but also due to the in creasing recognition that humans are part of ecosystems and that it is impossible to study ecology devoid of human impact, and that environmental management (even from a scientiﬁc basis) cannot be separated from human values and beliefs. Scale is important for both geographers and ecolo gists, although there is no unit of scale that is paramount within each discipline. At various times in the history of each discipline various scales have been privileged (e.g., regional geography, and more recently the corporeal geography that has been strongly inﬂuenced by feminist theory). Ecology may be concerned with individual or ganisms (including behavioral ecology, feeding strat egies), populations (including numbers and distribution of a species), entire communities (e.g., competition be tween species or predator–prey relationships), or at lar ger landscape scales (including how spatial variation in the landscape affects the distribution and ﬂow of energy, materials, and individuals). Geographers have also used work from within the scientiﬁc ecology tradition. There have been numerous instances of ecological concepts and content being bor rowed from geographers, economists, and anthropologists by ecologists, and vice versa. The ﬁelds of human ecol ogy, urban ecology, industrial ecology, and landscape ecology are attempts to link the separate disciplines and/ or to overcome the binary between human and Nature. For instance, urban ecology challenges the dualism be tween natural and built environments, but still tends to emphasize biophysical structures and processes relative to social structures and processes. Industrial ecology is increasingly being seen as a way to move towards sus tainable development by seeing industries not as isolated entities, but as part of an industrial (eco)system. Outputs from one industry become inputs into another industry, thereby closing waste loops, and conserving resources and energy. Human ecology drew on scientiﬁc ecology in a number of ways. These included the application of concepts and principles from scientiﬁc ecology,

302

Ecology

particularly concepts such as competition, succession, and their consequences. Some earlier work within human geography took ecological concepts such as competition and succession, and saw within the city a natural order. More recent critiques of this approach have highlighted the importance of political–economic systems and structures in creating areas within cities, and have noted that studies of these areas are like snapshots of a point in time. Human ecology research also included area based studies that combined the physical features of an environment, described in eco logical terms, with the socioeconomic characteristics of an area. There were also studies undertaken that plotted observable social phenomena such as crime rates and mental disorders, and sought to identify the ecological correlation between the social and environmental map ping of an area. Arguably the most important inﬂuence of ecology within human geography has been the provision of methodology. This was particularly the case when ecol ogy was understood as the ordering of natural science knowledge in a rational, comprehensible, and com prehensive way. When systems geography was in vogue in the 1960s (which was consistent with the popularity of systems theory in a number of disciplines), the transfer ence of methodologies applied in the study of ecosystems to the study of land use planning, geomorphology, and cities was considered unproblematic. Recent develop ments in geography that question the basis of classiﬁ cation systems, emphasize the importance of discourse and highlight that situated knowledge means that the transference of ecological methodologies to human geography is curtailed. The beneﬁt of linking geography closely with ecology in the 1960s was that it drew geography closer to mainstream scientiﬁc thought, thus giving geography greater prestige and access to resources. This is still pursued in many universities, largely due to the importance of resources, such that geography has become geographical science. Ironically, the change in name has occurred when the ways of doing geography have moved away from the methodological approaches that are considered rigorous in contemporary scientiﬁc ecology. In the 1960s, it was possible for some geographers to say that the discipline stood in much the same position in relation to ecology as it did 100 years previously. This can be summarized as geographers borrowing concepts from ecology, and applying them in geography. Since the zenith of systems geography, ecology has contributed less to the methodological approaches within human geography and, arguably, more to the content of human geography when geographers draw on ecological knowledge to research complex environ ments and the perception and use of these environments by people.

Conclusion Ecology is a complex term that is a scientiﬁc discipline, used to refer to various environmental philosophies, and is used in popular vernacular to refer to the environment. Ecology engages with many issues that are familiar to human geographers, with ideas and concepts moving between the two disciplines. This is likely to continue, albeit in a critical manner, as popular awareness and concern about the importance of the environment is likely to increase in forthcoming years. Within human geography, the multitude of theoretical approaches that draw on, or intersect with, differing notions of ecology, is likely to be expanded in future years as a result of the oretical developments in both ecology and geography. It could also be anticipated that links between the various forms of normative ecology within human geography will continue to develop, as researchers identify the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches, the potential for articulation, and the need to establish new research agendas to respond to changes in the world. See also: Anarchism/Anarchist Geography; Biodiversity; Chicago School; Conservation and Ecology; Darwinism (and Social Darwinism); Determinism/Environmental Determinism; Environmental Studies and Human Geography; Environmentalism; Political Ecology; Radical Environmentalism; Systems Theory.

Further Reading Barrows, H. (1923). Geography as human ecology. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 13, 1 14. Berry, B. and Kasarda, J. (1977). Contemporary Urban Ecology. New York: Macmillan. Botkin, D. (1990). Discordant harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bramwell, A. (1989). Ecology in the 20th Century. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Chorley, R. (1973). Geography as human ecology. In Chorley, R. (ed.) Directions in geography, pp 155 169. London: Methuen & Co. Colyan, M. and Ginzburg, L. R. (2003). Laws of nature and laws of ecology. Oikos 101, 649 653. Devall, B. and Sessions, G. (1985). Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered. Salt Lake City, UT: Peregrine Smith. Keil, R. (2005). Progress report Urban political ecology. Urban Geography 26, 640 651. Lawrence, R. (2003). Human ecology and its applications. Landscape and Urban Planning 65, 31 40. Luke, T. (2002). Deep ecology: Living as if nature mattered: Devall and Sessions on defending the earth. Organization and Environment 15, 178 186. Merchant, C. (2005). Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (2nd edn.). New York: Routledge. Naess, A. (1973). The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movements: A summary. Inquiry 16, 95 100. Worster, D. (1977). Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zimmerer, K. (2006). Cultural ecology: At the interface with political ecology The new geographies of environmental conservation and globalization. Progress in Human Geography 30, 63 78.

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Relevant Websites http://www.stetson.edu Association of American Geographers: Cultural and political ecology specialty group. http://www.che.ac.uk Centre for human ecology.

http://www.esa.org Ecological society of America. http://www.is4ie.org International society for industrial ecology. http://www.ser.org Society for ecological restoration international.

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Economic Crises M. Webber, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Accumulation The accumulation of capital is the increase of wealth. In orthodox economics, the equivalent term is capital formation. Capital can be accumulated in tangible means of production (real investment) or as ﬁnance (in paper assets or such nonproductive assets as residences). Orthodox economists also identify human and social capital formation, but these terms confuse investment with its effect. Asset Appreciation/Depreciation Productive assets are used to produce goods or services, rather than held principally for resale. For example, machines, buildings, patents, or licenses can be ﬁxed assets of a business. Financial assets include ﬁnancial instruments (such as stocks) and real estate, the price of which depends on supply and demand rather than their costs of production. Appreciation is the increase in value of an asset, and depreciation the decrease. An asset-based economy is one in which growth is based largely on the appreciation of ﬁnancial assets. Capital Money invested in assets for proﬁt. Development State/State-Led Development It refers to countries in which the state has, through macroeconomic planning, led private capital to develop speciﬁc industries that are thought to serve the national interest. The term is especially applied to countries in East Asia in the late twentieth century. Equilibrium A state in which economic actors have no incentive to alter their decisions. For example, in a competitive market, there is a price at which the quantity demanded by consumers is equal to the quantity supplied by producers. At this price, consumers and producers are satisﬁed with their decisions. According to trade theory, a trade imbalance (country A consistently exports more than it imports) means that A buys more foreign currencies than foreigners buy of its currency; therefore, the price of A’s currency tends to rise, making its exports relatively more expensive. Such price changes in A’s currency continue until the trade imbalance is corrected. Governance As a process, it uses social institutions and structures to develop and manage consistent policies and decision-rights for a given area of responsibility (a corporation or a state, for example). Government is a mode of governance of the state. Rate of Proﬁt The amount of proﬁt in relation to the size of the investment. In Marxist political economy, the rate of proﬁt is surplus/capital invested, where the surplus includes proﬁts, interest, and rent.

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What Is an Economic Crisis? The Case of East Asia In May 1997, global investors began to sell East Asian currencies. Despite rapidly rising interest rates, cur rencies fell sharply in Thailand, the Philippines, Ma laysia, Indonesia, and Singapore. The Hong Kong dollar also came under attack, but was rigorously defended by the Chinese government. By November 1997, as it be came clear that eight of Korea’s 30 largest chaebol were either bankrupt or ﬁnancially strained, the Korean won was being forced downward. By early 1998, the currencies of Australia and New Zealand had been drawn into the vortex. The Taiwanese dollar ($NT) fell steadily too. The only country in this region that largely escaped the turmoil was China: its currency was not freely traded internationally, and it supported the Hong Kong dollar. The Japanese yen also escaped devaluation. Be tween 1998 and 2002, the Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnamese currencies had been devalued by an average of 15–20% against the US dollar, while the currencies of Australia, Cambodia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand all traded at about 30% below 1997 levels. The Philippines peso and Indonesian rupiah fell even more sharply. Ten years after the start of the crisis, the currencies of Australia and New Zealand have re covered their lost values, and those of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have largely recovered. But the Cambodian, Malaysian, Thai, and Vietnamese currencies are still trading at 30% below the 1997 levels, the Philippines’ currency has fallen to almost a half of its precrisis value, and the Indonesian rupiah is still worth only a third of its precrisis value. The crisis also affected rates of growth of output. The most obviously affected have been Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia, all of which were forced to seek the Inter national Monetary Fund (IMF)’s support. However, other countries in the region have suffered too, particularly Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan, which are closely connected to the three principal patients. The impact of the crisis on levels of output is startling: in Korea and Taiwan by 2005 levels of output were 20–25% below what they would have been without the crisis, and in the other four countries, 30–35% (see Figure 1). This was the ‘Asian ﬁnancial crisis’, one of the most dramatic of a series of ﬁnancial crises that have affected developed and developing countries since the late 1970s. Similar events in the developed world include the attack on the sterling and lira in 1992 and on the Australian

Economic Crises

200

250 Indonesia Indonesia trend

150 100 50

Index of GDP (1997 = 100)

Index of GDP (1997 = 100)

250

150 100 50

150 100 50

200

Republic of China (Taiwan) Republic of China (Taiwan) trend

150 100 50 0 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 Year

0 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 Year

250

250 Singapore Singapore trend

150 100 50 0 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 Year

Index of GDP (1997 = 100)

Index of GDP (1997 = 100)

Korea (S) Korea (S) trend

250 Malaysia Malaysia trend

Index of GDP (1997 = 100)

Index of GDP (1997 = 100)

250

200

200

0 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 Year

0 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 Year

200

305

Thailand 200

Thailand trend

150 100 50 0 1980 1983 1986 1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 Year

Figure 1 Index values (1997 1) of gross domestic product in constant US dollars of 2000, 1980 2006 in six East and Southeast Asian countries. Note: solid lines track actual levels of GDP; the dotted lines post-1997 indicate what GDP would have been had it continued to grow at the average rate for 1988 97. The difference is an indication of the effect of the 1997 Asian ﬁnancial crisis. From World Bank, World development indicators; for Taiwan, Director General of Statistics, Executive Yuan, Republic of China.

dollar in 1985, and the banking crises of Finland (1991– 93), Norway (1987–89), Spain (1977–85), Sweden (1991), and the USA (1984–91). This crisis is important for three main reasons. First, for many people in East and Southeast Asia, the crisis is likely to be a deﬁning event of their lives. Throughout the region, the incidence of poverty has increased; divorce and suicide rates in Thailand sky rocketed after the crisis; the number of infants abandoned after birth or placed in orphanages increased; and there was a rise in the number of arrests for drug related

criminal activity and property crimes. Within Indonesia, people were killed in riots triggered by the economic collapse. Second, governments have been ejected and political power within the region has been substantially realigned as the crisis has forced changes to the political economy of the Asia Paciﬁc region. The IMF has become a dominant force in world politics: the US$110 billion in ﬁnancial assistance to Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand that the IMF brokered has enabled it to demand a variety of reforms in those countries. The Asian Development

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Bank (ADB), by contrast, was virtually ignored, and the World Bank’s concern about poverty and sustainable development carried little weight against the demands for market reform. Similarly, despite the magnitude of its assistance to the region, Japan has lost authority in comparison to the USA and China. Finally, ideologies have gained and lost too. By the argument that the cause of the crisis is local, the entire idea of a miracle system has been dismantled. By Japan’s own inept management, the whole idea of state led de velopment is ridiculed. To the IMF, to most of the Western world’s economists and press, the crash in East Asia was not simply a change in rates of growth, but was equally the signiﬁer of the failure of a development model. The localization of the social and political insti tutions that sustain markets by regulating, stabilizing, and legitimizing them was ignored under the rush to impose American styles of economic governance. This article explains some of the theories that seek to interpret such events. It brieﬂy outlines the explanations typically offered for the crisis in East Asia, arguing that these pay insufﬁcient attention to the fact that similar crises have affected a great variety of countries – not simply developing countries with supposedly poor standards of governance. Following that argument, a theory of crisis that is in the Marxist tradition is outlined.

Explaining the East Asian Crisis Most explanations of the ﬁnancial crisis in Asia are real and speciﬁc, in the sense that they identify characteristics of East Asian economies and societies to which investors reacted. Of course, crises are overreactions to events as investors panic, in a chaotic follow the leader process. A real, speciﬁc explanation, therefore, means an explan ation that starts with events or conditions in the real economy of a speciﬁc place: something wrong in East Asia causes investors to change their behavior (and per haps panic). The chain of causation runs: East Asia > ﬁnance system. What economic events in the year or two preceding the crisis may have triggered the change in expectations and the panic? Perhaps the most common explanation of what went wrong in the short run is that current account deﬁcits widened, causing exchange pressures to mount. Once doubts about the solvency of the borrowers arose, investors began to withdraw ﬁnancing and exchange rates fell. As the economies came under pressure, property and equity investments lost value and the currencies became the targets of speculation, facilitated by ﬁnancial liber alization, which made it easy for speculators to take advantage of falling currencies. But this argument leads to another question: what were the underlying social conditions of economic

governance that themselves permitted (or encouraged) those events? Some of the most politicized interpretations of the crisis have focused on this second question. One of the most inﬂuential politicized interpretations is ‘failure of governance’. This thesis takes several forms. The ﬁrst is a story about homegrown vulnerabilities: lack of transparency, insufﬁcient bank regulation, and personal inﬂuences on credit allocation. The second is a story about moral hazard – the belief by Western banks that Asian banks and corporations were in effect guaranteed by their governments, so the risks were perceived to be at gov ernment rather than private levels. However, the East Asian ﬁnancial institutions were effectively unregulated, making loans that were risky and that drove up the prices of assets in East Asia. These two forms of argument identify a failure of governance, either state or corporate: lack of adequate controls to ensure safe lending. A second long run explanation begins with changes in the nature of capital ﬂows into developing countries. Private capital ﬂows to developing countries increased sixfold during the 1990s, providing ﬁnance of a kind and magnitude that such countries had previously not learned to manage. These huge inﬂows of capital entered what were more or less development states, in which high rates of household savings were deposited in banks, which ‘on lent’ them to ﬁrms. Firms had high debt–equity ratios, but grew fast. This bank based, high debt model became the development state in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, steering market forces in line with national goals (Table 1). Because the economies of East Asia were successful, they attracted high levels of foreign capital. That capital, leveraged through the domestic banking systems, drove very rapid growth in supply. The argument goes: with ﬁnancial liberalization, with faster and easier ﬂows of short term capital, and, in some countries, with dem ocratization, ﬁrm–bank–government collaboration became more ﬁxated on short term issues rather than long term development objectives. Particularly, the management of high levels of indebtedness proved problematic when capital could more easily ﬂow across borders and burst property bubbles. Those problems led in the end to a classic property and equity speculative bubble, which eventually began to burst in Thailand in 1995. However, if the crisis was primarily the result of deep rooted problems (‘naughty’ East Asians or vast inﬂows of unregulated foreign capital), it should not have taken the world by surprise. Until the third quarter of 1997, there was widespread optimism about the region among international bankers (the spreads between Asian and comparable US interest rates narrowed during the 1990s through the ﬁrst half of 1997), credit rating agencies (ratings remained unchanged throughout 1996 and the ﬁrst half of 1997), securities ﬁrms (published forecasts), and the IMF itself (in its published country assessments).

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Table 1

Capital ﬂows into developing countries, 1990 97

Private ﬁnancial ﬂowsa Ofﬁcial ﬁnancial ﬂows Foreign direct investment

1990

1992

1994

1996

1997

29.8 56.3 32.8

57.1 55.5 49.6

107.1 45.7 90.4

170.6 40.8 128.7

156.5 100.0 125.0

a

units are billions of US$. From: Howell M. (1998). Asia’s ‘Victorian’ ﬁnancial crisis, paper pre sented at the East Asia Crisis workshop at the Institute of Development Studies, http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/research/howell.pdf.

Real analyses of the causes of the crisis assume that events in the real economy drove the ﬁnancial system. Thus, they pay far too little respect to the relations be tween the ﬁnancial and the real economy that are re vealed by this and earlier banking crisis. Similar crises occur in even the best regulated of ﬁnancial systems. Perhaps, then, the central theoretical implication of this crisis is that the real cause is irrelevant? Perhaps, that is, rather than looking for the cause of the ﬁnancial crisis in the conditions of the East Asian economies, we should recognize that the ﬁnancial system is now driving itself, independent of conditions in the real economy? How does such a state of affairs come to be?

Theory of Crisis In order to understand the emergence of such a ﬁnancial system, let us go back to the real economy of production and exchange. The history of capitalist accumulation suggests that growth has continued now for several centuries, but that periods of rapid expansion are limited. Many Keynesians and Marxists argue that economic expansion is checked by forces internal to the capitalist mode of production. Marx’s theory of the falling rate of proﬁt provides the foundation on which the account rests. Versions of the theory motivate different understandings of the historical economic geography of the post war world. Theories of the rate of proﬁt and of ﬂuctuations in growth are hotly con tested, but the variety of positions in that debate reﬂect different and partial models of the growth process, all of which insist that growth follows equilibrium characteristics. Accumulation is a deﬁning feature of the capitalist mode of production. Capitalists – owners of the means of production and controllers of the social surplus – have constantly to readvance capital in search of proﬁt. How ever, techniques of production change and, like Smith and Ricardo before him, Marx argued that the process of capital accumulation was subject to a series of checks and contradictions – internal barriers to the self expansion of capital. Three barriers to the accumulation of capital were identiﬁed: crises arising from underconsumption (after prolonged growth, the capacity of the economy to produce

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exceeds the demand for commodities), from a squeeze on proﬁts (after prolonged growth, increasing demand for labor leads to an increase in wages relative to proﬁts), and from the replacement of labor by plant, machinery, and equipment in production (which means that exploitable labor – the source of proﬁts – comprises an ever smaller proportion of the cost of production). Early writers, including Marx, identiﬁed these bar riers to the accumulation of capital, but their analyses were qualitative and could not specify the relative mag nitudes of the forces tending to increase and the forces tending to decrease the rate of proﬁt. The technical ap paratus of theory was not able to characterize this problem until the 1960s, when a stream of attempts were made to specify how all these variables are related. These formal mathematical models of the economy generally relied on the assumptions that prices are at equilibrium, that real wages are constant, that all that is produced is sold, and that all capital is productively employed; with these assumptions, the models demonstrated that cost reducing technical changes increase the equilibrium rate of proﬁt; that is, there is no real internal barrier to the self expansion of capital. Actually, though, economies are never in equilibrium. Instances of a commodity do not all command the same price; the demand and supply of commodities do not match; wages depend not only on the demand and supply of labor but also on historical and geographical con ditioning; capital is under or oversupplied. Productivity change is a probabilistic process in which marginal ad justments and learning reﬂect imperfect attempts to ﬁnd better technical conditions rather than optimal states. Location is dominated by history and by local attempts to overcome history: the East Asian dragons and other newly industrialising economies (NIEs) have demon strated just how powerful local struggle can be in es caping structural traps. So macroeconomic dynamics turn on the relations between the demand for labor, wages, the demand for commodities, and the supply and demand for capital – in an economy that is not evolving along an equilibrium growth path. In such a general economic model, the history of proﬁtability depends on the re lations that have been assumed away in the equilibrium models: between accumulation and the rate of growth of the labor force; between wages and the demand for commodities; between investment policies and supply; and between capacity and demand. In the short run, the rates of change of unit costs, net exports, output, and capital can take on unrelated values. So, the rate of proﬁt can rise or fall: trade, the rates of growth of demand, supply, and capital stock, and the rates of technical and wage change all interact to produce an actual history of proﬁtability. In the longer run, if the rate of proﬁt is rising and production is expanding, capacity constraints begin to

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bind. The critical constraints are that demand cannot exceed supply; the demand for labor cannot exceed its supply; and output cannot exceed the capacity to pro duce. These constraints mean that: either the rates of investment, growth of output, change in net exports, or change in unit costs of production cause the rate of proﬁt to fall, or the rate of proﬁt is rising and the economy is driven up against the constraints. In turn, the constraints mean that increases in the rate of proﬁt depend on re ducing unit costs of production or on increasing the level of net exports as a proportion of domestic demand. But in the longest run, other nations do not permit an economy to continually increase its net exports, for one country’s export success is another country’s failure. In the extreme longest run, therefore, net exports are a constant proportion of domestic demand (either exactly or on average over a period of years). In that case, if the constraints are met as equalities (either exactly or on average over a period of years), the rate of proﬁt is constant (or ﬂuctuates about a constant mean) and is limited by the rate of growth of the labor force; if the constraints are met as inequalities, the rate of proﬁt falls. The history of capitalism so far indicates that the con straints are met as equalities over the very long run (of hundreds of years), but that over shorter periods of 50 years or so the constraints are met as inequalities and proﬁt rates fall.

Finance There is good evidence that the proﬁtability of pro duction in capitalist economies ﬂuctuates in this manner (see, for example, Figure 2). In the USA, there were two periods of relatively high proﬁts, in the 1870s/early 1880s and in the period after World War II, and two periods of lower proﬁt rates, between 1880 and the 1930s and after 1970. (The timing of such ﬂuctuations is different in different countries.) How does investment respond to such ﬂuctuations in proﬁtability? As the value of investment in production falls, so the relative beneﬁts of ﬁnancial speculation rise. Histories of Western capitalism suggest that periods of proﬁtability and growth in the real economy are suc ceeded and separated by periods of dominance by ﬁ nancial capital and the emergence of a new leader in the international economy. So it was in the Italian city states in fourteenth to mid seventeenth centuries; in the Netherlands between late seventeenth and late eight eenth centuries; in Britain between late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries; and in the USA between late nineteenth century and the present day. Finance capital is comprised of money drawn out of production. Firms disinvest; thus the low rate of proﬁt is translated into low rates of growth of output (and falling

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Figure 2 The rate of proﬁt in the US nonresidential economy, 1870 1999. Date from Dumenil, G. and Levy, D. (2001). Periodizing capitalism: Technology, institutions and relations of production. In Albritton, R., Itoh, M., Westra, R. & Zuege, A. (eds.) Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalizations, pp 141 162. London: Palgrave.

working conditions). Rather than extracting surplus from workers, ﬁnance capital earns proﬁts: (1) from other capitalists (by buying low, selling high) and (2) by re allocating itself into new spheres of production (new commodities and new locales for capitalist production). The post 1970 emergence of ‘global capital’ is in this interpretation merely the latest in a series of phases of alternation between dominance by commodity and ﬁ nance capital. To understand the ﬁnancial economy, let us start by thinking about the way in which the value of money is set in trade. Suppose that there are two countries, A and B, that trade. As B exports to A, people in A must use their $A to buy $B in order to pay the producers of B for their exports. The demand for $B relative to $A rises, which tends to raise the relative value of $B compared to $A. A contrary motion occurs when A exports to B. If the balance of trade is such that A exports more than it imports, the demand for $A is greater than the demand for $B, and so the value of $A rises relative to the value of $B: A’s exports tend to become more expensive. Two features of this story are important: ﬁrst, the real move ment of commodities drives the contrary movement of money and so the relative prices of currencies, and sec ond, the movements are compensating – a trade im balance calls forth currency changes that tend to remedy the trade imbalance. But the ﬁnancial ﬂows (like those into East Asia) were not of this kind. Under conditions of global liquidity and easy transfers of money, the strength of the East Asian economies attracted capital. Those inﬂows did not

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compensate for the movement of commodities: the in ﬂows of money were themselves the independent vari able. However, as money ﬂows from B to A, three effects occur. First, a ﬂow of money from B to A implies an increase in the demand for $A and so an increase in its price. Second, since much of this capital was used to buy ﬁxed assets rather than productive facilities, the inﬂow stimulated rising asset prices. Third, the increased availability of money in relation to local production within A (and the lack of money in B relative to pro duction) tended to increase the trade deﬁcit of A. This system is not self compensating: the revaluation of the $A and the inﬂation of asset prices both tend to encourage increased inﬂows of capital by raising their proﬁtability. The relationship between the ﬂows of commodities, the ﬂows of money, and changes in the relative values of money thus depends on which ﬂow is driving the system. If the values of currencies are set mainly by trade, then a ﬂow of money from B to A implies that the $A is re valued, the trade imbalance falls, and money ﬂows di minish. If the values of currencies are set mainly by ﬁnancial considerations and asset prices, then the re valuation encourages additional inﬂows of money and growing trade deﬁcits. Increasingly, the latter consider ation became dominant in East Asia: capital inﬂows stimulate asset appreciation, trade deﬁcits, and currency revaluations (or at least relative currency stability in the face of trade deﬁcits). Conversely, in the case of Japan: capital outﬂows have stimulated asset depreciation, trade surpluses, and currency devaluations (or at least currency stability in the face of trade surpluses). In other words, the exchange rates are shifting in nonorthodox directions, dancing to the tune of capital ﬂows rather than to trade ﬂows. Under such a regime, capital inﬂows created the twin problems of East Asia: an asset bubble and in creasing competition within producers’ export markets.

Conclusions There may have been failures of governance, degener ation of the development state model in East Asia. But these conditions merely identiﬁed the target for the speculation (and perhaps exacerbated its effects). How ever, there would have been a ﬁnancial crisis somewhere, just as there have been currency and banking crises since the 1980s in the developed as well as in the developing world. In other words, explanations of the long run or underlying causes of the crisis must focus not on

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conditions in East Asia but on the mode of operation of global ﬁnancial markets. That in turn reﬂected the de clining proﬁtability of production within the Western world since the 1960s and therefore the emergence of incentives for ﬁrms to reallocate money from production to ﬁnance. With increasing sums of money withdrawn from production in the West came both the crises of their manufacturing sectors in the 1970s and 1980s and the new prominence of international ﬁnance capital. In the past, such episodes of international ﬁnancial capital have ended with the recovery of proﬁtable pro duction (as, for example, in the emergence of the US manufacturing in the late nineteenth century and the reconstruction after World War II). Perhaps the emer gence of China and India is signaling the start of a new spurt of production and the relative decline in the he gemony of ﬁnance? In the past, too, for reasons explored here, such spurts have also ended in falling proﬁts and the search for new outlets for unproductive capital. See also: Capitalism; East Asian Miracle; Finance, Historical Geographies of; Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Regulation.

Further Reading Braudel, F. (1981 1984). Civilisation and Capitalism, 3 vols. New York: Harper and Row. Dumenil, G. and Levy, D. (2001). Periodizing capitalism: Technology, institutions and relations of production. In Albritton, R., Itoh, M., Westra, R. & Zuege, A. (eds.) Phases of Capitalist Development: Booms, Crises and Globalizations, pp 141 162. London: Palgrave. Harvey, D. (1982). The Limits to Capital. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Lipietz, A. (1986). Behind the crisis: The exhaustion of a regime of accumulation. A ‘regulation school’ perspective on some French empirical work. Review of Radical Political Economics 18, 13 32. Mandel, E. (1975). Late Capitalism. London: New Left Books. Webber, M. J. and Rigby, D. L. (1999). Accumulation and the rate of proﬁt: Regulating the macroeconomy. Environment and Planning A 31, 141 164. Webber, M. (2001). Finance and the real economy: Theoretical implications of the ﬁnancial crisis in Asia. Geoforum 32, 1 13.

Relevant Websites http://www.marxists.org Marxists Internet Archives. http://www.rgemonitor.com RGE Monitor. http://www.worldbank.org The World Bank.

Economic Development, Rural D. Storey, University of Worcester, Worcester, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Rural Socioeconomic Change Throughout most of the so called ‘developed’ world, agriculture is of declining importance in economic terms. What are commonly referred to as processes of mod ernization have contributed to an expansion in average farm size, increased mechanization, and concomitant declines in the numbers employed in agriculture. In the United Kingdom in the early 1950s, agriculture em ployed over one million people; this number has since halved. Amalgamation into larger farm units has seen the number of holdings decline from over 520 000 in 1939 to a current level of just over 200 000 while France’s agri cultural population has more than halved since 1980. Simultaneously, there has been a reduction in the relative contribution agriculture makes to national economies. In Spain, agriculture now accounts for around 5% of em ployment and some 3% of GDP while in the USA and the UK less than 2% of employment is in agriculture. (It should of course be noted that agriculture continues to be of major signiﬁcance in other parts of the world contributing well over half of GDP and employment in some countries of Asia and sub Saharan Africa.) Paral leling this decline has been a growing diversity of em ployment in many rural localities reﬂecting the growth of other economic activities in the countryside. Rural areas now have a more diverse economy with a growth of (nonagricultural) industry and, more particularly, ser vices. The footloose nature of some industries has meant they may ﬁnd it advantageous to locate in rural areas in order to avoid some of the diseconomies that may be associated with congested urban centers. The growth of modern information and communications technology, most notably the internet, means an increasing number of companies and individuals can, in theory at least, work almost anywhere thereby (it is argued) rendering place unimportant. The increasing role of the service sector globally is one signiﬁcant element. Tourism in particular has been seen to be of major importance with rural places increasingly endeavoring to repackage themselves in order to tap into the tourist market. The growing shift away from what have been referred to as landscapes of production to landscapes of consumption and the apparent commodiﬁcation of the countryside means we are in an era where rural places are increasingly endeavoring to reimagine themselves in order to deal with the broader processes of rural change and restructuring which they have experienced. This attempt

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to promote some form of local distinctiveness is part of a broader strategy of place promotion which is seen as necessary in a competitive visitor market. These changes indicate that rural areas have become more globalized and, rather than being linked primarily into the local area, they are now increasingly enmeshed in national and international linkages. One obvious consequence of these structural shifts is the changing social composition of the countryside. There has been in migration into many rural areas from urban centers, a phenomenon generally referred to as counter urbanization. In England, for example, the population of rural areas increased substantially in the latter part of the twentieth century. While these changes are spatially and temporally uneven, the increasing economic and social heterogeneity of many rural areas means that rural and agriculture are no longer synonymous and this in turn has led many governments to recognize the need to devise rural development policies which embrace a broad spectrum of economic activities and more socially het erogeneous populations. The traditional approach to development and plan ning centered on planners and development specialists – a professional elite – advocating speciﬁc developmental pathways for cities or for rural areas. Attempts to entice industry to locate in more peripheral rural locations such as the west of Ireland or the Scottish Highlands, through mechanisms such as preferential grant rates and the construction of ‘advance’ factories in rural areas, were among the elements in such policies. This ‘top down’ development philosophy was much criticized for a var iety of reasons. Chief among these was a concern that such an approach failed to consider the views of those most directly affected – local residents. Such criticisms have in recent decades led to the promotion of more ‘bottom up’ approaches centered on the involvement of local people and the empowerment of those people so that they actively participate in devising strategies for their own areas.

Integration, Participation, and Partnership Changing economic and social relations have given added urgency to the need for more imaginative and integrated approaches to tackling the problems faced by rural areas. These approaches are characterized by an espousal of the

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importance of integration and participation. Integration can be interpreted in both a sectoral sense, whereby the various elements of the rural economy have a role to play in the development of rural places, and in a political and administrative sense, whereby various interested partners, organizations, and individuals are engaged within the development process. In this latter sense, the current development philosophy emphasizes the importance of participation and is underpinned by an espousal of the centrality of community involvement, empowerment, and capacity building. Four broad reasons might be suggested for the promotion of this strategy. First, the ‘bottom up’ approach could be said to reﬂect a democratization of the development process. Second, it has the potential to provide economic beneﬁts to increasingly diverse rural areas where there is a need for more locally attuned ap proaches rather than generic blueprints. Third, there is perceived to be a need for local responses to those global processes which have tended to open up localities to outside competition. Finally, the involvement of local individuals and agents appears logical in that it utilizes local knowledge and skills and it may ensure more success given it enjoys a degree of local support. The approach is seen then as not just socially and politically desirable but also more effective and economically beneﬁcial. All of these point away from cross spatial solutions imposed from outside and toward the need to be ﬂexible in the approaches taken to rural development in order to take account of local circumstances. This more ﬂexible ap proach could be seen to tap into the nature of people’s identiﬁcation with locality and community – what might broadly be seen as their sense of place. This version of rural development is delivered through partnership arrangements bringing together interested groups and individuals from the statutory and voluntary sectors, including representatives of relevant agencies as well as local actors. This would appear to be a logical extension of a bottom up approach. In the European Union (EU), the Cork Declaration in 1996 gave more substance to a partnership approach, and integration, participation, and empowerment have now become buzzwords within the contemporary development dis course in much of Europe. The idea that developmental solutions to local problems can be dealt with through mechanisms that draw together representatives of local authorities, the private sector, and voluntary and com munity groups is now the accepted orthodoxy throughout EU countries. The emphasis on partnership could be said to signify a shift from government to governance, a perspective which extends beyond the formal structures of central and local government to embrace the interactions be tween a range of actors at various levels in the spatial hierarchy and having varying degrees of inﬂuence. In general terms, the move to a more participative and

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partnership based approach might be seen in a positive light. On the surface at least, it appears to encourage decentralized decision making and recognizes the role of local people in the development process. This apparent local sensitivity might be seen as more desirable than externally imposed strategies. The encouragement of indigenous potential may also serve to break down the division between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’, between internal ‘resident’ and external ‘expert’. In broader terms, this shift might be seen as a reﬂection of the replacement of a modernist vision of planning with a more post modernist approach in which rural diversity and local differences are highlighted and celebrated. Underlying much of this appears to be an assumption that partner ship and participation are intrinsically good things to the extent that the supposed merits of the approach have become acts of faith not to be questioned.

Contemporary Examples The EU’s LEADER program provides a good example of this partnership approach to rural development. A fourth phase of this program is underway aimed at fostering economic development in rural areas utilizing a part nership approach and emphasizing innovation in the types of projects to be encouraged. LEADER has recognized that in addition to the need to demonstrate some form of sustainable economic output such as job creation, social, cultural, and environmental outcomes are of importance. LEADER has operated on the basis of providing part funding to local projects which could be seen as innova tive within that particular area. The program operates through a series of geographically based ‘local action groups’ consisting of representatives of the appropriate local authorities, other development agencies, and local community groups. In this way, the statutory, private, and voluntary sectors are brought together under one um brella. The types of project eligible have included craft type activities, local heritage initiatives, tourist related activities, support for the marketing of local produce, and promotion of local events. Another of LEADER’s under lying aims has been the encouragement of local action. As a consequence, funding has also been used to encourage local animation and capacity building thereby em phasizing the community development aspect. While agriculture may be seen to be of diminishing importance, recent years have seen a growing emphasis on local food production driven by a number of factors, including health concerns, perceived higher food quality, the desire to support local producers, resistance to supermarkets, and the reduction of ‘food miles’. As a consequence, the promotion and branding of local and regional foods and drinks has become a noteworthy phenomenon. An example of successful regional branding

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is the Fuchsia brand in West Cork in Ireland under which much local food produce is marketed. Elsewhere in Europe, North America, and Australia an increasing emphasis on regional, niche and heritage foods is discernible. Products such as wine and olive oil are increasingly incorporated into tourism promotional strategies in southern France, Italy, and elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Alongside this there has been a resur gence of local farmers’ markets in the UK and the USA. More broadly, these developments can be seen as symptomatic of increasing pluriactivity as farms diversify into other arenas leading some to characterize this as a shift from a productivist to a postproductivist era. An extension of this ‘theming’ idea is to market a locality under a ‘brand name’ in order, among other things, to increase visitor numbers. The idea of place branding has a long history reﬂected in ‘designated’ landscapes such as the national parks of England, their extensive equivalents in the USA and Canada, or parcs naturels regionaux in France. However, its usage as a promotional tactic is evidenced through the use of lit erary ﬁgures with the likes of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and Catherine Cookson Country in the Northeast of England as examples of local ‘literary branding’. In the United States many small settlements engage in local branding: the former silver mining town of Wallace, Idaho, styles itself ‘the silver capital of the world’. Others associate themselves with a nearby attraction so the small town of Columbia Falls in Montana is the ‘Gateway to Glacier National Park’. Others endeavor to ﬁnd a niche for themselves, an example being the promotion of bookshops in Be´cherel, in Brittany, in northern France. Besides being a cite du livre, Be´cherel like other small towns in the region is designated un petite cite´ de caracte´re; a devise used to boost visitor numbers. Other examples of local level initiatives aimed at encouraging regeneration of rural localities include government sponsored at tempts to regenerate market towns in England (and similar attempts to rejuvenate small towns in Australia and the USA) and the promotion of walking, cycling, and driving routes in rural localities. Much has been written by geographers and others on these changes in emphasis and two key strands appear to emerge. One of these is a focus on what might be seen as technical considerations surrounding how best for part nership working to occur and to be successful. Within this, attention has been paid to evaluating the effective ness of programs and the devising of toolkits to improve the ‘output’ of these. However, such apolitical assump tions elide important questions of power. Consequently, a more critical perspective has emerged directed at the underlying ethos of contemporary development prac tices. From this perspective, it is argued there is a need to consider the political dimensions of rural develop ment because (like any other form of development) it is

not a politically neutral process as measures imple mented are likely to beneﬁt some while simultaneously disadvantaging others. Within a ‘Third World’ context, the replacement of a ‘top down’ orthodoxy by another participative one to which all must subscribe is seen by some as merely a new form of tyranny rather than her alding a new and radical approach to development. In essence, what this suggests is that more attention needs to be paid to issues of power and the variable power re lations at play.

The Contested Nature of ‘Community’ Contemporary development rhetoric highlights the im portance of community development. ‘Community’ is a term with potent meaning and one which tends to induce warm and comforting feelings. It is also something felt by many people to be inherent within rural areas and is associated with a more general lauding of a rural way of life as distinct from a supposedly more atomized urban lifestyle. By virtue of this, the promotion of a com munity based approach to economic development is something which is useful in its appeal to people’s in built regard for community. However, community needs to be seen as a social construction rather than a concrete entity – a construction which can be both celebrated and abused. This is not to suggest that community does not exist but it is to warn of the implications of assuming it to be an essentialized and largely unproblematic entity. In very broad terms, community might be deﬁned either geographically or on the basis of shared interests. A problem arises when these place based and interest based interpretations are seen to be co terminus and where a commonality is assumed between all those resident in a geographically deﬁned area. Territorially based partnership approaches tend to elevate residential location above social stratiﬁcation and, as a consequence, various fault lines such as class, status, or gender are pushed to the background. While local residents them selves may be well aware of tensions which affect their understandings of what might be meant by community, the lauding of the local may result in the elision of ser ious differences which themselves may be linked to the problems manifest within a locality. While attention has been paid to devising mechanisms to draw out local potential and build the capacity among local actors to effect change, there is a risk of assuming that a consensus can be reached at a community level as to what path to follow. What this means in practice is that developmental initiatives endeavor to ﬁnd common ground. While this may be possible on some issues, it is unlikely to be the case with regard to everything. As a consequence, agreement may well be reached on lowest common de nominator issues with more contentious matters being

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either ignored or downplayed. The sidelining of poten tially divisive issues in favor of harmony may result in the implementation of a standard set of interventions. That which can be achieved will be pursued, while those things which might be desirable, but are more conten tious, will be kept off the agenda.

Partnerships and Power The arguments surrounding the meaning and nature of community give rise, in turn, to questions over the setting of the development agenda at a local level. It is not just in the tension between statutory and nonstatutory or between national, regional, and local that power relations are im portant. While participation may appear as an intrinsically good thing, this assumption ignores the fact that some actors are stronger than others. In other words, it plays down the ways in which power diffuses geographically. The assumption that power resides in speciﬁc sites, rather than being more diffuse, leads to the erroneous assumption that devolving to the local solves the problem. This as sumes that power as a reiﬁed entity can be simply trans ferred. Furthermore, it ignores the reality of local power relations and the relative power (or powerlessness) of some individuals and groups. Some actors and groups may wield considerable power, others may be involved (or feel they are involved), while still others are excluded (or choose to exclude themselves). This means that some actors may be more inﬂuential than others. Partnership arrangements may not necessarily equate to widespread participation with some voices more likely to be heard while others are ignored or remain silent. Research in Scandinavia, Aus tralia, North America, and elsewhere has raised questions about the ways in which, for example, women or young people may be marginalized within these structures. Dis course may be dominated by the ‘usual suspects’ who are regularly heard while a ‘silent majority’ sits outside the consultative structures. This is not to deny that the use of a territorial framework may serve as a mechanism which induces a real sense of community and which may also facilitate practical outcomes. The imposition of a territorial frame on a ‘community’ may also serve to mobilize residents and give rise to a sense of local solidarity in the face of unwanted developments. However, it is generally held that those with the time and the energy are more likely to participate in community initiatives and organizations resulting in those less articulate and the more dis advantaged citizens being largely excluded. All this raises serious questions over the ways in which we measure community vibrancy and mobilization. Although central and local government may appear to champion participative governance, the existence of in formal networks means that some power resides in ‘elite

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spaces’ beyond direct democratic or community control suggesting a need to take account of the political and social relations present within a locality. Community development in its broadest form has become pro fessionalized through the activities of individuals em ployed by government agencies or local authorities and those who represent community groups. The balance between statutory and nonstatutory partners may vary quite considerably and in some instances statutory agencies within local areas may continue to exert con siderable control – a sort of top down imposition of a bottom up strategy. Furthermore, those who wield more power are in a better position to control, or at least in ﬂuence, the development discourse thereby steering groups toward particular outcomes. In this way, it is meaningful to talk of discursive power whereby the ter minology is utilized and controlled in particular ways which enhance the prospects of certain outcomes. This means that the practice of partnership working may be considerably at odds with the rhetoric. To a considerable extent, this emphasis on com munity, partnership, and participation appears to be underpinned by the implicit idea that the local can be unambiguously deﬁned and that somehow it is always best. While it may well be appropriate to be skeptical of external ‘experts’, it is dangerous to assume a misty eyed romanticism with regard to local groups. It does not necessarily follow that local solutions are somehow bet ter. It can reasonably be argued that local knowledge, no more than expert knowledge, does not itself possess an intrinsic value. It is far from certain that a knee jerk lauding of the local, insofar as one distinct local can be identiﬁed, is in any way intrinsically ‘better’ than an externally imposed view. Local knowledge is not ﬁxed and is shaped by various interests. The more romanti cized justiﬁcations for local involvement tend to gloss over the possibility that some local perspectives may reﬂect insular and conservative values that may in turn translate into exclusionary practices directed against speciﬁc groups or individuals within a locality such as those not deemed to belong. In this way, an emphasis on place based communities runs the risk that it could le gitimate forms of social exclusion whereby some people are made to feel very much ‘out of place’. None of this is to impugn the motivations of local actors and those who play a role in rural development. Rather, it is to caution against simplistic assumptions concerning the value of local involvement.

Incorporation, Co-Option, and De-Radicalization The argument to this point suggests there are internal contradictions within contemporary rural development

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philosophy. Taking a step back from this, it might be suggested there is a broader set of political processes operating here. Whether intentional or not, the part nership approach may involve incorporation and de radicalization through the co opting of local agents into the development structures. This runs the risk that those who might otherwise espouse more radical positions ﬁnd themselves inside the structures of governance. Indeed, the importance attaching to the achievement of con sensus is such that those who are seen as less cooperative might be branded as negative inﬂuences resulting in their becoming sidelined. One effect of this is the neutralizing of certain arguments and the evasion of conﬂict. It might be argued that the incorporation of voluntary groups and local activists may well serve to blunt criticism. Through co opting possible sources of dissent, more powerful partners, whether central government, local authorities, or other statutory bodies, may ﬁnd their position en hanced. Less powerful partners may consent to be co opted by those who are more powerful in order not to be totally excluded. In effect, the discourse of participation, community, empowerment, and so forth disguises the various power relations in operation. Local people may have limited, if any, real control and the involvement of local groups may become a mechanism through which places are governed rather than reﬂecting a genuine shift in democratic structures. The importance of variable arrangements enhances the possibility of ‘local ﬁt’. However, although local differ ences are emphasized, a partnership approach has nevertheless become a new orthodoxy and therefore one to be implemented in all contexts. The designing and operationalizing of toolkits along with the spread of things such as rural appraisal and parish surveys in Britain, while perhaps being of beneﬁt, might also be seen as buying into a particular way of doing things which is ultimately dis seminated downward rather than rising from below. It may also be the case that partnerships behave in a very functional sense, in that they operate so as to gain access to funding. Indeed their very existence in some cases may be a consequence of funding considerations. Rather than arising organically, many partnerships may come into being and may behave in particular ways for purely pragmatic or instrumental purposes. Further, the em phasis on territorially based partnerships means there is intense competition between places in the search for funding and an increasing need for local organizations to become adept at writing funding bids.

Conclusions Undoubtedly there are many positive outcomes, tangible and intangible, associated with contemporary rural de velopment initiatives. However, these may be difﬁcult to

determine for a wide range of reasons. While useful at tempts at devising evaluative frameworks have been tried, an evaluation needs to do more than simply view these in terms of stated outcomes. The actual aims and objectives of various partners and agents may be somewhat different to those stated. An investigation of the appropriateness of current initiatives to address problems of marginalization and social exclusion needs to address fundamental issues of power. Are major shifts occurring or are we simply seeing old wine in new bottles? Is participation simply obscuring power relations and thereby ensuring a con tinuance of deep seated structural problems? Rather than witnessing a radically new developmental ethos some contemporary actions may be strong on ‘spectacle’ but weak on substance. In some instances there appears to be a simplistic as sumption that ‘doing something’ is sufﬁcient in and of itself or that all actions are inherently good and devoid of self interest. The various power relations operating across spa tial scales all need to be explored rather than simplistically assumed to operate in certain ways. While the ‘production’ of strong rural communities may be worthwhile in some respects, there is no guarantee that radical alterations in underlying structures are going to ﬂow from this. See also: Governance; Rural Communities; Rural Populations; Tourism, Rural.

Further Reading Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. (eds.) (2001). Participation: The New Tyranny? London: Zed Books. Commission of the European Communities (1996). Cork Declaration A Living Countryside. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. Edwards, B., Goodwin, M., Pemberton, S. and Woods, M. (2000). Partnership Working in Rural Regeneration. Bristol: Policy Press. Edwards, B. and Woods, M. (2004). Mobilizing the local: Community, participation and governance. In Holloway, L. & Kneafsey, M. (eds.) Geographies of Rural Cultures and Societies, pp 173 196. Ashgate: Aldershot. Goodwin, M. (1998). The governance of rural areas: Some emerging research issues and agendas. Journal of Rural Studies 14(1), 5 12. Liepins, R. (2000). New energies for an old idea: Reworking approaches to ‘community’ in contemporary rural studies. Journal of Rural Studies 16(1), 23 36. Moseley, M. (2002). Rural Development. Principles and Practice. London: Sage. Murdoch, J. and Abram, S. (1998). Deﬁning the limits of community governance. Journal of Rural Studies 14(1), 41 50. Osborne, S. P., Williamson, A. and Beattie, R. (2004). Community involvement in rural regeneration partnerships: Exploring the rural dimension. Local Government Studies 30(2), 156 181. Storey, D. (1999). Issues of integration, participation and empowerment: The case of LEADER in the Republic of Ireland. Journal of Rural Studies 15(3), 307 315. Westholm, E., Moseley, M. and Stenla˚s, N. (eds.) (1999). Local Partnerships and Rural Development in Europe. A Literature Review of Practice and Theory. Falun: Dalarnas Forskningsra˚d. Woods, M. (2005). Contesting Rurality. Politics in the British Countryside. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Economic Geography T. J. Barnes, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Commodity Chain Analysis A technique developed during the 1970s concerned with representing the entire trajectory of the life of a commodity and its associated geographies: from conception and design to consumption. De-Industrialization A process beginning in many Western high-income, industrialized nations during the 1970s and involving the large-scale decline of manufacturing employment especially in old industrial regions as manufacturing ﬁrms moved offshore, went bankrupt, or were radically restructured. Fordism/Post-Fordism Fordism was a particular form of industrial production originating in the early twentieth century, and characterized by the mass production of a standardized good, assembly-line techniques, use of dedicated machines, a large, de-skilled, and often unionized (male) labor force, and a centralized corporate industrial structure. Post-Fordism arose during the late 1970s as a replacement for Fordism, and characterized by batch production of specialized commodities, the use of ﬂexible (computer driven) machines, ﬂexible skilled labor, and a decentralized industrial organization. Globalization The increasingly interconnected relation among places in the world brought about by cheapening transportation and improved communications, and reﬂected in increasing international investment, trade, and the movement of people and ideas. Industrial District First discussed by the English economist Alfred Marshall in the early twentieth century, an industrial district is a tight-knit interlinkage of many highly specialized ﬁrms concerned with collectively producing a single product type such as clothing or furniture. Location Theory A body of interlinked analysis that began in the early nineteenth century with writings by Johannes von Thu¨nen and continues to the present, and concerned with the logically and empirically rigorous explanation of the spatial arrangements of economic phenomena and related ﬂow patterns. Multinational Corporation A large ﬁrm that owns facilities or carries out operations in at least two different countries. Neoliberalism An idea developed during the inter-war period of the twentieth century averring that the most efﬁcient form for organizing economic activities is the

free market, and if markets do not exist they require creation even under the auspices of the state. Regional Science A hybrid discipline originating in 1954 as a result of the energetic efforts of its founder Walter Isard, and concerned with twinning formal economic theory and quantitative methods to analyze spatial issues in economics, geography, and planning. Spatial Divisions of Labor An idea popularized by Doreen Massey in a book of the same name and concerned with the pattern and consequence of local geographical economic specialization.

Introduction Economic geography is a subﬁeld of human geography concerned with describing and explaining the varied places and spaces in which economic activities are car ried out and circulate. The discipline was institutional ized in the late nineteenth century in both Western Europe and the US, and remains one of the core subﬁelds within Anglo American geography. There have been repeated attempts to forge links between economic geography and its seeming intellectual soul mate, eco nomics, but none have held. Economic geography from the beginning was more empirically grounded, concerned with context, and conceptually open minded, and at the same time less abstract and formally theoretical than economics. There were moments when the two discip lines became close, but mostly they held themselves apart at a distance (as they generally do now). Further, unlike economists, economic geographers never settled on a single methodology, set of techniques, list of venerated luminaries, disciplinary problematic, or deﬁnitive deﬁnition. Change has been incessant, the ﬁeld continually re inventing itself. It makes for an exciting, dynamic, open subject, one that never looks back, and a frequent conduit for new ideas into the rest of human geography, but there is a nagging sense that before old promises are realized new ones are made. Economic geography sometimes seems like Penelope’s shroud: spun during the day, and unraveled the same night. Perhaps one of the reasons that economic geography has been subject to so much change is because of how closely the discipline is tethered to its empirical object of inquiry, and which over the subject’s lifetime has undergone profound alteration, with concomitant shifts

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in the discipline’s analysis of space, place, and geo graphical circulation. This is perhaps no better illustrated than at present. The end of the late twentieth and early twenty ﬁrst centuries are witness to periods of rapid economic geographical change, and propelled by a combination of technological revolutions around trans portation and communications, and a social revolution around the introduction of the market in places that had either not been exposed to it (such as in communist China and the Soviet Union), or experienced constrained versions of it (such as in India). The consequence has been speedy, and in some cases monumental transfor mation on the ground. Contemporary economic geog raphers are trying to represent and analyze the emerging geographical constellation, emphasizing the centrality of ﬂows and spatial interconnection, as well as the con tinuing importance of place. As they do so, the discipline itself changes. Economic geography lives in exciting times, but it sometimes leaves the discipline breathless. This article is divided into two main sections. The ﬁrst presents the main phases of the discipline’s historical development from the late nineteenth century when it was institutionalized within universities in Western Europe and North America to its present incarnation. Five main periods and associated approaches are recog nized: commercial geography (late nineteenth/early twentieth century); regional economic geography (the inter war period); spatial science (from the mid 1950s and continuing in attenuated form to the present); Marxism and radical economic geography (from the mid 1970s to the present); and the ‘cultural turn’ (from the mid 1990s to the present). The second section outlines the contemporary character of the discipline by re viewing some of the primary clusters of research and writing within the ﬁeld. Eight areas are discussed: theory and methods; globalization and neoliberalism; ﬁrms, in dustry, agglomerations, and networks; innovation and high tech; labor, bodies, and work; retailing and con sumption; producer services and ﬁnance; and nature and resources.

History and Approaches to Economic Geography Commercial Geography Existing in embryonic form as commercial geography, economic geography was formally deﬁned as a discipline in 1882 by the German geographer Go¨tz. Commercial geography had been less an academic discipline than a branch of the European imperial project. Commercial geography’s charge was providing practical geographical knowledge to the military, the business class, and the colonial bureaucracy, including information about where places were located, the kinds of goods they produced,

and the networks of available transportation. In contrast, under Go¨tz’s conception the purpose of economic geography was to fulﬁll a scientiﬁc and not a geopolitical end. It was to address the causes and reasons of economic geographical specialization, and determining the pro duction of commodities and the movement of goods. By the 1890s, economic geography courses were ap pearing in US university calendars. In 1903, Lionel W Lyde was appointed professor of Economic Geography at University College London, and in 1908, the University of Edinburgh created a lectureship for the economic geog rapher, George Chisholm, author of the earliest English language economic geography text, Handbook of Commercial Geography. Economic geography was up and running. Chisholm’s case is an interesting one. Born in Scotland in 1850, he later worked in London making a living from writing and editing geographical textbooks, gazetteers, and atlases (he previously worked for the Edinburgh publisher W. G. Blaikie & Son on such projects as the Imperial Dictionary). From 1896, Chisholm supplemented his income by lecturing on commercial geography at the University of London’s Birkbeck College using the Handbook as his textbook. In 1908, he came home, ap pointed as lecturer at the newly formed Department of Geography, University of Edinburgh. Chisholm’s Handbook was written mainly in the com mercial geography style, jammed with maps, tables, and economic geographical facts. It was a book designed to give especially the English business class a practical education, to make them more competitive against Western European rivals, particularly the Germans. But Chisholm also wanted to practice an economic as op posed to a commercial geography by scientiﬁcally ex plaining rather than merely describing. He did so by positing ‘nature’ as the central causative agent, arguing that the environment made each place uniquely ﬁtted to undertaking a particular type of economic activity. This position became more extreme, one with clear racist overtones, in the hands of a number of environ mental determinists later working in economic geog raphy at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Harvard geographer Ellsworth Huntington was the most notorious arguing that the level of economic develop ment in a region was a consequence of the climatic re gime that held. Climate, he contended, determined physical and mental efﬁciency, which in turn established the level of economic development. In Huntington’s famous phrase, climate was the ‘‘mainspring of civil ization.’’ Temperate climates found in Western and Northern Europe and parts of North America were conducive to high efﬁciency. While tropical and sub tropical climates found in Africa, large parts of Asia, and Central and Southern America produced low energy, hampering economic development, ensuring such places remained ‘backward’.

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Regional Economic Geography The intellectual backlash against environmental deter minism, as well as a changed global economic context in which imperialism and empire were no longer drivers, generated a different economic geography during the inter war period, a regional one. The focus was not as it was in Chisholm’s work on global commodity production, trade, and transportation, but rather on local economic interconnections that produced unique and singular regions. As a form of enquiry the regional approach was readily seen in the various economic geographical text books published in North America from the mid 1920s onward. It involved characterizing regions by a common typological scheme, one, for example, broken down by leading industries, natural resources, modes of transpor tation, and so on. Once all regions were so described, their differences, and thus their individual uniqueness, were immediately evident by reading across the typolo gical grid. For example, Vernor Finch’s and Ray Whitbeck’s Economic Geography is typical. The diverse body of detailed economic geographical facts they provide are ordered under an identical fourfold typology for each of the re gions investigated: agriculture; minerals; manufacture; and commercial trade, transportation, and communications. Or, another example is Clarence Jones’ textbook Economic Geography that deploys an eightfold typology. While more ﬁnely variegated than Whitbeck’s and Finch’s, Jones’ typology performs the same role: classifying observations that are mapped, tabulated, photographed, and listed under the appropriate classiﬁcatory heading. By typolo gically comparing the facts of different regions, economic geographical differences are immediately seen, and re gional uniqueness shines by its own light. It was not until just before World War II that an in tellectual justiﬁcation was provided from the American geographer Richard Hartshorne. Arguing against any separation between economic and regional geography, Hartshorne asserted that unique regions were the natural units in which the world expressed itself. That unique ness stymied any hope of producing scientiﬁc explan ation and generalization in economic geography, however. Science was successful, he thought, because it was able to identify common properties in the phenom ena it studied, enabling it to generalize, and at the limit to posit explanatory laws. Economic geographical re gions, however, were not the same kind of natural phe nomena because each region was a collection of exceptional features, describable only in its own terms. No generalization was possible. The consequence was, as Hartshorne wrote in The Nature of Geography that set out his larger thesis: ‘‘Regional geography, we conclude, is literally what its title expresses. y [I]t is essentially a

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descriptive science concerned with the description and interpretation of unique cases.y’’ (p. 44). Spatial Science Hartshorne’s book was published at exactly the wrong time. The regional descriptivism it proposed for geog raphy, and economic geography in particular, quickly became out of step with a set of larger changes that pointed in exactly the opposite direction. In particular, from the beginning of World War II, a number of social sciences, and even some humanities, were transformed from a descriptive approach of the kind championed by Hartshorne to one that instead emphasized scientiﬁc generalization and explanation. In part because of Hart shorne’s inﬂuence, economic geography initially resisted that impulse, but by the mid 1950s it joined in too. The resulting shift to spatial science, and represented by the ‘quantitative revolution’, profoundly altered economic geography, sweeping away talk of regional uniqueness in favor of the systematic application of scientiﬁc forms of general theorizing and rigorous statistical techniques of description and analysis. Spatial science within economic geography was de ﬁned by ﬁve main features. First, there was the use of formal theory and mathematical models, many of which were begged, borrowed, and stolen from neoclassical economics (in particular, from rational choice theory, general and partial equilibrium, and German location theory), and, a more unlikely source, physics (spatial interaction theory and later entropy maximization mod els). Second, there was the use of an increasingly so phisticated arsenal of quantitative methods. Initially used were off the peg inferential statistical techniques, but later specialized statistical measures and methods were designed in house to meet the peculiar features of eco nomic geographical data (e.g., techniques of spatial autocorrelation). Third, there was the use of computers. At ﬁrst they were very crude and limited, but within a decade they performed hitherto unimaginable calcula tions, for example, the inversion of large urban and re gional economic input–output matrices that would otherwise have taken a lifetime to calculate by hand. Fourth, there was a philosophical justiﬁcation made for spatial science based on positivism, the idea that only scientiﬁc knowledge is authentic knowledge. Fred K. Schaefer provided an early inﬂuential justiﬁcation based on logical positivism, but it was broadened and deepened by David Harvey in his Explanation in geography. Finally, there was a focus on abstract spatialities and geometrically deﬁned location. Regions remained part of the economic geographical lexicon, but conceived utterly differently than under the previous regional geographical regime. Regions were now explanatory, theoretical, and instru mental, a spatial unit to achieve functional objectives (and

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brilliantly realized in the parallel movement of regional science). The consequence was that people like Finch, Whitbeck, and Fielden Jones (and their respective books) were no longer recognizable as part of the discipline. They were not in the same ﬁeld, not on the same planet. Spatial science like most intellectual revolutions began at only a few sites, later diffusing more widely. In Europe it was associated with Cambridge University, Bristol University, and Lund University, and within North America, the Universities of Iowa, Washington, Chicago, and Toronto, as well as Ohio State. In each of these places, groups of young, bright, ambitious, com petitive, and almost exclusively male students gathered to participate in the revolution. The University of Washington at Seattle provides a good case study. The graduate students who gathered there from 1955, and given the moniker the ‘space cadets’, included Brian Berry who was to make a series of seminal contributions to spatial science. Berry and the others were drawn by two faculty members interested in establishing a more theoretical and quantitative economic geography: Edward Ullman and William Garrison. Gar rison was especially important acting as a mentor, pro tector, critic, muse, and paymaster. In 1955, Garrison offered the ﬁrst advanced course in statistics ever in a US geography department, and the same year he gave a course on spatial economic theory using Walter Isard’s regional science textbook, Location and space economy (1955). Such training held the ‘cadets’ in good stead for their next project, and funded through Garrison, which was to evaluate a proposal for federal highway develop ment around Seattle. It was the perfect assignment, allowing the students to hone their analytical and theo retical skills, to bootstrap learn from other disciplines such as engineering and economics which were also re cruited, and to display their newfound knowledge of abstract theorizing, quantitative methods, and computer programming. The project produced a revolutionary book, Studies of Highway Development and Geographic Change. Packed with calculations, data matrices, statistical tech niques, cost curves, and demand schedules, and con ventional maps overlaid with numbers, arrows, starburst lines, and balancing equations, it was a volume like none other previously published in the name of economic geography. But it became the norm as spatial science took over the discipline in the 1960s. Marxism, Political Economy, and Radical Economic Geography The ﬁrst signs of trouble for spatial science appeared in the early 1970s when David Harvey disavowed his earlier support, declaring that the quantitative revolution had run its course, telling us less and less of any import. Harvey was the ﬁrst of a series of high proﬁle defections.

In retrospect, the problem was the abstract, closed, and narrow conception of economic geography that spatial science proffered. It was not true to economic geography’s own variegated disciplinary history; not true to the his torical moment of the early 1970s that was increasingly politicized and drawn to issues of social relevance; and not true to its own scientiﬁc logic as assorted logical contra dictions, inconsistencies, and aporias revealed. An alternative was political economy, colored espe cially by Marxism. Certainly, this was Harvey’s choice after his spatial science renunciation. Subsequently, he provided a set of what have proved to be valuable and enduring concepts, for example, ‘space–time com pression’, drawn from Marx for understanding capital ism’s geography of accumulation (best found in Harvey’s magisterial The Limits to Capital ). In Britain, political economy surfaced in the late 1970s, emerging within industrial geography. Because of de industrialization Britain was hemorrhaging manu facturing jobs (and occurring also in other Western countries). Political economy with its focus on economic crisis and instability offered an ideal explanatory frame. Moreover, it was usefully supplemented by a methodo logical approach, critical realism, developed also in the late 1970s by the economic geographer Andew Sayer that linked political economy with speciﬁc on the ground strategies for empirical research and explanation. To explain economic geographical events, argued Sayer, re quired an intensive research strategy to separate out necessary structures that bore on their occurrence from merely contingent ones that happened to be present. Doreen Massey and Richard Meegan relied explicitly on political economy and critical realism in their important dissection of the Anatomy of Job Loss. And 2 years later, Massey brought everything together – political economy, critical realism, and the larger context of de industrial ization and industrial restructuring – in her watershed book, Spatial Divisions of Labour. Of the volume’s many accomplishments, reestablishing place and region on the economic geographical agenda was central. This wasn’t back to Hartshorne, however. Place and region were to be understood theoretically, as an evolving recursive re lation between rounds of capitalist accumulation and the socially constructed character of geography. Massey’s work sparked the UK locality project, a large multisite, multiyear venture charged with explaining the changing fortunes of British regions. While British economic geographers during the 1980s slogged in the grim trenches of industrial decline, a number of American economic geographers instead idled in the brilliance of industrial regeneration and growth. This was the ﬂip side of capitalism: its innovativeness, creativity, and powers of recuperation. Drawing on a combination of political economy and institutional eco nomics, the ‘California school’, including AnnaLee

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Saxenian Allen Scott, Edward Soja, Michael Storper, and Richard Walker, carried out during the 1980s a series of impressive theoretical and empirical studies based mainly in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay regions on high tech, the motion picture industry, and garment manufacture. They showed industrial capitalism was capable of rewriting its economic geography, producing new industrial spaces, and requiring a new theoretical lexicon of representation and explanation. While initially these British and American versions of political economy were like ships passing in the night, they came together in the 1990s through regulation theory that later provided the template for economic geographical work during the rest of that decade. Initially developed by the French economists Allain Lipietz and Robert Boyer, regulation theory was an attempt to ex plain why capitalism survived in spite of Marx’s best prediction of its demise. The regulationists argued that capitalism endured because historically an appropriate conjunction formed between the regime of accumulation, deﬁned as the macroeconomic relationship between consumption and investment, and the mode of regulation, deﬁned as a set of institutional rules, norms, and laws. For example, the post war Fordist regime of accumulation deﬁned by mass production and mass consumption was sustained because of the attendant mode of regulation, the Keynesian welfare state, which promoted private in vestment and consumer spending necessary for its maintenance. Moreover, regulationism explained how British and American economic geographical experiences were so different. While British economic geographers were documenting the disintegration of an older Fordist regime and mode, the California school was looking at the formation of a brand new one labeled variously post or neo Fordism, or ﬂexible production. They were dif ferent sides of the same capitalist Janus face. The ‘Cultural Turn’ By the 1990s another approach was emerging, the ‘cul tural turn’. In part it reﬂected a larger move across English language social sciences and humanities in taking culture more seriously (and linked to the rise of cultural studies and interest in post structural theory). But it also tapped existing disciplinary tendencies and inclinations especially since Massey’s Spatial Divisions that invoked a set of cultural understandings for explaining economic geographical events, including gender, patriarchy, re ligion, and cultural politics. It took almost a decade more, but by the mid 1990s the ‘cultural turn’ was turning. The agenda continues to be developed, but two main effects are apparent: rethinking the discipline’s object of inquiry, theory, and methods, and using case studies of particular substantive topics to work through a cultural approach. Proponents aver that the emphasis on culture

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is not mere intellectual fashion, but reﬂects fundamental changes in capitalism as it moves to a ‘soft’, ‘reﬂexive’, or ‘symbolic’ form where the line between culture and economy is not just hard to see but is no longer there. The traditional conception of economic geography presumed: (1) a clear object of study, the economy; (2) rationalist forms of theorizing; and (3) empiricist methods. The ‘cultural turn’ took aim at them all, ﬁnding each wanting. (1) J. K. Gibson Graham in The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) attacked the idea of a monolithic, puriﬁed economy. That idea possessed traction, Gibson Graham argued, only because of the grip of Western dualist metaphysical thinking. Once shed, however, the economy will be seen as it is: hybridized, het erogeneous, multiple, nonmarket, bleeding into other spheres such as the cultural, the social, and even the environmental. Consequently, it is not sufﬁcient to do only economic geography, but one must engage other kinds of geography too. (2) Rationalist, top down theorizing, the second char acteristic, is discredited by post structuralism, and implying one must do theory in different ways as well. Following post structuralism, new theorizing should be reﬂexive, open ended, and catholic in its sources. Theory should be conceived as a vocabulary to achieve new ends, rather than mirroring the object of investigation. As a result, what counts as theory dramatically expands. It might include established frameworks such as globalization modeled as a pro cess of spatial diffusion, but it could also include globalization modeled as rape (as in Gibson Gra ham’s The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It)). (3) Because of the increasing inﬂuence of feminist scholarship associated with the ‘cultural turn’, there is also a need for a dramatic revamping of methods. The traditional economic geography empiricist mindset of collecting numbers and the ad verbatim recording of ‘expert interviews’ no longer cut it. They should be replaced by methodological self consciousness and promiscuity that dramatically widens the deﬁnition of appropriate research data and strategies for collection. The ‘cultural turn’ was not only conceptual, but a re working of disciplinary content. In particular, the mid 1990s saw publication of a set of economic geographical monographs demonstrating the importance of taking culture seriously for particular substantive topics. Susan Hansen and Geraldine Pratt in their study of female labor markets in Worcester, MA, Space, Place and Gender, showed how gender mattered fundamentally in the supply and demand for jobs. Linda McDowell in Capital Culture focused on gender and sexuality in her case study of the practices of merchant bankers in the City of

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London. Erica Schoenberger’s concern in The Cultural Crisis of the Firm was the culture of senior managers in US multinational corporations who sometimes produced stunningly bad decisions, taking companies to the precipice of bankruptcy, and sometimes over it. And Andrew Leyshon and Nigel Thrift in Space/Money examined the culture of money within international ﬁ nancial centers such as London, including not only its making but its spending. The larger point was that eco nomic geography required broadening: that economic geography was always more than economic geography. Economic geography should recognize the multiplicities of connection, its joints, hinges, and folds with the noneconomic, its ‘‘trailing ands,’’ as William James once put it. This is what the ‘cultural turn’ was a turn toward. Summary Perhaps the most striking feature of the history of eco nomic geography is the lack of overall disciplinary pro gress. Later approaches rarely take up and reﬁne ideas contained in earlier ones. Rather, much more likely is caustic criticism and rejection. Furthermore, the history is not the classic Kuhnian one of paradigm shift either, with new paradigms developed to explain past anomalies. This is because there is no agreement on what constitutes anomalies, or even whether they exist. Instead of new paradigms emerging and eradicating old ones as envisaged by Kuhn, economic geography is more like a palimpsest, with past versions of the discipline still partially visible, not completely erased, and continuing to contribute to the discipline’s present form. This makes for a messy discip line, but clear from its recent history, a lively one, as dif ferent approaches continue to jostle and rub against one another. Since the 1980s the discipline has been marked by vibrancy, experimentation, fecundity, and rude health. In particular, its vibrancy is especially evident in eight areas of conceptual discussion and substantive work: theory and methods; globalization and neoliberalism; ﬁrms, industry, agglomerations, and networks; innovation and high tech; labor, bodies, and work; retailing and consumption; pro ducer services and ﬁnance; and nature and resources. These eight areas are not a deﬁnitive list, but exemplars showing contemporary economic geography’s range, vi tality, creativity, and relevance.

Contemporary Economic Geography Method and Theory Perhaps no discussions within economic geography have been more animated than those over its theories and methods. The theoretical controversies have been espe cially potent, but even issues of methodology, which in the past were subject to a ‘‘don’t ask, don’t tell policy,’’ triggered sometimes heated dispute.

Economic geography continues to be an empiricist discipline in the sense that it is concerned with repre senting an empirical object. But what counts as empirical information, and the methods used to collect, assemble, and interpret data, have signiﬁcantly shifted. In the past the central method turned on the assiduous collection of numbers and statistics, and taken to its extreme under spatial science and the quantitative revolution. But since the 1980s a ‘qualitative revolution’ has occurred, that is, a move to methods concerned with gathering and ana lyzing non numerical data. It began with ‘intensive case study research’ pioneered by proponents of critical realism in the early 1980s. But since then qualitative methods have multiplied and include now in depth interviews, focus groups, oral histories, ethnographies, participant observation, discourse and textual analysis, actor network theory, action research, and more beside. In this new methodological environment, nothing is proscribed, everything is permitted. The upside is diversity and rapid change: most of the methodological techniques listed would have been viewed as beyond the pale, or at best, suspiciously avant garde when ﬁrst introduced. The downside is the derogation of quanti tative analysis and loss of associated skills. Because of lack of training, economic geographers are now increas ingly unable to undertake formal statistical and numer ical analysis. As a result, critics complain that the turn to qualitative methods in economic geography has induced slapdash and superﬁcial research. The response is that one needs methods appropriate to the necessary data, and if the necessary data is now qualitative, and reﬂecting what is important for understanding the object of inquiry, these methods must be employed. Along with permissive methodology has gone per missive theory. As in the case of methods, now almost anything goes. Economic geography is polycentric, con sisting of a set of dispersed theoretical communities. At least ﬁve are recognizable: an older mathematical mod eling tradition drawn from spatial science, which is sometimes refurbished for the new economic times and spaces, but often is not; a variety of political economic theorizing, loosely grouped around writings of Marx, and frequently focused on theorizing the state or its absence; various stripes of feminist theory that sometimes inter sect with political economy, but more likely linked with post structuralism, and concerned with bodies and sub jectivities of men and women at work; a range of insti tutional approaches that draw upon theories developed especially in economic anthropology and sociology (Karl Polanyi’s idea of ‘embeddedness’ and Mark Granovetter’s notion of ‘social network’ have been especially inﬂuen tial); and selective theories drawn from science studies (particularly writings of Bruno Latour and Donna Har away) and used to understand the brute materialities of economic geographical activities from CAD–CAM

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technology to the lurching movement of primary re sources along the commodity chain. As with the new methodological practices, loose uses of theory (‘reading around’) has been liberating. There is no single authority to kowtow. One simply draws upon the theoretical tradition most appropriate to the task at hand. Critics complain that the result is anarchy, eclec ticism in which nothing ﬁts, producing ﬂighty, sloppy, and sometimes incomprehensible works. The overall result is Balkanization, a discipline of solipsisms and solitudes. The counter response is that fragmented theorizing is necessary to understand the increasingly fragmented geographical economy in which we live and study. Globalization and Neoliberalism Both permissive theory and methods are used to under stand an issue increasingly preoccupying economic geography, globalization, and forming a body of research as energetic as its focus of study. Increasingly linked with the study of globalization is work on neoliberalism, the larger political ideology and project averring the im portance of free markets. Globalization and neoliberalism are not necessarily connected, but over the last decade the two have often been twinned. In many ways, globalization was made for economic geographical examination. And as already discussed, in the beginning it was economic geography. He didn’t use the term, but George Chisholm was a student of glob alization. That focus was lost, however, as economic geography later drew inward and investigated only Western industrial economies. The rest of the world was parceled up and given over either to study by regional specialties, for example, Asian or Latin American geog raphy, or to the new subdiscipline of development geography. Processes beginning from the 1970s, however, such as the emergence of a new international division of labor, the increasing number, size, and dominance of multinational corporations, the growth of international ﬁnancial capital, and new forms of communication and long distance transportation, showed economic geog raphers that they needed to deal with the world as a whole. Further, it became clear that separating economic geographical study of the West from the rest of the world was not just unnecessary but obstructive. Under rapid globalization, the linkages, the ‘networks’, that connected places across the world were critical. Dividing the globe into separate spheres of study was precisely the wrong strategy, obscuring what was most important. Peter Dicken in his book Global Shift was the ﬁrst contemporary economic geographer to make this point through his study of international investment, and particularly car ried out by large multinational corporations. But Dicken made another point just as important. That globalization was no seamless process, eradicating geographical

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difference. Globalization represented not the ‘‘the end of geography,’’ as economists sometimes said, but the latest form of its continuing importance. Geographical differ entiation was crucial, the very precondition for globali zation’s possibility and achievement. Subsequent work by economic geographers over the last decade demonstrates unassailably that geography matters fundamentally in the processes of globalization. Globalization is not a thin ﬁlm spreading equally over the globe, but is uneven; it clumps and is spiky, occurring in very particular places. Geographical differentiation makes a difference. It determines where in the globe multinational corporations invest, where different links of the global commodity chains come down to Earth, where international ﬁnancial transactions occur, and how ﬁrms are managed and the spatial interactions they forge. Globalization is not smooth, homogenous, ﬂattening geographical difference as it goes, but utterly dependent upon spatial variegation, disjuncture, and distinction. Hand in hand with this discussion of globalization has been a complementary critical examination of neoliber alism. It is argued that globalization requires an appro priate regulatory framework. The economy, even the global economy, cannot exist shorn of an apposite gov ernance structure, and which from the late twentieth century has taken the form of neoliberalism, and facili tated by global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. By neoliberalism is meant the political ideological project of promoting free markets as the optimal means for undertaking eco nomic activity. While originating as an idea in the 1920s, it came to the fore during the 1980s in the politics and domestic policies of the Margaret Thatcher government in the UK, and the Ronald Reagan administration in the US. Later it was ‘exported’ to developing countries through the Washington Consensus. Its injunction is that places in the globe where free markets either do not exist, or are insufﬁciently free, must be transformed to meet neoliberal strictures, subject to policies such as trade and ﬁnancial market liberalization, deregulation, privatiza tion, and the securing of private property rights. Whether emerging internally or externally foisted, neoliberalism has increasingly taken over the world, and found not only in high income countries like the UK and the US, but also in the former Soviet Union, China, India, much of SE Asia, and in large parts of Central and Latin America as well as sub Saharan Africa (as a result of the World Bank’s neoliberal policies of structural adjust ment). Through neoliberalism’s aggressive stance in favor of open trade, investment, and ﬁnancial capital move ment, the wheels of globalization are greased, making it happen more smoothly, quickly, and easily. This is clear from a growing and diverse set of economic geographical studies examining such topics as international ﬁnance, the internationalization of education, the international

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migration of skilled labor, and international trade in primary resources such as for diamonds, lumber, and water. Firms, Industry, Agglomerations, and Networks Studying the economic geography of ﬁrms has always been a bulwark of the discipline. In 1910, even Chisholm turned away (brieﬂy) from his global maps of primary commodities to use the work of the German location theorist Alfred Weber to examine the locational factors bearing on ‘seats of industry’. Subsequently, each new generation of economic geographers has provided its own interpretation of the ﬁrm, and the factors bearing on its geographical behavior. In the 1930s, Michael Wise fo cused on small ﬁrms, and their propensity to cluster geographically in what the economist Alfred Marshall earlier called ‘‘industrial districts.’’ The 1960s saw the emergence of ‘the geography of enterprise’, later morphing into ‘corporate geography’, and concerned with multisite locational decisions made by very large ﬁrms. The 1980s and 1990s saw a return in part to the concerns of Wise, an interest in the tendency of ﬁrms to cluster or embed themselves geographically in agglom erations, albeit agglomerations that were themselves interlinked and sometimes half a world apart. And most recently, there is an interest in how ﬁrms of different sizes and types cohere together in the form of a network, held in place as much by social as economic relations, and sometimes extending over the entire face of the globe. The focus on ﬁrms in economic geography reﬂects a deep seated belief that they are principal agents shaping the economic geographical landscape. Understand them, and you understand economic geography. For this reason, industrial geography, the subdiscipline of economic geography principally concerned with ﬁrms, and manu facturing ﬁrms in particular, has always been important. Given mounting globalization, and industrial re structuring turning on the shift from Fordism to post Fordism, the subdiscipline became central during the 1980s, and deﬁned by several elements. At ﬁrst, especially British researchers concentrated on understanding the process of industrial decline particularly in old industrial regions as ﬁrms closed down, or moved offshore, or restructured their production operations, with associated large losses of manufacturing employment (de industrialization). But even in the UK there was recog nition that it wasn’t only a story of job loss. A new industrial landscape was emerging, triggered by innovative ﬁrms. Massey, for example, documented a new spatial division of labor in South Wales created by American and Japanese multinational electronic ﬁrms exploiting a spatially trap ped, greenﬁeld female labor force. In the US, Allen Scott focused less on decline than the potential for growth, constructing a new theory of the

dynamic ﬁrm based on transaction costs, external econ omies, and spatial linkages, and leading him to rediscover Michael Wise’s earlier work, and before him, Alfred Marshall’s idea of an ‘‘industrial district.’’ Deﬁned as a tight knit agglomeration of small ﬁrms with a high de gree of specialization and production interconnection, the industrial district became a condensation point for an enormous amount of economic geographical research during the 1980s and 1990s. Interest was given further momentum by Michael Piore and Charles Sabel’s in ﬂuential book, The Second Industrial Divide. Piore and Sabel were political scientists but their book was im portant for economic geography because they made in dustrial districts central to their thesis of an abrupt shift from mass production (Fordism) to ﬂexible production (post Fordism). Later work within the industrial districts genre emphasized the variety of forms taken by industrial districts (Anne Markusen rechristened them, ‘‘sticky places’’ recognizing four types); global interlinkage (Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift’s ‘‘Neo Marshallian nodes in global networks’’); and the importance of an appropriate institutional framework, in particular, the presence of thick social relations among ﬁrms and the larger com munities in which they were set (Karl Polanyi’s idea of ‘‘embeddedness’’). Paralleling the work on industrial districts, and drawing partly on Polanyi but also on the economic sociologist Mark Granovetter, was allied research on ﬁrms and social networks. Here the relation among ﬁrms is determined by social relationships, that is, by the social network among key decision makers who head different ﬁrms. Social networks are so important because they are the limits of the decision maker’s social world, and thus the limits of who can be relied upon and trusted. Moreover, they are not necessarily conﬁned locally, as in industrial districts, but can stretch across the globe. Their form is topological, independent of proximity, given only by the location of other members of the social network. One particular social network investigated by economic geographers was the Overseas Chinese (particularly by Henry Yeung). Innovation and High Tech Ideas of both social embeddedness and networks have been at the forefront of an outpouring of work, again much of it set within industrial geography, on innovation and high tech development. Some of that work was completed by the California school – Anna Lee Saxenian wrote the classic account of high tech development in Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128 – but a lot is undertaken also by Northern European economic geog raphers concerned with state led regional development. The interest in high tech initially focused on the computer (both hardware and software development), but

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it expanded to include biotech, and more generally all forms of digitally based design industries. High tech emerged as a research topic partly because of its in creasing importance to Western economies (and the seeming antidote to de industrialization); partly because its locational logic was quite different from traditional manufacturing industry – it was frequently suburban, and drawn by entrepreneurs and skilled labor found around university hubs; and partly because it offered the po tential to try out new methodological and theoretical frameworks. Saxenian’s study, for example, rested on the novel (novel, that is, for economic geography) method of long term ethnographic research. Given her method, it was perhaps not surprising that she also stressed the im portance of culture. High tech, Saxenian argued, is a cultural practice as well as an economic one, with culture seeping into the minutiae of everyday business, regu latory, and work routines. Michael Storper subsequently coined the term ‘‘untraded interdependencies’’ in his work on high tech to understand better the role that culture played. He used ‘‘interdependence’’ to stress the collective, communal nature of work in the industry, and ‘‘untraded’’ to signal that high tech was different from other economic sectors because it involved many non market based transactions. Given the success stories of high tech in places like Silicon Valley and on Route 128, an obvious question was whether they could be replicated elsewhere. This lay behind much economic geographical research especially during the 1990s on ‘creative’ or ‘innovation milieus’, or ‘learning regions’ and ‘networks’. The purpose was to ﬁnd the elements that made successful high tech complexes – for example, particular governance structures, or re lations among ﬁrms, or involvement by workers, or the presence of educational institutes – and then reproduce them in new regional contexts. It is a project that con tinues in different forms, most recently in Richard Florida’s research on creative cities. Whether one be lieves success is repeatable depends upon the extent to which one thinks that the economic potential of a given place rests upon either elements that are unique and inseparable from the place itself, or are general and de tachable. Certainly many communities that literally bought advice about how to become the next Silicon Valley believed the latter, but the fact that there still remains only one Silicon Valley may suggest the truth of the former. Labor, Bodies, and Work Given the emphasis on production by economic geog raphers it is odd that labor and work until recently re ceived so little attention. Perhaps it was because labor as a factor of production was conceived as sedentary, stuck in

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place, while capital was represented (more interestingly) as mobile and active. As David Harvey once put it, ‘‘unlike capital, labor has to go home every night.’’ But the attitude to labor and work has changed and it has become a fertile topic of research. In part, the new interest stems from globalization which has spurred research at both ends of the labor market. On the one hand, there are studies of the inter national movement of various professionals such as ac countants, bankers, and high end managers, as well as entrepreneurs such as among the Overseas Chinese and Indian high tech engineers. On the other hand, there is also work examining patterns of immigrant workforce segmentation in low end jobs by gender and ethnic ori gin, as well as case studies of particular occupations, such as janitors and back of the house hotel workers. Additionally, there has been a changed conception of labor, one concerned to recognize its greater agency, its ability to make a difference to economic geographical outcomes. In part this revamped view is associated with research on the geography of labor unions. Andrew Herod, whose work in this area has been important, makes a useful distinction between the geography of labor, the older view of labor as passive, and labor geography, the notion that labor possesses some auton omy. In this newer view, while workers still go home at night, at least during the day, as an organized collective, they possess sufﬁcient force to shape the economic geo graphical conditions in which they ﬁnd themselves. An important strand of writing, deriving especially from post structuralism, examines the performance of work, and the role various bodily social markings play. Doreen Massey’s writing on High Tech Fantasies was the ﬁrst to recognize the gendered nature of high tech work. While high tech work was often couched as an ethereal, abstract form of rationality, Massey contended the corporeal reality told another story. Based on her study of Cambridge (UK) high tech ﬁrm, Massey argued such rationality was achieved by workaholic young, white male bodies that were sustained at the worksite by fe male secretarial and administrative labor and at home by female partners undertaking domestic labor. McDowell’s study of Capital Culture involved merchant bankers in the City of London. In her case, she was concerned with how the bodies of both men and women, including their markers of sexuality, were contorted in the performances of making large sums of money for their employers (and sometimes for themselves). And at the other end of the employment spectrum, Geraldine Pratt examined Working Feminism through the bodies of Filipina domestic workers in Vancouver. The larger point is that labor and work are not neutral, just another technical input into production, but are inscribed by the social, cultural, and geographical contexts in which work is practiced.

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Retailing and Consumption Retail geography ﬁrst emerged in the 1960s with Brian Berry and the work of his students at the University of Chicago. Following spatial science, the presentation was formal: tangential budget lines and bid rent curves, dis tance minimizing constrained maximization equations, and quasi hexagonal grids of inter and intra urban retail location. As spatial science languished, however, so did retail geography. But it has been recently recouped, and like the contemporary retailing experience itself, re packaged into more enticing forms. While during the ﬁrst part of the twentieth century there were retail giants like Sears Roebuck or Woolworth, some of which even internationalized, they did not come close to matching late twentieth century trends of ex ponential growth in corporate retailing and retail global ization. Wal Mart is the classic example. Founded in 1962, within 40 years it was the largest corporation by revenue on the planet, with a million employees, and located in 14 countries. Other retailers, for example, France’s Carrefour and the Netherlands’s Ahold, while not as large became even more internationalized. Wal Mart also helped pion eer a different form of retailing, the big box store, trans forming the economic geographical landscape of towns and cities ﬁrst in the West but then everywhere. Big box stores frequently located in the suburbs rather than the city center (the presumed destination for shops in the old retail geography), and took the form of warehouses rather than traditional shops. The locational advantages were cheap land rent, space for on site parking, and highway accessibility. This was not how old retailing was done, but it sparked interest by economic geographers because it ﬁtted with other emerging disciplinary motifs such as corporatization and internationalization. Another motif with which the new retailing ﬁtted was the cultural turn’s emphasis on meaning and identity. We shop till we drop not because it rationally yields the greatest amount of economic pleasure and satisfaction (the presumed motivation in the old retail geography), but because it enables us to express our identity: we are what we consume. We buy things in order to signify who we are. Studies by economic geographers of the new geography of consumption, from drinking Starbucks coffee to trawling the shelves of the local Safeway, show that going shopping is always more than buying goods. It is to participate in the larger cultural performance of afﬁrming social identity. Finally, linked to the recognition that goods are more than just economic commodities are economic geo graphical studies illustrating the moral geography of consumption, and represented by sites of sweated labor, or clear cut old growth forests. Once we defetishize consumer goods by knowing the details of their social production, including their geography, such studies

suggest we no longer see goods as simply good, as only ‘things’ for consuming pleasure. One technique used by economic geographers to de fetishize is commodity chain analysis. A commodity chain traces the entire trajectory of a good from its conception and design, through pro duction, retailing, and ﬁnal consumption. Such chains by deﬁnition are geographical, and they make it immedi ately apparent, as David Harvey once put it, ‘‘where our breakfast comes from.’’ That is, they direct us instantly to other parts of the world where our goods are made, and germane here, they direct us to the moral conditions of production found at such sites whether that be in papaya plantations in Jamaica, cut ﬂower nurseries in Kenya, or virgin cedar and spruce stands in British Columbia. Producer Services and Finance Although services as opposed to manufacturing have been the dominant form of employment in high income Western countries, since around 1950 it has taken a long time for economic geography to catch up to this fact. Even during the 1980s, manufacturing was given priority as a study topic. Finally, this is beginning to change. Initially much of the discussion focused on what are called producer services, that is, high order service ﬁrms such as advertising, management consultancy, account ancy, and legal services, that serve the business com munity. Such ﬁrms tend to cluster geographically, often around client head ofﬁces, are strongly interconnected, rely on face to face contact, and depend upon the edu cational credentials, knowledge, and expertise of the employees hired. At the core of the producer service complex is the generation of specialized, high value knowledge and information, and creating large ﬁnancial rewards for those engaged in its production. Subsequently, much of the attention has focused on professional workers undertaking producer services par ticularly in global cities. Through the information they provide, they are critical to facilitating the larger pro cesses of internationalization gripping the economy for the last quarter century. Further, as a workforce they are globalized themselves with a high degree of international mobility. Most recently, it is their culture and the culture of the work they perform that has been scrutinized. For some economic geographers, professional workers are emblematic of wider changes occurring in the economy as the central product becomes knowledge. Producing and selling that product, however, requires very different skills than under the older conditions of work, skills that now emphasize cultural acumen and intelligence. Con sequently how people work, the sites in which they work, the tools they need to work, and even the larger built environment in which they work have changed radically, and producer services are at the center of that maelstrom of change. Those who study them are at an ideal vantage

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point to understand the emergence of the new economy and its economic geography. The producer service receiving the greatest con sideration in economic geography since the 1990s is the ﬁnancial sector, along with its principal focus, money. Money is a commodity like no other; the commodity of all commodities. Given advances in telecommunications, as well as deregulation, money is the commodity with the least friction of distance. Calling it ‘liquid’ does not come close to representing its ability to move effortlessly around the world, and literally at the speed of light. It was the breakneck speed of money that led the economist Richard O’Brien to announce ‘‘the end of geography.’’ Since then economic geographers have been keen to show how geography continues to matter. The existence of international ﬁnancial centers like London, New York, and Tokyo are one form in which geography still matters. Money does not move on its own, but needs to be made to do so. And where this happens are in the international ﬁnancial centers: they possess smart machines, smart buildings, and above all the smart people to propel money around the world. Geography matters also in that money does not ﬂow everywhere but usually only along well worn circuits. Accordingly some places are left out, subject to ﬁnancial exclusion as, for example, in large tracts of sub Saharan Africa, or in inner city US neigh borhoods. And geography matters for the opposite reason that some places possess advantages for holding money such as the Bahamas, or the Canary Islands, or Zurich, with money sticking to such sites. The point is that even money, that most ﬂeeting and slippery commodities, cannot escape geography. Nature and Resources Finally, nature and resources have become the focus of an animated disciplinary discussion since the late 1990s. For a long period the larger topic was an intellectual backwater, and almost lost altogether under spatial sci ence. The simplifying assumptions required for spatial modeling meant that the uneven and lumpy nature of resources were treated as complicating factors, the an alysis of which was promised but indeﬁnitely postponed. In the mid 1970s, David Harvey drawing upon Marx made a powerful case for considering nature along with the economy. This was not nature ‘red in claw’ but social nature, ‘the production of nature’ as it was called. Pro duction of nature did not mean creating something where nothing existed before. Rather, original nature, ‘ﬁrst na ture’ as it was referred, was transformed by industrial capitalism becoming ‘second nature’: farmed ﬁelds, urban climatological hot spots, polluted air, and a scarred manufacturing landscape. The original Marxist approach emphasized the cen trality of social relations in constituting the economic

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resource, and in doing so joined discussions with political ecology. But alongside these radical studies of nature and resources also went more traditional accounts, for ex ample, of speciﬁc sectors such as the wood products in dustry, or oil and gas, or agriculture. But even here there were attempts to offer relatively sophisticated theoretical renderings drawing upon, say, regulation theory or in stitutional economic theories such as found in the work of the Canadian economist Harold Innis. More recently, two themes have characterized the literature on nature and resources. First, there is a discussion of the effects of neoliberal regimes of governance on resource ownership, pro duction, and distribution. The argument is that resources are treated differently under the new regime such as, for example, with the privatization of water in many juris dictions, or the deregulation of mining, or the trade liberalization around the export of primary commodities such as coffee or tropical fruits. Second, drawing upon especially work from science studies there is an attempt to rethink the nature of nature. The difﬁculty with the Marxist idea of the ‘production of nature’ is that nature appears to drop out, the consequence of only the social. The issue, then, is how to keep nature in the discussion, but also the social too. Useful here is the notion of a hybrid, that is, joining together two different entities to create a third that is related to but nonetheless different from its original constituents. A number of economic geographers have tried to develop hybrid conceptions of nature as both social and natural in studies of water, coffee, lumber, and fresh fruit.

Conclusion and Future Direction Economic geography even until the late 1970s was rela tively staid and conservative. It was masculinist in in clination as well as membership; it had a clear sense of its object of inquiry, the economy, and which primarily meant manufacturing industry; it favored the tried and true methods of either statistical analysis or the expert interview; and it tended toward straight and narrow theory drawn from economics. As a result, by 1980 ac cording to Nigel Thrift, the discipline was ‘‘pretty moribund y at risk of boring its audience to death.’’ Contemporary economic geography is almost un recognizable by comparison. It is intellectually lively, open, eclectic, pluralist, possibly chaotic and anarchic. Inconstancy is the only constant, inconsistency the only consistency. The last adjective one would now use is boring. Boring would be a welcome respite. Accordingly there is no agreement about economic geography’s def inition, or even whether a deﬁnition is important. Boundaries between economic geography and other ﬁelds are muddy and indistinct. Likewise, the idea of a separate

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discipline, and a separate empirical object of study, is also contested. Anything can be fodder for its inquiry, and any method can be fashioned appropriately to yield results. Along with these internal changes the discipline is becoming less masculinist, partly because of the inﬂuence of feminist theorizing and methods, and partly because of recent formative contributions made by women such as Kathy Gibson, Julie Graham, Susan Hanson, Linda McDowell, Geraldine Pratt, and Erica Schoenberger along with the continuing inﬂuence of Doreen Massey. Economic geography is also becoming even slightly less Anglo American. The Second Global Conference on Economic Geography was held in Beijing in 2007 (the ﬁrst was in Singapore in 2000) and drew participants from thirty six countries. The biggest contingent continued to come from the US, and the lingua franca was English, but it was a start. And this sense of expanded inclusion ap plies also to younger economic geographers. Since 2003 there have been bi annual Summer Institutes in Eco nomic Geography held both in the US and the UK de signed speciﬁcally to socialize graduate students and junior faculty into the discipline. Not everything is rosy. There are signs of increasing fragmentation and discord, and critics from outside have complained of a hopeless ‘‘fuzziness’’ and a haphazzard approach, while even inside there are grumblings of a lack of rigor, focus, and policy relevance. In short, eco nomic geography’s future is not assured. This is odd. For, the subject matter of the discipline is what so many people outside of the discipline want to talk about. There can be few disciplines whose object of investigation is more germane to the present historical moment. This has even led to other disciplines muscling into economic geography’s traditional intellectual turf: such as economics, economic sociology, and even eco nomic anthropology. While there is a temptation to turn one’s back on such intrusions, to give the cold shoulder (and which certainly has been given to economics), an alternative strategy, and which may ensure that there is a disciplinary future, is to embrace them, to try to learn from them. The best future for economic geography paradoxically may be the continual dissolution of eco nomic geography as we knew it. See also: Commodity Chains; Cultural Turn; De-Industrialization; Globalization, Economic; Industrial Districts; Location Theory; Spatial Division of Labor; Spatial Science.

Further Reading Barnes, T. J. (1996). Logics of Dislocation: Models, Metaphors and Meanings of Economic Space. New York: Guilford.

Chisholm, G. G. (1889). Handbook of Commercial Geography. London: Longman, Green. Cook, P. (2004). Follow the thing: Papaya. Antipode 36, 642 664. Dicken, P. (2007). Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy. New York: Guilford. Gibson Graham, J. K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell. Hansen, S. and Pratt, G. (1995). Space, Place and Gender. New York: Routledge. Hartshorne, R. (1939). The Nature of Geography. Lancaster, PA: Association of American Geographers. Harvey, D. (1969). Explanation in Geography. London: Edward Arnold. Harvey, D. (1982). The Limits to Capital. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Isard, W. (1955). Location and Space Economy. New York: John Wiley. Jones, C. (1935). Economic Geography. New York: Henry Holt. Leyshon, A. and Thrift, N. (1997). Money/Space: Geographies of Monetary Transformation. London: Routledge. Massey, D. (1984). Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the Geography of Production. London: MacMillan. Massey, D. (1992). High Tech Fantasies. London: Routledge. Massey, D. and Meegan, R. (1982). Anatomy of Job Loss. London: Methuen. McDowell, L. (1997). Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City. Oxford: Blackwell. Peck, J. (1996). Work Place: Social Regulation of Labor Markets. New York: Guilford. Piore, M. and Sabel, C. (1984). The Second Industrial Divide. New York: Basic Books. Pratt, G. (2004). Working Feminism. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Saxenian, A. (1994). Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Schoenberger, E. (1997). The Cultural Crisis of the Firm. Oxford: Blackwell. Scott, A. J. (1988). Flexible production systems and regional development: the rise of new industrial spaces in North America and Western Europe. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 12, 171 185. Scott, A. J. (2000). Economic geography: The great half century. In Clark, G. L., Feldman, M. P. & Gertler, M. S. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography, pp 18 44. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, N. (1984). Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Storper, M. (1997). The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: Guilford. Thrift, N. J. and Olds, K. (1996). Reﬁguring the economic in economic geography. Progress in Human Geography 20, 31 37. Tickell, A., Sheppard, E., Peck, J. and Barnes, T. J. (eds.) (2007). Politics and Practices in Economic Geography. London: Sage. Watts, M. (1994). Oil as money: The devil’s excrement and the spectacle of black gold. In Corbridge, S., Martin, R. & Thrift, N. J. (eds.) Money, Power, and Space, pp 406 444. Oxford: Blackwell. Whitbeck, R. H. and Finch, V. C. (1924). Economic Geography. New York: McGraw Hill.

Relevant Websites http://www.clarku.edu Clark College: the website for the journal Economic Geography, the oldest journal in the ﬁeld. http://www.egrg.org.uk The website of the Economic Geography Research Group of the Royal Geographical Society, Institute of British Geographers and which includes working papers and book reviews. http://geog.uconn.edu University of Connecticut, Department of Geography: the website of

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the Economic Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers. http://faculty.washington.edu/Krumme/gloss University of Washington faculty web server: a website with an A Z

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listing of relevant terms for economic geography designed and maintained by Gunter Krumme at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Economic Geography, Quantitative E. Sheppard, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA P. Plummer, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Complex Spatial Systems These are characterized by a large number of spatially interdependent and heterogeneous elements, where the interdependence between these elements is characterized by nonlinear dependence. Entropy Maximization A method used to derive the most probable state of a spatial interaction system, given information on total inﬂows and total outﬂows and capacity constraints. Gravity Model An analog with Newtonian mechanics in which the interaction between two places varies directly with the size of those places and inversely with the distance between them. Methodological Individualism The view that society is best explained by reducing it to the (usually rational) beliefs and actions of the individuals who compose it. Monte Carlo Methods A simulation exercise designed to explore how a system behaves by running repeated experiments in which the initial conditions of the system and rule-based outcomes are drawn at random from a known probability distribution. Rational Choice The view that humans make choices that maximize their satisfaction (utility) given the limited set of resources at their disposal. Stochastic Utility Functions Utility functions expressing individuals’ preferences, in which parameter values vary stochastically across an otherwise uniform population according to a known probability distribution.

Quantitative economic geography has, at various times, taken one or more of three forms. First, dating back to the commercial geography of the nineteenth century, is the collection and cataloging of numerical statistics about the geography of economic activities and communications costs. Second, dating back to the ‘quantitative revolution’ in Anglo American human geography, is the use of stat istical methods to explore, and test hypotheses advanced, concerning, spatial relations between economic and other related variables (utilizing quantitative as well as quali tative data). Third, also dating back to the ‘quantitative revolution’, is the use of mathematics as a language to advance theoretical propositions about the spatial organ ization of economic activity, and the economic evolution of landscapes. Much of the attention that quantitative economic geography receives in the scholarly literature is

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devoted to how and whether the economy can adequately be captured through the collection and statistical analysis of economic and other related data, and about the relative merits of quantitative and qualitative empirical research methodologies. Neither of the ﬁrst two forms raises issues speciﬁc to economic geography, however, notwithstanding that quantitative data and methods are of particular relevance in economic geography, due to the nature of economic concepts and information. We thus focus here on the use of mathematics to conceptualize economic geography and advance propositions about the nature of the observable spatial economy. With very few exceptions, mathematical economic geography has concerned itself with analyzing the spatial dynamics of capitalism, not withstanding the coevolution of a variety of other eco nomic systems (e.g., socialist, subsistence, slavery, feudal, and community economies) at various times, and in all kinds of places. The use of mathematics to theorize economic geog raphy can be traced back to continental European economists, particularly Alfred Weber (1868–1958), Tord Palander (1902–72), Johann von Thu¨nen (1783–1850), and August Lo¨sch (1906–45), as well as the German geographer Walter Christaller (1893–1969) and the American political scientist Harold Hotelling (1895– 1973): ‘location and spatial interaction theory’. Within geography, an initial ﬂourishing of quantitative economic geography occurred, starting in the late 1950s, with the initiative of US based geographers Edward Ullman (1912–76), William Garrison (1924–), and Brian Berry (1934–); British geographer Peter Haggett (1933–); and Swedish geographer Torsten Ha¨gerstrand (1916–2004), the quantitative revolution began with economic geog raphy. In the early 1990s, this approach was reinvigorated within economics as a result of new mathematical models pioneered by the American economist Paul Krugman (1953–): ‘the new geographical economics’. Within geography, this approach came under signiﬁcant criticism in the 1970s and 1980s, for both its epistemological agenda and its ontological commitment to mainstream neoclassical economics. Thus, some geographers and regional scientists, notably Trevor Barnes (1956–), Panos Liossatos (1941–), Eric Sheppard (1950–), and Michael Webber (1941–) began experimenting with the use of mathematics for Marxian theorizations of the capitalist space economy: ‘regional political economy’. Under the aegis of the quantitative revolution, and drawing on the preexisting scholarship noted above,

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economic geographers sought to develop mathematical theorems to describe the spatial organization of a market economy. The bulk of this research, under the label of ‘location theory’, sought to determine the optimal (i.e., proﬁt maximizing or cost minimizing) point location for individual capitalist enterprises, within the continuous space of a market economy. Industrial location theory sought to identify the point where aggregate transpor tation costs, for both assembling inputs and marketing the commodity produced, are minimized. Central place and retail location theory sought to identify the best locations for individual retailers, taking into account competition from similar ﬁrms and the attractions of locating within retail clusters (central places). In both cases, the analysis concentrated on transportation costs, for producers and consumers, as the prime determinant of spatial variation in overall production costs, and therefore total proﬁts. Spatial variation in other costs, such as land, labor, cap ital, and taxes, and the effects of agglomeration econ omies (savings accruing to co location with other economic activities) were typically added as secondary considerations. Capitalists and consumers were con ceptualized as engaged in self interested, fully informed, rational choice. Space was conceived of as a uniform plane, and location theorists sought to understand why economic activities would emerge at some places rather than others on this plane. This research was also ex tended to consider public goods offered by the state, such as parks, education, and emergency and medical facilities. Complex location allocation and public facility location models were developed to determine the point locations that either maximized coverage of a spatially distributed population, or maximized accessibility, or minimized inequities in access. A second body of scholarship, pioneered by William Alonso (1933–99), examined land use patterns: agri cultural or urban activities that occupy extensive spatial territories or land use zones, rather than point locations. Rational capitalists were assumed to choose, for the land they own or rent, that activity that maximizes proﬁts. By the same token, residents of a certain kind would choose the location that is so desirable that they are willing to pay more for that location than anyone else. These choices were driven by the land market: competition for land means that each location is sold or rented to the highest bidder, who outbids others by using that land in a proﬁt maximizing (or utility maximizing) way. Thus, wheat is grown in regions where it is the most proﬁtable crop, and low income households occupy those parts of the city where they can outbid all other users of land. (Little attention was paid to other space intensive ac tivities, such as coalﬁelds, ﬁshing, or minerals extraction.) A third body of research, pioneered by John Q. Stewart (1894–1972), William Warntz (1922–88), and Alan Wilson (1939–), examined spatial interaction theory

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and the economics of transportation. One subset of this research sought to determine cost minimizing transpor tation ﬂows: which modes of transportation would be cheapest over which distances, and which routes through a complex transportation network will minimize time or cost. A second subset, more descriptive than normative in its approach, sought to predict how much spatial inter action (migration, commodity ﬂows, and capital ﬂows) would occur between places given prevailing transpor tation and communications technologies. Gravity models and entropy maximizing models were commonly used as tools for this purpose: seeking to predict the most likely patterns of ﬂows, taking into account the characteristics of origins and destinations (and nearby destinations), the costs of interaction, and any known constraints such as information on total inﬂows and outﬂows, and capacity constraints on links. Subsequently, many attempts have been made to demonstrate that the empirically robust empirical predictions of such descriptive models can be grounded in theoretical models of rational choice in the presence of stochastic utility functions. These attempts to provide a rational economic foundation to gravity models are, however, controversial. A fourth body of research, pioneered by Yorgos Papageorgiou (1943–) and Emilio Casetti (1928–), sought to bring all of these considerations together to simul taneously determine the spatial organization of an entire local economy (often conceptualized as a city): com modity production, consumption, agricultural, residential and commercial land use patterns, and transportation. The approach taken was drawn from neoclassical eco nomics, to which space was added as an extra consider ation. Assuming perfect competition and full information, every economic actor seeks to maximize his economic welfare, with the market determining production levels, consumption, and location. Like neoclassical economics, this scholarship made very strong assumptions about behavior (rationality), methodological individualism (microfoundations), and market structures (perfect competition), adding assumptions about preexisting spa tial structures (an isotropic plane). Importantly, this re search showed that the minor change of including even isotropic space into neoclassical economic theory calls into question the foundational principle of that theory: that a competitive market economy minimizes capitalists’ proﬁts and maximizes consumers’ welfare. Alternative comprehensive approaches were de veloped by Leslie Curry (1915–2009) and Michael Webber, who sought to determine the most likely spatial organization of activities, land uses, migration, trade, and labor markets without presuming rational, fully informed choice. Like models of spatial interaction, this approach replaced very strong assumptions about rational choice making with minimalist (even random) assumptions about behavior, showing that predictable spatial patterns

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nevertheless emerge. Similarly, Alan Wilson and his colleagues sought to extend their systems based spatial interaction methodology to comprehensive models of the local economy. These models explicitly incorporate the types of nonlinear interdependencies and structure changing behavior that are characteristic of chaotic and complex dynamics: ‘complex spatial systems’. Typically, scholars following these approaches were more skeptical of the idea that the world must be understood through a set of mathematical theorems, and were willing to ex periment with alternative approaches to analyzing the properties of their models through computational ex perimentation, most notably examining the empirical implications of their theorizations using Monte Carlo simulation. In the early 1990s, Paul Krugman catalyzed a re naissance of location theory in the spirit of neoclassical economics, the ‘new geographical economics’. The im petus for this was a new set of mathematical techniques introduced into mainstream economics by the US based economists Avinash Dixit and Joseph Stiglitz to model monopolistic competition using standard microeconomic tools (rational choice). Krugman’s innovation was to apply these, successively, to international trade and the emergence of industrial clusters. Grounded in this highly simpliﬁed model of monopolistic competition, the indi vidual rational choice foundations of neoclassical eco nomics, and the assumptions of friction of distance and undifferentiated space inherited from earlier location theories, the new geographical economists sought to extend Krugman’s initial insights to account for a set of stylized facts about the spatial conﬁguration of special ization and trade, agglomeration, and regional economic growth. In order to gain some purchase on the behavior of these types of spatial economic systems, conventional proof theorem mathematics was replaced by computa tional experiments, but always within the methodological bounds set by the methodological individualism of ra tional choice theory. Alongside these developments of mathematical spatial economic theory, economic geographers such as Luc Anselin (1953–), Daniel Grifﬁth (1951), Robert Haining (1949–), and Bernard Fingleton (1949–) were active in developing methodologies that would enable such the ories to be tested, in good positivist fashion, against empirical observation. Beginning in the late 1960s, enormous progress was made in measuring the con founding effects of spatial pattern on inferential statistics (measuring spatial autocorrelation and determining its effects on statistical inference), in developing methods of inferential spatial statistics that address these problems, and in incorporating these into a methodological pro gram of spatial econometrics. More recently, both spatial interdependencies and spatial heterogeneity were con ceptualized as resulting from the nature of the economic

process being modeled, in particular, those hypothesized by the new geographical economics, rather than as some ‘nuisance’ parameter to be controlled to ensure unbiased, efﬁcient, and/or consistent statistical inference. Increas ingly, these approaches sought to match the desire of the mathematical theorists to derive foundational theorems about the economy, with deﬁnitive hypothesis tests. The shape taken by this ﬁrst school of quantitative human geography, as for all intellectual endeavors, was strongly inﬂuenced by the time and place within which it emerged. Post 1945 North America and Europe was a period when social science sought to gain prestige by emulating the natural sciences; when the natural sciences saw themselves as providing a powerful value free ac count of nature by adopting logical empiricism (positiv ism) as its philosophy; when neoclassical economics was the discipline closest in approach to the natural sciences; and when there was strong belief in the power and ability of quantitative social science to improve society through social engineering. Under these circumstances, it seemed perfectly natural for quantitative economic geography to adopt the twin discursive frames of logical empiricism and neoclassical economics. Both positivism and the capitalist market economy came under increasing criti cism, however, in the politically turbulent years of 1968– 73. Even enthusiasts of quantitative economic geography, such as David Harvey (1935–) and Allen Scott (1940–), became disenfranchised from the twin ideas that posi tivism would enable the engineering of a brave new so ciety, and that markets were the key to this. As a consequence, a new school of radical economic geog raphy emerged that was severely critical of neoclassical economics (a critique that was already immanent, given the shortcomings of this theory identiﬁed once space was included into neoclassical theory). Radical geographers were equally critical of what was termed the spatial fet ishism of this ﬁrst school of quantitative geography (the assumptions of an isotropic plane, and of space as a variable exogenous to the economy), and its use of mathematical reasoning and quantitative methods. As a result, quantitative economic geography was taken to be equivalent to neoclassical and logical positivist economic geography, and was rejected by most radical geographers as empiricist and bourgeois. Nevertheless, in the 1980s, Allen Scott, Gordon Clark (1950–), Eric Sheppard, Panos Liossatos, Trevor Barnes, and Michael Webber catalyzed a mathematical economic geography in the spirit of Marxian political economy and post Keynesian economics, inﬂuenced by the work of the Italian economist Piero Sraffa (1898–1983), the Japanese economist Michio Morishima (1923–2004), and the American economist John Roemer (1948–). This body of research, which developed into what has become known as ‘regional political economy’, has extended parallel modeling in economics to account for the ﬂow of

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commodities, capital, and technical knowledge between regions. It has examined the relevance of a labor theory of value in a capitalist space economy, and has sought to move away from the equilibrium models popular in economics. A persistent conclusion has been that a cap italist space economy is unlikely ever to be in equi librium, and that its spatiality is a destabilizing force. Research has thus been undertaken into the dis equilibrium dynamics of a capitalist space economy. In the process, it has been shown how the introduction of geographical space – particularly the transportation sector and transportation infrastructure – calls into question some of the theoretical principles of both mainstream economics and mainstream Marxist theory. While rejecting the desire of economists to ground ag gregate models of the economy within microfoundations, research has sought to examine the spatial behavior of capitalists: the adoption of new technologies, and the pricing of commodities in spatially dispersed markets. Empirical work has examined growth dynamics at the national and international scale, the adoption and imi tation of new technologies within and across regions (establishing, for example, that persistent differences in technological mix and the trajectory of technical change exist between regions), the evolution of post Fordist in dustrial districts, and spatial pricing patterns within urban areas. Methods have included equilibrium and dis equilibrium modeling, evolutionary economic models, and spatial statistics. They also increasingly include the use of computational and simulation modeling, instead of seeking to simplify the economy to the point where it becomes tractable for the generation of general math ematical results. This has demonstrated that the com monly received view that quantitative methods are necessarily positivist or neoclassical is, in fact, erroneous. The study of connections between this research and the interdisciplinary ﬁeld of complexity theory has un covered parallels between this kind of mathematical economic geography, dialectical analysis, and certain kinds of Deleuzian theory (Sheppard, 2008). These very different conclusions about how a capit alist space economy works, notwithstanding the use of the same kind of mathematical theoretical reasoning, reﬂect a very different set of assumptions. Location theory sought to explain the space economy through the rational choices of self interested individuals, took geo graphic space to be exogenous to the economy and de terminant of economic outcomes, and presumed that the economy is tendentially at or near equilibrium. While space undermined perfect competition, the operating principle was that these imperfections and externalities could be identiﬁed and corrected through state inter vention and social engineering. By contrast, within re gional political economy different kinds of economic

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actors are assumed to occupy different class positions within the economic system (deﬁned by the factors of production they own, their position in the hierarchy of economic decision making, and their relative wealth), differentially conditioning the possibilities available to them as individuals. Thus social structures exist which condition action, making methodological individualism an inadequate conceptualization of human behavior. In addition, it is assumed that differences exist between individual actors occupying similar class positions in terms of relative location, resources, preferences, tech nologies, and so forth, and that actors possess only limited information about the current and future economic landscape. Space is not exogenous, because accessibility, transportation technologies, and infrastructures co evolve with the space economy. It can then be deduced that equilibrium is rarely to be expected, and that a capitalist space economy is conﬂict ridden and characterized by sociospatial inequality and uneven development. See also: Competitiveness; Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems; Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism; Economic Geography; Economics and Human Geography; Location Theory; Political Economy, Geographical; Quantitative Methodologies; Spatial Autocorrelation; Spatial Interaction Models.

Further Reading Alonso, W. (1964). Location and Land Use. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Anselin, L. (1988). Spatial Econometrics: Models and Methods. Berlin: Springer. Brakman, S., Garretsen, H. and van Marrewijk, C. (2001). An Introduction to Geographical Economics: Trade, Location and Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, G. L., Gertler, M. and Whiteman, J. (1986). Regional Dynamics: Studies in Adjustment Theory. London: Allen and Unwin. Curry, L. (1998). The Random Spatial Economy and Its Evolution. Aldershot: Ashgate. Fingleton, B. (ed.) (2007). New Directions in Economic Geography. Basingstoke: Edward Elgar. Krugman, P. (1991). Geography and Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lloyd, P. E. and Dicken, P. D. (1977). Location in Space: A Theoretical Approach to Economic Geography. London: Harper and Row. Losch, A. (1954). The Economics of Location (ﬁrst publ. 1940). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Scott, A. J. (1980). The Urban Land Nexus and the State. London: Pion. Sheppard, E. S. (2000). Geography or economics? Contrasting theories of location, spatial pricing, trade and growth. In Clark, G., Gertler, M. & Feldman, M. (eds.) Handbook of Economic Geography, pp 199 219. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sheppard, E. (2008). Geographic dialectics? Environment & Planning A, 40, 2603 2612. Sheppard, E. S. and Barnes, T. J. (1990). The Capitalist Space Economy: Geographical Analysis after Ricardo, Marx and Sraffa. London: Unwin Hyman. Webber, M. J. and Rigby, D. L. (1996). The Golden Age Illusion: Rethinking Postwar Capitalism. London: Guilford Press. Wilson, A. G. (2000). Complex Spatial Systems. London: Prentice Hall.

Economics and Human Geography J. R. Faulconbridge, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK S. Hall, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Economics The study of rational human behavior (microeconomics) and its implications for economic decision making and the production and behavior of national economies (macroeconomics). Policy Relevance Work that has a methodology and a message that inﬂuences policymakers rather than purely being of interest to an academic audience.

Introduction Since the work of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, work in the discipline of economics has focused upon the study of human decision making in relation to the use of scarce resources. Lionel Robbins’ 1932 book entitled An Essay on the Nature and Signiﬁcance of Economic Science provides a more recent discussion of these principles. Here, he reinforces the message of Smith and notes that the core of mainstream economics is (1) the study of rational human behavior (microeconomics) and its im plications for economic decision making; and (2) the production and behavior of national economies (macro economics). Explorations of the effects of value judg ments or aberrant behaviors on decision making are said to fall outside of the realm of such study. Human geographers meanwhile, and especially eco nomic and urban geographers, have at ﬁrst glance pre occupied themselves with not dissimilar questions in terms of studying the economy, economies, and their urban manifestations. This is perhaps most obvious in relation to theories of agglomeration and localization that have been used by both geographers and economists to analyze the tendency of people and economic activities to cluster together in cities. However, while on the surface this seems to suggest shared and complementary agendas that might allow interdisciplinary exchanges, the rela tionship between human geography and economics has at best been complex and contested, and at worst been adversarial, argumentative, and even nonexistent.

Changing Times, Changing Relationships The often fraught relationship between human geography and economics is by no means a recent development. Dating back to the late 1800s and as indicated above, the

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relationship has been characterized by the different dis ciplinary approaches taken to often similar research pro blematics. For example, Barnes writing in the book The New Industrial Geography outlines how the ﬁrst English language textbook in economic geography, George Chisholm’s A Handbook of Commercial Geography, sought to position com modity production and trade as fundamentally ‘geo graphical’ research concerns. While economists such as David Ricardo and J S Mill had studied trade, particularly through the development of concepts such as comparative advantage, Chisholm sought to demonstrate that it was precisely through geographical differences that such com parative advantages emerged. Moreover, in addition to sig naling the importance of geography to economic research agendas, he also forwarded a distinctive methodological approach that privileged detailed empirical research and the presentation of arguments through a distinctly geographical imagination, most notably through maps. Consequently, while the early relationship between human geography and economics in many ways fore shadows contemporary differences between the two dis ciplines, at a certain point in the history of human geography, the potential for a close relationship with economics seemed to exist. The ‘quantitative revolution’ of the 1950s and 1960s ushered in a period of more positivist study in which the modeling of spatial struc tures dominated the work of most (but not all) human geographers. This was both methodologically and philosophically closer to economics than present day human geography. The chance of a long standing rela tionship developing diminished, however, with changes in human geography that took place from the 1970s onwards. Two such developments stand out as being particularly signiﬁcant – developments that echo the earlier relationship between the two disciplines. First, led by the work of Manuel Castells, David Harvey, and Doreen Massey, human geography under went a critical and radical turn in the 1970s and 1980s in response to economic changes that were leading to deindustrialization, mass unemployment, and social in equality in ‘developed’ economies. This gave energy to the work of geographers that emphasized critical, nor mative politics. Scholarship sought to do more than ex plain sociospatial phenomena, instead being designed to develop social science theory while actively inﬂuencing policy in a way that might reduce inequalities and high light the exploitative nature of, and inherent contra dictions of, capitalism. Research in this period was heavily

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inﬂuenced by Marxist political economy that emphasized the intricate relationships between production and dis tribution and the need for revolutionary change in cap italist systems so as to break down class relations and associated inequalities. This was a very different political economy to that espoused by Adam Smith, mainly be cause of the desire to overhaul rather than explain sys tems of accumulation and the expropriation of surplus. This opened up a disjuncture between the projects of human geographers and economists. Not only were geographers increasingly radical in their work but a methodological revolution was also further distinguishing their research from economists. New interest in the im pacts of economic structures and systems, the winners and losers and the lived experiences of deindustrializa tion and unemployment that were resulting from capit alism’s spatial adjustments of the 1970s and 1980s, led to a burgeoning amount of qualitative research. This meth odological shift was far from total and many human geographers continued and continue today to use quan titative methods to explore a range of geographical questions. For example, Sheppard and Barnes in their book The Capitalis Space Economy provide perhaps one of the most thorough analyses of how a quantitative ap proach can reveal the intricacies of location as the interaction of places and labor as a heterogeneous social entity, something that allows a direct critique of neo classical economic work to be made. Nevertheless, a signiﬁcant switch away from quantitative methods swept the ﬁeld of human geography in the 1980s and set the foundations for the predominance of qualitative research that now pervades human geography. Second, this methodological shift was given further momentum by the growing inﬂuence of the ‘cultural turn’ in human geography from the 1990s. Inspired by the growth of cultural studies as an academic discipline from the late 1980s onwards, as well as the rise of diverse and ﬂexible post Fordist regimes of production and con sumption in capitalist space economies, the ‘cultural turn’ had a signiﬁcant impact on the ways in which human geographers study the economic. Most broadly, research into ‘the economic’ began to place emphasis on more ‘qualitative’ dimensions including: meanings, identities, trust, and knowledges. This was accompanied by research into neglected and relatively new areas of the ‘economy’, including most notably e commerce, consumption prac tices, and commodity chains and networks. Moreover, there was increasing interest in drawing on post struc turalist thought to critically rethink the economy as an object of analysis. In particular, geographers such as Andrew Leyshon, Roger Lee and Colin Williams in their book Alternative Economic Spaces sought to demonstrate that ‘the economy’ is not necessarily contiguous with ‘capitalism’ and pointed to the emergence of a range of proliferative and diverse economies.

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As a result of these shifts, corporate interviews have been joined by participant observation, participatory methods, and discourse analysis as commonly used re search tools with proponents arguing that such methods allow researchers to access the meanings attached to economic actions in ways that quantitative methods do not facilitate. Therefore, while it is important to note that the growing appreciation of the role of cultural factors in socioeconomic practices is by no means limited to human geography, it is widely acknowledged that for good or for ill, the effect on the discipline of both critically and culturally inﬂected research into the economic and economies has been substantial, distinguishing it from economics. In many ways, these developments have been inter preted as a furthering of the ‘divide’ between human geography and mainstream economics. However, there is nothing inevitable about this. First, as noted above, quantitative geographical studies continue to offer, meth odologically at least, points of convergence that could inform discussions. Second, interest in processes of glob alization and the geographical stickiness of economic ac tivities also creates shared research questions, addressed both by geographers and economists using concepts such as agglomeration and localization through the study of social processes and place speciﬁc institutional endow ments. Barnes highlights how, as a result, work in insti tutional economics and ‘new industrial geography’ effectively converged in the 1990s around ﬁve shared questions about: local and reﬂexive knowledge; the role of institutional analysis; the affects of embeddedness and networks; the power of cultural norms and conventions; and path dependency and ‘lock ins’ in economic devel opment. Third, this reveals then how economics, in a similar vein to human geography, is now a diverse dis cipline with multiple subdisciplines. Increasingly many of the subgroupings within economics are sympathetic to geographer’s beliefs that humans are irrational, socially and spatially variegated heterogeneous actors and ortho dox and neoclassical Economics now sits alongside het erodox economics and emphasizes the historically, socially, and spatially constructed rationalities of agents. Similarly, specialty groupings (e.g., ﬁnancial economists; inter national economists) approach questions of ﬁnancial geography and internationalization theory in ways that geographers can relate to. However, while this emerging plurality within both economics and human geography points to the possi bility for more engaged interdisciplinary discussion in the future, such opportunities have to be put in the context of the politics of both disciplines and the op portunities for and barriers to conversations that emerge when competitive rivalries and ideological positions exist, something that has been particularly signiﬁcant in the 2000s.

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Locating the ‘Economy’ in Contemporary Human Geography As will be clear from discussions so far, debates about the relationship between human geography and economics have been principally driven by economic and urban geographers because of their explicit engagement with the ‘economy’ and ‘economies’. The 2000s have seen, though, a number of ongoing debates emerge, principally within economic geography, about whether relationships with economists are appropriate or useful in the context of geographical studies of economies. Two strands cut through these debates that focus on academic approaches to the economy: deﬁnitions of the economy/economies themselves; and methodologies for studying the microeconomy. First, then, ‘deﬁnitions of the economic’. Amin and Thrift, in a provocative intervention, entitled What Kind of Economic Theory for What Kind of Economic Geography? made a call for geographers to abandon all hopes of talking to and working with economists. This argument was made on the basis that economists remain wedded to neo classical, resource based analyses of the ‘economic’ while human geography, in common with other social scientists such as anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists, acknowledges the existence of multiple, socioculturally constructed economies. For Amin and Thrift, this fun damental ontological difference means that, following the cultural turn, any engagement with economists will ul timately not prove fruitful. Consequently, human geog raphers should ‘play out’ with other more like minded social scientists as part of a project to reveal the ﬂaws of even the most heterodox economists. Others are, however, less sure about this ‘prescription’ for the future trajectory of human geography’s engage ment with the economic and see the focus upon the cultural and failure to fully theorize the processes leading to the construction of economic value as one of economic geography’s weaknesses. There is also concern that many geographers are blind to the insights of heterodox eco nomics and the growing body of work on gender and culture that has many parallels with the type of ‘econ omy’ Amin and Thrift describe. Consequently, there is little agreement about whether human geographers should boycott or engage with (but not ‘lie down’ and be eaten by) the lions that are economists as part of a project to place economic geography at the center of social sci ence debates about the economy. A second major debate provoked by Amin and Thrift’s intervention surrounds ‘the methodology used to study the economic’. On the back of the ‘cultural turn’, Amin and Thrift argue that micro social studies facilitated by ethnography and long term immersion in the ﬁeld are vital for understanding the sociospatial constitution of the economy. According to Amin and Thrift, even

microeconomists fail to achieve the type of textured analyses being produced by geographers, sociologists, and others. Instead, the scholarship produced by many economists is dominated by desk based theorizing and abstract claims that ignore the messiness of the ‘real’ world. This, they claim, is another reason to cast aside hopes of relationships with economists. Reactions to such claims have again been mixed. One response has been to show that many geographers are effectively using quantitative methods and modeling to explore the complexities of sociospatial economies and that this provides the opportunity for useful dialogues to be established. Indeed, Plummer and Sheppard in their paper Must Emancipatory Economic Geography be Qualitative? argue that the use of quantitative models by economic geographers is vastly different to that of economists and that the most effective way to highlight the frailties of economist’s analyses is to challenge them using the quantitative language they understand rather than through qualitative insights that geographers’ rivals quickly rubbish and dismiss. Slightly less provocatively, Sheppard writing about The Economic Geography Project calls for the establishment of ‘trading zones’ through which more effective dialogue can be established be tween researchers with different methodological stand points. Another response has been to question the value of completely jettisoning quantitative approaches from the work of geographers. The dangers of such a move are said to be evidenced by long held concerns about the ‘fuzziness’ of geographer’s concepts and the use of ‘thin’ empirics to back up theoretical claims. Consequently, an argument has developed in support of the use of exten sive quantitative surveys that will be taken seriously not only by economists but also by policymakers. Amin and Thrift would probably counter that geographers shouldn’t want to be taken serious by economists. But others clearly disagree.

Disciplinary Identities, Relevance, and Reproduction The debates surrounding the intersection between human geography and economics around ‘the economy’ also go beyond academic questions of deﬁning ‘econ omies’ and appropriate methodologies for studying them. They have also been couched within the wider context of the contemporary identity of geography (and economic geography especially) in both academic and policy cir cles. Here, two issues stand out as being particularly signiﬁcant. First, as hinted above, the need to sustain geography as a distinctive discipline with a unique toolkit able to analyze the effect of space and time on human socio economic practice has raised questions about whether

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engaging with economics might lead to the loss, rather than the consolidation, of a unique and potentially valu able geographical academic identity. For example, some geographers have argued that there is a need to return to the ‘core competencies’ of geography – particularly the development of conceptual toolkits to reﬁne theorizations of space and place. These critics claim that the neglect of such endeavors has allowed other social scientists, notably sociologists, to encroach on the heartland of human geography. Indeed, one of the most notable examples of the rise of geographical imaginations outside of human geography is within the discipline of economics. For example, the economist and special advisor to the United Nations, Jeffrey Sachs, adopts a crude approach to geography using both physical and human geographical differences (such as climate, proximity to coastal zones and popu lation density) as explanatory variables for poverty rates globally. Importantly for our argument here, he fre quently explicitly uses the term geography but does not reference the work of contemporary academic geog raphers. Meanwhile, the ‘new economic geography’ has been developed within economics itself. This intellectual tradition is most closely associated with Paul Krugman who argues that economists should take the inherently geographical nature of the economy more seriously. This work is particularly concerned with explaining the nature of agglomeration economies by drawing on ideas of im perfect competition and increasing returns to scale. Quite rightly, this growing interest in space and place within economics has been reﬂected by developments within human geography itself that aim to foster closer links with economists and develop more subtle geographical imaginations beyond human geography. In this respect, the founding of the Journal of Economic Geography in 2001 is signiﬁcant. The journal has editors in both economics and human geography and explicitly states on its website that its aims ‘‘are to redeﬁne and reinvigorate the inter section between economics and geography’’. However, some geographers have argued that initi ating a dialogue with economists, in common with de bates with social scientists more generally, represents more of an exercise in importing ideas into human geography from outside, in this case from economics, than genuinely entering into an interdisciplinary dis cussion where theories and concepts are developed through engaged and open dialogue. This debate has been particularly well developed in terms of the rela tionship between human geography and one brand of heterodox economics, new economic sociology. Perhaps most closely associated with the work of Mark Grano vetter, new economic sociology has been inﬂuential across a range of topics in human geography, particularly through the concept of embeddedness. For many human geographers, the attraction of this branch of heterodox

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economics is its move away from the efﬁciency and equilibrium principles associated with orthodox econo mists and its commitment to research a more diffuse set of political and cultural concerns – particularly the multiple contexts of economic action. However, as Jamie Peck in his article Economic Sociologies in Space argued that geographers have imported a rather simplistic reading of the sophisticated embeddedness literature within new economic sociology. Moreover, Peck suggests that new economic sociologists have been rather less interested in drawing on ideas from human geography and as such, the ﬂow of ideas within this interdisciplinary dialogue is ra ther one way. The second key set of debates surrounding the iden tity of human geography that impacts upon the discip line’s interactions with economics are associated with the relationship between human geography and policy making. Commentators including Ron Martin, Jamie Peck and Michael Samers in a series of articles in Antipode and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers have argued that the apogee of human geography’s engage ment with policymaking circles was in the 1970s and 1980s when the more critical ﬂavor of the discipline’s research resonated with the ‘big’ political questions of the time. However, more recently, it is claimed that work of a more cultural nature has gained far less traction in pol icymaking communities with economists thus domin ating policy relevant research in the social sciences. For example, critics such as Andre´s Rodrı´guez Pose and Henry Yeung argue that the impacts of the cultural turn have left human geography following ‘sexy’ subjects that are of little interest to broader policy communities and argue that what is needed is a ‘policy turn’ in the dis cipline to rectify this position. Moreover, the lack of political engagement by economic geographers is fre quently contrasted with economics that is perceived to have had a more inﬂuential say in policy than human geography. Consequently, critics argue that while many of the ‘big’ policy questions are inherently geographical, such as the inequalities associated with globalization, human geographies have been unable to engage policy makers, thus raising major questions about the discip line’s identity in the eyes of those making policy decisions. Of course, it is important to recognize that there are multiple ways of engaging in policy debates. Indeed, on closer inspection, there is evidence of human geog raphers working across a range of topics on the economy that have been inﬂuential in policy circles, particularly in terms of regional governance and ﬁnancial services. Moreover, it has been noted that engagement with pol icymaking can also mean being critical of policy com munities themselves. Perhaps, the more signiﬁcant issue in terms of reigniting human geography’s interest in policy relevant work is, then, the question of the need to

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compete with economists in ways in which work is valued both by the academy in economics and human geography but also by the policymaker. Indeed, while economists strive for this form of recognition, human geographers typically devalue it vis a` vis other academic pursuits, notably dissemination to their fellow geographical re search stakeholders. Perhaps the most notable way in which human geographers have begun to think about possible avenues for policy intervention is through an ongoing debate surrounding the nature of both Left politics and what it means to be a left or critical human geographer. This debate has been led by a series of essays published since 2005 in the critical human geography journal Antipode. Some commentators have been optimistic about the fu ture trajectories of leftist geographies and its opportun ities for inﬂuencing policy in socially progressive ways, something that it is often argued, economists are not so successful at. For example, Amin and Thrift in their provocative piece entitled What’s Left argue that rather than a single left, as perhaps characterized the earlier forms of critical human geography discussed above, there are in fact multiple lefts. Moreover, they claim that this is by no means necessarily problematic and could be seen as a signiﬁcant resource. Others are, however, far more circumspect about the possibilities for rekindling the kind of critical human geography that characterized the 1970s and 1980s. The debate about how to compete or collaborate with economists is, then, likely to rumble on for some time.

Future Directions Our review here has, in many ways, been rather Anglo American in its focus, primarily because of the domin ance of the work of scholars from the two countries in debates in leading geographical journals. There is, then, probably another story to be told from other perspectives. Indeed, our review has been necessarily selective and can only ever provide a snapshot of the diverse debates taking place about the relationship between human geography and economics. Nevertheless, the discussion in this art icle has revealed the importance of understanding how the relationship between human geography, and eco nomics, at least in the Anglo American world, has been dynamic and hotly contested in recent years. While not necessarily needing to be separate with many shared empirical and theoretical concerns, following the rise of a more critical human geography and the effects of the ‘cultural turn’, the two disciplines of human geography and economics have tended to develop in comparative isolation to one another, although there are still some important examples of where collaboration has taken place. Without doubt, the 2000s have been characterized

by a series of debates surrounding the possible future trajectories that human geography, and particularly eco nomic and urban geography, could and should take and the way a relationship with economics might inﬂuence this. These debates have in many ways focused on how economic geographers might best respond to economics perceived dominance in policymaking circles and the potential problems surrounding the more decentered and multiple economic geographies that have emerged fol lowing the cultural turn. However, while debates such as those surrounding the ‘Left’ in human geography offer a potential way for human geographers to reclaim the policy ground from economists, and the increasing recognition that more fruitful academic endeavors can stem from a genuine trade in ideas rather than human geographers being ‘net importers’ from disciplines such as economics are timely and well taken, there are other ways in which new intersections between economics and human geography could fruitfully emerge. First, there are considerable debates across the social sciences concerning the in creasing moves toward more post disciplinary futures. As initiatives such as the launch of the Journal of Economic Geography reveal, dialogues between economists and human geographers could certainly be part of this, al though there are important issues for discussion such as the epistemological and methodological convergences or divergences between the two disciplines that would need to be addressed. Second, and following on, there is an increasing rec ognition that the ‘big’ research questions currently being addressed by social scientists are inherently post disci plinary and as such demand a range of disciplinary perspectives. This does not necessarily mean that issues previously at the forefront of both disciplines were ne cessarily purely focused on one discipline or the other. Rather, it points to an increasing recognition in both academic and policy circles that many of the issues currently being studied are best approached using a post disciplinary framework from the start. Indeed, echoing earlier developments in human geography in which understandings of the economy were broadened to con sider a range of diverse economies, economists them selves are broadening their own conceptions of the economic, often in ways that have an implicit geo graphical take and are being taken seriously in policy circles. For example, the Stern report on The Economics of Climate Change was undertaken by the economist Sir Nicholas Stern and was tasked with explicitly linking economic growth through gross domestic product (GDP) measures to potential future climate change scenarios. Its recommendations are also framed in terms of GDP spend needed to offset potential declines in GDP associated with climate change. Geographers have much to say about sustainable adaptations to climate change and

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might seek to position themselves in these debates. Meanwhile, the economist Lord Layard’s hard hitting The Depression Report attempts to measure the cost to the UK economy of depression and chronic anxiety and uses this to urge reform of NHS care for these conditions, again based around the future GDP growth that could be enjoyed if his recommendations were implemented. In many ways, this resonates with the growing literature within human geography that is concerned with ex ploring geographical inequalities in health outcomes. So in terms of topics such as climate change and health, economists are making signiﬁcant inroads into political communities. However, their research could be developed in closer dialogue with human geographers as the latter become increasingly concerned to (re)discover their critical and political edge. That said, it is important to remember that future dialogues between human geographers and economists need to be framed around the fundamental differences both methodologically and in terms of disciplinary cultures. If genuine debate could be had around these, then the shared research topics between the two disciplines could provide the welcome opportunity for genuinely engaged post disciplinary work between the two. See also: Cultural Turn; Economic Geography; Human Geography.

Further Reading Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (1997). Globalization, socio economics, territoriality. In Lee, R. & Wills, J. (eds.) Geographies of Economies, pp 147 157. London: Arnold. Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2000). What kind of economic theory for what kind of economic geography? Antipode 32, 4 9. Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2005). What’s left? Just the future. Antipode 37, 220 238. Barnes, T. J. (1999). Industrial geography, institutional economics and Innis. In Barnes, T. J. & Gertler, M. (eds.) The New Industrial Geography. Regions, Regulations and Institutions, pp 1 22. London: Routledge. Barnes, T. J. (2001). ‘In the beginning was economic geography’ a science studies approach to disciplinary history. Progress in Human Geography 25, 521 544. Barnett, C. (1998). The cultural turn: Fashion or progress in human geography. Antipode 30, 379 394. Castells, M. (1977). The Urban Question. London: Arnold.

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Centre for Economic Performance (2006). The Depression Report. London: London School of Economics. Chisholm, G. G. (1889). Handbook of Commercial Geography. London: Longman, Green. Harvey, D. (1973). Social Justice and the City. London: Arnold. Harvey, D. (1982). The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Johnston, R. J., Hepple, L., Hoare, T., Jones, K. and Plummer, P. (2003). Contemporary ﬁddling in human geography while Rome burns: Has quantitative analysis been largely abandoned and should it be? Geoforum 34(2), 163 164. Krugman, P. (1991). Geography and Trade. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Leyshon, A., Lee, R. and Williams, C. (2003). Alternative Economic Spaces. London: Sage. Markusen, A. (1999). Fuzzy concepts, scanty evidence, policy distance: the case for rigour and policy relevance in critical regional studies. Regional Studies 33(9), 869 884. Martin, R. (1999). The new ‘geographical turn’ in economics: Some critical reﬂections. Cambridge Journal of Economics 23, 65 91. Martin, R. (2001). Geography and public policy: The case of the missing agenda. Progress in Human Geography 25(2), 189 210. Martin, R. and Sunley, P. (2001). Rethinking the ‘economic’ in economic geography: Broadening our vision or losing our focus? Antipode 33, 148 161. Massey, D. and Megan, R. (1985). Politics and Method. London: Methuen. Peck, J. (1999). Grey geography? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 24(2), 131 135. Peck, J. (2005). Economic sociologies in space. Economic Geography 81(2), 129 174. Plummer, P. and Sheppard, E. (2001). Must emancipatory economic geography be qualitative? Antipode 33(2), 194 199. Robbins, L. (1932). An Essay on the Nature and Signiﬁcance of Economic Science. London: Macmillan. Rodrı´guez Pose, A. (2001). Killing economic geography with a ‘cultural turn’ overdose. Antipode 33(2), 176 182. Samers, M. (2001). What is the point of economic geography. Antipode 33(2), 183 193. Sheppard, E. (2006). The economic geography project. In Bagchi Sen, S. & Lawton Smith, H. (eds.) Economic Geography: Past, Present and Future, pp 11 23. London: Routledge. Sheppard, E. and Barnes, T. J. (1990). The Capitalist Space Economy: Geographical Analysis after Ricardo, Marx and Sraffa. London: Unwin Hyman. Smith, A. (1776). The Wealth of Nations. London: Strahan and Cadell. Stern, N. (2007). The Economics of Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thrift, N. and Olds, K. (1996). Reﬁguring the economic in economic geography. Progress in Human Geography 20(3), 311 337. Yeung, H. W. C. (2001). Does economics matter for/in economic geography? Antipode 33(2), 168 175.

Relevant Websites http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ The Journal of Economic Geography.

Economies, Alternative S. Healy, Worcester State College, Worcester, MA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Alternative Economies (1) Processes of production, exchange, labor/compensation, ﬁnance, and consumption that are intentionally different from mainstream (capitalist) economic activity; and (2) an alternative representation of economy as a heterogeneous and proliferative social space. Class Process The form in which surplus (in labor, value, or product form) is produced, appropriated, and distributed. Class processes theorized by Marx and Resnick and Wolff include slave, feudal, capitalist, independent (ancient), and communal. Community Enterprise A market- or nonmarketoriented economic organization concerned to improve community well-being. Diverse Economy Theoretical proposition that economies are intrinsically heterogeneous spaces composed of multiple class processes, mechanisms of exchange, forms of labor and remuneration, ﬁnance, and ownership. Economic Difference A representation of economy as radically heterogeneous. Performativity Theory that discourse participates in constituting the reality it purports to represent.

Introduction Contemporary economic geography has seen a theore tical centering of the relationship among neoliberal governance, economic globalization, and capitalist de velopment. The question within this research program is whether to see neoliberal capitalism as a single force deﬁned by its regularities, or as a referent that describes a variety of relations between the state and the economy (see Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism). Against the backdrop of this larger conversation about neoliberal capitalism, a small but growing number of geographers have turned their attention to a variety of economic ac tivities and sites that can be described as alternative in one of two ways. In the ﬁrst approach, the alternative economy is simply imagined to be something other than a presumptively dominant capitalism and its associated systems of governance. The term ‘alternative economies’ describes an array of processes of production, ownership, labor, exchange, and consumption that differ from those of the mainstream economy. A second understanding of

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the alternative economy coalesces around an epistemic break which posits the economy as an always already and intrinsically heterogeneous space. This second approach not only represents the economy as a ﬁeld of difference but possesses the potential to reconﬁgure scholarly re search within economic geography. While there has been considerable excitement around the idea of alternative economies, and especially non capitalist economic activity, the alternative economy re mains a marginal concern because of the underlying and frequently unspoken spatial ontology that governs its academic (and popular) representation. In many repre sentations, alternative is synonymous with self con sciously intentional efforts undertaken on a local scale. This association renders what it describes as peripheral and relatively powerless, vulnerable to cooptation or even state repression. From the outset the alternative economy is seen as socially insigniﬁcant and thus un worthy of scholarly attention. What is required to combat this double marginality is a theoretical framework that diverges from the conception of the alternative economy as local and intentional. The ﬁrst step in developing such a framework is to recognize that the marginality of the alternative economy comes from deﬁning something as alternative in the ﬁrst place. The second step is to produce an ontology of economic difference that high lights the ubiquity (in place) of nonmarket and non capitalist practices alongside the variety of capitalist forms.

The Trouble with Alternatives The term ‘alternative’, by its very nature, underscores a foundational insight from modern linguistic theory – that no term derives its meaning self referentially. The ex istence of an ‘alternative’ economy implies that there is a dominant or mainstream economy against which the al ternative is deﬁned. Moreover, the perceived spatial ex tent and viability of alternatives are shaped by how one understands the dominance of the mainstream economy. Not surprisingly, this issue is a principal point of con tention among scholars interested in alternative economies. Those who understand dominance from a realist epi stemological perspective believe that it is possible to gauge relative degrees of power and the extent of vul nerability or powerlessness. They therefore almost always see alternative economies and organizations as weak and likely to be short lived. Those who understand dominance

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as performative, on the other hand, see it as predicated upon and produced by the dissemination and repetition of knowledges. Neoliberalism, for example, has become hegemonic in large part because academic knowledges, policy discourses, protest movements, and bureaucratic technologies of enactment have made it the focus of belief and action, bringing it into being in both authoritarian and democratic settings. From this perspective, the con tinual interruptions, large omissions, and widening gaps in the performance of neoliberalism are openings for the other discourses and technologies that are always already participating in bringing different economies into being. The resolution of this central debate as to whether the alternative economy really is a marginal set of activities or if it is performatively marginalized will determine the future direction of research into alternative economies. One interesting feature of this debate is that adherents of the performative perspective are frequently regarded by those adopting the realist perspective as idealists who imagine that thinking differently – an intellectual com mitment to celebrating noncapitalist spaces and practices – is all that is required to change the world. Celebration here is effectively a code word for an idealist naivete´ that ignores the reality of capitalism and a devolved neo liberal state dedicated to its expanded reproduction. But what if the way in which this reality is invoked to reign in the potential study of something other than capitalism is itself part of what keeps capitalism dominant? Perhaps the persuasiveness of the argument that capitalism is the real economy, while the alternative economy is fanciful celebration, is the ultimate conﬁrmation of performativity. Research based on the realist vision of the alternative economy tends to focus on self consciously alternative economic institutions and practices such as the self employed retro retailers studied by Crewe, Gregson, and Brooks. These enterprises are threatened simultaneously by self employment burnout and by conventional stores targeting the same demographic. The researchers’ analysis reﬂects a frequently expressed concern that the alternative is contingent and vulnerable in comparison with the systemic and encompassing dominant economy. The premise here is clearly a binary opposition in which superior qualities are ascribed to the mainstream. If the alternative economy is understood from the outset as intrinsically deﬁcient, it is not surprising that alternativeness is always vulnerable to erasure. Market competition, cultural cooptation, and state repression are seen as forces arrayed against the alternative economy that will, almost inevitably, reduce alternativeness to sameness. The continued existence of alternative eco nomic institutions – community based credit unions, for example – is seen as threatened by the dominant ideol ogy that governs ﬁnance, the laws of local, state, and national government, and the market forces that favor

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large capitalist ﬁrms. At the same time, it is imagined that alternative economic practices and institutions, such as local economic trading systems (LETSs), can exist only on the margins either in spaces that have been abandoned by traditional ﬁnancial institutions (poor blighted com munities) or in locations with progressive and afﬂuent populations that can elect to sustain them. While alter native economic institutions are conceived as existing only in contingent circumstances, the presumed domin ance of mainstream ﬁnancial institutions creates the ap pearance that they exist autonomously, independent of conditions. Gibson Graham’s work attempts to replace the binary opposition of mainstream and alternative with a con ception of the economy as a space of difference. In this vision, self consciously alternative economic activities constitute a fraction of the noncapitalist and alternative capitalist activity within a differentiated economic land scape. The economy is understood as being composed of many different processes of production, exchange, own ership, work, remuneration, and consumption without the presumption of necessary relations of dominance and subordination. The alternative economy as economic difference constitutes a new economic ontology whose performative efﬁcacy depends upon and produces an approach to scholarship that is centered on community engagement and action research.

Theorizing Economic Difference The commonplace view is that economic alternatives are tiny islands awash in a sea of capitalism. To the extent that difference is recognized – alternatives to capitalism or alternative forms of capitalism – this difference is seen as contained within or conceptually subsumed to capit alism as such. The ﬁrst problem facing theorists of eco nomic difference is how to deﬁne capitalism so that it is no longer seen as that which contains and subsumes difference. Following Resnick and Wolff, Gibson Graham turns to a close reading of Capital in order to more precisely deﬁne capitalism. From her perspective, what dis tinguishes capitalism is the speciﬁc way in which surplus labor is produced and appropriated, or what Resnick and Wolff term the ‘class process’. Capitalism involves the use of free wage labor in the production of goods and ser vices, usually for a market. Wage laborers produce a surplus that is appropriated by nonproducers – a sole proprietor, or the board of directors of a capitalist ﬁrm – who distribute this surplus in ways that they wish, though they are usually constrained to direct much of it to re producing the ﬁrm and its exploitative class process. This minimalist deﬁnition of capitalism carries with it the implication that particular capitalist ﬁrms might

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operate under a variety of conditions. A capitalist en terprise may or may not accumulate capital (in other words, invest appropriated surplus in expanding plant, equipment, and workforce), may or may not own the means of production (plant and equipment may be leased or borrowed), may or may not be in a dominant position with respect to the wage laborers employed, and may or may not strive to maximize proﬁts or market share. It is the minimal deﬁnition of capitalism that allows us to see capitalisms in all of their speciﬁcity and particularity at the level of the enterprise. With capitalism reduced from a systemic entity co extensive with the social space to a type of enterprise scattered (or perhaps concentrated) in a larger economic landscape, it is easier to see the other ways in which goods and services are produced and exchanged. In the United States, for example, it is possible to ﬁnd instances of goods and services publicly provisioned, or produced for exchange by people who labor without freedom of contract in what might be seen as a slave class process (prisoners, members of the armed forces, indentured migrants, and children). Likewise, as feminists inside and outside of geography have argued and demonstrated for quite some time, household based, noncommodity pro duction of goods and services accounts for 30–50% of total economic activity in both rich and poor countries. While it is not difﬁcult to ﬁnd examples of exploitative class relations – capitalist, feudal, and slave – in every country of the world, it is also possible via class analysis to ﬁnd instances of nonexploitative class relations in which the people involved in producing surplus labor are

also its appropriators. Self employment (which Marx referred to as the ancient class process) is ubiquitous in both rich and poor countries, and worker cooperatives (where surplus is communally appropriated) operate in market and nonmarket contexts throughout the world. Just as productive activities can be read for difference in class terms, it is possible to theorize exchange and labor/compensation occurring in a variety of ways. While many goods and services are produced for exchange on markets, they are also allocated in other ways – via gifts, state transfers, barter, theft, and so on. Similarly, many people in a society may be paid a wage for some of their labors, but likely do other work that is unpaid or alter natively compensated – for example, by payment in kind, or in a reciprocal labor exchange. This heterogeneity of exchange and compensation is a fundamental condition in economies around the world and through time. The understanding of economy as a space of differ ence is partially captured in the open ended con ceptualization of a diverse economy in Figure 1. This diagram could be expanded to differentiate other aspects of the economy such as property (private, alter native private, and common property), forms of ﬁnance, and other dimensions of difference. It can be used for inventorying economic activity in a particular locality or thinking about the ways different elements of the diverse economy are in fact connected to one another in any given practice or social location. For instance, the Community Economies Collective documented the story of a worker cooperative, Collective Copies, which was founded after the original owner decided to close shop

Transactions

Labor

Enterprise

Market

Wage

Capitalist

Alternative market

Alternative paid

Alternative capitalist

Sale of public goods Ethical ‘fair-trade’ markets Local trading systems Alternative currencies Underground market Coop exchange Barter Informal market

Self-employed Cooperative Indentured Reciprocal labor In kind Work for welfare

State enterprise Green capitalist Socially responsible firm Nonprofit

Nonmarket

Unpaid

Noncapitalist

Household flows Gift giving Indigenous exchange State allocations State appropriations Gleaning Hunting, fishing, gathering Theft and poaching

Housework Family care Neighborhood work Volunteer Self-provisioning labor Slave labor

Communal Independent Feudal Slave

Figure 1 A diverse economy. Note: The ﬁgure should be read down the columns rather than across the rows. Source: GibsonGraham, J. K. (2006). A Postcapitalist Politics, p 71. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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rather than allow unionization. The capital used to ac quire the business was donated in the form of outright gifts and a no interest loan from customers and com munity members. Just as primitive accumulation in the form of dispossession has historically given rise to cap italist enterprises, gifting could be seen as providing a source of primitive accumulation for this cooperative enterprise (and perhaps others). The story of Collective Copies links the success of this enterprise to other elements of the diverse economy, tracing the formation of a nascent community economy in which social interdependence is acknowledged and constructed. To expand this conception of the economy as a negotiated space of relation among diverse elements, it is necessary to conceptualize a ﬂat spatial ontology where differences are provisionally equivalent rather than hierarchically arrayed.

Spatialities of Alterity and Difference For those who focus on neoliberalism as well as those who are interested in the self consciously alternative economy, the economy is generally structured by a hierarchical spatial ontology in which the local is nested within the regional, national, and global scales. Viewed as containers, activities on a global scale – international ﬁ nancial markets, for example – are assumed to have more determining power than local projects that appear to be contained – a LETS or a worker cooperative. In this way, a hierarchically ordered space effectively afﬁrms the dominance of (global) capitalism while consigning eco nomic experiments to relative powerlessness. The metonymical pairing of global capitalism and local alternatives structures our understanding of eco nomic space even when an alternative economic practice becomes global in scope. Alter trade (or fair trade), in spite of its expanding presence in the global marketplace, is dismissed by its critics as small in relation to global trade as a whole (as, of course, are many sectors of international trade) and vulnerable to competition and cooptation. What is remarkable about this depiction is that alter trade could just as easily be represented as a powerful innovation, one that has injected an ethical sensibility into trade that did not exist 20 years ago. Alter trade is energized by an ethical dynamic of growth (rather than by a structural dynamic of competition and increasing market share) that works against cooptation, draws increasing numbers of products into fair trade marketing, and links together more and more people. Perhaps in order to see the potential of alter trade, what is required is a different spatial ontology that does not presume in advance the connection between scale, size, and power.

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Recently Marston, Jones, and Woodward have pro posed a ﬂat spatial ontology based on the site as an un folding materiality that constructs and reconstructs space through its often uneven and temporary connection to other (distant) sites. In this conception there are no spatial categories or containers that prearrange the world into ordered spaces. Another ﬂat spatial ontology is offered by Gibson Graham, whose feminist political imaginary is premised on a geography of ubiquity. Be cause women are everywhere, local and household based feminist projects can be globally transformative; because diverse economies are everywhere, the projects of local economic activists can have world changing effects. Linked semiotically rather than organizationally, these projects have the potential to conﬁgure a place based global movement for economic transformation. Flat spatial ontologies have several implications for theorizing and enacting economic difference. First, it becomes easier to see economies as self organizing spaces of contingent relationality where there is no presumption of dominance and subordination (though these will, of course, be found to exist in particular settings). When capitalist class relations are no longer to be regarded as necessarily dominant, it becomes more difﬁcult to im agine that other social sites and processes (e.g., house holds) are bound to the task of capitalist reproduction or that economic alternatives are awash in a capitalist sea. Second, a ﬂat spatial ontology allows us to see economic diversity as globally dispersed, while at the same time creating potential connections among disparate locations and processes. In the ﬂat space of economic difference, economic geographers interested in contributing to al ternative economies might play a constructive role in translating experiments from one location to another, formalizing lessons learned from experiments in one place for other places, and working imaginatively with individuals, communities, and regions to produce and disseminate economic innovation. Given the ubiquity of potential sites for these sorts of academic interventions – households, enterprises, communities, and regions – they could conceivably be conducted on a global scale. But in conceptualizing this politics of research and the future direction of scholarly interest in alternative economies, it becomes crucial to return to the concept of performa tivity and the way that it differs from just electing to think differently.

Performativity, Economic Difference, and the Politics of Research Colin William’s recent work on differentiating the pro cess of economic exchange poses a signiﬁcant challenge to the received wisdom that market exchange/com modiﬁcation has displaced, or soon will displace, all other

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forms of exchange. As William notes, the commodiﬁ cation thesis circulates as a widely accepted idea, and yet it remains, essentially, an assertion that has yet to be theoretically or empirically substantiated. His own em pirical work in the United Kingdom demonstrates that even in advanced industrial countries (and postindustrial ones), barter, other forms of nonmarket exchange, self provisioning, and mutual aid are widely practiced and may indeed be more integral to the lives of the middle and upper classes than they are for people on the social and economic margins. The crucial insight from Williams’ work is that the persuasive power of the commodiﬁcation thesis is itself a testament to operations of performativity. Something that is as ubiquitous as nonmarket exchange remains hidden only because it is conﬁgured discursively as subordinate. Interestingly, when it is revealed to be ever present it is dismissed as unimportant, dependent upon capitalism, or (from a progressive standpoint) not subversive enough. The perceived expansiveness and dominance of market exchange is performatively constituted even (perhaps especially) by those who are critical of it. Performativity theory is not simply an invitation to think differently; it also reveals the extent to which the discursive limits the conceivable and, by extension, the doable. In the open and indeterminate space of a diverse economy, the space of academic engagement is cor respondingly enlarged; the question becomes how do we understand and engage with economic difference when it is no longer positioned as the subordinate term within a binary opposition? One answer might be to see the space of economic difference as a space of self conscious and unconscious experimentation in becoming, where mar ginality or dominance, success or failure, cannot be known in advance. As Lincoln points out in his case study of worker owned (cooperative) enterprises, they succeed or fail as ventures for deﬁnite reasons just as capitalist enterprises succeed or fail. The vulnerability of co operative ﬁrms is not unique to their form, but reﬂects a general element of economic risk that is heightened or attenuated in particular situations. Viewing the economy as a space of experimentation/ becoming has another important implication in that the recognition calls forth and depends upon a new form of activist scholarship. The goal of this scholarship is to examine economic practices that are potentially valuable but discursively subordinated, bringing them to light and engaging with the actors to build or strengthen alternative economies. These scholarly interventions highlight the ethics and politics of language and representation, recognizing that acting differently requires thinking dif ferently, and that conscious change begins with the rec ognition of possibility. Kevin St. Martin’s work, for example, focuses on the discursive politics of resource management in the

ﬁsheries industry. Fisheries management is currently guided by the assumption that each individual ﬁsher is a self interested utility maximizer. As St. Martin points out, this leads to a regulatory approach – limits on days at sea – that generates more risk taking on the part of vessels and crews and produces the very behavior it presumes to control. Working closely with ﬁshing com munities themselves, St. Martin has put forward an al ternative representation of ﬁshers as a community engaged with and invested in a common resource. It is common practice, for example, in the ﬁsheries of the northeastern United States for ﬁshers to share infor mation (map plots) about bottom type and ﬁsh habitat; the controlled dissemination of this information consti tutes a form of community based resource management that offers, St. Martin argues, an alternative entry point to conservation. What is powerful about St. Martin’s work is that it is attempting to initiate a new approach to re source management which includes the community of ﬁshers as potential allies rather than adversaries. His approach to an alternative policy regime depends upon seeing the possibilities in what is already a commonplace, everyday activity. In another example of the experimental/performa tive approach to research, the Community Economies Collective is collaboratively drafting a protocol for self study with community based enterprises to document their histories and develop new, more appropriate metrics of success. One observation that has emerged from this work is that community enterprises often change their mandates over time. The Alliance to De velop Power (formerly the Anti Displacement Project (ADP)) started as an organization to preserve affordable housing in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts. At present, the organization owns housing worth $45 million dollars, making it one of the largest property owners in the area. Several years ago the ADP drew on their energetic membership and ﬁnancial power to start a cooperative enterprise – United Landscaping – that provides worker control and good jobs for ADP mem bers as well as maintenance services for ADP properties. More recently, the ADP has worked with a local union to open a worker education and advocacy center that offers ESOL, adult basic education, campaigns for fair wages and wage restitution, ﬁnancial services for the unbanked, and many other services to marginalized workers. In their ongoing efforts to document the successes and setbacks of the ADP and organizations like it, the Community Economies Collective sees its work as a vehicle for validating and disseminating effective strat egies of economic activism and community engagement. Via the existing infrastructure of academic and activist channels, the ADP’s experiences are readily communi cated to scholars and activists worldwide, contributing to

Economies, Alternative

the performance of alternative economies in far ﬂung places.

Conclusion St. Martin and other members of the Community Economies Collective explore the alternative economy as a space of experimentation and difference through a re search process that involves them collaboratively with people in place. Far from being idealist, the performative dimension of these action research projects makes use of what already exists, hidden in plain sight, in order to develop political, ethical, and organizational potential. The performative theory of economic difference is not blind to the realities of power, but emphasizes the power of representation and research. The examples of Collective Copies, the ADP, and community based ﬁsheries management suggest that the future of alternative economies research within economic geography might revolve around reconceptualizing re search as a process of performatively enacting com munity economies. Activist researchers could engage in disseminating and replicating such experiments in forming community economies, recognizing the powerful role these efforts might play in demonstrating how an other economy might be possible. Ironically, we might turn to the success of the neoliberal project itself for inspiration. As David Harvey points out, the basic tenets of neoliberalism articulated by Friedrich Hayek operated on the margins of economic orthodoxy for decades until the economic crisis of the 1970s gave pro ponents an opportunity to widely disseminate them. In the same way, perhaps identifying alternative economic prac tices, conceived as part of a larger ﬁeld of economic dif ference, might become a central part of an activist research agenda for economic geographers. Nearly 40 years after the economic crisis that propelled neoliberalism into a position of discursive dominance, it is neoliberalism that is now widely perceived to be in crisis. The ﬂat rejection of export oriented development and state devolution in Latin America must be seen in the larger context of the failure of the capitalist development project as a whole. When this failure is combined with a deepening awareness of global environmental contradictions, we may ﬁnd ourselves in an ideal context in which to engage in a performative schol arship and politics of alternative economic development. The expanding presence of the World Social Forum and national forums like the USSF cannot only be read as re ﬂecting a tangible hunger for alternative economies but as a practical context for activists and activist scholars to engage in experimentation and dissemination. Given the widespread recognition of the failure of development as usual and the ubiquity of alternative economic practices foregrounded in the theory of

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economic difference, the formation of community econ omies becomes a process that is potentially global in scale while being particular and local in practice. This ap proach to constructing economic alternatives offers no guarantees; it simply foregrounds possibilities, with the understanding that a wider sense of possibility is a ﬁrst step toward enacting alternative economies. It is the connection between a performative concept of know ledge, an ontology of economic difference, and a trans formative politics of research that will deﬁne this area of study and its promise in the future. See also: Economic Geography; Economy, Informal; Enterprise Discourse; Participatory Action Research; Performance, Research as; Performativity; Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies.

Further Reading Community Economies Collective (2001). Imagining and enacting noncapitalist futures. Socialist Review 28(3/4), 93 135. Crewe, L., Gregson, N. and Brooks, K. (2003). Alternative retail spaces. In Leyshon, A., Lee, R. & Williams, C. (eds.) Alternative Economic Spaces, pp 55 73. London: Sage. Gibson Graham, J. K. (1996/2006). The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson Graham, J. K. (2006). A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson Graham, J. K. (2008). Diverse economies: Performative practices for ‘Other Worlds’. Progress in Human Geography 32(5), forthcoming. Gibson Graham, J. K., Resnick, S. and Wolff, R. (2001). Representing Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lee, R. and Leyshon, A. (2003). Conclusions: Re making geographies and the construction of ‘spaces of hope’. In Leyshon, A., Lee, R. & Williams, C. (eds.) Alternative Economic Spaces, pp 93 198. London: Sage. Leyshon, A., Lee, R. and Williams, C. (2003). Alternative Economic Spaces. London: Sage. Lincoln, A. (2003). Alternative work spaces. In Leyshon, A., Lee, R. & Williams, C. (eds.) Alternative Economic Spaces, pp 107 128. London: Sage. Marston, S., Jones, J. P. III. and Woodward, K. (2005). Human geography without scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(4), 416 432. Marx, K. (1977). Capital, vol. 1. New York: Random House. Trans. B. Fowkes. North, P. (2007). Money and Liberation: The Micropolitics of Alternative Currency Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Pavlovskaya, M. (2004). Other transitions: Multiple economies of households in the 1990s. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94(2), 329 351. Resnick, S. and Wolff, R. (1987). Knowledge and Class. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. St. Martin, K. (2001). Making space for community resource management in ﬁsheries. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(1), 122 142.

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Relevant Websites http://autonomista.org Argentina Autonomista Project. http://www.ethicalmarkets.com Ethical Markets a gateway to cleaner, greener twenty ﬁrst century economies. http://www.commoner.org.uk The Commoner a web journal.

http://www.communityeconomies.org The Community Economies project a place where new visions of community and economy can be theorized, discussed, represented, and enacted. http://www.schumachersociety.org The E. F. Schumacher Society linking people, land, and community by building local economies.

Economies, Borderland M. Tykkyla¨inen, University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Antiterrorism Measures Comprise the US government’s security-related initiatives and regulations affecting the control of transport and foreign trade after the 9/11 attack. Devolutionary Process The process whereby regions in a state gain political power and growing autonomy at the expense of the central government. Ethnonationalism A movement among an ethnic group who consider themselves a distinct nation with a right to autonomy or independence in their own territory. Gateway A borderland or set of borderlands which occupy an important position in trade and transport and the smoothing of institutional differences between larger economic areas. Institutions Formal institutions are constitutions, rules, laws, property rights, and organizations, and informal or tacit institutions are individual habits, customs, codes of conduct, group routines, and social norms, values, sanctions, taboos, and traditions. Maquiladora Manufacturing industries located on the Mexican side of the US–Mexican border which utilize the low-cost labor and premises available there and export their production to US markets. R&D Inputs Research and development inputs constitute labor and funding spent by companies and the public sector on developing new products and production processes to improve the competitiveness of industry. Shatterbelt A strategically located region consisting of borderlands and states that is under the jurisdiction of a number of conﬂicting states and groups and is caught between the interests of powers and power coalitions.

performance, and welfare, and borderlands are mani festations of these divisions. Borderlands based on nation states are central and generally known in our perception of what the regions of the world are (Figure 1). This is the geographical division which is represented in everything from school atlases to government policy documents. The division is far from ﬁrm and stable, however. Continuous border forming processes produced by social processes are reshaping the regional systems, and the media suggest that areas of conﬂict and turmoil are liable to emerge rapidly, although many borderlands are the results of longer, historical processes based on economic performance, ethnic composition, and the evolution and decline of political, economic, and social organs. Bor derlands are areas on both sides of the edges of territories created by powers, social forces, and economic activities. Traditionally, borders show the territorial dimension of state power. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is re garded as a landmark of the beginning of the existence of the modern state. Since then the principal actors in international relations and in setting up legislation and the terms of trade have been sovereign states. The world was divided into states, and power has been exercised within their borders. Only a few people would call state formation into question, because it is related to our se curity and patriotism, but there are some who speak of a global or cosmopolitan world, and some stress the im portance of regions as the basic units of spatial organ ization. But, in principle, borderlands are commonly considered in a national context. When emphasizing economic and social interaction, the thesis of the end of the nation state has found widespread acceptance in the minds of citizens in this era of the information society and globalization. Borders have become more related to access to communication

Concepts Although borders are actually social constructs among people, social processes are reﬂected in the geographical space through the formation of regions. Thus, the world is divided into the layers of regions representing different geographical levels. The geographical system of regions consists of various sociospatial constructs, such as the geographical mosaic that has resulted from administrative and economic decisions. In spite of the talk of a ‘borderless’ world, various types of regional divisions exist based on administration, ethnicity, economic

Social processes

Spatial manifestations of social processes and interaction with geographical attributes Regions Border formation

Nation-states

Figure 1 Formation of regions and borders.

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systems and economic performance in the advanced parts of the world. As researchers have shown, there are in clusions and exclusions in virtual worlds which are coming more and more to determine individuals’ social status. People have uneven opportunities and resources for entering this cyberworld which is not measured in geographical coordinates. Hence, theoretically and in creasingly in practice, borderlands can manifest them selves on various spatial scales and in various spaces. In our vocabulary, however, the term borderland still usu ally refers to areas on the fringe of a national territory. States and federations have interests in developing and controlling borderland economies. In ancient times colonization was a common development policy in bor derlands, and later many infrastructural and regional policy measures were carried out according to the interests of a state in border issues. The European Union (EU) has large programs for abolishing tension in its borderlands and creating safer borders. On the one hand, it aims to increase cooperation between the borderlands of the EU and the adjacent countries, while on the other hand, it is increasing its control over the borders to prevent illegal interaction. A great difference in wealth and opportunities between the two sides of a border can easily lead to increasing control measures, as has been happening in many places in Africa, on the US–Mexican border, and on the outer border of the EU. Frontex, the EU agency, was created to coordinate operational cooperation in matters of border security, and another task is to follow developments in research relevant to the control and surveillance of external bor ders. Frontex strengthens the border control capabilities of the border guard institutions of the member states by informing them of modern technologies and products that are available. The agency also provides information on the tools needed for controlling the outer borders of the EU in an attempt to prevent illegal migration and trade. The impacts of such developments in terms of labor are negative rather than positive in vast, remote borderlands, because the implementation of technical surveillance reduces the need for infrastructure and work. Similar measures have been set up in the US. During the early 1990s the US had instituted programs to protect its borders and stem the ﬂow of illegal workers over the country’s southern border, and operations were set up to control the western end of the US–Mexican border more tightly. In addition to increasing the size of the border patrols, the programs included high tech detection equipment and higher and stronger walls along the bor der. At the same time, the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect there on 1 January 1994. Hence, even in attempting to create higher economic integration, the strategy can lead to strengthening of border controls related to certain segments of the population and trade.

Theoretical Arguments: A Border as a Hindrance or an Opportunity A geographical space that is divided into states and re gions is based very much on the institutional properties of each region. Borders are concrete manifestations of the division of the geographical space into territorial entities with separate institutional settings. From the viewpoint of economic geography, there are lots of arguments which see the constitution of national borders as a hindrance to development. Economies of scale cannot materialize to the extent that they could in a borderless situation, the transactions themselves are more costly across the border, and production factors are less mobile than in a bor derless situation. Growing global tension, such as anti terrorism measures, is also increasing the costs of economic cross border interaction. Hence a border that is sensitive to political tensions is an economic hindrance. A border constitutes a cultural transition zone or barrier. The separating factor can be language, religion, culture, or ethnicity. Ethnonationalism combined with economic interests can be a fundamental force promoting state formation, and hence the emergence of borderlands. Discussion has evolved around the formation of the world’s regions based on cultural and economic differ ences and the potential clash of civilizations in the long term. The tension between the West and the Islamic world, for instance, manifests itself geographically in a division of the world into macrostructures based on re ligion and ethnicity. This has been criticized as being too rough a division, however, which does not take into ac count diversity of opinion and the geography of the di versity of ethnicity and religion. Many borderlands are arenas for conﬂicts and con tinuous tension. Strategic positions and natural resources in particular can make these areas unstable, as is the case in Kurd areas, Iraq, Congo, the Cabinda exclave of An gola and Sierra Leone (Figure 2). Such high tension borderlands are problematic from the viewpoint of eco nomic stability and development, and their economies are encumbered with high security costs and the threat of violence. Resources are also often used for devolutionary processes, and proximity to major conﬂicts outside can also lead to instability and chaos. Lebanon is an example of a country which has suffered greatly due to its bor derland status between Israel and the powerful Arab countries and groups. It is obvious that there are strong national interests involved in mastering borderland economies in parallel with political interests. The border formation process reﬂects in a concrete way the reorganization of society, and the economy of the borderland changes along with it. The setting up of a border usually creates gradual economic decline in a region. An example of this would be Eastern Finland, which has had a stagnant economy for a century since the

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establishment of the border which separated the region from the full impact of the St. Petersburg area in Russia (Figure 3). The reconstitution of the border was one of the causes of stagnation. Corresponding stagnant areas can be found in many parts of the world. Post World War II Europe was full of new borderlands, which were de veloping relatively slowly. One of the achievements of European integration is that it has succeeded in abol ishing borders and has hence been able to create larger and more efﬁcient markets in Europe. Nowadays border establishment and state formation processes are taking place in the areas adjacent to Russia, leading to frag mented markets. Many countries would like to be less

dependent on Russia, but this can easily lead to the cutting off of economic ties, which creates economic problems. One example of this is the series of energy crises that have emerged in the new independent states adjacent to Russia. Although the border formation process brings about many regressive results when measured in economic terms, the outcome is not so straightforward. It is also dependent on the scale and viewpoint adopted. The separation of Estonia from the Soviet Union, for instance, is an example of the successful re formation of a bor derland economy. Estonia has transformed itself from a former Soviet agrarian borderland into a modern

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European industrial state within less than 20 years. Key factors in the transformation were the opportunities created by the division of labor and integration into more advanced economies, cultural ties with market econ omies, and the willingness to undertake radical trans formation of the institutional settings of the economy. This reform also led to a new border formation process, however. The Estonian borderland adjacent to Russia is

having to cope with restructuring problems in industry and has ethnic problems related to its original Russian population. The status of a borderland is very much dependent on political decisions and the development of a borderland is steered by changing institutional settings and developing economic conditions. Borderland econ omies are in the last resort the results of the work of social actors: people and companies.

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Borderlands and Welfare The situation of a borderland is usually peripheral and marginal from the economic viewpoint, which easily brings about welfare problems. A borderland is located far away from the core of the country and its economic base may be underdeveloped and one sided. Many bor derland economies can be classiﬁed into the category of peripheral, stagnant economies. Peripherality may lead to the economic marginalization of an area, or if it has a strategic meaning, the welfare of the region will be strongly supported by the presence of state institutions. The Kola Peninsula is a good example of an area which is too important to remain an underdeveloped borderland due to its strategic location from transport and military viewpoints. One may call such areas sheltered borderland economies, as they are subsidized by the state, which indicates their importance to the state. Fewer areas can utilize their border status to increase welfare to any substantial extent. A more positive welfare effect takes place when the borderland is adjacent to a much wealthier country and economic interaction is possible. Economic impacts are often the results of price differ entials in goods and services, which attract customers, and these impacts are substantial when cross border in vestments are possible. The growth of manufacturing brought about by the lower cost level of the less de veloped country increases the output of the border area. The maquiladora industry close to the US–Mexican border, for instance, has led to higher and more even incomes in the border states than in the rest of Mexico. Industry of this kind has also been one of starting points for the growth of many borderlands in Asia, such as Guangdong and Johor. These upward transitional bor derland economies are merely exceptions, however, and are closely dependent on the more developed region on the other side of the border and on the level of trade regulation. A borderland can be the area occupied by a national minority, or else there may be various ethnic and lin guistic groups along the border. These ethnic issues are often highly visible in former colonies, where borders may have been drawn for strategic reasons, dividing ethnic groups almost randomly from country to country. One example of this is Namibia. This sparsely populated country comprises 28 living languages and several ethnic groups, and includes the 450 km long Caprivi Strip that penetrates from the northeastern inland corner of the country into the middle of Southern Africa in order to guarantee the Namibians a connection with the Zambezi River (Figure 4). Caprivi itself is a borderland, and it creates borderlands on both sides of it. The population is a mix of tribes having relatives over the borders. There are also features such as trafﬁcking, smuggling, and health problems related to this border location.

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Resource based production is usually over repre sented in peripheral settings, due to a legacy of con centration on the utilization of natural resources and promotion of the diffusion of settlement. In many cases the borderlands have been target areas for active coloni zation. Siberia was colonized in order to mobilize all possible resources and to represent Russian, and later Soviet, power in the area. In the Nordic countries, Sweden colonized its vast northern and eastern border lands efﬁciently from the seventeenth century onward to make all its corners inhabited and defendable. Hence the political and economic legacy of the past is still visible in the structure of society in many borderlands. The same marking also takes place today. The Caprivi Strip in Namibia was linked efﬁciently to the main part of the country by the construction of a highway suitable also for an airstrip in the 1990s which is in fact oversized relative to the trafﬁc on it but is an excellent example of an infrastructure intended to show outsiders the readi ness of the state to keep the borderland as part of its territory. In some cases a borderland location has brought some advantages due to economic spillovers. Such borderlands as Johor in Malaysia, the Riau Islands in Indonesia, and Guangdong in China are prosperous although far away from the national centers, and they possess advanced industrial structures and higher incomes. These areas are adjacent to even more advanced areas, however, such as Singapore and the former British colony of Hong Kong (Figure 5). In such cases the economy of a borderland develops so that the less advanced border area acquires more mature economic activities such as manufacturing and assembly work from the more advanced area. In dustrialization takes place when companies relocate ac tivities to the other side of the border in order to take advantage of lower land rents and labor costs. These developments have proven to be highly changeable, however, as new situations develop and the advantages do not remain the same. Moreover, in more industrialized areas there is usually a certain daily crossing of labor over the border. This has been the case on the Polish–German border and the Singapore–Malaysia border, for instance. Crossing the border for trading and maintaining social relations is common under various conditions all over the world, but great adaptability is needed on the part of the local population in borderlands affected by tensions and po tential conﬂicts, due to control and regulations.

Impacts of the Closing and Opening Up of Borders As many examples show, the impacts of closing a border lead in most circumstances to a shrinking of the

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borderland economies. Various institutional settings, tariffs, and regulations lead to a situation in which there are less opportunities to use economies of scale and the division of labor. Thus economies become more closed, companies are smaller, and there is less competition. The border becomes a line splitting the market area. Thus integration has been seen in many parts of the world as a panacea for improving the competitiveness of inter regional systems. The EU is a good example of attempts to improve competitiveness by the formation of larger market areas. The aim of many trade organizations is to abolish trade barriers and protectionist economic regulation. The liberalization of trade and the movement of production factors lead to larger market areas with increasing use of economies of scale, and thus create opportunities for industries to specialize and expand. However, ﬁerce competition leads to closures, mergers, and increasing

efﬁciency, and this may lead to a shift of industries to areas over the border, where it is possible to make use of low cost labor and infrastructure. This means, however, that former borderlands become parts of larger economic markets, and the net effect of the opening up of a border is thus positive. The enlargement of the EU brought about consider able restructuring in a large number of former East Central European national borderlands. The border areas of Lithuania, Latvia, the eastern and southern parts of Poland, and the northern parts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia are considered to be borderlands that enjoy agglomeration economies but need signiﬁcant structural adjustment in order to deal with increased competition. The borderlands in northwestern Poland and most of the borderlands of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hun gary, Romania, and Bulgaria are considered to have high development potential due to their favorable

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Figure 5 Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong.

geographical position combined with low economic performance. The ﬁndings indicate that integration in Europe is still associated with signiﬁcant differences be tween borderlands, and that intensiﬁed integration may lead to both booms and busts with respect to border economies. The serious heterogeneity in development processes is a reminder of the importance of initial conditions and geography in shaping economic out comes, and also an indication of the limited ability of market forces to promote spatial cohesion. The impact of integration on borderland economies is dependent on the results of policy interventions and market dynamics. The enlargement of the EU will for several decades constitute an interesting laboratory for examining the impacts of the opening up of borderland economies.

Economic Projects for Boosting Borderland Economies Prosperous economic development in a borderland is very much dependent on the stability of the institutional settings and the trustworthiness of the environment. The division of the world into various types of geopolitical regions, such as shatterbelts and gateways, shows the

strong dependency of borderlands on international pol itics and military strategies. Shatterbelts are not areas where economic growth takes place easily, in spite of international agreements, peacekeeping, and aid and support programs. In the worst cases many supranational organizations have had to help borderlands cope with violent crises. This stabilizing task is linked to the pol icies and duties of the United Nations and other supra national organizations. The aid packages intended to reconstruct borderlands that have suffered due to wars are examples of the programs needed. There is often an intense military presence in borderlands, and power struggles can provoke instability in institutional devel opment and hence lead to poorer economic development. Due to the devastating world wars, Europe has a long post war legacy of cross border cooperation. In the European context, a Euroregion is a form of transnational cooperation between two or more territories located in different countries. The great majority of these lie within the current borders of the EU. Euroregions are limited to the competencies of the local and regional authorities which constitute them, and they are usually arranged in order to promote common interests across the border and cooperate for the common good of the border popu lations. There are more than 60 Euroregions in Europe,

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and the history of this cooperation goes back to 1958, when the ﬁrst of these was set up, constituting a border land between Germany and the Netherlands. Euroregions are independent organs related to the EU, but many projects in these regions are supported by the Union. To achieve more balanced spatial development in the EU, cohesion and convergence are required, which puts emphasis on the development of borderlands to create greater stability and integration. Various programs and funding instruments have been in effect within its inner and outer borderlands. Economic revitalization has played a central role in the measures in order to enhance economic competitiveness and sustainable development in borderlands. The European Commission began in 2003 to set up new programs to boost cooperation across the EU’s border with its neighbors. The neighborhood and partnership instruments aim at contributing to economic and social development on both sides of the border, promoting economic and social development in the borderlands in ﬁelds such as environment, public health, and the ﬁght against organized crime, ensuring efﬁcient and secure borders, and promoting local, grassroots type actions. The speciﬁc priorities and the actions to be supported within this schema are decided upon by the participating countries themselves. This instrument offers solutions to

socioeconomic problems in the external borderlands of the EU intended to stimulate outer cross border co operation, good neighborliness, and security.

Conditions of Networking in Borderlands Interaction across borders has created high expectations for the utilization of border locations, in the sense that factors such as cultural connections, labor, and social relations could be used for promoting economic activ ities. Economic actors become embedded in borderlands in the sense that they absorb and are constrained by the economic activities, cultures, and social dynamics that are embedded in those places. But what are the advantages of borderlands in this setting? One concrete example is the way in which global and national ﬁrms may take advan tage of beneﬁts provided by a state or programs for en terprises and local actors intended to establish subcontracting, subsidiary, or R&D operations in a bor derland. Moreover, the location or anchoring down of new ﬁrms in border locations may generate a new local or regional network of economic and social relations across the border, involving existing ﬁrms as well as attracting new ones. This is what happens in cases when there are a bundle of other factors which make economic activities 110° W

120° W CALIFORNIA

100° W UNITED STATES

ARIZONA

Los Angeles

NEW MEXICO Phoenix

San Diego Tijuana

TEXAS Mexicali

MEXICO 30° N

EL Centro 115°30′ W

SONORA

Main road Road Road or Street Railway Urban area

Hermosillo

N

0

PACIFIC OCEAN

150

COAHUILA

Calexico

BAJA CALIFORNIA

32°40′ W

USA O MEXIC

32°40′ N

Mexicali

300 km

International border Internal border River

N 110° W

Figure 6 Mexico United States border.

0

5

10 km 115°30′ W

Economies, Borderland

proﬁtable. A strong combination of competitive factors helps to consolidate the transborder embeddedness of industry, which in turn is closely linked to particular regional cultures. One factor is that the hybrid culture of a borderland can prove to be a competitive advantage for a company. Mexicali is an example of a city which has beneﬁted from its hybrid culture. It is the capital of the state of Baja California, Mexico, and situated on the border of the US state of California (Figure 6). The residents of Mexicali are from diverse European, Arab, Asian and African backgrounds. It attracts multinational companies to utilize qualiﬁed labor, infrastructure, its favourable business environment, and its location on the Californian border. There is social interaction, and assets are often related to culture and languages, which pro mote business in borderlands. In this age of the global izing economy, it seems that many people would wish to do away with a less competitive provincial cultural fac tor, in that companies would prefer to combine yielding cultural assets and space out production within their global networks. If institutional settings diverge greatly and cultural ties are more or less imagined, the result of this con solidation of joint ventures remains poor. Hence there are insurmountable hindrances which make the utilization of the endowment of difference in the composition and price of production factors less attractive. Adaptation to a new situation and the setting up of economic cooperation takes time and is restricted by supraregional institutional constraints such as differences in laws, rules, and eco nomic regulation. Borderland economies are heterogeneous, which means that the spatial scales of production must be taken into account in interpretations. Local and transborder markets are sufﬁcient niches for production for a shop keeper or small entrepreneur, but for companies which produce high volumes of consumer products global networking with suppliers and customers is important. Global connections are important for companies which make abundant use of R&D inputs and are innovative, but such an advanced high tech environment is missing from most borderlands. Thus both local and translocal relations are crucial for development and for the globally acknowledged performance of borderlands and the actors involved. Hence, links to research and development and innovation systems created by the state and private actors are just as important for borderland economies as for any other area. Economic development in borderlands is hence a process of glocal network building, creating and maintaining relationships of trust on various interrelated geographical scales. See also: Borderlands; Competitiveness; Economies, Branch Plant; Embeddedness; Export Processing Zones; Industrial Location; Industrialization; Institutionalism/

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Institutional Geographies; Local Economic Development; Local Economic Development, Politics of; Networks; Region; Regional Planning and Development Theories; Regional Production Networks; Resource Industries; Territory and Territoriality.

Further Reading Amin, A. (1999). An institutionalist perspective on regional economic development. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 23(2), 365 378. Anderson, J. and Wever, E. (2003). Borders, border regions and economic integration: One World, ready or not. Journal of Borderland Studies 18(1), 27 38. Bathelt, H., Malmberg, A. and Maskell, P. (2004). Clusters and knowledge: Local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation. Progress in Human Geography 28(1), 31 56. Cohen, S. B. (2005). The Eurasian convergence zone: Gateway or shatterbelt? Eurasian Geography and Economics 46(1), 1 22. Hill, F. and Gaddy, C. G. (2003). The Siberian curse: How communist planners left Russia out in the cold. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. Ho, K. C. and So, A. (1997). Semi periphery and borderland integration: Singapore and Hong Kong experiences. Political Geography 16(3), 241 259. Holmes, L. (1998). Europe’s changing boundaries and the ‘‘clash of civilisations’’ thesis. In Murray, P. & Holmes, L. (eds.) Europe: Rethinking the boundaries, pp 51 80. Aldershot: Ashgate. Huntington, S. P. (1993). The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affair 72(3), 22 49. Ladyz, J. (2006). Chosen aspects of sustainable development on the Polish, Czech and German borderland. Geo Journal 67, 1 7. MacPherson, A. D., McConnell, J. E., Vance, A. and Vancham, V. (2006). The impact of US government antiterrorism policies on Canada US cross border commerce: An exploratory study from Western New York and Southern Ontario. The Professional Geographer 58(3), 266 277. Mollick, A. V. (2003). Employment determination at Mexican maquiladoras: Does location matter. Journal of Borderland Studies 18(2), 45 57. Newman, D. (2003). On borders and power: A theoretical framework. Journal of Borderland Studies 18(1), 13 25. Peach, J. and Molina, D. J. (2002). Income distribution in Mexico’s northern border states. Journal of Borderland Studies 17(2), 1 19. Rautio, V. and Tykkylainen, M. (2001). Uneven development of economic interaction across the Finnish Russian border. Post Soviet Geography and Economics 42(1), 34 64. Topaloglou, L., Kallioras, D., Manetos, P. and Petrakos, G. (2005). A border region typology in the enlarged European Union. Journal of Borderland Studies 20(2), 67 89.

Relevant Websites http://www.absborderlands.org Association for Borderlands Studies (ABS). http://www.aebr.net Association of European Border Regions (AEBR). http://europa.eu European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders (FRONTEX). http://ec.europa.eu European Commission’s Regional Policy. http://www.tnris.state.tx.us Texas Natural Resources Information System, Texas/Mexico Borderlands Information Center (BIC).

Economies, Branch Plant H. D. Watts, University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Filter Down Concept The view that as products age their manufacture ﬁlters down the urban system from larger to smaller places and from central regions to peripheral regions. Manufacturing Belt (USA) The area stretching broadly from the mid-west to New England which in the 1950s and 1960s was the key geographical area in the US manufacturing system. Product Life Cycle The theory that each product or service has a life cycle running from initial development through standardization/maturity to obsolescence. Transnational Corporation (TNC) An organization controlling economic activities in more than one country. Truncated Economy An economy which lacks higher level functions such as corporate head ofﬁces and research and development activities.

Introduction A branch plant is a manufacturing site that is owned by a parent ﬁrm with a head ofﬁce at another location. Con ventionally, a parent ﬁrm controls a branch plant when it owns more than 50% of the share capital of the plant but share holdings as low as 10% provide opportunities to control an economic activity. In some cases, branch plants are referred to as subsidiaries of their parent companies. The term branch plant includes not only new factories but also formerly locally owned ﬁrms which have been acquired by ﬁrms based outside the local area. A geo graphical area is described as having a branch plant economy when branch plants account for a signiﬁcant proportion of employment and output in the manu facturing sector and when such branch plants are owned by parent ﬁrms based elsewhere. Branch plants can be owned by three different cat egories of parent ﬁrms. A transnational company (TNC) with its head • quarters (HQ) in another country (a foreign TNC) –

• •

Japanese branch plants in the USA and EU countries. A TNC with its HQ outside the branch plant econ omy but in the same country (a domestic TNC) – a Ford plant in the south of the USA. A domestic multilocational company with no foreign operations but with its HQ outside the branch plant economy.

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Although the role of foreign TNCs are emphasized in some analyses of branch plant economies, a number of studies have shown that their patterns of behavior do not necessarily differ from those of domestic TNCs. Research has tended to focus on branch plants in the manufacturing sector, but there is no reason why the concept of a branch plant economy should not be useful in the analysis of the primary sector (especially mining and forestry). It might also be applied to areas charac terized by a high proportion of service sector activities with parent ﬁrms based elsewhere.

Branch Plants and Branch Plant Economies Although branch plants are often treated in an un differentiated manner, there are a number of varieties. The local implementer branch plant produces a standard product for a speciﬁed market. The specialized con tributor branch plant has a speciﬁc role within the parent ﬁrm and ﬁts into a complex interdependent corporate system. The world mandate plant has worldwide (or at least major regional) responsibility for one (or perhaps more) of a ﬁrm’s products. The potential impacts of these different branch plants can be very marked. In the dis cussion that follows, most of the more positive features of branch plants are associated with the latter two types of branch plant and the more negative features with the local implementer category. An economy without branch plants would almost in evitably be weaker than one with branch plants. Branch plants (especially those on new sites) can bring many beneﬁts to an economy. Incoming plants to new sites not only expand employment opportunities in manufacturing but they can also introduce new industries into an economy, helping to diversify the economic structure or replace older industries with new industrial activities. In some cases, they can provide a platform for the emer gence of clusters of new economic activities. The estab lishment of new industries through the introduction of branch plants may provide a faster route to diversiﬁcation of an economy than a reliance on the development of locally owned ﬁrms. Branch plants can also provide higher wages and improved work conditions. Even where a branch plant employs only semiskilled or unskilled labor, it may offer higher wages than similar jobs in locally owned ﬁrms. This can raise wage levels and enhance work conditions generally in the area surrounding the plant. Another

Economies, Branch Plant

indirect feature of higher wages in incoming branch plants is that they may attract employees from over manned, locally owned ﬁrms and these locally owned ﬁrms may not replace the employees they have lost. The locally owned ﬁrms losing labor to the branch plants then achieve higher output per person as they utilize their smaller labor force more efﬁciently. Branch plants have access to the ﬁnancial resources of the parent ﬁrm, resources not available to a locally owned ﬁrm which may have to rely primarily on internally generated resources. Ownership of a branch plant by a TNC also offers access to global markets and global supply chains. Wider markets introduce stability by re ducing dependence on a limited geographical range of markets and access to global supply chains might offer a more cost effective purchasing strategy. Perhaps, most critically, branch plants can also ac celerate knowledge transfer. They provide access to the knowledge of the parent ﬁrm and to the knowledge in herent in the wider networks with which it is connected. These links to the parent ﬁrm and the parent ﬁrm’s suppliers and markets provide a conduit by which new knowledge is fed into an economy. In practical terms, this can assist technology transfer and speed the diffusion into the local economy of new processes, new working prac tices, and new products. The diffusion is enhanced where the branch plants enter partnerships with suppliers in the areas surrounding the branch plant. Partnerships may affect not only the suppliers of goods and services but also providers of training and skills for the local work force. Further diffusion can take place by new ﬁrms being spun off from the branch plants. These points make clear that a branch plant in itself need not be a negative feature of a particular economy. A concern arises where an area is seen to have a high de pendence on branch plants, and that is where it is a branch plant economy.

Identifying Branch Plant Economies It is important to emphasize there is no agreement as to the level at which the proportion of employment in branch plants becomes a cause for concern and at what point an economy qualiﬁes to be termed a branch plant economy. A useful rule of thumb is that where over one third of the employment of the manufacturing sector of an economy is in branch plants, the description branch plant economy might well apply. Branch plant economies tend to be characteristic of countries, regions, cities, and towns located in areas distant from, or on the periphery of, more prosperous economic areas. For example, the term branch plant economy has been applied at different times to all or part of Canada (peripheral to the USA), Ireland,

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Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, the north east of England (peripheral within the EU), the southern areas of the US (peripheral to the ‘manufacturing’ belt), and to speciﬁc cities such as Aberdeen (UK) and Lexington (USA). Although research has focused on areas in North America and Western Europe, it is probably worth recognizing that some of the issues that have arisen in these economies may appear in the transitional econ omies of Central and Eastern Europe where TNCs play an increasingly important role. The term might also be applied to the export processing zones/special eco nomic zones which are particularly characteristics of industrializing countries in South East Asia and China, although the maquiladoras of Mexico have also at tracted attention. In these zones, special incentives are available to encourage inward investment by foreign TNCs which import materials for processing before being exported. In the 1970s, 60% of Scotland’s manufacturing em ployment in larger plants was in branch plants. In Northern Ireland too, in the early 1970s, 53% of manu facturing employment was in branch plants. Canada is described frequently as a branch plant economy where 41% of employment was in branch plants in the early 1970s. One of the highest ﬁgures was recorded in the northern region of the UK where, in the late 1970s, over 80% of manufacturing employment was in branch plants compared with only 16% of manufacturing em ployment in the branch plants of foreign TNCs in the UK economy as a whole at that time. At sectoral level, the proportion of employment in branch plants can be over 90% especially where sectors are dominated by very large branch plants. There has been a tendency for reliance on branch plants to decrease in many of these areas. In Canada, the proportion has fallen to just less than a third, while in Northern Ireland, in the 1990s, the proportion had fallen to slightly less than 40%. However, in Ireland, the pro portion is still around 50%, but, as shown below, the characteristics of these Irish branch plants have changed. National governments rarely publish data on the ownership of economic activities, except for identifying activities owned by foreign ﬁrms. The latest ﬁgures noted above on branch plants in Canada and Ireland are derived from these sources. The most recent available data of this kind are shown in Table 1. It should be noted these data relate only to a selection of countries (e.g., data for Germany are not available) and the years for which the latest data are available range from 1999 to 2004. Al though these national data are not comprehensive in their coverage, at regional and smaller scales such data do not exist. The extent to which an economy is dominated by branch plants at regional and local scales can be es tablished only by surveys of individual plants within particular regions. Such surveys are rarely undertaken. In

356

Economies, Branch Plant

Table 1 Employment in foreign-controlled manufacturing plants in selected EU countries, various dates Manufacturing Employment in employment foreign-controlled plants

Sweden France UK Austria Netherlands Spain Italy Portugal

2000

Employees

Year

764 463 3 934 309 3 974 780 608 956 857 336 2 429 195 4 016 942 889 100

234 1 063 914 135 172 382 530 105

2000 2001 1999 2003 2000 2004 2001 2004

785 752 186 115 147 043 399 168

Percent

31.7 27.0 23.0 22.2 20.0 15.7 13.2 11.8

Source: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu (Accessed 25 July 2007).

the absence of survey data, many research studies have identiﬁed branch plants from commercial directories. There is an assumption that branch plants are con trolled by their parent ﬁrms and that a branch plant lacks control over its economic destiny. This is a simplistic view. Ownership is a useful surrogate measure of external control, but it has two major limitations. First, those few empirical studies that have measured the extent to which external ownership is equated with external control have shown that the control exerted by a parent ﬁrm over its branch plant can vary greatly from almost total control to very little control indeed. Much depends upon the in ternal structure of the parent ﬁrm and the extent to which it delegates control to its subsidiary organizations. External control will tend to be high in local imple menter branches, while levels of autonomy are likely to be high in world mandate branches. Overall, ownership measures tend to exaggerate the extent of external con trol. Second, many small ﬁrms, although nominally lo cally owned and controlled, are in fact dependent on major contracts with externally owned organizations and, de facto if not de jure, are controlled by them. Here, ownership data underplay the extent of external control. These data difﬁculties mean that it is problematic to measure the number and extent of branch plant econ omies. An implication of this is that most analyses of branch plant economies focus on one (or occasionally two) area and there does not appear to have been any attempt to analyze the economic performance of a large set of areas with varying proportions of branch plants. An exception to this assertion is those studies which explore the role of foreign TNCs within national economies.

Emergence of Branch Plant Economies A consideration of the implications of branch plant economies emerged in the last half of the twentieth century in a debate begun in Canada and developed

further in Scotland. Four features of those years pushed a concern with branch plant economies up the agenda of economic geography. First, many areas experienced (and often welcomed) inward investment in new branch plants by foreign TNCs. Second, in 1960s and 1970s, domestic TNCs and domestic multilocational ﬁrms located a large number of branch plants in less prosperous regions of the UK (in the north and west) and the USA (the south) as they sought out cheaper labor. Third, and a major force in the emergence of branch plant economies, was the acquisition of locally owned ﬁrms by foreign TNCs, by domestic TNCs, and by large domestic multilocational ﬁrms. These three trends led to the fourth feature, the emergence of the view that the branch plant economy was a challenge to national sovereignty. Nationalist par ties in Wales and Scotland drew attention to the acqui sition of Scottish and Welsh companies by English (and other foreign ﬁrms). Similar concerns were expressed in Canada over the increasing dominance of US ﬁrms in the 1960s and 1970s. It is not surprising there was considerable unease in local, regional, and national communities where major changes in economic activities were decided in distant places.

Measurement of Impacts As noted earlier, data constraints make the analysis of the impact of branch plants across a wide set of areas very difﬁcult (except where there is a concern simply with branch plants owned by foreign TNCs). In studies based on a single area, the distinctive features of branch plants can be identiﬁed by a comparison of branches and locally owned ﬁrms controlling for differences in, for example, sector and age. Although a number of such studies were undertaken in the 1970s, more recent evidence of this type is difﬁcult to ﬁnd. Contemporary studies can iden tify, for example, a low proportion of local suppliers among branch plants but there is usually no comparator to suggest whether or not the branch plants have higher or lower links than a locally owned ﬁrm. Despite the apparent absence of rigorous inter area or intra area analysis, there is sufﬁcient case evidence from a wide range of studies to piece together the impacts of a high proportion of branch plants in an economy. Some of this evidence is drawn from studies of the impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) which, although sensible in the context of national economies such as Canada and Ireland, presents only a partial picture in the case of areas like the south of the USA or the north of England where domestic TNCs can be as important as, or even more important than, foreign ﬁrms. A distinction is also drawn in some analyses between the impacts of branch plants established through acquisition and those set up as new

Economies, Branch Plant

operations. Although the negative impacts of the branch plants have been widely researched, the positive impacts of branch plants, noted earlier, have perhaps been underemphasized. Indeed, it might be argued that while the short run impacts of a branch plants might be negative, the longer run impacts, resulting in the emer gence of a post branch plant economy, may well be more positive. Employment Branch plants are seen as introducing an element of in stability into an area’s employment proﬁle. As ﬁrms can readily switch production to other sites and the distant decision makers are thought to have little attachment to place, branch plants are seen as having high rates of job loss and, in the extreme cases, a high rate of plant closure. Although there are high proﬁle cases of jobs being moved either across regions or, more recently, globally by do mestic and foreign TNCs, the aggregate evidence sug gesting a greater instability in branch plants as distinct from locally owned ﬁrms is mixed. The outcomes tend to be contingent upon the sectoral mix of an area and the plant size. In some areas, branch plants show a greater rate of job loss and closure than locally owned activities but in others they do not. However, in other aspects of employment, there is strong empirical evidence that a high proportion of branch plants can weaken an area’s employment structure, especially as a result of functional truncation. Such functional truncation is seen in the fact that branch plants (whether new or acquired) tend to exclude many higher level managerial/professional jobs. Indeed, acquisition of a locally owned ﬁrm is frequently followed by the removal of many of the higher level functions to another corporate site. Activities such as sales, marketing, legal services, and higher level management functions tend to take place outside the branch plant economy often at corporate headquarters. Research and develop ment activities are also frequently absent. Further this ‘truncation’ of an economy reduces the range of occu pations within an area and the lack of higher level pro fessional jobs can result in the out migration of the better qualiﬁed from the local economy. Branch plants (particularly new branch plants) are also associated, in many cases, with a high proportion of unskilled/semiskilled employees, especially in the case of local implementer branch plants. These often undertake primarily, the assembly of standardized products and the branch plants in which they work are sometimes called screwdriver plants. The product cycle concept argues that, in the later stages of the product life cycle, the key input is low skill labor making low wage areas an at tractive location for products in the later stages of the cycle. Tied to this concept is the notion that as a product

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ages, it ﬁlters down the urban and regional hierarchy from larger to smaller places or from prosperous to less prosperous regions. The ﬁlter down process creates a spatial division of labor where the less skilled jobs are found in the less prosperous regions. Certainly, many branch plants in peripheral areas do tend to have an over representation of unskilled employees. Accompanying this spatial division of labor and reﬂecting wider social patterns is the link between less skilled work and the employment of female labor. This is most evident in screwdriver plants employing mainly female assembly workers. There is also a concern that, from an employee’s perspective, the work environment may be unduly con strained. Managers of branch plants may have limited autonomy and the distant decision makers may have limited awareness of local labor market conditions. This might reveal itself in higher frequency of labor disputes, higher labor turnover, and higher rates of sickness and absence among branch plants. This would tend to weaken a branch plant economy’s labor productivity and its competitive advantage in the wider economy. However, the empirical evidence to support these arguments is very limited. Multipliers Each economic activity has a multiplier effect on its local area. The greatest effect arises from the spending of the employees. Cetirus paribus, a branch plant with few skilled employees and dominated by lower wage unskilled em ployees will limit the multiplier effects of employee spending. However, much interest has arisen in the extent to which purchases and sales of branch plants impact upon other ﬁrms in the area. Branch plants have been seen as ‘cathedrals in the desert’, that is, stand alone activities with few or no links to other businesses in the area. In aggregate, branch plants are thought of as being only weakly embedded in the areas in which they oper ate. There appears to be some truth in this view, espe cially with regard to the demand for business services. It is unusual for branch plants to make use of local business services and this is particularly true where higher level business functions (e.g., marketing activities and legal functions) are absent from the branch plant. Even outsourced routine tasks, such as cleaning and catering, may not be provided by local people but through national agencies with which the parent ﬁrm has a national contract. The limited demand for business services restricts the development of such activities in the area and thus reduces the business support available to locally owned ﬁrms. Although it is possible for a branch plant serving intermediate markets to stimulate upstream activities within the area in which it is located (e.g., through a

358

Economies, Branch Plant

petroleum reﬁnery stimulating the growth of a petro chemical complex) much interest arises in exploring the extent to which branch plants stimulate downstream material supply activities in the area surrounding the plant. Although a few classic (and much cited) examples show such a process at work in motor vehicle assembly plants attracting suppliers of motor vehicle parts, the more general picture is that the stimulation of local supply networks though branch plant supply chains is often limited. Inputs from the area within which a branch plant is located are often small. This is thought to reﬂect, in part, the lack of a local supply base or, where a local supply base exists, the limited awareness of purchasing man agers, based outside the area of the potential, of the area as a supply base. In some cases, it has been suggested that external purchasing managers may be aware of the po tential suppliers but, because of their unfamiliarity with those suppliers, they are concerned with the quality of local supply. Local links are further reduced by purchase of inputs from the wider areas within which the parent ﬁrm operates and, indeed, through a dominance of intra ﬁrm transactions. Even where there are important local purchases, these may be from other branch plants rather than from locally owned small and medium sized ﬁrms. In addition to multiplier effects arising from links to a local economy through material and service inputs, plants can also act as sources of innovation and seedbeds for new ﬁrms. However, innovation in branch plants may well be below that of locally owned ﬁrms. As noted above, branch plants may lack research and development (R&D) function, thus limiting their innovative capacity. Since they may also lack marketing/sales functions, they may be disconnected from customers and markets and, therefore, less likely to identify market trends and new opportunities. Further, a tendency for branch plants to produce standardized products at the late stage of the product cycle means that the scope for innovation is low. Even where a branch plant successfully develops a new product, there is no guarantee it will be produced on site. It might well be transferred to another site of the ﬁrm in another area. Since entrepreneurial start ups tend to be associated with managerial employees, the limited number and range of managerial jobs in branch plants reduces the entrepreneurial potential of an area. Spin off rates from branch plants tend to be low. Early evidence from Scotland showed few links between branch plants and new ﬁrms in the electronics sector and, in Ireland too, in the early stages of development, the evidence of former branch plant managers setting up their own businesses, as a result of plant closures and buyouts, was not very encouraging. These factors taken together emphasize the limited multiplier effects within a branch plant economy which

reduces an area’s ability to develop self sustaining growth.

The Post-Branch Plant Economy Some commentators have noted the emergence of the post branch plant economy. Whereas the latter half of the last century was frequently characterized by an increasing dependence on branch plants, this dependence does not necessarily show a continuous upward trajectory. Further, trends within TNCs have seen a tendency to move toward ‘glocalization’ where local needs are set more clearly within global operations and the nature of the branch plants can change. It is now recognized that branch plants develop over time through the accumu lation of resources and the development of specialized capabilities. They also change their roles within the parent ﬁrms to which they belong. It might be suggested that such developments over time might be more char acteristic of the branch plants of foreign TNCs than those of domestic TNCs. Branch plants may originate as locally implementer plants but gradually take on more functions and, in the end, become major centers of R&D. The strongest of branch plants may eventually obtain world mandate status. Such a trend is evident in Scotland where there is evidence of plants moving from screwdriver operations assembling parts of a US product range for the European market, through to development of products for the European market and, ﬁnally, to engineering develop ment work for a world market. This pattern emphasizes that as a branch plant matures, additional manufacturing or indeed nonmanufacturing functions such as design, engineering, and research can be added. Similarly, within Ireland, branch plants have taken on important new roles within reorganized corporate structures. Branch plants, especially in the information and communications tech nology sectors, now have more signiﬁcant positions within their wider corporate networks and an emerging cadre of Irish managers is helping to sustain economic development. Although an area may still have a high proportion of its manufacturing employment in branch plants, it is very different in its characteristics to the branch plant economy described earlier. Although a branch plant economy can evolve into a post branch plant economy, the process of change can be slow. In the future, this evolution may become faster as corporations are hollowed out and more functions are devolved to branch plants.

Policy The proportions of branch plants in many areas are likely to remain high, despite the increasing signiﬁcance of

Economies, Branch Plant

local entrepreneurship in some areas. Less prosperous areas still seek inward investment and local ﬁrms con tinue to be acquired by ﬁrms based outside the area. Indeed, the more successful entrepreneurial ﬁrms may also exit by sale to a larger external competitor. On the positive side, new branch plants are still seen as providers of new job opportunities and a chance to diversify and strengthen particular economies. More re cently, there has been a focus on attracting branch plants in related activities in order to develop a cluster of like activities. In practice, most areas accept most jobs that are offered regardless of overall strategic development aims, although for bigger projects, local administrations will attempt to negotiate beneﬁts additional to job creation. However, there are still concerns over the negative im pacts of a high proportion of branch plants. The inherent instability of some branch plants and their poor employment mix have encouraged a search for ways of changing the role of a plant within its wider organizational structure. It is now clear that managers of individual plants act as plant champions within intra corporate competitions. The role of plant champions can be strengthened by supportive local administrations. Efforts are also made by local administrations to encourage local sourcing but such a policy is working against, rather than with, current trends to toward global sourcing initiatives. Where there are local sup pliers to branch plants, supplier development programs enhance the performance of locally owned ﬁrms as the branch plants act as conduits to bring new ideas into the region.

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context of other critical elements of an economy. The key research question (certainly in any statistical study) must be whether ownership makes a difference when con trolling for other potential variables inﬂuencing an area’s economic performance.

Summary The external ownership/control of a branch plant economy is only one factor in a complex system of fac tors inﬂuencing an area’s economic performance. It should not be overemphasized. The negative aspects of branch plants are usually highlighted and the positive effects are played down. The evidence that branch plants contribute less to local economies than locally owned ﬁrms is contingent on time and place. However, there does seem consistent evidence to suggest that in most branch plant economies, the proportion of professional jobs is small, reliance on local business services is limited, and innovation rates are low. Even if branch plants are problematic, the level at which external ownership of an area’s plants becomes a cause for concern is unclear. What is more, the characteristics of branch plants can change and a post branch plant economy can emerge. See also: Embeddedness; Foreign Direct Investment; Global Production Networks; Spatial Division of Labor.

Further Reading Research Agenda Since the consequences of a branch plant economy vary in time and space, a key research task is to review the current extent of branch plant economies and the impact of external ownership on employment patterns and local linkages. Much of our knowledge still relies on research studies undertaken one or more decades ago. Replication of earlier studies would prove useful, but, as a result of changes in national, regional, and local economies and a shift to a service economy, more needs to be known about the effects of external ownership on service activities (e.g., call centers, major shopping areas, tourist resorts, and business services). Research on branch plant econ omies must move away from a focus on the manu facturing sector. While much can be learned from studies of the impact of inward investment by foreign TNCs, in particular national economies, the role of domestic TNCs should not be ignored in analyses of regional performance within those national economies. Further, any analysis of the impacts of external ownership must be set in the

Birkinshaw, J. and Hood, N. (1998). Multinational subsidiary evolution: Capability and charter change in foreign owned subsidiary companies. The Academy of Management Review 32, 773 795. Birkinshaw, J. and Morrison, A. J. (1995). Conﬁgurations of strategy and structure in subsidiaries of multinational corporations. Journal of International Business Studies 26, 729 755. Breathnach, P. (2003). Women’s employment and peripheralisation: The case of Ireland’s branch plant economy. Geoforum 24, 19 29. Brown, R. (2002). The future of ICT industries in Scotland: Towards a post branch plant economy. In Hood, N., Peat, J., Peters, E. & Young, S. (eds.) Scotland in a global economy: The 20:20 vision. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Crone, M. and Watts, H. D. (2003). The determinants of regional sourcing by multinational manufacturing ﬁrms: Evidence from Yorkshire and Humberside, UK. European Planning Studies 11, 717 737. Dicken, P. (2007). The multiplant business enterprise and geographical space: Some issues in the study of external control and regional development. Regional Studies 41, S37 S48. Firn, J. (1975). External control and regional development. Environment and Planning A 7, 393 414. Hayter, R. (1997). Canada as a truncated production system. In Hayter, R. (ed.) The dynamics of industrial location. Chichester: Wiley. International Labor Ofﬁce (2003). Employment and social policy in respect of export processing zones (EPZ). Geneva: International Labor Ofﬁce. Grimes, S. and White, M. (2005). The transition to internationally traded services and Irelands emergence as a ‘successful’ European region. Environment and Planning A 37, 2169 2188.

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Phelps, N. (1993). Branch plants and the evolving spatial division of labour: A study of material linkage change in the northern region of England. Regional Studies 27, 87 101. Phelps, N. A. and Fuller, C. (2000). Multinationals, intracorporate competititon and regional development. Economic Geography 76, 224 243. Pike, A. (1998). Making performance plants from branch plants? In situ restructuring in the automobile industry in the UK. Environment and Planning A 30, 881 900. Watts, H. D. (1981). The branch plant economy: A study of external control. London: Longman.

Relevant Websites Websites tend to focus on the activities of foreign TNCs in national economies. The roles of domestic TNCs in branch plant economies within national boundaries are not identiﬁed in public datasets. The two sources below contain useful summary data relating to foreign TNCs only. http://www.statcan.ca Global links: multinationals in Canada, an overview of research at Statistics Canada. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europq.eu The impact of foreign controlled enterprises in the EU, Eurostat.

Economies, Imagined A. Cameron, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction The idea that economies are ‘imagined’ is not a new one. Despite the prevalent assumption in much mainstream social science (particularly economics) that economies – and integral to them their geographies – are both self evidently ‘real’ (i.e., empirically observable) and the natural outcome of pure economic activity, in practice space economies historically have always been to some degree planned and actively created. Moreover, space economies in practice, however they come into being, are always and necessarily supported by forms and structures that are ﬁrmly rooted in the ‘imaginary’. This does not mean that the idea of ‘the economy’ is simply made up and therefore not real, but rather, that we ex perience its reality only through the medium of the imaginary. If this sounds radically new or like the product of some extreme postmodern philosophy, it is worth remembering that the theory and practice of ‘imaginary money’ was an entirely normal aspect of the world economy for at least 300 years from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Indeed the term only went out of use because ‘all’ money effectively became ‘im aginary’ as its value became progressively disconnected from precious metals and based instead on circulating credit and legal ﬁat. This article will look less at the particular imaginary aspects of economic practices and institutions (money, credit, value, etc.), however, than at the historically im agined relationships between economies and spaces. In particular, it will examine aspects of the historical con struction, and alleged demise, of the idea of the geo graphically distinct and legally sovereign ‘national economy’. This is not because the national economy is the only space economy and nor is it the only one that is produced by, and productive of, imaginary spatial con cepts. The same is true of any spatially identiﬁed eco nomic unit whether it is urban, regional, local, international, etc. The reason for focusing on the national economy is simply that for a little over two centuries, accounts of the existence, nature, and survival of the national economy have been the predominant ways in which economic space has been articulated and debated in and between capitalist societies. It is also because, with the advent of debates about economic ‘globalization’, the role of the national space economy as a valid unit of analysis and practice is again in question. In many ways, it is suggested here that the debate about globalization is

precisely a debate about different and possibly competing imagined economies.

Social and Economic Imaginaries By ‘imagined economies’ two distinct, but overlapping things, are being referred to here. First, it is a fact that economies are not naturally evolving or self evident but are actively planned, created, and/or identiﬁed by people – individually and collectively. Second, the capacity of economic institutions and practices, once established, to shape the social imaginaries of their subjects is referred to. As such, economic imaginaries are an important subset of, and contributor to, the wider set of social imaginaries that help us make practical sense of the complex world in which we live. The philosopher Charles Taylor deﬁnes social imaginaries in the following terms: By social imaginary, I mean something much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality in a dis engaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they ﬁt together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these ex pectations (Charles Taylor, 2004: 23).

As Taylor suggests, social imaginaries are not passive reﬂections on the world but are active processes through which we come to understand our position in the world and shape our normative responses to it. This is of im portance to geographers because to conceive of ‘an economy’ as a spatial entity, and to place ourselves within it, involves some signiﬁcant leaps of the imagination. In voking a ‘national economy’, for example, involves sub consciously linking a disparate series of social, cultural, and political spaces to an economic space, thus according all of these complex systems a common internal geog raphy and a common external boundary. Although we may know intuitively or through experience that these various systems are in practice never wholly contained by these boundaries, these spatioeconomic constructs remain ﬁrmly ingrained in our daily lives. This can be seen very clearly in recent British debate over whether to adopt the Euro in place of the Pound Sterling. Those arguing against the Euro appeal to the economic, strategic, pol itical, and cultural signiﬁcance of a ‘national’ currency for

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a ‘national’ economic space, despite the fact that money and ﬁnance have been thoroughly internationalized, even globalized, for many years. Even beyond such extreme debates, most people in their daily lives happily accept the notion of ‘the national economy’ – for example, as reported in the news media – without questioning the nature of its existence, let alone its geographies. Although we can ﬁnd examples of politicians and theorists actively imagining what economic forms and spaces might look like and then enacting them, economic imagination is not conﬁned to these small groups and nor is it a one way process. Economic imaginaries are, rather, integral to everyday life and are enacted as much by the economic activities of ordinary people (consumers, bank customers, credit card holders, taxpayers, etc.) as they are by powerful groups. We could not even begin to function as economically active individuals at any level unless we were already equipped with a set of basic, functional imaginaries and/or assumptions (for example, drawing the very important distinction between a banknote and a photocopy of a banknote). Further, just as ‘the economy’ can in part be seen to be a product of imagination, once established it too carries within it the potential to im agine ‘us’. In other words, when an economy – or a set of economic principles – becomes a reality, that reality to a certain degree also then shapes its subjects – the im aginers are themselves in turn imagined.

Imagining the ‘National’ Economy Writing about the relative weakness of Italy as a political and economic force in Europe in the early nineteenth century, the Austrian political economist Friedrich List was very clear about its cause: She [Italy] supplied all nations with manufactures, with articles of luxury, and with tropical products, and was supplied by them with raw materials. One thing alone was wanting to Italy to enable her to become what England has become in our days, and because that one thing was wanting to her, every other element of prosperity passed away from her; she lacked national union and the power which springs from it (Friedrich List, 1844: 5).

List’s point here is that for all Italy’s economic strengths, the lack of a coherent, ‘national’ economic identity and structure rendered the country weak com pared to England. In our terms Italy was not, unlike England, imagined as a single economic space (by its government, industrialists, or population) and thus was unable to capitalize on the economic potential of such unity. England – more accurately Great Britain as a whole – is important here because by the early to mid nineteenth century Britain had achieved an un precedented degree of national economic and political

unity. Much of what we now regard as the basic insti tutional features of the nation state and national econ omy were ﬁrst forged in a series of policies enacted in Britain in the early to mid 1800s which were themselves the products of particular ways of imagining the con solidation and regulation of economic space. Writing in the late seventeenth century, for example, the English political theorist Sir William Petty proposed the combined use of cartography and ‘political arith metic’ (what we would now call statistics) to consolidate, tame, and render more economically efﬁcient Britain’s Irish colonies. As he put it in 1671: Ireland is such a place which must have so great an army kept up in it, as may make the Irish desist from doing themselves or the English harm by their future Rebel lions. And this great Army must occasion great and heavy Leavies upon a poor people and wasted Countrey; it is therefore not amiss that Ireland should understand the nature and measures of Taxes and Contributions. The parishes of Ireland do much want Regulation, by uniting and dividing them; so as to make them ﬁt En closures wherein to plant the Gospel: wherefore what I have said as to the danger of supernumerary Ministers, may also be seasonable there, when the new Geograp[h]y we expect of that Island shall have afforded means for the Regulation abovementioned (Sir William Petty, 1671).

In proposing the introduction of taxation to Ireland through the creation of a ‘new geography’ (by which he meant a map), Petty was laying the conceptual and practical foundations for what we would now recognize as a modern national economy. Although no such thing as a ‘national economy’ existed when Petty was writing, he shrewdly anticipated that a militarized and bureaucratic state form, exercising tight control over both land and people, could generate a more efﬁcient and disciplined form of economic practice. By deliberately linking eco nomic and ﬁscal efﬁciency with issues of security, mo rality (his system of taxation was based on a reformed church parish system), and efﬁcient spatial consolidation, Petty is imagining the form of what would later become the ideal of the nation state linked to a spatially con solidated ‘national’ economy. By the late eighteenth century, a number of ‘classical’ political economists (Adam Smith, David Ricardo, David Hume, and others) had built upon the early theorizations of Petty and others, to imagine the forms and structures of a ‘national political economy’. These early theoriza tions of what a national economy ‘ought’ to look like, combined with a series of responses to particular his torical events and in the context of growing industrial and imperial power, made it both possible and necessary for Britain to become the ﬁrst ‘national’ economy in the modern sense of the term.

Economies, Imagined

There were many historical dynamics driving the creation of the British national economy, but one of the most powerful and immediate was the threat of war with Napoleonic France. Following the Revolution of 1789, France declared war on Britain in 1793 and threatened to invade. The effects of this on the economic systems of Europe in general and Britain in particular were pro nounced, causing, among other things, both the ﬂight of precious metals from British currency markets and placing a considerable defense burden on the British government. The measures taken to resolve these problems entailed the imagination of the British economy in ways never before attempted and further developed the normative possi bilities of what a national economy might be like. First, in response to the run on gold and silver, in 1797 the Bank of England (at this time still an essentially private institution) in consultation with the government sus pended payments in gold and silver to people seeking to redeem banknotes. Banknotes were not themselves legal tender at this time, but were promissory notes issued by banks that could be circulated in markets and ultimately cashed in for the precious metals they directly represented. The ‘suspension period’ was of fundamental importance because for the ﬁrst time an economic system was seen to function purely on the basis of circulating paper. Earlier experiments to create such a system had failed – par ticularly the infamous ‘John Law experiment’ in France in the eighteenth century – leading to considerable distrust of paper money. While the suspension period had many problems – not least counterfeiting and fraud – and while payment in metal was eventually resumed in 1821, it nevertheless demonstrated that a ‘national’ currency could operate successfully on the basis of nothing more than circulating paper (backed by the national debt) and tight monetary control. This was the model of a national cur rency ultimately adopted by all modern nation states in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Second, the costs of fortifying the south coast of England and preparing the ﬂeet were so great that the British Government was forced, reluctantly, to introduce the ﬁrst ever ‘national’ income tax in 1799. Prior to this, wars had been funded through a series of ad hoc indirect taxes on commodities, periodic levies, and/or borrowing from merchant banks. None of these sources was either regular or productive enough to meet the immediate defense needs of the state in 1799, however, and so it resorted to direct taxation of the whole population in the name of common, national defense. Despite the contro versies surrounding the tax, it was highly successful raising signiﬁcant amounts and was known at the time as ‘the tax that beat Napoleon’. Although abolished at the ﬁrst opportunity, the income tax was soon reinstated more or less permanently and has since been adopted as a normal feature of a national economy. The British in come tax set a very important precedent both in terms of

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the ﬁscal powers of the state and because it formally ‘imagined’ the population of the state as a single eco nomic entity with a common responsibility and thus led them to, as Bourdieu put it, ‘‘discovering themselves as taxable, as tax payers.’’ These measures were accompanied by a series of others throughout the nineteenth century which further consolidated the emerging imaginary of Britain as a uniﬁed socioeconomic space. The ﬁrst national census of population was conducted in 1801. The Ordnance Survey (founded in 1795) produced the ﬁrst highly detailed comprehensive national maps of Britain in the 1830s. Legislation was passed that removed the special status of British cities which, until 1835, were able to run them selves as corporate entities largely independent of the national government. Other reforms introduced between the 1820s and 1870s also helped consolidate a national currency, gave special powers to the Bank of England in the service of national economic stability, consolidated private banking into a few large institutions, laid the foundations of what was later to become the welfare state and, in general, created the spatially uniﬁed ‘social body’ of the nation. This entailed the creation not just of a population that regarded itself as socially and spatially homogenous, but one that understood itself to belong simultaneously to the ‘imagined community’ of the na tion and the ‘imagined economy’ of the state.

Imagining Economic Citizens Imagining an economy in terms of institutional arrange ments – boundaries, legal provisions, political structures, etc. – is not in itself enough. Economic practices as insti tuted and spatialized processes only become economies once people actively participate in them. The history of Western capitalist economies is, therefore, one of the continual shaping both of structures and of the people expected to operate within them. As part of the latter process the citizens of the emerging social, political, and economic orders not only had to physically occupy new institutional and regulatory spaces, they had to be educated and/or disciplined to behave in particular ways conducive to the emergent demands of the ‘national economy’. As Michael Perelman has argued, integral to the ‘in vention of capitalism’ in the nascent national economies of Europe was the invention of the capitalist citizen – an individual that would give up traditional agrarian lifestyles to work in the emergent industries of the Industrial Revolution. Perelman argues that the same classical polit ical economists, who imagined the institutional structure of the national economy, also laid down prescriptions for the often brutal disciplining of the people who would work within it. These included the forced relocation and ur banization of agrarian populations, use of the threat of

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starvation for those unwilling to work even for low wages, debt bondage of industrial workers, the widespread use of slavery, the use of the workhouse to punish the ‘un deserving poor’ for their economic deviance, and, more generally, the active promotion of a moralizing ‘work ethic’. Such measures also entailed the deliberate shaping of new geographies of economies. This can be seen in particular with the ‘Enclosure Acts’ passed in Britain between roughly 1760 and 1850, which consolidated British land ownership into large estates and emptied large areas of the traditional rural population. This contributed to the active forging of the new industrial economy in two ways. First, by disrupting traditional systems of small scale, subsistence farming, the En closures created bigger agricultural units which were both highly proﬁtable and operated by a new class of farmer/landowner operating on an industrial scale. Sec ond, by driving people off the land, the Enclosures also provided rapidly growing industrial cities with the workforces they needed. These processes were also accompanied by the emer gence of new forms of mapping, and a new ‘cartographic imagination’ which did not neutrally depict the landscape, but presented a powerful image of the emergent national economic space. This was particularly true of the ‘cadas tral’ maps – maps of legal property owership – that were produced in increasing numbers and with increased levels of detail and precision from the sixteenth century onward. Cadastral maps were both functional and active aspects of the imagination of the new national economic space. They were functional because they permitted levels of sur veillance and regulation over the land that had never before been possible – essential both for establishing and policing property relations and for setting and collecting taxes on property and people. Mapping of this kind helped to create what John Pickles describes as the ‘geo coded world’ – an ordered image of the landscape in which people and places were immediately and easily legible both to the state and to themselves. Such maps were also ‘imaginary’ in that they pre sented an image of the national economic landscape that deployed visual techniques to provide ‘simpliﬁed’ images of people and places. As Pickles argues, Mapping, social statistics, public health, moral education and the institution of urban planning and administration were from the beginning thoroughly spatialized practices of identity construction and social engineering. Mapping and statistics made citizens visible in particular ways, rendering them subject to public administration, and it provided useful accounting tools for new practices, such as insurance (Pickles, 2004: 131).

Mapping and planning, as Pickles suggests, were es sential to making the imagined economy of the nation state

a reality, because they presented an apparently abstract and neutral image of the land in which emerging economic relations were already embedded. The most apparently neutral and abstract map, therefore, presents an imagined economy (and society) as though it were a ‘natural’ feature of the landscape. This naturalization of the imagined economy of the state was further bolstered by the emergence of a plethora of literary and media descriptions of proper (and, therefore, improper) economic practices and be haviors. Such ‘imaginary’ depictions of economic realities pervaded the popular media and became an important element in public debate over the nature of economic life. Literary historian Patrick Brantlinger has argued that there is a direct connection between the emergence of ‘realism’ in literary ﬁction in the nineteenth century and public debate over the ‘reality’ of certain aspects of the national economy (particularly paper money and credit, both of which were highly controversial because they did not seem to be ‘real’). The constant reiteration of the idea of the economy through the popular and literary media, combined with the increasing experience of wage labor and the money economy all helped the process by which ordinary people began to understand themselves as economic citizens. As a result of all these many, overlapping processes of economic imagination linked, of course, to real economic practices, ordinary people began automatically to asso ciate themselves with particular ‘national’ economic spaces long before the concept of ‘the economy’ entered common usage in the 1930s. It is during the inter war period that the idea of ‘autarky’ – complete national economic self sufﬁciency – reaches its most extreme and damaging expression in the totalitarian states of Ger many, Italy, Japan, and the Soviet Union. Even beyond these extreme examples, most states during this period imposed very tight controls over economic activity. This very strong expression of economic nationalism persisted to the post war period, albeit in the more benign form of various versions of the Keynesian National Welfare State, when a close association was drawn between individual and collective economic well being and national identity. The welfare state imagines ‘the economy’ to be a co herent and corporate entity analogous to the nation itself. Although this remains a powerful conception of state/ economy relations, the internationalization and global ization of economic activities starting in the 1960s have produced new economic imaginaries that are challenging the strong idea of the national economy.

Imagining Economic Globalization Although, as noted above, few people would accept un critically the notion that all national economic activity

Economies, Imagined

can ever be contained within a given state space, the idea of economic sovereignty continues to be prevalent both in political and media accounts of economic practice and policy. The normative expectations of an economy and its geographies carried by our ‘social imaginaries’, this is to say, may not necessarily have too much to do with the ‘actual’ geographies of economic practices and ﬂows we experience. This is of particular relevance in the glob alization debate because much of what is claimed to be distinctive about the emergent global economic order rests on assumptions about economic space. Most accounts of globalization start from the premise (usually simply assumed) that economic activity used to be national, then became increasingly international and now is rapidly becoming global. This certainly seems to be common sense if one accepts the idea that the natural trajectory of economic growth is to occupy ever larger spatial domains until it becomes, literally, global. How ever, as has been pointed out by some of the more critical literature on globalization, not only was economic ac tivity never contained within the economies of nation states, in many ways it can be seen to have been more thoroughly ‘global’ in the past than it is today. With respect to the idea of imagined economies this has two important implications. First, despite its preva lence in the language of politics and economics, complete economic sovereignty within a speciﬁed geographical space has never been completely accomplished and has, as suggested above, a very speciﬁc practical and con ceptual history. Second, it implies that as the strong conceptualization of the ‘national economy’ loses its grip on the popular, and political imagination, other economic imaginaries, new and old, become available. The controversies surrounding the idea of economic globalization, therefore, may stem less from the sub stantive challenges that emergent global economic structures and institutions may pose than the competing social imaginaries contained within the discourses of national and global economies. This is not to suggest that the global economy is simply a ﬁgment of individual or collective imaginations. Nor is it to suggest that the evidence marshaled in defense of the idea of global ization (the Internet, 24 hour banking, e commerce, etc.) is not real or does not represent signiﬁcant institutional and practical change. On the contrary, economic prac tices, including the geographies in which they are set and which they help to produce, are continually changing and some of those changes (now and in the past) may be global in extent and/or consequence. How we interpret and represent these changes, however, depends in large part on the sorts of economic imaginaries to which we subscribe. The ongoing debate over the meaning and existence of globalization is at one level, therefore, evidence of two competing and (possibly) mutually exclusive sets of

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economic imaginaries: one for which the sovereign nation state established in the nineteenth century re mains the most signiﬁcant geographic element; and an other for which the open, global, market is the only rational spatial scale at which economic activity can be properly articulated. Between these two extremes we ﬁnd politicians (and academics) subscribing both to the con tinuity of geographies of the states through which they derive their authority and to the new ‘realities’ of the global marketplace. From this have been derived a range of new descriptors for the state which attempt to capture ‘both’ its continued salience as an economic space ‘and’ its inclusion in a globally competitive marketplace. These descriptors include: the ‘enabling state’, the ‘trading state’, ‘Postnational Schumpeterian Workfare State’, the ‘market state’, and the ‘competition state’. In all cases, these new ‘descriptive’ concepts are also deliberate at tempts to ‘reimagine’ the nature of the relationship be tween economic practice and state space.

Conclusion The idea that spatioeconomic categories are, in part at least, imagined has important methodological and con ceptual implications for geographers. Conventionally, for example, economic geographers have simply adopted prevailing spatial imaginaries – particularly those of the nation state – and operated entirely within them. Whatever the substantive outcomes of such research, therefore, it has also had the effect of reproducing and reinforcing the imagined economy of the state. More recently, because the conceptual grip of such established imaginaries is declining, geographers and others have started to examine economies in different ways, reﬂecting different sociospatial imaginaries. Examinations of ‘al ternative’ economies, various types of ‘social’ and/or gift economies, ‘cultural’ economies, ‘urban’ economies, state space, and so on, are all deliberately altering the ways in which the geographies of economies are imagined. This is not because ‘national’ economies no longer exist – the same plethora of media sources that ﬁrst helped shape the nation state in the nineteenth century continues to promote the idea, after all – but because there is now a more general recognition that a properly reﬂective and critical geographical practice can no longer simply take the imagined nature of such economies for granted. See also: Cultural Economy; Globalization, Cultural; Globalization, Economic; State Theory.

Further Reading Amin, A., Cameron, A. and Hudson, R. (2002). Placing the social economy. London: Routledge.

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Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (eds.) (2003). The cultural economy reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reﬂections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso. Bobbitt, P. (2002). The shield of Achilles: War, peace and the course of history. London: Allen Lane/Penguin. Bonney, R. (ed.) (1998). The rise of the ﬁscal state in Europe c1200 1815. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bonney, R. (2001). France and the ﬁrst European paper money experiment. French History 15(3), 254 272. Bourdieu, P. (1998). Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic ﬁeld. In Bourdieu, P. (ed.) Practical reason, pp 35 63. Cambridge: Polity. Brantlinger, P. (1996). Fictions of state: Culture and credit in Britain 1694 1994. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Brenner, N., Jessop, B., Jones, M. and Macleod, G. (eds.) (2002). State/space: A reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Brenner, N. and Keil, R. (eds.) (2005). The global cities reader. London: Routledge. Cameron, A. and Palan, R. (2004). The imagined economies of globalization. London: Sage. Castoriadis, C. (1987). The imaginary institution of society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Cerny, P. (1990). The changing architecture of politics: Structure, agency and the future of the state. London: Sage. Daunton, M. J. (1995). Progress and poverty: An economic and social history of Britain 1700 1850. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, G. (2002). A history of money from ancient times to the present day. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Einaudi, L. (1953). The theory of imaginary money from Charlemagne to the French Revolution. In Lane, F. C. & Riemersma, J. C. (eds.) Enterprise and secular change: Readings in economic history, pp 229 261. Homewood, IL: Richard D Irwin Inc. Feavearyear, A. (1963). The pound sterling: A history of English money. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gilbert, N. and Gilbert, B. (1989). The enabling state: Modern welfare capitalism in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere. Cambridge: Polity. Helleiner, E. (2003). The making of national money: Territorial currencies in historical perspective. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hirst, P. and Thompson, G. (1996). Globalization in question. Cambridge: Polity. Ingham, G. (2004). The nature of money. Cambridge: Polity. Jessop, B. (2002). The future of the capitalist state. Cambridge: Polity. Joyce, P. (2003). The rule of freedom: Liberalism and the modern city. London: Verso.

Leyshon, A., Lee, R. and Williams, C. C. (eds.) (2003). Alternative economic spaces. London: Sage. List, F. (1844). The national system of political economy. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Mitchell, T. (1998). Fixing the economy. Cultural Studies 12(1), 82 101. O’Brien, D. P. (ed.) (1999). The history of taxation vol. 1. London: Pickering and Chatto. Perelman, M. (1996). The invention of capitalism: Classical political economy and the secret history of primitive accumulation. London: Duke University Press. Pickles, J. (2004). A history of spaces: Cartographic reason, mapping and the geo coded world. London: Routledge. Poovey, M. (1995). Making a social body: British cultural formation 1830 1864. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Poovey, M. (1998). A history of the modern fact: Problems of knowledge in the sciences of wealth and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rosencrance, R. (1986). The rise of the trading state: Commerce and conquest in the modern world. New York: Basic Books. Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Seymour, W. A. (ed.) (1980). A history of the ordnance survey. Folkestone: Dawson. Taylor, C. (2004). Modern social imaginaries. London: Duke University Press/Public Planet Books. Williams, C. C. (2005). A commodiﬁed world?: Mapping the limits of capitalism. London: Zed Books. Williams, R. (1973). The country and the city. London: The Hogarth Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.adbusters.org Adbusters Journal of the Mental Environment. http://www.neweconomics.org/gen New Economics Foundation. http://www.quatloos.com Quatloos Cyber Museum of Scams and Frauds. http://www.taxhistory.org Taxanalysts A public service of Tax Analysts. http://terranova.blogs.com Terra Nova A Weblog about Virtual Worlds.

Economy, Informal S. Turner, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary LETS (Local Exchange and Trading Systems) Operate a currency system as an alternative to the formal economy.

Introduction The informal economy is open to multiple interpret ations leading to many, often contradictory, deﬁnitions. Very generally, the informal economy can be considered to be that part of the economy where activities, often occurring on a small scale, take place beyond ofﬁcial recognition and record. Such activities may include small scale enterprises and trade, street vending (Fig ure 1), garbage recycling ventures, subcontracting, and homework. Within countries, the nature of the informal economy is highly fragmented by location of work, be it in the home, in a small enterprise or on the street; the speciﬁc nature of the activity; and the status of em ployment. Yet in general, it can be said that all people involved in the informal economy share a lack of formal labor rights and social protection. The informal econ omy is most commonly found in developing countries where at times up to 80% of the economy might be based upon informal work, much of it self employed;

however, such informality certainly also occurs in de veloped countries. Two other sectors of the economy are sometimes in corporated within the term informal economy, a practice the International Labour Organization (ILO) argues against. First, it is argued that the criminal economy is not part of the informal economy. While there may certainly be illegal or semi illegal production or labor arrangements within the informal economy, it is sug gested that this sector does not cover criminal activities in illegal goods or services such as drug smuggling. Second, the reproductive or care economy, including unpaid domestic work is considered by some not to be part of the informal economy, due to the fact that these activities are not part of the economy for which goods and services are created for sale or remuneration. However, such limits on the sector are debatable as they point to a sizeable grey zone, and others argue just as forcibly that these activities should be included. Likewise, debates continue as to whether subsistence agriculture forms part of this deﬁnition, with suggestions that be cause such activities are so widespread, they need to be analyzed in their own right. There are many perspectives on the informal econ omy, and while some have tended to follow one another over time, they are not necessarily in conﬂict. Yet, while the term ‘informal sector’ was used in most initial works to describe these activities, it tends to have been

Figure 1 Informal economy street vending, Hanoi, Vietnam.

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overtaken in more recent studies by the term ‘informal economy’. In the 1990s and current decade, much re search tends to build from a range of previous ideas, pulling elements from different approaches when they are relevant to a particular setting. Indeed, it is important to note that informal activities are highly context con tingent, a fact stressed persuasively in recent work, with numerous different forms of informality occurring in different places and at different times. In addition, this term pertains to different economic systems, from peas ant to wage labor systems, from feudalism to capitalism to communism.

Approaches to the Informal Economy Dualistic Models Since their initial appearance in the 1940s and 1950s, dualistic models have tended to occupy center stage in research on the informal economy especially that oc curring in developing countries. Often considered a remnant of precapitalist economies, the informal econ omy was considered by this approach to refer to the activities of ‘local’ people in colonized countries, not yet integrated into the colonial economic and social struc ture. As a result, the sector was seen as backward, ir rational, and inefﬁcient. Writing in 1953, Boeke introduced an early concept of dualistic production systems based on an examination of the Dutch East Indies. He deﬁned two social systems: the capitalist, imported from abroad; and the domestic social system. This model was to provide a starting point for much subsequent work including that of Clifford Geertz, who in 1963, identiﬁed the ‘ﬁrm centered’ and ‘bazaar’ economies in his work focusing on two towns in Java and Bali, Indonesia. The ‘ﬁrm centered’ economic sector in volved trade occurring via impersonal social institutions, while the ‘bazaar economy’ related to local competitive traders often relying upon numerous spontaneous interactions. In 1971, at the ‘Conference on Urban Unemployment in Africa’ held at the University of Sussex, UK, Keith Hart coined the speciﬁc term ‘informal sector’ drawing from his work in Ghana. Hart understood the informal sector as being distinct from wage earning employment (the formal sector), the distinction between the two being the degree of rationalization of work. Labor within the formal sector was recruited on a permanent basis for ﬁxed wages, whereas the informal sector consisted of ir regular forms of employment and self employment. Despite its relative complexity, Hart developed a classi ﬁcation of the two sectors based on the income oppor tunities available to people in a city. It is interesting however, that his division did make it possible for members of the same household to gain employment in

different sectors of the economy. Shortly after, in 1972, the ILO, in a study based upon work in Kenya, built upon Hart’s work while scaling it up to examine the structure of the economy as a whole. While maintaining a dualistic approach, one outcome of their research was to suggest that governments should support informal economy ac tivities because of the important role they play in ab sorbing unemployment. This marked a notable shift in attitude, from the informal economy being seen as a backward sector in earlier work, to instead being sug gested by both Hart and the ILO as a site for efﬁciency, creativity, and resiliency; indeed, perhaps a solution to economic development and poverty alleviation. Almost immediately after the informal economy/ sector concept ﬁrst appeared, criticism of the approach also emerged. One of the strongest concerns was that by placing the informal economy in opposition to the for mal, an artiﬁcial dichotomy was created. In addition, these approaches were accused of social evolutionism, or having a ‘modernization take’ on the economy, with as sumptions that informal ways of making a living would eventually be subsumed by the modern capitalist econ omy. Subsequently, a number of modiﬁcations to this initial work was made, including the work of Milton Santos who, in 1975, spoke of the urban economy as consisting of two circuits or subsystems, an ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ one, structured in a closely linked relationship. He described the upper circuit as using imported capital intensive technology and consisting of banking, export trade and industry, modern urban industry, trade and services, wholesaling, and so on. Most of the relations of this circuit were seen to operate at a national or inter national level. On the other hand, the lower circuit consisted of small scale, non capital intensive activities using locally adapted technologies. This circuit was dominated by the poor, and was well entrenched in the urban realm. Although appearing independent, it was argued that these circuits were closely interlinked with the lower circuit maintaining a dependent relationship with the upper circuit. Petty Commodity Production Critiques While the approach based on the informal/formal economy dichotomy was being developed by Hart, the ILO, and others from the 1970s, the increasing wealth of information linking those operating in the informal economy to those involved in other sectors of the economy forced many researchers to seek alternative frameworks. The most prominent of these emerged from a neo Marxist critique of utilizing informal economy terminology in developing countries, and subsequently the ‘modes of production’ approach became popular. Neo Marxists saw informality as being a result of the unequal development of capitalism, with the informal

Economy, Informal

economy playing an essential role in providing a low wage reserve of labor, a strategy theorized by Karl Marx as the maintenance of a disposable ‘industrial reserve army’. While essentially still dividing the urban economy into two parts – the capitalist and precapitalist modes of production – the neo Marxist ‘modes of production’ approach paid closer attention to interﬁrm relationships, while being more pluralistic in nature. Several forms of precapitalist mode of production were recognized, one being labeled ‘petty commodity production’. This aspect of the model became increasingly popular as a tool with which to examine the development of, and relationships surrounding, what had previously been called the ‘in formal economy’. Instead of having a benign, autono mous, or complementary relationship with the formal economy, this approach identiﬁed a relationship in which the petty commodity production sector was exploited and subordinated by the formal economy. Two main exploitative relationships were identiﬁed: ﬁrst, the in formal economy was considered an extension of the productive network of large ﬁrms, providing a pool of cheap and ﬂexible wage labor; and second, it subsidized the formal economy by providing cheap goods and ser vices to the labor force therefore enabling large ﬁrms to pay low wages. However, this neo Marxist approach was not immune from criticism either, critiques including that it viewed socioeconomic transformations as a product of external determination, and as such ignored local histories, structural differences, and diverse possible responses. As such, there was little room in the approach for local agency. Yet at the same time, it did not take long for some authors to feel that the traditional dualistic approach and the neo Marxist approaches were intersecting, given that the features of those undertaking work in the informal economy were basically the same as those undertaking petty commodity production. Trying to synthesize these approaches, authors such as Mazumadar (1976), and Bromley and Gerry (1979) cre ated a framework based upon the vulnerability of work ers. The informal economy was perceived as a labor market phenomenon identifying a speciﬁc dichotomy between the unprotected informal economy and the protected formal economy. Formal economy protection arose from the actions of unions, governments, or both acting together. Formal workers tended to have stable wages, protection via labor laws, and perhaps health and pension beneﬁts. In comparison, the informal economy was characterized by industries that were ‘unprotected’ by company policy, government regulations or trade union action, and to which entry was relatively easy. Such workers, many of whom Mazumadar noted were rural to urban migrants, were often employed on a daily basis, and could be undertaking piecework for larger ﬁrms. Some authors placed the self employed in a separate

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category again, noting that such work created different forms of vulnerability. Neoliberal/Legalist Approach In 1989 the seminal work The Other Path written by Peruvian Hernando De Soto was translated into English. De Soto argued that informal activities were not due to the dynamics of the labor market but were a consequence of excessive state regulation. To support his arguments, De Soto and his research team undertook a widely cited experiment to try to register a small garment enterprise in Lima, a process that involved over 100 administrative procedures and took almost a year of continuous effort. Neoliberal/legalists see members of the informal econ omy as the hope for the future for capitalist economic development. They argue that what is needed is a re duction in state interference in the market and the elimination of the maze of regulations that are commonly associated with establishing an enterprise. Alternatively, critics of this approach state that an unregulated econ omy would not be the best solution, as the approach ignores the structural subordination of small enterprises and traders. Structuralist Approaches Given the climate of global economic restructuring during the 1980s and 1990s, it is not surprising that a structuralist approach, rooted in neo Marxist traditions, emerged partly in response to recessions in a number of developed countries, structural adjustment reforms, and increased competition from newly industrializing coun tries. Indeed, this was a time when post Fordist modes of production were becoming increasingly apparent in de veloped and advanced developing countries, with many workers pushed from formal employment into the in formal economy. This approach, generally speaking – as there are many variants – rejected all notions of eco nomic dualism and focused instead on the linkages amongst formal and informal production. Proponents of this approach argued that the informal economy was very much a result of capitalist ﬁrms attempting to evade state regulations regarding taxes and social legislation such as maintaining minimum wages, safety standards, and pro viding social beneﬁts. Firms attempt this by imple menting ﬂexible labor arrangements such as networks of subcontracting, outworking, and piecework. The use of such labor practices, involving growing part time or casual work, tend to impact the most on the labor sector made up of vulnerable workers such as women, youth, and immigrants. In many cases the state has been sup portive of such moves, especially in developing countries where informal practices are accepted so that a country can obtain comparative advantages with more regulated nations.

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While the structuralists would argue that there are signiﬁcant differences in the social and economic com position of the informal and formal economies, the neoliberal/legalists argue that these differences are legal, rather than structural, and are of the state’s making. Structuralists wish to push for improved worker con ditions, while neoliberal/legalists argue that worker protection will lead to a loss of employment opportun ities. Nevertheless, proponents of both approaches tend to agree that the linkages between the sectors work to disadvantage those in the informal economy. Small-Scale Enterprises Since the 1980s another body of work to have emerged is that focusing upon the economic activities of small scale enterprises. This is a diverse body of literature that tends to focus on concepts such as ‘informalization’ rather than the ‘informal economy’. This literature is highly relevant to discussions on the informal economy because of the fact that small enterprises are so often the setting for informal labor practices, which may often cut across family/enter prise boundaries, as well as often being unregistered and outside formal recognition by the local state. Within this realm of studies, there has been a concentrated body of literature focusing upon clusters of small enterprises, in areas such as the ‘Third Italy’, as well as developing countries such as Indonesia. Some have drawn from these studies to apply arguments emerging from ﬂexible spe cialization literature to small enterprises operating in de veloping countries – with mixed results as to the applicability of such a concept. Work on small enterprises in general, however, unlike many informal economy studies in the past, tends to take a closer look at individual actors, highlighting the importance of the social embeddedness of economic activities. Such an approach allows for the in clusion of important variables such as gender, ethnicity, class, religion, and local politics in studies of how people mobilize resources and use social networks to not only get by, but often to get ahead as well. The important role of such small scale enterprises as a social safety net was es pecially notable after the beginning of the economic crisis in Southeast Asia in 1997 when thousands of people pre viously employed in formal work entered the realm of small enterprise and trade in Thailand and Indonesia. In deed, here, as well as in Latin America in the 1980s, during structural adjustment in Africa, and economic transitions in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, it has be come plainly clear that employment in small scale enter prises and trade, and the informal economy as a whole tends to grow during times of economic crisis. Social Networks and Social Embeddedness Closely associated with the work on the informal econ omy and small enterprises is a body of literature that is

even more heterogeneous, drawing upon interdisciplinary research from geography, economic anthropology, soci ology, and economics. In essence, this research demon strates that a common feature of informal activities is that they are facilitated by a wide variety of noneconomic actions, including reciprocal social relations involving kinship, friendship and neighborhood networks, and household, community, and other informal ties. Relations of production, consumption, and exchange in informal economies are therefore often deeply entangled in noneconomic relationships of trust and solidarity. The social networks view thus focuses on the organizational role of social ties, and rather than regarding informality as an absence of regulation per se, sees it as an alternative form of regulation functioning external to the framework of formal state bureaucracy. In more ways than one, this approach draws upon what social scientists with a sub stantivist leaning have argued since the 1950s, that is, there is no economy without cultural context, and local practices such as kinship ties and ethnic networks of trade partners are important elements in which the economy is unavoidably embedded. Social networks play a role in social cohesion, the building of trust, and in deﬁning community identity. They frequently operate within a framework of moral ethics that ensures mutual obligation and the right to subsistence for all members, acting as a ‘safety net’. Such work is often closely associated with that on social cap ital, the networks and ties that can help people ‘get ahead’. This approach is also being increasingly drawn upon for recent studies of informal small scale enter prises and trade. Social network and social embeddedness contributions offer perspectives that contest the traditional economic dualisms of work/nonwork, economic/noneconomic, public/private, and monetary/nonmonetary. Instead, these approaches recognize that informal activities fre quently take place in domains that straddle and combine these dimensions. Following such an approach it could be argued that the informal economy includes a number of activities that involve no transfer of money at all, such as barter, the exchange of domestic labor, mutual aid net works, and Local Exchange and Trading Systems (LETS), the latter operating a currency outside of the formal sector, to date most commonly found under this name in the UK.

The Causes of the Informal Economy Naturally, as there are numerous deﬁnitions, approaches, and groups of participants, in turn there are a multitude of reasons put forward as to why the informal economy exists. Some of the more common explanations include government failures, for example, to provide adequate

Economy, Informal

social support and labor regulations, or more broadly to satisfy societal needs; or alternatively, excess regulation of the economy by the state. Over urbanization and the inability of urban areas to absorb rural–urban migrants into ‘regular employment’ is often argued to play a role, especially in developing countries, China and India being key current examples. Economic restructuring and globalization are also often put forward as key causes of informal economy growth. Finally, another cause is people operating within the informal economy simply as an act of resistance to formal systems and the sur veillance that so commonly comes with them.

Geographical Perspectives The work of geographers has spanned all of these dif ferent approaches to the informal economy. For example, Terry McGee, one of the most foremost human geog raphers writing on Southeast Asia, has been a key sup porter of the petty commodity production approach arguing that the dualistic approach was too simplistic, masking the realities of economic relationships in cities in the region and beyond. Indeed, geographers are valuable contributors to this ﬁeld of study, bringing with them a concern for how local, on the ground realities are interwoven with economic and political changes at broader spatial scales, including national, regional, and global transformations; an understanding of the import ance of place based speciﬁcs to informal economy attri butes; and an awareness and understanding of the heterogeneity of the livelihoods and survival mechanisms of those working in this sphere. See also: Economic Geography; Globalization, Economic; Informal Sector; Informalization; Livelihoods; Networks; Networks, Urban; Political Economy, Geographical; Slums; Third World.

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Further Reading Boeke, J. H. (1953). Economics and economic policy of dual societies, as exempliﬁed by Indonesia. New York: Institute of Paciﬁc Relations. Bromley, R. and Gerry, C. (eds.) (1979). Casual work and poverty in third world cities. Chichester: Wiley. Cheng, L. and Gerefﬁ, G. (1994). The Informal economy in East Asian development. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 18(2), 194 219. De Soto, H. (1989). The other path: The invisible revolution in the third world. New York: Harpercollins. Geertz, C. (1963). Peddlers and princes: Social change and economic modernization in two Indonesian towns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hart, K. (1973). Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana. The Journal of African Studies 11(1), 61 89. International Labor Organization (1972). Employment, incomes and equality: A strategy for increasing productive employment in Kenya. Geneva: International Labor Organization. International Labor Organization (2002). Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture. Geneva: Employment Sector, International Labor Organization. Mazumdar, D. (1976). The urban informal sector. World Development 4(8), 655 679. McGee, T. G. (1979). The poverty syndrome: Making out in the Southeast Asian city. In Bromley, R. & Gerry, C. (eds.) Casual work and poverty in third world cities, pp 45 65. Chichester: Wiley. Portes, A. and Sassen Koob, S. (1987). Making it underground: Comparative material on the informal sector in western market economies. The American Journal of Sociology 93(1), 30 61. Rakowski, C. A. (1994). Convergence and divergence in the informal sector debate: A focus on Latin America, 1984 92. World Development 22(4), 501 516. Santos, M. (1979). The shared space: The two circuits of urban economy in underdeveloped countries. London: Methuen. Turner, S. (2003). Indonesia’s small entrepreneurs: Trading on the margins. London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Relevant Websites http://www.ilo.org Informal Economy, International Labour Organization. http://www.wiego.org Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGD).

Ecotourism D. A. Fennell, Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Accreditation Programs that provide a means of establishing the extent to which a business offering tourism experiences meets industry-nominated standards. Alternative Tourism The antithesis of mass tourism deﬁned by: local control, small-scale, beneﬁts distributed more evenly in community, support for other local sectors, preservation of authenticity, and more holistic approach to planning. Community Ecotourism should be designed according to a local orientation, as regards to beneﬁts, control, and scale, as one of the ﬁve deﬁning characteristics of ecotourism. Consumptive Tourism Activities that have a direct negative impact on individuals, groups, or other aspects of the natural world, for example, hunting and ﬁshing. Conservation The prevention of resource depletion, species extirpation, or habitat degradation, as one of the ﬁve deﬁning characteristics of ecotourism. Education One of ﬁve deﬁning characteristics of ecotourism, such that ecotourism is deﬁned by a degree of education or learning as part of the experience. Mass Tourism The predominant form of tourism deﬁned by: foreign ownership, marketing based on high volume, seasonal employment; very little of the tourists’ money stays in the destination, and with little effort to support local producers. Nature-Based Tourism (NBT) Any form of tourism that uses natural resources in a wild or undeveloped form. Ecotourism is one form of NBT which is one of the ﬁve deﬁning characteristics of ecotourism. Nonconsumptive Tourism Activities that typically do not have a direct negative impact on individuals, groups, or other aspects of the natural world, for example, wildlife viewing. Policy Whatever governments choose to do or not to do with respect to the planning, development, and management of the ecotourism industry. Sustainability Development that meets the goals of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. One of ﬁve deﬁning characteristics of ecotourism.

Introduction A sector of tourism that has generated a signiﬁcant amount of interest and controversy over the past two

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decades is ecotourism. Interest, because it represents an alluring alternative to the mass tourism paradigm that has been so transformative to the social and ecological con ditions of destinations throughout the world; and con troversy because many feel that it has yet to live up to its position as a more responsible or ethical form of travel. Ecotourism (‘eco’ as in ecological) is a type of tourism that is founded primarily on a speciﬁc interest in the natural history of a region. Aspects such as culture and adventure, however, have also been associated with the term, making assessments of its magnitude very difﬁcult. In 2003, ecotourism is said to have earned US$25 billion globally, representing approximately 2–4% of inter national tourism. Theorists have tended to focus on the origins and deﬁnition of ecotourism, as well as issues related to economic realities and incentives, consump tiveness, ecotourism as mass tourism, control and rights, and accreditation, all of which will be brieﬂy discussed below.

Origins and Deﬁnition Although there does not appear to be any deﬁnitive study outlining the precise origins of the concept of eco tourism, there is tacit support for the idea that it emerged from the eco development literature of the 1970s, re garding the harmonization of social and ecological ob jectives, wise management of environment, thresholds, and the enhancement of people, communities, and just ice. Several theorists have adopted this position in illus trating that the ideas behind ecotourism resulted from concern over inappropriate use of natural resources. During the latter part of the 1980s, these ideas were more formally crystallized through the sustainable develop ment movement as a model for structural change within society – one that ventures away from a strictly socio economic focus to one where development meets the goals of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The application of sustainable development ideas and principles very quickly entered into the tourism ver nacular, with an expanding market of travelers clamoring to take advantage of new eco based opportunities. The face of sustainable development in tourism emerged in the form of alternative tourism (AT) as a natural out growth of the dissatisfaction with the mass tourism in dustry which by the 1980s had adversely transformed many of the world’s most beautiful and sensitive regions at the expense of communities and the natural world. The philosophy behind AT – forms of tourism, like

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ecotourism, that advocate an approach opposite to mass conventional tourism – was to ensure that tourism pol icies no longer concentrate on economic and technical necessities alone, but rather emphasize the demand for an unspoiled environment, the needs of local people, and the elimination of outside inﬂuences (e.g., exter nal stakeholders) in winning back decision making powers. Although the onset of ecotourism is very strongly tied to eco development and AT, it is important to realize that the concept has been with us for much longer. For ex ample, the travel department of the American Museum of Natural History has conducted natural history tours since 1953. Probably the ﬁnest examples of the evolution of ecotourism can be found in the African wildlife based examples of tourism developed in the early twentieth century and, to some, the nature tourism enterprises of the mid nineteenth century. In the present day, some of the icons of ecotourism include many protected areas in Costa Rica like the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador, Iguac¸u Falls, the Amazon basin, the Patagonian region of Argentina and Chile, Antarctica, hill tribe trekking in Southeast Asia, Ayers Rock, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Milford Track in New Zealand, the Serengeti Plain, Kruger National Park in South Africa, and polar bear watching in Churchill, Canada. Indeed, ecotourism thrives in all environments including rainforests, moun tain regions, polar environments, islands and coasts, deserts and grasslands, and marine regions. Practices in these and other ecotourism destinations include the watching of speciﬁc animal groups like cetaceans, birds, and bears. But ecotourism has also branched out into the realm of culture (indigenous practices) and adventure (kayaking and canoeing). While this branching out has increased the market, there are serious issues sur rounding the legitimacy of forms of tourism that are more cultural and adventure based than ecological in their orientation. Much of the literature supports the fact that Ceballos Lascura´in was the ﬁrst to coin the phrase, deﬁning it as traveling to relatively undisturbed or uncontaminated natural areas with the speciﬁc objective of studying, ad miring, and enjoying the scenery and its wild plants and animals, as well as any existing cultural manifestations (both past and present) found in these areas. However, the term has been traced further back to the work of Hetzer, who used it to explain the intricate relationship between tourists and the environments and cultures in which they interact. Hetzer identiﬁed four fundamental pillars that need to be followed for a more responsible form of tourism: (1) minimum environmental impact, (2) minimum impact on – and maximum respect for – host cultures, (3) maximum economic beneﬁts to the host country’s grassroots, and (4) maximum ‘recreational’ satisfaction to participating tourists.

Nature-related interest Hard (dedicated)

Soft (casual)

B Hard (difficult) Physical rigor

Soft (easy)

A

Figure 1 Hard and soft dimensions of ecotourism. From Laarman and Durst (1987).

Other theorists have made reference to nature tour ism’s (nature tourism being synonymous with ecotourism at the time) hard and soft dimensions, based on the physical rigor of the experience and also the level of interest in natural history (Figure 1). The hard and soft path characteristics have also been discussed as deep and shallow ecotourism. Deep ecotourism is characterized according to intrinsic value, small scale development, community identity, community participation, and the notion that materialism for its own sake is wrong. Con versely, shallow ecotourism is characterized as a business as usual attitude to the natural world; nature is seen as a resource to be exploited in maximizing human beneﬁts, management decisions are based on utilitarian reasoning, and sustainability is viewed from a weak or very weak perspective. During the early 1990s ecotourism and na ture based tourism (NBT) were differentiated on the basis of the fact that the former was recognized as one small part of a broader NBT deﬁned as any form of tourism that uses natural resources in a wild or un developed form, and includes activities such as adventure tourism, hunting, ﬁshing, as well as numerous other consumptive and nonconsumptive activities. In efforts to provide a clear distinction between eco tourism, nature tourism, and other related forms like wildlife tourism (wildlife tourism is tourism based on encounters with nondomesticated (nonhuman) animals, which can be consumptive, for example, hunting, or nonconsumptive, e.g., wildlife viewing), researchers have attempted to isolate core variables that make ecotourism distinctive. This core includes sustainability, education, a nature base, a conservation mandate, and contribution to community, all of which have been incorporated in the following deﬁnition by David Fennell: Ecotourism is a sustainable, non invasive form of nature based tourism that focuses primarily on learning about nature ﬁrst hand, and which is ethically managed to be

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low impact, non consumptive, and locally oriented (control, beneﬁts, and scale). It typically occurs in natural areas, and should contribute to the conservation of such areas. (Fennell, 2008).

As regards to the ecotourist, studies point to the fact that this type of traveler maintains the following char acteristics: predominantly male, afﬁliated with conser vation organizations, long staying, well educated, and ﬁnancially well off. Of interest is the recent trend toward more female representation in ecotourism, described as the ‘feminization’ of the ecotourism sector. Four studies examined between 2001 and 2005 found 57%, 62%, 70%, and 59.2% of their samples to be female.

Issues Economic Realities and Incentives Economists argue that ecotourism cannot hope to ac complish its lofty goals (e.g., biodiversity conservation), because of the inability to control the costs and beneﬁts of market exchanges. Ecotourism is constrained by the fact that it produces a number of negative costs (termed ex ternalities, like damage to the ecology from ecotourism) imposed on others which are often ignored in the oper ation of the market. It is difﬁcult to internalize these ex ternal costs because economic theory tells us that incentives to ignore externalities are quite strong: it is rational, in an economic sense, to impose costs on third parties if this contributes to our own self interest. This means that there is scepticism regarding how successful ecotourism operators will be in balancing proﬁt with the goals of ecotourism – with the former usually taking precedence over the latter. In the face of declining par ticipation, ﬁrms will typically increase proﬁts or increase demand, both of which may detract from the ﬁrm’s faithfulness to the tenets of ecotourism. By reducing costs, efforts to minimize external costs are diminished by de liberately not taking steps to, for example, reduce pol lution or remove garbage. While the service provider beneﬁts by avoiding these costs, such are typically borne by a third party, like a community. In the case of increasing demand, the service provider appeals to a wider market by offering additional services or increasing carrying capaci ties in existing programs (e.g., the Galapagos Islands Na tional Park in Ecuador). What eventuates is an industry that has parallel characteristics of mass tourism with larger numbers who may be less sensitive to the environment. This seems to be the case with places like SeaWorld which are labeled and marketed as ecotourism, but without ecotourism’s philosophical foundation. Researchers argue that the capture and display of animals for touristic con sumption should not be considered as bona ﬁde ecotourism because it places the well being of the animal at risk. As

such, any form of ecotourism that places stress on the ecology of an area, including individuals and populations, should not be considered as ecotourism. This coincides with the extent to which other more consumptive forms of NBT have been considered as ecotourism. For example, moose hunting in Sweden has been referred to as eco tourism if cultural and social aspects are taken into con sideration. In other cases, bill ﬁshing (sport ﬁshing for marlin and sailﬁsh) has been referred to as ecotourism because it directs economic assistance to the local com munity and has economic advantages over other uses. Theorists, however, argue that such an activity cannot be ecotourism because of (1) the intention to catch the animal (ecotourism should be about minimum disturbance in all cases); (2) the pain and stress that results from catching the animal; (3) consumptiveness (catch and release practices still may be viewed as consumptive); and (4) values, such that ecotourists have a different set of values related to sport and the intrinsic/extrinsic motivations surrounding participation in these activities. The argument follows that the treatment of animals cannot be based on healthy populations (i.e., it is ﬁne to catch animals because of the healthy state of the population), but rather that respect must be shown to individuals comprising these populations. The development and use of weak ecotourism deﬁnitions has opened the door to a great deal of misrepresentation (and unethical marketing) and the prospect of more an thropocentric values superseding ecocentric ones. The ra tionale for including activities like hunting and ﬁshing under the ecotourism umbrella is not clear. One hypothesis is that the ecotourism label offers these activities social acceptability in the face of declining memberships. Ac cordingly, the best way to increase participation is to make the activity more socially acceptable through normative measures hinged on sustainability and ethics (i.e., catch and release or contributions of meat, skins, bones, and ivory to local people for commercial reasons). The economic realities of ecotourism have also been used to predict the willingness of local people to support ecotourism and conservation through incentives. Con servation and environmental awareness are often raised because of involvement in tourism, which act as an in centive for a new rationality in traditional resource use. Ecotourism sites, however, that are not charismatic rarely generate revenue at a scale that will induce incentives for conservation. This is the case in Mongolia, where al though local people have a strong conservation ethic, they were unwilling to discontinue grazing in certain protected area regions without compensation. Parallel to this is the ﬁnding that a chief motivating factor for in volvement in the ecotourism industry is a depleting natural resource base based on deforestation or over grazing activities. In Baja, Mexico, for example, poor ﬁsheries conservation techniques lead to a depletion of the inshore ﬁshery. In an effort to bolster the local

Ecotourism

economy, whale watching ecotourism emerged as an option on extrinsic (proﬁt) grounds only. And because the whale watching industry evolved with the proﬁt motive only in mind (in the absence of an ethical and well managed approach to ecotourism), it has not been so lucrative as to alleviate the pressures on the inshore ﬁshery. As such, conﬂict over the right to use marine resources has only intensiﬁed as a result of ecotourism. Community Control and Rights The ecotourism literature is replete with examples of how the introduction of tourism has lead to the marginalization of populations through the removal of control and rights. Pressure from outside investment often translates into inevitability about the pace and scale of development and the perception of insigniﬁcance regarding the role of local people in ecotourism. Taken out of the hands of the people who live in the destination is the ability to control the effects that these large developments have on local resources, resulting in higher tourist impacts, the failure to put money into the hands of local people, and marginal efforts to conserve ecological resources. A logical reaction to exogenous forces is to simply reject outside funded tourism and ecotourism in order to fully control the tourism landscape. However, these efforts are constrained by (1) the inability to organize to the point of political mobilization; and (2) whether the mobilized unit can ever be strong enough to inﬂuence government policy, in the face intense development interests from outside. The path of least resistance for cash strapped governments, un fortunately, is foreign investment. Unhappily, the rush to develop tourism in marginal areas has led to a series of problems that undermine efforts to balance traditional human uses and conser vation. For example, the importance of considering local property rights has been demonstrated in Bohol, Phil ippines, where protected areas were established based on the effects of intensive deforestation, agricultural ex ploitation, and quarrying. With the establishment of limits to traditional harvesting activities, local people accuse policy makers of ignoring their rights because of the top down approach employed in the establishment of protected areas. This has led theorists to suggest that coexistence between local people, tourism, and pro tected areas managers should be developed through adaptive governance models that are based on shared involvement and more inclusive objectives. Two issues emerge from the foregoing discussion. First, there has been a critical lack of meaningful policy in ecotourism to guide industry practices, which should be informed by broader national tourism policy, which itself is a manifestation of an overall government policy. Policy should involve all stakeholders who stand to be impacted by ecotourism development, including

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protected area personnel, local communities, the tourism industry, NGOs, ﬁnancial institutions, consumers, and national ecotourism councils. Second, policy might also emerge in response to the inculcation of newer forms of governance which are based on the interactions of actors, structures, and processes through which societal de cisions are made and power is exercised, and through institutions and norms. Consistent with this approach is the precondition that a given society be open to inﬂuence and change through development vehicles like eco tourism. This aspect of openness should not be treated lightly. If society is to somehow become better, it must be open to different approaches in a climate of cooperation between those groups who stand to be affected. Ecotourism as Mass Tourism Another issue that has come to the fore in ecotourism is the likelihood of infusing ecotourism’s more responsible ethic into mass forms of tourism in making these other types somehow ‘better.’ Some ecotourism theorists argue that because scale doesn’t matter in our efforts to be sustainable (i.e., small and large scale can either be good or bad) there is no reason to believe that ecotourism cannot occur at a grander scale. The argument follows that because softer path ecotourists restrict their activities to front country regions of protected areas which are hard ened sites that can absorb the impacts of numbers (with hard path ecotourists more likely to penetrate deeper into the sensitive back regions of these areas), this group has less of an impact. Furthermore, the softer path ecotourist is more likely to contribute to conservation ﬁnancially through the revenue generated by larger numbers of tourists. An example of this ‘ecotourism as mass tourism’ model can be found in Thailand, where two of the region’s oldest eco tour operators, Sea Canoe and Siam Safari, are said to uphold the principles of ecotourism even though they have structural connections to the package tourism industry that provides their main market. As such, eco tourism in Phuket has emerged not in opposition, but as a function of the mass tourism industry, where tourists typically stay in four to ﬁve star hotels, visit Phuket en route to other destinations or for short holidays, and book through travel agents and tour operators. Other theorists, however, are not so keen to accept this mass scale linkage because of the belief that ecotourism loses its integrity along the way. The fact that some softer path ecotourists stay in more luxurious accommodations, as with Phuket, above, means that their higher resource demands will contribute to a larger ecological footprint. The nature of this larger footprint often comes at the hand of the economic elite who gain considerable social capital by visiting exclusive softer path ecotourism re sorts, even though they may not be very ecologically benevolent. The issue of impact is compounded by the

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Ecotourism

fact that ecotourism involves long haul travel and asso ciated high usage of fossil fuels to satisfy hedonistic ends. The more that participate, the higher the fuel demand. Accreditation (Certiﬁcation) Some pundits argue that if ecotourism as an industry is to become legitimate, it might only do so through the im plementation of accreditation (also referred to as certiﬁ cation) schemes which seek to instill conﬁdence that programs in ecotourism are high quality, based on pre determined levels of competency. Accreditation is deﬁned as programs that provide a means of establishing the ex tent to which a business offering tourism experiences meets industry nominated standards. Adherence to these standards, and the ability to advertise as such through eco logos, provide the organization with the opportunity to be competitive. A good example of accreditation in action is the Nature and Ecotourism Accreditation Pro gram (NEAP) of Australia, where operators are given a core level of accreditation if they satisfy the program’s basic criteria. The system also encourages operators to implement measures beyond the standards of the core in earning advanced standing. An important aspect of NEAP is that programs are accredited rather than operators. This means that although operators may run a number of programs, only those that are worthy get accredited. However, despite the advantages of these schemes, others argue that accreditation has become politicized because of the sheer number of these schemes in oper ation and the control over those which are most prom inent (e.g., Green Globe 21). Just as important in the debate over the signiﬁcance of such schemes is the basic question of whether accreditation is worth all of the time and energy. They may ultimately be less effective than simple government regulations and codes of ethics, but more research is required to answer this question. Other theorists argue that such schemes cannot do justice to the experiential aspects of ecotourism because there is sim ply too much of an emphasis on the institutionalization of ecotourism through objective forms of evaluation which serve to strengthen power structures rather than topple them. Consequently, accreditation schemes have turned more toward commodiﬁcation of ecotourism, rather than well being and participatory democracy – which is really what ecotourism ought to defend.

Conclusion Issues like economic realities and consumptiveness, mass tourism as ecotourism, control and rights, and certiﬁ cation are only a few of the themes that continue to constrain ecotourism from reaching its potential as a positive agent of chance. These are all ethical issues that need proactive rather than reactive treatment if we are to

move forward collectively. Perhaps most damning to ecotourism is the criticism that it is often planned and managed no differently than other more invasive forms of tourism through linear, instrumental modes of thinking that have made the marginalized morally unimportant in the face of industry efﬁciency. Theorists are only now realizing that the pervasive problems in ecotourism are a function of ‘who we (humans) are at the deepest level’; and until we start to better understand the dynamics of this, no name, label, or concept can have any hope of making things better. Ecotourism can still be that form of tourism that we want it to be, but we do need to temper this hope in full view of some fundamental tru isms about human nature that need to be explored from an interdisciplinary perspective. What also continues to limit ecotourism, apart from this interdisciplinary void is a disconnection between industry, local people, aca demics, and government with respect to a collective vi sion for the future. It is indeed unfortunate that so many competing demands have grossly disﬁgured ecotourism’s most basic philosophical premise – an ecocentric ap proach to tourism – because of more instrumental values. See also: Conservation and Ecology; Consumption; Ecology; Nature; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Tourism; Tourism, Rural.

Further Reading Fennell, D. A. (2008). Ecotourism: An introduction (3rd edn.). London: Routledge. Fennell, D. A. and Dowling, R. K. (eds.) (2003). Ecotourism Policy and Planning. Wallingford: CABI. Higham, J. (ed.) (2007). Critical Issues in Ecotourism: Understanding a Complex Tourism Phenomenon. New York: Elsevier. Honey, M. (1999). Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who Owns Paradise? Washington D.C.: Island Press. Page, S. and Dowling, R. (2002). Ecotourism. Essex, UK: Person Education. Weaver, D. B. (1998). Ecotourism in the Less Developed World. Wallingford: CABI.

Relevant Websites http://www.bigvolcano.com.au Big Volcano Ecotourism Resource Centre. http://195.212.4.4 ECONETT. http://www.ecotourism.org Ecotourism Explorer. http://ecotour.csu.edu.au Ecotourism Information Centre. http://www.txinﬁnet.com Planeta. http://www.yorku.ca STRING. http://www.green travel.com The Green Travel World Ecotourism Directory. http://www.tourismconcern.org.uk Tourism Concern.

Edge Cities N. A. Phelps, University College London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Edge City A settlement that has grown rapidly in under half a century, which has more jobs than bedrooms and at least ﬁve million square feet of ofﬁce space and 600,000 square feet of retail space.

Introduction Washington Post journalist Joel Garreau in 1991 coined the term ‘edge city’ to speak to the apparently spontaneous growth of new urban nodes at the edge of but not con tiguous with major established cities in the United States. More so than a profusion of other terms used by social scientists over several decades prior to the 1990s, Gar reau’s term edge city managed to impose itself upon the popular consciousness and academic debates in the United States. The term, for instance, found a prominent place in Tom Wolfe’s novel A Man in Full. It also in evitably was brought into academic discussion and an alysis in the United States. In particular, it has come to be associated with the increasingly polycentric, postmodern nature of city regions in the United States where ‘‘what was once central is becoming peripheral and what was the periphery is becoming increasingly central y with the intensive urbanisation of the suburbs into outer cities or edge cities y’’ (Soja, 2000: 152). In fact, edge city like developments were observed to be a feature of expanding Chicago – the archetypal ‘modern’ industrial city – during the 1920s and 1930s and, if we see their lineage in processes of suburban ization, we might trace the ancestors of edge cities in the earliest suburbs of modern cities. This article situates a discussion of edge cities with respect to long standing processes of suburbanization. Edge city appears as one among many terms used to try to capture the ever in creasing size and complexity of city regions over time. The article also discusses the extent to which the term edge city signiﬁes something distinct about the form, function, processes producing, and ideological content of, contemporary urbanization when compared to earlier processes of suburbanization. The article then considers the mildly paradoxical planned nature of urban sprawl and the rise of edge cities. Finally, the article considers whether edge city is a term that can be deployed outside of the United States.

Edge City An edge city was formally deﬁned by Garreau in 1991 as: having at least 6 million square feet of ofﬁce space; having at least 600 000 square feet of retail ﬂoor space; having more jobs than bedrooms; being perceived as a separate place; and having been nothing like a city as recently as 30 years ago. On the basis of this deﬁnition, Garreau identiﬁed most major United States cities to have one or more such edge cities – there being 123 existing and 78 emerging edge cities in the United States at the outset of the 1990s. Beyond these main criteria, Garreau’s descriptions of edge city development also drew attention to the locational preferences of owners and managers of companies for an ‘edge’ location. There is also what he describes as the ‘law’ that 85% of em ployment growth in edge cities derives from existing businesses. Despite the apparent formality of this deﬁnition, it conveys little of what most people understand by the term edge city and which is now so ﬁrmly invested in the popular and academic consciousness. Perhaps the key deﬁning feature of a United States edge city is the low density, car dependent commercial and residential de velopment apparent at major intersections on the freeway system. Edge cities present themselves at the most ac cessible points on the interstate road system and/or with close connections to other major transportation infra structure such as airports. The process of suburbanization has always been more economically, socially, and racially heterogeneous than often entertained in popular discourse on the subject. Studies have therefore, to an extent, ﬁlled in some of the details left blank by Garreau in his descriptions of edge cities. Bingham and Kimble, for example, suggest that the economy of many edge cities is often more diverse than their central city neighbors such that they have replaced a segment of downtown. Edge cities also share some of the mixed social complexion of cities and inner suburbs such that many of the problems of cities stand to be peripheralized with growth of edge cities. However, in other respects The ‘‘edge cities’’ label is misleading. First of all, they are not cities. They are business centers with some but not all, of the functions of the old down towns. Nor is the ‘‘edge’’ part really accurate. Many were nowhere near the edge when they were built. y Few edge cites are any where near the edge today. In fact, after the 1980s few new ones have appeared. It seems that the sudden growth

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of these centres might have been only a brief transitional phase in a much longer process of decentralization. (Bruegmann, 2005: 71)

Indeed, two of the three types of edge city identiﬁed by Garreau tend to imply that such developments are not entirely novel. Popular and academic interest in Gar reau’s work has tended to focus on what he terms ‘greenﬁeld’ edge cities that are the newest and physically most distinct of edge cities. However, there are also what he describes as ‘uptowns’, which have been built on preexisting settlements of some note, and ‘boomers’, which have evolved from chaotic suburban development. Garreau’s term is just one of 44 pieces of terminology used more or less successfully to try to capture the ever expanding urban fabric of the United States. In its deﬁnitional criteria it echoes earlier terminological in novations which have also drawn attention to the basis of such new urban nodes in employment rather than resi dential functions. Terms such as edge city have tended to imply a break with past processes of suburbanization – and this remains something of an open question as we consider further below.

Lineages of Edge City Although Garreau’s concern was to stress the novelty of edge cities as the new frontier in American life, it clearly is appropriate to locate edge cities as a recent incarnation of long standing processes of urbanization outside the city proper as understood at any particular historical moment. If we do so, we are presented with at least three interrelated issues around which any historical–geo graphical analysis should focus, namely, the form, ap pearance, or morphology of urban development; the processes and actors involved in urban development; and the function of urban development. The term ‘suburb’ dates back to the expulsion of un wanted residents and land uses from the walls of the preindustrial city. While a small number of the wealthy in society also resided outside the city proper, there seems little point in tracing the lineage of edge cities to such ancient times. For a start, the meaning and ideological content of suburban development at this time was in almost complete contrast to the meaning and ideological content that has come to dominate in modern times. Hayden includes edge cities as one manifestation of the 200 year long history of suburbanization apparent among what arguably were from the start modern cities in the United States. Important continuities in the ideological content of various incarnations of suburban ization are apparent in this more limited time frame. Even so, Teaford has suggested that new postsuburban ideological content has been added with the rise of the

likes of edge cities. Central ‘‘to the emerging post sub urban polity is the tension between suburban ideals and post suburban realities. y Economically these areas may have become post suburban but intellectually and emo tionally they were solidly suburban’’ (Teaford, 1997: 5). Walker and Lewis have recast the growth and outward expansion of North American cities dating back to the 1800s as typically occurring in a series of nodal develop ments that were then subsequently absorbed into one continuous fabric. That same process was apparent to Louis Wirth commenting on 1920s Chicago – the modern city made famous by the Chicago School of urban sociologists. The city and its hinterland represent two phases of the same mechanism. One of the latest phases of city growth is the development of satellite cities. These are generally industrial units growing up outside of the boundaries of the administrative city, which, however, are dependent upon the city proper after the city has inundated them, and thus lose their identity. (Wirth, 1925, cited in Dear, 2003: 502)

In the 1960s, Jean Gottman was drawing attention to the decentralization of manufacturing and service in dustries and speciﬁcally to the interurban location of associated developments within Megalopolis – the heavily urbanized swathe of eastern seaboard of the United States connecting Boston and Washington, DC. Finally, by the time Garreau was writing, others such as Robert Fishman and Jon Teaford were also drawing at tention to what were perceived to be novel aspects of urban development at the edge of established cities. Seen in the context of the historical antecedents de scribed above, the edge cities enumerated and described by Garreau lose some of their novelty. Moreover, the term edge city has been overtaken with recent reference to what Lang calls ‘edgeless cities’ in the United States and to ‘Zwischenstadt’ – in between cities – in Europe, as commentators try to come to terms with the economic, social, and cultural basis of the evermore diffuse urban landscapes and systems in which we live and work.

Paradoxes of Edge City It is tempting to view the growth of edge cities as something of a spontaneous unplanned phenomenon. Indeed, there is a sense in the United States that the generalized urban sprawl of which edge cities are a part has been produced from a planning system which has helped to produce an outcome of nonplanning . Garreau, in fact, appears to have borrowed the term edge city from a Phoenix city region planning strategy which sought, in a context of diffuse urban sprawl, actively to channel development into identiﬁable urban centers. Thus,

Edge Cities

planning conceived in several different guises has been instrumental in the rise of edge cities. Federal state policies have clearly had a major role in the production of urban sprawl and edge cities. The characteristic habitat of edge cities at the intersections of major interstate highways has much to do with the major Federal government expenditures made in the 1950s and 1960s which threw up fresh development opportunities at a host of new highly accessible but undeveloped lo cations. Federal expenditures – in the shape of housing programs – also incentivized mass tract house building. The articulation of these Federal programs with other state and municipal policies and with developments in the private sector have seen urban sprawl identiﬁed as ‘the’ physical manifestation of the Fordist industrial complex. In a similar analytical vein, albeit that the systemic logic and the precise articulation between sec tors and interests within national economies are argued to have metamorphosed, the likes of edge cities and their counterparts in Europe have come to be regarded as the projection spaces of an emergent post Fordist economy. Within this context of a broad articulation between sectors of the economy, we can also see quite speciﬁc instances of ‘planning’ that have contributed to the pro duction of sprawl and edge cities in particular. In Los Angeles, and pretty much everywhere else in the United States, the limited planning capacities of local govern ments coupled with their own desire to compete with one another for jobs and wealthy residents has seen land use zoning powers promote urban sprawl. In the absence of any counterbalancing cooperative planning and joint ﬁ nancing arrangements among municipalities, urban sprawl has tended to produce severe income, employ ment, and collective consumption expenditure inequal ities among municipalities in major metropolitan regions. However, in a technical sense much of the planning expertise exists outside of municipal planning depart ments in the private sector. Hise, for example, has stressed the role of major private sector companies – either manufacturing companies decanting from inner city locations or housing construction companies – to the master planning of new communities at the edge of major established cities such as Los Angeles. He presents what is, at ﬁrst glance, a curious juxtaposition when arguing that ‘‘the historical record suggests y Edge cities are not a new phenomenon. We can trace conceptual roots back to Ebenezer Howard’s garden city and the planned dis persion of the industrial city’’ (Hise, 1997: 215). Hogan too highlights how the relative success of what he terms ‘big picture planning’ has generated the urban sprawl in San Diego that it was supposed to prevent. Here, big businesses, big environmental groups, and municipal and state planners actually thought rather alike. There is a sense then in which planning ideals and plans themselves have had unintended

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consequences in their part in the production of sprawl and edge cities. Finally of course, continuities in the ideological content of suburbia and the postsuburbia of edge cities and the like should alert us to the fact that we as indi viduals – with our residential, work, and commuting preferences – are implicated in the production of sprawl and of edge cities or their functional equivalents else where in the world. While urban development including discrete elements such as edge cities take place within a systemic context, this context has evolved over time with a degree of population decentralization having taken place under each economic system. It is under capitalism – the system most associated with mass afﬂuence and democratic politics – that Bruegmann sees the greatest production of sprawl as a product of the expression of myriad residential and business location preferences. ‘‘For much of the world, the Edge City maxim, that every American city is growing in the fashion of Los Angeles has become much more of a foreboding than a hopeful promise’’ (Soja, 2000: 401). The foreboding re lates to the perceived inequities of the sort of urban sprawl presumed to be represented by edge cities. Here again interesting paradoxes abound. While urban sprawl does present us with some genuine questions, concerns over sprawl have often been aimed – due to the very term sprawl – at a moving target, and one that frequently has been deﬁned on the basis of class and aesthetics. Edge cities – as the term implies – actually display a degree of nodality and density of development which we presently would not associate with the term sprawl. In fact, de creases in the density of United States cities reached their maximum by the 1960s and since then have stabilized or reversed. This has happened because of increases in the density of development in the suburbs. There is no little irony in the fact that Los Angeles is now one of the most densely populated cities in the United States.

¨ ber Alles? California U Despite the generality of the deﬁnition proposed by Garreau, the term edge city is one that is now ﬁrmly invested with the speciﬁcs of the appearance of subur banization in the United States setting. Also, if anything, the term has been further melded in popular and aca demic discourse with the archetypal United States sprawl – Los Angeles in the state of California. There seems little sense therefore in looking for edge cities per se in Europe and East Asia for example. Yet, literature on Europe and East Asia has begun to focus on urbanization at the edge of established cities. So the question remains, does the apparent uniqueness of the United States edge city obscure potential points of comparison with possibly similar developments elsewhere in the world?

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Certainly some of the differences between patterns and processes of suburbanization in the United States and those in Europe, for example, appear to revolve around differences in their timing in these different contexts. Commentators point to a degree of convergence among United States and European and between United States and East Asian patterns of urbanization, including the sorts of decentralization of population and jobs apparent in edge cities. As such sprawl, and presumably the sorts of systemic tendencies and individual preferences crys tallized in edge cities, are not peculiarly American. Thus, ‘‘recent development tendencies in European metropolitan regions bear resemblance to Edge City de velopment in several respects’’ (Bontje and Burdack, 2005: 317) but differences also exist in terms of the involvement of the public sector, for example, that render these de velopments, speciﬁcally European variations, on the edge city theme. Here, while new urban nodes at the edge of major cities may differ in terms of their physical appear ance from edge cities in the United States, they may have similarities in terms of their functioning as part of a wider urban system and even in terms of the processes and the politics implicated in their growth. The partial incorporation of market principles and elements of de and re regulation of economies in East Asia has set in train very rapid urbanization, including at the edge of major cities. This has led some to argue that since the 1980s ‘‘a pattern of new town developments in tegrated with industrial estates, toll roads, ports and air ports. y Notwithstanding the very different settlement pattern on which it is being imposed, the new arrangement matches very closely with what Garreau described in Edge city’’ (Dick and Rimmer, 1998: 2304). However, the sig niﬁcance and place of such developments within the porous and mixed land use extended metropolises typi cally regarded as rather unique to Southeast Asia remains an open question.

Conclusion Like it or loathe it, the term edge city is one that con tinues to excite opinions both popular and academic. The phenomenon of edge cities can usefully be situated in a broader historical and geographical context in order that its value and limitations can be appreciated. As a term it may already be too ﬁrmly invested with the speciﬁc ap pearance or morphology of urban development in the United States to be of wider analytical use. Yet edge cities, as incarnations of longer term processes of sub urbanization which have been as much nodal as seamless additions to contiguous urban areas, focus our attention on some of the most active and advanced patterns of urban development.

Edge city may already have experienced its high point as the term of choice to refer to developments that many have observed and named. Judging by past experience, the essence of what it crystallizes about the socio economic and cultural complexity of modern urban systems is bound to be the subject of continued popular and academic interest and terminological invention. See also: Concentrated Deconcentration; Corridor and Axis Development; Los Angeles School of Post-Modern Urbanism; Suburbanization; Urban Planning and Human Geography.

Further Reading Bingham, R. and Kimble, D. (1995). The industrial composition of edge cities and downtowns: The new urban reality. Economic Development Quarterly 9, 259 272. Bontje, M. and Burdack, J. (2005). Edge cities, European style: Examples from Paris and the Randstad. Cities 22, 317 330. Bruegmann, R. (2005). Sprawl: Compact History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Dear, M. (2004). The Los Angeles school of urbanism: An intellectual history. Urban Geography 24, 493 509. Dick, H. and Rimmer, P. (1998). Beyond the third world city: The new urban geography of Southeast Asia. Urban Studies 35, 2303 2322. Garreau, J. (1991). Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Doubleday. Gottman, J. (1961). Megalopolis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hayden, D. (2003). Building Suburbia: Greenﬁelds and Urban Growth, 1820 2000. New York: Pantheon. Hise, G. (1997). Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth Century Metropolis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hogan, R. (2003). The Failure of Planning: Permitting Sprawl in San Diego Suburbs, 1970 1999. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Keil, R. (1994). Global sprawl: Urban form after Fordism. Environment and Planning D, Society and Space 12, 31 36. Lang, E. (2003). Edgeless Cities: Exploring the Elusive Metropolis. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Muller, P. (1981). Contemporary Suburban America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Phelps, N. A., Parsons, N., Ballas, D. and Dowling, A. (2006). Business at the margins? Business interests in urban politics. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32, 362 383. Phelps, N. A., Parsons, N., Ballas, D. and Dowling, A. (2006). Post Suburban Europe: Planning and Politics at the Margins of Europe’s Capital Cities. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Sieverts, T. (2003). Cities without Cities: An Interpretation of the Zwischenstadt. London: Routledge. Soja, E. (2000). Postmetropolis. Oxford: Blackwell. Teaford, J. (1997). Post Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge Cities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Walker, R. (1981). A theory of suburbanization: Capitalism and the construction of urban space in the United States. In Dear, M. & Scott, A. (eds.) Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Societies, pp 383 429. London: Methuen. Walker, R. and Lewis, R. D. (2001). Beyond the crabgrass frontier: Industry and the spread of North American cities, 1850 1950. Journal of Historical Geography 27, 3 19.

Relevant Websites http://www.garreau.com The Garreau Group: Edge City.

Edge Effects I. Yamada, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Complete Spatial Randomness (CSR) A point pattern is considered to be completely spatial random when each point has the equal probability of occurring at any location in a study region and there is no interaction between point locations. It is often used as a baseline point distribution with which an observed pattern is compared. Nearest-Neighbor Distance Analysis A method for point pattern analysis that utilizes inter-point distances from points to their nearest neighboring points. A short nearest-neighbor distance implies potential clustering of those points, while a long one implies a regular (or uniform) point pattern. Power of a Statistical Test A measure of how likely the statistical test can detect a deviation from the null hypothesis (e.g., CSR in point pattern analysis) when it actually exists. Ripley’s K-Function Analysis One of the most common methods for point pattern analysis that is based on the distribution of inter-point distances for all pairs of points observed in a study region. Also known as the reduced second moment measure. Spatial Filtering A technique that applies a ﬁlter function to an imagery so as to obtain an enhanced imagery or to reduce noises in it.

relationships between observations be deﬁned based on their proximity, adjacency, or other criteria, which may be biased due to unrecorded observations located outside the study region. For point pattern analysis, there are a variety of analytical methods that are based on inter point dis tances. When points distributed outside the study region are ignored, the nearest neighbor distance for a par ticular point observed within the study region may be overestimated, which will in turn distort test statistics. For instance, by applying such methods to a CSR pattern without realizing edge effects, one might falsely conclude that it was a regular pattern because of the longer inter point distances than expected for CSR. Methods for areal data analysis often take into ac count neighbors of individual areal units because, for example, a crime rate observed in a particular area in a city tends to be inﬂuenced not only by characteristics of the area itself but also by those of its neighborhood. Because areal units lying along the boundary of a study region generally have their neighbors outside the study region too, such areal data analysis methods will also be affected by edge effects. If those external inﬂuences are simply ignored, results of spatial analysis will be less reliable for areal units close to the study region boundary than for those well inside. The problem of edge effects is often called the boundary value problem in areal data analysis.

Edge Effects: Deﬁnition

Types of Edge Effects

Spatial analysis inevitably concerns itself with a ﬁnite region, a small bounded segment of an inﬁnite space. Because of this ﬁniteness of a study region, a boundary always exists, while any spatial phenomenon such as spatial distribution, association, interaction, and diffusion observed within the study region is most likely to extend beyond its boundary. In addition, the majority of spatial statistical theories has been developed on the basis of the inﬁnite space assumption. Therefore, analysis conﬁned within a bounded study region may well be biased be cause of the ignorance of the outside of the study region as well as the inappropriateness of the theories. This problem of potential bias in spatial analysis is re ferred to as edge effects (or boundary effects). Edge ef fects are important for any type of spatial analysis, including analysis of point and areal data, because methods for spatial analysis always require that spatial

Two types of edge effects can be distinguished in spatial statistical analysis of a ﬁnite space. The ﬁrst type of edge effects occurs when one ignores observations of a spatial phenomenon that are located outside the study region. The second type of edge effects comes into play when a statistical method designed for an inﬁnite space is applied to a ﬁnite space. A point based analysis applied to a tree distribution within a small subset of a forest will be af fected by both types of edge effects (Figure 1a), while that applied to a tree distribution in a whole island will have only the second type of edge effects (Figure 1b). On the other hand, in Figure 1c, an area based statistic calculated for region A will not have the second type of edge effects, but will have the ﬁrst type because values observed for border subzones in region A are likely to be related to values of neighboring subzones in regions B, C, D, and E.

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Figure 1 Types of edge effects. The ﬁrst type of edge effects is due to the ignorance of observations outside the study region and the second type is due to the application of a statistical method designed for an inﬁnite space to a ﬁnite space. (a) the ﬁrst and second types combined; (b) the second type only; and (c) the ﬁrst type only.

The second type of edge effects may or may not be corrected by modiﬁcation of the statistical method in use. Although it is not possible to perfectly eliminate the ﬁrst type of edge effects unless additional data are available for the outside of the study region, edge correction methods to be discussed in the later sections attempt to minimize the effects by modifying structures of the study region and imposing certain assumptions on the distri bution of the spatial phenomenon in question.

Magnitude of Edge Effects The magnitude of edge effects depends on both size and compactness of the study region. Let us assume that one is interested in the number of points for which nearest neighbor distances are less than a particular value, h, in a given point distribution. This number may be under estimated because some points may have their true nearest neighbors outside the study region. Points pos sibly affected by this bias are the ones that are located within distance h of the study region boundary, that is, within the shaded areas in Figure 2. Comparison of re gions (a) and (b) clearly suggests that a larger proportion

of points are affected in the smaller study region (b) than in the larger one (a) for the same h, given that regions (a) and (b) have the same intensity (or density) of points. On the other hand, the study regions (a) and (c) are equal sized while (a) is more compact than (c). Again the proportion of points affected by edge effects is much larger in the noncompact study region (c) than in the compact one (a). In general, the magnitude of edge ef fects decreases as the size and compactness of the study region increase. When a spatial pattern under investi gation exhibits clustering tendency, locations of clusters relative to the study region boundary will also have an impact on the magnitude of edge effects.

Edge-Correction Techniques This section summarizes edge correction techniques that are popularly used and applicable to a variety of spatial analysis and modeling methods. Also discussed here are correction techniques that are speciﬁcally designed for particular methods.

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Figure 2 Magnitude of edge effects in relation to the size and compactness of a study region. Shaded portions represent areas that are possibly affected by edge effects at the scale of h. (a) compact and large study region; (b) compact but small study region; (c) noncompact study region with the same size as (a).

Toroidal Edge Correction Toroidal edge correction, also known as translation, can be applied only when a study region has a rectangular shape. In order to circumvent the constraint of ﬁniteness, this method maps a ﬁnite rectangular study region onto a torus, a doughnut like three dimensional shape shown in Figure 3c, so that the study region can be considered to be inﬁnite. First, the northern border of the study region is connected to the southern border, which transforms the study region into a cylinder (Figure 3b). Then, the eastern end of the cylinder is connected to the western end, which transforms the cylinder into a torus (Figure 3c). Another interpretation of this correction technique is that the study region is exactly replicated eight times so as to form a 3 3 grid consisting of nine identical rectangles at the center of which the original study region is located (Figure 3d). The toroidal edge correction is permissible under the assumption that the underlying process ruling the phenomenon of interest does not differ between inside and outside of the study region. In addition to an obvious limitation that this method is not applicable to a study region of irregular shape, some researchers have pointed out its possible weaknesses as well. First, errors in a dataset would be propagated in a test statistic because the error associated with the same observation may be used repeatedly in the calculation of the statistic. Second, the torus shape corresponds to no physical geographic situation and thus one may ﬁnd it unnatural. Third, the toroidal correction as well as re ﬂection correction to be explained below generates ar tiﬁcial periodicity in a spatial pattern, which is often considered to be unrealistic; thus the resulting neigh borhood situations are unlikely to mirror realities. Reﬂection edge correction can be seen as a variant of the toroidal correction although it is less frequently used. This method also replicates the study region eight times and creates a 3 3 grid, but the replicated rectangles

are reﬂected along the four edges of the original study region (Figure 3e). The reﬂection edge correction can be applied only to rectangular study regions. Guard-Area Edge Correction Guard area edge correction, also known as border area edge correction, constructs a buffer zone along the study region boundary and uses the remainder in the middle as a new study region (Figure 4a). Although in most cases the buffer is created inside the study region (called inner guard area), it is also possible to create the buffer outside the study region (called outer guard area) if data avail ability allows. In the latter case the study region remains as it is (Figure 4b). In point pattern analysis, points in the guard area are used only to take measurements (e.g., nearest neighbor distances) for points that are located within the study region and the guard area points themselves are dis carded from subsequent analysis. The concept is illus trated in Figure 4c. Similarly in areal data analysis, areal units in the guard area are used as neighbors of units in the study region, but they do not appear in subsequent analysis. A fundamental shortcoming of this approach is the information loss; that is, it needs to discard part of the sample and decrease the effective sample size, assuming that the guard area is created inside the study region. When a study region contains a small number of obser vations, either points or areal units, this problem becomes more severe because a higher proportion of observations will be discarded and the remaining sample size may no longer be sufﬁcient for analysis. Imagine that the shaded part of Figure 2b was a guard area, which left only a single point for analysis. Another difﬁculty exists in de termination of the optimal width of the guard area. Too narrow a guard area will fail to sufﬁciently remove edge effects, while too wide a guard area will lead to an unnecessary amount of data to be discarded. The

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Figure 3 Toroidal and reﬂection edge corrections. (a) original study region; (b) study region (a) made into a cylinder; (c) cylinder (b) made into a torus; (d) toroidal edge correction; (e) reﬂection edge correction.

guard area correction, however, is considered to be the most realistic technique because only actually observed data are used while other techniques such as the toroidal correction artiﬁcially generate additional data around the study region. As a special case of the guard area correction, let us consider the following analysis that is based on nearest neighbor distances between n points observed in a study region. A simple method for summarizing the point dis tribution is to look at the proportion of points whose nearest neighbor distance is less than or equal to a given distance, h, for a range of h. A high proportion at a small value of h, for example, indicates clustering of the observed points. Letting hi and bi represent distances from point i to its nearest neighboring point and to the nearest boundary of the study region, respectively, and #( ) mean ‘the number of ’, the proportion denoted Gˆ ðh Þ is given by Gˆ ðhÞ ¼ #ðhi rh Þ=n. However, this equation under estimates the actual proportion for small values of h

because hi may be longer than its true value when point i is close to the study region boundary. To eliminate this edge effect, one can calculate the proportion Gˆ ðh Þ using only points whose distance to the nearest boundary bi is greater than h to assure that all nearest neighbor distances in cluded in the calculation are valid even when points out side the study region are taken into account. That is, Gˆ ðhÞ is calculated as Gˆ ðhÞ ¼ #ðhi rh; bi > hÞ=#ðbi > hÞ. This modiﬁcation can be seen as a variant of the guard area edge correction that changes the width of the guard area in accordance with distance scales under investigation. Edge Correction Based on an Artiﬁcial External Buffer Zone When analyzing areal data, one may construct a buffer zone outside the study region and assign it a single value such as the mean of the observed attribute values to avoid the information loss resulting from the construction of

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Figure 4 Guard-area edge correction. (a) inner guard-area edge correction; (b) outer guard-area edge correction; (c) application of the inner guard-area correction to nearest-neighbor distance (NND) analysis.

the inner guard area. The external buffer zone can be treated as a single areal unit or partitioned into several units so that interactions between units in the buffer zone can be incorporated. Figure 5 illustrates the method when applied to a regular lattice. Areal units in the ex ternal buffer zone are handled in the same way as units in the guard area discussed in the previous section. The width of the external buffer zone needs to be determined in relation to the deﬁnition of neighbors. A prominent drawback of this technique is that results are highly dependent upon the value assigned to the external buffer zone. Moreover, it barely makes sense to assume that all areal units in the buffer zone have the same value when spatial variation in the study region is of interest. This drawback may be avoided by extrapolating values to be assigned to units in the buffer zone on the

basis of observations in the study region. However, it should also be kept in mind that such extrapolation itself is subject to edge effects.

Edge Correction Based on a Weighting Factor Generally speaking, an observation that is close to the study region boundary is more strongly affected by edge effects than an observation located in the middle of the study region. It is therefore possible to weight each ob servation in relation to its proximity to the boundary in a way that the weight for an observation serves as a proxy for the degree of missing information and/or the mag nitude of edge effects at its location. It should be noted that speciﬁcation of the weights may differ reﬂecting the

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Figure 5 Edge corrections based on an artiﬁcial external buffer zone. (a) buffer as a single unit (without inter-unit interaction); (b) buffer as a set of units (with inter-unit interaction).

nature and purpose of the analysis and that it has an inevitable impact on subsequent analysis and results. A simplest approach to reﬂecting the proximity to the boundary in the weight structure would be to determine the weight for observation i as a function of the distance between observation i and the study region boundary, denoted di. For areal data analysis, di may represent the distance between the centroid of areal unit i to the study region boundary. The function should be chosen in a way that an observation with a sufﬁciently large di is assigned a weight of 1 and thus fully incorporated in the analysis, while an observation with a small di has a smaller weight value. Another basic weighting scheme that is often ap plied to areal data analysis utilizes the ratio of the pe rimeter of unit i that is in common with the study region boundary, lbi, to the entire perimeter of unit i, li, that is, lbi/li. An appropriate weight function in this case is a function that takes on 1 for an observation with lbi ¼ 0 and decreases as lbi increases. Ripley’s circumference method, which is also known as Ripley’s local correcting factor, is an example of weight based edge corrections. Although it is originally designed for the K function analysis, this correction method is applicable to other point pattern analysis techniques that are based on inter point distances. The K function at the distance scale of h is deﬁned as the expected number of points within distance h of an arbi trary point in the study region divided by the intensity of points. It takes a higher value when the point distribution is more clustered than CSR, and a lower value when it is more regularly distributed. In essence, for an observed point pattern consisting of n points, one can estimate the value of the K function by ﬁrst counting, for each point i, the number of other points within distance h of it and then taking the average of those n counts. When deter mining the count associated with point i, Ripley’s

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circumference edge correction inﬂates the count of point j if a circle centered at i and passing through j crosses the study region boundary as in Figure 6, because it implies a possibility that other points at the same distance from i as j exist outside the study region. More speciﬁcally, a weight for a point pair i and j, wi j , is deﬁned as the proportion of the circumference of the circle within the study region, lij; that is, wij ¼ lij/2pdi j , where dij is the distance between points i and j. Point j is then counted as 1/wij points. Diggle, Getis and Franklin, Hasse, and Goreaud and Pe´lissier provide explicit formulae to implement this correction method for rectangular and/or circular study regions at various levels of details. Goreaud and Pe´lissier also propose a technique to compute edge corrected K function for study regions of more irregular complex shapes. Some researchers have reported that, although this edge correction provides an approximately unbiased

Edge Effects

estimator for the K function, it tends to result in an in creased variation in the estimated K function compared with its unadjusted counterpart. Monte Carlo Simulation Approach Depending on data and/or analytical techniques to be used, edge correction methods described so far may not always be applicable. For instance, the toroidal correction cannot be used for a study region of irregular shape and the guard area correction is not appropriate for a small study region or one with a small number of observations. Under such circumstances, one might wish to simply ignore edge effects while assuming they do not exist. Although this ignorance is not uncommon, it is generally problematic unless empirical evidence suggests the ab sence of edge effects or the outside of the study region can be assumed to be empty. When testing of a particular hypothesis is of greater interest than obtaining an actual value of a test statistic or model parameters, a practical solution is to use the Monte Carlo simulation that im poses no or few restrictions on the analysis settings, such as the shape of the study region. The Monte Carlo simulation approach does not at tempt to eliminate edge effects. Instead, it repeatedly simulates the phenomenon of interest under the null hypothesis for a given study region, and then estimates the distribution of a test statistic in the presence of edge effects resulting from the given study region. If an observed point pattern is to be tested against the null hypothesis of CSR, the Monte Carlo simulation approach ﬁrst simulates a CSR pattern within the given study region and computes a test statistic (e.g., the average nearest neighbor distance) for the simulated pattern without any edge corrections. This process is repeated for a large number of times to generate a set of simulated values of the test statistic, which in turn is considered to be an approximated distribution of the test statistic when the null hypothesis of CSR is true and edge effects are not corrected for. Then the test statistic is computed for the given data, again with no edge cor rections. This test statistic is compared with the simu lated distribution; the proportion of simulated test statistic values that are greater than or equal to the ob served value represents the probability of observing a test statistic that is more extreme than the observed when the null hypothesis is true. If this probability is sufﬁciently small, the null hypothesis of CSR can be rejected because the observed test statistic value is very unlikely if it is true. It should be emphasized that no edge corrections are necessary in this procedure because test statistics calcu lated for the observed pattern and simulated realizations are both biased by the same edge effects associated with the given study region.

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Comparison of Edge-Correction Techniques There are several factors that affect the effectiveness and suitability of edge corrections. Such factors include, but are not limited to, a test statistic and/or model to be used, size and compactness of a study region, and spatial patterns embedded in data. Moreover, application of edge corrections generally imposes an underlying, sometimes implicit assumption that the phenomenon under study has the same (or at least similar) spatial patterns over the study region and its surroundings. When this assumption cannot be justiﬁed, any edge correction may result in erroneous conclusions and a possible alternative is to take the Monte Carlo simulation approach that empirically estimates the distribution of a test statistic in the pres ence of edge effects speciﬁc for the given study region. Several researchers have conducted comparative studies of edge correction techniques for various settings. Some found that an appropriate edge correction could result in improvement of the power of a statistical test because it could substantially reduce instability of the test statistic, while others found opposite cases where a test without edge corrections performed at least as powerfully as ones with edge corrections. This section provides a brief summary of ﬁndings from those pro ceeding studies. Point Pattern Analysis As for point pattern analysis, method speciﬁc corrections (e.g., Ripley’s circumference correction) and the toroidal edge correction were generally found to be more powerful than other corrections discussed above. How ever, the toroidal correction may not work well when a point distribution under investigation exhibits a regular pattern, or may lead to results that were different from what other types of corrections would lead to, especially for clustering patterns. Multiple studies have also re ported that the Monte Carlo simulation approach has at least comparable and sometimes better power than other edge corrections. When one is interested in comparing two point pat terns observed in the same study region, analysis with and without edge corrections tend to yield similar results. For instance, if one examines the difference or ratio of test statistics computed for two point distributions (e.g., trees of two different species), edge effects in the test statistics would mostly be canceled out because they are both attributable to the same study region. Areal Data Analysis When applied to areal data analysis, traditional edge corrections do not appear to be effective enough for correcting edge effect biases, and more statistically

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sophisticated methods have been investigated. Such newly suggested methods include: 1. the dummy variable method that statistically dis criminates between border and nonborder areal units while considering edge effects to be a spatial process that possibly works differently in the border and nonborder areas; 2. the generalized least squares method that math ematically determines a transformation matrix to ad just for edge effects in a similar way that a boundary value is treated in time series analysis; and 3. the missing data method that recasts the edge effect problem as a problem of missing values along the study region boundary and statistically estimates val ues for the external buffer zone; this method can be seen as an extension of ‘edge correction methods based on an artiﬁcial external buffer zone’ discussed above. The generalized least squares method was found to be a promising approach to removing edge effect biases on the basis of simulation experiments. The missing value method was also reported to effectively reduce edge ef fects encountered in spatial ﬁltering process.

Discussion As the previous section suggests, no panacea for the problem of edge effects has been found yet although a wide variety of correction techniques have been extensively studied since 1970s. It appears unlikely that such an opti mal solution would be developed because of the complex structure of edge effects. How strong edge effects would be and whether or not they could be removed from analysis depend not only upon the conﬁguration of a speciﬁc study region and the structure of an underlying spatial process, but also upon statistical and/or modeling techniques used. Consequently, the effectiveness of any edge correction is also strongly associated with those factors. Nonetheless, it is important to establish some guidelines for selecting an appropriate edge correction in a given situation charac terized by the combination of those factors. It would be possible by accumulating empirical ﬁndings as discussed in the previous section, while a more systematic, standardized approach is needed to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the edge effect problem. In the mean time, the Monte Carlo simulation ap proach seems to be a promising alternative when the objective of an analysis is to test a hypothesis about a spatial process rather than to obtain an actual value of a test statistic or model parameters. It essentially eliminates

the need for edge corrections and also offers an oppor tunity to test null hypotheses more complex than CSR or other basic ones, for which the distribution of a test statistic may not be theoretically obtained. See also: Monte Carlo Simulation; Point Pattern Analysis; Spatial Autocorrelation; Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of; Spatial Filtering/Kernel Density Estimation; Spatially Autoregressive Models.

Further Reading Baddeley, A. J., Kerscher, M., Schladits, K. and Scott, B. T. (2000). Estimating the J function without edge correction. Statistica Neerlandica 54(3), 315 328. Cressie, N. (1991). Statistics for Spatial Data. New York: Wiley. Diggle, P. J. (1983). Statistical Analysis of Spatial Point Patterns. London: Academic Press. Ge, Y., Cheng, Q. and Zhang, S. (2005). Reduction of edge effects in spatial information extraction from regional geochemical data: A case study based on multifractal ﬁltering technique. Computers and Geosciences 31, 545 554. Gignoux, J., Duby, C. and Barot, S. (1999). Comparing the performances of Diggle’s tests of spatial randomness for small samples with and without edge effect correction: Application to ecological data. Biometrics 55, 156 164. Grifﬁth, D. (1983). The boundary value problem in spatial statistical analysis. Journal of Regional Science 23, 3277 3387. Grifﬁth, D. (1985). An evaluation of correction techniques for boundary effects in spatial statistical analysis: Contemporary methods. Geographical Analysis 17(1), 81 88. Grifﬁth, D. and Amrhein, C. (1983). An evaluation of correction techniques for boundary effects in spatial statistical analysis: Traditional methods. Geographical Analysis 15(4), 352 360. Goreaud, F. and Pe´lissier, R. (1999). On explicit formulas of edge effect correction for Ripley’s K function. Journal of Vegetation Science 10, 433 438. Haggett, P. (1981). The edges of space. In Bennett, R. (ed.) European Progress in Spatial Analysis, pp 51 70. London: Pion. Hasse, P. (1995). Spatial pattern analysis in ecology based on Ripley’s K function: Introduction and methods for edge correction. Journal of Vegetation Science 6, 575 582. Lancaster, J. and Downes, B. (2004). Spatial point pattern analysis of available and exploited resources. Ecography 27, 94 102. Lawson, A. B., Biggeri, A. and Dreassi, E. (1999). Edge effects in disease mapping. In Lawson, A. B., Biggeri, A., Bohning, D. et al. (eds.) Disease Mapping and Risk Assessment for Public Health, pp 85 98. New York: Wiley. Ripley, B. (1981). Spatial Statistics. New York: Wiley. Ripley, B. D. (1979). Tests of randomness for spatial point patterns. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 41(3), 368 374. Yamada, I. and Rogerson, P. A. (2003). An empirical comparison of edge effect correction methods applied to K function analysis. Geographical Analysis 35(2), 97 109.

Relevant Websites http://www.spatialanalysisonline.com Geospatial Analysis (online book).

Education N. Lewis, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Positional Good A good that gives its acquirer advantages relative to others (shufﬂes its holder up a social hierarchy), as in the value of education at a particular school and hence its quality is dependent upon how that school compares to others rather than on discrete measures of quality (the beneﬁts from consuming that education are entirely at the expense of others). Production of Space A conceptual framework for understanding geographical conﬁgurations as outcomes of the interplay of the lived practices of people in their places, the material relations around which these are arranged, and representations about how relations between people and their places are and should be made (including, importantly, policy settings).

economic growth is about knowledge production and dissemination, then the absence of thriving geographies of education is a hole in the disciplinary attention. This article draws on writing within the sociology of edu cation as well as geography to consider what we know about the role of education in the production of space and the implication of spatial difference in the generation of education spaces. It argues that geographers might extend this knowledge in productive directions. The article begins by outlining the centrality of education as a social institution, and then highlights its political sig niﬁcance. The subsequent section puts geography into this politics, and identiﬁes key lines of enquiry in what might be termed the political geography of education. The ﬁnal section confronts the ways in which geog raphers are tackling these geographies.

Politics of Education Introduction In teaching geographies of education as a block in a third year social geography course, the author ﬁnds himself compelled to begin the module by posing the question, ‘‘why might geographers be interested in edu cation?’’ While an excellent, discipline afﬁrming way to begin any such module, it shocks the author to think that he needs to convince himself and potentially skeptical students that education is something that should be taught in geography. Such skepticism is clearly un warranted and generally short lived in the classroom, but is borne of a dearth of geographical scholarship on education. The work of Ron Johnston and William Clark on the role of schools in urban segregation notwith standing, there has been little sustained geographical interest in education as a site or subject of study. While prominent geographers have made contributions over many years to the rich geographical education literature, education geography has remained marginal. The marginality of geographies of education is sur prising given the centrality of education (formal and otherwise) in social and spatial processes from subject formation; to community and neighborhood change; the production of city, regional, and national identities; the generation of geographical imaginaries; economic growth and advantage; and questions of social order. If cultural geography is about identity and subjectivity and political geography is about inﬂuencing people in places, and

Education is bound up tightly with the production and dissemination of cultural, social, and economic know ledge. Formal education is a formative set of institutions for the production of identities (local, national, class, global, values based, and so on) and formation of sub jectivities as well as economic and social resources. Schools, in particular, are perhaps the only social insti tution through which we all pass, and the core problems of the state are writ large across them. They have im portant economic functions, and play enduring and central roles in patterns of socialization, social control, and cultural reproduction. If the object of politics is to change attitudes, beliefs, conduct, and knowledge, and the method is to produce a curriculum of political texts and discourses that establishes values, promotes desired conduct, and justiﬁes action then education institutions are crucial political arenas. Education is implicated in struggles from those over social organization and belief systems right down to micro struggles over neighborhood transportation routes. Education institutions are expected to deliver the sub jectivities upon which liberal democracies or religious or revolutionary socialist states are founded. Schools are expected to ensure the safety of children in and around their grounds. There is always an extensive set of social, cultural, and economic purposes claimed for education. Commonly deﬁned poorly or rhetorically and over determined by the dominant governmental rationalities of time and place, they are transformed through the political process into particular sets of expectations and

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policies to achieve them in any setting. They generate multiple contests over models of curriculum, pedagogy, and organization and associated micro practices. Struggles over who gets taught, what, where, how, and by whom have both a surface politics (education politics) and a deeper structural and ideological politics involving the meaning, purpose, and potential of education (the politics of education). Micro struggles over curriculum, pedagogy, or organization are commonly embedded in, expressions of, framed as, or roughly aligned with, meta ideological positions or meso expressions of them in political projects such as literacy, universal education, the three R’s, life long learning, community education, or the knowledge society. Although inevitably inﬂuenced by situated practices, surface politics, and conﬂicting the ories, debates over the content and delivery of education and its spatial organization are always deeply political in inspiration, conduct, and effect. The ideological and political terms of debate tend to be close to the surface. One key axis of struggle in the politics of education is its contradictory potential to produce knowledges, sub jects, and measures of worth that may be either eman cipatory (however differently conceived) or conservative (even repressive). In the Global South, the challenge has been to extend the privilege of education and realize its potential for positive change. In the discourses of Paolo Freire, the Zapatistas, Islamic states, and more recently the Bolivarian Hugo Cesar, education is clearly under stood as subjectifying, and as knowledge production in very broad terms. Its potential and purpose are seen as revolutionary. In these discourses, education should ideally be imagined, delivered, and governed by com munities. At the other extreme, neoliberal discourses see education as the production of individual opportunity – a pivotal moment in the production and valorization of human capital. They insist that its provision in formal institutions should be driven by consumer preference guided by markets (education and labor markets). To the extent that it generates individual advantage, it should be paid for by individuals who are in effect investing in themselves. For welfare states, education is pivotal but means something different again, the geographies of which are explored below. States are, as a result, heavily invested in education, whether the political projects in play are imperialist or revolutionary, rooted in the development state or glob alization, promoting the production of citizens and workers for Fordist labor processes or global citizens and creative classes for knowledge societies. States may own, deliver, and/or regulate education, be it schooling, ter tiary education, or (increasingly) preschooling. At the International Geographical Congress in Seoul in 2000, David Harvey made one of the few statements by geographers on the politics of education. He observed that through their education agendas and programs,

states orchestrate their efforts to secure their power and impose normative programs on the production of space. In these terms, Harvey argued that state education is a major inﬂuence on territoriality, identity, and geo graphical distributions of population, economic activity, social services, wealth, and well being. Justiﬁed by the special case of the public good elements of ‘human capital’, neoliberal states have re mained heavily invested in education despite bringing to bear various market disciplines. Education has re mained a space where neoliberal subjectivities can be fostered and potentially problematic persons identiﬁed and worked upon. In projects of the knowledge economy and the creative city, formal education in schools as well as universities and technical institutes is being integrated into and reconﬁgured in the terms of national systems of innovation. Students are taught the technologies and instilled with the dispositions that will facilitate the in dividual, city, and national success in the global know ledge economy. Education for citizenship programs seek to graft the environmental ethics of global warming and an ethics of diversity onto the innovative and entre preneurial dispositions commanded by economic na tionalism, at the same time as ‘life long learning’ is deployed to legitimize the unstable work regimes of postindustrialism. The Global South is being subjected to the content and rationalities of these policy discourses in terms of good governance conditionalities and expert inter ventions by World Bank consultants, United Nations ofﬁcials, returning students, and aid donors. At the same time, formal education remains the panacea for enduring discourses of the development project and is cast as community education for an alternative development in more revolutionary settings. In all settings and places, education is a positional good that presents individuals and families the opportunities for social and economic participation in labor markets and paths for social and spatial mobility. It has underpinned patterns of social and spatial mobility over the second half of the twentieth century, presenting pathways of hope and aspiration for poorer families, migrants (inter and intranational), eth nic minorities, and women generally. However, radical alternatives notwithstanding, edu cation is not a universal, stable, or simply deﬁned good. It is more than certiﬁed knowledge acquisition, a bundle of workplace skills, or even a mechanism for sorting and attributing values to human capital. It subjectiﬁes, but does so unevenly and in articulation with other social institutions, individual dispositions, and social distri butions. It delivers highly uneven bundles of skills and identities. There can be no guarantee that achievement is either a measure of capability, or that it will be used as such at any site or moment of ascription. Formal education is a highly problematic basis for social

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sorting – one that is heavily conditioned by existing distributions of social privilege and that in turn inscribes new inequalities. Spatial unevenness is a key factor in its workings.

Political Geographies of Education: Welfare State Systems as Example This narrative of the politics of education reveals mul tiple geographies of education that are both the product of the politics of education and constitutive of the pos sibilities and projects that deﬁne it. Each of the key questions underlying the politics of education (who gets taught what, where, how, and by whom) has pivotal geographical dimensions, while the co resolution of these questions in any education system has a signiﬁcant bearing on the production of space. Some of this political signiﬁcance can be teased out by focusing on the geog raphies of welfare state programs in education. Geography is central to making decisions about which students attend what institutions and where. These de cisions have a certain underlying central place logic, particularly where the state is the supplier of schooling to children, who must, by law, attend schools. Demand for schooling is universal and tied directly to population structure. Informed by welfare state governmentalities of spatial equity, postwar planning in much of the west at tempted to lay down such a pattern of schooling. Aided by the ﬂexible thresholds of schooling, schools were lo cated as if the social plain was ﬂat, subject to the irruption of unavoidable topographic features (physical and polit ical). The aim was to ensure equalities of access, with school zones (formal or socially accepted) matching students to schools, and universal curricula, national examinations, standardized teacher training, and other institutions regulating a national equity in access. Uni versities and technical institutes were also organized to serve, and seen as serving, catchments, but at regional or city scales. They required greater mobility from students, but institutions such as accommodation allowances, hostels, and scholarships evened access, particularly where movement across catchments was necessary for specialist courses. Educational space was about catchments (formal and perceived), which tied communities to their educational institutes and made them community institutions. With education seen as standard, spatial equity was a question of access. Free and universal education in many ways deﬁned welfare states and the nations built around them. Education was a primary mechanism for delivering spa tial equity, leveling opportunity space, and redistributing opportunity across space and social strata. Schools, es pecially, became sites of a great social engineering project as states intervened in the intergenerational transfer of

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opportunity, sought to redistribute opportunities, and built national identities. Social advancement was to be achieved by learning, and talent balanced by jobs for all. Welfare state education systems released the great en ergies and aspirations of the new middle classes and in turn the great high modern advances in knowledge production. At the same time, they provided the social democratic glue of apparent equity and secured national citizenship in different ways (from debating democratic concepts to teaching national constitutions, raising ﬂags, and reciting oaths of allegiance). However, as sociologists of education recognized and social geographers began to demonstrate in their work in other areas, space is not ﬂat, all places are not the same, schools are power driven institutions, identity formation is complex, and there is no uniform student. Equity in education is not simply a question of central place planning. Neither the social nor the educational experi ences of schooling are uniform, and social mobility is not simply ascribed by educational qualiﬁcations. Geography and the relationships among places, their social make up, and their schools are important. Even if curriculum and pedagogy could be delivered uniformly across space, education is a social experience generated by the working out of social relations in place (schools). Formal edu cation is a positional good. Who is in the classroom is crucial to the education experience, as are the legacies of earlier groups lodged in the physical infrastructure of the school, the practices of teachers, and the reputation of the school. ‘Where’, then, is a crucial question in the politics of education. Schools are in large part the sum of their children. Their composition is crucial. If places are dif ferent (socially, environmentally, ethnically, and cultur ally), then so too will education experiences (the mix of pedagogy, curriculum, physical space, and ‘hidden cur riculum’ of place). Universal curricula and messages about identity will be delivered and received differently. Schools become expressions of their communities, and education a product of place. The positional value of education will also have crucial geographies. Like urban neighborhoods, schools are spaces produced by the interplay of their students and teachers, their cultural practices and dispositions, the material resources of schools and parents, particular processes of community formation, and the discourses of education, pedagogy, administrative practices, and curricula imposed on them. Geographers are well placed to understand schools in these terms. Despite the widespread gains in opportunity under welfare states, educational outcomes were far from equal. Underachievement along class, ethnic, and spatial lines reproduced deeper social inequalities. Sociologists of education contested the sources of educational advantage and disadvantage, reminding us that what counts as

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education is itself politically constructed. Marxian soci ologists drew on Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital to explain the persistent underachievement of certain groups by reference to the class and racial biases em bedded in education programs and school practices. Al though arguing over the difference that schools can make or how exactly cultural capital relates to learning, they drew attention to the relationship between education and the production, concentration, and reproduction of spa tial inequalities. From a geographical perspective, these debates are over the production of space. Bourdieu’s work is under lain by complex geographies of schooling that are pressing and involve the co constitution of education institutions and space. Neoliberal reforms to education systems have in many places canceled commitments to spatial equity and fractured relationships between com munity and school. With competition and individual re sponsibility the new dominant governmental rationalities and regimes of choice have replaced zones and the pre sumptions of uniformity. Now made more fully respon sible for their children’s success, actively choosing parents clearly recognize education as both social re lation and positional good. In selecting for social attri butes and educational reputations (often collapsed, where social composition is proxy for educational quality) they are making choices that have resulted in new patterns of segregation and concentrations of educational advantage and disadvantage in schools, and new social and spatial inequalities in place. Universities and technical institutes now compete openly for students in quasi markets within and across national systems. Schools are forced to compete from positions largely determined for them by their place. State schools now compete with quasi state and in creasing numbers of private alternatives, while catch ments are confused further by the uneven access to schools of different qualities produced by different en dowments of ﬁnancial and cultural capital. The evidence in many settings suggests that while many have beneﬁted from the opportunity to escape the tyrannies of place (particularly in poor urban neighborhoods), concen trations of underprivileged are becoming more pro nounced, while the educational prospects and social futures of many children removed from their com munities are uncertain. Efforts by states to guide these ‘markets’ and alter the patterns of advantage and spatial difference emerging by voucher systems, charter schools, or reintroducing partial zoning are adding new layers of complexity. In con stituencies where education has deeper traditions of private provision, these complexities are already in scribed into institutional and material geographies and educational discourses. In all places, the relationships between education, spatial difference, and its

reproduction have produced new patterns of ethnic segregation and governance structures. Events such as the closure of rural schools and amalgamation of urban schools demand that new geographies of education be written and geographers are beginning to respond.

Written Geographies Education institutions are thus both geographically produced spaces and space forming. Schools are creatures of their communities, neighborhoods, and cities, yet also pivotal in their production, while schooling is a crucial cultural and socioeconomic activity. In this light, sur prisingly few geographies of education have been written or research agendas built around education. We might expect geographers to have interests in the way in which the questions of ‘who’ and ‘where’ are co constitutive with what gets taught, how, and by whom – and in the consequences. The baseline geographies of delivery are a place to start – who goes where, and to what effect in terms of the production of space. However, we might also expect geographers to have asked how and why these patterns emerged, and how they are related to other processes of social formation, such as class, ethnic seg regation, cultural, and economic change and urban form. They might also be interested in what these geographies tell us about broader issues of societal composition and social transformation, or concepts such as equity, justice, or democracy. More generally, education offers a pro ductive entry point into reﬂections on different dimen sions of the production of space, particularly those to do with identity and subjectivity. While geographers have been slow to explore this potential, several emergent research agendas promise to give education greater prominence in the geographical literature. Geographies of Geographical Education Geographers have long been concerned with the teach ing of geography, both in schools and universities. Both have generated rich literatures exploring the geo graphical knowledges produced by education institutions and related practices. The Journal of Higher Education in Geography (JHEG), in particular, has provided the basis not just for reﬂection on the teaching of geography and the nature of geographical knowledges, but also routinely locates these in the changing geographies of its provision – policy changes, globalization, the relationship between the emergence of ideas and material change, issues of social justice (particularly their spatialities), and projects to decenter the imperialism of Anglo American geog raphy. Commentators have been interested in the geo graphical imaginaries generated in the production of both knowledge and subjects in schools and universities. Much of what we know as geography is practiced and

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produced in educational institutions, which are also where the geographical imaginaries that shape the world are co constituted with other knowledges. The geog raphies of the provision of geographical education are very important. Geographies of School Composition Geographers have also studied spatial patterns of school attendance, and in doing so, confronted to some degree the political geographies of school composition. Working with quantitative methodologies, geographers in the 1970s and 1980s examined the role of schooling in pro cesses of urban segregation. Engaging with policies such as ‘school bussing’, which moved children between neighborhoods to counteract racial segregation in schools within administrative boundaries, the literature provided evidence for policy debates and theorizations of urban processes. It engaged with a politics of social justice around tyrannies of place in poor urban neighborhoods and the virtues of integration (perhaps now more likely framed as diversity). Studies have highlighted the role of schooling in increasing segregation within cities, its interplay with income differentials, cultural attitudes, and real estate markets and the difﬁculties of intervening through policies such as bussing. This literature, its protagonists, politics, and meth odologies, has resurfaced in recent years in research collaborations between educationists and geographers in Bristol, Cardiff, and Los Angeles. It is now concerned increasingly with a critique of post zoning, competitive, and choice based strategies that seek to match students with schools in state systems. That is, it examines the effects of systems of increased parental choice on school composition, success in schooling, and residential lo cation. The literature is again concerned with measuring who goes where, but must now confront active choices and the strategies of parents as well as the changing ethnic and class composition of different schools. Studies conﬁrm just how important education is in family strat egies, and how signiﬁcant schools are in stitching toge ther the social fabric of cities. They direct attention to the effects of schooling policies on urban forms and life worlds. The British studies reveal, for example, that the preferences of different minority groups for ethnically dominated schools have resulted in greater ethnic seg regation in schools. The use of geographic information system (GIS) techniques has enhanced this work, while also offering a valuable ﬁeld of study for the application of these techniques by critical geographers. Ideally, this literature will now engage in a more sustained dialog with sociologists of education examining what actually happens in schools, the social and educational outcomes generated, and the implications for the production of space.

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Schools and Their Communities In rural communities and tightly bound urban neigh borhoods, schools are central social institutions. Where catchment boundaries are more open, relationships be tween schools and communities will take different forms, but schools are still places where individuals cross paths and share experiences across social groups and gener ations. They are often the places where the community meets for other social purposes and become repositories of historical practices and community memory and store historical resources in their physical and social fabric. These memories and social exchanges condition the be havior of teachers, students, and parents, such that communities come, in turn, to deﬁne the nature of the education experience in their schools. Studies by geog raphers of programs of school closures in New Zealand and Canada conﬁrm these relationships. Although yet to be studied in the same way by geographers, it is clear that tertiary education institutes can also come to deﬁne their communities, especially where they are dominant em ployers in regional centers, university towns, or even major centers. The geographies of hi tech clusters and creative cities in many parts of the world are in a sense geographies of education. Children’s Geographies of Schooling The school is, alongside the family, an important insti tution in the geographical worlds of children and young people. Inﬂuenced by feminist perspectives, cultural studies, and a moral stance on the rights of children, these geographers of children concentrate on worlds that take place in and around schools and where schools are often a signiﬁcant presence. Although often shadowed in the written geographies of children, school experiences are pivotal to the lived geographies of children. They generally have a background presence in this work, al though geographers such as Gill Valentine have studied schooling directly. The spatial imaginaries of young people, their classroom experiences, the permeable boundaries between school and after school for younger children, the problems of getting to and from school, children’s resistance to various forms of subjectiﬁcation, the signiﬁcance of school spaces such as school grounds, and the implication of schools in child health, all appear in this literature but demand more sustained research. Schools and Identity and the Production of Citizenship Work emanating from the Canadian scene and from interests in both geographies of school composition and those of mobility and citizenship has in recent years directed attention to the production of citizenship in schools. Katharyne Mitchell and Ranu Basu have both grappled with the implications for identity formation and

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citizenship of what is taught to whom and how. Mitchell concentrates attention in this regard on the production of social space related both to the experiences of diaspora and political projects of multiculturalism. Echoing work on the politics of education, she shows how education is a sphere of social life in which projects of multiculturalism can be connected to projects of economic development by mobilizing diversity for competitive advantage. In her later work she reconnects these interests to a critique of neoliberalism in the formation of European education policy. This connection with neoliberal critique, echoed in Basu’s work, is one of several connections to other emergent geographies of education – children’s geog raphies, school composition and closures, international izing education, and neoliberal governmentalities in education. Internationalizing Education Geographers have also become interested in the social and knowledge spaces generated by both neoliberal re form and the internationalization of education – com monly in concert. Publishing alongside educationists in the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education, they are beginning to ask questions about the emerging networks of ﬂows and their political economy, the involvement of private enterprises in the unbundling of commodity chains, the use of benchmarking, branding, and audit technologies to neoliberalize universities and constitute a global industry, the strategies of education institutions as economic agents, the geographical imaginaries at work and the remaking of geographical knowledges, and the realignments of geographical centers of enquiry and power within the discipline. In their own performance of globalizing education, political and social geographers are now working alongside educationists under the um brella of the World Wide University Network on a re search project labeled Constructing Knowledge Spaces. Geographers interested in changing urban forms, built and social, have begun to explore the implications of large scale student movements in the production of these forms in destination cities – in the investment decisions of property developers, the retail signage that adds color to cities, the peopling of the city, the languages spoken, spectacles performed, and the social networks estab lished. Some have begun to explore education in terms of global city formation. Questions are being to be asked about a global battle for brains, the neocolonialism of the knowledges produced, and the formation of a global elite class. Some of this work lies embedded in the discipline’s reﬂection on its own practices in the JHEG, but work in this area would beneﬁt from insights drawn from devel opment geography. In an important cross over with work on the internationalization of education, a network of scholars centerd on Singapore has begun to ask questions

about altered family lives, the stretching of families across borders, the writing of international education into migration strategies, and the formation of new global social and economic networks. The aim is to bring re search on the mobility effects of international education into dialog with concerns over the battle for brains in the knowledge economy and creative city strategies of globalizing cities.

Conclusion The shift by geographers to confront the globalization and neoliberalization of education in both schooling and university systems is an exciting ﬁeld of geographical enquiry. This interest is often framed by an interest in their own practices as teachers and researchers, and ex tends to the interests of political geographers in edu cation as a space in which to examine the ways in which government agencies inﬂuence decision making in mul tiple and dispersed settings. However, this recognition of the treatment of schools and universities as economic agents has yet to tempt economic geographers to con sider many of the themes in which they show great interest – from clusters to knowledge transfer, the boundaries of the ﬁrm, governance, and so on. Again surprisingly, geographers have been slow to investigate the micro spaces and the micro practices of the pro duction of space in schools and universities. They are sites where policy representations and agendas come into direct confrontation and articulation with the ingrained practices of education, the social practices of young people, the material social relations of place, and estab lished physical architectures. A thriving education geography might like that the ﬁeld of health geography be based on a sustained dialog between different geographical subdisciplines and edu cationists. Alternatively, it might be a more disparate set of explorations of the relationship between education and the production of space in different ﬁelds of geographical enquiry (political, economic, cultural, or social), where education places, institutions, and processes are objects for analysis in their own terms or for other enquiries. If this were to be the case, then a meaningful and partially cohesive education geography might be fashioned from periodic dialogs across these enquiries. In either of these scenarios, the value to the discipline of focusing more attention on so central and rapidly changing a social institution cannot be overstated. Education is central to questions of social justice, and its emancipatory potential has not been fully squashed by neoliberalism. The lessons of children’s geographies and mobility studies, and work on parental choice in schooling suggest that geographical enquiry from participatory action research to policy critique can make a signiﬁcant difference. The

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opportunities to provoke and promote more just out comes from applying the ethics, perspectives, and prac tices of geography to education should not be lost. See also: Children/Childhood; Citizenship; Community; Cultural Capital; Segregation.

Further Reading Andersson, A. and Subramanian, S. V. (2006). Explorations of neighborhood and educational outcomes for young Swedes. Urban Studies 43, 2013 2025. Apple, M. (1982). Education and Power. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Basu, R. (2007). Negotiating acts of citizenship in an era of neoliberal reform: The game of school closures. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31, 109 127. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J. C. (1977). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (transl. Nice, R.). London: Sage. Burgess, S., Wilson, D. and Lupton, R. (2005). Parallel lives? Ethnic segregation in schools and neighbourhoods’. Urban Studies 42, 1027 1056. Clark, W. A. V. (1987). Urban restructuring from a demographic perspective. Economic Geography 63, 103 125. Croft, J. (2004). Positive choice, no choice or total rejection: The perennial problem of school catchments, housing and neighbourhoods. Housing Studies 19, 927 945. Dale, R. (1989). The State and Education Policy. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

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Hankins, K. and Martin, L. (2006). Charter schools and urban regimes in neoliberal context: Making workers and new spaces in metropolitan Atlanta. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, 528 547. Holloway, S. L. and Valentine, G. (eds.) (2000). Children’s Geographies: Playing, Living, Learning. London: Routledge. Johnston, R. J. (1984). Residential Segregation, the State and Constitutional Conﬂict in American Urban Areas. London: Academic Press. Johnston, R., Wilson, D. and Burgess, S. (2005). England’s multiethnic educational system? A classiﬁcation of secondary schools. Environment and Planning A 37, 45 62. Lewis, N. (2004). Embedding the reforms in New Zealand schooling: After neo liberalism? GeoJournal 59, 149 160. Mitchell, K. (2003). Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: From the multicultural self to the strategic cosmopolitan. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28, 387 403. Mitchell, K. (2006). Neoliberal governmentality in the European Union: Education, training, and technologies of citizenship. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(3), 389 407. Novelli, M. (2006). Imagining research as solidarity and grassroots globalisation: A response to Appadurai (2001). Globalisation Societies and Education 4, 275 286. Olds, K. and Thrift, N. (2005). Assembling the global schoolhouse in Paciﬁc Asia. In Daniels, P., Ho, K. C. & Hutton, T. (eds.) Service Industries, Cities and Development Trajectories in the Asia Paciﬁc. London: Routledge. Waters, J. (2006). Emergent geographies of international education and social exclusion. Antipode 38, 1046 1068. Witten, K., Kearns, R., Lewis, N., Coster, H. and McCreanor, T. (2003). Educational restructuring from a community view point: A case study of school closure from Invercargill New Zealand. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 21, 203 223.

Electoral Cartography A. Kavanagh, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Cartogram Map which represents different regions not according to their land areas, but according to some other thematic mapping variable, such as population, thus distorting the shape of these regions to take account of other variables. Electoral Geography A branch of geography, within the subdiscipline of political geography, which is especially concerned with studying the geographical dimension of electoral results, as well as of how elections are organized and conducted. Gerrymandering The practice by which the shape and size of electoral boundaries is deliberately changed to beneﬁt one political grouping (usually a governing party) at the expense of others. Geographically Weighted Regression Technique for exploratory spatial data analysis, which allows for the measurement of spatially varying relationships (thus showing how relationships between the dependent and predictor variables might vary over space). Ge´ographie E´lectorale Early work in the ﬁeld of electoral cartography and geography carried out in France in the early 1900s and particularly associated with French geographer, Andre´ Siegfried. Marked Register Turnout Figures Turnout ﬁgures calculated, usually for very small areas, based on the study of the marked electoral registers used in speciﬁc electoral contests, thus addressing the dearth of small-scale electoral data that emerges in politicians where such data is only available for (relatively large) constituency units. Such ﬁgures may be calculated to the level of the smallest areal units used for the purposes of census returns (such as electoral divisions, in the case of the Republic of Ireland). Redistricting Term particularly associated with American politics, mainly involving the making of changes to the boundaries of election constituencies, usually in order to take account of population change within a state as identiﬁed in the publication of census reports. In states such as the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, independent commissions take reponsibility for the redrawing of election boundaries, whereas in other states this responsibility may lie in the hands of government politicians, a factor that may give rise to the practice of gerrymandering (see above).

Electoral cartography, concerning the mapping of the various factors associated with elections, including

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election results, voter turnout levels, and party mobil ization efforts, is a key aspect of electoral geography. Studies within the areas of electoral cartography and electoral geography highlight the key role of geography in elections; stressing that voters do not express their preferences within a vacuum, and that political decision making processes are inﬂuenced, to varying degrees by the contexts – national, regional, and local – that such processes are inserted within. Electoral cartography en sures that a spatial, or contextual, viewpoint remains central to studies of electoral participation, voter choice, and the operation of electoral systems, and stresses that place matters in those processes, an argument put for ward by leading geographers in this ﬁeld, such as John Agnew, Ron Johnston, and Chris Pattie. Much research is concerned with the mapping of electoral patterns – such as area based electoral partici pation or party support ﬁgures – and it attempts to explain these trends with reference to various causal factors. The mapping of electoral patterns particularly formed the key focus of the earlier work within the discipline, as most notably associated with the French regional school and the ‘ge´ographie e´lectorale’ of Andre´ Siegfried in the early 1900s. Siegfried’s research, as with many other subsequent studies in electoral geography, involved a technique of map comparison, wherein the degree to which the spatial patterning of election results for different French political parties could be associated with the spatial trends associ ated for other, causal, factors was studied. Siegfried’s (1913) classic study of voting trends in the Arde`che region of France was accused of being environmentally determin istic in nature, given his identiﬁcation of particular voting patterns for different physical landscapes, but this ignores how linking the physical and political environments allowed Siegfried to highlight how different landscapes helped produce different socioeconomic conditions, which in turn acted to shape the political orientation of voters within different French regions. Little work was carried out within the ﬁeld of electoral geography (and electoral cartography) outside of France until the 1960s and the emergence of geography’s quan titative revolution. With this, Siegfried’s cartographic comparisons gave way to more statistically based techni ques at this time, and rigorous statistical analyses of how space impacted on electoral behavior replaced the earlier map comparisons approach and these studies were par ticularly concerned with voting cartographies, electoral boundaries, and the analysis of geographical inﬂuences on voting, including work on the neighborhood and friends

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and neighbors effects. While other areas of political geography, such as geopolitics, were in decline during this period, electoral geography, with its large data bank of electoral statistics, proved to be particularly suited to the quantitative approach. However, cartographical techniques still remained as a particularly powerful tool; for instance, maps of different outputs produced by the ecological models were often produced to complement the statistical analyses and to illustrate the key ﬁndings. Since then new and highly sophisticated computer based applications have added further dimensions to electoral cartography and to its applicability within practical politics. The use of more sophisticated mapping programs has, however, fur ther increased the effectiveness of partisan gerrymanders, as evidenced in the results of congressional elections in the USA in the 2000s, with such practices, in turn, contrib uting to more general trends of congressional incumbency protection and declining electoral competitiveness. The development of geographically weighted regression tech niques, in turn, has added new dimensions to work within the area, as the mapping of localized statistical outputs from such research allows the reader to easily appreciate how relationships between various causal factors and electoral behavior may vary across space, thus offering a statistical means to illustrate how place or local context matters, in terms of inﬂuencing how different factors relate to electoral behavior. The use of cartograms to display geographically based electoral ﬁgures has also added new dimensions to electoral cartography, with the use of such cartograms for the purposes of displaying US election results (including the work of Gastner and Newman) giving a more faithful presentation of the relative strengths of the Republican and Democrat parties in recent elections. Conventional maps suggest that US political space is being largely dominated by Republican support, mainly due to this party’s strength in the large, but low density, Mid Western states. In using cartograms to display electoral support levels however, the sizes of US states (or coun ties) are rescaled according to population levels, thus placing greater emphasis on highly populated states where Democrat support is often higher. New and interesting research continues to emerge, facilitated by the aforementioned developments in stat istical techniques and geographical information systems, as well as the availability of better quality electoral and socioeconomic data. Such research has tended to be quite varied in its scope, with different papers focusing on speciﬁc elements of the main strands within electoral geography. Recent research has focused on the redrawing of constituency boundaries and the electoral abuses of gerrymandering and malapportionment, while other re search in this ﬁeld has highlighted the impact of ﬁrst past the post electoral systems in producing disproportional and biased electoral results. The availability of more

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detailed electoral data at the aggregate level has also acted as the basis for interesting new research, as evi denced in recent marked register analyses based studies of voter turnout levels (as in the Republic of Ireland), focusing either on the national picture or on more lo calized contexts. The volume of research within this ﬁeld has remained strong, although various commentators have viewed the bulk of this output as amounting to little more than piecemeal offerings to the general study area, involving isolated studies of speciﬁc elections within speciﬁc states and regions that fail to help create a co herent body of knowledge that would add to the overall study of political geography. The general consensus among such commentators is that electoral geography is overtly empirical in its approach and fails to underpin these researches with well developed theoretical frame works, an atheoretical stance that has left it at odds with general trends within human geography and its cultural turn. Commentators, such as Colin Flint, have viewed electoral geography’s conception of time and space as being particularly constrained, given that much research tends to focus on a single election or series of elections within a particular region or state. Another critique leveled at electoral geography relates to the manner in which geography is used in such research, with some commentators arguing that it is usually treated as an epiphenomenal or residual factor, a point which has been contested by electoral geographers, such as Johnston and Pattie. Efforts to promote a stronger theoretical dimension to electoral geography have found strong resonance with realist philosophy and structuration theory, and argue for the need to better situate electoral research within frameworks that locate it within the larger perspective of global economic transition while also placing greater stress on the impact of the local context. This places greater emphasis on the role of geographical scale in electoral research, while highlighting the importance of place, or the local context, in terms of electoral decision making processes. Researchers, such as Taylor and Flint, have advocated a world systems approach to the study of electoral geography that would also address the dis cipline’s failure to study elections in the developing world, while also arguing for the need to understand how electoral behavior is shaped by structural constraints and how voters in speciﬁc places are responding to global processes. Creating electoral cartographies within such frameworks allows for place speciﬁc electoral behavior to be studied with reference to the political and economic context provided by global economic trends and also the localized institutions and cultural practices that mediate electoral responses to these global processes. In light of this, electoral cartography needs to be based on an ap proach to electoral geography that marries together a series of different but interrelated geographical scales, as

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argued by John Agnew, thus refocusing the discipline on a study of how historical–geographical context impacts on political behavior. In stressing the importance of geographic scale and also the need to base researches on a place centered approach, work within the areas of electoral geography and electoral cartography, married to new and ongoing developments in geographical statistics and computer mapping, promises to offer fresh insight not just to the subdiscipline of political geography, but to the larger study of human geography and indeed also to political science and the other social sciences. See also: Electoral Districts; Electoral Geography; Geographically Weighted Regression; Gerrymandering; Maps; Place; Political Geography; Political Representation.

Further Reading Agnew, J. A. (1990). From political methodology to geographical social theory? A critical review of electoral geography, 1960 1987. In Johnston, R. J., Shelley, F. M. & Taylor, P. J. (eds.) Developments in Electoral Geography, pp 15 21. London: Croom Helm. Agnew, J. A. (1996). Mapping politics: How context counts in electoral geography. Political Geography 15(2), 129 146. Belanger, P., Carty, R. K. and Eagles, M. (2003). The geography of Canadian parties’ electoral campaigns: Leaders’ tours and constituency election results. Political Geography 22, 439 455. Flint, C. (2001). A timespace for electoral geography: Economic restructuring, political agency and the rise of the Nazi party. Political Geography 20, 301 329. Forgette, R. and Platt, G. (2005). Redistricting principles and incumbency protection in the US Congress. Political Geography 24, 934 951.

Johnston, R. J. (2000). Electoral geography. In Johnston, R. J., Gregory, D., Pratt, G. & Watts, M. (eds.) The Dictionary of Human Geography (4th edn.), pp 204 205. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Johnston, R. J. (2002). Mapping manipulating maps and winning elections: Measuring the impact of malapportionment and gerrymandering. Political Geography 21, 1 31. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. (2003). Representative democracy and electoral geography. In Agnew, J., Mitchell, K. & Toal, G. (eds.) A Companion to Political Geography, pp 337 355. Oxford: Blackwell. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. (2004). Electoral geography in electoral studies: Putting voters in their place. In Barnett, C. & Low, M. (eds.) Spaces of Democracy: Geographical Perspectives on Citizenship, Participation and Representation, pp 45 66. London: Sage. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. (2006). Putting Voters in their Place: Geography and Elections in Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnston, R. J., Rossiter, D. and Pattie, C. (2005). Disproportionality and bias in US presidential elections: How geography helped Bush defeat Gore but couldn’t help Kerry beat Bush. Political Geography 24(8), 952 968. Kavanagh, A. (2004). Turnout or turned off? Electoral participation in Dublin in the early 21st century. Journal of Irish Urban Studies 3(2), 1 24. Kavanagh, A., Mills, G. and Sinnott, R. (2004). The geography of Irish voter turnout: A case study of the 2002 General Election. Irish Geography 37(2), 177 186. Siegfried, A. (1913). Tableau Politique de la France de l’Ouest sous la Troisie`me Re´publique. Paris: Armand Colin. Taylor, P. J. and Flint, C. (1990). Political Geography: World Economy, Nation State and Locality. London: Longman. Taylor, P. J. and Johnston, R. J. (1979). Geography of Elections. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers.

Relevant Websites http://www.uselectionatlas.org/ Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. http://www.electionsireland.org/ Elections Ireland.org.

Electoral Districts J. I. Leib, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA G. R. Webster, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Electoral District Discrete, geographically bounded territories drawn for the purpose of electing members to a legislative body. Gerrymandering Manipulation of electoral district boundaries to disproportionately inﬂate the representation of one group and the underrepresentation of others. Ideal District Population The population of a jurisdiction divided by the number of districts that jurisdiction is apportioned. Majority–Minority District An electoral district in which 50% or more of eligible voters are members of minority groups. Multimember District A geographic district drawn to delineate a constituency that elects two or more members to a legislative body. (Re)apportionment The process by which seats in a legislative body are (re)allocated to political jurisdictions. (Re)districting The process of (re)drawing electoral district boundaries. Single-Member District A geographic district drawn to delineate a constituency that elects a single member to a legislative body.

Deﬁnition and Purpose of Electoral Districts Electoral districts are discrete, geographically bounded territories drawn for the purpose of electing members to a legislative body. While interest within political geog raphy concerning how districts are drawn can be traced back nearly a century, the process of district drawing drew much study starting in the 1960s and 1970s, co inciding with the rise of research in electoral geography at a time when spatial–analytical perspectives were dominant within political geography. Redistricting is still an area of study within the discipline today, but has branched out to include post structuralist concerns with issues of boundaries, place, power relations, difference, and the social construction of identity. Different systems of electoral districts are used to elect representatives to national legislatures around the world. In some, each member is elected from a geo graphically discrete single member district. This dis tricting structure attempts to create a direct linkage

between the legislator and the geographic area they are elected to represent. In such a system of ‘particular ter ritorial representation’, legislators are expected to rep resent the interests of the constituency that elected them. Among the countries that use single member district systems for elections and representation are Bangladesh, France, Ghana, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom. At the other end of the spectrum, some countries, including Israel and the Netherlands, use ‘pure’ pro portional representation systems in which all members are elected from a single ‘electoral district’ conterminous with a country’s borders. Such systems provide for ‘vir tual representation’ in which members are expected to represent the interests of the country as a whole (though recent evidence suggests that in Israel and the Nether lands geographic representation occurs because the poli tical parties competing select representatives to stand for election from those areas of the country where the par ties expect to be most competitive). A variety of electoral district systems are used with characteristics falling between the two extremes of single member districts and national constituencies. For example, some countries use multimember electoral districts from which two or more members are elected to the legislature. Included in this category are Egypt and Kuwait which elect two representatives from each of their electoral districts. Alternatively, Brazil and Austria are subdivided into a small number of districts with each electing a variable number of representatives (from 8 to 70 per multimember district in Brazil, and 6 to 102 per multimember district in Austria). Still other countries use mixed systems in which some members are elected from single member districts and others from multimember districts (e.g., Japan), or in systems which elect some members from single member districts and others through proportional representation from a national constituency (e.g., Italy, South Korea). One of the most complicated electoral structures is that of the Palestinian Authority, which uses a mixed system to elect 132 members of its legislature. In the 2006 elections, half of all members were elected from electoral districts, while the other half were elected by pro portional representation from its territory as a whole. For the 66 members elected from districts, the Palestinian Authority’s territory was divided into 16 electoral dis tricts including 11 in the West Bank and ﬁve in Gaza. Among these 16 were 13 multimember districts (with the

399

400

Electoral Districts

number of seats per multimember district ranging from two to nine), while the other three were single member districts. Thus, all voters cast two sets of votes, one for representatives from their single member or multi member electoral district, and one for legislators to represent the territory as a whole. Further complicating matters, in four of the 13 multimember districts, one or two seats were reserved for the Christian candidate receiving the highest number of votes in those districts. As well, legislative bodies are found at multiple scales in many countries. Not all use the same types of electoral system and electoral districts at each scale within the same country. In the United States, where elections to legislative bodies are held at the local, state, and national levels, it is common to ﬁnd voters residing in different types of electoral districts depending on the scale of election being held. For example, at the local level, Woodbridge Township, New Jersey elects members to its township council through both at large and single member district elections, meaning that each resident resides in both a single member and a multimember district. In state elections, New Jersey elects members to its state legislature’s upper chamber from single member districts, while representatives in its lower chamber are elected from two legislator multimember districts. Members of the US House of Representatives are elected from single member districts. Thus, a resident of Woodbridge, considering the elections at these three scales, resides in three single member districts, one two member district, and a township wide constituency electing candidates at large.

Table 1a

Variation in Population Size of Electoral Districts The strength of the linkage between the residents of electoral districts and their representatives is based in part on the number of persons per district. As is evident in Tables 1a and 1b, the number of persons per electoral district varies greatly around the world. In terms of single member districts, the number of persons per district ranges from under 50 000 in Botswana, Ja maica, and Swaziland, to approximately 100 000 in France, Ghana, the United Kingdom, and Uzbekistan, to much larger average ratios of people per single member district in Bangladesh, Pakistan, the United States, and India. In terms of countries using multimember districts, the size per constituency is a function of both the number of total seats and the number of seats per dis trict. While Kuwait is divided into 25 constituencies for its 2.6 million persons (an average of approximately 100 000 persons per each multimember district), Brazil has only 27 constituencies for its population of 183 million (an average of nearly 7 million people per multimember constituency). The differences in average constituency populations are in part a result of the number of seats in each national legislature. Thus, the larger the number of seats a legis lature has, the smaller the average constituency size will be. As suggested in Table 1 national legislatures can range in size from several dozen seats (such as 36 in Trinidad and Tobago) to many hundreds (659 in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons).

Selected countries using single-member districts

Country

2006 Pop. (in millions)

No. of seats/districts (as of 2000)

Population per seat/district

Bangladesh Botswana Canada France Ghana Haiti India Jamaica Kyrgyzstan Malawi Morocco Pakistan Swaziland Trinidad and Tobago United Kingdom United States Uzbekistan

147.3 1.7 32.2 60.7 22.4 8.4 1 123.9 2.7 5.2 12.6 31.5 166.9 1.2 1.3 59.9 297.1 27.3

300 40 301 555a 200 83 543 60 70 177 325 207 55 36 659 435 250

491 000 42 500 106 645 109 369 112 000 101 205 2 069 797 45 000 74 286 71 186 96 923 806 280 21 818 36 111 90 895 682 988 109 200

a Does not include constituencies outside of France proper. Source: Compiled and calculated from data available from Rose, R. (ed.) (2000). International encyclopedia of elections. Washington, DC: Con gressional Quarterly Press, and Population Reference Bureau (2006). Population Reference Bureau DataFinder. http://www.prb.org/DataFinder.aspx (accessed in Aug. 2006).

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Table 1b

Selected countries using multi member districts/constituencies

Country

2006 Pop. (in millions)

No. of seats (2000)

Pop. per seat

Argentina Austria Belgium Brazil Costa Rica Dominican Republic Egypt Ireland Jordan Kuwait Latvia Turkey Vietnam

38.7 8.1 10.4 183.8 4.3 9.1

257 183 150 513 57 120

150 584 44 262 69 333 358 285 75 439 75 833

24 9 20 27 7 30

1 612 500 900 000 520 000 6 807 401 614 286 303 333

10.7 20.3 7.5 19.0 8.1 4.0

76.4 4.2 5.9 2.6 2.3 73.3 83.5

444 166 80 50 100 550 450

172 072 9 638 73 750 58 000 23 000 133 272 185 555

222 41 20 25 5 79 158

344 144 102 439 295 000 29 000 460 000 927 848 528 481

2 in each 4.0 4.0 2 in each 20 (14 27) 7.0 2.8

Adjustments to Electoral Districts The population sizes of districts are frequently highly dynamic, and many countries periodically adjust the numbers, population sizes, and the geographic conﬁgur ations of their electoral districts to reﬂect growth or decline in population. As population increases, some countries increase the number of seats in their legis latures to maintain somewhat equal populations in each district over time. In other cases, the number of seats remains constant but districts are redrawn to reﬂect population shifts within a country, and to keep districts roughly equal in population size with each other. These processes can be demonstrated by comparing the districting process for legislatures in three Western Hemisphere countries: the House of Commons in Can ada, and the House of Representatives in both Jamaica and the United States. All three countries currently elect members to these national legislative bodies from single member districts. To reﬂect population growth, the number of seats, and therefore the number of districts, has increased over time in each country’s legislatures. Canada The Canadian Parliament is composed of the House of Commons and the Senate. Of the two, the House of Commons is by far the most powerful, and its 308 members are elected by voters from single member districts. As the population of Canada has grown since its founding in 1867, the number of seats in the House of Commons has also increased from 181 in 1867 to 308 today. However, the increase in the number of seats has not kept pace with the increase in population. As a result, the average constituency size has increased ﬁvefold from an average of approximately 20 000 persons per district in

No. of dis./ con.

Pop. per dis./con.

Mean no. seats per dis./con. (range) (2 (6 (2 (8 (4 (2

25) 102) 33) 70) 21) 31)

(3 5) (2 9)

(2 21) (2 3)

1871 to nearly 100 000 today. Based on formulas crafted in the Representation Act of 1985, the decennial re apportionment following the 2001 Canadian Census saw nearly 90% of the seats in the House of Commons ap portioned to the ten provinces based on their popu lations. The remainder were allocated (1) to the provinces to insure that no province had fewer seats in the House of Commons today than it did in 1976, or in the Canadian Senate (these provisions added seats to all provinces except for the fastest growing (Ontario, Al berta, and British Columbia) above what they would have received based on their 2001 population alone), (2) and to the three Canadian territories (Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and Yukon Territory), which are apportioned one seat each. As a result, average district sizes among the provinces range from approximately 34 000 for each of the four seats in Prince Edward Island to nearly 109 000 for each of the 36 seats in British Columbia. The number of seats per jurisdiction ranged from one for each of Canada’s three territories to 106 for Canada’s largest province in population, Ontario. Once seats are reapportioned among the provinces, electoral district boundaries are readjusted through the process of redistricting (the process of drawing electoral district boundaries), as detailed in the Electoral Bound aries Readjustment Acts of 1964 and 1985. The districts are redrawn in each province by a three member non partisan provincial electoral boundary commission. Commissions are to create districts within a province that are ‘reasonably’ equal to each other in population, with population deviations generally acceptable to 725% of the ideal district population (the total population of a jurisdiction divided by the number of districts that jur isdiction is apportioned). Additionally, criteria guiding redistricting include taking into account such factors as communities of interest and identity, and the locations of

402

Electoral Districts

previous district boundaries. The commissions are also charged to maintain districts of a ‘manageable geographic size’, especially in the thinly populated northern regions of many of the provinces (in such cases, commissioners may create districts that deviate in population by more than 25% from the ideal district population). Jamaica The Jamaican Parliament is composed of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Members of the Senate are appointed, while members of the House of Repre sentatives are elected from geographically deﬁned con stituencies. Article 66 of the 1962 Independence Constitution provided the island be divided into no less than 45 and no more than 60 constituencies, with each electing one member of the House. Prior to the parlia mentary elections in 1967, the ﬁrst nationwide vote after independence, the number of constituencies was in creased to 53. In 1976 the number of constituencies was further increased to a total of 60. The Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC) is charged with making recommendations to the House of Repre sentatives on appropriate changes to the boundaries and numbers of constituencies. Changes may be recom mended to Parliament for their approval every 4–6 years. Subsequent to approval, changes are effected by an order of the governor general. Jamaica is subdivided into 14 ﬁrst order civil divisions called ‘parishes’. The Jamaican Constitution mandates that all parishes have a minimum of two constituencies, and that the size of the electorate in all constituencies be as ‘‘nearly equal to the electorate quota as is reasonably practicable.’’ The ‘electorate quota’ is calculated by dividing the total electorate by the total number of districts or constituencies. Signiﬁcant differ ences from the electorate quota may be justiﬁed on the basis of contrasting physical features, existing transpor tation facilities, and contrasts between urban and rural areas as reﬂected in different population densities. However, the Constitution limits size differences to no smaller than 66.66% and no greater than 150% of the electorate quota. The EAC has also adopted guidelines for its recommendations such as following natural boundary lines and avoiding the division of communities. There are two primary parties in Jamaica: the Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). Though the PNP has been the dominant party for nearly two decades, the 2002 elections indicated much greater parity in support for the two parties. Also in 2002, the parliamentary elections in Trinidad and Tobago resulted in a virtual tie causing substantial con troversy. These two events led the Jamaican EAC to begin developing recommendations to increase the number of constituencies from the even number of 60 to 65 to prevent the potential for a tie in the number of seats

won by the two main parties (no third party in Jamaica has ever won a parliamentary seat). In 2005 the EAC hosted an international boundary conference to seek input from other countries on the redrawing of Jamaica’s constituency boundaries. The EAC subsequently rec ommended that changes in the number of constituencies be effected prior to the parliamentary elections of 2007. A bill constitutionally allowing for an immediate increase to 63 seats and a subsequent rise to 65 seats was debated in the Jamaican House of Representatives in 2006, but tabled due to concerns over gerrymandering by some of the chamber’s members. The EAC is also having in creasing difﬁculty making boundary changes to districts in some parishes to remain in compliance with the constitution’s prohibition of constituencies being no lar ger than 150% of the electorate quota. Jamaican election ofﬁcials reported in 2006 that three constituencies ex ceeded the constitutional limits for the total number of electors, with two more soon expected to be in noncompliance. United States The United States Congress is composed of two cham bers: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives apportions seats based upon population by state, with all members elected from sin gle member districts. Membership in the House of Representatives was initially set in the 1780s at 65 seats, subsequently rising to its present level of 435 members. While initially the size of House constituencies was set at one representative per 30 000 persons, in the re apportionment subsequent to the 2000 Census of Popu lation each constituency averaged approximately 647 000 people, an over 21 fold increase in constituency size. Between 1790 and 1910 the number of seats in the House was commonly increased after each census to lessen the effect upon constituency size due to the country’s rapid population growth. The size of the US House was last increased following the 1910 Census to a total of 435 seats. In that census the US population was enumerated at 92 million, leading to an average district constituency size of 211 000 people. While the Reapportionment Act of 1929 froze the size of the House at 435, the country’s population has tripled since 1920, leading to the com paratively large sizes of House constituencies today. Each of the 50 states is allocated a minimum of one seat in the House of Representatives, with the remaining 385 seats apportioned to the states based upon their populations. In the apportionment following the 2000 Census, the number of House seats per state ranged from one seat in seven states to California’s 53 seats. The range in the constituency sizes was greatest between those states having the constitutionally deﬁned minimum of one seat. Thus, Wyoming’s one member represented

Electoral Districts

494 000 people while Montana’s single member repre sented 902 000 people. The districts electing members of the House of Representatives are generally redrawn after each census, as are most single member districts at all lower geo graphic scales (e.g., county commissions, city councils, state legislatures). In nearly all cases the process of redistricting must be completed prior to the ﬁrst general election after the release of the census data. Legislative bodies are most often responsible for completing the process. Thus, in most states the state legislature redraws their own districts, as well as those for the US House of Representatives. Due to the almost certain partisanship in the process, some states have vested responsibility in nonpartisan agencies (e.g., Iowa) or bipartisan commis sions (e.g., New Jersey). The purpose of such alternatives is to reduce the likelihood of partisan gerrymandering (the manipulation of election district boundaries to dis proportionately inﬂate the representation for one group and the resulting under representation of others). Since the early 1960s the redistricting process in the United States has increasingly come under the scrutiny of the federal judiciary. For example, the federal courts have mandated evermore perfectly equal populations between US House districts in the same state. In some states the number of people per congressional constitu ency may vary by less than a handful of individuals. Although state legislative and local government districts generally have greater ﬂexibility, it is exceedingly rare for districts at these scales to vary by more than 5% from the ideal district population within those jurisdictions. In the early 1990s those having responsibility for the redistricting process substantially increased the number of districts having racial and ethnic majorities. This trend emanated from the US Department of Justice’s legal in terpretation that amendments to the 1965 Voting Rights Act required that majority–minority districts be de lineated whenever possible. Such afﬁrmative redistricting resulted in several majority–minority districts that were geographically extensive and of comparatively lesser geographic compactness. Several court suits were ﬁled against these districts during the 1990s that called into question the constitutionality of irregularly shaped dis tricts drawn to promote minority representation. Gen erally race and ethnicity can be considered in the redistricting process at present, but such demographic considerations must be used in conjunction with other districting criteria such as contiguity, compactness, and maintaining the integrity of local government boundaries. In the past decade partisan gerrymandering has be come an increasingly important legal issue at the national level due to the similar numbers of Democrats and Re publicans in the US House of Representatives. Since state legislatures generally have the responsibility to delineate congressional districts, the majority party in each state

403

legislature can have an enormous effect upon the party makeup of the US House. Due to redistricting litigation in Texas after the release of the 2000 Census, the state’s districts were redrawn by a panel of federal judges in advance of the 2002 congressional elections. In the 2002 election the Texas State Legislature shifted to the control of the Republican Party, and the body again undertook an effort to redraw the state’s congressional districts prior to the 2004 congressional elections. The resulting plan sig niﬁcantly increased the number of Republicans elected from Texas, aiding that party’s ability to continue as the majority party in Congress. While it is customary that, barring a court order, redistricting is carried out only once a decade in the United States, the US Supreme Court did not ﬁnd a constitutional violation in the Texas legislature’s mid decade redistricting. This leads to the possibility that states might revisit the redistricting process for partisan purposes multiple times during a single decade.

Issues in Electoral Districting There are a number of issues surrounding the delineation of electoral districts including those pertaining to the data, technology, and criteria used to draw districts, and the fairness of the resulting districts to political and demographic groups. For example, the data employed in the redistricting process is generated through enumer ations of the population in each country. As a result, errors in the population enumeration of a country can result in the under or over representation of geographic areas and/or demographic groups. Generally ethnic mi norities, the poor, and those residing in rural settings tend to be undercounted. For the purposes of districting, population data are broken down into small geographic units that can be aggregated to form districts of nearly equal population. In the United States, the Census Bur eau provided demographic data at the ‘block’ level, the lowest level in the census’ geographic unit hierarchy, for all parts of the country for the ﬁrst time after the 1990 Census. Such detailed data allows those delineating boundaries to create districts with near perfectly equal populations to insure equitable representation. But they also provide an increased ability for partisan manipula tion of district populations. The advent and rapid development of sophisticated Geographic Information Systems (GISs) has greatly re duced the historically cumbersome character of the redistricting process. A GIS can allow the consideration of massive quantities of demographic, economic, social, and political data in the districting process. Such systems have arguably democratized the system, as any citizen with access to GIS can create districting plans to submit to districting authorities. At the same time, however, GIS has also created a greater potential for gerrymandering.

404

Electoral Districts

The criteria used in the districting process differ de pending upon country. Among the most common cri terion is equal population. Two additional criteria that are commonplace are territorial contiguity and geo graphic compactness. Territorial contiguity requires that any portion of a district must be accessible from all other parts without entering a second district. Geographic compactness has long been used as a criterion for mul tiple purposes. Historically it is has been assumed that citizens residing near one another will have more in common than those living at greater distances. Geographic compactness has also been viewed as a means of limiting the manipulation of districts for political or demographic advantage. However, such an assumption is also increasingly suspect, as more detailed data and GIS allow comparatively compact districts to be formed that facilitate the over representation of some groups by dividing the geographic concentrations of other groups. It is also common in many countries to consider the representation of religious, ethnic, or racial minorities as a criterion in the redistricting process. Thus, in Leba non’s Parliament there is an established number of seats for each confessional group including among others, Maronites, Sunnis, Shiites, Druze, Protestants, and Ar menian Catholics. The equitable representation of ethnic and racial minorities in the United States has been ac tively litigated for over a half century. Due to the Voting Rights Act, extended in 2006 by the US Congress for another 25 years, racial, ethnic, and linguistic minorities must be considered in the districting process. Most observers would agree that the electoral dis tricting system should be as fair as possible in providing an equal chance of representation to all segments of the population. However, achieving fair representation can be difﬁcult because of differing deﬁnitions of what is ‘fair’. In spite of this difﬁculty, the best electoral dis tricting plan is one that provides the greatest access to representation to the greatest number of demographic or political groups. The districting process is about allo cating power to population groups, and a group without access clearly has a limited political voice in the legis lative body. See also: Electoral Cartography; Electoral Geography; Gerrymandering; Political Geography; Political Representation.

Further Reading Arrington, T. and Ingalls, G. (1998). The limited vote alternative to afﬁrmative districting. Political Geography 17, 701 728. Elections Canada (2002). Representation in the House of Commons of Canada. Ottawa: Elections Canada. Forest, B. (2001). Mapping democracy: Racial identity and the quandary of political representation. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91, 143 166. Grofman, B. (ed.) (1998). Race and Redistricting in the 1990s. New York: Agathon. Johnston, R. J., Pattie, C. J., Dorling, D. F. L. and Rossiter, D. J. (2001). From Votes to Seats: The Operation of the UK Electoral System since 1945. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Johnston, R. J., Rossiter, D. J. and Pattie, C. J. (1999). The Boundary Commissions: Redrawing the UK’s Map of Parliamentary Constituencies. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Latner, M. and McGann, A. (2005). Geographic representation under proportional representation: The cases of Israel and the Netherlands. Electoral Studies 24, 709 734. Leib, J. (1998). Communities of interest and minority districting after Miller v. Johnson. Political Geography 17, 683 699. Leib, J. and Webster, G. (1998). On enlarging the U.S. house of representatives. Political Geography 17, 319 329. Morrill, R. L. (1981). Political Redistricting and Geographic Theory. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers. Morrill, R. L. (1999). Electoral geography and gerrymandering: Space and politics In Demko, G. J. & Wood, W. B. (eds.) Reordering the World: Geopolitical Perspectives on the 21st Century (2nd edn.). pp 117 138. Boulder, CO: Westview. Population Reference Bureau (2006). Population Reference Bureau DataFinder. http://www.prb.org/DataFinder.aspx (accessed in Aug. 2006). Rose, R. (ed.) (2000). International Encyclopedia of Elections. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press. Taylor, P. J. and Johnston, R. J. (1979). Geography of Elections. London: Croom Helm. Webster, G. R. (2000). Playing a game with changing rules: Geography, politics and redistricting in the 1990s. Political Geography 19, 141 161. Webster, G. R. (2004). Evaluating the geographic compactness of representational districts. In Janelle, D. G., Warf, B. & Hansen, S. (eds.) WorldMinds: Geographical Perspectives on 100 Problems, pp 43 47. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Relevant Websites http://www.ace.at.org ACE Project, The Electoral Knowledge Network. http://www.commoncause.org COMMON CAUSE, Holding Power Accountable. http://www.fairvote.org Fair Vote, The Center for Voting and Democracy. http://www.lib.purdue.edu Purdue University. Libraries, Access Knowledge Success. http://www.parliament.uk United Kingdom Parliament, Elections, Parliamentary Constituencies. http://www.census.gov US Census Bureau, Census Redistricting Data Ofﬁce.

Electoral Geography C. Pattie, University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK R. Johnston, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Egocentric voting Voting based on evaluations of what is best for oneself, irrespective of the impact on others (often discussed in contrast with sociotropic voting). Electoral de-alignment A process in which longstanding divisions within the electorate, inﬂuencing which parties members of different groups are likely to support, weaken. De-alignment hs typiﬁed politics in most western nations since the 1970s. Logistic regression An extension of the regression technique to take into account situations where the dependent variable is measured using categorical data. The technique is particularly useful for the analysis of survey data. Modiﬁable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) A problem which arises when small areal units can be combined into several different sets of larger units. Combing the smaller units in different ways can substantially alter the apparent geography of an underlying attribute of interest at the level of the larger units. Multi-level modelling A family of statistical methods designed to take into account situations where data exhibit a multi-level structure (for instance, school pupils’ performance may be inﬂuenced by factors operating at a variety of nested scales: individual ability; family background; school effects; and so on). Plurality electoral system In plurality elections, the candidate with the most votes is deemed to win, whether or not s/he has achieved an outright majority (50%+) of all votes cast. Most plurality election systems employ single-member constituencies. Plurality elections are most common in the UK and in former British colonies. Psephology The academic study of elections and voting. Regression analysis A statistical technique involving ﬁtting a linear trend to data to uncover how one or more explanatory (independent or x-) variables affect the variable the analyst wishes to explain (often termed the y- or dependent variable). Sociotropic voting Voting based on evaluations of what is best for others, irrespective of the impact on oneself (often discussed in contrast with egocentric voting). Spatial regression An extension of regression techniques to take into account spatial autocorrelation in geographical data.

Valence politics Valence issues are those on which all individuals commonly agree (as, for instance, in the general desire for prosperity or for good health). In valence politics, therefore, public support for political parties is based not on the ideological claims of the parties, but on evaluations of which party is most likely to deliver generally-desired outcomes successfully.

Introduction Electoral geography, the analysis of the interaction of space, place, and electoral processes, shares a consider able hinterland with the related political science subﬁeld of psephology. Pronounced geographies of party support are to be found in most countries, even in those (such as the Netherlands and Israel) which employ highly pro portional electoral rules in a single national constituency. The ﬁeld’s primary research question is therefore ‘why do particular parties draw more electoral support from some places than from others?’ Explaining how geographies of party support are created involves the analysis of a variety of factors, which interact in potentially complex ways: the underlying so cial geography of party support; interactions between citizens living in the same areas; the impact of economic geography on government popularity; geographically targeted party campaigning; and the geographical out comes of the operation of the electoral system. Underpinning all of these is a debate, common throughout human geography, about the relative im portance of compositional and contextual effects. Do people behave and think as they do because of who they are (compositional effects, based on the social groups they belong to, the upbringings they have had, and so on), or because of where they are (contextual effects, drawing on the wider environments within which they are em bedded, the things they see and experience around them, and the – spatially structured – encounters they have throughout their lives)? The geography of any actual election is a combination of both contextual and com positional effects: unraveling how these operate is the central task of electoral geography.

Origins Electoral geography can be traced back to the early twentieth century. Many of the early contributions were

405

406

Electoral Geography

by political scientists. The approaches they adopted, and the insights they developed, have had a lasting inﬂuence on the ﬁeld. The French political scientist Andre´ Siegfried is often seen as the founder of academic electoral geography. His path breaking analyses of voting in France linked social processes to geographies of party support. Famously, he compared party support with underlying geology: in northern France, he noted, support for the right was highest in areas where the local rock was granite, while parties of the left did better in chalk areas. However, this was not environmental determinism. Geology inﬂuenced vote via its impact on factors such as local land holding patterns (e.g., whether farms were large or small, which affected whether agricultural workers were employees or self employed peasants, and hence local patterns of social stratiﬁcation) and industrial location (which inﬂuenced local class structures). While the maps included local geologies, the electorally important processes reﬂected social relations in particular places. This remains a focus of attention for modern electoral geography. Another pioneer, the Swedish political scientist, Herbert Tingsten, employed statistical data to analyze electoral geographies. By comparing electoral and so cial data for 55 Stockholm electoral districts at the 1932 second chamber election, he demonstrated a strong positive ecological correlation between the proportion of working class voters in an area and the level of support for parties of the left there: the more working class the neighborhood, the more votes the Socialists won. Following Tingsten’s lead, the statistical analysis of voting and social data aggregated into electoral districts has become part of the electoral geography mainstream. The American political scientist V. O. Key provided another inﬂuence. His 1949 study, Southern Politics, ex plained the electoral distinctiveness of the southern states of the USA in terms of their particular political histories. Support for the Republicans, the party of the Union, was weak in the south for almost a century after the Civil War, while southern Democrats were more conservative and appealed more to a white supremacist vote than did their more liberal northern counterparts. In addition, racism was also linked to white voters’ participation in elections: the larger the local Afro American community in a district, the greater the turnout among white voters. However, the geography of party support in the south also resulted from what Key termed ‘friends and neigh bors’ voting: voters were more likely to vote for local candidates than for candidates from other parts of the state. Key’s discussion of normal and critical elections was also inﬂuential. Critical elections break the mould. Existing patterns of support for parties break down, and new patterns are established. After a critical election,

these new patterns of support become entrenched, pro ducing a stable period of normal elections, which persists until the next critical election. Periods typiﬁed by normal elections tend to have relatively stable electoral geog raphies, in which some regions consistently give greater support to particular parties than do others. In a critical election, however, these stable geographies can break down suddenly and, on occasion, irrevocably. One such realignment occurred in the US during the 1970s, when the formerly Democratic south began to swing behind the Republicans. Key’s work inﬂuenced geographers at the University of Iowa in the late 1960s, exempliﬁed by J. Clark Archer and Peter Taylor’s analysis of the regional geography of US Presidential elections from 1828 to 1980. They ar gued that socioeconomic interests, spatially expressed in different regions of the US, produce sectionalism, which forms the basis of patterns of party support. They iden tiﬁed different voting ‘eras’, each covering several presi dential elections, each with its own distinctive geography, and each breaking down in time. Others have continued this line of work, identifying areas with consistent voting patterns over time at a variety of scales. A rather different take, both methodologically and substantively, was offered by sociologists at Columbia University, led by Paul Lazarsfeld and Bernard Berelson. Whereas most previous studies – including Siegfried, Tingsten, and Key – had employed aggregate data to study electoral behavior, the Columbia group utilized detailed social surveys in particular communities, be ginning with their study of the 1948 presidential election in Elmira, New York. For them, individual voters had to be seen as embedded within social groups and local communities. Their evidence suggested that political inﬂuence spread through contact with friends and ac quaintances: voters were inﬂuenced by (and also inﬂu enced) the views and opinions of those they talked to and interacted with. The longer term effects of the Columbia studies on electoral studies generally can be seen in the widespread adoption of the sample survey as the dominant source of data for the analysis of electoral behavior. Most sub sequent studies have followed the example of the slightly later project launched by political scientists at the University of Michigan in the 1950s (and continue to the present as the American National Election Studies), and have employed national random samples of the electorate. In the process, they have gained the ability to generalize across the entire electorate, but have lost the ability to focus in depth on politics within particular communities. Only a handful of subsequent studies, most notably Huckfeldt and Sprague’s analysis of the 1984 presidential campaign in South Bend, In diana, have repeated the Columbia school’s focus on a particular community. For electoral geographers,

Electoral Geography

meanwhile, the Columbia school’s enduring legacy has been of interest in the neighborhood effect – the ten dency for individuals living in the same place to vote in the same way. Despite these precursors, however, initially few geographers took up the study of elections. It was not till the late 1950s that Prescott provided one of the ﬁrst formal discussions of electoral geography as a distinctive subdiscipline. Prescott’s electoral geography was ﬁrmly within the regional geography paradigm. It could be used to illustrate Hartshorne’s concept of the raison d’etre of the state – as, for instance, in Northern Ireland, where the geography of the Unionist vote picked out the zones of greatest support for the Province’s raison d’etre, continued links with the UK. This vision of electoral geography was strikingly apolitical. Tellingly, Prescott noted that ‘‘(p)robably the greatest objection which geographers have to using election returns is the need to acquire background political knowledge.’’ Elections where the primary issues at stake are those of public policy, gov ernment performance, and so on, Prescott deemed of little interest for electoral geography, since they reveal little about the state’s raison d’etre. Later electoral geog raphers, in contrast, have embraced such ‘background political knowledge’ as an essential part of adequate explanation. A more seminal spatial science perspective was sup plied in the 1960s by Kevin Cox, who saw voters as de cision makers inﬂuenced by their local contexts. Cox conceptualized voters as nodes in a network, receiving, processing, and transmitting political information. The extent to which individuals might be inﬂuenced by the views of those they lived among, he argued, would be inﬂuenced by a variety of biases: Geographical distance bias: people would be more • inﬂuenced by the views of their neighbors than by

•

• • •

individuals who lived further away. Acquaintance circle bias: individuals are more likely to be inﬂuenced by the views of others in their ac quaintance circle than by the opinions of relative strangers (though later work by Granovetter showed the importance of casual acquaintances as a means of encountering heterodox views). Force ﬁeld bias: especially before the introduction of the secret ballot, voters might come under pressure from politically more powerful groups and individuals. Reciprocity bias: individuals are more likely to be inﬂuenced by those they are structurally related to (spouses, employees and employers, children and parents) than by people with whom they have no structural relations. Ideological bias: voters with strong political convic tions would be less open to inﬂuence than those with weaker opinions.

407

Albeit shorn of some of its spatial science underpinnings, Cox’s work continues to inform electoral geography to the present.

Methodological Issues From these origins, electoral geography has become in creasingly sophisticated, both theoretically and meth odologically. In this section, we consider the latter. Elections are mass events, depending on the simul taneous participation of several political parties and many voters. Furthermore, election results are routinely published for subnational areas, enabling geographical analysis of the outcome. At the 2005 UK general election, for instance, almost 44.3 million adults were eligible to vote, and 27.1 million did so: results were announced for 646 constituencies. Understanding the entirety of an election requires methods which can generalize over large populations, therefore. As a consequence, quanti tative methods dominate analysis in electoral geography. The methods employed range from simple carto graphic representations of election results, to more ad vanced methodologies. Regression models are widely used: a party’s constituency vote share in each seat can be regressed against a range of social, political, and economic indicators. Even so, communities of electoral geographers differ in the precise methodologies they apply. Spatial regression techniques, which allow the identiﬁcation of ‘hot spots’ of support for particular parties, are most widely applied by North American analysts. American electoral geography is dominated by the ecological an alysis of election results in small districts. Despite the heavy use of sample surveys by American political sci entists, few US electoral geographers made use of them. In the UK, by contrast, spatial regression has rarely been used to study constituency voting patterns: conventional ordinary least squares (OLS) models have been more commonly applied. However, British electoral geog raphers have made heavy use of survey data in recent years, applying not only logistic regression models but also multilevel modeling techniques. There are pros and cons to the analysis of both eco logical data from electoral districts and survey data. Ecological data allow the analysis of election results in all parts of a country simultaneously, since there is complete coverage for all areas. However, analysts are limited by data availability and the ecological fallacy. Survey data allow analysis of individual voters’ decisions. However, since most national surveys interview in only a few constituencies, and contact only a handful of voters in each seat, they are not well suited to uncovering the detailed geography of constituency voting. Analysts have therefore combined ecological and survey data. Most obviously, data on individual voters can

Electoral Geography

be combined directly with data for their constituencies. Alternatively, constituency level estimates can be made of data which are not available directly at that scale. For instance, there are grounds for suspecting that the strength of class voting (typically, working class voters are more likely to vote for the left, and middle class voters for the right) varies from place to place. However, national surveys do not allow a detailed examination of the geography. And while census data on class and election results are commonly available at the constitu ency level, they are almost never cross classiﬁed. Some estimation method, such as entropy maximising, is therefore required to get at the constituency geography. Electoral geographers are not naı¨ve empiricists, however: they draw on a range of theoretical perspectives. Some theories come from political science. Partisan identiﬁcation (the Michigan model) describes voters’ long term loyalties to particular parties. Sociological accounts emphasized the electoral inﬂuence of factors such as class, religion, and core–periphery relations. Rational choice theories, meanwhile, emphasize the cost beneﬁt calculations taken by voters and parties, with implications for the analysis of electoral participation, strategic (or tactical) voting, and electoral campaigning. They have also had an inﬂuence on the emergence of the valence politics perspective, which argues that voters decide by evaluating the relative performance of parties when in ofﬁce. The trafﬁc of ideas has not been one way, however. Electoral geographers have emphasized the contextual nature of voting decisions. Place based explanations drawing on structuration theory have been applied to the development and long term persistence of distinctive local political cultures, in which individuals learn about politics in distinct environments. Two individuals in otherwise identical social positions might have very dif ferent political beliefs if one grew up in an afﬂuent commuter suburb while the other grew up in a declining industrial city, for instance. Much empirical work in electoral geography is at root about tracing the geo graphical ramiﬁcations of these theories.

Social Bases of the Vote Many political parties develop to represent the interests of particular sections of society, most commonly along class lines: Social Democrat or Labour parties try to mobilize working class votes, while Conservative or Liberal parties appeal for middle class support. The class cleavage, while never absolute, dominated West Euro pean electoral politics for much of the twentieth century. British politics provides a good example: at the 1964 general election, roughly two thirds of middle class voters supported the Conservatives, and around two

thirds of working class voters supported Labour (Figure 1). A class cleavage among individual voters has impli cations for the geography of the vote, as housing and labor markets produce social differentiation between areas. Some communities are predominantly working class, others mainly middle class. If the individual class cleavage holds everywhere, therefore, we would expect support for the main party of the right to be highest in middle class areas, and for the main left of center party to be highest in working class areas. Imagine two hypo thetical constituencies, Richtown and Steeltown. Both have electorates of 60 000, and both are contested by the Conservatives on the right, by Labour on the left, and by some minor party candidates. Richtown is middle class: 80% of its voters are in nonmanual occupations. Steel town, meanwhile is working class: 70% of its electorate is in manual jobs. If there is a strong national class cleavage in voting, invariant throughout the country, the Con servatives will win a clear overall majority of the vote in Richtown, as will Labour in Steeltown (Table 1). Note that the underlying class cleavage is identical in both constituencies: the different election outcomes are purely a result of the differences in class composition between the two seats. Real world evidence reveals similar patterns. For in stance, the German Social Democrats are traditionally strongest in industrial areas such as the Ruhr, while the Christian Democrats and their partners have drawn more support from afﬂuent and agricultural areas such as Bavaria. The link between geographies of class and party support is also well illustrated by constituency results at the 1970 British general election (Figure 2). 70 Nonmanual Manual

60

50

% Vote

408

40

30

20

10

0 Conservative

Labour

Other

Figure 1 The class cleavage at the 1964 General Election in Britain.

Electoral Geography

Table 1

409

The effect of a national class cleavage on voting in two hypothetical constituencies

National class cleavage

Nonmanual (%)

Conservative Labour Other Total

Manual (%)

62 22 16 100

Richtown

Nonmanual

Conservative Labour Other Total

(N) 29 760 10 560 7680 48 000

Steeltown

Nonmanual

Conservative Labour Other Total

(N) 11 160 3960 2880 18 000

28 64 8 100 Manual (%) 62 22 16 100

(N) 3 360 7680 960 12 000

Total (%) 28 64 8 100

Manual (%) 62 22 16 100

(N) 11 760 26 880 3360 42 000

(N) 33 120 18 240 8640 60 000

(%) 55.2 30.4 14.4 100

Total (%) 28 64 8 100

(N) 22 920 30 840 6240 60 000

(%) 38.2 51.4 10.4 100

80.00

Conservative % vote, 1970

60.00

40.00

20.00

R sq linear = 0.464

0.00

0.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

% Professionals and managers, 1971

Figure 2 Constituency class composition and the Conservative vote in Britain, 1970.

The geography of the vote can result simply from the interaction of a national electoral cleavage and the geography of different social groups, therefore. Just be cause party support varies from place to place does not mean that geography has an independent effect on electoral behavior. Indeed, critics have argued that, once the appropriate attributes of individual voters are taken

into account, apparent geographic effects will disappear: they argue places vote differently because of the sort of people who live there (compositional effects), not be cause of the sorts of places they are (contextual effects). A closer examination suggests contextual effects do operate, however. For instance, Butler and Stokes showed the class cleavage was not uniform throughout

410

Electoral Geography 70

Table 2 Geographical variation in the class cleavage at the 1970 British general election: class self-image and partisan selfimage Most nonmanual 10% of seats

Middle Working class (%) class (%)

Middle Working class (%) class (%)

46 54

78 22

21 79

50 50

Britain but varied systematically from place to place. They contrasted voters living in the 10% of seats with the highest proportions of manual workers in 1970 with those living in the 10% of seats with most nonmanual workers (Table 2). In both areas, a higher proportion of middle than working class people voted Conservative than voted Labour, and a higher proportion of working than middle class people voted Labour, as implied by the class cleavage. However, working class voters in predominantly middle class communities were more likely to support the Conservatives than were working class voters in mainly working class areas. And similarly, middle class voters in working class areas were more pro Labour in outlook than other middle class voters in middle class areas. Miller (1977) argued this was the result of ‘conversion by conversation’: individuals in areas dominated by a particular class would be more likely than average to encounter the views and opinions of that class, and hence would be more open to its in ﬂuence than voters elsewhere. Who people are is not the only inﬂuence on how they vote: where they live seems to have an effect too. Recent cross national trends in electoral cleavages provide even more striking evidence for contextual ef fects. Since the early 1970s, most Western democracies have experienced de alignment. Voters are no longer so strongly inﬂuenced by social class, or by long term loy alties to particular parties. We can illustrate this by comparing class voting at the 1964 and 2005 British general elections: far fewer voters voted for their ‘natural’ class party in 2005 than in 1964, and many more voted either for a third or for the ‘wrong’ class party (Figure 3). Voters are more volatile, and more likely to judge parties by results than in the past. However, although individual voters are less class aligned than in the past, the same is not true of the geography of party support. Even among de aligned electorates, right of center parties gain most support in middle class neighborhoods and left of center parties in working class areas. For instance, at the 1992 British General Election class had relatively little bearing on the decisions of individual voters. However, at the constitu ency level, little had changed since 1970 (cf. Figures 4 and 2). Context matters.

60

50

% Vote

Conservative Labour

Most manual 10% of seats

Nonmanual Manual

40

30

20

10

0 Conservative

Labour

Other

Figure 3 The class cleavage at the 2005 General Election in Britain.

How does context inﬂuence the vote? In the following three sections, we look at: the inﬂuence of other voters; the impact of local economic conditions; and the effects of party campaigns.

The Neighborhood Effect The neighborhood effect literature draws on a simple observation: people live, work, and play with other peo ple. Through our daily interactions (some deep, some ﬂeeting) with others we ﬁnd out what those around us think. Some are likely to be inﬂuenced by the views they encounter in these interactions, either by sheer weight of numbers (‘if that’s what most people think, there must be something in it’) or because the opinion is promulgated by individuals who are seen as particularly authoritative (‘she obviously knows what she’s talking about, so I had better take her view seriously’). This process is contextual: individuals can be inﬂu enced by, and in their turn can inﬂuence, the views of those they encounter. The neighborhood effect traces its origins back to (among others) the Columbia school and Kevin Cox. Its core claim is interactions between people living in the same communities are consequential (e.g., as a result of Cox’s geographical distance bias), such that a dominant community view will come to be shared by most people living there. A substantial cross national body of research – much of it inspired by the innovative analyses of Robert Huckfeldt and John Sprague – demonstrates that voters’ decisions are indeed inﬂuenced by the views of those they talk to. For instance, respondents to the 1992 British Election Study

Electoral Geography

411

70.0

60.0

Conservative % vote, 1992

50.0

40.0

30.0

20.0

10.0

R sq linear = 0.471

0.0 10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

50.00

60.00

70.00

% Professionals and managers, 1991

Figure 4 Constituency class composition and the Conservative vote in Britain, 1992.

Table 3 Voter defection and intensity (in terms of % voting in 1992) of partisan reinforcement in conversation networks Party supported by discussants

Number of discussants supporting party 0

1

2

3

a) Respondent did not vote Conservative in 1987 Conservative 8.5 26.0 Labour 19.4 12.0 Liberal Democrat 15.1 15.7

45.5 51.7 5.8 2.1 8.9 22.2

b) Respondent did not vote Labour in 1987 Conservative 16.8 8.1 Labour 6.9 15.3 Liberal Democrat 12.0 6.5

2.7 2.1 37.3 66.7 6.2 0.0

c) Respondent did not vote Liberal Democrat in 1987 Conservative 10.5 9.9 8.6 2.1 Labour 9.0 13.6 8.3 6.4 Liberal Democrat 6.5 28.8 40.0 57.1 From: 1992 BES.

were asked to name the three individuals they were most likely to talk to regarding important matters, and were also asked which parties (if any) they thought these individuals supported. Among respondents who had not voted for a party at the preceding (1987) election, the more individuals they reported having talked to who did support that party, the more likely they were to switch their vote to it in 1992 (Table 3). Take, for example, those individuals who did not

vote Conservative in 1987: while just under 9% of those who did not name any Conservative supporting conver sation partners went on to vote for the party in 1992, 26% of those who had talked to one Conservative did so, as did 46% of those who had talked to two, and 52% of those who talked to three. And the corollary holds too: the more these individuals talked to supporters of other parties, the less likely they were to switch: looking again at those who had not voted Conservative in 1987, while 19% of those who did not name a Labour supporting conversation partner switched to the Conservatives in 1992, only 2% of those who talked to three Labour supporters did so. Conver sations can persuade individuals to change their minds. However, where one’s conversation partners agree with one, discussion can reinforce one’s views: among those who voted for a party in 1987, the more they talked to other supporters of the party, the more likely they were to stay loyal to it 5 years later, while the more they talked to supporters of other parties, the less likely they were to stay loyal. The impact of conversations on individuals’ views varies from person to person, however. Those who have strong political preferences are less likely to be inﬂu enced than are those who do not (Table 4). The chances that those who had not voted for a party in 1987, and who did not generally identify themselves with it, would switch to it in 1992 were almost nonexistent for those

412

Electoral Geography

Table 4 Strength of partisanship and the inﬂuence of conversation, 1992 (a) Respondent did not identify with Conservatives and did not vote Conservative in 1987: % voting Conservative in 1992 Respondent had:

Very strong party identiﬁcation Fairly strong party identiﬁcation Not very strong/no party identiﬁcation

No Conservative discussants 0.5

1 þ Conservative discussants 0.0

2.1

2.7

5.1

23.6

(b) Respondent did not identify with Labour and did not vote Labour in 1987: % voting Labour in 1992 Respondent had:

Very strong party identiﬁcation Fairly strong party identiﬁcation Not very strong/no party identiﬁcation

No Labour discussants 0.8

1 þ Labour discussants 0.0

1.8

2.7

4.7

13.9

(c) Respondent did not identify with Liberal Democrats and did not vote Liberal/SDP Alliance in 1987: % voting Lib Dem in 1992 Respondent had:

Very strong party identiﬁcation Fairly strong party identiﬁcation Not very strong/no party identiﬁcation

No Lib Dem discussants 1.0

1 þ Lib Dem discussants 5.0

3.1

11.3

6.1

22.1

SDP, Social Democratic Party. From: 1992 BES.

who identiﬁed very strongly with a second party, ir respective of whether they talked to supporters of the ﬁrst party. However, among those who had not voted for the ﬁrst party in 1987, did not identify with it, and also did not identify strongly with any other party, the chances of switching to the ﬁrst party in 1992 were be tween three and ﬁve times higher for those who spoke to at least one supporter of the ﬁrst party than among those who spoke to no supporters of the party. Undecided voters are more easily swayed than are partisans. However, cross national research suggests the con versation effect is, to some extent, culturally speciﬁc. For instance, Japanese voters are less willing than Americans to give their opinions to others, and hence are less likely to encounter the heterodox views of other citizens. Key’s ‘friends and neighbors’ voting, in which voters in a particular area give greater support to candidates with

Table 5 Friends and neighbors voting in Galway West, 1977: correlation between vote share and distance from candidate’s home Political party/candidate Fianna Fail Geoghegan-Quinn Loughnane Molloy O’Morain Fine Gael Byrne Coogan McCormack Mannion Labour Higgins Sinn Fein Coffey

Correlation coefﬁcient 0.20 0.73 þ 0.27 0.66 0.65 0.50 0.38 0.85 0.48 0.15

From: Parker, A. J. (1982). The friends and neighbours voting effects in the Galway West constituency. Political Geography Quarterly 1, 243 263, table 2.

local connections than to candidates from outside the area, is a distinctive variant of the neighborhood effect. It has been reported at a variety of scales, from local gov ernment contests to US presidential elections. It is rare for a presidential candidate to lose his home state, for instance, even when his campaign stalls throughout the rest of the country. At a more local scale, Parker’s (1982) analysis of election returns in the 63 electoral districts of the multimember Galway West constituency at the 1977 Irish general election reveals that the further from the district a candidate lived, the fewer votes the candidate gained there (Table 5: the main exception, Molloy, turned out to have family connections to the west of the constituency, where his vote was strong). However, the neighborhood effect is neither sufﬁcient nor necessary for the creation of a distinctive electoral geography. As discussed below, voters can also be inﬂu enced by what they see around them, even if they do not talk to others in their local communities.

Valence Politics: Economic Geography and Electoral Geography Ideally, voters carefully compare political parties’ pol icies and ideologies against their own preferences. Sur veys show voters are guided by their ideological predispositions and attitudes. Such ‘issue voting’ has be come more important over time as de alignment has reduced the inﬂuence of class and partisan loyalties. But at the same time, two ﬁndings recur in the empirical literature: most voters, most of the time, have little if any detailed knowledge of particular policy areas, let alone where the parties stand on them; and voters’ attitudes are

Electoral Geography

often volatile, implying that they are not deeply held. The electorate is not, on the whole, well informed and does not have deep seated, clear preferences. However, voters’ lack of knowledge may be rational. Modern governments are complex, legislating over very many ﬁelds, and much of their activity is both highly technical and controversial. Few voters have the re sources (of time, as much as anything) really to get to grips with even a few policy areas. At the same time, the chance that their personal vote will be decisive in an election is small, and (since they vote for a party and its entire program, rather than for individual policy items), the chances of supporting a party with which they agree on every issue are remote. Given these facts, rational ignorance is a sensible strategy: while a broad idea of what one stands for is useful, holding detailed opinions on every policy area is not. So how are voters, especially in a de aligning elector ate, to choose sensibly between parties? One answer is valence politics: voters decide on the basis of broad judgments of ‘what works’. I may not understand economic theory, may be confused by international politics, may be ignorant of social policy, but I do have a useful yardstick against which to judge governments especially: have they improved my standard of living or not? If the government can make me better off, it must be doing something right and hence probably deserves my support. If I become worse off, I might conclude the government is failing, and hence that I should support the opposition. This is the essence of valence politics: results matter. Much research on valence politics has concentrated on economic performance. Government popularity varies over time in step with the state of the economy. Some studies examine the impact of actual national economic indicators, most commonly the unemployment and in ﬂation rates. Others look at public perceptions of eco nomic performance – do people feel things are getting better or worse over time? Most studies conﬁrm that the better the economy performs, and the more afﬂuent voters feel, the more support the government of the day enjoys. In part, this is due to the effect of general eco nomic movements on voters’ personal circumstances (egocentric voting – do I feel better or worse off ?). But in part, too, it reﬂects a more contextual, or sociotropic, effect – irrespective of how I personally am faring, how are other people doing? Two factors limit the general applicability of these ﬁndings, however. First, what ‘counts’ as a good or bad economic performance is in part contextual. Over time voters can become accustomed to economic conditions which, a few years before, might have seemed highly problematic. Unemployment levels which would have been deemed unacceptably high in the 1960s were often seen as a marker of economic success after the high unemployment of the 1980s. This does not, of itself,

413

invalidate the economic vote model, but it does suggest that models need to be periodically recalibrated. Second, the extent to which governments are held to account for economic performance depends on how easy it is for voters to hold particular parties responsible for success or failure. Economic performance has a stronger impact on government support in countries with a tra dition of single party majority governments than in countries where multiparty coalition governments are the norm, and where accountability for policy can be less clear cut. Economic voting has geographical implications. Eco nomic performance varies from place to place. While some areas enjoy prosperity, others suffer austerity – and this geography can change over relatively short time periods. This means that voters’ egocentric and socio tropic evaluations may vary, depending on where they live. Individuals are more likely to be out of work themselves in areas where unemployment is high than in areas where it is low. But even where two individuals have identical levels of personal prosperity, they may have different views of the government’s handling of the economy if one lives in a depressed region and the other in a thriving one. As a consequence, the changing re gional and local geographies of support for governments are strongly inﬂuenced by the waxing and waning of regional and local economies: ceteris paribus, voters in prosperous areas support the government, while those in declining areas oppose it. We can illustrate this by examining recent British elections. A ﬁrst step is to demonstrate that voters are aware of their local economies. The 1997 British Election Survey (BES) asked respondents how they felt their personal ﬁnancial situation had changed over the previ ous year, how they thought the national economy had changed over the same period, and how they felt their local area had fared relative to the rest of the country since the 1992 election. Overall, the period between 1992 and 1997 was a good one for the UK economy: un employment fell almost everywhere and the economy grew quite strongly. However, the strength of the re covery varied from place to place. Voters noticed. Their opinions of economic change at all three scales (personal, regional, and national) were sensibly related to actual changes. Those who felt things had improved tended to live in areas with the largest average falls in unemploy ment, while those who felt things had worsened lived in areas with the lowest average falls (Table 6). And while local economic conditions were only relatively weakly related to evaluations of personal income, they were re lated more strongly to evaluations of the national, and most strongly of all to evaluations of the regional economy. Furthermore, voters’ party choices are inﬂuenced by their evaluations of their local area’s economic

414

Electoral Geography

performance. At the 1997 UK election, a Conservative government was defending its record against the Labour opposition. Among those who felt their local economy was performing much better than the national average, a near majority (49%) voted Conservative, while only a third voted Labour (Table 7). However, as perceptions of regional performance worsen, government support falls and opposition support grows. Further analysis demon strates that the effect is strongly inﬂuenced by voters’ attributions of responsibility for the state of the local economy (Table 8). Among those who held the gov ernment responsible for the state of their local economy in 1997, support for the Conservatives was 67% among those who felt their region had become much more prosperous, but only 7% among those who felt it had become much less well off: the equivalent ﬁgures for Labour support were 18% and 73%, respectively. But

Table 6 Retrospective economic evaluations and local economic conditions, 1997 Situation got

Mean % change in constituency Number unemployed, 1995 1997 Better

Area prosperity since last election UK economic situation last year Household ﬁnancial situation last year

Same

Worse

30.32

28.99

25.39

30.08

27.30

26.66

29.36

27.96

27.28

From: 1997 BES and constituency data.

Table 7 Perceptions of regional economic performance and vote, 1997 UK general election Since the last election, local area has become A lot more prosperous A little more prosperous Stayed about average A little less prosperous A lot less prosperous

Table 8

among voters who did not hold the government re sponsible, there was no real change in support for the government and opposition between those who felt the local economy had performed well and those who felt it had fared badly. Gubernatorial elections in the US reveal another di mension to the economic geography of elections. Vote shares for incumbent governors standing for reelection in states where the local economy was dominated by con ventional industries or by services were higher where the state economy was doing well than where it was per forming badly. However, the reelection chances of gov ernors in agricultural states were unaffected by local economic performance. This reﬂects the likely attribution of responsibility. Many things which inﬂuence proﬁts in agriculture are beyond a governor’s control – the weather, commodity prices, etc. – and it would not be reasonable to hold the incumbent responsible for them. But in states dominated by manufacturing and service industries, the incumbent is likely to have a greater direct inﬂuence on state economic performance. Attribution of responsibility matters.

% Voting for

Conservative

Labour

Other

49.0 36.2

32.0 40.0

19.0 23.8

32.2 18.3

45.7 58.7

22.1 23.0

10.4

68.3

21.3

The Geography of Electoral Campaigning The geography of an election can also be inﬂuenced by the direct campaigning activities of the parties them selves, which aim to achieve a variety of goals. Campaigns mobilize existing supporters, ensuring they vote for the party. They seek to win over uncommitted voters, whose support may change the election outcome. They try to discourage supporters of a party’s opponents from voting, by suggesting that the rival party has no chance of win ning. And they inform voters, of both the main campaign issues and the candidates’ identities (which can be useful if, for instance, friends and neighbors voting prevails). In part, this requires campaigns aimed at voters throughout the country. But in part, too, it demands targeting re sources on particular, pivotal contests and communities, where an extra effort might yield electoral rewards. The analysis of electoral campaigning has therefore become an integral part of electoral geography, overturning in the process the accepted wisdom – especially among UK

Perceptions of regional economic performance, vote, and attribution of responsibility, 1997 UK general election

Responsibility for local economy

Government % voting for

Other % voting for

Since the last election, local area has become

Conservative

Labour

Conservative

Labour

A lot more prosperous A little more prosperous Stayed about average A little less prosperous A lot less prosperous

67.3 47.2 30.2 11.5 7.0

18.4 31.8 49.4 66.6 73.1

31.4 27.3 33.8 37.8 26.2

43.1 47.3 42.6 37.8 47.6

Electoral Geography

political scientists – that the advent of television cam paigning in the 1950s had rendered local campaigning during a general election a superﬂuous anachronism. Effective campaigning requires the efﬁcient allocation of scarce resources across competing demands. In an election campaign, not all areas of the country are of equal importance to a party (especially under a plurality electoral system). In some seats, the party’s support is too low to give any realistic chance of winning there. In other seats, its popularity is so high that it can virtually guar antee election, even in a bad year nationally. A rational party will expend few resources ﬁghting in either kind of seat (where the party is unpopular, it may have too few resources to mount an effective campaign, even if it wanted to). Rather, it should concentrate its efforts in marginal areas, where a relatively small number of votes either way could mean the difference between winning and losing. There is substantial evidence that parties do indeed behave in this manner. In Britain, for instance, the main parties identify strategic target seats for extra campaign effort, and largely ignore other seats. This can be illustrated by the relationship between how much a party spent on its constituency campaign at the 2005 British general election, and how marginal the seat was for the party (we concentrate only on English constituencies in this example). Marginality is deﬁned here as the difference between a party’s constituency vote share at the previous (2001) election and (if the

party won the seat then) the vote share of the party in second place or (if the party lost the seat) the share of the party which did win. Each party’s marginality measure is negative where it lost a seat, and positive where it won. The closer the measure is to zero, the more marginal – and hence competitive – the seat is for the party. Graphs for the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats (the three main parties in the UK) all show similar pat terns (Figures 5–7). Campaign spending (as a percentage of the legally permitted maximum in each seat) in 2005 was lowest in seats where the party had lost by a wide margin, reached a peak in the party’s most marginal seats, and (for Labour and to a lesser extent the Conservatives) declined somewhat in the party’s safer seats. What is more, constituency campaigning does make a difference to each party’s performance (Table 9). The more effort parties put into their campaigns locally, the more votes they gather themselves, and the fewer votes go to their rivals. Controlling for how well each party did in each constituency at the preceding election, the more the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats spent on their local campaigns in 2005, the better they did themselves, and the worse their rivals did. Labour’s constituency campaign seems to have misﬁred in 2005, however. While the party’s campaign efforts had the desired negative effect on the Conservative vote, it did nothing to boost either its own vote or its ability to see off challenges from the Liberal Democrats.

Conservative campaign spend as % of max, 2005

120.00

100.00

80.00

60.00

40.00

20.00

0.00 −80.00

−60.00

−40.00

415

−20.00

0.00

20.00

40.00

Conservative % marginality, 2001

Figure 5 Conservative constituency marginality and campaign expenditure in England at the 2005 general election.

416

Electoral Geography

120.00

Labour campaign spend as % of max, 2005

100.00

80.00

60.00

40.00

20.00

0.00 −60.00

−40.00

−20.00

0.00

20.00

40.00

60.00

80.00

Labour % marginality, 2001

Figure 6 Labour constituency marginality and campaign expenditure in England at the 2005 general election.

120.00

Lib Dem campaign spend as % of max, 2005

100.00

80.00

60.00

40.00

20.00

0.00 −80.00

−60.00

−40.00

−20.00

0.00

20.00

40.00

Lib Dem % marginality, 2001

Figure 7 Liberal Democrat constituency marginality and campaign expenditure in England at the 2005 general election.

Electoral Geography

Table 9 The impact of constituency campaigning on party vote share at the 2005 UK general election in England: regression models

Table 10 Campaign spending and incumbent performance in the 1974 92 US Senate elections Incumbent % vote share

% vote 2005 Conservative Conservative % vote 2001 Labour % vote 2001 Lib Dem % vote 2001 Conservative % campaign spend 2005 Labour % campaign spend 2005 Lib Dem % campaign spend 2005 Constant R a b

2

OLS model Labour

Lib Dem

0.99a 0.82a b

0.60

417

b

TSLS model

Challenger spending Incumbent spending

5.32 2.58b

6.50b 7.44b

R2

0.57

0.46

Signiﬁcant at p ¼ 0.05. Signiﬁcant at p ¼ 0.01. From: Gerber, A. (1998). Estimating the effects of comparing spending on senate election outcomes using instrumental variables. American Political Science Review 92, 401 411. a

b

0.05a

0.04a

0.04a

0.01a

0.00

0.00

0.02a

0.02a

0.12b

1.01

4.87

9.90

0.95

0.96

0.89

signiﬁcant at p ¼ 0.05. signiﬁcant at p ¼ 0.01.

Similar results are obtained in US Congressional elections, though here the focus is more on spending by individual candidates than by parties. Incumbent candi dates and challengers also differ in the effectiveness of their campaign spending. The more a challenger spends on the campaign, the greater the share of the vote he or she gathers. However, incumbents receive few extra beneﬁts from campaign spending – and may even do worse the more they spend. The reason for this apparent paradox is that, thanks to the publicity of ofﬁce, incum bents are better known than challengers. Increased campaign spending by challengers raises their proﬁle with the electorate. But increased spending by incum bents is an indication of weakness, since it is likely to be triggered by the threat of a strong challenger. However, this result remains controversial, and its analysis raises difﬁcult methodological questions. Work by Alan Gerber (1998) suggests not only that incumbent spending in US Senate elections has a signiﬁcant positive impact on in cumbent vote share, but that when two stage least squares (TSLS) regression is used in preference to OLS, the impact of incumbent spending on incumbent per formance is comparable in size (though opposite in ef fect) to that of challenger spending (Table 10). This controversy notwithstanding, there is general agreement that campaign spending, especially by chal lengers, is electorally consequential. There is, however, little evidence that constituency campaigning imparts substantial new information to voters (beyond the iden tities of the main candidates – though this can of itself win votes). Rather, the main impacts seem to come through a combination of information about the con stituency political context and mobilization of one’s

supporters. This can be illustrated by looking at strategic voting and at the geography of electoral turnout. Strategic voting occurs when a voter’s preferred can didate stands no chance of winning a constituency and she votes for her second preference where that candidate has a better chance against a third candidate she strongly op poses. The decision whether or not to vote strategically is contextual, only making sense in the light of one’s favored party’s prospects in the seat where one votes. Parties can exploit this in their constituency campaigns by drawing attention to the structure of local party competition where this is likely to attract strategic voters to them. At the 2001 UK general election, Labour and Liberal Democrats were ideologically close, and distinct from the Conservatives. In seats where they were in second place behind a Con servative incumbent, or which they held against a Con servative challenge, Liberal Democrat campaign literature pointed out that while a Labour vote there would be wasted (as the Labour candidate had no chance of victory) voting strategically for the Liberal Democrat would pro vide the best chance of preventing a Conservative victory. Such appeals work. Around 10% of respondents to the 2001 BES said they voted strategically: about 70% of these strategic voters supported either Labour or the Liberal Democrats (Table 11). More voters supported the Liberal Democrats for strategic reasons where it was in ﬁrst or second place in a seat at the previous election than where it was in third place or worse: 30% of Liberal Democrat voters in seats where the party was second to the Con servatives voted strategically, as did 45% of the party’s supporters in seats where it was in ﬁrst place in 1997 and the Conservatives were in second, whereas in seats where the main battle was between Conservatives and Labour, only 20% of Liberal Democrat voters said they voted strategically. In general those who voted Liberal Democrat strategically really preferred Labour – especially in seats where Labour was in third place or worse: almost two thirds of Liberal Democrat strategic voters in seats where a Conservative incumbent faced a Liberal Democrat in second place would have voted for Labour had they not voted strategically.

418

Electoral Geography

Table 11

Strategic voting for the Liberal Democrats at the 2001 UK general election

Constituency result

% voting LD strategically

1st

2 nd

Con Con Lab LD

Lab LD Con Con

1st preference for LD strategic voters

20.0 30.0 20.3 44.9

Con

Lab

LD

14.3 15.4 30.8 22.0

42.9 65.4 34.6 54.9

42.9 11.5 23.1 15.9

80.0

R sq linear = 0.508

% Turnout 2005

70.0

60.0

50.0

40.0 0.0

10.0

20.0

30.0

40.0

50.0

60.0

70.0

% Majority 2001

Figure 8 Constituency turnout and marginality at the 2005 British general election.

Constituency campaigns also seek to maximize sup port where it is most needed – in the most marginal constituencies. As the 2005 UK general election showed, turnout is higher in the most marginal seats (where the campaign is ﬁercest and most effort goes into mobiliza tion) than in safer seats, where there is less to gain (Figure 8). The geography of electoral campaigning plays an important role in creating the wider patterns of electoral geography, therefore.

From Votes to Seats: Geography and Electoral Systems Geography can affect election results in another, more mechanical, manner, through its impact on the con version of votes into seats. This occurs because most

electoral systems divide a state up into electoral districts, each of which elects members to the national parliament. However, because party supporters tend to be clustered geographically, the imposition of a grid of electoral dis tricts over a country can affect election outcomes, a consequence of the modiﬁable areal unit problem. Im agine a country, divided into 9 small areas, each with 1000 voters (Figure 9a). Only two parties (L & R) con test elections there, and party R has more supporters than party L. The country employs a plurality electoral system and is divided into three constituencies, each with 3000 voters. There are several ways in which this could be achieved, using the nine small districts as building blocks. Two are shown here. Without any voters chan ging their preferences, we can change the result of the election by using different constituency boundaries. If we deﬁne three seats which all run from east to west (panel b:

Electoral Geography

L: 560 R: 440

L: 520 R: 480

L: 120 R: 880

Table 12 Simulating the redistricting in Shefﬁeld, 1992

L: 535 R: 465

L: 210 R: 790

L: 300 R: 700

Distribution of seats

L: 780 R: 220

L: 412 R: 588

L: 350 R: 650

Overall vote shares: L: 3787 (42%); R: 5213 (58%). (a)

L: 560 R: 440

L: 520 R: 480

L: 120 R: 880

L: 535 R: 465

L: 210 R: 790

L: 300 R: 700

L: 780 R: 220

L: 412 R: 588

L: 350 R: 650

Seats won: L: 1; R: 2. (b) L: 560 R: 440

L: 520 R: 480

L: 120 R: 880

L: 535 R: 465

L: 210 R: 790

L: 300 R: 700

L: 780 R: 220

L: 412 R: 588

L: 350 R: 650

Seats won: L: 2; R: 1. (c)

Figure 9 The effect of varying the geography of electoral districts: a hypothetical example: (a) the underlying geography of party support; (b) constituency geography I; and (c) constituency geography II.

the constituency boundaries are the solid lines), party R will win two seats (the two more northerly ones) while party L wins one seat, the shaded constituency in the south of the country. But another possible constituency geography (shown in panel c) would produce only 1 seat for party R and 2 (shaded) for party L: the least popular party would win the election. Designing real electoral districts is considerably more complex. Taylor (1973) identiﬁed a sample of 700 dif ferent ways of redrawing Iowa’s Congressional districts. In early 1990s Britain, meanwhile, Shefﬁeld’s 29 wards could be combined into six constituencies in 1515 dif ferent ways, such that no constituency’s electorate devi ated from the average by more than 8%. But the decision can have partisan consequences. In Shefﬁeld, 1054 of the possible plans would have likely given the Conservatives one seat locally, Labour four, and the Liberal Democrats one. The remaining solutions would have yielded dif ferent mixes of partisan outcomes: while some would have left the city with no Conservative MPs, for instance, others would have given the party two seats (Table 12). Furthermore, population change creates a need peri odically to revise the boundaries of electoral districts, as some areas grow and others decline. Most modern

partisan

419

consequences

Conservative

Labour

Liberal Democrat

Number of solutions

1 2 0 1 0

3 3 4 4 5

2 1 2 1 1

64 376 14 1054 7

of

electoral systems assume that each vote is of equal in ﬂuence. Failure to revise electoral boundaries in line with population change undermines this aim, however: voters in districts with falling populations end up with more inﬂuence, other things being equal, than those in growing districts. Where constituency size varies systematically with party support, this can result in malapportionment. A party which tends to win in the smaller seats is at an advantage over a rival which wins in larger seats as it takes fewer votes on average to elect each of the former’s MPs than to elect the latter’s. Such malapportionment can occur deliberately or by accident. In the UK, Labour has tended to be the beneﬁciary of an accidental malapportionment, as it is popular in areas which have lost population steadily since the mid twentieth century, such as the inner cities and Scotland. Excessive malapportionment is commonly avoided by periodic revisions of constituency boundaries, normally with the aim of making electorates as near to equal in all districts as possible. In the US , for instance, reviews take place after each decennial census. In the UK, Boundary Commissions have reviewed parliamentary constitu encies roughly every 11 years since the late 1940s. The rules governing this process vary from country to coun try, altering the frequency with which reviews take place, the nature of the personnel involved (nonpartisan civil servants or government appointees, for instance), the amount of input from political parties, the extent of public involvement, and so on. The alteration of constituency boundaries also gives rise to another potential electoral abuse, gerrymandering. In a gerrymander, constituencies are drawn deliberately to maximize one party’s representation at the expense of another, as illustrated in Figure 9. Gerrymanders can work by concentration – allowing a party to win a few seats by very large margins, hence wasting many of its votes in seats that it wins – or by dispersion – spreading a party’s supporters thinly across several seats in order to deny it a winning majority in any one. The abuse is most common in systems which allow parties a strong input – either de jure or de facto – into the redistricting process. Redistrictings in the US have produced a variety of bi zarrely shaped districts which owe their existence to partisan calculations. Richard Morrill’s (1973) analysis of

420

Electoral Geography

Table 13

The redistricting of Washington State, 1972: expected political impact of alternate plans 1970 result

Expected number of seats

1965 districts

Court

Democrat

Republican

1972 districts

1972 results

Senate Safe Democrat Lean Democrat Toss-up Democrat

8 13 5

8 12 10

5 20 6

9 10 6

8 13 7

Toss-up Republican Lean Republican Safe Republican Total

5 11 7 49

12 7 49

10 8 49

18 6 49

3 11 7 49

House Safe Democrat Lean Democrat Toss-up Democrat

15 28 8

16 25 19

10 40 12

17 21 12

16 27 14

Toss-up Republican Lean Republican Safe Republican Total

12 25 14 99

24 14 98

20 16 98

36 12 98

3 24 14 98

From: Morrill, R. L. (1973). Ideal and reality in reapportionment. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 63, 463 477.

the 1972 redrawing of Senate and House electoral dis tricts in Washington State provides an example. Different proposals for new boundaries were made by him for the courts and by local Democrats and Republicans: those proposed by the parties were designed to maximize the number of seats in which they would be likely to win by relatively narrow rather than large margins (Table 13). To minimize the risk of gerrymandering, some countries either exclude parties and the public entirely from redistricting or grant them a relatively minor and re stricted role, leaving the ﬁnal decisions in the hands of independent civil servants (as in the UK). Gerrymandering and malapportionment are not re stricted simply to plurality electoral systems. Boundaries can also be manipulated for partisan advantage in PR systems, for instance by controlling how many MPs are returned from each multimember district. This affects the proportionality of the result. A party might seek smaller constituencies where it is strong (in which case proportionality will decline, and it stands to win more MPs than its vote share strictly entitles it to) and larger constituencies where it is weak (to increase proportion ality and hence guarantee it at least some MPs). The translation of votes into seats can result in electoral bias, whereby one party systematically gains more seats than its vote share strictly entitles it to on a proportional representation basis. A winner’s bias is a familiar feature of most plurality systems: the party with the largest vote share normally wins an even larger share of seats in Parliament. The 2005 UK general election provides a striking example. Labour gained the largest vote share of any party, though at just 35%, this was the smallest winning party vote share in the UK in the

modern era. Thanks in part to the winner’s bias, the party won 55% of seats in Parliament, giving it a clear working majority. But in very close contests, the winner’s bias can disappear, and the electoral outcome can be perverse. In the 2000 US Presidential election, Al Gore was mar ginally the more popular candidate, gaining 48.3% of the national vote compared to George Bush’s 48.0%. But the geography of Bush’s support was more efﬁcient from the point of view of obtaining support in the Electoral College than was Gore’s. While Bush won 271 Electoral College votes, Gore won 266. The slightly less popular Bush became President. Even where a party loses an election, a biased elect oral system can protect its representation. One way of demonstrating bias at a particular election is to apply a uniform swing to all constituencies in order to simulate a result in which both parties tie nationally in terms of vote share. If there is no systematic bias in favor of one party rather than the other, then the two should win identical numbers of seats at equal vote shares nationally. But if, when their votes tie, one party still wins more seats than the other, then the electoral system is biased in favor of the former party. Furthermore, it is possible to break down the sources of bias, in terms of malapportionment, differential turnout, and variations in vote efﬁciency. If one party is more successful than the other in seats with smaller electorates and lower turnouts, or if it enjoys smaller majorities where it wins and gains smaller vote shares in seats that it loses than does its rival (and hence wastes fewer votes), then a plurality system will tend to be biased in its favor. Electoral bias has now been in vestigated in many electoral systems, including the US, the UK, and New Zealand.

Electoral Geography

Scale and Electoral Geography One of the most striking, though little commented upon, features of the electoral geography literature is that most studies are contained within national or subnational spatial frames. We have studies of American elections, British elections, French elections, national elections, local elections, and so on. But very few have looked at electoral geography on a wider canvas. This is doubly surprising given the rise of comparative politics in the related ﬁeld of political science. Two notable exceptions stand out. The international distribution of democracies as op posed to authoritarian governments shows a striking core–periphery pattern. Most core states are functioning democracies while many (though not all – India is a clear exception, for instance) peripheral states are not. Taylor accounts for this in terms of the surplus available for redistribution nationally. In core states, there is sufﬁcient surplus to allow a relatively open political debate over who beneﬁts. But in the periphery limited surpluses raise the stakes: local elites are more reluctant to share their gains with the poor and hence are less likely to allow the poor access to politics through elections. This can lead to a ‘politics of failure’ in which experiments with electoral democracy in many peripheral states are either short lived, ending in coups, or fail to establish long lasting parties with reliable geographies of support. Another notable exception can be found in O’Loughlin et al.’s work on the spread of democracy, which can be set against the backdrop of initial reactions to the collapse of Communism in the early 1990s. A triumphalist rhetoric emerged among some Western commentators (most notably from Francis Fukuyama) to the effect that democracy had ‘won’, and would now spread inexorably to all countries. O’Loughlin et al. provide an important corrective, showing that while democracy did spread from country to country in a dif fusion like manner, this spread was not inexorable, but was subject to reversals and setbacks. Previous waves of democratization had stalled and been to some extent reversed, and there were no grounds to expect the post Cold War wave to be any different. In the light of international politics post 9/11, his results seem prescient. These exceptions notwithstanding, however, electoral geography remains primarily concerned with intra national, not international variations, and with elections in established rather than emerging democracies. The development of a global, comparativist electoral geog raphy remains a challenge for the future. See also: Citizenship; Democracy; Ecological Fallacy; Economic Geography; Electoral Cartography; Electoral Districts; Entropy-Maximising Models; Gerrymandering;

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Modiﬁable Areal Unit Problem; Neighborhood Effects; Political Geography; Political Representation; Place, Politics of; Regression, Linear and Nonlinear; Social Class; Social Geography; Social Movements; Spatially Autoregressive Models; Spatial Science; Structuration Theory.

Further Reading Agnew, J. (1987). Place and Politics: The Geographical Mediation of State and Society. London: Allen and Unwin. Archer, J. C. and Taylor, P. J. (1981). Section and Party: A Political Geography of American Presidential Elections from Andrew Jackson to Ronald Reagan. Chichester: John Wiley. Butler, D. and Stokes, D. (1974). Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice (2nd edn.). London: Macmillan. Cox, K. R. (1969). The voting decision in a spatial context. Progress in Geography 1, 81 117. Dalton, R. J. (2006). Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (4th edn.). Washington, DC: CQ Press. Ebeid, M. and Rodden, J. (2006). Economic geography and economic voting: Evidence from the US states. British Journal of Political Science 36, 527 547. Gerber, A. (1998). Estimating the effect of campaign spending on Senate election outcomes using instrumental variables. American Political Science Review 92, 401 411. Gimpel, J. E. and Schuknecht, J. E. (2003). Patchwork Nation: Sectionalism and Political Change in American Politics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology 78, 1360 1380. Gudgin, G. and Taylor, P. J. (1979). Seats, Votes and the Spatial Organization of Elections. London: Pion. Huckfeldt, R. and Sprague, J. (1995). Citizens, Politics and Social Communications: Information and Inﬂuence in an Election Campaign. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ikeda, K. and Huckfeldt, R. (2001). Political communication and disagreement among citizens in Japan and the United States. Political Behavior 23, 23 51. Jacobson, G. C. (1978). The effects of campaign spending in Congressional elections. American Political Science Review 72, 469 491. Johnston, R. J. (1983). The neighbourhood effect won’t go away: Observations on the electoral geography of England in the light of Dunleavy’s critique. Geoforum 14, 161 168. Johnston, R. J. (1986). The neighbourhood effect revisited: Spatial science or political regionalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 4, 41 55. Johnston, R. J. and Hay, A. M. (1983). Voter transition probability estimates: An entropy maximizing approach. European Journal of Political Research 11, 93 98. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (2006). Putting Voters in Their Place: Geography and Elections in Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnston, R. J., Pattie, C. J., Dorling, D. F. L. and Rossiter, D. J. (2001). From Votes to Seats: The Operation of the UK Electoral System since 1945. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Johnston, R. J., Shelley, F. M. and Taylor, P. J. (eds.) (1990). Developments in Electoral Geography. Routledge: London. Jones, K., Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (1992). People, places and regions: Exploring the use of multi level modelling in the analysis of electoral data. British Journal of Political Science 22, 343 380. Key, V. O. (1949). Southern Politics in State and Nation. New York: Alfred Knopf. Key, V. O. (1955). A theory of critical elections. Journal of Politics 17, 3 18. King, G. (1997). A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Lazarsfeld, P., Berelson, B. and Gaudel, H. (1948). The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Columbia University Press. Lipset, S. M. and Rokkan, S. E. (1967). Cleavage structures, party systems and voter alignments. In Lipset, S. M. & Rokkan, S. E. (eds.) Party Systems and Voter Alignments, pp 3 64. New York: The Free Press. Miller, W. L. (1977). Electoral Dynamics in Britain since 1918. London: Macmillan. Monmonier, M. (2001). Bushmanders and Bullwinkles: How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Morrill, R. L. (1973). Ideal and reality in reapportionment. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 63, 463 477. O’Loughlin, J., Flint, C. and Anselin, J. (1994). The geography of the Nazi vote: Context, confession and class in the Reichstag election of 1930. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84, 351 380. O’Loughlin, J., Ward, M. D. and Lofdahl, C. et al. (1998). The diffusion of democracy, 1946 1994. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88, 545 574. Osei Kwame, P. and Taylor, P. J. (1984). A politics of failure: The political geography of Ghanaian elections, 1954 1979. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 74, 574 589.

Paddison, R. (1976). Spatial bias and electoral redistricting in proportional representation systems: A case study of the Republic of Ireland. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe 67, 230 240. Parker, A. J. (1982). The friends and neighbours voting effect in the Galway West constituency. Political Geography Quarterly 1, 243 262. Prescott, J. R. V. (1959). The functions and methods of electoral geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49, 296 304. Shelley, F. M., Archer, J. C., Davidson, F. M. and Brunn, S. D. (1996). Political Geography of the United States. New York: Guilford. Siegfried, A. (1913). Tableau politique de la France de l’ouest. Paris: A. Colin. Taylor, P. J. (1973). Some implications of the spatial organization of elections. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers 60, 121 136. Taylor, P. J. and Flint, C. (2000). Political Geography: World Economy, Nation State and Locality (4th edn.). Harlow: Prentice Hall. Taylor, P. and Johnston, R. J. (1979). Geography of Elections. London: Croom Helm. Tingsten, H. (1937). Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistics. London: PS King and Son. Whitten, G. D. and Palmer, H. D. (1999). Cross national analyses of economic voting. Electoral Studies 18, 49 67.

Embeddedness M. Hess, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Human geography has witnessed a number of epistemo logical changes over the last half century. These include the quantitative revolution, behavioral approaches, radical political economy, and, more recently, the cultural and relational ‘turns’, which also resonated in economic geography. In the context of the latter, embeddedness has become a widely used concept. It refers to the social, cultural, and institutional basis of economic activity and has been applied in numerous studies since the 1990s. For many authors, embeddedness has been a key element in explaining the successful economic development of re gions, based on speciﬁc social arrangements and rela tionships that help to establish mutual trust and shape collective strategies and goals. By emphasizing the social and institutional foundations of economic behavior, the embeddedness concept – deﬁned as a set of ongoing social relations – moves beyond an atomistic reading of human action and rejects the orthodox economic notion of a ‘homo oeconomicus’. Thus, it represents an analytical framework better situated to deal with the complexities of real world socioeconomic development. Like most the ories used in human geography, the origins of the embeddedness concept are to be found outside the dis cipline of geography and can be traced back to the 1940s.

Intellectual Origins of the Concept The ﬁrst time the term embeddedness was used in a conceptual way was in the seminal work by the Hungarian intellectual Karl Polanyi, The great transformation. Pub lished in 1944, this book was a major stepping stone in rethinking the relationship between economy and society. Polanyi’s central argument is that nonmarket systems of economic exchange are embedded in society and en meshed in institutions. He identiﬁes three different in stitutional patterns of organizing economic activities: householding, reciprocity, and redistribution. These sys tems of exchange are based on shared values and norms, and constituted not by monetary goals but by common social and cultural bonds. Hence, economy is seen as a part of the broader society, an instituted process or what Polanyi calls a substantive deﬁnition of economics. This he puts in contrast to the formal economics applied by market ideologists and economists at his time and based on ideas of proﬁt maximizing behavior, rational calculation, and unlimited information in a self regulating

marketplace. Analyzing the economic history of nine teenth century Europe to illustrate his argument, Polanyi demonstrated how modern market economies became increasingly disembedded from society. Under the free market doctrine, he concludes, instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embed ded in the economic system by monetarizing and economizing the cultural and social elements of society. Critics have pointed to the fact that Polanyi describes modern market economies as disembedded, although in reality even the most liberal economies arguably are enmeshed in institutions, that is, embedded. This cri tique, however, is based on a misreading of his embedd edness concept, as Polanyi, whose argument is indeed a complex one and hence easy to misinterpret, sought to expose the utopian nature of pure market societies as advocated by economists and political ideologists at his time. For Polanyi, every exchange system including the market system is socially constructed and embedded, a central insight about the economy–society relationship that subsequently would become highly inﬂuential in economic sociology and cognate disciplines. One school of thought that echoes the arguments put forward by Karl Polanyi is the National Business Systems literature as developed by Richard Whitley and his colleagues. Albeit not explicitly using the term embeddedness, they share the view that society and its institutions are crucial in shaping the economy, providing different systems of co ordination and control that ultimately embed economies in societies in variegated ways. The most inﬂuential writings, however, to ﬁrmly establish the notion of embeddedness within the social sciences after Polanyi, stem from the work of economic sociologist Mark Granovetter. He can be credited with coining the term ‘new economic sociology’ and has since become the most widely cited author of the embeddedness literature. In his seminal 1985 article, ‘The problem of embedd edness’, Granovetter picks up Polanyi’s main theme, the relationship between the economic and the social. His approach departs from Polanyi – the father of the embeddedness concept – in a number of signiﬁcant ways. While both authors show their dissatisfaction with the absolutization of the market in orthodox economics, Granovetter arguably attempts to reconcile economics and sociology rather than dismiss the discipline and its intel lectual project as ultimately utopian, as Polanyi does. While the latter emphasizes the historically contingent nature of society–economy relationships, Granovetter

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aims for universal explanations of the social embeddedness of economic action. In his view, the concept of embedd edness serves to avoid both the undersocialized views of economic action such as homo oeconomicus behavior and rational choice assumptions in neoclassical economics and the oversocialized views of human action as based solely on internalized values and norms, a concept drawn mainly from Parsonsian sociology. At the center of Granovetter’s embeddedness concept are not the abstract, structural relations between economy and society, but the concrete personal relations and struc tures of these relations (i.e., networks) that affect economic action, outcomes, and institutions. In other words, it is the relational (dyadic) and structural (network) embeddedness that explains economic action and outcomes. Thus Gran ovetter ‘scales down’ Polanyi’s original concept of embeddedness by switching the focus toward the analytical scale of individual and collective actors in social systems of exchange, rather than the systems themselves. In the wake of Granovetter’s 1985 article, a vast body of literature has developed in the social sciences that used embeddedness as a central analytical category. Many attempts have been made to reﬁne the concept and produce more differentiated understandings of embedd edness by further deconstructing the notion of social embeddedness. One typology, for instance, proposed by Sharon Zukin and Paul DiMaggio, distinguishes four forms of embeddedness: cognitive, cultural, structural, and political. Other classiﬁcations followed suit and have been applied in organization and business studies, among other disciplines (see Table 1 for a summary). At the beginning of the 1990s, the ﬁrst researchers in economic geography also started to adopt the concept.

Economic Geography and Embeddedness In hindsight, we are able to identify two major factors that contributed to the growing interest in noneconomic Table 1

factors by economic geographers over the last 20 years. At an epistemological level, there was an increasing awareness among many geographers of the limitations of mainstream approaches to economic geography. More and more human geographers became concerned about the ‘spatial fetishism’ of the discipline. This is not to say that social interaction has never been a subject of geo graphical enquiry. Indeed, there have been numerous critical voices in the radical literature of the 1970s and 1980s. However, they often have been neglected or ig nored in a thitherto prevalent tendency of treating social relationships as purely spatial relationships. Over the last two decades, this was increasingly criticized, calling for a different ontology of space as being socially constructed and shaped by human practices (relational space). At a more empirical level, the emergence of the embeddedness concept in economic geography was as sociated with a growing interest in the analysis of tech nologically advanced and economically competitive regions since the late 1980s. It was this shift of attention away from declining and old industrialized areas and toward these new types of regions – variously called creative milieus, learning regions, or networked regions – that coincided with a conceptual shift away from more traditional explanatory tools such as transaction cost theory or agglomeration economics toward the inclusion of noneconomic factors like embeddedness, social capital, and trust as determinants of regional socioeconomic development. Thus a large body of work evolved that has since become known as ‘new regionalism’ and has had an enormous impact not only in the academic discipline of human geography but also in policy making circles from the local to the supranational scale. Two of the most inﬂuential articles that helped to ﬁrmly establish the embeddedness concept in geography and regional studies have been published in 1992. The ﬁrst, written by Peter Dicken and Nigel Thrift for the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, set out to reconsider the spatial and geographical conditions

Different views on embeddedness Who?

In what?

Geographical scale

Polanyi’s ‘Great transformation’ Business systems approach

‘The economy’, systems of exchange Firms

No particular scale, but emphasis on the nation-state Nation-state, ‘home territory’

New economic sociology

Economic behavior, individuals, and ﬁrms Firms, networks

‘Society’, social and cultural structures Institutional and regulatory frameworks Networks of ongoing social (interpersonal) relations Time, space, social structures, markets, technological systems, political systemsy Networks and institutional settings

Organization and business studies

Economic geography

Firms

No particular scale No particular scale

Local/regional

Reproduced with permission from Hess, M. (2004). ‘Spatial’ relationships? Towards a reconceptualization of embeddedness. Progress in Human Geography 28(2), p. 173, & Sage Publications, 2004, by permission of Sage Publications Ltd.

Embeddedness

of economic organizations and enterprises. The authors argued that business organizations are produced through a historical process of embedding whereby they interact with the speciﬁc characteristics of their ‘home territories’ and the characteristics of other regions they operate in. This echoed Polanyi’s analysis of the economy–society relationship and provided a powerful critique of in creasingly fashionable ‘ﬂat Earth’ theories where geog raphy doesn’t matter anymore in a globalized world. According to Dicken and Thrift, rather than moving toward global homogenization the territorial embedd edness of business enterprises remains crucial in their production and reproduction. In other words, economic actors like ﬁrms do things differently depending on the nature of their cultural, political, social, and territorial embeddedness. The second paper to have a considerable impact early on, authored by the late Bennett Harrison and published in Regional Studies, is a sympathetic critique of the in dustrial districts literature, initially based on neoclassical agglomeration and growth pole theories from Alfred Marshall to Francois Perroux and Raymond Vernon. While Harrison acknowledges some explanatory power of these approaches, like Granovetter he criticizes the undersocialized (or disembedded) conception of human action in these theories, ignoring or neglecting the ‘his torical and cultural vestiges’ that shape and structure interpersonal and interﬁrm relationships and therefore should be regarded as an integral part of explaining the formation of industrial districts and similar territorial economic conﬁgurations. For Harrison, the industrial district model represents a particularly strong form of embedding economic or business relations into a broader social and societal fabric, ultimately leading to regional economic success through the seemingly contradictory process of cooperation and competition (or co opetition). The introduction of the embeddedness concept into economic geography has clearly helped to refocus on the social and cultural foundations of economic activity in order to explain regional socioeconomic development. Whereas traditional economic theories of regional de velopment tended to focus on one set of actors only, namely the ﬁrms, the embeddedness view also takes into account other groups of actors and nonﬁrm institutions that are important to create an ‘institutional thickness’ that is crucial in generating positive economic outcomes for any region through networked forms of local and regional governance. The four factors that contribute to institutional thickness are: (1) a strong institutional presence (e.g., of education and research institutions, unions, government and development agencies, etc.); (2) a high level of interaction between the different types of actors involved; (3) deﬁned structures of domination and/or coalition; and (4) a mutual awareness of being involved in a common enterprise (or what can be called a

425

common economic agenda based on a speciﬁc regional identity or culture). A strong and positive combination of these factors serves to consolidate the local and regional embeddedness of the economic system. Such a reasoning resonated well with policy makers at different levels, as it provided concrete starting points for them to try and increase regional competitiveness in an increasingly neoliberal, competitive global environment. Trying to replicate the success of highly embedded, successful regions – high tech based and otherwise – has since become a major political endeavor, often under the label of ‘cluster policies’ to stimulate regional economic growth. Arguably, this has helped to reestablish the dis cipline of economic geography as policy relevant and being recognized by other disciplines, as well as the wider public. However, to some critics the new regionalism of the 1990s with its emphasis on territorial embeddedness as an important factor in achieving innovation and com petitive success has led to a spatial fetishization of the local/regional, while the concept of embeddedness has been inextricably linked with the local and regional scale, at the expense of other possible translocal links. Recent work in economic geography has started to question the idea that the local or regional level is the only spatial logic of embeddedness, and has set out to conceptualize embeddedness in a way that helps to take space and scale seriously in analyzing embedded relationships, while at the same time avoiding the hitherto overterritorialized views of the new regionalism literature.

Spaces and Scales of Embeddedness It certainly is to the credit of economic geography that space has become a signiﬁcant element in conceptual izing embeddedness. However, as discussed above, most of the literature has shown a tendency to overemphasize the local and regional scale of embeddedness as the most important. One of the main reasons for this view – apart from the role of institutional thickness and the continued importance of Marshallian agglomeration economies – is the assumption that spatial proximity and hence local embeddedness is essential to generate trust and avoid malfeasance in regional networks of economic activity. The underlying argument is that trust is difﬁcult to achieve over long distances, as face to face interaction is needed to create trust in the ﬁrst place. Following this very same logic, it is argued that globalization and space– time distance are strongly linked to a state of dis embeddedness, whereby social relations are detached from their local and regional context of interaction. That point has been made in Anthony Giddens’ analysis of modernity, where localized, personal relationships based on trust have been replaced by trust in reliance upon abstract expert systems like supranational organizations,

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Embeddedness

scientiﬁc bodies, or political and ﬁnancial institutions. Going back to original conceptualizations, this bears a strong resemblance to Polanyi’s analysis of the dis embedded market society. So far, however, no theoretical foundation of the scalar argument has been provided to substantiate the claim that trust – and therefore embeddedness – can only occur in spatial proximity. On the contrary, Giddens himself argues that trust is related to absence in time and space, as trust is not necessary if other peoples’ activities are constantly visible. By the same token, he states that the disembedding power of globalization has not eradicated the importance of personal relations, but these, too, now stretch over time and over space, so that personal trust has become de localized as well. In other words, the multiscalar nature of embeddedness has become some thing that needs to be taken into consideration when applying the concept in economic geography and other social sciences. Integrating the insights of original the orists like Polanyi and Granovetter and scrutinizing the spatial, scalar, and not least temporal nature embedding (and disembedding) processes, the very concept of embeddedness has recently been reworked to provide a comprehensive yet consistent typology of embeddedness as a heuristic framework to analyze society and economy in space. Three basic dimensions of embeddedness – analytically distinct but strongly interwoven – have been put forward: societal, network, and territorial embedd edness (see Figure 1). Based on Polanyi’s initial ideas, societal embeddedness considers the extent to which economic action is inﬂu enced by the social and cultural background of the actors. As many studies have demonstrated, societal embedd edness or where an actor comes from is important in

analyzing economic behavior and economic outcomes. As many studies have shown, companies operating in a global economy still tend to keep many of their ‘home territory’ characteristics and how they act abroad is – despite globalization – still very much grounded in their societal ‘heritage’. Likewise, work on transnational entrepreneurs has demonstrated how migrant com munities – while becoming enmeshed in their host re gions’ economy – still keep strong personal and business relationships with their countries of origin, again dis playing a high degree of societal embeddedness. Following Granovetter’s work, network embeddedness refers to the fact that individuals and organizations do not act in isolation, but always within networks of rela tionships, regardless of their countries of origin or the places these actors operate in. In such a relational view, the degree of embeddedness depends on the stability and durability of relationships (relational embeddedness) and networks (structural embeddedness). Network embedd edness therefore emphasizes the fact that economic ac tion – despite considerable autonomy of actors – is neither purely economic and rational, nor is it solely based on an actor’s inscribed attributes and internalized social norms and values, but always in relation to some one else. The process of embedding and disembedding thus can be seen as a result of building, retaining, and losing trust between the different network agents. The extent to which an actor or set of actors is ‘an chored’ in particular places and regional networks is captured by the notion of territorial embeddedness. While it is not the only spatial logic of socioeconomic relations, as discussed above, it clearly is an important element of the space economy. Actors become territo rially embedded by absorbing and – in some cases – being

New economic sociology

Polanyi’s ‘Great transformation’

Organization and business studies Societal ‘History’ of actors embeddedness and economic systems

Business systems

Network embeddedness

Territorial embeddedness

Composition and structure of networks

Economic geography, new regionalism

Territorial configuration and condition of networks

Figure 1 Fundamental categories of embeddedness. Reproduced with permission from Hess, M. (2004). ‘Spatial’ relationships? Towards a reconceptualization of embeddedness. Progress in Human Geography 28(2) p. 178, & Sage Publications, 2004, by permission of sage Publications Ltd.

Embeddedness

constrained by the socioeconomic dynamics existing in those places. This latter point indicates that embedded ness is not per se and automatically beneﬁcial to a region’s economic development, as suggested in much of the lit erature. Rather, territorial embeddedness can stem from an over reliance on local network resources that ultim ately leads to lock in effects, undermining the region’s potential for development. This has been the case in many old industrialized regions where such a lock in has resulted in limited adaptability to changing global eco nomic dynamics. Whatever the developmental outcome of territorially embedded networks may be, place obvi ously still matters in a global space of ﬂows, with regions forming nodes in global networks and thus creating is lands in an archipelago economy. From a human geography perspective, the threefold typology of societal, network, and territorial embedded ness as a spatial–temporal concept can be associated with a typology of space as developed in actor network theory. Thus, societal embeddedness corresponds with what Annemarie Mol and John Law call ﬂuid spaces, formed by actors moving between places like migrant labor or transnational entrepreneurs and enterprises. Network embeddedness reﬂects the topological space of networks, in which distance and proximity are not measured in Euclidian terms, but are a function of the relations be tween actors. Territorial embeddedness, ﬁnally, links to a notion of space as region, where objects are clustered together and it is possible to draw boundaries, in other words the hitherto most common understanding of embeddedness in economic geography. What is impor tant to note, however, is the fact that it is the simultaneity of all three forms of embeddedness that ultimately shapes networks and economic action in space and time.

Whither Embeddedness? Without doubt, the concept of embeddedness has gained prominence in the social sciences. Firmly grounded in network ontology, it represents a relational view of (economic) action and interaction. Equally important, embeddedness emphasizes the social and cultural nature of economic action while attempting to avoid the under and oversocialized views of orthodox economics on the one hand and some strands of sociology on the other, with their respective assumptions of atomistic action. Some scholars have noted that the embeddedness con cept has become the main paradigm in economic soci ology, or what since has become known as ‘new economic sociology’. However, its growing impact does not mean the concept remains uncontested. In recent years, it has been criticized from different perspectives for its per ceived limitations and contradictions. The main issues questioned by critics of the concept are: (1) the

427

theoretical foundations of embeddedness and its inter pretation of ‘the market’; (2) the importance of structural factors in economy and society; (3) the nature of the economic and the social, and their relation; and (4) the role of power asymmetries in interpersonal and interﬁrm relations and the role of politics. Some of these critical comments are addressing not only embeddedness, but economic sociology and its relation to the discipline of economic geography more broadly. In a recent publication, US sociologist Greta Krippner engages in a critical analysis of Granovetter’s embedd edness concept. While recognizing his attempts to de velop a ‘corrective’ to neoclassical economics and ‘old’ sociology, Krippner argues that Granovetter does not succeed as through his concept he reiﬁes the market as an economic fundamental rather than really overcoming economistic deﬁnitions of the market. This stands in contrast to Polanyi’s attempts of demonstrating how the market economy and the market society are ideological and ultimately utopian constructs developed in formal economics. Therefore, it is argued, new economic soci ology and embeddedness as a concept exist in a symbiotic relationship with mainstream economics and reacts to theoretical developments in orthodox economics rather than transcending it. As Krippner and other commen tators like Jamie Peck state, the core argument of markets being socially constructed and embedded has led the proponents of embeddedness to take the market for granted. That view directly links to a second strand of critique, namely of the epistemological assumptions about the nature of the economic and the social. The embedded ness literature is said not only to reify the market, but to purify the economic from the social thus sustaining an artiﬁcial dualism of the social and the economic. This critique has been brought forward from two sides: authors in the political economy tradition have raised it, as well as proponents of the cultural turn that are in favor of a more practice centered approach in social sciences and human geography. While the academic debate on embeddedness currently seems centered around this issue, it is interesting to note that all the above ap proaches arguably have difﬁculties in providing an al ternative that fully transcends the dualism of the social and the economic, as they all rely on some distinction between the two, at least for analytical purposes. Another criticism of the embeddedness concept that has been raised by various commentators is its usefulness for critical and radical social science and the associated policy relevance of the concept. As discussed earlier, the concept is appealing for policy makers at different scales, but according to its critics suffers from a depoliticized view of economic development by largely ignoring power asymmetries between actors and institutions. By em phasizing relationships of trust and reciprocity, among

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other things, embeddedness has come to be signifying a positive, benign form of development based on col laboration and equality. Indeed, as much of the embeddedness literature has empirically focused on successful regions and positive outcomes, there seems little room to consider the dark side of embeddedness. This, however, is not something that is immanent to the concept. The fact that interpersonal or interﬁrm ties are embedded does not exclude the possibility of power struggles and negative economic outcomes. Examples of corruption, old boys’ networks, or nepotism as particular forms of embedded ties may sufﬁce to illustrate this point. Embeddedness as a concept has come a long way and to date had a considerable career in the social sciences. Economic geography has been among the disciplines taking up the concept to explain developments in the space economy. To this end, embeddedness as a heuristic tool had and still has a lot to offer for analysing socio economic development in space. Recent conceptual developments have made some progress in addressing the criticisms articulated regarding its theorization, and, as with all frameworks, there certainly is room for improvement to strengthen its clarity and intellectual potential. The concept is still widely used and is in forming many studies in economic geography and cog nate disciplines. To what extent it will continue to do so and what its place among a range of different approaches will be in the future remains, of course, to be seen.

See also: Actor-Network Theory/Network Geographies; Local-Global; Locality Debates; Networks; Relational Economic Geography; Structurationist Geography; Transnational Ethnic Networks.

Further Reading Barber, B. (1995). All economies are ‘embedded’: The career of a concept, and beyond. Social Research 62, 387 413. Dicken, P. and Thrift, N. (1992). The organization of production and the production of organization: Why business enterprises matter in the study of geographical industrialization. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 17, 279 291. Granovetter, M. (1985). Economic action and economic structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology 91, 481 510. Hadjimichalis, C. (2006). Non economic factors in economic geography and in ‘new regionalism’: A sympathetic critique. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, 690 704. Harrison, B. (1992). Industrial districts: Old wine in new bottles? Regional Studies 26, 469 483. Hess, M. (2004). ‘Spatial’ relationships? Towards a reconceptualization of embeddedness. Progress in Human Geography 28, 165 186. Hess, M. (2006). Spatial relationships. In Ritzer, G. (ed.) Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, pp 4633 4635. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Jessop, B. (2001). Regulationist and autopoieticist reﬂections on Polanyi’s account of market economies and the market society. New Political Economy 6, 213 232. Krippner, G. (2001). The elusive market: Embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology. Theory and Society 30, 775 810. Peck, J. (2005). Economic sociologies in space. Economic Geography 81, 129 175. Polanyi, K. (1944). The great transformation. The political and economic origins of our time. Boston: Beacon Press.

Embodied Knowing R. Longhurst, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bodies Bodies are sites of identity, morality, estheticism, practical action, work, play, pleasure, and pain. They have a materiality – skeleton, ﬂesh, organs, nerves, muscles, and blood – but this materiality is always constituted within discourse. Feminists have made the point that there is, of course, no one body – ‘the’ body is an illusion. Bodies are usually sexed bodies and therefore much discussion focuses on the complex processes through which female and male bodies are differentiated. Geographers have added to debates about bodies that bodies are always ‘located’, that is, they are inextricably entwined with place. Corporeal, Corporeality Refers to the physicality, substance, materiality, or matter of the body. As some social scientists have pointed out, however, this matter of the body never sits outside of discourse or systems of social and cultural signiﬁcation. Discourse The notion of discourse is complex, mainly because there exist many conﬂicting and overlapping interpretations from a range of disciplinary and theoretical standpoints. Basically, however, two general understandings of discourse can be identiﬁed. First, in linguistics, discourse tends to refer to examples of either written or spoken language. Second, in social theory, discourse tends to be understood in broader terms. Although social theorists recognize the centrality of language to understanding discourse, they use the term to refer to ways of structuring knowledge and social practice. Dualism When a continuous spectrum is divided into discrete self-contained elements which exist in opposition to each other this is known as a dualism. Dualism is the principle that there are two mutually exclusive types of ‘things’, for example, white/black, good/bad, rich/poor, public/private, man/woman, and mind/body. Feminist Geography A body of literature and series of questions prompted by feminist politics and theory about the ways in which gender relations and spaces are mutually constituted. Feminist geography began to emerge in the 1970s. Initially research aimed to document women’s absence from the discipline and then to make women visible by examining how women’s experiences often differ from men’s. More recently feminist geographers have drawn on a broader range of social and cultural theory in order to develop a more

complex understanding of the diverse range of women’s experiences. Masculinist Some feminist geographers have argued that the discipline of geography is ‘masculinist’. This term describes work that claims to be exhaustive but in actuality forgets about or ignores the worlds of women. It concerns itself solely with the existence of men and masculinity. Other, Othering A process by which some individuals, groups, and categories become constructed (psychically, discursively, and materially) as the Other, that is, as ‘different’ from the Self. The Other is understood to be lesser than and/or to lack in some way. The process of Othering is associated with unequal power relations that exclude and marginalize some individuals, groups, and categories. Post-Structuralist Feminism A version of feminism that emerged mainly from women in ethnic minorities who felt that second-wave liberal feminism placed too much emphasis on sameness and equality rather than on difference. Post-structuralist feminists argue that it is vital to have a theory that accounts for the relationship between the individual and the social, in other words a theory that looks not only at forms of social organization and the values associated with them, but also the subjectivities and actions of individuals. Reﬂexivity Critical and conscious introspection and systematic questioning of oneself as a researcher. Researcher reﬂexivity involves examining one’s own embodied subjectivity in order to gain new insights into research. Situated Knowledge A notion that challenges the idea that knowledge is simply ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered. Instead knowledge is both ‘embodied’ and ‘situated’, that is, it is made by individuals who are situated within particular contexts.

Introduction Over the past two decades many scholars have critiqued the idea that knowledge is universal, objective, rational, and of the mind, and have instead argued that knowledge arises out of an individual’s experience. Knowledge is not simply ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered. It is partial, situated, and embodied, that is, it is made by individuals who are located within particular contexts. This move

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toward critically examining the construction of geo graphical knowledge as partial, situated, and embodied has been particularly strong by those in the discipline who adopt critical perspectives, for example, socialist, antiracist, postcolonial, post structuralist, queer, and feminist geographers. These geographers have argued that focusing on the body is one possible route to changing social, cultural, and economic relations for the better. It is important to recognize that bodies (bodies that have a particular skin type and color, shape, geni talia, impairments, are a speciﬁc age, ethnicity, and so on) are always placed in particular temporal and spatial contexts. This has prompted critical geographers, espe cially feminist geographers, to question the production of knowledge in geography.

Feminist Critiques Feminist geographers have mounted an argument that a dualism between mind and body underlies, and is inte gral to, the production of human geography. The mind/ body dualism is a presumption, or a foundation, upon which geographical knowledge is constructed. However, not only are the mind and body conceptualized as a dualism but the divisions between mind and body are gendered and sexed. The mind (reason and rationality) has long been associated with masculinity while the body (emotion and irrationality) has long been associated with femininity. What has constituted knowledge in geog raphy is that which appears to be rational, reasonable, public, cultural, productive, masculine, and of the mind. Geography has tended to exclude from its scientiﬁc and philosophical discourse that which is thought to be un knowable, irrational, unreasonable, private, natural, re productive, feminine, and of the body. Feminist geographers have argued that there is something in the very claim to ‘knowing’ in geography – a speciﬁc notion of knowing, and of knowledge, as objective and disembodied – which tends to have mar ginalized or excluded women as producers of knowledge. In various and complex ways knowledges have become imbued with a division between rational Man who is thought to be able to pursue universal knowledge un encumbered by the limitations of his body and irrational Woman who is thought to be closely bound to the par ticular instincts, emotions, and desires of her body. Treating the body as Other in geography serves to marginalize certain individuals and groups, that is, those groups who are thought to be ‘tied to their bodies’ and, therefore, incapable of reason. Included here, for ex ample, are people who are constructed as physically weak, disabled, ugly, frail, diseased, queer, criminal, de generate, elderly, black, poor, working class, unemployed, and so on. In other words, almost anyone except young,

heterosexual, white, bourgeois, able bodied men are ob jectiﬁed and constructed as belonging on the side of the body as opposed to the mind.

The Body as Other The privileging of modern reason, rationality, transcen dent visions, neutrality, and disembodiment within geography has led to the exclusion and devaluation of women. While it is perhaps questionable to single out a category such as women (since categories such as women, homosexual, elderly, and so on are not mutually exclusive and gender is not necessarily the most salient base of oppression), it has nevertheless been a useful category for prompting a critique of geographical knowledge as dis embodied. A geographer who has been at the forefront of mounting these arguments is Gillian Rose. Rose in her book Feminism and Geography (1993) explains that mas culinist rationality is a form of knowledge which assumes a knower who believes he can separate himself from his body, feelings, values, etc. Rose explains that geography has a history of men attempting to be ‘detached ex plorers’ who produce ‘transcendent visions’. There has been a privileging of some knowledges over others – the rational, reasonable, public, cultural, productive, and masculine (all that is associated with the mind) over the irrational, unreasonable, private, natural, reproductive, and feminine (all that is associated with the body). The subject who produces knowledge has been bracketed off from the knowledge he or she has produced. All this is not to say that the body has been entirely absent in the discipline of geography – it has been bracketed off and treated as Other but not entirely absent. Some have described the body in the social sciences (and I would include here geography) as an ‘absent presence’. When examining examples of geographies typical of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, it is possible to detect traces of the body. Geographers in the 1990s did not suddenly recover bodies that were previously missing, but rather they shifted bodies from being in the wings (from being Other) to being center stage. The reason why the body has functioned as Other in geography is because in order to establish rationality, there must be a contrast with the irrational. The exact ways in which bodies have functioned as Other in geo graphical discourse depends on the particular school of thought under consideration. Therefore, in considering the historical privileging of the conceptual over the corporeal (or mind over body) in the production of geographical knowledge it is necessary to examine more critically exactly which geographical knowledges are to be the subject of critique. To group together, for example, quantitative geography of the 1960s, humanistic geog raphy of the 1970s, Marxist/structuralist approaches to

Embodied Knowing

geography in the 1980s, and post structuralist feminist and/or ‘new’ cultural geographies of the 1990s and 2000s, is not particularly useful for understanding some of the ways in which the body has been Othered in the dis cipline. Even within these broad subject areas there are likely to be large differences (including national, re gional, and individual differences) in the research carried out. It is necessary then to disaggregate the category ‘geography’ into some of its constituent parts. In an at tempt to tease out the idea of the body as Other in geographical discourse it is possible to examine any of the subdisciplinary areas within geography but the three examples discussed below are time geography, human istic geography, and medical geography. First, time geography is a perspective on the tem porospatial structuring of social life developed by To¨r sten Ha¨gerstrand. Time geography allowed geographers to focus on the everyday and the ordinary and was adopted by some feminist geographers to examine some of the spaces women tend to occupy. Although bodies ‘seem’ central to time geography it has been argued by authors such as Gillian Rose (1993) that they are not. The routine actions of individual human agents in time and space are represented by paths – paths that bodies follow. The body itself virtually disappears and in fact becomes its path. It is the ‘paths’ that deﬁne Ha¨gerstrand’s subjects, not their bodies. Ha¨gerstrand does not talk about bodies in relation to things such as sickness, violence, and pas sion. Time geography can be deconstructed in a way that reveals that although the body seems present, in fact, it functions in texts as Other to the mind, the rational, the orderly, and the dispassionate. It is worth noting though that there have been some interesting recent attempts by geographers such as Mei Po Kwan to recorporealize time geographic constructs (such as time–space paths) through post structuralist feminist perspectives. Second, humanistic geographers, especially in the late 1970s, attempted to understand the ways in which places were perceived by people, arguing that it was impossible to make sense of the social world without paying atten tion to the interpretations of those who lived in it. Hu manistic geographers refuted ideas of objectivity and scientiﬁc rationality which characterized positivism. In this way, they placed people center stage. Drawing on phenomenology, they focused not on reason but on human creativity, not on the universal but on the speciﬁcs of people’s lives. Drawing on phenomenology, humanistic geographers retrieved the body into their studies eliciting dimensions of people’s lifeworlds. Nevertheless, while corporeality played an important role in humanistic geography the body still tended to function as an Other in a number of ways. For example, humanistic geographers failed to acknowledge the ‘spe ciﬁcity’ of bodies such as observable differences in the rather ordinary ways in which women and men typically

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perceive, access, move in, use, and experience environ ments. Also, in the absence of any particular body being speciﬁed, a white, masculine, self contained body tended to be presumed. Bodies tended to be treated as though they were complete, autonomous, transcendent, and al most incorporeal. They did not want a body that is messy, incomplete, out of place, and not possessing clear boundaries, for example, the menstruating, pregnant, or birthing body – that which is feminine. In this way, it could be argued that although humanistic geography includes the body in its discourse its masculinism re mains intact. The use of Man in humanistic geography makes men the baseline against which Woman’s em bodied difference is spoken. Third, one might expect that some consideration has been paid to the body in medical geography; however, this is not the case. Many medical geographers have in the past, and still today, rely heavily on discourses of science in order to map the medical distribution of medical phenomena by counting the number of bodies with a particular disease (note: the more recent critical and post structuralist inspired work on health and/or disability is ‘not’ being referred to here). These scientiﬁc representations serve to textually and socially distance the work from ﬂesh and blood bodies, reducing bodies to mere vectors or points on maps. In this way, the body, while initially appearing present in medical geographies, is actually Othered. Some have argued that medical geographers need to extend their current research agendas by drawing on the possibilities proposed by re cent advances in feminist, social, and cultural theory on embodiment.

Embodying Knowledge as a Methodology Privileging the mind over the body is one of the reasons why, despite critical interventions into the discipline over the past two decades, much contemporary geography continues to be a largely disembodied discourse. The discourses of geography in various and complex ways assert a division between the abstract Self and the em bodied Other. In ‘reality’, we all ‘have bodies’ (are bodies) but the difference lies in that some are thought to be able to pursue and speak universal knowledge, unencumbered by the limitations of a body placed in a particular time and space/place, whereas Others are thought to be closely bound to their ﬂeshy, located bodies. It has now become apparent to many critical geographers that knowledge is not omnipresent but embedded in speciﬁc social and spatial contexts. Knowledge is embodied. In relation to methodology, geographers have at tempted to ‘position’ themselves in their research usually by acknowledging their gender, ethnicity, or age. But is this enough? Reﬂecting on our own embodied positions

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as researchers in order to gain new insights into research practice and knowledge production may be a useful goal but one that in practice is difﬁcult to achieve. How possible is it to fully understand ourselves as researchers, the researched, and the research context? It is important that researchers consider exactly what kind of reﬂexivity is being recommended and what other kinds of reﬂex ivity, if any, might be ‘better’. Although it is now permissible, even desirable, within feminist and other critical discourses to acknowledge something of ourselves and our political locatedness in the production of our texts it is still only permissible to acknowledge and reﬂect on some things about our cor poreality – things we are supposed to unproblematically know and understand such as our gender, ethnicity, and/ or age. Many things remain off limits – too private, too emotional, too ‘inappropriate’, to include. Other (more messy) traces of our embodiment such as our size, food preference, and bodily habits tend to remain absent. These things are signiﬁcant to the way in which we understand spaces but are not commonly voiced in geographical texts or forums. Some might think that these things belong in the category of the everyday, prosaic, and banal. Perhaps they do. But banal does not necessarily imply that which is intellectually un interesting and unimportant. The banal ought not to escape attention or be sidelined as domestic, feminine, and Other. Sometimes engaging in different kinds of positioning can convey an embodied subjectivity that is shifting. To date then, it seems there has been a sustained engagement with the bodies of research subjects but less engagement with the bodies of researchers. Although it needs to be noted, some researchers have put their bodies ﬁrmly in the research frame by using autobiography. Pamela Moss suggests there are many beneﬁts to ‘writing one’s life’ geographically. There is, however, still a way to go toward embodying knowledge in ways that acknow ledge how researchers learn through their bodies. Un doubtedly, over the past decade geographers have begun to pay more attention to bodies – the bodies of those being researched and to a lesser degree researchers’ – and the way in which knowledge is embodied but this line of enquiry is still to have a major impact on the way geographers tend to think about qualitative research practice.

Conclusion All geographical knowledge is embodied, however, by the time research makes its way into scholarly books and journals all or at least most traces of research participants’ and researchers’ bodies tend to have dis appeared. Embodied subjectivities (the emotions and

the sweat) become transformed into dispassionate, ob jective, rational prose. Knowledges are always situated. They are produced. They come from somewhere. It makes a difference who is doing the research, who participates in the research, where the research is car ried out, and how and why it is being carried out. It also makes a difference how it is turned into a ﬁnished product and for whom. The dualism between mind and body still underpins the production of geographical knowledge and as a result the body, to some degree, still remains Othered in the discipline. Geographical knowledge, however, cannot be separated from the minds and bodies that create it. All knowledge, even that which feigns to be objective, is embodied. This is a notion that geographers are likely to continue working with for some years to come. See also: Emotional Knowing; Feminist Methodologies; Performance, Research as; Performativity; Situated Knowledge, Reﬂexivity; Subjectivity.

Further Reading Cook, I. et al. (2005). Positionality/situated knowledge. In Atkinson, D., Jackson, P., Sibley, D. & Washbourne, N. (eds.) Cultural Geography. A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts, pp 16 26. London: I.B. Tauris. Crang, M. (2003). Qualitative methods: Touchy, feely, look see? Progress in Human Geography 27(4), 494 504. Dyck, I. (1993). Ethnography: A feminist research method? Canadian Geographer 37, 52 57. England, K. V. L. (1994). Getting personal: Reﬂexivity, positionality, and feminist research. Professional Geographer 46, 80 89. Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin. Jaggar, A. and Bordo, S. R. (eds.) (1989). Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and Knowing. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kwan, M. P. (2002). Feminist visualization: Re envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geographic research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94(2), 645 661. Longhurst, R. (1997). ‘(Dis)embodied geographies’. Progress in Human Geography 21(4), 486 501. Moss, P. (2001). ‘Writing one’s life’. In Moss, P. (ed.) Placing Autobiography in Geography, pp 1 21. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Moss, P. (ed.) (2002). Feminist Geography in Practice: Research and Methods. Oxford: Blackwell. Moss, P. (2005). A bodily notion of research: Power, difference, and speciﬁcity in feminist methodology. In Nelson, L. & Seager, J. (eds.) A Companion to Feminist Geography, pp 41 59. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Nash, C. (2000). ‘Performativity in practice: Some recent work in cultural geography’. Progress in Human Geography 24(4), 653 664. Nast, H. and Pile, S. (eds.) (1998). Places Through the Body. London: Routledge. Rose, G. (1993). Feminism and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Rose, G. (1997). Situating knowledges: Positionality, reﬂexivities and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography 21(3), 305 320. Shilling, C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage.

Embodied Knowing

Relevant Websites http://www.iep.utm.edu Feminist Epistemology (The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). http://www.plato.stanford.edu Feminist Perspectives on the Self (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy).

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http://www.iep.utm.edu Foucault and Feminism (The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy). http://www.thegreenfuse.org The Green Fuse: Notions of Embodied Knowing. http://www.teak.ﬁ The Theatre Academy: Challenging the Notion of Knowledge.

Emigration B. S. A. Yeoh, National University of Singapore, Singapore & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Yimin Migrant (Chinese).

A Brief History of Emigration Usually deﬁned as the departure of persons from their native land to settle permanently in another country, emigration has been part of human experience since ancient times, although it is only with improvements in transportation systems in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the volume of emigration ﬂows became signiﬁcant. Historically, emigration took different forms and had different demographic effects: for example, the movement of intact families to less populous regions transplanted whole communities and cultures (e.g., the English migration of members of the Puritan religious community to New England in the seventeenth century, or Jewish emigration to escape pogroms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), while that of young, predominantly male, adults resulted in cultural mixing and the formation of creolized families (e.g., the migration of European men to Spanish and Portuguese America; Japanese men leaving to work in the sugar plantations of Hawaii in the nineteenth and early twen tieth centuries; Chinese men as coolie labor to Southeast Asia; and Indian men as indentured workers to Mauritius, South Africa, Malaya, Fiji, and the Caribbean). The more spectacular emigrations in recent history in terms of geographical and cultural scope have involved the transcontinental movements of people from the Old World to the New. One of the best studied emigration streams in this respect was the ﬂight of a million Irish on so called ‘cofﬁn ships’ mainly across the Atlantic to the United States during the 1845–52 ‘potato blight’ which also killed another million or more. Not all European emigration stemmed from cataclysmic events of course. Between 1850 and 1914, more than 40 million persons of different occupations and social class left their European birthplaces for a variety of reasons – one tenth of the mean total population of 400 million and perhaps one fourth of the labor force. Large numbers, for example, moved from Britain across the Atlantic to the United States, as well as to settler colonies of the British Empire, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The vast majority of the emigrants paid their own fares, although a small proportion took advantage of government

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sponsored ‘assisted’ emigration schemes, including as sisted passages under the Empire Settlement Act put in place to divert British and Irish emigrants from the United States to Australia and New Zealand with the aim of populating the white dominions with British stock, as well as the Sao Paulo scheme aimed at recruiting workers – mainly Italians – for the coffee plantations in Brazil. It should be remembered, however, that until the 1830s, the enforced emigration of blacks to the Americas (8 million before 1820) was numerically more important than white emigration (2.5 million before the same date). Empire building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the hands of European powers was charac terized by the expansion of control over trade and ter ritory in non European parts, which in turn generated a large demand for labor met mainly through the migration of non Europeans. During this period, more than 50 million Chinese migrants and 30 million Indian mi grants left their homelands, many to seek work oppor tunities in European controlled territories. It should be noted that among the Chinese in particular, leaving China was considered a form of ‘sojourning’, a concept that signiﬁed a temporary absence from home which would come to an end with eventual return. Despite the fact that some never returned, in the ofﬁcial Chinese view, there was no concept of permanent emigration; instead for all intents and purposes, those who leave China were, as historian Wang Gungwu noted, ‘‘either sojourners who had gone out to trade and would even tually return or deﬁant lawbreakers who dared not return for fear of severe punishment.’’ In fact, the word yimin, the Chinese term for ‘migrant’, implies ‘movement en forced by ofﬁcials away from one’s own land or village’; traditionally, migration to the Chinese is never a volun tary act but rather ‘a great evil or calamity to be avoided’. Mass European emigration reached record levels just before World War I and declined thereafter as a result of the introduction of quotas and restrictions on both emi gration and immigration prompted by increasing eco nomic and political nationalism. The rise of totalitarianism in parts of Europe also led to further falls in emigration rates. The intense period of worldwide migration during the age of empire further attenuated with the establishment of nation states in the post–World War II era as political control of the nation state’s bor ders and institutional barriers regulating entry were heightened. The task of national self deﬁnition that preoccupied new nation states in the postwar decades depended not only on strategies of inclusion to

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strengthen group cohesion and belonging to the nation, but also entailed exclusionary strategies which dis tinguished ‘self ’ from ‘Other’. Not only were immigrants often thought of as ‘out of place’ in transgressing the national geobody, emigrants who unmoored themselves from their ‘birth’ nation states were also considered ‘out of place’ in betraying their homelands. The closing years of the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty ﬁrst ushered in an increasingly globalized age of quickened mobilities of people, ideas, and commodities as well as a heightened sense of inter connectivity among places. The number of international migrants reached an estimated 175 million in 2000 (i.e., one out of every 35 people in the world is an inter national migrant living in a country other than that in which they were born), having risen by 18 million in 1970–80, 27 million in 1980–90, and 21 million in 1990– 2000. Migratory moves are increasingly taking on a transnational character where movement is no longer based on permanent uprooting and settlement, but often multidirectional, complex, provisional, and based on a multiplicity of interconnections and networks sustained between ‘home’ and ‘host’. In this context, the original notion of emigration as a form of permanent departure from a home nation (usually paired with the notion of immigration as a form of full incorporation and per manent settlement) needs to be rethought using frame works of transnationalism that accord more provisionality and ﬂexibility to people movements. As Toro Morn and Alicea noted, ‘‘the demarcation line between ‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ countries is no longer a clear cut line between core and periphery.’’

Mexican emigration, one of the largest in volume in the contemporary world, cannot be decoupled from Mexico’s insertion into the world economy: on the one hand, high levels of unemployment, low wages, deterioration of agricultural resources, and overall economic instability in Mexico impel movement out of the country, whereas, on the otherhand, greater income inequality, demand for cheap labor, and the territorial and economic reorgan ization of the US economy combined with long standing social networks between communities on either side of the border, result in ‘pull forces’. Among the under developed island states in the Caribbean, emigration pressures are clearly linked to structural economic fac tors such as debilitated institutions, strong macro economic imbalances, dilapidated infrastructure, depleted productive assets, and pervasive poverty. How ever, emigration decisions (as in the case of the Anglo phone Caribbean) are not just tied to negative economic pressures but must also be understood in the context of historical linkages, social networks, and the degree of success in establishing transnational communities in host countries. Emigration hence does not signal permanent departure, but forms a part of circular migration based on the formation of highly interactive transnational house holds linked by to and fro movements of people and circuits of remittances, commodities, care, and emotions. Within the New World Order, emigration in the form of labor migration is undoubtedly the dominant trend in current international migration (illustrated for Asia in Table 1). In South Asia, for example, international population movements are numerically dominated by ﬂows of documented and undocumented workers, mainly unskilled young male workers (except in the case of

Emigration Dynamics Emigration is a multifaceted social, economic, and pol itical phenomenon. The current ‘emigration climate’ is partly shaped by the migration policies of sending and receiving countries, while postcolonial migration path ways often reﬂect historical links based on ties with former colonial metropolises, military occupation, as well as trade and investment ﬂows. Among African countries, for example, Zairians emigrate to Belgium, Senegalese to France, and Nigerians to the United Kingdom. However, historical and geographical relationships are no longer the primary drivers of migration; instead, there are changing poles of attraction which add considerable complexity to the current patterns of movement. Globalization dynamics have widened the gap be tween the developed and developing world through the increasing concentration of capital encouraged by foreign direct investment, and this has in turn created new conditions for mobilization that has spurred un precedented population movements. For example,

Table 1 Average annual number of migrants leaving for employment abroad in Asia: 1990 2003 Country

Bangladesh China India Indonesia Pakistan Philippines Sri Lanka Thailand Vietnam Total a

Number of migrant workers departing (in thousands) 1990 94

1995 99

2000 03

174 75a 377 118 145 489 52 87 1517

263 375b 360 328 118 746 165 193 13 2561

297 387 130 867 195 165 47 2088

Average for 1990 91 includes workers abroad both under international labour contracts and under project contracts. b Average for 1998 99 includes workers abroad both under international labour contracts and under project contracts. Source: Adapted from UN Habitat (2006). Additional Migration Statistics. http://www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/Media/ WHD%20 Additional%20Statistics.pdf, 3 (accessed 2 May 2008).

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Sri Lanka where over half of emigrant workers are fe male) seeking work in the Middle East, Europe, as well as more developed Asian countries such as Japan and Ma laysia. The importance of the Middle East to Indian workers led the Indian government in 1983 to pass a new Emigration Act which sought to protect the welfare and interest of Indians abroad. New ‘feminized’ streams of labor migration have also evolved, in response to changing production and repro duction processes worldwide predicated on a gendered division of labor. Production activities relocated from core economies to the periphery to take advantage of cheaper input costs draw on preexisting gender relations and target cheap and ﬂexible female workers – many from countries with declining employment opportunities – to work in the ‘global assembly line’ in export pro cessing zones and industrial parks in rapidly industrial izing countries. Women from underdeveloped countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean have also left ‘home’ for overseas jobs as paid domestic workers as a result of the intensiﬁcation of the ‘care deﬁcit’ in advanced industrialized countries where reproductive labor is being shifted from the household to the market. The feminization of labor migration has also taken the form of more women migrating to work as ‘entertainers’ or sex workers in response to the expansion of hospitality and sexual services as male executives and entrepreneurs become more mobile. While the widening economic and demographic div ide between underdeveloped and developed countries is an important factor in driving emigration dynamics, ‘‘there is no cut and dry relationship between poverty, demography and emigration,’’ as noted by Trebilcock and Sudak. Indeed, the impact of war, political oppression, and environmental degradation in many countries often in association with worsening economic conditions are also major contributors. In the underdeveloped econ omies of Africa, for example, a potent cocktail of negative economic growth rates, military or authoritarian rule with poor human rights records, interethnic strife and conﬂict, the effects of Structural Adjustment Plans on wage freeze and inﬂation, and the deterioration of the living environment has spurred emigration. Emigration streams are highly complex: they range from cross border or intraregional movements to departures for inter national destinations, and may involve labor seeking migrants using migration as a household strategy to combat poverty and landlessness, whole families escaping political or religious strife and deteriorating living con ditions, or skilled workers seeking professional advance ment. Similarly, among several countries of Central America, emigration is linked not only to economic crises and structural adjustments but also to the dwindling capacity of the state, social, and armed conﬂict, and human rights violations.

Apart from macro structural factors, emigration de cisions are often dependent on negotiations within the family and community, as well as social networks the aspiring emigrant has with those living in potential host countries. In historical and contemporary times, ‘chain migration’ where emigrants tend to follow similar path ways and head for similar destinations as family and community members who have emigrated earlier pro vides a mechanism for minimizing risk and uncertainty, and maximizing information and assistance. Once a sys tem of social networks is put in place, migration takes on a self sustaining and self perpetuating character. With the passage of time, emigration generates its own raison d’etre and also habituates people into leaving. Sustained emigration ﬂows breed a culture of migration charac terized by a general acceptance of migration as part of the life course and an increasing dependency of the com munity on outside resources and employment. In the Philippines, for example, after 30 years of labor migra tion, emigration as a means of seeking work has become, as Maruja Asis put it, ‘‘knitted into the survival or mo bility strategies of many individuals and families, [as well as] a common pathway to achieve the good life.’’

Changing Discourses on Emigration The Oxford English Dictionary notes that early usage of the term ‘emigration’ may also apply to the departure of the soul from the body, either as a result of death or ecstatic rapture. Echoing this duality of meanings, ofﬁcial dis courses about emigration today span those carrying connotations of ﬂight, disloyalty, and exile, on the one hand, to those which revalorizes emigration as a modern and even patriotic act on the other. Within academic and popular discourses, a similar variety of representations persists. In their broad survey of emigration dynamics through recent history, Lowenthal and Comitas identiﬁed differ ent stances that home societies may take toward emi gration: those which do not countenance emigration at all (people who leave do so against the will of the com munity, maintain no contacts, and return only at their peril); those which encourage emigration but do not expect aid from emigrants (e.g., prosperous economies such as England in the context of seventeenth and eighteenth century mercantilism); those where emigrants are expected to contribute support but are discouraged from coming home (as in the case of the Irish who viewed emigration as a ‘safety valve’); and those where indi viduals are encouraged to leave, to send remittances while away, and eventually return home (see later). These ‘social imperatives’ of home society affect ‘‘the emigrant’s attitude toward his [sic] homeland, the duration or

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permanence of his stay abroad, and the speed and ease with which he assimilates to his adopted land.’’ At the turn of the new millennium, discourses on emigration among home countries in the developing world have generally taken on more positive conno tations. While individuals who leave the People’s Re public of China were once regarded as ‘traitors’ within state narratives, such mobility is now encouraged for certain groups as a strategy to tap business potential inherent in the development of diasporic networks. In the case of overseas students, the key policy is encapsulated in the ‘Twelve words Approach’, ‘zhichi liuxue, guli huiguo, laiqu ziyou’ (meaning ‘support study overseas, encourage returns, guarantee freedom of (international) move ment’). In the case of the Philippine state, turning citizens into labor commodities in the global marketplace by institutionalizing employment abroad through the Phil ippine Overseas Employment Program has become a major strategy to address poverty and unemployment, and to siphon in remittances vital to the Philippine economy. With over 800 000 Filipinos annually deployed to take up work in foreign countries and roughly 10% of its population abroad, the Philippines has positioned it self within the new international division of labor as a major source country of workers, supplying workers of varying skill levels to over 100 countries. This is ac companied by a consistent state discourse where all the presidents from Marcos to Macapagal Arroyo have lau ded overseas contract workers as the nation’s ‘new her oes’. At the same time, imaginaries of the ‘nation’ – i.e., the ‘transterritorial nation state’ in Luis Guarnizo and Michael Smith’s words – based on a shared ethnicity continue to be drawn upon to protect the integrity of the nation and sustain its longevity. There is also the as sumption here, as Filomeno Aguilar put it, that ‘‘at their destinations, emigrants will be transnationalists’’ who would engage in transnational circuits – both emotional and material – to contribute to the development of their ‘homelands’. Among host countries, however, emigration is viewed in far more ambivalent terms. In the early 1990s, a project on Emigration Dynamics in Developing Countries fun ded by the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Population Fund was initiated to address ‘widespread concern’ about ‘‘the increasing numbers of refugees, irregular migrants and asylum seekers’’ from the South ‘‘grasping the emigration option as a last chance for survival and moving, uninvited, to y developed countries.’’

Consequences of Emigration While the demographic proﬁle and socioeconomic sus tainability of many countries in Europe were vitally

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affected by transatlantic emigration during the past four centuries, emigration at a level high and sustained enough to lead to depopulation of an entire country is not common. The latter is best exempliﬁed by the nineteenth century exodus of the Irish to North America, which not only seriously depleted the population of the sending country (where the demographic effects lasted for more than a century), but also left behind a country made up of ‘residual people’ whose young and more productive members had left permanently. Without its most creative and energetic members, Irish society stagnated throughout much of the twentieth century, and only experienced economic, social, and cultural revival in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Irish emigration, however, represents one extreme in terms of its demographic consequences on home society. Under different circumstances, emigration has been used by governments as a deliberate means to relieve population pressure on national resources. In the case of Japan in the 1920s, for example, emigration to South America, and especially Brazil, was encouraged as part of national policy in order to address the twin problems of popu lation growth and economic instability. Today, while many developing countries have been consistently losing population as a result of emigration, the impact on population growth is usually small given the high natural increase rates in these countries. In weighing the economic costs and beneﬁts of emi gration to sending countries in the contemporary world, Trebilcock and Sudak concluded in tentative terms: Although emigration poses risks of ﬁscal loss and human capital depletion, the empirical basis for these fears is unclear given possible offsetting factors such as remit tances, return migration, and skills transfer, initial in centives for education, and dynamic investment effects of citizens living abroady. Emigrants are properly viewed not as a stink cost, but as a resource to be cultivated (Trebilcock and Sudak, 2006).

Among the ‘emigration threats’ feared, ‘brain drain’ or ‘human capital ﬂight’ and its impact on developing countries has been an issue of widespread concern given its scale. As a rough measure, it has been noted, for ex ample, that between a third and half of the developing world’s science and technology personnel now live in the developed world. On the one hand, the depletion of skilled, educated, and talented individuals may adversely affect the development of local knowledge and science, retard economic growth, erode tax revenues, and cripple public institutions and service delivery. In small de veloping countries with high rates of emigration such as the poorer Caribbean island states, the sheer volume of emigration often means that any possible positive effects may be outweighed by negative impacts on economic

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dynamism, the delivery of key public services, and the depletion of the political classes. It has also been argued, for example, that the hemorrhagic loss of health pro fessionals from African countries has incapacitated health sector reforms and perpetuated a vicious cycle of ill health and poverty. On the other hand, these negative views have been challenged by those who argue that the emigration of talent is not so much a ‘drain’ but part of ‘brain circu lation’, and that positive effects for the source countries can include remittance ﬂows, mobilization of foreign capital, exposure to new ideas and technologies, and the creation of diaspora networking that facilitates the ex ploitation of unique trade and business opportunities. Such an approach to emigration effects is predicated on the presence of transnational linkages among emigrants and their homelands, including the possibility of return. Strong transnational connectivities appear to hold in a range of migration scenarios. For example, the massive out migration from Latin America and the Caribbean to the United States, Canada, and Europe has been char acterized by the transnational ties that immigrants maintain across borders between their home and host communities, and that incorporate return and counter ﬂows. More speciﬁc examples include the formation of the Hsinchu Science based Industrial Park in Taiwan in the 1980s and 1990s beneﬁted from the return of Tai wanese entrepreneurs and engineers from Silicon Valley while the growth of India’s Bangalore and Hyderabad software development and outsourcing centers is tied to business networks facilitated by Indian engineers work ing in Silicon Valley. An issue central to understanding the developmental consequences of emigration concerns the complex question as to whether remittance gains might sufﬁciently spur development to offset human capital loss. Not withstanding the huge volume of remittances ﬂowing back to source countries of the developing world (US$51 billion out of a total remittance amount of US$63 billion was estimated to have been sent back to developing countries in 2000), the verdict with regard to the devel opment impact of remittances is still an open one. While remittances invested in land purchase, business and technology, or in improving health, education, and in frastructure in source countries may have signiﬁcant multiplier effects, those used to ﬁnance consumption purchases may not generate longer term beneﬁts and instead increase consumerism (e.g., of imported goods) and engender a culture of dependency. Turning ﬁnally to the social consequences of con temporary emigration on source areas in the developing world, scholars have stressed the need to understand the processes operating at the nexus between emigration and the ‘left behind’ population, and to avoid treating the latter as passive recipients of migration effects.

Out migration from rural Southeast Asia, for example, has become so widespread that it has a ‘demonstration and emulation’ effect on aspirations and achievement throughout communities, making it misleading to assume that the left behind would always hold on to ‘traditional values’ or remain static in their worldviews. In other in stances, far from being deserted by migrating children, left behind parents actively participate in providing ﬁ nancial and emotional support for their children’s mo bility, leading to the emergence of a translocal extended family linked by multistranded, ﬂuid relations between members across geographical space. Similarly, studies on migrating mothers and their left behind children high light the (re)enactment of episodes of family interaction through distanced communication as the family takes on transnational dimensions. New work has also called at tention to the gender politics implicit in a range of mu tually constitutive interactions between migrants and the left behind: in areas such as rural Indonesia and Vietnam where feminized out migration streams predominate, es tablished gender ideologies may either be challenged by changing social practices where women assume bread winner roles, or continue to regulate traditionally scripted roles for men and women but in new ways.

Conclusion In deﬁning emigration as ‘don’t look back exit for a new existence elsewhere’ and the ‘converse and historical complement of diaspora’, Roger Sanjek is able to point to several ‘unambiguous instances of historical emigrations’, but only with the beneﬁt of hindsight as human inten tions at the point of exiting may be unclear or may change. With the proliferation of transnational con nectivities, multidirectional mobilities and hybridized identiﬁcations in a globalized new order, emigration as a unidirectional people movement of nonreturn is likely to become even more provisional and ambivalent. Instead, emigration as a form of ‘home leaving’ and ‘border crossing’ may become a recurring moment, held in ten sion with ‘transiting’, ‘sojourning’, ‘settling’, ‘rooting’, ‘returning’, ‘homecoming’, ‘inclusions/exclusions’, and other multiple experiences of migrations. See also: Immigration I; Immigration II; Migrant Workers; Migration; Remittances; Transnationalism.

Further Reading Aguilar, F. V. (2004). Is there a transnation? Migrancy and the national homeland among overseas Filipinos. In Yeoh, B. S. A. & Willis, K. (eds.) State/Nation/Transnation, pp 93 119. London: Routledge. Appleyard, R. (1998). Emigration Dynamics in Developing Countries, (Vols 1 4). Aldershot: Ashgate.

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Asis, M. B. (2005). Caring for the world: Filipino domestic workers gone global. In Huang, S., Yeoh, B. S. A. & Abdul Rahman, N. (eds.) Asian Women as Transnational Domestic Workers, pp 21 53. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish. Baines, D. (1995). Emigration from Europe 1815 1930. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guarnizo, L. and Smith, M. (1998). The locations of transnationalism. In Smith, M. & Guarnizo, L. (eds.) Transnationalism from Below, pp 3 34. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2005). World Migration 2005: Costs and Beneﬁts of International Migration. Geneva: International Organization for Migration. Lowenthal, D. and Comitas, L. (1962). Emigration and depopulation: Some neglected aspects of population geography. Geographical Review 52(2), 195 210. Manning, P. (2005). Migration in World History. New York: Routledge. Nguyen, L., Yeoh, B. S. A. and Toyota, M. (eds.) (2006). Special section on migration and the well being of the ‘Left behind’ in Asia. Asian Population Studies 2(1). Nyiri, P. (2004). Expatriating is patriotic? The discourse on ‘new migrants’ in the People’s Republic of China and the identity

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construction among recent migrants from the PRC. In Yeoh, B. S. A. & Willis, K. (eds.) State/Nation/Transnation, pp 120 143. London: Routledge. Sanjek, R. (2003). Rethinking migration, ancient to future. Global Networks 3(3), 315 336. Toro Morn, M. I. and Alicea, M. (eds.) (2004). Migration and Immigration: A Global View. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Toyota, M., Yeoh, B. S. A. and Nguyen, L. (2007). Special issue on migration and the ‘‘Left Behind’’ in Asia. Population, Space and Place 13(3). Treilcock, M. J. and Sudak, M. (2006). The political economy of emigration and immigration. New York University Law Review 81(1), 234 293. UN Habitat (2006). Additional Migration Statistics. http:// www.unhabitat.org/downloads/docs/Media/ WHD%20Additional%20Statistics.pdf, 3 (accessed 2 May 2008). Wang, G. (2003). Don’t Leave Home: Migration and the Chinese. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press. Xiang, B. (2003). Emigration from China: A sending country perspective. International Migration 41(3), 21 48.

Emotional Geographies J. Davidson and M. Smith, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Cartesian Dualism A theory that rigidly distinguishes between mind and matter as two distinct substances. This understanding has been extended and associated with other binary distinctions between concepts such as reason/emotion and male/female, where the former is culturally privileged over the latter. Existentialism A philosophy of existence or being concerned with choice, freedom, and authenticity that holds individuals to be without predetermined essence. Rather, persons are responsible for determining their own lives through acts of individual will. Phenomenology A philosophy that investigates the experience and signiﬁcance of phenomena, fundamental elements of perception as disclosed to the human subject. To facilitate purely intuitive analysis of phenomena, phenomenology holds that all naturalistic presuppositions and prior knowledge should be set aside or ‘bracketed off’; this suspension of judgement is termed the epoche¯. Positivism An inﬂuential philosophy of science that holds empirical and replicable approaches to the observable natural world to be separate from social context and so capable of producing knowledge that is neutral and value-free. (The approach has been subject to extensive critique since the mid-twentieth century, and its appeal to universal foundations for knowledge has been undermined by critical philosophies that privilege the production of situated knowledges, inﬂuenced by context.) Subjectivity Often used in preference to identity for its less ﬁxed and individualistic, but more ﬂuid and inclusive connotations, subjectivity is concerned with the qualities of being a thinking-feeling self in context. The term is associated with approaches such as feminism that attend to individuals’ complexly constituted subjective experiences of the world.

Introduction: Why on Earth Study Emotions? Emotions are woven into the fabric of our everyday lives – as boredom at work, worry about ﬁnances, and amusement at a TV show – and yet they also serve to recompose and transcend these mundane aspects of our existences in in tense experiences that mark unique moments, such as the

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uncontainable exuberance of falling head over heels in love. They are, paradoxically, both inordinately diffuse and all pervasive and yet also heart and gut wrenchingly present and personal; sometimes moods seem to envelop us from without, sometimes emotions seem to surge up from within and comprise the very core of our being here in the world, our human existence. Emotional responses deﬁne places as much as people and yet they seem strangely absent from most geography texts, or at least their import is assumed in such a manner that they become part of the unnoticed background scenery rather than an intimate, indeed indispensable, component of every worldly performance. Even a theo retical term like, for instance, alienation, though deﬁnable in terms of modes of economic production, class, the division of labor, and human nature relies for both its descriptive potential and its political bite on the emo tional resonances associated with the misery of feeling exploited, the loneliness of detachment from proper human companionship, pride in one’s work, and the de sire and hope to feel at home and live a fully human life in the face of a discouraging world. The apparent absence of geographical attention to emotion therefore needs explanation, unless, of course, this lack is more apparent than real. Perhaps, if we re appraise past works in the light of our newly discovered interests we might ﬁnd geography’s hidden emotional treasures lying waiting beneath its seemingly indifferent surface. To some extent this may be so. After all, if emotions are all pervasive then traces of them should be revealed almost anywhere we care to look. But there again, like gemstones, their distribution will be uneven and require more (intellectual) effort to identify, extract, and reﬁne in some instances than others. In some texts emotions are very deeply hidden indeed under tables of data and ﬁgures, maps, detached observations, third person or impersonal narratives, and so on. Hence, a geography that takes emotions as its subject matter would still need to reﬂect upon and interpret this unevenness, suggesting reasons why certain authors, geographic ﬁelds, historic periods, methods, and so on, express, or alter natively suppress, emotions in the many various ways they write (about) the world. This suggests then that emotional geographies might, as it becomes an increasingly familiar term, serve to denote an emergent ﬁeld of critical geography where a new focus of study also, quite rightly, throws the history and current state of the discipline into relief, illuminating what it excludes and overlooks. Just as feminist

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geographies continue to critique and recompose geo graphical accounts of a world where women have been noticeable largely by their absence, so emotional geog raphies too might be thought of as a recognition and response to a lack, that is, geography’s failure to represent our emotional lives. Perhaps we could even understand this term – lack – in ways reminiscent of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s (1901–81) usage. If geography has de ﬁned its self identity as a discipline partly by excluding the emotional, as something it regards as ‘other’ than geography (e.g., as belonging to psychology), then the recent emotional turn could be understood as the exer cising of a geographical imaginary, the acting out of a desire to make geography more complete by giving graphic (written and symbolic) form to what now, upon reﬂection, seems lacking in its relations to the world. This, no doubt, would be a partial and controversial analysis but one that might at least spark further thought about what emotional geographies can and cannot do. For example, in Lacanian terms the human subject’s experi ence of lack and subsequent desire for completion is ultimately unachievable precisely because this subject is originally deﬁned over and against what it is not, what is ‘other’. To change the relation to the ‘other’, to try to own it in some way, inevitably changes and redeﬁnes, rather than completes the self. It thereby also reveals to the human subject the dizzying absence of any essential ﬁxed self identity, any ﬁnal answer to the question of who they really are. In terms of our analogy, recognizing geo graphy’s emotional lack makes apparent the ﬂuidity of what might previously have been thought to be hard and fast disciplinary boundaries and the absence of an essential center or core that identiﬁes what geography, as an academic subject, is. To appropriate the words of geographer David N. Livingstone the ‘‘idea that there is some eternal metaphysical core to geography in dependent of historical circumstances will simply have to go.’’ There is an irony here then. Even if we accept that the motivation for the relatively recent emergence of emo tional geographies arises from the recognition that there is something crucial missing in geography as it is cur rently instantiated, their development will not make geography whole, restore its integrity, or ﬁll a gap. Rather they make this lack available for reﬂection, make it seem problematic, and on this basis facilitate a form of self critique – what is sometimes referred to in critical theory as a negative dialectics. This threatens to decompose as well as recompose its object, breaking down current disciplinary boundaries and challenging ﬁxed ideas of geography. Some geographers, already feeling their dis cipline threatened, might not be happy with such a situation, they might try to deny that emotional geog raphies are real (proper) geography but this, after all, is partly the point. Emotional geographies do not just

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extend the limit of current geographical research, they recompose what geography might be in terms of emo tionally, as well as sociohistorically, situated theories. On this same analysis, we also need to bear in mind what emotional geographies cannot do. They cannot provide a complete representation of emotions. Why? Because our Lacanian analogy would also suggest an other, parallel, kind of lack, a failure of representation that, Lacan argues, operates at the level of the symbolic order itself. Words (indeed all symbols) lack a ﬁxed sig niﬁer – something solid and permanent that we might point to as anchoring their meaning or, reciprocally, that might be fully represented by them. Words’ meanings, like subjects’ identities, are only constituted over and against ‘other’ words, discourses, and practices. Words too are in ﬂux; they allow us to reﬂect on the world, to situate our knowledge within various contexts but, they cannot capture the world’s essence – if such a thing exists. Something of the world we try to describe always eludes those descriptions. Indeed, this seems paradigmatically the case with (words for) emotions which overlap and melt one into another, that allude to each other and their contexts in complex but often vague and mysterious ways, that operate in close association with other emo tional states or exist through attempts to dissociate oneself from them – think of shouting loudly at someone – ‘‘I’m not angry!’’ Emotions are then conceptually linked together only by our perception of (what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) originally referred to as) fam ily resemblances, overlapping patterns of similarities and differences between them, and the contexts in which they are used, the situations that give them meaning. Emotions have no common deﬁning feature, a point emphasized by Thomas Dixon’s recent claim that ‘‘emotions did not even exist until two hundred years ago’’. That is to say that emotion only comes into use as an over arching category after about 1820, earlier texts tending to refer to the affections, passions, interests, appetites, and so on, each with their own associations. This certainly doesn’t mean that previously people didn’t feel desolate or happy but that the way particular emotions were understood (and perhaps even something of the ways they were ex perienced) varied accordingly. For example, the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90), like many writing in the eighteenth century, focused attention on what were termed moral sentiments, feelings, like remorse, regarded as intimately associated with ethical responsiveness to ‘others’ and with judgments about right and wrong. How remorse is deﬁned and how it is occasioned and experi enced, perhaps even whether it is experienced at all, are dependent upon historically, culturally, and geographic ally, varying norms. So, although geographies can, quite literally, add new dimensions to the understanding of these patterns of emotional differences – the spaces

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between boredom and irritation, anger, rage, and jealousy – they reconstrue rather than complete the deﬁnition of them. Emotional geographies are not then, on this under standing, indicative of a new science that will focus on how to map emotional landscapes, to provide a demo graphic of despair or cartography of embarrassment. In deed it works against such attempts to pin emotions down, to deﬁne them in such ways that they might be come mere objects of quantiﬁcation, comparison, and manipulation. After all, if geography were to accept such a view it would merely have provided it with a new academic resource and have accepted the very under standing of geography as an entirely rational (in the sense of being emotion free) enterprise that it seeks to disrupt. As Wittgenstein himself pointed out, emotions cannot properly be understood by such mechanistic reductions. ‘‘‘Grief ’ describes a pattern which occurs, with different variations, in the weave of our life. If a man’s bodily expression of sorrow and joy alternated, say with the ticking of a clock, here we should not have the charac teristic formation of the pattern of sorrow or of the pattern of joy’’. This is not then to say that emotional geographies are not concerned with empirical matters, far from it. The phenomenal experiences of emotions are the starting points for most researchers, as are the ways emotions are embodied and serve to color our experiential world such that we interpret and value aspects of it in particular ways – we might see red watching Canada’s mass slaughter of seal pups; feel dark despair at the emotional discon nection that those involved in such killing exhibit, their absence of compassion for ‘other’s’ lives. But attending to the phenomenology of emotion also leads us away from attempts to reduce the importance of such feelings to simplistic lines of causation or mere numbers, such as the thousands killed, or the paltry few thousands of dollars they represent to the Canadian economy. This ex periential aspect is precisely why an emotional geog raphy of seal slaughter would be so very different from an economic geography of the same issue, or a geography framing the question in terms of resource distribution and allocation. Perhaps we can now return to questions of how the suppression and repression of emotions in contemporary geography originated and how emotional geographies respond to this lack. It should at least be somewhat clearer why certain forms of critical geography, namely, feminist, nonrepresentational, psychoanalytic, and phe nomenological, have been most closely associated with the emergence of emotional geographies. This is pre cisely because these approaches have been concerned with the critique of a world view that accepts the cen trality of an essentially rational, unchanging, autono mous, and emotion free or emotionally controlled human

subject, (a typically masculine ideal) who has the ability to fully represent the external world within a universally applicable, objective, and rationally determined symbolic order. This view has dominated geography as much as any discipline with scientiﬁc pretensions and is often thought of as being exempliﬁed by, and as part of the legacy of, the ﬁrst modern philosopher, Rene Descartes (1596–1650). (Although certain aspects of this view could, in fact, be traced back much further, e.g., to the Stoics who regarded emotions as clouding our rational abilities.)

Cartesian Coordinates and Emotionally Empty Space Descartes’ philosophy has a number of important geo graphical and emotional implications. First, in terms of coming to see the world materialistically, as composed of mere objects at the disposal of human subjects. Second, in terms of how subjects come to understand this world through abstract, rational representations of its mechan ical properties. Objects come to be deﬁned in terms of their physical extension in a supposedly empty space, a space that can be mapped and measured using math ematical coordinates thereby providing objective mental representations of how material things stand in relation to each other. Third, Cartesian dualism thus gives rise to a representational epistemology, an understanding of knowledge as a mapping or reﬂection of the physical world within an entirely separate world of mental con structs, concepts, symbols, and so on. As Jonathan Crary has remarked, Vermeer’s painting, The Geographer, per fectly illustrates this (Figure 1). Here a paradigmatically masculine subject mentally surveys the map which rep resents the outside world from which he averts his eyes. These intellectually coordinated representations are all he needs to know to master that world. Note then, that for Descartes, unlike Lacan, there is no underlying reason why all that the world contains cannot be fully (com pletely) represented in every material aspect in the transparency of thought. Indeed with the beneﬁt of hindsight Descartes might be regarded as a key source of the rather different view, often associated with scientiﬁc positivism, that all that really matters, all that there ac tually is, can, in theory, be so represented. From this perspective what cannot be measured, manipulated, predicted, or accurately deﬁned by a concept does not exist in any meaningful sense. So where does this leave the emotions? Interestingly, they seem to be suspended in a kind of no man’s land; they inhabit an overlooked territory in between mind and matter, subject and object, resisting attempts to entirely appropriate them by one side or the other. They are not alone here since this interstitial space is also where the senses reside, both having about them a necessary

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Figure 1 Vemeer’s painting. The Geographer.

ambiguous status because, given the absolutism of Des cartes’ dualism, there should be nothing that is not either entirely mind or entirely matter, no in between. And yet without such a ground all connection between these two distinct realms is simply impossible – there can be no representation, no worldly knowledge. If this was so then what would it mean for one to touch something or be (emotionally) touched by what someone does; where exactly do these effects and affects take place? Such questions expose what is lacking in Descartes’ con ceptions of both his human subject and his theoretical ediﬁce – a space for senses and emotions to operate. The rather bizarre location he does propose, the brain’s pineal gland, is hardly convincing! Although Descartes’ substance dualism is largely jet tisoned in later philosophical and scientiﬁc develop ments, the basic structure of his thought remains. Today’s geographer may sit before a computer screen rather than Vemeer’s nautical map but s/he is, if anything, even more dependent on the visualization and manipulation of mathematical representations and coordinates. The emotions ﬁnd themselves further sidelined, as even the senses, required to play the role of a trustworthy inter mediary running back and forth between thought (con cept) and object, become cleansed of any remaining emotional encumbrances. Sight, for example, is reduced to scientiﬁc observation, a mode of visual communication with the sole function of information retrieval. But to this extent geography be comes both detached from the real world, and de humanized. There is no space here for, say, the emotional and ethical insight a loving gaze might offer into the lives

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of ‘others’. Nor, for that matter, can an emotionally cleansed notion of the senses explain the feeling of anxiety or the uncanny (unheimlich) that an ‘other’s gaze can provoke in us, a look that according to existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (1905–80) makes us aware both of our own individual existence and the fragile, groundless, nature of that existence, the nothingness that ‘‘lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.’’ Even sight then, the most paradigmatically detached, dis tanced, and objective of the senses, affects us intimately, magically expressing something of our mode of being in the world and providing insight into ‘others’; how else could a stare be aggressive, a look malicious, a gaze lustful or leery, or a glance wistful, capricious, or yearning? It is just these emotionally mediated senses and re lations that compose the fabric of our human existence, that make our lives meaningful, or, in their absence, hopeless. Emotions are vital (living) aspects of who we are and of our situational engagement within the world; they compose, decompose, and recompose the geog raphies of our lives. And even Descartes recognized this to some extent. After all, in his last book, ﬁttingly entitled The Passions of the Soul, he reﬂected upon what was lacking at the centre of his divisive philosophy, the emotional no man’s land in and between the subjective and objective worlds he had broken apart. Here he recognizes that even his rationalistic philosophy is, after all, motivated by desire, a desire for knowledge and that this passion is, in its turn, sparked into being by another, by wonder. ‘‘Wonder’’, says Descartes, ‘‘is a sudden surprise of the soul causing it to consider with attention those objects which seem to it novel and unexpected.’’ And while Descartes argues an excess of wonder is harmful and must be suppressed having no remedy ‘‘other than ac quiring the requisite amount of knowledge,’’ this is, nonetheless, an explicit admission that the ‘‘sweetest pleasures of this life’’ we feel only because we are not pure mind but hybrid beings, profoundly passionate creatures also composed of ﬂesh and blood. Contra to Cartesian dualism, we are always already emotionally engaged beings in the world.

Current Trends in Emotional Geographies Emotions then are not just a new topic for geographical study. They trouble and yet inspire its very existence just as they trouble and inspire individuals. Without passions, sentiments, and their affects there would be no human geography worth its name. Phenomenologist, feminist, psychoanalytic and nonrepresentational geographers have all recognized this and have consciously tried to situate themselves in this interstitial no man’s land, dis solving the interrelated dualisms between thought and

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world, male and female, reason and emotion, and culture and nature. Phenomenological approaches achieve this by focus ing, as the term suggests, on what is experienced rather than on what those experiences might be supposed to represent (e.g., the feeling of ‘therapeutic touch’ recently discussed by Mark Paterson in the edited collection, Emotional Geographies). The phenomenological world is not the abstract empty space of Cartesian coordinates but the lived world perceived and produced through our emotionally laden activities. Distances, for example, would not be thought of as ﬁxed measurements between objects but as differently experienced movements af fected by myriad inﬂuences – the frightful depths of the night through which we walk, the wearisome weather we struggle against, and the lightening of our mood and steps in good company. This is not a form of subjectivism, but a recognition of the self ’s entanglement with the world since all such emotions are intentional, that is, they are inherently about something – the dark, the weather, and so on – even when their root causes are far from clear to us. Being alive we will feel, but never fully own, these emotions which come and go without our having called them into being. It is not surprising then that con temporary geographic phenomenologists, like Yi Fu Tuan and Edward Casey, have often focused on emotional re sponses and attachments to particular places. Places like people can thus be understood as being constituted within an emotionally charged middle ground, one nei ther entirely subjective nor objective – this has become increasingly obvious in recent phenomenological studies of our spatially mediated sense of self. As phenomen ologist Maurice Merleau Ponty (1907–61) wrote: ‘‘Truth does not only inhabit ‘the inner man’, or more accurately there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.’’ This quotation leads directly to the potential contri bution of feminist geographies, since it is not only man who is in the world! Feminist geographers’ interests often overlap with phenomenology but bring a critical aware ness of the gendering of emotions (indeed of emotion ality in general, so often dismissed as a feminine trait), such as the particular fears felt by women in nighttime urban environments, discussed in a recent work by Hille Koskela, or the gendered incidence of phobias, as re vealed in studies by Ruth Bankey, Felicity Callard, and Joyce Davidson. Feminist theory has been particularly critical of ab solute binary distinctions and, though rarely, until re cently, explicitly focused on emotion; feminist explorations of embodiment have proved fruitful for emotional geographies. They uncover feelings about ex periences of, for example, sexuality, pregnancy, disability, chronic illness, and the consumption of foods and fash ions. (Many of these topics are discussed in recent

‘emotional geographies’ themed issues of Gender, Place, and Culture, and Social and Cultural Geography.) In investi gating these taken for granted emotional aspects of em bodied experiences feminists illustrate the intimate connections between physical (material) and mental health. Rather than treating individuals in isolation, feminists also make explicit theoretical connections with broader social systems of politics and power as evidenced by Victoria Lawson’s recent work on geographies of fear and hope. Feminist methodologies reﬂect these theore tical concerns emphasizing relational, reﬂexive, and intersubjective approaches that are typically qualitative, attending closely to the emotional relations that per meate geographical practices. Psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic perspectives offer geographers another ﬁeld of emotionally relevant theories and practices that are capable of more than simply providing Lacanian analogies (though this hope fully illustrates something of their wider theoretical po tential). Geographers like Liz Bondi and David Sibley have paid particular attention to the factors mitigating the creation, maintenance, or dissolution of the more or less stable and permeable psychosocial boundaries that are constitutive of both individual subjectivity and of social identities (the work of Hester Parr and Chris Philo is also instructive here). Emotions clearly play a pivotal role in these formative processes which impact both in dividual mental health and sociopolitical cohesion, shaping social relations through the mediation of the self ’s relations to those deemed ‘other’, drawing and re drawing boundaries between you and me, them and us via feelings of attraction, repulsion, and so on. Psycho therapeutic approaches too, although apparently focused on reaching and treating the contents of individual minds through discursive processes, concern themselves intim ately with subjects’ relations to other people and places, not least the therapist and therapeutic setting. A key as pect of these, as with psychoanalytic, approaches is the need to recognize the difﬁculties inherent in composing a necessarily incomplete emotional self understanding and of expressing this (representing it) in language. Com posing and expressing oneself emotionally are both ne cessary and yet, ultimately endless (lifelong and incomplete) tasks. If psychoanalytic and therapeutic approaches focus on the emotional lack at the heart of subjectivity then, crudely speaking, nonrepresentational theory (NRT) focuses on the necessary incompleteness (the lack) within the act of representation itself, that is, on that which eludes expression in language. NRT’s preference for the term affect over emotion is, as Nigel Thrift suggests, linked to this concern for the ineffable; affect is sup posedly indicative of those more immediate embodied engagements with the world beyond language. Hence NRT tends to focus on performance, on what people do

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rather than what they say they do, challenging the Car tesian priority accorded to thinking in and through words as represented in recent writings by Ben Anderson, JD Dewsbury, and Paul Harrison. This is clearly important and NRT offers some radically different insights into emotional ﬂows and conjunctions although there may, ironically, be something of a performative contradiction in NRT’s approach, insofar as its practitioners employ some of the densest and most abstract philosophical language (such as that associated with Gilles Deleuze) to theorize and interpret such performances. There is also an important question about how far even nonverbalized bodily movements, in say a ballet performance, are both implicitly and explicitly representational. The dance of the dying swan is actually overburdened with layers of cultural (e.g., gendered) meanings as well as being in dicative of presentationally constrained and rehearsed emotional content – something true even of less overtly stylized manifestations. NRT is surely right in that not everything about an emotional performance can be captured in language; actions, like bursting into tears, often speak louder than words. However, the fact that words cannot completely represent emotions is not ne cessarily a problem for representation, it is, as Lacan might argue, of the nature of representation. And rep resentation in some form or other seems to be an in escapable aspect both of a symbolic order that encompasses far more than words, and of our self understanding. It is not immediately clear that the anger expressed in giving another driver the ﬁnger is any less representational (or indebted to a masculine symbolic order) than giving vent to irritability through con textually apt sarcasm. Words too are always performances and all performances, however nonverbally immediate, are meaningless unless they comply with certain (con straining) preﬁgurations. There are then important debates still emerging within and between these different approaches to emo tional geographies despite their overlapping interests. These debates are an encouraging sign of the creative ﬂuidity of an emergent ﬁeld that will hopefully continue to resist the desire to present a single unifying theoretical totality, one that would belie the intricate complexities of its subject matter. (Such issues will be explored in interdisciplinary depth by the new journal, Emotion, Space and Society.) What makes emotional geographies so fas cinating is their potential to critique and reconstrue al most everything that geography has so far taken for granted.

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See also: Affect; Agoraphobia; Emotional Knowing; Existentialism/Existential Geography; Feminism/Feminist Geography; Other/Otherness; Positivism/Positivist Geography.

Further Reading Anderson, B. (2006). Becoming and being hopeful: Towards a theory of affect. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24, 733 752. Anderson, K. and Smith, S. (2001). Emotional geographies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26, 7 10. Bendelow, G. and Williams, S. J. (eds.) (1998). Emotions in Social Life: Critical Themes and Contemporary Issues. London: Routledge. Bondi, L. (2005). Making connections and thinking through emotions: Between geography and psychotherapy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 433 448. Casey, E. (2001). Between geography and philosophy: What does it mean to be in the place world? Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91, 683 693. Davidson, J. and Bondi, L. (2004). Spatialising affect; affecting space: An introduction. Gender, Place and Culture 11, 373 374. Davidson, J., Bondi, L. and Smith, M. (eds.) (2005). Emotional Geographies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Davidson, J. and Milligan, C. (2004). Embodying emotion, sensing space: Introducing emotional geographies. Social and Cultural Geography 5, 523 532. Dewsbury, J. D. (2003). Witnessing space: Knowledge without contemplation. Environment and Planning A 35, 1907 1932. Dixon, T. (2003). From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harre´, R. and Parrott, W. G. (1996). The emotions: Social, Cultural and Biological Dimensions. London: Sage. Harrison, P. (2007). ‘How shall i say it’? Relating the nonrelational. Environment and Planning A 39, 590 608. Koskela, H. (2005). Urban space in plural: Elastic, tamed, suppressed. In Nelson, L. & Seager, J. (eds.) A Companion to Feminist Geography, pp 257 270. Oxford: Blackwell. Lacan, J. (1992). E´crits: A Selection. London: Routledge. Lawson, V. (2007). Introduction: Geographies of fear and hope. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97, 335 337. Lupton, D. (1998). The Emotional Self. London: Sage. Parr, H. (2005). Emotional geographies. In Cloke, P., Crang, P. & Goodwin, M. (eds.) Introducing Human Geography, pp 472 485. London: Arnold. Philo, C. and Parr, H. (2003). Introducing psychoanalytic geographies. Social and Cultural Geography 4, 283 293. Thrift, N. (2004). Intensities of feeling: Towards a spatial politics of affect. Geograﬁska Annaler 86, 57 78.

Relevant Websites http://www.csun.edu American Sociological Association, Section on Emotions (Sociology of Emotions), California State University, Northridge. http://www.elsevier.com The journal of ‘Emotion, Space and Society’, Elsevier. http://www.sseas.org Society for the Study of Emotion, Affect and Space (SSEAS).

Emotional Knowing L. Bondi, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Affect Feeling, disposition, or mood that exists prior to cognition or rational thought. Often referred to as a mental state, affect is also bodily or sensory and unconscious or nonconscious in character. To be affected is to feel or to be touched or moved. Binary Distinctions Concepts that are deﬁned by an either/or structure: one term is deﬁned by the exclusion of the other in a context whether there are only two alternatives. Binary gender is an example: people are categorized as either female or male, with no overlap between the categories and no space outside of them. Cognition Conscious thought, thought processes, knowledge, and apprehension. Cognition is generally linked to the exercise of mental faculties, such as intelligence reasoning, logic, memory, and perception. Emotion Feeling or disturbance of feeling. Emotion is often understood as outward and expressive as well as embodied, and therefore as psychosocial (rather than biological or physiological) and as available to thought. Feeling Bodily sensation or perception, especially through sense of touch. Feeling has also acquired the more speciﬁc meaning of bodily sensation associated with affect or emotion. Post-Structuralist Theory A range of theoretical resources that developed out of critiques of structuralism. Common features include the idea that human subjects are not uniﬁed, but are always other to/ than themselves; the idea that meanings are not ﬁxed but are produced and negotiated in particular contexts; and an insistence on nondeterministic approaches to knowledge production, which shift the focus of attention away from questions about causes toward questions about how things happen. Reﬂexivity Turning back on itself of the awareness of the subject. In relation to research methods, reﬂexivity refers to the analysis of how the researcher impacts on the research process, and how the subjective realities of researchers and research participants interact. Subjectivity Qualities of human being that characterize human subjects’ situated self experience. Subjectivity is often associated with feelings, perceptions, and beliefs of human individuals. However, a sense of individuality is itself an aspect of subjectivity and is not necessarily inevitable or universal.

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Transference A concept used in psychoanalysis to describe how a person’s patterns or habits of relating are transferred from one context (typically that of early life with parental ﬁgures) to others. Psychoanalysts use the idea of transference to describe key aspects of their experience of how their patients relate to them, which they theorize in terms of early relationships with caregivers.

Introduction Human geographers have long been interested in peo ple’s experiences of the places, spaces, landscapes, and environments in which they live, work, and move. These experiences include people’s emotions, that is, their subjective feelings about, and in relation to, these places, spaces, landscapes, and environments. Moreover, emo tions do not necessarily belong uniquely to people: par ticular places, spaces, landscapes, and environments may themselves be redolent with emotions, and may act as powerful sources of affect, in the sense of affecting what is felt and what takes place. Despite the self evident importance of emotions to the phenomena that human geographers study, until re cently, emotional dimensions of existence have rarely been mentioned or engaged with directly. Silence about emotions has generally been accompanied by apparently dispassionate ways of presenting knowledge about the world. This exclusion of emotions and emotional ways of knowing from human geography is not surprising given that knowledge is widely understood to be grounded in reason as opposed to emotion, whereas emotion is often viewed as intrinsically unreasonable. Consequently, human geographers have been cautious and circumspect about engaging with issues of emotion. Nevertheless, emotion and emotional ways of knowing have found their way into several strands of human geography. Further more, human geographers have also challenged the supposed opposition between reason and emotion, and the notion that knowledge is necessarily emotion free. This has prompted an upsurge of interest in questions of emotion, including the methods appropriate for gener ating knowledge about emotions, and the status of emotion as a source of geographical knowledge. These developments have been inspired especially by feminist, nonrepresentational, and psychoanalytic ideas.

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Passionate Traditions Apparent Dispassion Underlain by Personal Values and Emotions Traditionally and popularly, scientiﬁc knowledge is grounded in value free, objective reasoning and in facts about the world that can be veriﬁed by others. Empirical evidence, laws, and theories are linked together by ex plicit logical rules. From this perspective, emotions are seen as a potential source of bias, liable to undermine logic and objectivity, and to cloud dispassionate judg ment, from which scientiﬁc knowledge therefore needs to be protected. Emotion, it appears, has no place in the generation of sound, reliable, scientiﬁc knowledge about the world. Accounts of scientiﬁc knowledge focus on the meth odological frameworks through which the scientiﬁc status of knowledge is warranted. These accounts do not ad dress the choices researchers make about the topics they select for investigation, or about forms of scholarship that do not aspire to scientiﬁc status. In these domains, less dispassionate and more emotionally infused ways of knowing the world and generating knowledge are evi dent. Thus, many human geographers (like other re searchers) are motivated or inspired to explore particular topics for essentially emotional reasons, including per sonal values and desires. Examples include anger at in justice inspiring research on geographies of inequality, and passionate attachment to particular places inspiring research about conservation, development, and planning. In these examples, emotion plays a part in initiating the processes through which human geography develops. While dispassionate reason may guide the subsequent production of knowledge, motivating emotions are often essential to inspire the continuing development of the discipline. Even after research has been initiated, emotions may have a decisive and constructive part to play in the de velopment of knowledge. While reason and logic may frame the formal processes of knowledge production, intuition and inspiration also play a part, perhaps espe cially in ﬁnding new and apparently ingenious solutions to problems. An archetypal example is provided by the story of Archimedes. According to this story, Archimedes had been trying to work out how to calculate the density of a crown in order to determine whether it really was, as claimed, made of gold. The solution to this problem came to him suddenly as he stepped into the bath and observed the displacement of water. In this moment he was not applying logical reasoning to the problem but was re laxing. The moment of realization triggered such ex citement that Archimedes is reputed to have leapt out of the bath and run into the streets of Athens naked, shouting ‘‘eureka’’ (I have found it). While the whole problem was solved only when he had worked with his

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insight to generate a formal, logical explanation of the relationship between volume and density, this formal solution was discovered only through the moment of highly emotional knowing in which Archimedes achieved his crucial insight. Challenging Exploitation, Inequity, and Discrimination The idea that knowledge is ever value free has been contested by many human geographers, especially since the 1970s, which witnessed the rise of politically com mitted approaches to research and scholarship. Scholars informed by Marxist, feminist, antiracist, and antidisablist perspectives criticized all claims to value freedom. Their critiques identiﬁed the values implicit in the conduct of research that claimed to be objective, value free, and scientiﬁc. For example, models designed to determine the optimal locations of speciﬁc facilities might incorporate assumptions about those using the facilities in question that implicitly exclude or disadvantage particular groups, such as those without access to a private car or those with mobility impairments. Research informed by explicit political commitments eschews any claim to a neutral vantage point and instead aims to challenge exploitation, inequity, and/or dis crimination. Contributions to human geography ensuing from these starting points are often palpably infused with powerful emotions, such as anger at injustice, compassion toward the oppressed, and desire for a fairer world. Such research exposes the mechanisms and impacts of dis crimination and oppression, laying bare the extent and the consequences of the hurt and injury inﬂicted, in ways designed to elicit emotional as well as rational responses. As with more scientiﬁc approaches, these traditions have not, until recently, self consciously and explicitly espoused research about emotions, or emotional ways of knowing about the world. However, by arguing for the explicit acknowledgment of values, and through the self evidently passionate commitments they express, antioppressive geographies have further validated the importance of emotional inspirations for knowledge production. Humanizing the Human in Human Geography The 1970s also witnessed the rise of humanistic geog raphy, which sought to rehumanize human geography by focusing explicitly on subjective aspects of human ex perience. This tradition challenged the idea, typical of spatial science, that human action can be modeled and predicted according to the principles of economic ra tionality. Humanistic geographers argued that people do not have the information or the inclination to behave in such ways, and that human geographers might more usefully explore, rather than making assumptions about,

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the subjective realities underlying human action. Hu manistic geographers also criticized politically commit ted geographers insofar as they represented people as passive victims of the circumstances in which they found themselves. Against such approaches, they sought to understand the nature of human agency and human meanings. In this context, humanistic geography drew on a range of philosophical perspectives to develop new ways of thinking about the relationship between people and their contexts or environments. For example, the concept of the life world was taken up with a view to transcending oppositions between external, objective realities and internal, subjective perceptions. Like the other traditions described above, explicit engagement with emotion was quite limited in much of this work. However, the call to understand subjective experience generated new explorations of people’s feel ings about and for a variety of places and spaces. Studies ensued about such topics as what it was like to live in an old people’s home, or about the feelings evoked by places under threat from the building of new roads. These studies drew on methods designed to generate insight about people’s subjective worldviews, including in depth interviews and ethnography, which were subsequently taken up and further developed by feminist geographers interested in generating knowledge of, and explicitly informed by, emotion.

Integrating, Embodying, and Narrating Emotion: Feminist Perspectives on Emotional Knowing Gender, Emotion, and the Critique of Binaries The approaches discussed in the preceding section have engaged with emotional ways of knowing more by acci dent than design. One of the ﬁrst explicitly emotional topics for research was about the geography of women’s fear. As well as validating the emotion of fear as an im portant topic for geographical research, this work was notable for its consideration of fear as something stimulated, exacerbated, countered, or alleviated by en vironments. This perspective suggested that fear and other emotions, such as joy and anger, might permeate social and physical environments as well as people’s in teriorized subjective experience. Put another way, emo tions could usefully be understood as arising at the interfaces between people and their contexts rather than being thought of as essentially individualized and psy chological phenomena. Some early studies of the geography of women’s fear challenged the notion that women’s fear is irrational. In so doing, this body of work contributed to the process of rethinking the relationship between emotion and reason, in which feminist geographers sought to undo the idea

that rationality and emotion are mutually exclusive op positions. The binary distinction between reason and emotion is closely linked to a gender binary in which emotion is associated with femininity and reason with masculinity. Since the late 1970s, feminist geographers have sought to challenge such associations, and, drawing on post structuralist theories, they have sought to de stabilize the binary structure characteristic of much geographical thought, and they have sought to undo the mapping of emotion onto women, and the treatment of emotion as unreasonable. According to post structuralist theory, mutually ex clusive oppositions in which one term is more highly valued than the other – such as reason and unreason or male and female or mind and body – conceal the de pendence of the superior term on the supposedly inferior one. For example, reason is deﬁned by, and therefore dependent on, what it is not, namely, unreason. Reason is therefore never truly free from unreason. Given that emotion is often viewed as intrinsically unreasonable and opposed to reason, this argument suggests that reason is in fact never emotion free. Conversely, emotion is never wholly without reason. Rather, emotion and reason are mutually interwoven with one another. In this context, we might think of dispassionate modes of knowledge production as expressions of emotional attachment to the idea of binary thinking. This approach also suggests that, even if unacknowledged or denied, emotional ways of knowing are always present within the production of knowledge in human geography and other disciplines. Embodying and Situating Knowledge The dismantling of binary thinking in feminist geography has developed further as feminist scholars have engaged with questions of embodiment as well as emotion. Emotions are intrinsically sensory. We feel and we are touched by emotions bodily. We smell, taste, see, and hear emotion, whether understood as arising within us or encountered in our interactions with people and places. Through the senses, emotions are inextricably bound up with the body and embodiment, and the idea of emo tional knowing is closely linked to sensory, embodied ways of knowing. In this context, feminist geographers have explored a wide variety of intertwined emotional and embodied knowledges. Examples include research focusing on troubled and troubling experiences, such as women’s experiences of living with chronic and contested illnesses or conditions such as agoraphobia and ﬁbro myalgia. These studies generate rich accounts of feelings in which the embodiment of emotion and the emotion ality of embodiment are powerfully articulated. Consideration of emotional and embodied aspects of knowledge production has contributed to critiques of universal knowledge claims. If our feelings and bodies are

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integral to our knowledge of the world, it is not possible to generate knowledge that transcends the perspective of the knowledge producer. All that we claim to know is marked by our speciﬁcity, including our location within systems of difference that locate us in relation to places, times, and peoples. Emotional knowing, as it has been taken up and explored by feminist geographers, offers avowedly situated ways of understanding our worlds, in which the subjective positions and contexts of all those involved in knowledge production (researchers and re search participants) are acknowledged and viewed as integral to processes of knowing. Narrating and Co-Constructing Emotion At the core of feminist geography is a commitment to giving voice to women and men in relation to their lived experience, especially those whose experiences tend to be marginalized in existing bodies of knowledge, policy, and practice. Consequently, a great deal of attention has been devoted to methodological questions about the conduct and representation of ﬁeldwork. Feminist researchers reject the idea of the detached, objective, neutral ﬁeldworker and attend instead to par ticular positions they occupy in relation to research participants. They generally seek to establish egalitarian relationships with research subjects, with a view to cre ating trustworthy and safe contexts in which research participants can talk about their lives. Underlying this is the idea that self narration by research participants has a central part to play in the production of knowledge. These narrations communicate emotional dimensions of lived experience. Participants talk about how they feel and thereby make their emotional knowledge available to researchers. Narration does not take place in isolation, and even when researchers invite participants to produce nar rations in their absence, for example, by keeping written or photo diaries, the data generated are produced in the context of relationships and imagined audiences. Field work data are always, therefore, co constructed, in the sense that their production involves researchers as well as research subjects. Feminist researchers have placed par ticular emphasis on the importance of reﬂexive self monitoring in order to help understand the character of these co constructions. Researcher reﬂexivity involves considering the emotional impact of the relative positions of research subjects and researchers, including, for ex ample, how it might feel to talk to someone of similar or different age, gender, and class position, within a par ticular social and environmental context. The narrations co constructed by research subjects and researchers are analyzed and represented in the process of producing academic knowledge. Feminist re searchers have sought to involve research participants in

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these phases of research with a view to ensuring that they convey the voices of participants effectively and honor the trust placed in them. Thus, the emotional knowing constructed in the course of feminist ﬁeldwork is understood as delicate, fragile, and vulnerable to ex ploitation and mistreatment. Indeed, feminist geography is deeply marked by awareness of the emotional injuries inﬂicted through misrepresentation and exploitative re search practices. It is the appreciation of these risks and injuries that has informed much feminist methodological debate about emotional knowing.

Enlivening, Affecting, and Rethinking Emotion: Emotional Knowing Beyond Representation Escaping Representation and Honoring the Ineffable While feminist geographers have sought to give voice to the experiences – including the emotional knowledge – of marginalized others, the idea that emotions can be represented effectively through narrative accounts has also been subject to challenge. Thus, some geographers have argued that discursive representations of lived ex perience are profoundly ﬂawed and actively obscure the very vitality researchers seek to convey. According to this critique, geographers need to engage with what people do and feel rather than with what people say they do and feel, and therefore with emotions rather than with nar rations of emotion. Furthermore, this argument suggests that the co constructing emotional narrative replaces emotions with discourses about emotion, and, in so doing, it displaces and even destroys emotional knowing as well as deadening rather than enlivening geographical knowledge. In order to get beyond representations and discourses, researchers inspired by this argument have often focused their attention on practices that are intrinsically non verbal, such as dance, yoga, meditation, massage, and reverie. It is the embodied feel of such practices that studies explore. However, researchers have also ap proached talk and conversation as performative rather than representational practices. Whatever the practice on which research focuses, attention is given to the sensory, embodied, spiritual, and affective doing, rather than the substantive content or overt meaning of what is said or communicated. Emotional knowing is understood to reside in and to be accessible only via the practices themselves. As well as seeking to convey emotional dimensions of practices without recourse to narrative accounts of emotion, research from this nonrepresentational per spective has also explored emotion as intrinsically unarticulable and ineffable. Sometimes focusing on

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speciﬁc emotions such as hope, and sometimes on unnamable emotional qualities associated with loss or with love, this work emphasizes what cannot be rendered into words. In so doing, it draws attention to limits of representational modes of knowing and valorizes non representational emotional knowing. Beyond Cognitive Knowledge and Beyond Personal Feelings Research within this nonrepresentational tradition often uses the term affect rather than emotion. The rationale for this preference is an association made in psychology between emotion and cognitive representations of feel ings, in contrast to an association between affect and noncognitive experiences. While the distinction between emotion and affect is contested (e.g., by feminist geog raphers in the context of the critique of binary thinking discussed above), the key point to be made is that non representational approaches to emotional knowing are concerned with, and focus on, the noncognitive. From this perspective, emotion/affect lies beyond cognition and constitutes a distinctive mode of knowing about the world that is radically different from cognitive knowing. One feature of this otherness is that emotional/affective knowing always exceeds representability. As well as emphasizing what lies beyond cognition, nonrepresentational approaches challenge the idea that emotions are essentially individualized phenomena, felt by and belonging to human individuals. This underlines the presumption that emotional knowing is not available through self reﬂection. Moreover, because the idea that emotions belong to individuals is so strong, at least within Western cultures, scholarship within this perspective is often practiced in a way designed to disrupt such as sumption. For example, to convey a nonindividualized understanding, emotion/affect may be described as in human. Certainly, from a nonrepresentational per spective, the task of research is not to provide insight into how individuals feel about their lives. Rather, alongside, conveying ineffability and nonrepresentability, this work seeks to retheorize emotion/affect in new ways that ac tively decenter conscious human agency. Practices, Networks, and Posthuman Ways of Knowing Nonrepresentational geographers draw on a variety of resources in order to undertake this retheorization. The focus on noncognitive, nondiscursive practices points to ideas about repetitive, unconscious, habitual everyday practices elaborated by writers, including Bourdieu and de Certeau. However, these theorists have not proven particularly popular among geographers concerned with the development of nonrepresentational work on emo tional knowing. Two other sets of ideas have been more

inﬂuential. First, Latour’s ideas about the agential prop erties and circulating effectivities of linkages and net works have proven attractive because of their capacity to radically reframe and reorient debates about agency away from the traditional focus on human beings. In other words, Latour’s work helps geographers to rethink the subjects and subjectivity of emotional knowing as non human, inhuman, or transhuman. Second, the writings of Gilles Deleuze have been especially inﬂuential within this body of work to such a degree that nonrepresenta tional approaches are sometimes thought of as in trinsically Deleuzian. Deleuze provides resources for working against the grain of individual subjectivity, de scribing affects and desires as independent of human subjects. Although nonrepresentational approaches to emo tional knowing contest some features of feminist ap proaches, including especially the status of narrations of emotion, there are also important points of connection and convergence. For example, some feminist theories of embodiment also seek to write against the grain of body as biological organism and to disrupt assumptions that equate subjectivity with individuals. Indeed, where feminist and nonrepresentational approaches tend to converge, for example, in their insistence that emotion is a form of knowing, they also share a good deal with psychoanalytic perspectives.

Relating, Flowing, and Connecting Emotion: Psychoanalytic Approaches to Emotional Knowing Unconscious Relational Registers of Emotion Like nonrepresentational approaches, psychoanalysis is not a singular body of theory, but, among the ideas, its different versions share is that of the unconscious. In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious is not merely that which is not conscious, but it is related to conscious life in a necessarily conﬂictual and antagonistic way. It is radically other to conscious life and always present within it, adding layers of meaning to all that is said and done in ways that necessarily exceed conscious meanings, and that are always liable to disrupt conscious intent. The Freudian slip (in which what is said is not what the speaker had consciously intended but which can be understood as expressing an unconscious thought) is a classic example. Expressions of unconscious life are emotionally rich and often highly charged. Indeed, emotional experience often provides clues about the content of unconscious life, as, for example, in moments when we are surprised or disturbed by our feelings. Unconscious life is like a rich reservoir of noncognitive knowledge, often deeply felt, but not directly available to conscious thought.

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Different versions of psychoanalysis also share the idea that unconscious life is conﬁgured relationally, both intrapsychically and interpersonally. Unconscious life can be thought of in terms of objects located in a variety of places, including inside and outside our own represen tations of ourselves. These objects are images of (or transfers from) anything that is salient within our un conscious lives. Psychoanalytic theory postulates that images of signiﬁcant others (classically our parents), or aspects of signiﬁcant others are conﬁgured in this way, and also acknowledge that signiﬁcant others may be signiﬁed in a multitude of different and often indirect ways. Emotionally redolent relationships operate be tween, and are constitutive of, the multitude of signiﬁers that forge unconscious life. This is integral to the psy choanalytic concept of transference, according to which the impress of our unconscious patterns of relating is necessarily transferred across different interpersonal re lationships, classically but not solely from patterns gen erated by our earliest relationships (normatively with parental ﬁgures) to subsequent ones. As this account indicates, psychoanalysis and non representational approaches start from very different points, the former arguing that meaning and knowledge of all kinds are inextricably bound up with processes of representation, and the latter seeking to access meaning and knowledge prior to and beyond representation. However, the two approaches unite in their emphasis on noncognitive and non (or un) conscious modes of knowing (including emotional knowing), and in their challenges to assumptions about human subjectivity as agential, intentional, conscious, individualized, and bounded. Emotional Flows and Fluid Boundaries According to psychoanalysis, a sense of subjective inter iority is produced at least in part through the process of locating salient signiﬁers inside self representations. But signiﬁers may be located anywhere, for example, when emotion states such as anger are projected onto others, so that subjective boundaries never correspond directly to self representations. Instead, self making requires endless psychic work, which is inevitably rich in emotion, and emotional knowing is part of what it means to be human. For geographers interested in emotional knowing, psy choanalytic ideas are useful because they provide a way of thinking about the spatiality of subjectivity as well as a spatialized approach to emotional knowing. Geographers working with psychoanalytic ideas (in common with those drawing on nonrepresentational approaches) have emphasized the mobility and ﬂuidity of emotion. From a psychoanalytic perspective, this ﬂuidity is integral to the idea that the unconscious is constituted by signiﬁers, the meanings of which are

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necessarily relational rather than ﬁxed. Emotion is understood as movement between, through which con nectivities are expressed, created, and sustained. Emo tional knowing enables and requires boundaries to be crossed and reworked. Thus, feelings about selves and environments actively connect people to speciﬁc land scapes, blending qualities of places into people’s sense of who they are.

Connecting (to) Fields of Emotion Psychoanalytic ideas present challenges to, and resources for, researchers seeking to generate emotional know ledges. If the omnipresence and radical alterity of un conscious life are taken seriously, then the traditional caution around emotion as source and topic of know ledge may seem to be entirely appropriate. However, as a few geographers have argued, psychoanalysis, and some of the practices it has spawned, also offers useful pointers for exploring emotional life in ways alert to, but not overwhelmed by, the challenges presented by the un conscious. For psychoanalysts and other practitioners who draw on psychoanalytic ideas, one’s own emotional experience (or countertransference) provides a point of access to the ﬁeld of emotional dynamics in which one is located. Psychoanalytic practices create very precisely speciﬁed ﬁelds in which practitioners use highly reﬁned skills to sense what is happening. If emotions are understood as always relational and as at least potentially symptomatic of unconscious processes, then something broadly analogous might be possible in other contexts. Researchers’ uses of self experience may be much less reﬁned than those of psychoanalysts, and their purposes may be quite different, but if emotion always entails movement between, then our own feelings are likely to provide clues about the emotional contexts in which we are embedded. On this account, our own emotional knowing is integral to any attempt to generate knowledge about emotions. There are connections between this perspective and both the reﬂexive self monitoring advocated by feminist geographers, and the immersion in practices advocated by those working with nonrepresentational perspectives. With respect to the former, psychoanalytic ideas support and provide conceptual and practical resources for ex ploring the interpersonal dynamics of ﬁeldwork, in cluding the ways in which researchers and research participants take up, are drawn into and move between different positions in relation to one another. Psycho analysis shares with the latter the idea that emotional knowing requires embodied, noncognitive immersion within, rather than the production of representations of, practices. In such ways, different approaches to emotional knowing are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

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See also: Affect; Agoraphobia; Embodied Knowing; Emotional Geographies; Feminism/Feminist Geography; Feminist Methodologies; Non-Representational Theory/ Non-Representational Geographies; Performativity; Psychoanalysis; Psychotherapy/Psychotherapeutic Geographies; Situated Knowledge, Reﬂexivity; Subjectivity.

Further Reading Ahmed, S. (2004). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Anderson, B. (2004). Time stilled space slowed: How boredom matters. Geoforum 35, 739 754. Bennett, K. (2004). Emotionally intelligent research. Area 36, 414 422. Bingley, A. (2003). In here and out there: Sensations between self and landscape. Social and Cultural Geography 4, 329 345. Bondi, L. (2003). Empathy and identiﬁcation: Conceptual resources for feminist ﬁeldwork. ACME: International Journal of Critical Geography 2, 64 76.

Bondi, L. (2005). Making connections and thinking through emotions: Between geography and psychotherapy. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 433 448. Bondi, L., Avis, H., Bingley, A. et al. (2002). Subjectivities, Knowledges and Feminist Geographies. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld. Chodorow, N. (1999). The Power of Feeling. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Davidson, J. (2003). Phobic Geographies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Davidson, J., Bondi, L. and Mick, S. (eds.) (2005). Emotional Geographies. Aldershot: Ashgate. Harrison, P. (2007). How shall I say ity? Relating the non relational. Environment and Planning A 39(3), 590 608. Hochschild, A. (1979). Emotion work, feeling rules and social structure. American Journal of Sociology 85, 551 575. Laurier, E. and Parr, H. (2000). Emotions and interviewing in health and disability research. Ethics, Place and Environment 3, 98 102. Nigel, T. (2004). Intensities of feeling: Towards a spatial politics of affect. Geograﬁska Annaler 86B, 57 78. Parr, H. (2005). Emotional geographies. In Cloke, P., Crang, P. & Goodwin, M. (eds.) Introducing Human Geography, pp 472 485. London: Arnold.

Empire M. Power, University of Durham, Durham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Decolonization The process by which colonies achieve their political independence from the colonial metropolitan power. This also relates to an intellectual movement known as postcolonialism which seeks to examine the legacies of colonialism and imperialism. Hierarchization The process by which the expansion of political power establishes dynamics of inequality, geographies of uneven development, or unequal relations of exchange and accumulation. Imperialism The creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. Neocolonialism A means of economic and political control articulated through the powerful states and capitals of ‘developed’ economies over the economies and societies of the ‘underdeveloped’ world. Neoliberalism A political project that entails a particular set of economic and political ideologies based, in part, on eighteenth-century liberal economic theory. Concerned primarily with theoretical economic models, neoliberalism is a theory of how to structure economies through free markets. Orientalism The scholarly study of and general interest in ‘the Orient’, which was a predominantly European and American construction, produced within a grid of power, knowledge, and geography. Orientalism is also a discursive formation and corporate institution for the production and domination of the ‘Orient’ by the ‘Occident’. Postcolonialism A critical political and intellectual formation concerned with the impacts of colonialism and its contestation on the cultures of both colonizing and colonized peoples in the past and the reproduction and transformation of colonial relations, representations, and practices in the present.

Introduction: Geography and Empire The word ‘empire’ evokes visions of grandeur and glory, conquest and slavery but, as we shall see, the word has had a complicated history and many different, ﬁercely contested meanings. It has also often been combined with several other contentious words like imperialism, colo nialism, globalization, neocolonialism, and others. To

complicate things further, a great deal of compound terms have been added to the mix such as informal empire, cultural imperialism, internal colonialism, post colonialism, and many more. Projects of empire have also been very varied through time and not always mutually supportive and compatible including, for example, pro jects of conquest, commerce, settlement, and rule. The difﬁculties are not just conceptual but also political and emotional since to deﬁne something as imperial or co lonial today almost always implies hostility to it. Across several imperial formations through history, to be an empire builder was to be an adventurer, a hero, and a selﬂess laborer for others’ well being. Only over the last century has this changed (where today’s empire builders are met with near universal distaste). Empires both past and present have profoundly shaped the contemporary world and empires live in memory long after they have faded from power. In many ways geography should be treated as both a discipline and a discourse of empire: as a set of geo graphical ideas, institutions, and practices that induced and legitimized territorial expansion; and as a dynamic medium through which European attitudes of dominance and core periphery or metropolitan–colonial relation ships were imagined, negotiated, and represented. Em pire has thus been central to the making of the discipline of ‘geography’ which produced and disseminated a wide variety of material and imaginative resources that aided the exploration and colonization of many parts of the non Western world, especially at the end of the nine teenth and start of the twentieth centuries. In the pro duction of imperial imaginaries and in the formulation of visions of empire (including the production of ideologies of superiority and conceptual devices for ordering the world), geography both as a discipline and a discourse contributed to the rising capacity of Europeans to bring the world within their imperial visions. Geography then, at least to begin with, was a kind of ‘handmaiden of empire’ along with associated disciplines like anthro pology. In this sense, geography served the causes of European imperialism, helping to create and maintain an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship between states in the form of empires based on domin ation and subordination. Over the last 500 years, imperialism has been a pre dominantly Western project and form of dominance shaped by expansionist (both capitalist and communist) systems. Europe’s rise to global dominance in the nine teenth century stemmed from a much longer history of

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trade, settlement, exploration, and warfare however. From the ﬁfteenth century explorers of Spain and Portugal through to the ‘scramble for Africa’ at the end of the nineteenth century and the climax of imperialism in the early twentieth century, the construction of empires has followed intrinsically geographical dynamics that involve extensions of sovereignty in one nation state over the land and lives of distant others. This process has in variably involved military conquest, the imposition of direct rule, colonial settlement, and informal empires of trade and political supervision. As European colonial empires began to collapse and dissolve in the latter half of the twentieth century the term has acquired other con notations, being used to describe the global economic inﬂuence of Japan or the USA, the power of transnational corporations, the geopolitical spheres of inﬂuence maintained by China or the USSR during the Cold War, and the management of the so called Third World by Western countries and institutions. Today the predominant motif in investigations into questions concerning the nature and possibilities of the contemporary world order has been that of ‘empire’. A signiﬁcant number of speculations concerning the im perial nature of our times have appeared since late 2001, many inﬂuenced by Marxist–Leninist thought where imperialism has been used as a synonym for capitalism. The emergent consensus on the imperial nature of the contemporary world order is not intended to indicate a break between the post Cold War era and a brand new twenty ﬁrst century imperial age. Speculations regarding the imperial form of the world order after 9/11 arose ﬁrst of all in commentaries that argued that the contemporary conjuncture had more in common with the political form of the Roman Empire. Such arguments indicate that the concepts of ‘empire’ and ‘new imperialism’ are deployed not because of their uniqueness or singularity to the contemporary era, but because of their historical reson ances that are seen to afford purchase upon, and thus deeper understanding of, contemporary world politics. Indeed, this resurgence of interest in imperial political forms suggests that a consensus is emerging that empire is a neglected category of political analysis. Many critics thus suggest that we need to conceptualize contemporary empires and imperialisms in more general terms – as subject to logics of power, as systems of violence, or as sets of historical tendencies and cultural perspectives since its effects are pervasive and wide ranging. We are probably most likely to think of empire in connection with Rome; the term, in fact, comes from the Latin imperium, with its root meaning of order and command. Tacitus, the Roman historian, also used it to refer to the immense size and diversity of the Roman world. Empires predate the Romans by several hundred years, however: Egypt, for example, set up an empire in the sixteenth century BC by invading and then

incorporating Nubia and the ancient city states of the Levant. The Akkadian Empire of Sargon of Akkad exists as one of the earliest models of a far ﬂung, land based empire. Many different empires beyond that of Rome – for example, Mesopotamian, Ottoman, Persian, Chinese, Aztec, and Mughal – have appeared throughout history and around the world. By exploring the diverse historical, cultural, and geographical settings of empires, we can understand how and why empires emerged, when and where they did, how they were maintained, and how and why they came to an end. In most cases, military power has been critical to empire building. While empires generally introduced new political and administrative institutions, they also frequently adapted to existing in stitutions and local elites. Further, most empires spent considerable energy and resources in attempting to control production and trade within their realms. Ul timately, however, what is perhaps most interesting about the comparative study of empires is that peoples widely separated by time and place independently created common forms of political and social organization.

Deﬁning Empire and Imperialism There has been considerable debate about what consti tutes an empire. There are thus many deﬁnitions of empire and its conceptualization has been the focus of some considerable debate. Some deﬁne an empire as a state that extends dominion over areas and populations distinct culturally and ethnically from the culture/eth nicity at the center of power. Other deﬁnitions may emphasize economic or political factors. The term gen erally implies military hegemonic power. Like other states, an empire maintains its political structure at least partly by coercion. Empires can be land based (such as the Mongol Empire) or can be seaborne (such as the Portuguese and the British empires) or they may feature looser structures and more scattered territories. Empire contrasts with the example of a federation, where a large, multiethnic state – or even an ethnically homogeneous one like Japan or a small area like Switzerland – relies on mutual agreement among its component political units which retain a high degree of autonomy. Historical comparison, however, beneﬁts from con ceptual clarity and the application of a ‘core’ deﬁnition. Empire has often been deﬁned as a state that is endowed with particular properties. This state (by contrast with bands, local groups, or chiefdoms) has been deﬁned by a range of observers as a differentiated set of institutions and personnel, embodying centrality. In this sense, pol itical relations radiate outward from a center to cover a territorially demarcated area, over which the empire claims a monopoly of binding and permanent rule making, backed up by physical violence. Empires differ

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from generic states not so much in terms of size as in terms of diversity and internal political differentiation. Clearly ‘empire’ intuitively connotes large scale: however, given that scale is necessarily relative in the sense that it is contingent on historical context, it is impossible to set any absolute quantitative thresholds for imperial state hood. Moreover, the meaning of empire has varied over time, which requires us to understand the different his torical contexts in which the term has been used. The emergent literature on the ‘new imperialism’ is often at pains to delineate a distinction between ‘imperialism’ on the one hand and ‘empire’ on the other. This distinction is intended to capture a break from twentieth century Marxist understandings of European colonial imperial ism. Marxist accounts have been criticized for providing overly reductionist representations of the relationship between the political and the economic and for being bound to the explanation of the historically particular form of nineteenth and twentieth century European colonial empires. Indeed, as we shall see below, this emergent literature implicitly follows the argument that the present world order is something altogether different from ‘imperialism’. Some of the ﬁrst global empires were a product of the European age of exploration that began with a race of exploration between the then most advanced maritime powers, Portugal and Spain, in the late 1400 s. Over the next four centuries, Europeans began to establish empires across the world that, according to Eric Hobsbawm, ul timately resulted in the ‘age of empire’ (deﬁned as 1875– 1914), where colonial empires were formed and where the economic character of industrial capitalism proved to be critical. Imperialism in this sense is the salient ‘inner contradiction’ in the phase of capitalist development. Capitalism, according to Marx and Engels, creates a world after its own image and thus compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the ‘bourgeois mode of production’. In this ‘age of empire’ between 1875 and 1914, a half dozen European powers parceled out col onies among themselves amounting to one quarter of the planet’s land surface. For some observers, such as Hobsbawm, imperial expansion was but one response to the crisis of proﬁtability that beset capitalism in the great depression of 1873–96 (the others included protective tariffs, cartelization, and pressures on labor). Though other explanations for the remarkable burst of coloniza tion at the turn of the century have emerged, attempts to divorce the explanation of imperialism from the speciﬁc developments of capitalism in the late nineteenth century have often been regarded as ideological exercises. In theory, capitalism was profoundly internationalist, without loyalty to community or nation, dedicated only to proﬁt wherever or however it might be made, impa tient of political frontiers or any other so called artiﬁcial constraints on the efﬁcient ﬂow of the factors of

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production. In practice, however, this model was in adequate given that the evolving world economy of capitalism was a collection of solid national state blocs, as well as a ﬂuid entity. In this sense, the age of empire has been considered a period of intense rivalry between na tional state blocs. The clash between the universalizing and the nationally competitive tendencies of capitalism formed the central thesis of Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917) in which he argued that the resultant imperial rivalries had engendered the frat ricidal capitalist war then raging. Lenin quotes Cecil Rhodes as saying that colonialism and imperialism abroad were the only possible ways to avoid civil war at home. Although it was not direct economic confrontation per se that led to armed conﬂict, global capitalist expan sion did engender an atmosphere of limitlessness, in which the linkage of national interest to concretely de ﬁned objectives was severed. States might no longer be able to specify their own national necessities, but they did believe that any concession, large or small, to any ad versary, real or potential, could eventually prove fatal. More recent deﬁnitions of empire touch on the elements of hierarchy and heterogeneity, for example, and have focused much more directly on indirect forms of power and control than has previously been the case. Here empire is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state controls the effective political sover eignty of another political society and it becomes a sys tem of interaction between two political entities, one of which, the dominant metropole, exerts political control over the internal and external policy – the effective sovereignty – of the other, the subordinate periphery. This form of domination accommodates various forms of ‘indirect’ rule, (i.e., the exertion of political control through and in conjunction with the elites of the subju gated peripheries) and does by no means presuppose direct control from the center over the actual manage ment of these peripheries. Related deﬁnitions of empire tend to stress diversity and alienation. For instance, em pire might be seen as a state in which one or more re gions have a living memory of being part of a different autonomous polity, which was at some point brought under the rule of the current imperial power. As this memory fades, a unitary state evolves. Diversity per se, however, is of limited value in deﬁning empire simply because all prenation states in history that were bigger than city states tended to be heterogeneous in terms of language, religion, and other deﬁning cultural characteristics: if diversity were the critical variable, most premodern states would have to be subsumed within the category of empire. Many observers have noted that empires almost constantly ﬁght and seek to separate the zone of conﬂict, the frontier, from the zone of peace, the core – at least in theory. In this view, most nation states begin as empires in that they ﬁnish this homogenizing

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job, imposing linguistic uniformity and a sense of en compassing identity. Empires and nation states may thus be conceived as two ideal types that bound a range of combinations in between. Common to all empires and an institution in its own right, the frontier marks the boundaries between insiders and outsiders and always becomes a contested fault line along which acts of vio lence accumulate. For some, empire may be regarded as a centrifugal violence transfer, from the interior to the frontier. These deﬁning qualities of political hierarchy and cultural diversity have also been combined in some deﬁnitions where an empire is understood as a large, composite, multiethnic, or multinational political unit, usually created by conquest and divided between a dominant center and subordinate (sometimes very dis tant) peripheries. The culturally diverse character of the imperial whole, on the other hand, while often a logical and indeed inescapable consequence of conquest, cannot properly be regarded as an essential action, condition, or ingredient of empire. Overall, core periphery centered concepts work well for any empires that are republics, because the citizenry of the dominant core will strive to preserve any privileges associated with its formal separa tion from the population of the dominated periphery, as well as for any modern colonial empires with their European or North American cores and geographically and culturally distant possessions. Several deﬁnitions thus see empire as a form of political organization in which the dominant state – the ‘mother country’ or the ‘metropole’ – attempts to create a network of allied elites in regions abroad who accept subordination in inter national affairs in return for the security of their position in their own administrative unit (the ‘colony’ or, in spatial terms, the ‘periphery’). In this sense, there is an explicit differentiation of empires from nation states, where states can be socially and ethnically homogenous but the empire is differentiated: territorially, religiously, nation ally, and occupationally. In this formulation, empires stabilize inequality at home and export social hierarchies. While modern deﬁnitions of empire that emphasize the domination and exploitation of a periphery by a dominant core owe much to the experience of modern colonial empires, this does not limit the utility of such deﬁnitions to that particular context. It is hard to envision any kind of imperial expansion that is not sustained by a core or metropole (however diffuse, as in the case of the Mongol or Ottoman conquest empires), which claim certain en titlements. Conquest, by contrast, is not an essential in gredient. This distinction begins to break down in the case of very long lived empires, such as the Roman Empire under monocracy – a period in which the privileges of the core gradually declined to zero – and China after the Qin uniﬁcation. In other cases, most notably Old Kingdom Egypt, core periphery relationships disappeared much

more rapidly and territorial states emerged. This problem underlines the need for a dynamic deﬁnition of empire that gives due considerations to two issues: that states we may not ordinarily think of as ‘empires’ often underwent an ‘imperial’ phase of core periphery dominance and at tendant diversity – say, France or Britain; and that even very large and initially highly heterogeneous empires may, over time, turn into states that retain some of their diversity but lose a distinctive core (such as the mature Roman Empire or China). ‘Empire’, therefore, is best understood both as a particular type of political entity ‘and’ as a stage or phase of state formation.

Empire State Building: British Imperialism Modern European empires were modeled on those of Greece and Rome but states such as Britain built the ﬁrst truly global empires and grappled with issues that their predecessors did not. The British Empire produced Europe as a sovereign subject seen to be at the pinnacle of human civilization and at the center of an imaginative grid and global hierarchy of civilization that positioned all other continents as subordinate spaces. Imperial ex pansion was conceived in triumphalist terms (although this was often ridden with anxiety and fear), as a uni versally beneﬁcent agent of progress and as an inevitable consequence of European history. Similarly, non Euro pean lands and peoples were depicted as ‘uncivilized’ or ‘backward’ and hence in need of domestication and rule. Not only in Britain, but also in many other European colonial empires, colonialism contributed to the making of European modernity and elaborated ‘imaginative geographies’ of ‘us’ and ‘them’, ﬁctitiously creating binary oppositions between a supposedly dynamic, rational, masculine, and democratic ‘Occident’ and an eternal, irrational, feminine, and despotic ‘Orient’. In this sense, particularly in Britain, travel writers, cartographers, surveyors, professional geographers, geographical soci eties, and landscape artists contributed to empire and shaped imperial categories of thought and colonial practices in numerous ways. It is difﬁcult and unwise however to generalize from the experience of the British Empire given that European states developed distinct imperial ideologies and styles of power and dealt with diverse subject peoples in often very different ways. Different agents of empire (such as explorers and merchants, governors and settlers, and engineers and armies) made the world over in the image of particular interests (such as those of gender, race, or class) and drew upon culturally speciﬁc ideas and prac tices. Further, European colonists often forged identities that diverged from metropolitan visions of empire and in some cases played a role in leading colonial societies out of empire. British and other European identities were

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often renegotiated in the course of imperial passage through other non European landscapes and cultures. European colonial empires were thus geographically variegated systems of power and knowledge. Empires were also heavily shaped by covetous national agendas and were implicated in the production and construction of national identities. British national identity, for ex ample, was (among other things) shaped by a range of imperial ideas that revolved around the utilization of space. Contemporaries argued that Britain’s strength and distinctiveness in Europe and the imperial world rested on principles of property and liberty and practices of cultivation and international commerce. A product of the European age of discovery, the British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history and for a long period was the foremost global power. By 1921, the British Empire held sway over a population of 458 million people (or approximately one quarter of the world’s population) and covered 14.2 million square miles (one quarter of the earth’s total land area). As early as 1550, a committed policy of col onizing Ireland had been put in place centered upon a number of plantations that would later form the tem plates of empire, overseen by key ﬁgures like Walter Raleigh and Frances Drake who would later also play an important role in the early colonization of North America. The British Empire took shape during the early seventeenth century with the settlement of the Eastern colonies of North America (which would later become the United States), Canada’s Atlantic provinces, and the colonization of Caribbean islands like St. Kitts, Barbados, and Jamaica. Slavery was central to the sugar plantation economies the British established in the Caribbean while the American colonies provided rice, cotton, and tobacco among other things. The settlement of Australia (through the formation of penal colonies from 1788) and New Zealand created a major zone of British migration. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the focus of British expansion shifted from the Americas to Asia and later Africa following the Ameri can war of independence (1775–83). In the 1840s and 1850s, self governing colony status was granted to Aus tralia and Canada given that their inhabitants were seen to be closely aligned with the interests of the ‘mother country’ but this status was not granted to Ireland which had been incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801 following the Irish rebellion against British rule in 1798. During this time and following the abolition of slavery in British colonies in 1834, Britain expanded its political and economic inﬂuence through ‘informal empire’ which was under pinned by notions of free trade and a strategic pre eminence based on naval dominance. One of the ﬁrst multinational corporations, the British East India company, led the annexation of most of the

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Indian subcontinent and the conquest of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaya and other surrounding Asian countries. Established in 1600, with the intent to favor trade privileges in India, the company originally func tioned as a trading concern establishing an informal empire in the subcontinent, but by the 1850s the com pany functioned more like a state, engaging in conﬂicts with neighboring Asian countries. By this time India had become an extremely important part of the empire’s economy. As the company struggled to maintain control over its conquered Indian territories, the Crown and British government began to assume direct rule over the Indian subcontinent lasting for 90 years following the dissolution of the company. This period of direct rule, known as The Raj, saw the nations now known as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar collectively referred to as British India. Britain’s overseas commercial dom inance and free trade ideology (which had allowed it to master control of the world’s raw materials and markets) was beginning to be challenged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, by countries like France, Germany, and the US and by the rising tide of pro tectionism. While early European colonial empires were seen as mercantile in nature and promoted by European states through merchant companies, this new period of ‘classical imperialism’ (Hobsbawn’s ‘age of empire’) was rooted in a new phase of capitalist development and interimperial rivalry. There were growing concerns in Britain that existing trade links and overseas markets would be undermined by the increasingly closed imperial trading blocs being established by rival powers. Forced to join the renewed ‘scramble’ for formal empire at the end of the nineteenth century, Britain became part of the ‘new imperialism’ in a period during which there was an unprecedented pursuit of ‘empire for empire’s sake’, involving aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions. During this time Eur ope’s powers added nearly 8.8 million square miles to their overseas colonial possessions. A ‘scramble for Africa’ resulted given that the continent had been mostly un occupied by the Western powers as late as the 1880s and the continent’s territory was divided up formally between European colonial empires at the Berlin conference of 1884–85. This conference sought to regulate the com petition between the powers by deﬁning ‘effective oc cupation’ as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. Egypt was occupied from 1882 fol lowed by Sudan (1896–98) and South Africa (1899). Be tween 1885 and 1915, Britain took nearly 30% of Africa’s population under its control (compared to 15% for France and 9% for Germany). Nigeria with 15 million people had more subjects than the entire German colo nial empire in Africa. Cecil Rhodes, a key ﬁgure in British imperial expansion in Africa, dreamed of a British Empire stretching across the continent from Cape Town

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to Cairo, connected by British technologies like the railway and the telegraph. The British Empire began its transformation into the modern Commonwealth with the extension of dominion status to the already self governing colonies of Canada (1867), Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), New foundland (1907), and the Union of South Africa (1910). Full dominion independence was formalized in the 1926 Balfour Declaration and the 1931 Statute of Westminster where each dominion was henceforth to be considered equal in status to Britain and autonomous in inter national relations. The aftermath of World War I had led to an expansion of British imperial possessions involving League of Nations mandates for Palestine and Iraq (fol lowing the collapse of the Ottoman empire) and Britain taking control of territories like Tanganyika and South West Africa (Tanzania and Namibia, respectively) fol lowing the collapse of the German colonial empire in Africa. By the end of World War II, however, the collapse of Britain’s own empire was gathering momentum as anticolonial nationalist movements in British colonies began to challenge an imperial power more preoccupied with issues closer to home. India became independent in 1947 and over the following two decades most of Britain’s colonies followed suit. The end of the British Empire in Africa took place with remarkable rapidity although withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of the continent was complicated by the regions’ white settler populations – white settler rule continued in South Af rica until the end of apartheid in the 1990s and the white minority in Southern Rhodesia (a self governing colony since 1923) made a unilateral declaration of independ ence rather than submit to the immediate majority rule of black Africans. Although in 1997 Britain’s last major overseas territory (Hong Kong) became a Special Administrative Region of China, Britain still retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles which remain under British rule because of a lack of support for independence among the local population, because of a small population size dependent on British economic subsidies or because the territory is largely uninhabited except for transient mili tary or scientiﬁc personnel. British sovereignty of two of these territories, Gibraltar and the Falklands Islands, is disputed by their nearest geographical neighbors: Spain and Argentina, respectively. Many former British colonies (and even one former Portuguese colony) are today part of the Commonwealth of Nations.

Toward the Colonial Present and the ‘New’ Imperialism The predominant motif in investigations into questions concerning the nature and possibilities of the

contemporary world order has been that of ‘empire’. For some contemporary observers, this ‘new imperialism’ appears as nothing more than the revisiting of the old, though in a different place and time. Since the start of the twenty ﬁrst century, a signiﬁcant number of speculations on the imperial nature of our times have appeared. These include a range of seminal interventions from authors including David Harvey, Michael Mann, Alain Joxe, Emmanuel Todd, Derek Gregory, Michael Ignatieff, and Niall Ferguson, as well as a range of articles in scholarly journals and news media. This writing has received added impetus from the global popularity of some of these works as they inquire into the contemporary global capitalist world order (particularly that of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri) and the multiple scholarly critiques of this work that have emerged since 2000. Indeed, this resurgence of interest in imperial political forms suggests that a consensus seems to be emerging that empire is a neglected category of political analysis. Some of these interventions suggest that the world market is globalizing beyond the capacity of nation states to affect and shape it. In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, many scholars of international politics wrote about the emer gence of the postinternational order. This is in reference to the international system of nation states that began in Westphalia in 1648. This postinternational order is seen to be one in which the political sovereignty and terri toriality established in the 1648 treaty of Westphalia are surpassed and replaced with a deterritorialized or even supraterritorial order in which states would dissolve in global architectures of governance. The supposedly dis crete human communities hitherto represented by na tion states would thus emerge into a condition of global supraterritorial interconnection. In this emerging literature on the new imperialism the sovereignty of nation states is thus said to be vanishing, replaced by a newly emerging global sovereignty or ‘empire’ arising from the coalescence of a series of na tional and supranational entities united under a single logic of rule, with no clear international hierarchy. Here, in some cases, ‘empire’ does not simply refer to imperi alist domination of the periphery by the center, but to an all encompassing entity that recognizes no limiting ter ritories or boundaries outside of itself. Some of these authors concerned with contemporary forms of empire thus argue that, insofar as they represent restraints on the homogenizing force of the world market, all forms of imperialism are doomed to fail. Empire is thus, in a sense, seen to be both ‘postcolonial’ and ‘postimperialist’. Whereas classical imperialism is understood by some to have been a global machine that channels, codes, and territorializes the ﬂows of capital (blocking certain ﬂows and facilitating others); the world market, in contrast, is seen to require a smooth space of uncoded and deterri torialized ﬂows.

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Some observers see the Vietnam war as the ﬁnal mo ment of the imperialist tendency and argue that concepts such as center and periphery are now all but useless given that through the decentralization of production and the consolidation of the world market, the international div isions and ﬂows of labor and capital have fractured and multiplied so that it is no longer possible to demarcate large geographical zones as center and periphery, North and South. Empire, the name given to this supposedly New World Order, is argued to be a product of the struggle over sovereignty and constitutionalism at the global level. Many of these authors are skeptical about the prospects for localized acts of resistance against ‘em pire’, believing that the struggle now is simply over the form globalization will take. Even David Harvey, whose work delineates the historical continuities (as well as transformations) in relations between state sovereignty and global capitalism and thus draws extensively upon Marxist understandings of the imperialism of nineteenth and twentieth century European colonialism, distinguishes in the very title of his book between such ‘old’ imperialism and a ‘new’ imperialism speciﬁc to the contemporary era. This distinction is intended to highlight the speciﬁcity of contemporary world politics and imply that while reson ances of imperial forms might be discernable, today’s empire is different from yesterday’s. ‘Empire’ (or the ‘new imperialism’) is thus intended to indicate that the emer gent contemporary world order is a progression to a new form of order different from that of the classical trans continental or nineteenth /twentieth century European colonial empires, from the Westphalian states system, and from the post Cold War interregnum of globalization (of capitalism and governance). David Harvey’s examination of the place of American hegemony in a historical continuum of imperial forms draws upon the historical resonances of ‘empire’ in order to ask about the nature of contemporary world politics. Harvey starts from the assumption that American he gemony is a variety of ‘capitalist imperialism’, a contra dictory fusion of ‘the politics of state and empire’. Imperialism is here understood as a distinctively political project on the part of actors whose power is based in command of a territory and capacity to mobilize its human and natural resources toward political, economic, and military ends. For Harvey, imperialism is also a dif fuse political–economic process in space and time in which command over and use of capital takes primacy. American power, Harvey argues, needs to be understood in this nexus of territorial command and capital accu mulation enabling an exploration of the manner in which American foreign policy seeks to maintain hegemony over the wider global dynamics of capitalist accumu lation. In this sense, Harvey’s problematic has some similarities with the enquiries into the colonial policies of European powers in the nineteenth century that were

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similarly rooted in the relationship between state power and capital accumulation. Harvey argues that hegemony is predicated upon the three pillars of money, productive capacity, and military might. Imperialism is thus the deployment of these resources in order to achieve a hegemonic stabilization and conservation of the advan tages that accrue from a given set of unequal relation ships of exchange. Harvey charts the development of the new imperialism, or American hegemony, through identiﬁable historical transformations of the deployment of these resources since 1870. While Harvey’s position is ﬁrmly located in the Marxian tradition of political economy (indeed, Harvey notes that the so called ‘new imperialism’ is similar to the old imperialism described by Lenin and others) other observers have relied much less directly on Marxian thought to make related points about the contemporary signiﬁcance of empire. Michael Hardt and Anthonio Negri, for example, argue that although nation state based systems of power are rapidly unraveling in the face of global capitalism, globalization cannot be understood as a simple process of de regulating markets. Far from withering away, regulations today proliferate and inter lock to form a multicentered supranational order which they choose to call ‘empire’. The term, as they use it, refers not to a system in which tribute ﬂows from per ipheries to great capital cities, but to a more Foucauldian ﬁgure – a diffuse, anonymous network of all englobing power. Hardt and Negri claim that the sinews of this diffuse polity – its ﬂows of people, information, and wealth – are simply too unruly to be monitored from metropolitan control centers. Their account suggests that an older, statist world (of ruling class and proletariat, and of dominant core and subject periphery) is breaking down and being replaced by a less dichotomous and more intricate pattern of inequality. The logic of this volatile and diffuse entity evades, blurs, and transgresses all the inherited divisions of political thought: state and society, war and peace, control and freedom, and core and per iphery. More than just an important historical episode, the advent of this ‘empire’ has important consequences for our conceptions of reality and is an event of signiﬁ cant ontological importance. Other authors, such as Michael Mann, have also fo cused on the diffusion and incoherence of contemporary forms of empire not by examining politics or economics but by examining the recent history of American military power. While America cannot be said to have universal dominance, it can be said to have global reach and is a military force equipped only for battleﬁeld superiority and not for occupation or colonial garrison. While America is thus able to cajole and put pressure on other states, the implication is that it will struggle to remake the world order in its preferred image. In turning to the economic power of the US, Mann notes that America is a

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reluctant participant in the multilateralism necessary to keep a globalized economy running. This is similar in some ways to Harvey’s argument that American foreign policy seeks to maintain hegemony over the wider global dynamics of capitalist accumulation. Without engaging in multilateralism the US is unable to dominate the global economy and can only steer it with limited success. Moreover, while America brings an ideology of free trade to the global economy, it practices the protection of American interests. Mann thus argues that America’s political power is ‘schizophrenic’ in that American for eign policy oscillates between multilateralism and uni lateralism. The US perceives itself to be facing possible threats from either a coalition of states or a single state and is uncertain whether the best approach is multilateral engagement or unilateral invasion. Given the incoher ence of American power and its reliance on military dominance, contrary to Harvey, Mann argues that the US does not have imperial political powers and that the ‘age of empire’ has gone while America’s imperial efforts are not hegemonic. It is important, however, to avoid narrow conceptions of the international which focus solely on political–military and economic interactions and over look the thicker sets of social relations and sociocultural ﬂows.

Conclusions: Imperialisms ‘Old’ and ‘New’ The literature on the new imperialism/empire is an important attempt to come to terms with the manner in which political forms are changing in the early twenty ﬁrst century. Whether understood as the latest stage in capitalist spatiotemporal expansion or the global exten sion of military dominance, many authors take ‘empire’ to be ‘the’ dominant, determining motif of our times: a central political form of the contemporary world order. Derek Gregory’s identiﬁcation of the ‘colonial present’, for example, examines the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan and its extensions into Palestine and Iraq and argues that this must be understood in the historical context of British and American involvement in the Middle East, where colonial power continues to cast long shadows over our own present. For Gregory, 9/11 activated a series of political and cultural responses that were pro foundly colonial in nature. This kind of work leads us to ask which historical echoes and resonances of past imperialisms shape the contemporary use of the term ‘empire’. More speciﬁcally, what core attributes are seen to occur in any instance of contemporary world politics to which the term ‘imperial’ can be applied? Beyond this, what is the novelty, uniqueness, and speciﬁcity of these contemporary uses of the term ‘empire’? Since empire is deployed to speak about a transformation in world order, what attributes are said to inhere in the world order of

the contemporary era that legitimizes references to a ‘new’ form of imperial power? The literature on the new imperialism often legitimizes its use of the term ‘empire’ by noting a range of similarities between the expansive characteristics and extensive reach of classical transcontinental or European colonial empires and the global aspirations of American power in the early twenty ﬁrst century. Since empire or imperialism indicates an expansion beyond the borders of the state of political inﬂuence or control some authors see continuities and similarities between European imperial attempts to open markets around the world and attempts by the American state to maintain a global hegemony of neoliberal capit alism. Others have noted the manner in which the achievement of global military dominance encourages the US to deploy military force well beyond its borders. The dynamic of subordination and exploitation that characterizes the expansion of political power in the contemporary era also has its own historical echoes of past imperialism in that there is arguably a similar dynamic of ‘hierarchization’. Some authors have thus argued that ‘hierarchization’ is a key logic of empire in the colonial present where the expansion of political power establishes dynamics of inequality. Thus authors such as Harvey have argued that the geopolitics of empire comprises a geog raphy of uneven development and unequal relations of exchange and thus establishes a hierarchical geography of accumulation. It is less clear to see, however, where some authors draw a distinction between old and new imperialisms while the speciﬁcity of contemporary empire is often even harder to detect. It is thus not always clear how the form of expansion, hierarchization, or capital accumu lation in the contemporary world order is radically dif ferent to those found in analyses of classical Roman or modern European colonial empires. Since analyses of the Roman Empire, understandings of imperial power have taken crisis and decline to be central. Empires are said to rise and fall, overstretch themselves, and collapse. The concept of crisis has also been important in the literature on new imperialism/empire. For Harvey, America is a hegemon struggling to maintain its control over global capitalism. More speciﬁcally, the invasion of Iraq must be read as an attempt to maintain control over ‘the global oil spigot’ of the Middle East in order to preserve US he gemony. America, it is argued, thus faces a crisis in its imperial leadership, one that it seeks to postpone by in creasingly desperate foreign interventions. Moreover, Harvey argues that this crisis is not simply one of he gemony over the global conditions of capitalism, but also an internal crisis within American civil society. American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are thus read as re sponses to ‘internal’ crises of civil society. Others such as Michael Mann have argued that the contemporary world order is in a period of crisis in which American militarism

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threatens peace and order. Moreover, this crisis results from the weakened imperial state of the USA that, in its global militaristic dominance and unilateralism, threatens to overstretch its hegemonic position and plunge the contemporary imperial form into decline. In arguing that the ‘age of empire’ has gone, Mann suggests that an an archic order of nation states is reasserting its primacy. While the Westphalian states system has always had pretensions to timelessness, empires have always been time bound, rising, and falling. In this sense, when looking for ways in which to demonstrate that the con temporary world order could be said to represent a transformation of the mythical Westphalian principles of interstate order, the ﬁgure or idiom of empire is a natural choice. It is very difﬁcult to conceive of change in the Westphalian order and so those scholars who continue to be preoccupied with an older, statist world (of ruling class and proletariat, and of dominant core and subject periphery) talk of a resumption of business as usual with unilateralist statism sweeping away the temporary hiatus of the post Cold War enthusiasm for globalization. Contrary to this timeless order of statism, the idiom of empire is one that is rooted in time and always already asks how an imperial power arose and whether it is in danger of decline. The introduction of the concept of ‘empire’ is therefore intended to suggest that, at least in part, world politics cannot be read through the con straints of the Westphalian interstate system. For some, retrieving the imperial offers a way out of the ‘territorial trap’ set by Westphalia and alerts us to a range of phe nomena occluded by the use of our central categories in geography, international relations, and so on. Thus, some authors have begun to read the concern with the expansion of political control as an assertion of the primacy of transnational interconnections over international relations, foregrounding the primacy of connections (which transgress established borders) over those relations that are predicated upon preserving such borders. Using the concept of empire to chart the ex pansion of political power suggests that borders are naturally permeable and permeated and that sovereignty is neither contained in its territorial bounds, nor inviola ble. This expansion of power in the ‘new imperialism’ is said to involve the emergence of deterritorialized net works of global governance that relay norms and regu lative ideals throughout global space via institutions lacking territorial coordinates (e.g., the international ﬁ nancial institutions). While all forms of empire have had regimes of government, today’s regime of governance is not a territorial incorporation of the periphery into the circuits of capital emanating from and returning to the center, but rather the extension of diffuse, nonterritorial circuits of regulation embodied in intergovernmental organizations, civil society, non governmental organiza tions and transnational corporations. The circulation of

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notions of human rights, good governance, competition, and free trade, for example, establishes a global empire of individualist (neo)liberalism. This is a diffuse global he gemony in an empire that aims to appear universal and natural while disguising its imperial nature. Thus the ‘new imperialism’ or ‘empire’ of the contemporary world order is seen as wholly other than that of the period of classical imperialism because of the dissimilarity between the territorial basis of previous historical empires and the global ambitions of the deterritorialized empire of the contemporary world. Evidence for such antiterritorial imperial dynamics is said to be found in the evolution of a hegemonic global liberal governance regime. Whereas nineteenth and twentieth century coloni alism brought the values of the colonizer from the met ropolitan heartlands of the empire to the colonized at its periphery, there is, however, a distinct difﬁculty in es tablishing the peripheries of these ‘new’ contemporary forms of empire. The global hegemony of (neo)liberalism is achieved not through imposition, but through the manner in which these values come to be considered ‘norms’ and therefore become the global horizon of political discourse. Thus, supposedly peripheral govern ments openly embrace ideas of good governance or human rights not because they are being incorporated as ‘colonies’ but because they are becoming yet another relay in the global circuit of liberal governance. Thus, the use of the term is justiﬁed by noting that expansion was a primary feature of previous empires, but the speciﬁcity of contemporary empire is noted by arguing that the new imperialism is a nonterritorial, globalizing regime of governance, in which the traditional imperial separation between core and periphery, colonizer and colonized, is rendered indistinct. Whereas classical understandings of the hierarchiza tion entailed by imperialism viewed the unequal rela tionships as ones in which the center extracted values from the periphery, the literature of the new imperial ism/empire takes empire to be the naturalization of the hegemony of a universal (neo)liberal regime. In this sense, while accumulation often ﬂows from the Global South to the Global North, this is not clearly the same as the ﬂow from center to periphery. Following Hardt and Negri, we could argue that while the ‘old’ imperialism rested on the blood and tears of conquest and extraction, the ‘new’ imperial power is characterized by the he gemony of a naturalized set of putatively universal values. The rise of ﬁnancial capital and the emergence of ﬂexible production, for example, are said to be transforming the logics of state away from preservation of territorial in tegrity (as per the logic of Westphalia) toward engage ment in multilateral institutions of governance and transnational networks of production and accumulation. Such a change leads to the progressive deterritorializa tion of production and accumulation and hence the

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dissolution of the classic colonial practices that charac terized European imperialism. The state is no longer the tool of acquisition that it was assumed to be by theories of ‘old’ imperialism. Rather the state, through its multi lateral engagement with organs of global governance, establishes the conditions that permit transnational cor porations to roam without restriction across global space. For Hardt and Negri, the national colors of the imperi alist map of the world have merged and blended into an ‘imperial global rainbow’. Despite this supposed merging and blending of na tional colors the global role of America is a central thread running through the tapestry of this literature on the new imperialism/empire. This preoccupation with America is also one of the ways in which this literature claims to have identiﬁed the speciﬁcity of the present world order. Some have argued that since 1945 the US global empire has assumed two forms: the empire of production, from World War II to the 1970s, and the empire of con sumption, from the 1970s to the present. Others have pointed to the twentieth century ‘empire of the dollar’ or point to the US oil interests in Iraq and the emergence of ‘petroimperialism’. Other contemporary authors however, like Hardt and Negri, argue that US imperialism is not a central force in the world today in that the US cannot form the center of an imperialist project since imperial ism is over and no nation will be world leader in the way modern European nations were. This passage to a new global constitutional regime, it is argued, is shown by the Gulf War, during which the United States emerged as the only power able to manage international justice, not as a function of its own national motives but in the name of global right. In setting itself up as some kind of ‘world police’ the United States is thus argued to act in the interests of a deterritorialized ‘empire’. In this sense the Gulf War did indeed, as George Bush claimed, announce the birth of a New World Order. Thus while the ‘new’ empire might resemble the old in many ways, it differs insofar as it is a speciﬁcally American empire. America has thus taken its turn as the imperial power. The new empire is an American empire in peril however: either of overstretch and collapse, of decadent decline, or in danger of plunging the rest of the world into a ‘global civil war’. The crisis at the heart of the ‘new’ empire represents the return of history and an urgent call to consider the emergent features of the contemporary world order. The literature on the new imperialism/empire thus offers a signiﬁcant opportunity to rethink the nature of this world order and the cat egories and concepts we draw upon to make sense of it. We must take seriously, however, the ‘postimperial’ character of contemporary American and Western power, and recognize a much wider range of contemporary ‘quasi imperial’ forms. Imperial power relations are even a common feature of many non Western states,

considered ‘Westphalian’ nation states or ‘postcolonial’ states in some previous classiﬁcations of contemporary statehood. It seems incumbent upon scholars of world politics then to address the speciﬁcity of the imperial form in the early twenty ﬁrst century and grasp the possibilities for a nonstate centric analysis that it offers. This poses im portant challenges for geographers in particular who are well placed to contribute to these debates and to the formulation of concepts and theoretical perspectives. We need to keep in mind, however, the versatile power(s) of geography in the construction of empires and imperial hegemony, past and present. It is also important for ‘geography’ as a discipline to come to terms with its own history of engagement with European colonial empires. The challenge of decolonizing geography is thus im portant and ongoing. Much recent work in geography, focused on the tensions of empire today, is imbued with the perspectives of postmodernism and postcolonialism and these approaches offer important ways forward. This work pays close attention to the Eurocentric dimensions of empire and imperialism and the ambivalent nature of colonial discourses. Many critics have argued that while colonial empires have been dissolved, global relations are still structured by imperial attitudes and the affairs of postcolonial societies are still shaped by ‘Western’ frameworks of knowledge. This work has focused debates around the nature of ‘otherness’, the legacies of coloni alism, and how the West continues to engage the world in imperial terms. It also focuses attention on the ways in which imperial and colonial projects were subverted. In order to address the speciﬁcity of the imperial form in the early twenty ﬁrst century and to grasp the possibilities for new forms of analysis that this offers, geographers must come to terms with how the discipline is still shaped by imperial attitudes, by ‘Western’ frameworks of knowledge and by the postcolonial legacies of imperial conceptions of difference and otherness. See also: Capitalism; Cold War; Colonialism I; Colonialism II; Imperial Cities; Imperialistic Geographies; Neocolonialism; Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies.

Further Reading Barkawi, T. and Laffey, M. (2002). Retrieving the imperial: Empire and international relations. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31(1), 109 127. Brewer, A. (1990). Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Callinicos, A. (2002). The actuality of imperialism. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31, 319 326. Corbridge, S. (2003). Countering empire. Antipode 35, 184 190. Cox, M. (2004). Empire, imperialism and the Bush doctrine. Review of International Studies 30, 585 608.

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Driver, D. (2001). Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferguson, N. (2004). Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. London: Allen Lane. Gregory, D. (2004). The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Oxford: Blackwell. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000). Empire. London: Harvard University Press. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2004). Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Putman. Harvey, D. (2003). The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Howe, S. (2002). Empire: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ignatieff, M. (2003). Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. London: Vintage. Joxe, A. (2002). The Empire of Disorder. New York: Semiotex(e). Kirsch, S. (2003). Guest editorial: Empire and the Bush doctrine. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21, 1 6. Mann, M. (2003). Incoherent Empire. London: Verso. Raman, B. (2003). De centering Empire. Antipode 35, 194 196. Robinson, J. (2003). Postcolonising geography: Tactics and pitfalls. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 23, 273 289.

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Shaw, M. (2002). Post imperial and quasi imperial: State and empire in the global era. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31, 327 336. Smith, N. and Godlewska, A. (eds.) (1994). Geography and Empire. London: Blackwell. Walker, R. (2002). On the immanence/imminence of empire. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31, 337 349.

Relevant Websites http://www.infoshop.org An online copy of Hardt and Negri’s Empire (2000). http://www.bbc.co.uk BBC resources on the British Empire. http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg Resources concerning post colonialism. http://www.empiremuseum.org The British Commonwealth and Empire museum. http://www.globalissues.org Useful resources on geopolitics and US imperialism.

Empowerment R. Scheyvens, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction ‘‘We not only want a piece of the pie, we also want to choose the ﬂavour, and to know how to make it our selves,’’ says Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self Employed Women’s Association of Ahmedabad, 1992. Discourse on empowerment has had an important inﬂuence on debates about development especially since the early 1990s. Along with similar catchy terms in cluding ‘sustainable development’ and ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ has been captured by, and incorporated into, the rhetoric of a wide range of development agen cies with diverse social and political aims. While, at ﬁrst, empowerment was associated with al ternative development approaches endorsing grassroots participation and local level development, it is now ap plied more broadly to attempts to overcome global in equalities at a wide range of scales. For the poor, the disadvantaged, and the disenfranchised, empowerment implies a signiﬁcant challenge to current structures of power. Empowerment can thus be seen as essential for any group which wishes to challenge systems of op pression which have curtailed their life opportunities. From a geographical perspective, it is interesting to ob serve that claims for space – whether demands for rec ognition of land rights by indigenous groups or the importance for women in having a separate space in which to meet – are often closely associated with em powerment processes. This article discusses how empowerment can be de ﬁned, different approaches to empowerment, and high lights a range of ways in which the concept has been employed. As will be shown, the concept of empowerment has been utilized particularly by development geographers (especially those interested in gender or indigenous de velopment), feminist geographers, geographers studying other less powerful groups (including the disabled and children), and those advocating participatory or inclusive research methodologies.

Deﬁnitions Empowerment means activation of the conﬁdence and capabilities of previously disadvantaged or disenfranchised individuals or groups so that they can exert greater control over their lives, mobilize resources to meet their needs, and work to achieve social justice.

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Before we can fully understand empowerment, how ever, we need to be clear on the meaning of its source term, ‘power’. Power is often seen as a binary, hierarchical concept whereby it is synonymous with domination. This is power ‘over’ and it is instrumental in that power is understood as a means of inﬂuencing others to one’s own advantage. However, development geographers generally prefer to see power as an enabling, productive force. This can include power ‘to’ – generative forms of power which can include resistance; power ‘with’ – the power of col lective action; and power ‘from within’ – a sense of self belief which leads to conﬁdence to seek changes which could improve one’s life. With these latter understand ings of power, it becomes clear that a development agency cannot actually ‘empower’ someone who is op pressed, marginalized, or otherwise disadvantaged; how ever, it can ‘facilitate’ empowerment. There are concerns that, like power, ‘empowerment’ is often used in a rather instrumental sense as a means by which disadvantaged peoples can be more effectively harnessed to achieve certain organizational or insti tutional goals set from above. Thus, the notion that empowerment aims to enhance the well being of indi viduals or communities, as is well understood within development discourse, is at odds with the use of the term in the business world where empowerment is as sociated with handing over greater responsibility to workers who will then be more efﬁcient, deliver en hanced customer service, or otherwise beneﬁt corporate interests.

Consciousness Raising and Empowerment Consciousness raising is regarded as an important ﬁrst step in facilitating empowerment of disadvantaged peo ples. If power is to come from within and if people are to realize what they are capable of – something referred to as psychological power – there needs to be a strong awareness of the political and social context of one’s oppression, so that people feel that they deserve to have access to resources and to be respected. They also need to know how they can use existing economic, political, and bureaucratic systems to improve their lives. Conscious ness of their situation and a sense of self belief can de termine, for example, whether people from minority ethnic groups will stand up to outside imposed devel opment programs such as mines and dams, or whether

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adults who have had no formal schooling will consider enrolling in literacy classes, and whether any marginal ized persons will put themselves forward for election to decision making bodies to ensure that their voices are heard at community, regional, or national level. Schuler, reﬂecting on possibilities for women’s de velopment, devised a model of levels of empowerment which suggests that consciousness raising is an important ﬁrst step in moving people toward collective action and the achievement of political power (Figure 1). As an example, the gender and development program of a Maasai run NGO named CORDS (Community Research and Development Services) carries out aware ness raising and training among 14 Maasai women’s groups in Northern Tanzania. In 2006, in Kiteto District, this training inspired women to come together in an at tempt to evict illegal settlers who were planting crops on what was previously cattle grazing land. There was a suspicion that male leaders in the area, who made no attempt to challenge the settlers, had received bribes from them. The collusion of their own leaders made it very difﬁcult for other Maasai men to act to have the settlers removed. The women were not willing to be complacent, especially, when they saw that Maasai chil dren were regularly being beaten by the settlers when their livestock roamed onto newly cultivated land. Armed with new knowledge about land rights and women’s rights from training provided by CORDS, these women decided to take action, ﬁrst knocking on the doors of district ofﬁcials to make complaints. When this had no effect, they decided to send a delegation of one man and one woman to Dodoma to talk to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister saw them brieﬂy, and later ordered a commission of enquiry into the land grabbing that was occurring. As a result: (1) the District Commissioner of Kiteto was sacked, and (2) the illegal settlers were issued with eviction letters. While they are still trying to resist eviction, the women of Kiteto District are adamant that they will continue to ﬁght to ensure that what they have left will pass on to their children. These women are very keen for the training from CORDS to continue:

Political power Implementing strategies Organizing Gaining skills Collective consciousness

Individual consciousness

Figure 1 Building empowerment. From Schuler, M. (1986). Empowerment and the law: Strategies of Third World women. Washington, DC: OEF International.

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‘‘We want more training because that’s how we get strength and knowledge. If we weren’t trained, we would have stayed in our houses until the intruders came and burned them down,’’ says a member of Irpopongi women’s group.

Changing Approaches to Empowerment within Development Geography Alternative Development The notion of empowerment can be seen as implicit in social movements, struggles for democracy and in dependence that date back hundreds of years; however, its use in development quarters is more recent. While advocates of women’s development and others embraced the concept during the 1980s, empowerment did not enter the mainstream of development discourse until after the publication of John Friedmann’s book, in 1992, entitled Empowerment: The politics of alternative development. Friedmann understood empowerment to be a complex phenomenon involving psychological, social, and polit ical dimensions. He focused on the level of the household as the locus for an alternative approach to development, suggesting that development could best be achieved by a self empowered group of citizens mobilizing resources. Friedmann’s work inspired supporters of alternative development who espoused bottom up, participatory forms of development. They embraced empowerment as it was seen as central to possibilities for the development of oppressed, disenfranchised peoples and, through its recognition of politics, for self determination. It is thus not surprising to ﬁnd much talk of empowerment among those interested in the rights and knowledge of in digenous peoples, such as those who were concerned that Eurocentric processes of development were stiﬂing in digenous knowledge and initiative. Empowerment was also taken up in the gender and development ﬁeld, es pecially after an article by Caroline Moser appeared in World Development in 1989 noting that empowerment could be seen as the most advanced of ﬁve approaches to women and development. As opposed to other ap proaches which tended to focus on ‘practical gender needs’ associated with immediate concerns such as the need for food and shelter, an empowerment approach recognized that it was also vital to address ‘strategic gender needs’ which were more long term in nature, such as women’s rights to land, control over their bodies, and encouraging men to share domestic tasks. In addition, geographers inspired by alternative de velopment approaches have also utilized the concept of empowerment as an analytical tool, as shown in Table 1 which speciﬁes four dimensions of empowerment (eco nomic, social, psychological, and political). This concept attempts to show what empowerment can mean for host

466 Table 1

Empowerment

Framework for assessing extent of empowerment of communities involved in tourism Signs of empowerment

Signs of disempowerment

Economic empowerment

Tourism brings lasting economic gains to a local community. Cash earned is shared between many households in the community. There are visible signs of improvements from the cash that is earned (e.g., houses are made of more permanent materials; more children are able to attend school).

Tourism merely results in small, spasmodic cash gains for a local community. Most proﬁts go to local elites, outside operators, government agencies, etc. Only a few individuals or families gain direct ﬁnancial beneﬁts from tourism, while others cannot ﬁnd a way to share in these economic beneﬁts because they lack capital, experience, and/or appropriate skills.

Psychological empowerment

Self-esteem of many community members is enhanced because of outside recognition of the uniqueness and value of their culture, their natural resources, and their traditional knowledge. Access to employment and cash leads to an increase in status for traditionally low-status sectors of society, for example, youth, the poor.

Those who interact with tourists are left feeling as if their culture and way of life are inferior. Many people do not share in the beneﬁts of tourism and are thus confused, frustrated, disinterested, or disillusioned, with the initiative.

Social empowerment

Tourism maintains or enhances the local community’s equilibrium. Community cohesion is improved as individuals and families work together to build a successful tourism venture. Some funds raised are used for community development purposes, for example, to build schools or improve water supplies.

Disharmony and social decay. Many in the community take on outside values and lose respect for traditional culture and for their elders. Disadvantaged groups (e.g., women) bear the brunt of problems associated with the tourism initiative and fail to share equitably in its beneﬁts. Rather than cooperating, families/ethnic or socio-economic groups compete with each other for the perceived beneﬁts of tourism. Resentment and jealousy are commonplace.

Political empowerment

The community’s political structure fairly represents the needs and interests of all community groups. Agencies initiating or implementing the tourism venture seek out the opinions of a variety of community groups (including special interest groups of women, youth, and other socially disadvantaged groups) and provide opportunities for them to be represented on decision-making bodies, for example, the wildlife park board or the regional tourism association.

The community has an autocratic and/or selfinterested leadership. Agencies initiating or implementing the tourism venture fail to involve the local community in decision making so the majority of community members feel they have little or no say over ‘whether’ the tourism initiative operates or ‘the way’ in which it operates.

Source: Scheyvens, R. (2002). Tourism for development: Empowering communities. Harlow: Prentice Hall.

communities involved in tourism as well as how dis empowerment of host communities may manifest itself. Neoliberalism After its uptake by devotees of alternative development, such as members of nongovernmental and community based organizations, rhetoric on empowerment started appearing in documents produced by governments and by bilateral and multilateral agencies which were more likely to approach development from a neoliberal perspective. A neoliberal view of empowerment is instrumentalist, focusing on enhancing the ability of the poor to meet

their own needs and thus reducing their dependence on welfare or state services. This is how the term has often been used to justify reductions in state spending on social services or to utilize the poor as free or cheap labor in terms of service delivery. For example, the post apartheid state in South Africa in some cases exploited the labor of poor township residents in its waste collection schemes, using the rhetoric of black empowerment and gender empowerment. A neoliberal approach to empowerment has also been the basis of programs to develop small scale entre preneurialism among the poor and thus overcome eco nomic and social inequalities between regions. An example of this was the revitalization program for

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distressed urban and rural areas in the United States devised in 1993 under the Clinton administration. The Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community program stood out from other government attempts to uplift social and economic well being in impoverished areas because communities had to compete to join the program, and their acceptance was based on the quality of a strategic plan drawn up by community groups. In the strategic plan, communities were to assess the assets available to them, note constraints to development in the area, give their vision of a better future, and show how this vision could be achieved. The program was thus supposed to be driven by community members at the grassroots and to build upon existing resources. In 1994, 69 urban com munities joined the program and a further 20 were added in 1999. All were provided with federal grants, and tax beneﬁts were also provided to local businesses which engaged in initiatives to meet objectives of the strategic plan. This attempt to engage private sector investors in initiatives to improve the well being of the poor also made the program unique, as this was a clear departure from approaches which suggested that poverty alleviation was a role only for the public sector. While politicians claimed that these zones empowered anyone who was willing to work hard to improve their lives, there were also critics of the scheme. Such critics argued that the rhetoric of bottom up empowerment was undermined by both involvement of already powerful individuals in the planning phase, and administration of the funding from above, with strings attached. In some cases, therefore, it has been suggested that the programs have had only a marginal impact upon uplifting poorer people. There has also been broader criticism of the phil osophy behind a neoliberal approach to empowerment because while it may devolve greater resources and rights to individual citizens or community groups, it also charges them with great responsibility for the planning and delivery of services, thus releasing the state of some of its obligations toward the welfare of citizens. Post-Development The inﬂuence of the cultural turn in the social sciences led to the development of interesting ‘new’ geographies during the 1990s, and use of new tools of analysis. Al ternative development was not seen as offering a sub stantial challenge to mainstream development; thus, concepts like empowerment lost favor. Instead, many geographers chose to focus on different types of in vestigations utilizing the likes of discourse analysis and deconstruction of texts. While such tools were valuable in adding to critiques of development concepts, categories, and institutions, thus providing fuel for an antidevelop ment perspective, they often presented a rather narrow

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view of development issues and they could not hope to reveal multiple sites of resistance to development from people around the world. In addition, deconstruction can be seen as offering little hope to those seeking guidance on positive ways forward. A focus on critique can be dismissive of the concerns of many Third World peoples who, while not wishing for externally imposed and controlled development, do want to see infrastructural improvements, and have access to more economic de velopment opportunities and social programs. While empowerment was out of favor with some academics through the 1990s, it has returned to favor under the guise of a post development approach. Stimulated by the cultural turn, post development wri ters have criticized development binaries (such as tradi tional–modern), challenged the universalisms of grand theories of development which fail to account for social, economic, and geographical diversity, and argued for greater recognition of social diversity. However, they have also taken up the challenge to the ‘new’ geographies to move beyond critiques of hegemonic forces and in equitable structures and to ﬁnd ways of transforming these structures so that the poor/oppressed or otherwise disenfranchised may beneﬁt. Not all of the new geog raphies have been as receptive, however, to the notion of a moral imperative for their work to make a contribution to society. Empowerment sits comfortably with many of the new, more enabling ideas of development endorsed under a post development approach, including post development interpretations of social capital, rights based approaches, and capabilities.

Contrasting These Approaches to Empowerment While some authors argue that there is now considerable shared ground between different approaches to devel opment and empowerment, there are also some funda mental differences that remain. A neoliberal perspective on empowerment does not seek to change the existing order, and it is likely to see disadvantaged peoples as a resource to meet development agendas determined from above. However, contrary to a strong neoliberal position which advocated the pulling back of the state, there is growing emphasis on the roles states should play in empowering the poor. Post development theorists, meanwhile, share with alternative development advocates a more explicit socio political view of empowerment, rather than an economic view. Under a socio political view, empowerment entails a challenge to existing structures of society in order to challenge inequitable power relations between governments and citizens, men and women, dominant and minority groups.

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Empowerment

Thus, those supporting empowerment from a post development perspective generally are somewhat aligned with proponents of alternative development, while cri tiquing neoliberal perspectives on empowerment. How ever, post development advocates have also raised concerns about the obsession with the local within al ternative development discourse, whereby the local level is highlighted as the site of empowerment. In a related point, proponents of alternative development have been criticized for making assumptions that local communities are homogenous entities whose members have shared values, interests, and face similar disadvantages. Post development advocates stress that communities are di verse; thus, there are often signiﬁcant power relations and inequalities evident at the local scale which may provide an impediment to participation and empowerment in practice. In addition, gloriﬁcation of the local scale in alternative development forums has meant that the sig niﬁcance of oppressive national and international polit ical and economic structures has often been overlooked. This focus on the local is illogical to geographers who recognize that social, economic, and political processes at work at a wide variety of scales set the context within which local development does, or does not, occur. While most of the discussion above has shown the inﬂuence of these different approaches on development geography, it is important to note that empowerment has also been utilized by geographers outside of the devel opment ﬁeld, as the following section explains.

Empowerment Applied in Other Areas of Human Geography Geographies of Less-Powerful Groups Empowerment has inﬂuenced the thinking of a range of human geographers, as is particularly evident in research on geographies of childhood, ethnic minorities, the poor, geographies of (dis)ability, and in feminist geographies. There has been increasing advancement of the idea that members of less powerful groups are social agents, who should play a central role in planning their own lives, rather than beneﬁciaries requiring handouts from the state. Furthermore, efforts have been made to ensure that the voices of less powerful groups are heard regarding planning and resource distribution issues. Technologies for Empowerment Geography as a discipline has expanded with the de velopment of technology, as is particularly obvious with applications such as remote sensing and geographic in formation systems. While some human geographers have regarded such change with suspicion, due perhaps to its association with the belief that quantitative methods are more rigorous than qualitative methods of enquiry, many

have seized the potential of these new technologies (see the section titled ‘Community mapping’). There are also bodies of research within geography which explore ways in which commonplace technologies can have liberating, or empowering, potential for certain groups of people. Researchers have studied topics such as the relationship between cell phones and freedom of movement of teenagers, and the spread and use of the Internet, especially in terms of the access of less privil eged groups of society to this supposedly global infor mation technology. Debates still rage concerning whether such technologies are (1) accessible, (2) relevant, and (3) cost effective, as means of improving the lives of disenfranchised groups. Community Mapping In times past, map production was the domain of spe cialist cartographers and to some extent geographical information systems (GIS) technologies have continued to keep map making as a specialist activity. However, in recent years, there has been growing recognition that maps do not always have to represent interests of an elite, rather, what Peluso refers to as ‘counter mapping’ can be conducted by communities searching for social justice and seeking to claim resources. The empowering po tential of community mapping can be realized either by using technology like GIS or by using purposefully low technology techniques associated with participatory rural appraisal (PRA) or participatory learning and action (PLA). Here people may gather together to draw up a social or resource map using minimal inputs – maps have sometimes been drawn in the dirt using sticks and stones as markers, and more commonly on a large sheet of paper. A community map typically represents a community’s efforts to document places and resources which are im portant to them. They can then use this information to determine ways of responding to threats to their en vironment. Thus, maps can be seen as rhetorical devices which enable communities to articulate their interests or plans, rather than to present objective, neutral repre sentations of facts. For this reason, community maps are often used by indigenous groups as the basis of land rights claims in order to protect land that their people have resided in for generations, but to which they have no legal title. Similarly, an urban community may identify that there has been signiﬁcant erosion in public park space as their city has grown and this may provoke ini tiatives to lobby their local authorities to try to limit future incursions on this space. Feminist and Participatory Methodologies In addition, empowerment has become central to certain research philosophies and methodologies which regard

Empowerment

research participants as far more than the subjects of the research. Researchers employing feminist methodologies, for example, have been keen to ensure that geographical knowledge is produced in ethical ways by working with, not on, their research participants. In this way homeless women, or women who have experienced violence, can come to be seen as partners in the research exercise. They may be actively involved in research design, data collection, and analysis, and there may be attempts to ensure they share ownership of the research results. Similarly, a number of geographers have studied topics like health, housing, or impairment in ways which in tentionally develop the skills of research participants and increase their knowledge. Such research is referred to by Gill Valentine as ‘enabling geography’. However, geographers with a commitment to en gaging in an empowering research process should not underestimate ways in which institutional pressures can erode their good intentions. First, access to research participants often requires the permission of an inter mediary agency, and if this agency is hierarchical in na ture, they may oppose participatory research because they feel threatened by the idea that the research process will raise awareness or empower participants. Second, university funding agencies often display little appreci ation of the time and resources required to enact par ticipatory, empowering methodologies. Third, it can be difﬁcult to truly share ownership of the research results in practice. Despite plans by researchers to share their ﬁndings with participants and allow them to scrutinize transcripts before their voices are turned into quotations in an article or report, the expectations of the academy may mean that such meritorious aspects of the research as set out in the design phase are pushed aside once that geographer is sitting back in their ofﬁce amidst the usual pressures to ‘publish or perish’.

Empowerment through Claiming Space Geographers have long been interested in the relation ship between power and space. Space has liberating po tential, as is evident in some of the examples given from both development geography and human geography more generally. Thus, it is through drawing maps that members of illegal settlements have claimed their space in the city – they have become visible. Similarly, in digenous groups often have a very real appreciation of the political nature of space; for them, displacement from traditional lands is equivalent to disempowerment. In order to resist domination, they may choose to occupy a space – be it a building or a section of contested land – as a central strategy in making their claims. A number of gender and development writers have also shown how the space provided by women’s groups

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can provide an important forum for the collective em powerment of women. These groups provide a safe space in which women may meet and discuss their burdens and their ideas, share skills and knowledge, learn more about their situation and strategies for change, and become involved in collective action. Thus even though women’s groups may appear to be conservative, they have often been very effective in terms of providing a legitimate, socially acceptable reason for women to gather together regularly within their communities, and this has some times led to social actions which challenge their sub ordinate position in society.

Empowerment as a Process and a Goal This article has examined a number of very interesting applications of the empowerment concept. While some writers draw a clear distinction between empowerment as a ‘process’ and empowerment as a ‘goal’ of development, in the examples discussed, the two are often closely re lated. To elaborate, advocates of community mapping suggest that this can be an empowering experience for participants in two ways. First, the process of coming together and engaging in collective action can enable people to discover that they have shared interests and aspirations with those living around them and that together, they can work to enact positive changes in their communities. Second, community mapping can lead to people gaining greater control over resources. In a related point, urban communities have often drawn the maps in response to attempts by government ofﬁcials to evict them from illegal settlements, but the process of de veloping the maps has resulted in better communication between ofﬁcials and occupants of illegal settlements, and sometimes this has led to programs to assist with up grading of informal settlements. However, the process leading to empowerment can be corrupted. There is always the risk that dominant indi viduals or groups will take control of supposedly em powering processes, or that more powerful individuals will ﬁll decision making roles.

Conclusion Empowerment is a crucial aspect of development for social groups which face disadvantages related to phe nomena such as gender, ethnicity, class, age, and religion. For them, empowerment is best understood as part of a process to enable disadvantaged or marginalized peoples to play a stronger role in society, inﬂuence decision making, and access resources according to their self de termined needs. When employed by development agen cies, however, empowerment can be seen to represent a range of meanings. As with any popular, yet contested,

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development term, it is thus important that we are crit ical in our use of the term empowerment, and when analyzing the potential of empowerment to be a positive force for change, we need to consider carefully the ap proach being adopted, rather than just being seduced by the versatility of the concept. While a diverse range of agencies and institutions have embraced empowerment rhetoric, the outcomes of empowerment programs have sometimes been dis appointing, such as with the Clinton regime’s Em powerment Zone/Enterprise Community program. For the disadvantaged to gain greater control over their lives, the agents of development, including multilateral insti tutions, governments, donors, nongovernmental organ izations, and community based organizations, may need to change their modus operandi to see the disadvantaged more as partners who wish to direct their own develop ment, rather than drawing on neoliberal logic which re gards them as resources to be harnessed to achieve organizational goals set by outside agencies. Empower ment should not be reduced to a process for encouraging poorer groups to take on greater responsibility for meeting their own needs. Studies of the culture of powerful development institutions could help to illu minate whether or not they are structured in such a way as to support such a shift in thinking. While the early advocates of empowerment spoke from an alternative development perspective and worked mainly with communities for bottom up empowerment, if empowerment of the poor and disadvantaged is to be central to development agendas, then it is vital that we look beyond the local scale. It is important not to over look the signiﬁcance of oppressive national and inter national political and economic structures which help to set the context within which local development occurs. More recent research on empowerment has shown the value of studies which connect local, regional, national, and international levels. In conceptualizing empowerment, geographers can offer unique insights into the close relationship between space and power. Space is not apolitical; it represents power. This is why processes of empowerment are often strongly associated with claims to space, such as the demand for secure land tenure, or the right to speak in public forums. However, development geographers are also faced with important challenges. One challenge that stems directly from recognition of the value of em powerment is that academics need to move beyond cri tiques of the language, documents, institutions, and practice of development. Rather, we need to continue to rise to the challenge of ensuring that our research on development issues has legitimacy not just in terms of the

academy, but in development policy making and practice as well. See also: Eurocentrism; Feminism/Feminist Geography; Feminist Methodologies; GIS, Public Participation; Neoliberalism and Development; Participation; Postdevelopment; Resistance; Social Capital.

Further Reading Allen, J. (2003). Lost geographies of power. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Bebbington, A., Woolcock, M., Guggenheim, S. and Loson, E. (eds.) (2006). The search for empowerment: Social capital as idea and practice at the World Bank. West Hartford: Kumarian Press. Brohman, J. (1995). Universalism, Eurocentrism, and ideological bias in development studies: From modernisation to neoliberalism. Third World Quarterly 16(1), 121 140. Friedmann, J. (1992). Empowerment: The politics of alternative development. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Hickey, S. and Mohan, G. (2005). Relocating participation within a radical politics of development. Development and Change 36(2), 237 262. Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reﬂections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Development and Change 30, 435 464. Miraftab, F. (2004). Making neo liberal governance: The disempowering work of empowerment. International Planning Studies 9(4), 239 259. Mohan, G. and Stokke, K. (2000). Participatory development and empowerment: The dangers of localism. Third World Quarterly 21(2), 247 268. Moser, C. O. (1989). Gender planning in the Third World: Meeting practical and strategic gender needs. World Development 17(1), 1799 1825. Peluso, N. (1995). Whose woods are these? Counter mapping forest territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Antipode 27(4), 383 406. Pricechalita, P. (1994). Spatial metaphor and the politics of empowerment mapping a place for feminism and postmodernism in geography. Antipode 26(3), 236 254. Rowlands, J. (1997). Questioning empowerment: Working with women in Honduras. Oxford: Oxfam. Scheyvens, R. (2002). Tourism for development: Empowering communities. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Schuler, M. (ed.) (1986). Empowerment and the law: Strategies of Third World women. Washington, DC: OEF International. Valentine, G. (2003). In pursuit of social justice: Ethics and emotions in geographies of health and disability. Progress in Human Geography 27, 375 380.

Relevant Websites www.wateraid.org.uk Manual by WaterAid, London on ‘Community mapping: A tool for community organizing’ (2005). http://www.nativeweb.org Native Web. http://cerd.ph The Center for Empowerment and Resource Development. http://www.undp.org Women’s empowerment page of the United Nations Development Program.

Enlightenment Geography C. W. J. Withers, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Cosmopolitanism The view that intellectual enquiry and exchange was a shared enterprise and should take place unhindered by religion, rank, or geographical boundary. Metrology The science and practice of measurement. Republic of Letters A term used to describe the signiﬁcance of correspondence and of literary production and exchange for the public good. Science of Man A term used by contemporaries to signify the systematic observation and empirical examination of human moral and cultural traits. Utilitarianism In its strict sense, the belief that knowledge should have an economic value; less rigidly, the view that knowledge itself is valuable.

Introduction The Enlightenment is that period – by convention, the ‘long’ eighteenth century in Europe c. 1680 to c. 1815 – when the world was made ‘modern’. For contemporaries then and for modern scholars now, the Enlightenment was both a historical moment and an intellectual move ment distinguished by challenges to established authority, belief in the power of reason, and by new ways of critical thinking about the world. The Enlightenment is com monly considered in terms of its deﬁning features and principal characters – its ‘what’ and its ‘who’. Great at tention has been paid to the origins and motivations of Enlightenment (its ‘how’ and its ‘why’) because they fascinate still, and to the Enlightenment’s legacy (its ‘so what’) because of the enduring implications of claims to freedom and the ideals of progress. In these terms, the Enlightenment is most often treated as a historical phe nomenon. Yet the Enlightenment and its ideas, personnel, and artifacts were locatable as well as datable: in several important ways, the Enlightenment had a ‘where’. This article takes Enlightenment geography to mean the geographical dimensions of the Enlightenment. Drawing upon a range of evidence and against a sum mary background of how the Enlightenment has been approached, this topic is explored in three related sec tions. In the ﬁrst, attention is paid to the geographies of the Enlightenment, to the Enlightenment’s geographical expression at different scales, nationally, transnationally, and locally. The second outlines the ways in which the

world was geographically revealed and understood as an object of geography in the Enlightenment – through exploring, for example, in mapping and in travel narra tives. In the third, the focus is on the subject of geography in the Enlightenment, with how it was understood and employed in a variety of ways and social spaces. Laid out thus – by considering the geography of, geography and, and geography in the Enlightenment – this essay moves from an understanding of the Enlightenment as a geo graphical question evident at different scales and places, to the impact of geographical ideas upon Enlightenment thought, and to geography as an Enlightenment subject. The Enlightenment: Questions of Deﬁnition, Matters of Geography Eighteenth century commentators concerned with what has become known as the Enlightenment focused on the extent to which public affairs should be governed by reason, with the freedom of press, with science and philosophical enquiry as useful, and with the idea of human progress. Key to their interests and works was the shared belief that the application of reason based on careful observation of the world, not faith in ancient authority, would bring practical social beneﬁts. For con temporaries, the Enlightenment was about improvement in the human condition. Most modern interpretations of the Enlightenment agree that it was an eighteenth century phenomenon concerned with new ways of critical thinking as means to intellectual and social reform. Yet important variations exist in modern Enlightenment scholarship. For some people, the Enlightenment was a largely philosophical phenomenon, predominantly urban and male and by origin French, a movement deﬁned by the writings and lives of thinkers such as Voltaire and Montesquieu. Other commentators discern a broader Enlightenment, with origins in Holland and in England or, more widely, have moved beyond philosophical enquiry to examine the social history of the Enlightenment and the ways in which new ideas and attitudes were evident in topics such as race, science and medicine, and women to name only a few. Further strands of Enlightenment studies are apparent in the work of those who have considered the Enlightenment’s contradictions, consequences, and con tinuing implications. For as we look back on eighteenth century claims concerning the power of reason, it is clear that Enlightenment ideals did not always result in pol itical advance, intellectual liberation, and individual freedom. The power of reason was at times and in the

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wrong hands a corrupt force: with reason came restraint, with tolerance, terror. Here, for some, the focus is the Enlightenment’s uneven legacy, what some have con sidered ‘the dark side of the Enlightenment’. For all these reasons, the Enlightenment continues to fascinate, albeit differently understood, then and now. One further and vital reason is its geography – for what was a period of philosophical and historical enquiry was also a period of geographical investigation. Although interpretation of the Enlightenment’s ‘where’ has often been overlooked, the Enlightenment was a geographical matter in several senses. In the En lightenment, what was known about the size and the content of the world changed dramatically as a result of voyages of geographical exploration. Previous views of the world were in time overturned (Figure 1). The Pa ciﬁc Ocean in particular became Europe’s ethnological, botanical, and astronomical laboratory as new peoples and natures were revealed to the gaze of Europeans and island sites became local ﬁxing points for global meas urement. As Figure 1 shows, there was much to know at the beginning of the Enlightenment about the shape of continents, and the dimensions of the ‘fourth part of the world’, Australasia. Geographical data provided the raw material from which philosophers and historians fash ioned their theories about human society. In books, maps, and illustrated travel accounts, audiences across Europe, on the eastern coast of North America and in Spanish

Latin America encountered these new geographies with curiosity and wonder. In universities and public acad emies as well as in schools, geography was widely taught in the Enlightenment, often in association with geometry and with history: the ﬁrst valuable in learning math ematics, the second in understanding the development of nations, both as useful knowledge. Books of geography incorporated Enlightenment theories about human soci ety, about the shape of the Earth, and about the natural resources of countries. Furthermore, the Enlightenment had geographical expression in the location and recep tion of its ideas among different publics, and in the movement of those ideas – from the Paciﬁc or Lapland back to metropolitan Europe, from town to country, be tween different social groups and within different insti tutions. In short, the Enlightenment was about geography and spatial difference – about the Earth and its geo graphical variety – and it was something that had a geography, which took place in and over space.

Geographies of the Enlightenment The Enlightenment in National Context Where the Enlightenment has been studied geographic ally, the scale of examination has commonly been the nation. Two principal variants of the Enlightenment exist as a national phenomenon. The ﬁrst is signaled to by ‘the

Figure 1 The pre-Enlightenment world: note the uncertainty over the northwest American coastline and the errors over New Guinea and Australia. Reproduced from Dampier, W. (1698), A New Voyage Round the World. London: James Knapton, map opp. title page, drawn by Herman Moll, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

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Enlightenment in France’, ‘the Enlightenment in Amer ica’, ‘the Enlightenment in the Netherlands’, and so on. The second is evident in ‘the Italian Enlightenment’, ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’, and the like. In the ﬁrst of these variants, the Enlightenment is made to have both es sential deﬁning characteristics and variant national ex pression by virtue of an unproblematic movement – in the form, for example, of philosophical or scientiﬁc ideas, the travels of inﬂuential ﬁgures, or in the dissemination of their books – from one nation to another. Over time and over space, the Enlightenment travels as an essential entity and, often, is held to do so from an originating Enlightenment ‘core’ or ‘hearth’ – very often France or the Netherlands – to a ‘periphery’ or to ‘margins’, such as Portugal, Spain, the Greek speaking countries of south east Europe or to the Spanish speaking colonies in Latin America. The second variant hints at more distinctive experiences resulting from given national circumstances but, in so doing, differences within the nation are ob scured even as common experiences above the nation may be neglected. As common as they are, these variants have been subject to criticism and revision in recent years in line with wider changes in Enlightenment studies. One signiﬁcant feature has been suspicion of the deﬁnite article – a dangerous linguistic tool for geog raphers and historians. This is important. What matters is not that there may not have been a shared and single Enlightenment apparent at the national level: it is just that scholars should not take it for granted that there was. The use of the deﬁnite article encourages the presump tion that there was such a thing as the Enlightenment and that how we treat it geographically is simply to trace its origins and its dissemination in different national con texts. Omitting the deﬁnite article – even, thinking of diverse Enlightenments rather than any one essential Enlightenment – reminds us of the importance of dif ferences within and above the nation. Two examples will help illustrate this point. The term ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ was ﬁrst coined in about 1900. Yet what this label speaks to was delimited a century or so before by writers com memorating men whose work gave Scotland a prominent place on the map of eighteenth century philosophical and scientiﬁc life. Modern scholarship on the Scottish Enlightenment at one time saw the movement as essen tially philosophical and certainly urban, even Edinburgh based, the preserve of a few great thinkers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. More recently, such interpretations have been replaced by studies, which reveal differences between the cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, which point to the importance of chemistry and natural history as well as to moral phil osophy and which show that enlightening Scots looked to counterparts in Naples, Boston, and Berlin as well as to each other.

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So, too, in Italy. Where the Italian Enlightenment was once reckoned the preserve of a few liberal priests and cultured bibliophiles, more recent study has highlighted important geographical and social distinctions. En lightenment in the south centered upon Naples, was rooted in political economy, and apparent in topics as diverse as Newtonianism and volcanic activity. In the Papal States by contrast, signiﬁcant features of En lightenment included scientiﬁc reform in agriculture and the engagement of women in a scientiﬁc and courtly milieu akin more to Paris than to Naples. Thus, while the nation is a convenient unit by which to study the Enlightenment, to do so uncritically is problematic. Pictures of the Enlightenment as a single intellectual movement fracture in the face of differences between nations and the geographical and social diversity within nations. In the eighteenth century, the idea of the nation was anyway relatively new. In France, for example, Enlightenment map makers and military surveyors were much involved in deﬁning the extent of their nation, beginning in the 1680s, and, after the Revolution, in re structuring old regional boundaries in the New Republic. In Greek speaking eastern Europe, Enlightenment no tions were imported from western Europe and, used in debates about national identity often by Greek expatri ates in Italy and Germany, and were put to a different purpose than had been intended by their progenitors: in Greece, the idea and ideal of the nation and of En lightenment helped establish one another. In Portugal, Enlightenment was characterized less by its nationals working elsewhere and more by foreign intellectuals working from within. In Spain, the Enlightenment was much restricted by the Church and despotic government. Yet, in Spain’s colonies in Latin America, a distinctive Enlightenment emerged that looked to local traditions of historical scholarship and moral authority, not to the uncritical acceptance of European intellectual concerns. Then, rather than think of the Enlightenment as having only national expression, we should also approach its geography in terms of transnational connections. Cosmopolitan Geographies Thinking about the Enlightenment above national con text allows us to focus on the nature, strength, and dir ections of the intellectual trafﬁc in ideas that sustained critical commentators in different parts of the world. What connected political economists in Naples and in Edinburgh, for example, was the fact and the process of correspondence. Throughout Europe, epistolary net works and literary exchange bound people together in botanical study, chemical experimentation, and medical thinking, for example, as journals were exchanged, re views penned, news disseminated, and societies’ volumes distributed. Beyond Europe, Enlightenment ideas about

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natural diversity and human difference were shaped and reshaped by the receipt of new data – plant specimens, cultural artifacts, and on occasion, living humans. The Enlightenment was thus a Republic of Letters (and of artifacts), deﬁned by correspondence, practices of exchange, and networks of communication. Such trans national or cosmopolitan geographies are apparent, for instance, in the internationalism of the expeditions which undertook to measure the transits of Venus in the 1760s – an important moment in astronomical study and in the development of longitude – and in the coordination of mapping projects between Britain and France even as the two countries were at war. Yet the Republic of Letters was not, as it were, a ‘free country’, something simply ‘above’ geography, or national interest. Correspondence and exchange was principally between people deemed cred ible witnesses and reliable authorities by virtue of their social status and intellectual capacity. Global voyages of exploration such as those of the Briton, James Cook and the Frenchman, Jean Franc¸ois de Galaup, the Comte de Lape´rouse, pursued commercial objectives for national advantage. Most signiﬁcantly, those networks of cor respondence and exchange that sustained the Republic of Letters centered upon the intellectual interests of urban metropolitan Western Europe more than they did upon the peoples of the Paciﬁc, for example, or of America – or even of Northern Europe. These facts of social and geographical variation do not weaken the idea of the Enlightenment as a dynamic and cosmopolitan phenomenon so much as they remind us of the need to pay attention to the nature, direction, and strength of its connections and to the fact that the En lightenment moved above and beyond the nation. This in turn demands that we consider the local institutions and social spaces in which the Enlightenment’s cosmopolitan geographies were grounded. Local Sites and Social Spaces Consideration of the Enlightenment’s geographies at a local scale is consistent with, not separate from, its study at national and transnational levels as well as being part of the more general diversiﬁcation in Enlightenment studies. For what national and cosmopolitan approaches reveal is less a single national Enlightenment or a transnational Enlightenment in only, say, political econ omy, than myriad micro geographies of the Enlighten ment at work in different social spaces – in salons and societies, in learned academies and on board ship, in cafe´ talk and public house lectures, and in bookshops and from pulpits. Between 1660, and the foundation of the Royal So ciety of London, and the 1790s, about 70 ofﬁcial acad emies and societies were in existence across Europe with a few in the Americas and in Asia. These institutions

were the Enlightenment’s ‘hot houses’, sites for the de bate and discussion of dissenting ideas, for the analysis of scientiﬁc data, and sociable conversation on the latest news. Many such bodies, often short lived, also appeared in smaller towns and cities and had a concern with agrarian reform, mineralogy, or with other expressions of economic patriotism. This was especially so in the pre dominantly Protestant regions of Germany. In France, the Enlightenment gravitated around the Academy of Sciences in Paris and other comparable bodies, but throughout that country, learned societies undertook an enlightened agenda often with local emphases – Mont pellier for medicine and mathematics, for example, more mercantilist interests in the port towns. Anatomy theatres, coffee houses, concert halls, and other such spaces provided further sites for the engage ment with and performance of the Enlightenment. In Enlightenment London in particular, coffee houses were commonly sites for turning scientiﬁc debates into popular lectures, and Newtonian cosmography into neighborly conversation. In Paris by contrast, cafe´ talk was often written down and reported on and was thus more guarded. In salons, talk was not modulated gossip but mannered and informed debate. Salons were im portant sites for Enlightenment sociability, polite spaces for the domestication of abstract ideas and, in France particularly, afforded a space for the engagement by women with Enlightenment ideas given their exclusion from academies and societies. In addressing the geographical scale of the En lightenment, several points may be made. The impor tance of different geographical scales of analysis should be noted. Recognizing these different scales is not to privilege one over another. It is, rather, to consider the connections between them, to see how the Enlighten ment was made and received in different ways in dif ferent places and to understand the Enlightenment to have been about the dynamic interchange of ideas over space not just a period or a moment in time. An im portant consequence of such geographical thinking is to displace the idea of the Enlightenment as an essential thing by a view of it as multiple and variegated, with numerous geographical modiﬁers. Whatever people held Enlightenment to be, its networks of correspondence, movement, conversation, and experimentation came to Earth in certain places: its cosmopolitan concerns always had local expression.

Geographical Knowledge and the Enlightenment World Exploring, Travelling, Mapping Enlightenment exploration and the individuals and in stitutions that undertook and promoted it sought to bring

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the globe under the sovereignty of science through the practices of primary survey – voyaging, observing, map ping, collecting, reporting, writing, and disseminating. Charting the globe did not necessarily mean leaving the laboratory and the library behind, for many explorers’ ships were, effectively, mobile universities and collecting sites, vessels of modernity for a new understanding of the globe. Exploration in the Paciﬁc in particular revealed what contemporaries called ‘a new, or ﬁfth division’ to the world, Europe, Africa, and Asia being the ﬁrst three, Columbus’s discovery of America having provided the fourth. Taken together, the voyages of men like John Byron, James Cook, John Phipps, and George Vancouver for the British, of Louis Antoine de Bougainville, Nicolas Baudin, and Lape´rouse for the French, of Alessandro Malaspina (a Genoan working for the Spanish) and Vitus Bering, a Dane employed by the Russians, gave shape to the world in terms of its continental margins and their overall extent. The myth of Terra Australis Incognita, an unknown southern continent, was exposed as Australia and New Zealand and strings of Paciﬁc islands began to take recognizably modern cartographic dimensions; the northwest coast of North America likewise; earlier de pictions of Baja California as an island were replaced by its status as a peninsula (cf. Figure 1). Even so, Enlightenment voyages did not reveal a geographically diverse world equally or easily or at once. Discovery was often dangerous, new facts often hard won (Figure 2). Cook and Lape´rouse died in the Paciﬁc, Malaspina was imprisoned by his patrons upon his return, his work never published. The polar regions remained resistant to geographical scrutiny until well into the nineteenth century. Explorers’ ships were akin to ﬂoating laboratories, yet, as Figure 2 suggests, the pursuit of scientiﬁc knowledge often had to give way in the face of the more immediately practical problems posed by un certain geographies. What was revealed – natives, fellow brethren or ‘savages’ depending upon different com mentators’ views, a bountiful nature, a scientiﬁc wealth undreamt of – provided matters for disquiet as well as reﬂection. Map makers had to rethink their works. At least initially, published reports of Enlightenment navi gator explorers have a tone of astonishment and hesi tancy: they are not simply scientiﬁc accounts with all the language of precision and regularity that this term con notes. Although continental margins were plotted, in teriors were uncharted: Africa was the least well known continent in the ‘Old World’, Australia the same in the ‘New World’, China ﬁgured in travel accounts but its description was often based only on hearsay. That is why the geographical opening up of the world in the Enlightenment is distinguished by the develop ment of published guides on how to travel and what to collect. From the late seventeenth century onwards, the

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genre of what is, effectively, the geographical ﬁeld guide, starts to appear in an attempt to regulate the languages of description, collection, and explanation. Such regulatory texts were not always successful: in the face of different scales for measurement, of cultural diversity and different languages, and given the lack of consistency in longi tudinal measurements until the 1770s, it was hard to reveal the world and to represent it according to agreed metrological conventions and standards. That is, again, why we must be cautious about seeing the Enlightenment as an unproblematic move to modernity in which rational practices and languages were everywhere and at once adopted, and why Enlightenment geography matters, for the European encounter with the exotic ‘other’ varied from place to place and did not always involve the far away. The Enlightenment brought new mapping projects and new types of map makers into being. Where most European countries earlier had a mix of mariner map makers, geographers, commercial publishers, and land surveyors, the Enlightenment was distinguished by the rise to prominence of the professional military or state surveyor. Many had an institutional base in an academy or, in the case of France’s military geographers, the De´poˆt de la Guerre, and for its hydrographers, the De´poˆt de la Marine. France took the lead in European nations in being systematically surveyed under the direction of the Cassini map making family in the Enlightenment, but in estate mapping, in topographical survey, in the Military Survey of Scotland and elsewhere in Britain, in the tri angulation projects of William Roy that underlay the establishment of the Ordnance Survey, Europe’s nations mirrored the French. In Bengal, men such as James Rennell produced atlases and maps that promoted and reﬂected the commercial expansion of Britain’s empire. Enlightenment map making thus emphasized empir ical observation and quantiﬁable measurement in the service of the state and of science. Yet for many of the peoples who were encountered through geography and mapping, discovery was not a sure route to their proper cartographic delineation. Enlightenment maps are sym bols of geographical encounter and of cultural engage ment but they are in part also documents of cultural effacement in that they often omit or misrepresent evi dence of the peoples discovered. The painterly depictions of foreign geographies in the work of artist naturalists such as William Hodges and Sydney Parkin son likewise strove for depictive accuracy but did so according to European conventions. The move toward realism in representation was associated with the devel opment of standards in measurement, observational training in collection, and systematic explanation in sci ence. Yet encounter and empirical enquiry could also lead to effacement, the writing ‘out’ of people rather than their always being sketched ‘in’ (Figure 3). George

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Figure 2 The fragility of Enlightenment geographical exploration is evident in this engraving entitled ‘Discovery on the rocks’ [in August 1792]. Reproduced from Vancouver, G. (1798). A Voyage of Discovery to the North Paciﬁc Ocean, and Round the World. Vol. I, facing page 364. London: G. G. and J. Robinson, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

Vancouver’s work – from which Figure 3 is taken – is one of many which helped realize and disseminate ‘foreign’ geographies in word and image to public audiences. In deed, the facts of exploration, travel, mapping, and pic turing only added to the sum of Enlightenment knowledge if they made a ﬁnal move – the ‘voyage into print’. When they did, Enlightenment audiences avidly consumed tales of the far away and strange in different ways and places: by borrowing from libraries and reading, by meeting the Tahitian natives who returned or by witnessing in a London theatre the staged mimicry of Cook’s distant geographical ‘performances’. Encountering the Terraqueous Globe ‘‘On the surface of this immense globe we are presented with heights and depths, prairies, seas, marshlands, rivers, caves, chasms, and volcanoes and, on ﬁrst inspection, we

ﬁnd no regularity, no order in all of that.’’ Writing thus in his Histoire Naturelle, the leading Enlightenment natural historian Georges Louis LeClerc, comte de Buffon, en capsulated the sheer scale of what there was to know about the world and the role of Enlightenment natural philosophers in systematizing what was to be known. As they set about the investigation of the terraqueous globe – ‘‘to discover the true geography of the Earth’’ as Vancouver put it – Enlightenment commentators chal lenged established views of the age and origins of the Earth, the authority of religious interpretations and, at the same time, provided the foundation for modern sci entiﬁc disciplines. The themes of geodetic measurement, botanical classiﬁcation, earthquake theorization, and meteorology may be used to illustrate these claims. The ‘shape of the Earth’ debate was a question central to Enlightenment interests in what we may think of now as terrestrial physics or geodesy. The problem, in essence,

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Figure 3 Here native names have been partly displaced by explorers’ views of the nature of the encountered human ‘other’. Reproduced from Vancouver, G. (1798). A Voyage of Discovery to the North Paciﬁc Ocean, and Round the World. Vol. I, facing page 388. London: G. and G. and J. Robinson and J. Edwards, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

was straightforward: if one followed the precepts of Newtonian gravitational theory, the Earth was elliptical in shape, ﬂattened at the poles. If one subscribed to Cartesian ideas of vortices, the Earth would be extended at the poles, and ﬂattened across the equator. To an ex tent, these competing mathematical conceptions found national even local expression: the British favored Newton, the French (with one or two signiﬁcant ex ceptions) favored Descartes. The solution to the problem demanded geographical ﬁeldwork in those parts of the world key to the different theoretical views, on the equator and as near as possible to the poles, where ex periments with pendulums and in magnetic declination would determine the Earth’s shape. And so in the early 1730s, two expeditions were undertaken. The ﬁrst in 1733 headed to Lapland under the guidance of Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (an advocate of Newtonian rea soning), the other to Peru in 1737 under the direction of Charles Marie de la Condamine. The results of the ex peditions proved Newton and Maupertuis right. Geo graphical ﬁeldwork, from often small sites but with global

consequences, both corroborated and refuted book based reasoning (Figure 4). Large scale and land based En lightenment science had its many smaller counterparts – as is evident in the tents at Observatory Inlet in Figure 4 – and often depended upon maritime cor roboration of its instrumental readings: new continents were ‘put to shape’ by this interplay of instrumentation and navigation at the margins of land and sea. The mid 1730s were crucial to Enlightenment phys ical science for another reason, for as geodesists were testing the Earth’s shape, botanists were putting the world to order. This is particularly evident in the schema of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. His works es tablished, on the basis of plants’ sexual characteristics, a standard botanical nomenclature of generic and species names. Linnaeus also proposed ﬁve climate zones across the world by which to explain the distribution of plant types. For Linnaeus, botanical work with a utilitarian purpose was central to the Enlightenment: ‘‘the sciences are the light that will lead the people who wander in darkness.’’ Yet his ideas were not the only ones nor were

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Figure 4 James Cook observed the Transit of Venus from a tent incongruously named ‘Fort Venus’ on Tahiti. Here the small-scale nature of geography’s ﬁeld sites is evident in one of Vancouver’s observatories on the North American coast. Reproduced from Vancouver, G. (1798). A Voyage of Discovery to the North Paciﬁc Ocean, and Round the World. Vol. I, facing page 332. London: G. G. and J. Robinson and J. Edwards, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

they everywhere accepted. Parisian naturalists opposed him. In London, botanists did not think his taxonomy accurate. In Berlin, Edinburgh, and in St Petersburg, al ternative readings of the Book of nature were proposed. Even as the empirical sciences became established, the map of Enlightenment scientiﬁc activity looked different in different places. One site which profoundly altered conceptions of the Earth’s history as divinely disposed and prompted renewed speculation upon the Earth as a dynamic object was Lisbon. On 1 November 1755, one of the largest earthquakes in human history hit the city, followed by a tsunami and ﬁres. The physical shock was felt across Europe: in Scotland, the waters of Loch Lomond were ‘much agitated’; in the West Indies, a smaller version of the tidal wave arrived 9 hours later; aftershocks con tinued for weeks. The mental shock was as enormous and longer lasting. In a world where natural circumstances had theological signiﬁcance, what could the destruction

of a European capital mean? What clerics explained as divine retribution, Voltaire interpreted as the end of enlightened secular optimism and others saw as either a chemical phenomenon or the result of electrical dis charge. However understood, the effect of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake was to accelerate existing trends in the Enlightenment toward materialistic and historical phil osophies of nature and away from theological ones. Much the same is true of meteorology in the En lightenment. In Classical thought, meteorology meant ‘reading the skies’ for natural portents that could then be used to explain or foretell social circumstances. With the development of mathematical reasoning, physical ex perimentation, and instrumentation, commentators across the world began to systematize weather records and to correspond with one another over the results. It is not appropriate to see shifts from weather watching to weather recording as the basis to an explanation of cli mate, far less to see in such work any sense of climate

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change in modern terms (although people were aware of extreme weather events). Yet late Enlightenment me teorology in particular was a portent of developments in the sciences as a whole. Further, questions of climate mattered crucially in the Enlightenment in relation to questions of human difference. Charting Human Difference What emerged from the voyages and books of geo graphical discovery in the Enlightenment was the ‘Shock of the Human New’: reports of pygmies, ‘cannibals’, Pa ciﬁc natives, American indigenous peoples ﬂooded in, and challenged conventional wisdom even as they were, in many instances, refuted. The impact of this ‘shock’ was apparent in several ways. New evidence about human variety helped lay the foundations for the human sci ences, and, more generally, helped establish what En lightenment commentators termed the ‘Science of Man’, namely, bringing questions of science as method and of utility as outcome to bear upon the moral and the human world, not just the physical and natural world. In this respect, the Enlightenment laid the foundations for the emergence of ‘modern’ human disciplines – anthro pology, sociology, even moral philosophy, and linguistic studies to name just a few. And as ideas about human difference and critical methods about evalu ating human difference appeared, so theoretical models

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of human development began to be articulated, theories which commonly posited ‘European Man’ at the head of stages of social development and positioned other peo ples and cultures at different stages of development be neath them (Figure 5). Often, as in this depiction of canoes, illustrations served to provide a visual taxonomy of social difference and geographical difference, taxo nomies that could themselves be transported home for later further analysis. The Enlightenment was thus characterized by geographies of human difference in time in which the social systems and cultures of different peoples were used to advance theories about relative social development, and, at the same moment, by geog raphies of human difference over space which underlay what Edmund Burke called the ‘‘Great Map of Mankind’’ – namely, the evidence of different social systems and thus, different stages of human development, being pre sent at once in different parts of the world. One powerful explanation for these different human geographies was climate. Unlike earlier writers who considered climatic questions either divinely disposed or ﬁxed by planetary inﬂuences in arguments about bodily ‘humors’, for example, Enlightenment theorists turned to climate and climate’s inﬂuence in order to explain the relationships between custom, law, social systems, and human difference. A key ﬁgure in this respect was Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, whose 1748 L’Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of Laws) is a

Figure 5 Understanding human social differences involves classifying material artifacts as well as cultural traits and languages here the focus is Paciﬁc islanders’ canoes. Reproduced from de Bougainville, L.-A. (1772). A Voyage Round the World (Trans. from the French by J. R. Forster), facing page 258. London: J. Nourse and T. Davies, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

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comprehensive attempt to understand the moral codes governing human conduct – and a key work on the effects of climate as a physical determinant of social difference. Montesquieu subscribed to the view that climate – by which, essentially, he and others meant temperature variations with latitude – inﬂuenced the body’s physical state which, in turn, helped constitute different social customs. What geographers and others (such as Linnaeus) took to be the ‘temperate zone’, Montesquieu saw as a space of moral and cultural equability: ‘In temperate climates we ﬁnd the inhabitants constant in their manners, as well as in their vices and virtues: the climate has not a quality determinate enough to ﬁx them’. But to the North and to the warmer South especially, climate determined different degrees of cultural in constancy against this supposed European norm. Hence South Sea islanders, South African ‘Hottentots’ and others could be – and were – regarded as ‘savages’ as a result of the climate driving their culture. Montesquieu’s work (like others’) needs to be under stood in context. He was in part advancing an environ mental explanation from earlier theories and he was reliant more upon earlier geographical accounts than upon the results of later Enlightenment geographical discovery. But he was doing so as part of novel attempts to explain the nature of the human condition and its geographical variability. Others such as Voltaire and David Hume thought his emphasis on physical causes, misplaced: for them, social agency not temperature or latitude was the basis to human difference. It is for these reasons important that we should not judge Enlighten ment commentators by later scholarly or moral standards since what they were searching for was, effectively, a new set of rhetorical instruments, a new analytic vocabulary, by which to explain the Science of Man. And the terms they employed in respect of human differences – ‘race’, ‘nation’, and ‘species’, for example – changed over time and were differently used in different Enlightenment sites and social spaces. Linnaeus’s classiﬁcations of the genus Homo and its single species, sapiens, incorporated four varietate (var ieties) in his initial formulation in 1735: Europaeus albus (white European man), Americanus rubens (American red man), Asiasticus fuscus (Asian yellow man), and Africanus niger (African black man). But his classiﬁcations changed as new geographical information brought new data to his attention. What he took to be a world of different ﬁxed varieties, others such as Buffon interpreted as more dy namic, the result of natural relationships with la varie´te´ humaine changing in its traits over the generations. Where Linnaeus saw a world of human ﬁxity, Buffon saw vari ation over time. And while variation might mean ‘im provement’ in the nature of human society, so it could also allow degeneration, the deterioration of the stock. That is why Buffon, looking at the generally smaller, less

robust and, to judge from numbers and distribution, less fertile human species in the Americas, interpreted the peoples there as inferior to Europeans. At the same time, ideas of ‘progress’ and of the stage by stage development of human society from hunting, pastoralism, agrarianism, to commercialism, helped pos ition the West’ and the ‘Rest’. As James Dunbar put it in his Essays on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages (1780), ‘‘The history . . . of some of the South Sea isles, which the late voyages of discovery have tended to disclose, enables us to glance at society in some of its earlier forms.’’ Such ideas about what contemporaries termed ‘conjectural history’ were particularly prevalent in Enlightenment Scotland, but they were a feature of much Enlightenment writing about human society. In effect, what people then understood as the ‘Science of Man’ was in several senses a ‘Geography of Man’. For those encountering human difference across the globe, human geography was a matter of location and distri bution: who was where? Explaining human distribution as a matter of geography – why were peoples where they where? – elicited geographical answers: climate and latitude. For yet others, geography was not a ﬁxed natural ‘base’ against which human cultures were determined, but, rather, something that could be moulded by human agency. That is why so many works of economic and agrarian commentary and of historical and philosophical speculation in the Enlightenment are concerned with improvement: they were, in one way or another, outlining future geographies – not what was but what could be. Taken together, the processes of geographical know ledge at work in the Enlightenment made the world seem older, bigger, more complex and with a more modern ‘shape’ than had earlier been thought. As geographical examination provided the raw data for emergent discip lines and the physical world was subject to detailed scrutiny (Figure 6), so humans individually and socially became the object of theoretical models. As Gru¨ner shows in this engaging and early picture of glaciers, Enlightenment observers placed themselves in nature: direct encounter was an important concern in depicting and in understanding the world’s geography. And as they looked for explanation of the issues of climate and social development, Enlightenment thinkers turned to the facts of geography to explain human society.

Geography in the Enlightenment Books and the Making of Geographical Identity As the Enlightenment world became bigger and more diverse, so books of geography incorporated and dis seminated the new facts and theories. In doing so, they exempliﬁed for those particular concerns the rapid ex pansion of periodical and printed works that

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Figure 6 Glaciers were of interest for their aesthetic merits as well as being understood and labeled as agents of landscape formation. Reproduced from Gruner, G. S. (1770). Histoire naturelle des glaciers Suisse. Paris: L’Imprimerie, Plate XII, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

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distinguished the expanding literate markets of the En lightenment’s public sphere in general. In understanding what books of geography were in the Enlightenment, what they did, who were their authors and who their readers, it is helpful to make a distinction between books of geography in a more strict sense – even although there was variation within this category – and books in which geography ﬁgured prominently as part of the promotion and diffusion of Enlightenment ideas. A key work in the latter sense is the Encyclope´die, ou: Dictionnaire Raisone´e edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert, and published in Paris in 17 volumes be tween 1751 and 1765 (with 11 volumes of plates ap pearing between 1762 and 1772). For its critical tone, engagement with the unwarranted authority of the Church, and advocacy of powerful reason, the Ency clope´die was much prized by contemporaries. It has been seen by later commentators as the embodiment of the Enlightenment, even its ‘manifesto’. Its editors saw it as providing a new map of the intellectual world in which the essence of, and the connections between, different categories of knowledge were laid out. Geography ﬁgured within this schema, had close connections with mathematics and history and was divided into several parts – physical geography, historical geography, sac red geography, ecclesiastical geography, natural geog raphy, and political geography being the main divisions. As a subject, geography thus embraced the study of the globe and the measurement of its physical characteristics, matters of practical utility resulting from such work – such as the mathematical bases to navigation – and the moral bases to human occupation of the Earth. In looking at the Encyclope´die in another way – at its movement and reception rather more than at its content – we can see how the Enlightenment had a geography through its books. In addition to the volumes of the Paris edition, the Encyclope´die was published in Geneva, Lucca, Leghorn, Neuchaˆtel, Berne, and Lausanne. Many of the authors of the Paris edition were members of local aca demic institutions, notably so for the authors from Languedoc who were associated, for example, with the Socie´te´ Royale des Sciences de Montpellier. From the ﬁgures of the subscription sales we can chart, at least on a city by city basis, the purchase of the Encyclope´die and, thus, plot something of the social contours of the Enlighten ment’s reception. Lyons dominated the geography of the Encyclope´die’s sales with 1079 subscriptions, nearly twice that of Paris. Sales were generally higher in France’s provincial capitals – Toulouse, Bordeaux, and so on – and in towns with an administrative and cultural focus. The work sold poorly in port towns and in the textile towns of northern France. Beyond France, Geneva dominated with 284 subscribers with towns such as Genoa, Warsaw, and Lie`ge having several dozen

subscribers. By and large, the main purchasers were a fairly heterogeneous group of noblemen, clerics, civic ofﬁcials, and professional persons. If the Encyclope´die thus illustrates in outline the En lightenment’s purchase, mobility, and reception among different social groups in different towns, a glimpse at books of geography reveals a rather different picture. Most books of geography in the Enlightenment em phasize geography as a coherent body of knowledge about a clearly deﬁned object, namely the situation of places on the Earth and the content of those places in human and natural terms. Many geography books were not, however, the work of geographers, at least not in our modern and professional understanding of that term. Most were by compilers of geographical facts, jobbing journalists in effect. This is not to say that the books were not regarded as useful or that they did not incorporate new geographical information. Many did and as En lightenment discoveries were added to the stock of knowledge, numbers of such books and their print runs increased. English language books of geography produced in Britain tended to place Britain at the forefront of utili tarian knowledge and as the leading nation in advancing new geographical understanding, but occasionally, they did not privilege Britain or even England. In his A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar (1770), for example, the Scots born William Guthrie explicitly connected his geography with those contemporary the ories, many by his fellow Scots, on the stage by stage development of human societies. In France, Edme Mentelle wrote different sorts of geography books to use in different social settings – ﬁrst as a Royalist tutor, lat terly as an author for the New Republic in works which were intended to mould a new citizenry and a new modernity through the study of geography. In Greece, geographical authors used their books to promote the idea of contemporary Greece not as an Enlightenment ‘margin’ but as a modern setting for the virtues – in reason, philosophy, and science – of ancient Greece. The clearest picture of geography books making the Enlightenment work and of geography making national identity work in the Enlightenment comes from America. As was the case in many towns and cities on both sides of the Atlantic, the Enlightenment public had a wide variety of public teaching and instruction in geography to choose from. In America, however, interest in geography de pended on books from anywhere but America. Worse still, what was written about America was very often not founded on truth. The response to these circumstances came from Jedidiah Morse, formerly a Congregationalist minister in Charlestown, Connecticut, whose The American Geography, or A Present Situation of the United States of America (1789) is the ﬁrst major book in Enlightenment America to shape America’s national consciousness

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through geography. To understand why this was so, it is helpful to look at Morse’s earlier Geography Made Easy (1784), at other comparable works such as Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1787) and to ap preciate the intellectual and political context in which books of American geography helped make America. The new geography of the North American continent represented challenges to established knowledge and to political administrators alike. The gradual East–West movement of map makers slowly rendered America visible as a geopolitical space (Figure 7). Powell’s map here shows, on its western margins, the then Spanish dominion of Louisiana. After 1804, and the Louisiana Purchase, America signiﬁcantly enlarged itself to the West. For authors of geography books, new on the ground information was necessary if the emergent nation

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was to be fully understood and properly governed. The result was the appearance in America of a new ‘print discourse of geography’, what has even been termed ‘a geographic revolution in early America’, in which books become the means to know one’s self and one’s nation. Where Noah Webster promoted the Americanization of place names and sought to provide a national frame of reference for different spoken accents in his The Gram matical Institute of the English Language (1783–93), Jedidiah Morse turned to books of geography. And in order to promote America’s geography, Morse inverted the es tablished order of European texts by placing America ﬁrst. Geography Made Easy is the ﬁrst book in Western print history to do so. Morse’s American Geography built upon these ideas and upon Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia which had

Figure 7 The emerging ‘New Republic’ of America is shown in Joseph Powell’s map of the southeastern United States. Reproduced from Morse, J. (1792). The American Geography, 2nd edn. London: John Stockdale, opp. title page, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

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offered a critique of Buffonian views about the limiting effects of America’s climate. Again, Morse inverted tex tual tradition and put America ﬁrst. He went on to offer a moral view of geographical difference within America, drawing upon notions of climatic inﬂuence and of the present and future social development of different states – Connecticut being the most virtuous, New England generally being the standard by which the new republic should advance, the southern states being too prone to indolence through drink, innate sloth, and the effects of climate. To modern readers, such views would be anathema: for Morse, as for Guthrie, books of geography could and did provide the basis for national identity and standards of moral conduct. Maps, Medicine, and Military Space Geography worked in other ways, not just through its books. In the Nuremberg Cosmographical Society (1746– 54), for example, classes were held on mathematical geography and historical geography and schemes laid for a state geographical bureau to collect geographical stat istics and for correspondence networks to collect data from individuals farther aﬁeld. In Paris, we can identify the local sites and social networks through which geog raphy and map making was carried on. Before 1790, most geographers – and their associated publisher booksellers – concentrated on the Quai d’Horloge, the Quai des Augustins and the Ile de la Cite´ in the heart of the city, some like the ge´ographes du roi, the geographers to the King, in court appointed residences. After the Revolution, these local geographies of Parisian geography altered as courtly privileges ceased and trade restrictions were lifted. In France, signiﬁcant geographical work in the En lightenment was undertaken by the corps of military engineers, the ingenieurs ge´ographes, men trained in foreign languages and survey techniques and, to use modern parlance, in the design and interpretation of question naires and other qualitative techniques by which the contents of national space, and not just its measurement and mapped delineation, could be known. Military mapping in America before the American War of In dependence was used by both sides in the campaigns. There was by the late Enlightenment a deﬁnable ‘medical cartography’, even a ‘medical geography’. Dis ease mapping has an established history in the En lightenment. In 1700, the Bolognese geographer and naturalist Luigi Marsigli had prepared a plague map of the eastern Adriatic coast in which, among other features, he had outlined the time geography of different treat ment times from the center of the outbreak. Dot maps of the yellow fever outbreaks in New York in the 1790s helped physicians in their treatment of the disease. In the work of a German physician, Leonhard Ludwig Finke, we can discern an attempt to think geographically about

the geography of disease and its treatment and, thus, to go beyond mapping toward explanation. Finke outlined his concerns in his 1772 Versuch Einer Allgemeinen Medi nisch–Praktischen Geographie (Attempt at a General Med ical–Practical Geography) by drawing upon his own experiences as a regional medical ofﬁcer, a civil servant responsible for preparing what were known as ‘medical topographies’ – syntheses of meteorological, climatic, and demographic data geared toward more effective political administration. He drew upon the work of others, in cluding the statistician and early zoo geographer Eberhardt Zimmermann and of some French map makers. Finke’s reasoning was geographical, his end in view political: here was geography being used as a tool for the practical improvement of peoples’ lives – the very ideal of Enlightenment. Spaces of Geographical Sociability Finke’s book may not have been treasured and read in Enlightenment homes as was the case for Morse’s and Guthrie’s texts, but books, maps, globes, and even geo graphical games were a commonplace of Enlightenment sociability in the home. And not just there, for in schools, learned academies, universities’ curriculum, and in public classes, the Enlightenment was characterized by a widespread civic engagement with geography. Institutional membership lists can be used to assess geography in the public sphere but must be examined with care. In terms of listed occupation, for instance, there were only seven ge´ographes du Roi enumerated as members of the Parisian Acade´mie des Sciences between 1699 and 1793, and a further 17 persons who recorded ‘geography’ as their principal disciplinary interest. But among the many botanists, natural historians, and mathematicians were men like Maupertuis and La Condamine who we have seen to have had geographical interests. The same is true for the Royal Society in London where geography was with astronomy and mixed mathematics a major component of the papers heard by that body in the years between 1720 and 1779, at least. In such academic societies, there was more geography being done than there were geographers doing it. The same is true of those Enlightenment universities whose curriculum in this period shows geography being commonly taught as part of civil history, mathematics, classics, and humanities and in association with moral and natural philosophy. Although geography’s con nections with history and with mathematics was a com monplace of the period, the fact that different professors in different institutions placed different emphases upon different parts of geography means that we can site local geographies of geographical teaching. For that very rea son, however, we must be wary of uncritical general ization. In Aberdeen, for example, the moral philosopher

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Thomas Reid gave a course, which emphasized geo graphy’s utility ‘to the important Ofﬁces of our Society’. In Glasgow, geography was taught alongside math ematics. In Ko¨nigsberg, Immanuel Kant concentrated upon physical geography as, too, did Saussure in Geneva. In Go¨ttingen, by contrast, mathematical geography was to the fore given the close connections between that university’s teaching staff and the Nuremberg Cosmo graphical Society. These remarks about the local sites and spaces of geographical activity apply also to geography’s place in schools in the Enlightenment. Different institutional settings mattered: in his dissenting academies, the chemist and radical philosopher Joseph Priestley insisted on geography being taught as an adjunct to history, for instance, for history and geography helped to ‘‘free the mind from many foolish prejudices.’’ In most grammar schools in England, by contrast, geography was associated with Latin and Greek as part of a much more con servative humanist tradition. Most people in the Enlightenment did not receive a formal education. Yet there were many public classes in

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geography (and in many other subjects) available. Pubs and coffee houses provided a venue for Newtonian philosophy and sociability as well as geography teaching. There were over 20 different geography classes in Edinburgh between 1708 and 1800, a story echoed in Glasgow, London, and overseas in Europe and in North America. In Philadelphia, geography classes for young women were a particular feature of Mr Poor’s Young Ladies Academy: there, in December 1789, one Eliza Dolby was given a prize for ‘excelling in geography’ – in fact, for reading aloud to her classmates from Morse’s newly published American Geography and for discoursing upon its signiﬁcance. In school, in public classes, and of course in the home, geography was thus spoken about as well as read and drawn or committed to memory and was learnt through play as well as via formal instruc tion. Narratives of exploration held the public’s interest, perhaps none more so than Mungo Park’s 1799 Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, in which the author portrayed himself as dashing, even visionary, in con trast to his textual account of the rigors and dangers of African exploration (Figure 8). For women and

Figure 8 The Scottish explorer Mungo Park enjoyed considerable fame for solving, in 1796, one part of the then 2000-year-old ‘River Niger problem’ which way did the river run? He died in 1806 unsuccessfully trying to answer the other part where did the river end? Reproduced from Park, M. (1799). Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa. London: W. Bulmer, frontispiece plate, by permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

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children, the home was a site of conversation, instru mental instruction, and politeness: geography and soci ability were commonly learnt together in the Enlightenment’s many social spaces.

Enlightenment’s Geography: Matters of Continuing Signiﬁcance Thinking about the Enlightenment’s ‘where’ is as im portant as thinking about its ‘when’, ‘what’, ‘who’ and ‘why’. Here, evidence about scale and the importance of geographical difference ought now to allow the dismissal of the idea of The Enlightenment as an essential feature, philosophical in nature, French in origin, and reducible only to the level of the nation. Further, it is clear that the Earth was revealed as an object of geography through practices of geographical enquiry such as exploring, mapping, and reporting. Geographical knowledge was a key component of Enlightenment theories about human culture, in the present, in the past, and in informed speculations about the future. In many of their specula tive writings, commentators were, effectively if not im plicitly, sketching out what the geographies of the future world might be. Geography was, with many other intel lectual concerns, a form of Enlightenment knowledge, a form evident in texts, instruments, polite conversations, and formal instruction in different institutions. If, then, consideration of the Enlightenment’s geog raphy allows us to know the period and the movement better and to be more faithful to its varying social and intellectual expression, so uncritical notions of ‘The Enlightenment Project’ weaken in the face of geo graphical difference. The often assumed privileged geographies of metropolitan Europe can be shown to be connected in complex ways with other parts of the world. Particular places – the Americas, Paciﬁc islands – were key sites for the making of world knowledge and were not, as is too commonly depicted, ‘margins’ to an En lightenment European ‘hearth’ or ‘core’. These are im portant matters. From them, two further points follow. The ﬁrst is that the Enlightenment – and its geographical differences – is with us still. I mean by this that the Enlightenment continues as an object of modern schol arly study because of its political implications, its ideals and languages and for the fact that it is unﬁnished. The Enlightenment continues also as an object of scrutiny for the legacy of its ‘dark side’. Not all persons and nations beneﬁted equally from attention to questions of reason. Doctrines of progress for some were for others route

maps to the death camps. This is why some scholars ask of the Enlightenment ‘what’s left of it?’ and, why some postmodern commentators, keen to dismiss the En lightenment but wrong to do so, ask of it ‘so what?’. The second is that the ideals of the Enlightenment, its em phases upon reason, the commitment to tolerance and social well being – what contemporaries often considered the ‘quantum of happiness’ of a society or a people – are for many persons still values worth committing to. Of course the Enlightenment looks different from the viewpoint of different human cultures and different human geographies and of course it may be interpreted differently from the vantage point of the historic present than from within the period itself. These too are reasons to keep thinking about Enlightenment and its geog raphies, then and now. See also: Exploration; Geography, History of; Modernity.

Further Reading Baker, K. M. and Reill, P. H. (eds.) (2000). What’s left of Enlightenment?: A postmodern question. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bruckner, M. (2006). The geographic revolution in early America: Maps, literacy, and national identity. Chapel Hall: University of North Carolina Press. Canizares Esguerra, J. (2003). How to write the history of the new world: Histories, epistemologies, and identities in the eighteenth century Atlantic world. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Clark, W., Golinski, J. and Schaffer, S. (eds.) (1999). The sciences in enlightened Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Clayton, D. W. (2000). Islands of truth: the imperial fashioning of Vancouver Island. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Fox, C., Porter, R. and Wokler, R. (eds.) (1996). Inventing human science: Eighteenth century domains. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gavroglou, K. (ed.) (1999). The sciences in the European periphery during the enlightenment. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Kors, A. (ed.) (2003). Encyclopedia of the enlightenment, 4 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mayhew, R. (2000). Enlightenment geography: The political languages of British geography, 1650 1850. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Porter, R. (ed.) (2003). The Cambridge history of science. Vol.4: Eighteenth century science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Porter, R. and Teich, M. (eds.) (1981). The enlightenment in national context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmidt, J. A. (ed.) (1996). What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth century answers and twentieth century questions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Withers, C. W. J. (2006). Eighteenth century geography: Texts, practices, sites. Progress in Human Geography 30, 1 19. Withers, C. W. J. (2007). Placing the Enlightenment: Thinking geographically about the age of reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Withers, C. W. J. and Livingstone, D. N. (eds.) (1999). Geography and Enlightenment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Enterprise Discourse P. M. O’Neill, University of Western Sydney, Parramatta, NSW, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Enterprises are the core organizational entities for capit alist economies. An enterprise is a commercial business and might take the form of a corporation, a partnership, a cooperative, a conglomerate, a franchise or simply a corner store run by a sole trader. The most powerful form of enterprise, of course, is the corporation, and it is the main type of enterprise referred to in this article. Enterprise discourse is the language process that creates and propels the enterprise, forming up its organizational structures, devising its logics and strategies, and enacting its per formances. In this sense, enterprise discourse underpins the creation and operation of the modern corporation. Constructing the corporation out of the idea of enterprise discourse draws on the epistemology of post structuralism. In this approach, the existence and oper ation of the corporation are co determined by texts and discursive practices, and the social practices and devices that bring them into existence. An enterprise discourse, then, has speciﬁc sets of vocabularies, language assem blages, practices and intentions which bring the enter prise into a certain type of existence at any point in time. Importantly, though, while a particular type of enterprise discourse can dominate all or part of a corporation for a period of time, enterprise discourses are never fully stable or enduring since, by their very nature, they generate alternative and oppositional discourses. The corporation, then, is not reducible to a single enterprise discourse. Rather, a corporation is a ﬁeld of competing discourses each seeking different, often contradictory, operational pathways and distributional outcomes.

Enterprise Discourse and the Nature of the Firm In one sense an enterprise discourse view of the ﬁrm sits uncomfortably with traditional views of the ﬁrm, espe cially those from the economic literature. In neoclassical economics the ﬁrm is portrayed as an ordered, autono mous and ultimately rational economic subject that op erates according to centrally imposed logic while manifesting predictable (or general) dynamics. A belief that a unifying, ordered logic underpins the capitalist ﬁrm similarly dominates Marxist economics, notwith standing the profound differences between neoclassicism and Marxism about the actual substance and consistency of this logic.

In another sense, though, one can ﬁnd resonance with the idea of enterprise discourse in historical accounts of the ﬁrm in economic theory. Beginning with Adam Smith, the ﬁrm has consistently been assigned the sub jectivity of an individual with pure economic knowledge and detached agency. According to this prime organiza tional position, neoclassical economics naturalized the ﬁrm as the key agent of proﬁt creation and capital ac cumulation within an economic system. At the same time, though, there is a vast economic literature that explores the way the ﬁrm departs from such an idealized position. John Stuart Mill, for instance, wrote of the growing complexity of the ﬁrm seeing it as an entity engaged in the resolution of social claims over distributional ﬂows. Mill thus expanded interest in the role of the ﬁrm beyond proﬁt making and accumulation. His insights drew attention to the consequences for ﬁrm behavior of the separation of business management from business ownership and to the impacts on ﬁrms and their managers of the market conditions in which they operate. Through this type of thinking, Mill opened up the ﬁrm as an entity actively engaged in both its internal com position and, as much as its market power allowed, its external operating environment. The works of Michael Jensen and William Meckling are a more recent manifestation of interest in internal ﬁrm composition and behavior and the rejection that these can be read from a general theory or exposition of capitalism. So too the works of Alfred Marshall, Edward Chamberlin, Joan Robinson, and William Baumol have demonstrated how a ﬁrm’s behavioral options and con straints are shaped not by any general laws deducible from the foundational logics of an idealized capitalist ﬁrm but from the outcomes of interplay with other ﬁrms each with their own speciﬁc structures, powers, and ac tions. The theory of the ﬁrm developed in this lineage thus involves an exploration of the ways a ﬁrm functions as a vehicle for a variety of stakeholders to advance their interests and aspirations. This theoretical broadening has opened up the ﬁrm as a space of contestation about economic procedures and directions and about social desires and obligations. It has also seen a broader interest in the ﬁrm by social scientists other than economists, accountants, and economic man agement theorists. There is now a considerable literature on the ﬁrm within many discipline domains, including sociology, psychology, labor studies, human geography, and cultural studies. Not accidentally, post structuralist

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approaches from within these disciplines have been brought to bear on our understanding of the ﬁrm espe cially in exploring the role played by language and its deployment. Once we step outside the speciﬁc analytical language of economics, it is relatively easy to see that there are many different types of language sets, structures, and discourses that bear on a ﬁrm’s structure and behavior. The following section concentrates on four of these: production and in vestment, ﬁnancial, organizational and legal narratives. Like all discourses, each of these carries its own logics, unique vocabularies, dedicated calculus and so on. These four discourses are probably the key four that have impact in today’s corporate world, though they compete for promin ence with other signiﬁcant discourse types such as the discourses of technological change, business ethics, man agement practice, and human resources, such is the com plex ﬁeld of the modern corporation. Importantly, with an ever expanding range of pro duction possibilities, markets, ﬁnancing options and or ganizational structures, and with corporations becoming immensely more complex, traditional top down and hierarchical management practices that seek to rely on a unifying enterprise discourse have become redundant. Management decisions are now fed by highly skilled teams devoted to the creation of legal, ﬁnancial, and engineering complexities using specialized verbal, sym bolic, and mathematical languages, sometimes to expose the performance of the corporation or its parts, for ex ample, to drive improvement; and sometimes to conceal the precise nature of a corporation’s activities or struc tures, for example, from the eyes of competitors or regulators. Moreover, and somewhat paradoxically, rather than stabilizing the corporation, this overlay of moni toring, reviewing, and strategizing narratives builds oppositional enterprise discourses which offer alternative accumulation and distributional pathways for the ﬁrm. Management of the enterprise becomes the task or art, then, of assembling and implanting discourses which are capable of resisting opposing discourses because, perhaps, they take a contrary view about the way a ﬁrm should perform or because, perhaps, they seek to install different people to the positions of power from which new discourses can be deployed. In the modern corpor ation, discourse management is no easy task. As we see below, a modern corporation must have stable discourses that drive production and investment. These must intersect with a ﬁnancial system, itself produced and governed by one of many types of ﬁnancial discourses. So too the corporation must adopt a legal architecture and produce an organizational structure, each interrelated with the other and spliced inseparably onto the ﬁrm’s production, investment and ﬁnancial operations. That said, we now turn to each of these discourse types one by one.

Types of Enterprise Discourses Production and Investment Ideas of how to best organize the production of goods and services in large corporations have waxed and waned since the industrial revolution. In 1911, for instance, the construction of a text and an argument for scientiﬁc based organization of factory labor by Frederick W. Taylor in his book The Principles of Scientiﬁc Management led quickly to the overturn of artisan or craft based systems of industrial organization. Taylorism, as it be came known, was an industrial discourse that provided the rationale for wholesale changes to the conduct of work. Tasks became subdivided into sets of basic oper ations allowing workers to be stationed in ﬁxed positions along an assembly line to perform low skilled repetitive tasks. Factories became transformed from workshops into large scale sites designed for the mass production of standardized goods through the installation of specialized capital equipment whose design and function intersected explicitly with divisions of labor designed to maximize worker productivity and factory throughput, however demanding the work process had become. A similar transformation in industrial production methods was driven by a variant to the Taylorist pro duction discourse, namely, the one advanced by Henry Ford in the middle years of the second decade of the twentieth century, the precursor years to the economic boom years of the 1920s. Fordism, as this version became known, added the idea of mass consumption to the dis course of mass production, Ford arguing that living wages were in the interests of industrial corporations since they provided the pool of domestic demand necessary for the sales of growing industrial output. One can chart these types of discursive constructions and displacements throughout the twentieth century: Fordism replaced by state driven demand management practices known as Keynesianism; Taylorism undermined by automation and the substitution of labor by capital; developed world industrialization eroded by productive investments in newly industrializing nations like South Korea and Singapore, describable by many as the creation of a new international division of labor; massive re structuring of developed world industrial capital and the depowerment of organized labor under neoliberalist economic management regimes pioneered by UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US president Ronald Reagan; high technology, ﬂexible industrial systems, es pecially in Scandinavia, in search of a high value added, high wage industrial response to deindustrialization of developed world economies; and so on. In their time, all of these discourses of production and investment convinced industrial audiences that there was a better way to enhance the productivity of capital and labor. Once adopted, a production/investment discourse

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produced not just the promised changes to output but also corresponding shifts in distributional outcomes – according to how powerful or clever certain fractions of capital or organized labor have been in the negotiations and struggles relating to the industrial changes in question. Financial Financial discourses also underpin the operation of the corporation and play an increasingly powerful role in decisions about how production is organized, what in vestments are desirable and what distributional outcomes should be encouraged or engineered. The package of logics, vocabularies and calculus that constitute ﬁnancial discourses – like other forms of enterprise discourse, though probably more powerfully – produces three outcomes: ﬁrst, it creates organizational structures; sec ond, it creates management devices; and, third, it creates regulatory and performance standards, some of which are internal to the ﬁnancial community and others which are governance measures imposed on it. Ever since the headline capturing takeovers, mergers and asset stripping ventures of the 1980s, there has been considerable public awareness of the powerful role that ﬁnancial management plays in building the structures and strategies of ﬁrms. Yet, accounting and ﬁnance de partments have always been integral to ﬁrms’ structures. They rival production, engineering, and sales depart ments for their inﬂuence on ﬁrms’ behaviors. The introduction of Taylorism to workplaces in the early twentieth century, though, led to the dramatic insertion of accounting practitioners and their instruments into the management of production processes in a way that saw the nature of production redesigned to take account of what ﬁnancial, especially accounting, narratives dictated. What the ﬁrm looked like changed radically. So too, the discovery that idle cash ﬂows internal to a ﬁrm gave the ﬁrm much potential as a debt raising and payment device saw profound changes to the structure of ﬁrms in the 1980s. These changes which not so much shifted individual modes of production – though these modes were certainly changing for technological reasons and in response to rising international market competition – but brought a consciousness to the production manager of the need to capture and steer value creation as quickly and as efﬁciently as possible. Once again, new ways of doing ﬁnancial business changed ﬁrms’ organizational structures, the internal structures of ﬁrms being re organized to mimic ﬁnancial, not just production, rep resentations of the ﬁrm. Aided by the IT revolution, new systems of ﬁnancial management were devised which focused managers’ attention on speciﬁc performance measures (asset values, gearing levels, cash ﬂows, labor costs and so on) which thereby demanded particular

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behaviors. They also created particular social and polit ical ways of governing individuals, activities and organ izations. For example, they might have encouraged more aggressive controls over labor practices in a ﬁrm while according zero economic value to philanthropic be haviors. A new role of ﬁnancial management has, there fore, become the creation of a logic, a direction and a process of change. Each ﬁnancial management model constructs a new language, replete with its own for mation, representations, vocabulary and calculus. Thus in a discursive sense, ﬁnancial management can be seen as a process of scripting the operations of the corporate or ganization and the behaviors of its members. A ﬁnancial narrative, then, operates as an enterprise dis course which constitutes and is constituted by a ﬁeld of power relations thereby producing, as we have seen, the preconditions for its contestation. A ﬁnancial narrative is constructed for the purpose of producing a set of power relations which will deliver and stabilize a particular set of accumulation and distributional outcomes. The enduring success of a hegemonic management narrative lies, therefore, in its capacity to recreate its logics, languages, and calculus, making other narratives and their agents less inviting through time. Of course, any process of suppression will involve ap propriating strategic features from alternative narratives through the same processes of networking and talk which maintain the hegemonic status of the dominant narrative. On the other hand, suppression creates the conditions for re sistance and the rise of competitive narratives with different claims and aspirations. Financial discourses are thus, like all enterprises discourses, comprised of a multitude of com peting stories continuously in the process of formation and, potentially, in competition for dominance. Notwithstanding their role as a vehicle for the successful deployment of power and control within an enterprise, ﬁ nancial discourses within an enterprise are also part of an external ﬁeld of ﬁnancial discourses and of wider societal discourses of social and economic transformation. The le gitimacy and survival prospects of a ﬁrm are enhanced by adopting key ﬁnancial management practices and pro cedures consistent with wider political directions and in stitutional processes. Successful ﬁnancial management depends on the societal network of practices and discourses in which it is set. Yet, simultaneously, ﬁnancial management constructs and transforms social institutions, and the (largely economic) truths that are associated with them. Of course, the intersection of ﬁnancial narratives and societal talk is enhanced by the status of ﬁnance professionals in the wider community, in the political process and in the control of large corporations. Organizational The organizational structure of a corporation is the direct outcome of a plethora of talk, especially

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management talk. This talk has a particular motivation and agenda depending on its authors and disciples. There is a complex debate in economics and organiza tional theory about which types of management talk have achieved primacy in modern capitalism. The tra ditional view is that managers talk up maximization goals especially the maximization of proﬁts, sales and asset values. Another view is that a ﬁrm’s managers will seek to maximize the opportunities and rewards they can accrue personally from running the ﬁrm so long as some reasonable level of return to the ﬁrm’s owners are maintained. Another is that managers are motivated by securing the ﬁrm’s long term interests and so will seek control over the ﬁeld of transactions that intersects with the ﬁrm’s interests. Managers might also be seen as maximizing their power within the organization re sulting, perhaps, in actions to accumulate personnel and resources under their direct control. And, it is possible that managers might be motivated by wider social justice and sustainability concerns and so steer the ﬁrm toward socially and environmentally responsible activities. Of course, a large corporation will have long experi ence of all of these motivations, and more, from within its management ranks. As it embraces a variety of manage ment actions – each and every one of which is devised and propelled within an enterprise discourse – it creates the organizational wherewithal to process actions and responses, most commonly through the engagement of specialists and the formulation of strategies and policies in the key areas from which talk is generated: production, sales, ﬁnance, human resources, ethics, IT, and so on. Over time, these ‘areas’ are institutionalized into spe cialist departments with deﬁned responsibilities, and so corporate structure is built. On the one hand, then, the ﬁrm is a dynamic ﬁeld of competing logics and aspirations often situated within wildly chaotic, disconnected ﬁelds of economic and social transactions. On the other hand, because ﬁrms have long histories of reconciling distributive claims on productive capacities and earnings, their operations are stabilized by their organizational form and by sets of much prescribed and therefore repeated behaviors and transactions. Im portantly, these prescriptions draw heavily from obser vations of other ﬁrms and from the vast array of management discourses available almost ubiquitously including at airport bookshops and in the management texts of the world’s most elite universities. Successful managers are the ones who devise and institute new operating languages to control and capture the value that ﬁrms create without the need for operatives to make constant referral to management for direction and de cision. Enterprise discourse instills instinctive responses into a ﬁrm’s practices and thereafter consolidates them into organizational form and structure.

Legal The enterprise can also be portrayed as the product of legal discourse, a cluster of legal obligations and relation ships, or a nexus of contracts – some formal, some not – which have been spawned to identify and protect the private property and wealth creating rights of the corpor ation as a social entity. Legal rights and obligations that are seen to be located within the boundaries of the corporation include basic property rights; rules for the use of pro ductive assets; frameworks to maximize and legitimize economic cooperation in internal enterprise relations, such as employer/employee and shareholder/manager relations; rules governing market behaviors; duties and obligations in raising debt and equity ﬁnance; and rights and restraints in international transactions. Just as with production/investment, ﬁnancial, and organizational discourses, the legal narrative of the cor poration is a historical tale of tension, contest, resolution, and crisis, bounded by wider societal knowledges, prac tices, and expectations. And just as with other types of enterprise discourse, the legal version plays a major role in stabilizing the corporation, legitimizing private pro duction and distribution activity, and directing external relationships now and into the future. Law builds the corporation as the prime economic entity through three major installations: autonomy, limited liability, and ﬁdu ciary duty. Autonomy is the transfer of the rights of an individual directly onto the corporation. The idea of the corpor ation as an autonomous entity draws directly from the Lockean notion of the autonomous individual subject, and is fundamental to corporate legal discourse. Limited liability is the condition by which share holders of a company are legally responsible for the debts of a company only to the extent of the nominal value of their shares. Limited liability was the legal cornerstone to nineteenth century American industrialization enabling risky ventures like railways and water schemes to attract private ﬁnance without further call on ﬁnanciers’ other assets. Simultaneously, limited liability reinforces the beneﬁts that ﬂow from the idea of autonomy by effect ively evacuating citizenship responsibilities from the list of obligations of the shareholder. Fiduciary duty is the basic duty of care in supervision and positional conduct that all citizens are required to exhibit. For the corporation, ﬁduciary duty refers to the relationship of trust that shareholders have with the corporation’s directors and managers; chieﬂy that they will advance the objectives of the company, which in variably involves the maximization of ﬁnancial returns to shareholders via dividends and capital gains. While open to interpretations that press wider societal and environ mental obligations on a ﬁrm, court interpretations of ﬁ duciary duty have invariably narrowed its ﬁeld of

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meaning to oblige corporate managers and directors to elevate the interests of shareholders above all others. Such a narrowing also reinforces the suite of legal pro tections and powers that emanate from the discursive presence of the ideas of autonomy and limited liability. Just as the law is a discursive act, we can see that the corporation is in turn constructed by legal discourse; and that as this discourse shifts and bends according to new interpretations, statutory adjustments, and professional practices, so too the corporation adjusts and changes. Often these changes will be required to accommodate changes made within the corporation arising from shifts in production/investment, ﬁnancial, and organizational discourses. Frequently, though, corporate law – its texts, practices, and professionals – will override, prohibit or adjust processes of change emanating elsewhere, signi fying that while legal discourse may lack the physical force of a production/investment narrative, the cut through power of a ﬁnancial narrative or the historical inertia of organizational talk, legal discourse sources its unique form of power from the autonomy, distinction, and status that it accords itself and has ceded to it.

sorts of monetary and nonmonetary forms. On the edges of the ﬁrm, other stakeholders (shareholders, com munities, host environments, and state agencies) will want a say in the narratives that drive the ﬁrm’s oper ations, and they will focus also on the form and balance of accumulation and distribution options. At any point in time, then, the ﬁrm can be shown to be composed of a very deeply institutionalized set of structures, though at every other point in time these will change, driven by a contest of talk over accumulation and distributional outcomes. Such a discursive and reﬂexive view of the enterprise raises the broader question about realizing the corpo ration’s potential as a public sphere – where it is normal to witness open debates about corporate governance, rights of access to information, mutual and social obli gations, philanthropy, environmental sustainability and so on. Mobilizing these sorts of discourses about the en terprise and attaching them to a ﬁeld of possibilities that we might know as the corporation has the potential to create a more humane and responsible, perhaps even a more productive, modern corporation.

Alternate Discourses of Responsibility

See also: Corporate Responsibilities; Discourse; Economic Geography; Firms; Poststructuralism/ Poststructuralist Geographies.

Taking an enterprise discourse view of the corporation opens up the corporation to the possibility of it being something else: more environmentally or socially re sponsible, for instance; or more generous to outsiders; or, even, engaged politically in pursuit of something better. By identifying the coexistence of the production/in vestment, ﬁnancial, organizational and legal discourses of the ﬁrm, we can see the enterprise as organized by a number of different logics, some of which are mutually supporting while others are deliberately in opposition; which means that the determining power or logic or normative prescriptions within any one discourse is never guaranteed. From a management point of view, as we have seen, the latent instability of a corporation arising from the coexistence of both supportive and competing enterprise discourses means that much of the art and task of man agement is the construction of hegemonic narratives of performance within a ﬁrm in order to produce a stable strategy capable of driving a ﬁrm’s accumulation and, probably more importantly, its distributional outcomes. Yet, because there will always be an alternative man agement narrative that offers a different accumulation and a distributional outcome, there will always be a struggle over a narrative’s formulation and enactment. Other managers will seek to displace the dominant nar rative with another. Employees will contest it in order to claw back a greater proportion of surplus value in all

Further Reading Boden, D. (1994). The Business of Talk. London: Polity Press. Brown, J. S. and Duguid, P. (1995). Organizational learning and ‘communities of practice’. In Cohen, M. D. & Sproull, L. S. (eds.) Organizational Learning, pp 76 92. London: Sage. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gibson Graham, J. K. and O’Neill, P. M. (2001). Exploring a new class politics of the enterprise. In Gibson Graham, J. K., Resnick, S. & Wolff, R. (eds.) Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism, pp 56 80. London: Duke University Press. Hopwood, A. G. and Miller, P. (1994). Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maskell, P. (2001). The ﬁrm in economic geography. Economic Geography 77, 329 344. Miller, P. (1994). Accounting as social and institutional practice: An introduction. In Hopwood, A. G. & Miller, P. (eds.) Accounting as Social and Institutional Practice, pp 1 39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norton, B. (1995). The theory of monopoly capitalism and classical economics. History of Political Economy 27, 737 753. O’Neill, P. M. (2001). Financial narratives of the modern corporation. Journal of Economic Geography 1, 111 129. O’Neill, P. M. and Gibson Graham, J. K. (1999). Enterprise discourse and executive talk: Stories that destabilize the company. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24, 11 22. Schoenberger, E. (1997). The Cultural Crisis of the Firm. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Taylor, M. and Asheim, B. (2001). The concept of the ﬁrm in economic geography. Economic Geography 77, 315 328. Yeung, H. W. (1998). The social spatial constitution of business organizations: A geographical perspective. Organization 5, 101 128.

Entrepreneurship E. Stam, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Cluster Geographic concentration of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular ﬁeld. Entrepreneurial Opportunities A set of ideas, beliefs, and actions that enable the creation of future goods and services in the absence of current markets for them. Nascent Entrepreneur Individual who is taking steps to found a new business but who has not yet succeeded in making the transition to new business ownership. New Firm Formation Rate The number of new ﬁrms started, as a percentage of the total number of ﬁrms. Self-Employment Rate The number of business owners, as a percentage of total employment. Spin-Off A ﬁrm that is started by someone who has left his employer.

Introduction Entrepreneurship has been recognized as an important element in explaining (regional) economic development. This means that the explanation of regional variations in entrepreneurship has also become an important issue. Even more so because there are pronounced differences within and between nations in rates of entrepreneurship. Historically, the literature has often explained entre preneurship as the product either of environments (like provision of venture capital (VC), growing demand) or of personal attributes (like risk taking propensity, need for achievement). Individuals are heterogeneously endowed with knowledge (bounded rationality, prior knowledge), attitudes, and preferences and environments are hetero geneously endowed with institutions, inputs, and demand for products. The entrepreneurial process depends on entrepreneurial opportunities in the environment and enterprising individuals that identify and exploit these opportunities. Entrepreneurship is the result of the interaction between individual attributes and the sur rounding environment. When individuals identify an opportunity, they do not react automatically with establishing a new ﬁrm (as suming that they have the intention to start one): new ﬁrms are created with a sequence of processes like cre ating a legal entity, product development, and ﬁnancing. Given prospects of employment, education, and other circumstances differ across individuals, the population is heterogeneous with different individuals facing different

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opportunity costs when acting to exploit an opportunity they recognized. There are many obstacles at the road from entrepreneurial intentions to a successful business. Although this article aims to give an overview of the regional determinants of entrepreneurship, it should be kept in mind that results from studies of speciﬁc regions are hard to transfer to another region due to the speciﬁc, often idiosyncratic institutional context of these regions. This means that it is unlikely that there will be institution free descriptions of best practices in entre preneurship policy.

Deﬁnitions and Measurement of Entrepreneurship The literature on entrepreneurship recognizes a variety of entrepreneurial roles. Entrepreneurs have been rec ognized to fulﬁll different roles in economic change, as: 1. the person who assumes the risk associated with un certainty (Knight); 2. an innovator (Schumpeter); 3. a decision maker (Casson); 4. an industrial leader (Schumpeter); 5. an organizer and coordinator of economic resources (Marshall); 6. an arbitrageur (Kirzner); and 7. an allocator of resources among alternative uses (Schultz). These roles all implicitly carry an economically positive connotation with them. However, if entrepreneurs are de ﬁned to be persons who are ingenious and creative in ﬁnding ways that add to their own wealth, power, and prestige (Baumol), then it is to be expected that not all of their ac tivities will deliver a productive contribution to society. Three indicators of entrepreneurship are often used: the percentage self employed in the labor population, the number of new ﬁrms, and the number of new growing ﬁrms. Some studies also take into account people with a preference for entrepreneurship (‘latent entrepreneur ship’), or people that take steps to start a new business (‘nascent entrepreneurship’). The latter two indicators can be seen as potential entrepreneurship. The dominant empirical deﬁnition of entrepreneurship in economic geography is the formation of a new ﬁrm by (an) indi vidual(s). These individuals are called entrepreneurs, or an entrepreneurial team when a collective starts a ﬁrm. There are two general methods for empirically analyzing entrepreneurship as new ﬁrm formation. The

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ﬁrst method standardizes the (annual) number of new ﬁrms relative to the number of establishments already in existence, which is termed the ecological approach, be cause it considers the amount of start up activity relative to the size of the existing population of businesses. The second method, the labor market approach, standardizes the number of self employed with respect to the size of the labor force. The latter approach is based on the theory of entrepreneurial choice, which explicitly focuses on the occupational choice between wage labor and self employment.

Entrepreneurship as a Regional Event Entrepreneurs are hardly lone individuals who rely pri marily on their extraordinary efforts and talents to overcome the difﬁculties inherent in the formation of a new ﬁrm. The process of starting a new ﬁrm is eminently social, as information and resources are to a large extent acquired via the personal networks of the (nascent) entrepreneur. The social ties of the potential entre preneurs are likely to be localized, and induce entre preneurs to start their ﬁrm in close proximity to their homes and to their current employers. For example, a study of Portuguese manufacturing ﬁrms found that Portuguese entrepreneurs were willing to accept labor costs three times higher than in alternative locations to locate the new business in their current region. It is al most a stylized fact that entrepreneurs start their ﬁrm in the region where they live and/or work. For them the choice is what kind of ﬁrm to start given their location, not so much choosing a location for a given ﬁrm. There are several reasons for this locational inertia of entrepreneurs. First, they can utilize their existing net work to seek partners, employees, suppliers, customers, advisors, and investors. This decreases search costs, but it also permits them to build upon credibility and trust developed in past relationships. Second, they can start on a part time basis (often being home based) and delay full time commitment until the venture seems suf ﬁciently promising. Third, a spouse can keep a job so that income continues to ﬂow to the family; other aspects of a founder’s life can remain the same. The full energies of the entrepreneur can then be devoted to start up.

several perspectives: the nature and number of organ izations in a region, the regional culture, and the labor market structure in a region. Key elements are the re sources, abilities, and preferences of individuals. It ex plains why in given environments some individuals are more likely to start a ﬁrm than others: for example, due to their willingness to incur risk, preference for autonomy and self direction, speciﬁc human capital, and experi ence. The demand side of entrepreneurship represents the opportunities for entrepreneurship. In contrast to the supply side perspectives, demand side perspectives argue that individuals in particular environments are more likely to be entrepreneurs because the availability of opportunities encourages their exploitation by starting a ﬁrm. The demand side can be studied by looking at the sources of opportunities: for example, a growing pur chasing power, technological change, and regulatory change (see Figure 1 for a graphical representation of the analytical framework). Empirically the supply and demand for entrepre neurship can be measured with different indicators. Figure 2 shows the levels of perceived skills and know ledge to start a business among adults in European re gions (supply of entrepreneurship), while Figure 3 shows the levels of perceived opportunities to start a business in the local area (demand for entrepreneurship). These ﬁgures show that there are not only large international variations in the factors related to the demand and supply of entrepreneurship, but also signiﬁcant regional differ ences within countries (e.g., within the UK, Germany, and Italy).

Industry Structure New ﬁrm formation across regions can be explained by differences in the regional composition of industries and by differences in one particular industry in speciﬁc re gions. The latter would indicate that there are context speciﬁc differences affecting entrepreneurship rates, while the former would indicate that the explanation should largely be sought in the speciﬁc industry structure of the

Supply

Demand and Supply of Entrepreneurship For explaining the spatial distributions of entrepreneur ship, one can look at the demand side and at the supply side of entrepreneurship. The supply side refers to the composition and characteristics of the population of individuals and organizations as producers of entre preneurship. It starts with the availability of (potential) entrepreneurs. The supply side can be studied from

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Regional entrepreneurship rate

Availability of (potential) entrepreneurs: -Preferences of individuals -Skills of individuals -Resources of individuals

Demand

Availability of entrepreneurial opportunities: -Technological change -Political/regulatory change -Social/demographic change

Figure 1 Supply and demand of entrepreneurship.

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Perceived skills SUSKILLS 20.940 000−25.570 000 25.570 001−32.690 000 32.690 001−38.150 000 38.150 001−41.990 000 41.990 001−46.360 000 46.360 001−59.400 000

Figure 2 Perceived skills and knowledge to start business, percentage of population between 18 64, 2001 05 (Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.)

region. The industry structure of a region affects the overall new ﬁrm formation rates in a region, as industries differ in their degree of contestability (entry barriers) and the extent to which entrepreneurial opportunities emerge (e.g., many in business services and few in mining). In dustry structure may affect the supply of, as well as de mand for, entrepreneurship. Sometimes both the industry structure and the re gional context are favorable for the new ﬁrm formation rate in a region; this can, for example, be found in the South East of the UK, which has both a favorable in dustry mix (especially construction, service, ﬁnance, and related sectors) and favorable local conditions. In con trast, regions like Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales suffer from a combination of both an unfavorable in dustry mix and unfavorable local conditions for new ﬁrm formation. Often the industry mix component dominates the local conditions component in statistical analyses of determinants of regional ﬁrm formation rates.

Entrepreneurship as an Organizational Product Although some individuals become successful entre preneurs without related prior experience, they are the

exception rather than the rule. Entrepreneurs are often organizational products, that is, they spin off a ﬁrm from their previous employer. Many entrepreneurs are char acterized by ‘sectoral inertia’, that is, they start their ﬁrm in an industry with which they already were familiar. Far from the universal choice, entrepreneurial action is relatively constrained: instead of looking around to seek the most proﬁtable opportunity, the potential entre preneur concentrates his attention on a familiar sector. A person working in an industry is more likely to identify a market gap, irrespective of the degree of industry com petition and growth prospects. This prior experience and personal networks are likely to be acquired during the entrepreneur’s career in existing organizations. This explains why the nature and number of organizations in a region are important de terminants of entrepreneurship in that region. Empirical research has shown that a population of business organizations dominated by small ﬁrms is a fertile breeding ground for new ﬁrms. The greater the proportion of an industry’s labor force with direct ex perience of working in smaller ﬁrms, the more wide spread the propensity for self employment and hence the greater the propensity to start a new ﬁrm. Industries dominated by large plants would be expected to perform poorly as incubators of new business founders.

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Perceived opportunities OPPORREG 4.390 000−15.340 000 15.340 001−22.350 000 22.350 001−28.510 000 28.510 001−35.810 000 35.810 001−45.100 000 45.100 001−53.650 000

Figure 3 Perceived opportunities to start a business in local area, percentage of population between 18 64, 2001 05. (Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.)

Clusters Regions that have a concentration of organizations of a certain kind (in a speciﬁc industry) tend to generate a relatively large number of new organizations of that same kind. This pattern has been shown for industries in general, and for speciﬁc industries like footwear, ac counting, biotechnology, computer workstations, and motorcycles. There are several reasons for why indu strial clusters foster entrepreneurship. Clusters provide established relationships and better information about opportunities. They open up niches of specialization due to the low degree of vertical integration. Clusters foster a competitive climate and strong rivalry among ﬁrms that impose pressure to innovate due to the presence of close competitors. They provide role models with the presence of other ﬁrms that have ‘made it’, and a cultural en vironment where establishing one’s own business is normal and failure is not a social stigma. Clusters provide access to physical, ﬁnancial, and commercial infra structure; easing the spin offs of new companies from existing ones. Especially because potential entrants will know how the local industry functions and have the technical skills to operate in it. Existing organizations expand the pool of potential entrepreneurs available in a region by employing

individuals in roles conducive to acquiring information about entrepreneurial opportunities and to developing the social ties necessary for resource mobilization. This all lowers entry and exit barriers and reduces the risk and uncertainty for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Urbanization Urban areas have important advantages for entrepre neurship. These include the relative ease of access to customers, as well as the inputs required (capital, labor, and suppliers) to produce the goods or services. The classical ‘incubation hypothesis’ in urban economics states that persons aspiring to go into production on a small scale have found themselves less obviously barred by a high cost structure at the center of the urban area than at the periphery. Urbanized areas are often con centrations of educated individuals with business ex perience in their early and middle adult years, and in that way they are a source of entrepreneurs. Urban areas have important advantages for the demand for entrepreneur ship. The risk of starting a business in urban areas is also relatively low due to the abundant employment oppor tunities, which function as an occupational buffer for the entrepreneur when the ﬁrm fails.

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There is systematic evidence that growth in demand, measured with either population growth or income growth, positively affects the rate of new ﬁrm formation. As demand increases, more new ﬁrms will be founded to satisfy this greater demand. Also increased diversiﬁcation of consumer demand positively affects entrepreneurship. This latter phenomenon is central in ﬂexible special ization theory, which explains such trends in terms of the breakup of the mass market for standardized goods and services and the consequent emergence of a variety of smaller niche markets capable of exploitation by new or small businesses. This growth of demand is likely to be associated with urbanization. Metropolitan areas are often concentrations of (advanced) demand, providing relatively many niches to be served by entrepreneurs (better matching of demand and supply). Recent research has also acknowledged the impor tance of urban areas for knowledge spillovers, that is, the relative abundance of new knowledge that might be an important input for entrepreneurial opportunities.

Culture The regional culture is also important in the supply of entrepreneurship via its effect on the attitude and values that people acquire. Social psychologists have claimed that an individual’s attitudes and traits are not inherited but are developed in interaction with the social en vironment. Perceptions about the desirability of be coming an entrepreneur are formed and revised given the set of information available to each person. The existence of a number of entrepreneurs in a region also legitimizes the activities of nascent entrepreneurs. Regional differ ences in culture in that way affect the level to which people aspire and think about becoming an entrepreneur, which is an important phase in the process of starting a ﬁrm. One example of this is the fear of failure that might deter people from starting a new ﬁrm. Cognitive theories have proposed that by observation of entrepreneurial activities in its immediate environment, an individual acquires information and skills that might trigger and enable his/her choice for an entrepreneurial career. Distinct local cultures can have effects on different types of entrepreneurship. For example, a ‘self employ ment’ and a ‘career’ life mode have different positive effects on entrepreneurship, while a ‘wage earner’ life mode has a clear negative effect on entrepreneurship. In the self employment life mode the dominant job related motivation is to own the means of production and control the production process. This culture is carried over from generation to generation, and is most frequently found in rural areas characterized by independent and self reliant small scale farmers, artisans, and small business owners. It is rare in areas dominated by large scale operations.

The dominant value in the wage earner life mode is the sale of one’s labor at the highest possible price in order to maximize the utility of one’s leisure time. Such indi viduals are unlikely to set up new businesses, except when they are ‘forced’ by unemployment. This life mode is likely to be most common in regions characterized by a narrow industrial base and dominated by large externally owned ﬁrms. Finally, the dominant value of individuals with a career life mode is the advancement of their career. They are likely to be well educated and working in large private or public sector organizations. They will start their own businesses if this becomes the best way in which to beneﬁt from their skills, knowledge, and expertise. These businesses are often technologically advanced, innovative, and with good marketing capabil ities. Career mode entrepreneurs are often concentrated in large metropolitan areas and smaller attractive cities. This career life mode resembles the life mode of the so called creative class to a large extent. The creative class consists of individuals with relatively high levels of creativity in their work. These individuals are rela tively more likely to recognize and realize entre preneurial opportunities. A spatial concentration of creative class has been shown to positively affect new ﬁrm formation rates. Indirectly, amenities in regions affect new ﬁrm formation rates, by attracting the creative class.

Unemployment During the economic downturn in the 1980s there was much attention for the relation between unemployment and new ﬁrm formation. It was suggested that when workers are unemployed they might be more likely to start their own business out of necessity. As the un employment rate rises there is likely to be some increase in the number of potential entrants and, other things equal, a greater propensity to enter. However, the relationship between unemployment and entrepreneurship is more complicated, as high levels of unemployment are likely to indicate a reduction in aggregate demand (and thus demand for entrepreneur ship), thereby putting downward pressure on the rate of new ﬁrm formation. Empirical research shows both ef fects: time series analyses point to unemployment being positively associated with new ﬁrm formation, whereas cross sectional studies appear to indicate the reverse. The latter outcome depends on the initial unemployment levels in a region. In regions with low unemployment, relative self employment rises along with relative un employment, indicating that push effects are dominant. In regions with already high unemployment, relative self employment falls if relative unemployment rises, indi cating the dominance of prosperity pull effects.

Entrepreneurship

Growth in (Scientiﬁc) Knowledge New knowledge created at universities and research centers generates opportunities for entrepreneurship, es pecially in high tech industries. Often these organizations are not able to fully recognize and/or appropriate the ensuing opportunities to commercialize that knowledge. Knowledge workers in these organizations respond to opportunities generated by new knowledge with starting a new ﬁrm, and in this way appropriate the expected value of their endowment of knowledge. Geographic proximity to these sources of new knowledge is an asset, if not a prerequisite, to entrepreneurial ﬁrms in accessing and absorbing spillovers from universities and research cen ters. However, geographical proximity should not be seen in a too local sense, as these knowledge spillovers are said to extend up to more than 100 miles. The degree to which technological change promotes new ﬁrm formation (in high tech industries) depends on the institutional environment. The institutional setting affects the nature of technical labor markets, VC markets, and the structure of buyer–supplier ties that are highly relevant for the incentive constraints and appropriability constraints acting on incumbent and start up ﬁrms, re spectively. For example, institutions enabling a ﬂuid labor market, a well developed VC market, and loose buyer– supplier ties allow new ﬁrms to rapidly assemble and deploy experienced engineering talent, and move quickly to commercialize advanced technology. Cross country research has shown that this latter situation can be found in the US, in contrast to Japan, and cross regional re search found, for example, that Silicon Valley is much more conducive to new technology based ﬁrms than Route 128 (Massachusetts) for similar reasons. The institutional environment also affects the op portunity costs involved in leaving a (relatively secure) job at a university or research center for self employment.

Financial Capital Liquidity constraints are an important factor disabling entrepreneurs to realize their business opportunities. This is especially relevant for large new ﬁrms that re quire relatively large scale investments for their initial activities. Small scale ﬁrms can often be ﬁnanced with bank loans or the support of the entrepreneur’s family and friends. The availability of collateral, most often in the form of the entrepreneur’s own housing, is shown to be the single most important source of such collateral. Indirectly, ﬂuctuations in the local housing market could thus affect the availability of ﬁnancial capital for new ﬁrms. New ﬁrms that require large scale investments are more likely to enter the VC market. Providers of VC

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provide not only ﬁnancial capital, but also knowledge of developing a business. The provision of ﬁnancial capital in general is more likely to be bounded to national scales, while the provision of VC is most likely constrained to relatively large regions. The supply of VC is distributed evenly across regions. For example, the VC market in the US is highly concentrated (both in supply and invest ments) in the east and west coasts of the country, and in the UK it is highly concentrated in the Southeast, in and around London. This uneven regional spread has also been found in other countries. This means that in regions far away from these centers entrepreneurs might be discouraged to start capital intensive start ups. The as sumption is that spatial proximity may be necessary for the formation of a VC relationship and that it makes monitoring of investments easier. Face to face contacts between the entrepreneur and the VC provider are ne cessary to identify the value of the new business and the involvement in business affairs by the VC provider. These contacts are hard to initiate and sustain over a large distance. Recent evidence shows that most of these contacts cannot easily be maintained over a longer dis tance via telecommunication, as this is only used as a complement to face to face contacts, not as a substitute.

Conclusion The regional heterogeneity in the determinants of entrepreneurship leads to an even higher heterogeneity in the spatial distribution of entrepreneurship, as can be seen in Figure 4. This ﬁgure shows the variation in nascent entrepreneurship and young businesses over European regions. In order to explain the regional vari ations in entrepreneurship rates, both the factors related to the supply of and the factors related to the demand for entrepreneurship should be taken into account. This article has discussed several important factors in the supply of entrepreneurship, like the industry struc ture, the population of organizations, and clusters in a region, providing a breeding ground for potential entrepreneurs. Another important factor in the supply of entrepreneurship is the regional culture, which explains the preference for entrepreneurship. A more ambiguous factor is unemployment: unemployment could make self employment a relatively attractive option (necessity entrepreneurship), but unemployment could also de crease the demand for products of new ﬁrms and thus also lower the demand for entrepreneurship. Other im portant factors in the demand for entrepreneurship are the expanding knowledge base of a region, which in creases the number of technological inventions to be commercialized by new ﬁrms. Urbanization is also likely to increase the demand for entrepreneurship, as it is generally correlated with an increasing diversiﬁcation

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Entrepreneurship

TEA by region TEA 1.860 000−3.210 000 3.210 001−4.340 000 4.340 001−5.250 000 5.250 001−6.090 000 6.090 001−7.310 000 7.310 001−8.930 000

Figure 4 Early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA), percentage of population between 18 64, 2001 05. (Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.)

of demand. Finally, the relatively abundant supply of (venture) capital is likely to lower the barriers to develop a new business. See also: Agglomeration; Capitalism; Competitiveness; Creativity; Firms; High-Tech Industry; Industrial Location; Industrial Organization; Industrial Restructuring; Innovation; Labor Market; Local Economic Development; Location Theory; Networks; Public Policy; Technological Change; Technology and Regional Development; Technology Industries; Venture Capital.

Further Reading Audretsch, D. B., Keilbach, M. C. and Lehmann, E. E. (2006). Entrepreneurship and economic growth. New York: Oxford University Press. Bosma, N. and Schutjens, V. (2008). Mapping entrepreneurial activity and entrepreneurial attitudes in European regions. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business 5, Forthcoming. Feldman, M. P. (2001). The entrepreneurial event revisited: Firm formation in a regional context. Industrial and Corporate Change 10, 861 891.

Hanson, S. (2003). Geographical and feminist perspectives on entrepreneurship. Geographische Zeitschrift 91, 1 23. He´bert, R. F. and Link, A. N. (1989). In search of the meaning of entrepreneurship. Small Business Economics 1, 39 49. Malecki, E. J. (1997). Entrepreneurs, networks, and economic development: A review of recent research. Advances in Entrepreneurship, Firm Emergence and Growth 3, 57 118. Reynolds, P., Storey, D. and Westhead, P. (1994). Cross national comparisons of the variation in new ﬁrm formation rates. Regional Studies 28, 443 456. Saxenian, A. (1994). Regional advantage: Culture and competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wagner, J. and Sternberg, R. (2004). Start up activities, individual characteristics, and the regional milieu: Lessons for entrepreneurship support policies from German micro data. Annals of Regional Science 38, 219 240. Zucker, L. G., Darby, M. R. and Brewer, M. B. (1998). Intellectual human capital and the birth of U.S. biotechnology enterprises. American Economic Review 88, 290 306.

Relevant Website http://www.gemconsortium.org Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).

Entropy-Maximising Models R. Johnston, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK C. Pattie, University of Shefﬁeld, Shefﬁeld, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Data Paucity and Ecological Inference In many areas of social science the data needed for testing hypotheses are unavailable and bespoke data collection (by conducting surveys, for example) is not feasible – very often because of ﬁnance. Researchers are thus forced to adopt ‘second best’ strategies, using whatever data are available to generate approximations of the information that they need. Such approaches neces sarily carry caveats – these are the best answers that we can provide to our research questions given the available data and our ability to manipulate them. One area of work in which such methodologies are frequently deployed goes under the collective title of ‘ecological inference’. It involves deriving estimates of ‘unknown quantities’ – such as the number of households of different sizes with two cars in each of a series of areas – from what is known about those areas (the number of households of different sizes in each and also the number of households with two cars – but not the cross classiﬁ cation of the two).

Entropy A form of ecological inference developed and applied by human geographers is entropy maximizing. ‘Entropy’ – a concept developed in thermodynamics but since widely applied in information theory – is a measure of the amount of uncertainty in a probability distribution, subject to constraints. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the entropy. Thus, for example, if you have a population of 100 persons, 98 of whom are male, the probability of randomly selecting a male is very high – or the uncertainty associated with the outcome of such sampling is very low. If 48 are male, however, the un certainty is much greater – and hence the entropy is larger. Entropy is linked to another important mathematical– statistical concept – ‘maximum likelihood’. In the study of probabilities, the maximum likelihood estimate is that most likely to occur. (In the example in the preceding paragraph, with 98 males out of 100 the maximum likelihood expectation is that a randomly drawn individual will be male.) Mathematically, the two procedures – entropy and maximum likelihood – are equivalent. Entropy maximizing methods have been used in two major areas of research in spatial science. These are

discussed here, following an introductory section setting out the mathematics behind the procedures.

The Entropy-Maximizing Procedure Based on the thermodynamic concept of entropy as maximum disorder, the entropy maximizing procedure (EMax) seeks the most likely conﬁguration of elements within a constrained situation. It is widely used in a range of disciplines, but its potential for the social sciences has been only slightly recognized. It can be illustrated by a simple example. Take a 2 2 (N M) matrix, P in which the row and column totals (shown by the ) are known but the in ternal cell values are unknown (the ?):

N1 N2 P

M1

M2

? ? 3

? ? 7

P 4 6

This is termed the system’s ‘macro state’. That macro state can be generated by a number of ‘meso states’, distributions of individuals across the four internal matrix cells which are consistent with the system constraints – the macro state’s row and column totals. There are four feasible meso states:

N1

M1 3

M2 1

M1 2

M2 2

M1 1

M2 3

M1 0

N2

0

6

1

5

2

4

3

M2 4 3

EMax identiﬁes which of those meso states is most likely to occur – given no other constraints or inﬂuences on which individual is allocated to which cell. To do that involves identifying the ‘micro state’ most likely to occur because it has the largest number of different allocations of the individuals in any one meso state. For example, the ﬁrst meso state above has four individuals in row N1 – a, b, c, and d, say. There are four different ways in which they can be allocated to the two cells in that row. (1) a appears in column M2 and the other three, b, c, and d, in column M1; (2) b in M2, a, c, and d in M1; (3) c in M2, a, b, and d in M1; and (4) d in M2, a, b, and c in M1. Whichever allo cation occurs, all six of the individuals in row N2 (u z, say) must be allocated to column M2. Hence there is a total of four micro states associated with the ﬁrst meso state.

499

500

Entropy-Maximising Models

The second meso state has six different ways of al locating the four individuals in row N1 to the two col umns (the ﬁrst pair refers to M1 and the second to M2): (1) ab, cd; (2) ac, bd; (3) ad, bc; (4) cd, ab; (5) bd, ac; (6) bc, ad. In addition, there are six different ways in which the six individuals in row N2 can be divided between the two columns in the ratio of 1:5 ([u; v z], [v; u, w z], etc.). This gives a total of 36 different micro states associated with that meso state (i.e., the product of the two separate allocations). There are 60 different micro states associ ated with the third meso state (four different ways of splitting the four individuals in N1 in the ratio 1:3 and ﬁfteen of splitting the six in N2 in the ratio 2:4) and 18 associated with the fourth (there are 18 ways of splitting the six individuals in N2 in the ratio 3:3 and just one way of allocating the four in N1 in the ratio 0:4). The maximum likelihood solution is the third of the four meso states: this has the most micro states associ ated with it and is thus the most likely to occur. If all we know is that ten individuals are distributed across the four cells of the macro state, then the most likely meso state associated with that conﬁguration is the third of the four identiﬁed, because it has the largest number of separate ways (micro states) in which it can be created, given the constraints of the row and column totals. The Mathematical Basis Application of the method here involves a three dimensional data cube for which the three sets of sums are known. Assume a matrix V with m rows and n col umns which applies to the entire country (this is matrix mVn). That country is divided into k districts, each with its own matrix mvn. Thus vijk is the value for P the ith row, in the jth column, and the kth district and vijk ¼ Vij . If the total number of individuals in the country is T, then the number of different combinations of individuals in the ﬁrst cell – v111 – of the data cube is T !=½v111 !ðT

v111 Þ!

For the next cell – v112, say – the number of combinations is fT

v111 g!=½v111 !ðT

v111

v112 Þ!

The procedure continues to identify all the possible ways of allocating T individuals across the ijk cells, until all of the cells are ﬁlled. The total number of possible com binations is W, deﬁned as W ¼ T !=

Y

vijk !

which is the factorial of the total number of individuals divided by the product of the factorials of all of the in dividual vijk values. Stirling’s approximation can be used

to derive this as log W ¼ ðT log T

TÞ

X ðvijk log vijk

vijk Þ

This is an unconstrained solution, however. We need the cell values to sum toP the relevant row and column totals – vijk ¼ vi.k , over all m rows in each vi.k, and v.jk . Thus P district and vijk ¼ v.jk , over all n columns in each district. In addition, the sum for any one cell across all districts must equal the sum in the national matrix (V : the con tents of this national matrix may be derived from a var iety of sources, for instance from a special census tabulation or – commonly – from the results of a national random survey): X

vijk ¼ V ij ; over all k districts

These three constraints are then used to limit the dis tribution of all T individuals across the vijk cells of the data cube, giving a statistic L, deﬁned as X L ¼ ðT log T T Þ ðvijk log vijk X X gik ðV i: þ lij ðV :j vij : Þ þ X þ Fjk ðV ij vijk Þ

vijk Þ vi:k Þ

in which the three parameters l, g, and F constrain the distribution of T to the known totals expð lij Þ ¼ Aij V ij expð gik Þ ¼ Bik V i: expð Fjk Þ ¼ Cjk V :j :

These are scalars for each row in each state (Bik), each column in each state (Cjk), and for each cell in the na tional matrix (Aij) which ensure that the constraints are met. The maximum likelihood value for each allocation of T across the vijk cells is then calculated as vijk ¼ Aij V ij Bik V i: Cjk V :j

Fitting the Model Calculation of these vijk values is achieved using the it erative biproportionate matrix scaling procedure (or ‘Mostellerisation’). The three dimensional data cube is assembled, and initial estimates of the internal cell values – that is of each vijk value – are added: the easiest way of starting this to designate all cell values as 1.0. These are then summed across one of the dimensions in the cube, and those sums are compared with the relevant constraint values (the known values). If the rows of the matrix for each district were chosen, this would give a matrix of row

Entropy-Maximising Models

estimates (ER) ERi:k ¼

X

501

distance. This had the form T ij ¼ f ðX i ; Y j ; d ij Þ vijk

½1

for all j columns in the kth district

These are then compared with the relevant constraint for each row, and a row scalar (SR) produced as a ratio be tween the sum of the estimates and the actual value: SRi:k ¼ V i:k =ERi:k

The cell values are then multiplied by the relevant scalar to give a new estimate of their values eijk ¼ vijk * SRi:k

These are then summed across the other two dimensions of the cube, to produce estimates of the column sums (matrix EC) and the slice sums (matrix ES). These are compared with the relevant constraints, to produce a new set of scalars (SC and SS): SC:jk ¼ V :jk =EC:jk

SSij : ¼ V ij : =ESij :

The process is then repeated by producing a new set of cell value estimates – eijk – using one of these two scalars – either eijk ¼ eijk * SC:jk

or eijk ¼ eijk * SS:jk

The decision on which to use is determined by a goodness of ﬁt statistic, for instance the average difference between the estimated and constraint sum, expressed as a percent age of the constraint sum. The procedure continues until a stopping rule is ap plied – either after a set number of iterations or when each of the two goodness of ﬁt statistics is below a pre deﬁned maximum – an average of 1%, perhaps. (The third will always be zero, since the cell values have been scaled to ﬁt that set of constraints.)

Gravity Models and Transportation Flows The ﬁrst use of entropy maximizing models in geog raphy was by Alan Wilson, in research on transportation planning. Before his work, most researchers had applied the ‘gravity model’ – based on an analogy with Newton’s theory of interaction between two bodies separated by

where Xi is the number of travelers originating in area i; Yj is the number of travelers whose destination was in area j; dij is the distance between areas i and j; and Tij is the total volume of movement originating in i and moving to j. As X and Y are assumed to have a positive impact on the volume of movement and d a negative effect (i.e., distance is a deterrent to moving), this model was usually tested (and applied in planning studies) as a regression equation with the following form: T ij ¼ a½fðb1 X i Þ * ðb2 Y j Þg=fd ij e g

½2

However, Wilson pointed out that this model does not conform to the method of bounds, and can generate ‘nonsense’ estimates/predictions – for example, more people traveling to j than there were destinations there. Thus, gravity models ﬁtted using eqn [2] could be of little use in estimating travel ﬂows in models developed for planning purposes. In their place Wilson proposed a constrained gravity model in which the estimated/predicted total outﬂow from each X equals the total number of travelers known to originate there, and the estimated/predicted total in ﬂow to each Y equals the known destinations there. (In a trafﬁc model, for example, X may be the number of workers living in each zone and Y the number of jobs there.) The macro state was thus a matrix with N rows (the origin areas) and M columns (the destinations), and the constraints were the row and column sums. A large number of meso states would be associated with this, each of which had an associated set of micro states. The EMax procedure identiﬁed the meso state with the largest number of micro states as the most likely pattern of ﬂows, given the two sets of constraints. A third constraint was then added, the distance de terrence factor – the total number of miles traveled, for example – which, in predictive models especially, would result in the least overall effort solution (which would be the same as the maximum likelihood estimate). The model thus allocated movements between home and workplace areas so that no area generated more or less journeys than there were workers living there, no area attracted more or less workers than there were jobs there, and the total number of miles traveled did not exceed the third constraint. It was the ‘least effort solution’ given the constraints. The constrained gravity model was thus an extension of the ‘normal’ speciﬁcation (model [1] above) with the form I ij ¼ f ðX i ; Ai ; Y j ; Bj ; e bdij Þ

½3

502

Entropy-Maximising Models

In which the Ai and Bj are balancing terms to ensure that the twin constraints – the number of workers and jobs – are met, and e bdij is a multiplier which ensures that the total amount of interaction does not exceed the sum of miles traveled in the entire system. This model cannot be rewritten as a regression equation (as in eqn [2] above) but instead has to be ﬁtted by the iterative biproportional method described above (or some equivalent procedure). Wilson’s goal – and that of the large research teams who worked with him at Leeds in the 1970s–1980s – was not to test hypotheses regarding spatial structure and spatial behavior (as was the case in much of the ‘quan titative and theoretical geography’ being undertaken at the time), but rather to build models from available data to indicate not only the most likely patterns given cur rent constraints but also those which would emerge if the constraints were changed, by forecasting future patterns of residential and workplace location, and from these – using EMax methods – to deduce the most likely ﬂow patterns on which planning (of transport routes and service provision, for example) could be based. A detailed example of this approach was provided in a book length study of the West Yorkshire region in the UK. Separate strategies were used to model the region’s future population geography, plus the location of work places, shopping and other services, and of demand for those services. This geography of supply and demand for transportation was then fed into EMax models to derive predicted trip patterns, by type and by mode of transport (‘modal split’). Further work extended these exercises in a variety of ways (by, for example, subdividing households according to their income and other characteristics in order to predict their trip behavior).

Spatial Variations in Voting Behavior The use of EMax to address this issue was ﬁrst promoted some 15 years before King’s work. It has since been used to tackle a substantial number of issues regarding voting patterns in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and Germany, but has not been widely adopted by re searchers other than the original authors. The original problem which led to the development of this EMax application was an observation that the con cept of uniform swing then widely employed in the an alysis of changing voting patterns in the UK was both theoretically and empirically untenable. If party A and B received 54% and 46% of the votes cast nationally at the ﬁrst election in a pair and 52% and 48% at the second, this involved a net swing of 2 percentage points away from A and to B. Empirical analyses showed that a similar swing occurred in most of the country’s Parliamentary constituencies, which led to the inferred conclusion of a uniform political culture throughout the country: people were moving away from A towards B in similar pro portions everywhere. This could not be the case, however. If parties A and B get 72% and 28% of the votes respectively in constitu ency X at the ﬁrst election, then with a uniform swing the allocation at the second will be 70 and 30 – with A losing the support of 2.78% of those who voted for it at the ﬁrst contest. In constituency Y, where A and B got 30% and 70% respectively of the ﬁrst election votes, on the other hand, the result of the swing would be 28 and 72 at the second, with A losing 6.67% of its supporters to B. There was thus a paradox: a uniform absolute change was pro duced by a non uniform relative change. But what was the pattern of shifts between the two elections across the country’s constituencies? The EMax matrix for each constituency can be written as

Geographies of Voting The only other research question for which EMax has been widely deployed by geographers concerns spatial patterns of voting at the individual scale. Whereas elec tion returns provide aggregate data, answering the question ‘how many people voted for what, where?’, they almost invariably fail to answer questions such as ‘what type of people voted for what, where?’. In such cases, researchers have had to rely on methods of ecological inference, estimating answers to the second questions with data that only explicitly answer the ﬁrst. There is a long history of exploratory analyses addressing this issue: King claimed that he had solved the ecological inference problem, but later debate has shown that although his EI procedure has made major advances possible in certain situations (especially for the simplest problems, involving sets of 2 2 matrices), many technical problems remain and alternative procedures continue to be sought.

Election 2 Election 1 A

A u

B u

B P

u k

u k

P k k k

The cells represented by k indicate known quantities (the number of votes for each party at each of the two elec tions), whereas those represented by u indicate un knowns. EMax can be deployed to estimate the u values for each constituency, and thus portray variations across constituencies in what is known as the ﬂow of the vote. P If each u value is expressed as a percentage of the row , then the value of the top left cell shows – for example – the percentage of those who voted for party A at the ﬁrst election and who voted for it again at the second, whereas that in the top right cell shows the percentage who switched from A to B. The national constraint

Entropy-Maximising Models

(represented by Vij in the above algebra) is normally provided by evidence from survey data, which allows the estimation of the total number of voters in each cell of the national transition matrix. Further observations identiﬁed another issue. Analysts assumed that the pattern of voting by class – the dom inant cleavage in UK politics at the time, with middle class voters tending to vote Conservative and working class voters preferring Labour – was the same every where. If the national matrix of voting by occupational class was applied to each of the country’s constituencies (using census data), however, this produced very poor predictions of the election outcome in most. The con clusion was that similar people must vote differently in different places – but how differently? Both issues are variations on the same ecological problem. We have a three dimensional data matrix, in which each slice is an area – in the UK, a Parliamentary constituency. If each (k) of those two dimensional matrices comprises N ¼ 5 rows (e.g., a division of the electorate into ﬁve social classes) and M ¼ 4 columns (i.e., the three parties contesting each election, plus ab stentions), then we know the row sums (the number of people in each social class) and the column sums (the number of votes for each party), but not the matrix’s internal cell values. For the country as a whole we also know, from voter surveys, the estimated contents of that 5 4 matrix summed over all k constituencies. Using the method of bounds – the foundation of King’s EI method also – we know that: 1. In any one constituency, k, the number of people in each social class voting for the four parties must equal the total number of people in that class (the known row total) (throughout, we treat abstention as a party for ease of discussion). 2. In any one constituency, k, the number of votes for each party across the ﬁve social classes must equal the recorded total number of votes cast for it (the known column total), P 3. Across all constituencies, k, the number of people in each social class voting for each party must equal the national number of people in that matrix cell (i.e., the known number of votes cast for each party by each class as divulged by the voter survey). The technical problem was how to use the three sets of known values to estimate the unknown values – the in ternal cells of the matrix for each constituency – so that they were consistent with those known values. Wilson’s EMax approach was adapted and presented in a series of papers. A number of applications to UK electoral analysis followed, looking at spatial variations across constituencies in both the pattern of voting by class and the ﬂow of the vote between elections. The

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conclusion was clear: there are very substantial spatial variations across the UK in patterns of voting by class and in inter election voter transition matrices. One speciﬁc application of EMax in recent years has been in the study of split ticket voting, as in the United States where at any one election voters may have to choose both a President and a Representative and at MMP elections in Germany, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales in which voters cast ballots both for a constituency MP and a party list. Some may vote a straight ticket – that is, for the same party’s candidates for both President and the House, or for both a constituency member and her/his party in the list contest – whereas others may vote a split ticket. EMax has been used to estimate spatial variations in the volume of split ticket voting (as in Germany), and the accuracy of those estimates has been evaluated against New Zealand data, thereby enhancing the method’s credibility.

Conclusions Entropy maximizing has been deployed in the study of two major areas of research in human geography, but although its potential usage across the spatial sciences, where the issue of ecological inference arises, is wide, it has received little attention outside those two appli cations. Apart from an early paper on its value in mi gration studies, for example, it was not deployed for studies using census data until Simpson and Tranmer’s paper on using the iterative proportional ﬁtting pro cedure (the analytic algorithm – Mostellerisation – de ployed to ﬁt EMax, as indicated above) to estimate car ownership levels by housing tenure in small areas using census data. The EMax approach is just one of several promoted to resolve the missing data problem which besets many researchers – others include micro simulation, which is based on the same principles, and linear programming (which produces the same outcomes as EMax in certain circumstances): Wilson has also argued that EMax out comes can be interpreted using the economic concept of consumer’s surplus: maximum likelihood estimates also maximise that surplus – the economic gain accruing to consumers when they engage in trade (or, in this case, interaction). It allows researchers to estimate, with some certainty, aspects of human spatial behavior which would otherwise remain unknown (and recent work has ex tended the method by calculating error terms for the estimates), thereby not only uncovering patterns that would otherwise remain hidden but also to suggest so lutions to problems of spatial allocation and planning. See also: Electoral Geography; Quantitative Methodologies; Transport Geography.

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Further Reading Bacharach, M. (1970). Biproportional Matrices and Input Output Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Berrington, H. (1965). The general election of 1964. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A 128, 17 66. Chilton, R. J. and Poet, R. W. W. (1973). An entropy maximising approach to the recovery of detailed migration patterns from aggregate census data. Environment and Planning A 5, 135 146. Cleave, N., Brown, P. and Payne, C. (1995). Evaluation of methods for statistical inference. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A 158, 55 72. Dempster, A. P., Laird, N. M. and Robinson, D. B. (1977). Maximum likelihood from incomplete data via the EM algorithm. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 39, 1 38. Elff, M., Gschwend, T. and Johnston, R. J. (2008). Ignoramus, ignoramibus: The principle of maximum entropy and uncertainty in ecological inference for RxC tables. Political Analysis 16. Evans, S. P. (1973). A relationship between the gravity model for trip distribution and the transportation problem in linear programming. Transportation Research 7, 39 61. Gould, P. R. (1972). Pedagogic review. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 62, 689 700. Gschwend, T., Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (2003). Split ticket patterns in multi member proportional election systems: Estimates and analyses of their spatial variations at the German federal election, 1998. British Journal of Political Science 33, 109 128. Johnston, R. J. (1983). Spatial continuity and individual variability. Electoral Studies 2, 53 68. Johnston, R. J. (1985). The Geography of English Politics: The 1983 General Election. London: Croom Helm. Johnston, R. J. and Hay, A. M. (1982). On the parameters of uniform swing in single member constituency electoral systems. Environment and Planning A 14, 61 74. Johnston, R. J. and Hay, A. M. (1983). Voter transition probability estimates: an entropy maximizing approach. European Journal of Political Research 11, 93 98.

Johnston, R. J. and Hay, A. M. (1984). The geography of ticket splitting: A preliminary study of the 1976 elections using entropy maximizing methods. The Professional Geographer 36, 291 296. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (1993). Entropy maximizing and the iterative proportional ﬁtting procedure. The Professional Geographer 45, 317 322. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (1999). Constituency campaign intensity and split ticket voting: New Zealand’s ﬁrst election under MMP, 1996. Political Science 51, 164 181. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (2000). Ecological inference and entropy maximizing: An alternative estimation procedure for split ticket voting. Political Analysis 8, 333 345. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (2002). Campaigning and split ticket voting in new electoral systems: The ﬁrst MMP elections in New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. Electoral Studies 21, 583 600. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (2003). Evaluating an entropy maximizing solution to the ecological inference problem: Split ticket voting in New Zealand 1999. Geographical Analysis 35, 1 23. Johnston, R. J., Pattie, C. J. and Allsopp, G. J. (1988). A Nation Dividing? London: Longman. King, G. (1997). A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. King, G., Rosen, O. and Tanner, M. A. (2004). Ecological Inference: New Methodological Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simpson, L. and Tranmer, M. (2005). Combining sample and census data in small area estimates: Iterative proportional ﬁtting with standard software. The Professional Geographer 57, 222 234. Wilson, A. G. (1970). Entropy in Urban and Regional Modelling. London: Pion. Wilson, A. G. (2000). Complex Spatial Systems. Chichester: Wiley. Wilson, A. G. and Bennett, R. J. (1985). Mathematical Methods in Human Geography and Planning. Chichester: Wiley. Wilson, A. G., Rees, P. H. and Leigh, C. M. (1977). Models of Cities and Regions: Theoretical and Empirical Developments. Chichester: Wiley.

Environment S. Eden, University of Hull, Hull, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Commons Originally a piece of land used by local people for access, food, and pasture, especially in the Middle Ages in Europe; more recently, an environmental resource open to use (and abuse) by many different groups, such as the ocean. Cultural Turn A move in human geography toward cultural issues and approaches in the early 1990s. Darwinism Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution, especially that only the ﬁttest survive the struggle for existence and that species (and human races) evolve in response to their environmental conditions. Dualism A problematic way of thinking that divides everything in a set into two opposite and mutually exclusive categories, not allowing for any middle ground, exclusions, or overlaps. Examples are nature–culture, mind–matter, human–nonhuman, and female–male. Ethical Turn A move in human geography toward ethical issues and approaches in the late 1990s. Humanistic An approach in human geography that values the empirical study of human subjective experience, feeling, and thought, usually at the level of the individual. Instrumental Value/Thinking Where the environment is valued or thought about only in terms of its practical use or as a means to an end, rather than the end itself. Intrinsic Value/Thinking Where the environment is valued or thought about in terms of its existence, as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end.

Environment The environment is the context in which things happen: it makes us what we are but we also change it through everything we do. This relationship between us and our environment is essential to life, but it is also a challenging and complex thing to manage. Moreover, how we think about the environment is often dependent on the times we live in. We can understand this better if we consider how people in different places and times made sense of their environments and of environmental change. Assumptions and preconceptions about environmental inﬂuence and change are central to human geography, but are often buried deep within our collective psyche. Instead, we need to bring them into the light to recognize how they

shape our thinking about environmental issues. Human geography research suggests that we can group these diverse ways of thinking about the environment into three: the environment as a powerful resource outside society; the environment as fragile and damaged by so ciety; and the environment as part of society. This article examines each of these in turn to show how they arose historically, and then considers some themes that cut across these and are particularly important in recent times. The Environment as a Powerful Force and Resource Outside Society The ﬁrst way of thinking about the environment is as an external force or object. We might call this a ‘modern’ way of thinking about the environment, because, unlike previous ‘premodern’ thinking associated with un developed cultures, it sees the environment as outside society, as the external, inanimate context within which society must work, rather than as intimately intertwined with human life. This arose during what is variously referred to as the Scientiﬁc Revolution, the Age of En lightenment, and the Age of Reason in medieval Europe. This started well away from the environment with as tronomy, when Copernicus, Galileo, and others argued that the Sun, not the Earth, was at the center of the universe, challenging the long held dogma that the Earth was the center, and thus main purpose, of creation. However, such early science was also a search for laws to explain how the environment worked, and gradually led to the environmental sciences with which we are familiar today. The scientiﬁc method is also associated with object ivity and neutrality in understanding the environment. In the seventeenth century, Rene´ Descartes theorized that ‘mind’ and ‘matter’ were different, because ‘matter’ was subject to primary observation, being measurable, em pirical, objective, or otherwise corporeal, and ‘mind’ was only subject to secondary observation through logic or theory, not being measurable but theoretical or subjective (hence his famous aphorism: I think, therefore I am). This division of mind from matter – now referred to as ‘Cartesian dualism’, after Descartes – still underlies the division often assumed today between the natural or physical sciences, which are seen as providing ‘hard’ data and objectively true results, and the social sciences, which are seen as wooly, uncertain, and prone to sub jective bias or distortion. Both of these assumptions are problematic, but they also underlie the division between

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physical and human geography, in that the former is dominated by natural science and the latter by social science. More generally, accepting this division allowed people to classify the environment as merely ‘matter’, thus stripping animals, ecosystems, and indigenous people (who were often regarded as being nearer to nature than civilization, with typical European arrogance) of both feelings and rights. As merely ‘matter’, the environment became a lifeless thing, a machine, or, more in line with the thinking of the day, like clockwork, all cogs and wheels but no feelings or soul, a mechanical system that we can tinker with, model, adjust, and improve. This is sometimes referred to as a mechanistic view of the en vironment and is important because it supported later arguments about environmental exploitation, as ex plained below. Environmental determinism

The role of the environment as an external force was also important in human geography. In the late nineteenth century, geographers were still trying to establish their subject in universities and borrowed from the more established sciences to give it more credibility and in ﬂuence. Ideas from Darwinism were used to explain the puzzle of why human cultures differ so much, by arguing that they were produced by environmental conditions. This had long been a theme in natural history: for ex ample, the ancient Greeks thought that people who lived in cold environments, especially in the near Arctic, were ﬁerce and cruel because they had to struggle to survive there, whereas people who lived in very hot environ ments were lazy because food was easy to come by in the lush tropics. But, like Goldilocks, they thought that people who lived in temperate environments, like themselves, were just right in terms of their morals, politics, and cultures. Such arguments are now termed ‘environmental de terminism’ and underpinned much later European atti tudes toward how ‘warmer climes’ made people lazy and willful, such as eighteenth century views of Africans which were used to justify the slave trade and nine teenth century views of India held by British occupiers. In the nineteenth century, such notions were seen as scientiﬁc explanations for human differentiation and were widely studied, through analysis of facial charac teristics of different races, for example. Today, we can see the racism and ethnocentrism in such notions, but they also suggest how the environment was seen as a crucial force in either supporting or constraining human devel opment took a long time to ebb away. Even in the early twentieth century, geographers were debating how far environmental conditions explained social differen tiation, although they had moved away from the crudest forms of environmental determinism in favor of more

complex models of how the environment and human society inﬂuenced each – an idea that. Environmental resources for exploration and imperialism

So, science underpinned the ﬁrst main way of thinking about the environment that was introduced in the be ginning of this article, particularly how the environment inﬂuenced human development. This way of thinking also saw the environment as a set of material resources for exploitation for the beneﬁt (and proﬁt) of growing societies, from timber, furs, meat, and land for growing good crops, to metal ores, coal, oil, and gas for fuelling industry and development. Human societies have fought wars to control environmental resources and built em pires upon them, again illustrating how the environment can be seen as a source of power. Because of this im portance, human geography has frequently studied the natural resources provided by the environment and also how best to manage and conserve them. This way of thinking about the environment was supported by two other factors in the early modern period. First, human populations exploded in Europe, multiplying three or four times over between 1500 and 1850. Europeans began to emigrate across the world, especially to colonies in the New World, trading and empire building on the way. Often, this was prompted by the search for one’s fortune or even ‘paradise on earth’ (in a religious evocation of the return to the biblical Garden of Eden for Christians). Such ideas were used not only deliberately in advertisements for sailors and colonizers, but also more implicitly in how people imagined other places to be – their imagined geographies often saw the environment as an inexhaustible resource which people had a (literally) God given right to exploit. This can be seen at its most extreme, perhaps, in the European col onization of North America, where European immigrants thought that the environmental resources they saw all around them were too plentiful ever to be exhausted. Consequently, the environment was widely and rapidly plundered, forests were cut down for agriculture, for settlement, and sometimes just for the fear that they would harbor wild animals or bandits or Indians bent on attack. Sometimes it was just for the fun of sport, such as massacring a ﬂock of passenger pigeons, so that the bodies piled up in great mounds. The result of such thinking, in the case of the passenger pigeon, was that there were maybe eight billion passenger pigeons in the seventeenth century, ﬂying ‘so thick that I could see no sun’, according to one person at the time, but none by 1914. This idea of having no limits to environmental exploitation proved long lived and it was not until the late twentieth century that it was seriously challenged. Second, capitalism and industrialization expanded as part of empire building, and tapped into increasingly

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powerful techniques to exploit environmental resources, from smelting technologies to calculating longitude ac curately for navigation, to plantation agriculture, railways, and surveying. Together with the movement of people, these knowledges and technologies fundamentally chan ged the environment in many countries across the world. This colonial period also saw the entrenchment of private property rights over what had often been, before then, collective environmental resources or ‘commons’ that could be used by anyone for collecting ﬁrewood, hunting game, or just passing through. Such privatization of the environment supported cap italist development and also reinforced the separation of nature from growing (and urbanizing) human societies. Instead of living on the land and close to the animals and plants (e.g., often sharing buildings with livestock), people were increasingly urbanized and separated from the en vironment through new technologies and land use prac tices. By making the environment separate from and subordinate to society, and regarding it as a machine or inorganic system subject to human exploitation, some have argued that the environment ceased to be a living, sym bolic entity in people’s minds: a forest stopped being full of meaning and life, animals and plants, food and game, and contemplation and fear, as in premodern cultures, and instead became (merely) a quantiﬁed amount of timber for logging, selling, shipping, and processing. This represents ‘instrumental’ thinking about the en vironment, where an environmental resource is valued because humans can make use of it directly, especially for proﬁt, such as land, whale oil, buffalo skins, or timber. Environmental economists call this ‘user’ or instrumental value and it supports a way of thinking about the en vironment as an object, a resource for exploitation. This is not necessarily only exploitation for individual gain – it can also be ‘utilitarian’ in arguing that the environment should be used for the greater public good, often in sup porting a growing national economy, for instance. Overall, therefore, this ﬁrst way of thinking about the environment is often practical and functional. Moreover, we can still hear it used today, to justify environmental exploitation. The Environment as Fragile and in Need of Protection The second way of thinking about the environment comes much later and was a reaction against the ﬁrst. With the rising power of human technology and the dominant Enlightenment ideal of progress, more and more commentators questioned the environment’s power to shape human destiny. They also questioned whether the resources provided by the environment were truly inexhaustible and began to wonder if such resources, especially fossil fuels but even basic resources like food and water, might eventually run out. Such questions

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fostered ideas of environmental degradation and damage and also the need to manage the environment better, leading to the development of the modern environmental movement. The Romantic view of nature and the antiurban backlash

But the origins of this way of thinking lie a bit further back, in a backlash against urbanization, industrialization, imperialist science, and environmental exploitation from the late eighteenth century. The ‘Romantic’ movement rejected urban life because of its immorality, industry, pollution, and loss of civilized values and instead sought solace in the environment, valuing an esthetic response to nature. In England, the Romantics were epitomized by William Wordsworth, and in the USA, by Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. They revered mountains, rivers, waterfalls, and moorland; praised natural forms through the arts of poetry and painting, representing the en vironment as powerful, forceful, and everlasting; and encouraged human humility toward nature, rather than the control and exploitation of the resource perspective. This way of thinking can be seen as a fanciful ideal ization of the environment, imagining the countryside to be a pastoral ‘idyll’ of wholesomeness and beauty, sani tized and puriﬁed of all the city’s social problems and activities. But it was inﬂuential in challenging the in strumental view of the environment because it represents a way of thinking about the environment based on ‘in trinsic’ value, rather than instrumental value. Also called ‘existence’ value by environmental economists, this is where an environmental resource is valued merely be cause it exists, even if it is not used as a resource nor is ever likely to be. Whales, buffalo herds, Californian redwoods, and a clear view of the stars above our heads can therefore be valued not because they can be turned to a proﬁt, but because they have a right to exist in dependent of human needs and because the world would be a less meaningful place without them. Environmental damage and the beginnings of environmental concern

As well as valuing the environment differently, this sec ond way of thinking also takes a different perspective on human power, seeing it as capable of inﬂicting environ mental damage. This was a challenge to the dominant ideas of environmental abundance and inexhaustibility in the nineteenth century (as outlined earlier), and turned the tables of the ﬁrst way of thinking by seeing the en vironment as fragile and humans as powerful, capable of damaging the environment and thereby also threatening their own destruction. Although we tend to think of concern about en vironmental degradation as modern, ancient Greek wri ters considered problems of soil erosion and laws against

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air pollution, especially smoke, were enacted in London, England, in the thirteenth century. Again, it was in the nineteenth century that concerns about the impact of increasing urbanization and industrialization on the en vironment and people’s health solidiﬁed into campaigns for public sanitation, personal hygiene, nutrition, exer cise, and access to open space. As outlined above, the Romantic antiurban backlash was part of this process of revising society’s views about the value of the environ ment, leading to early environmental groups like the 1865 Commons, Open Spaces and Footpaths Preser vation Society being developed to preserve open land for workers in cities and to correct the lack of ‘wholesome’ countryside. In 1895, the National Trust was set up in England to buy land and thus protect it from industrial development and, in early twentieth century in Africa, the protection of big game species for hunting prompted colonial administrations to designate land for protection. These movements, therefore, identiﬁed human activity as a powerful and frequently damaging inﬂuence on the environment, rather than solely the reverse. A touchstone for geographers is Man and Nature, by George Perkins Marsh, published in 1864 in the USA, sometimes cited as the ﬁrst ‘modern’ expression of such environmental concern. Marsh’s book was before its time in challenging the common assumptions that environ mental resources were inexhaustible and that the en vironment was resilient to human impact. But although Marsh’s book helped to inspire US forest protection in the late nineteenth century, it fell into neglect until re discovered in the 1930s, when another US environmental problem – soil erosion from agriculture – gained public and political attention. Environmental strategies of conservation, and amenity use

preservation,

The early environmental movement was therefore prompted by fears of losing resources, species and sport, and consequently sought to hold back the tide of human development. Attempts to do this fell into three main categories: preservation, conservation and amenity use. Preservation sought to protect land and wildlife from human exploitation by designating an area with en vironmental value (often because it was seen as ‘natural’) as a national park or nature reserve, thus emphasizing intrinsic value over instrumental value. The ﬁrst National Park was ofﬁcially designated in 1872 in Yellowstone, USA, to protect (1) geological interest, (2) esthetic interest (scenery that people liked), and (3) a preserve for wild animals, and in 1890 Yosemite National Park was the ﬁrst park explicitly designated to preserve its wilderness. A second way to protect the environment was con servation. This grew out of a move toward sustainable yields and the professionalization of forestry (under the

inﬂuence of Gifford Pinchot in the USA in particular) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Con servation was not merely about preserving environments, but about using them productively and efﬁciently, while also having an eye on their future sustainability and re plenishment. Hence, conservationists not only saw the environment as producing resources (instrumental value), but also acknowledged that these resources were not inexhaustible but had to be carefully managed to ensure they were replenished. Thus, conservation is a forerunner of many forms of state led environmental management today and also a forerunner (at least par tially) of concepts such as sustainable development. A third way to protect the environment was to use it for public amenity or leisure purposes. The late nine teenth century saw a craze for mountain climbing in the Alps and the Rockies, and Victorian philanthropists in vested in urban parks to provide environments as a public good for their workers, but it was the inter war period that saw a big increase in interest in outdoor exercise, such as walking and cycling, across all income groups, especially in Europe. The Ramblers Association was set up in the UK in 1926 and mass trespasses by walkers in the Peak District in 1932 protested against the lack of access to private land. Here, we see two environmental ideas come into conﬂict: the environment as a private property resource for the owner to manage and exploit for proﬁt and the environment as a public property re source for the nation to enjoy for the good of their mental and physical health. Both are forms of instrumental value, but they beneﬁt quite different social groups. This interest led to a drive for public access to land and for national parks in the UK, linked after World War II to the nationalization agenda to make the UK ‘a land ﬁt for heroes’ who had fought in the war. This resulted in the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act that set up national parks in the UK for both protecting the environment as a national asset and supporting public access. But this tension between protection and use has remained problematic ever since, because it fails to re solve the inherent conﬂicts between environmental pre servation, conservation, and use for amenity. The rise of modern environmentalism in science and culture

In the 1960s, we ﬁnally see the origins of what we probably think of today as ‘modern’ thinking about the environment – as fragile and in need of protection from (and by) humans. This was partly nurtured by science, especially ecology. Haeckel used the term ‘oecologie’ in 1866 to represent the Earth as a household (‘oeconomie’) of interrelated organisms that interact with their en vironment, but he did little more to establish the content of the science that he named. It was not until later that the term ‘ecology’ came to mean the interrelationship

Environment

between plants, animals, and the inorganic environment Early on, it was associated with the notion of the ‘climax community’ as the stable state into which systems of plants and animals mature over time, unless arrested on the way by natural disaster or by human intervention, and later with the notion of the ‘ecosystem’ that we are familiar with today. By the 1950s, this ‘new ecology’ had become the orthodoxy in scientiﬁc thought and uni versities ran courses in environmental management that tended to take a mechanistic view of the environment as an ecosystemic machine that needed to be properly managed. Ecology also lent scientiﬁc authority to notions of environmental damage and threat, by measuring the ef fects of human activity on ecological quality and species loss. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, about the effects of pesticide residues on bird populations, was a bestseller and is often credited with spurring the debate about the environmental effects of pollution, buttressed by subsequent and well publicized accidents with oil tankers, nuclear power plants, and industrial waste dumps. In contrast to earlier periods, when the en vironment was seen as powerful and its resources in exhaustible, the twentieth century increasingly delivered evidence of the environment as fragile, as the victim of (human) violence, and threats to its functioning, which is a very important change. Nearly a century after Marsh’s Man and Nature, a leading cultural geographer, Carl Sauer, led a symposium that was published in 1956 as Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, which was perhaps the ﬁrst step in modern geography in this way of thinking. By the 1970s, two key concepts rose to importance: in environmental terms population and environmental limits. In 1798 in England, Thomas Malthus had pub lished his Essay on Population, arguing that there was a ‘natural law’ wherein the human population tended to reproduce faster than its food supply, so that population growth would only be slowed or reversed by outside forces, such as bad weather causing crop failure or out breaks of disease or war. Although Malthus was much disputed, his ideas reemerged in the 1960s on a global stage in relation to population growth in developing countries. Such ‘neo Malthusian’ ideas are shown in Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb, published in 1968, which sought to raise the alarm about rising population levels, and Garrett Hardin’s essays, The Tragedy of the Commons and Living in a Lifeboat, published in 1968 and 1974 respectively, which criticized the overexploitation of environmental resources because they were limited by nature. The most famous example of this way of thinking was The Limits to Growth model and book, commissioned by a group of business leaders, The Club of Rome, in 1972. The ‘limits to growth’ was a computer model of all the major global trends – human population, food supply,

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and industrial pollution – projected to 2100. Although it was crude and we could spend plenty of time critiquing its assumptions and data, the point is that it generated debate instead of complacency about the future. The time was also appropriate: the global oil price crisis highlighted the ﬁnite nature and precarious supplies of essential environmental resources. But there were challenges to such thinking, which was derided as ‘doom mongering’. Marxist critics in human geography and other disciplines argued that there were no ‘natural’ limits to human growth, because growth depends upon human ingenuity (to create technology) and human justice (to distribute resources fairly). If anything, limits would be relative to human development. These two ways of thinking directly clashed in 1980, when Paul Ehrlich made a bet with the economist Julian Simon (who disputed the idea of limits) about what would happen to the prices of ﬁve key metals over the next 10 years. Ehrlich lost and had to pay Simon US$576 in 1990. Simon’s ideas ﬁt what geographers have called ‘technocentrism’ (or ‘cornucopianism’). This arises from classical science and modernism and argues that eco nomic growth (usually measured in gross domestic product/gross national product (GDP/GNP)) is the in dicator of a healthy society and that science and tech nology ‘create’ resources by ﬁnding ways to turn a shiny bit of rock into something that can be used and sold. Such thinking rejects the idea of ﬁxed (natural) limits to en vironmental resources and argues that technology and science will ﬁgure out answers to our environmental and social problems. Hence, this is sometimes criticised as a superﬁcial or ‘technological ﬁx’ to our problems, where we develop a new gadget or upgrade our old one in order to redress environmental damage, rather than change more fundamental aspects of how we eat, live, work, and travel. Modern environmentalism as politics and culture

But not only science nurtured modern environmental thinking. The environmental movement also arose within a wider movement in the 1960s in science and the arts to express feelings that were antiestablishment, anti indus trial, and antimaterialist – often called, collectively, the ‘counterculture’. Grassroots political movements sprang up on many fronts: peace, antinuclear, civil rights and Black power, students, women, and the environment. Like the Romantics in the previous century, this was another backlash against social trends, in this case against tech nology and sociopolitical oppression, rather than against urbanization and its ills. Moreover, modern thinking had not wholly sup planted premodern thinking about the environment. In deed, researchers have been increasingly interested in how cultures other than the industrialized West see the environment, especially where they see the environment

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not as a separate realm from society, but as part of their everyday life through both practice and meaning. These ways of thinking about the environment are often asso ciated with religion and spirituality. In Native American culture, symbolic rituals are part of practical actions, such as hunting animals by showing them respect, ‘courting’ them with dances and songs before the hunt commences, and in some African cultures, there is a strong individual identiﬁcation with animals. Geog raphers ﬁnd it particularly interesting when such cultures emphasize the importance of place, as a very particular and well known environment. Aboriginal Australians think that where people are born (as well as to whom) is very signiﬁcant to their status and future prospects – ‘the country’ therefore gives both life and meaning and also is a physical and spiritual product of the lives of their an cestors. In many premodern cultures, spirits or gods lived throughout the environment, in animals, waterfalls, caves, and so on, and deities also took animal form. Such no tions are also important in non Western traditions today, such as in Egyptian and Indian religions, causing scholars to study different religious traditions to understand and compare their environmental ethics. Indeed, some have argued that the Judeao Christian theology, so dominant in the industrialized West, has had damaging con sequences for the way that Western cultures (and those in areas colonized by the west) think about and treat the environment and that other religions may offer better approaches. The environmental movement therefore has a diverse philosophical base drawing from ecology and other sci ences, but also from ethics, religion and culture. One key environmental philosophy is ‘deep ecology’, sometimes also referred to as ‘ecocentrism’ in contrast to techno centrism (see above). Deep ecology emerged from the countercultural reaction against increasingly polluting industries and from a turn in the West in the 1970s toward eastern religions and philosophies such as Taoism, Buddhism, yoga, and meditation, as well as new scientiﬁc ideas like chaos, complexity, and relativity. Deep ecology’s two key principles are self realization and biocentric equality, based on the intrinsic value of all life. So, it is not just about managing the environment better, but about managing oneself better and self improvement through reexamining one’s relationship with the en vironment. Other important examples of environmental philosophy are ecofeminism, bioregionalism, and social ecology. But again, environmental philosophies are not just about analysis, they also inspire practical action. In digenous ways of thinking about the environment in non Western cultures are often held up as practical examples of better environmental management, because they draw on both indigenous knowledge and a closer connection between people and their environment, whether this is

spiritual or philosophical in character. Sometimes this risks idolizing premodern cultures as environmentally perfect, when they may simply have been less damaging because their technology was less extensive or their numbers were far fewer than today. However, analyzing alternative ways of thinking about the environment can also be very useful in challenging the dominant way of thinking, empowering indigenous people and arguing for change. Good examples from India are the Chipko women’s movement and the arguments of Vandana Shiva for more culturally informed environmental management and, from North America, Native American tribal groups that have campaigned for better management of sacred sites. In the 1970s, Schumacher’s notions of Buddhist Economics also inspired the ‘appropriate technology’ movement, a movement that had a lasting impact on the politics of international development. Overall, this second way of thinking about the en vironment was generally and self consciously more pol itical than the ﬁrst, which focused more on practical beneﬁts. However, both inﬂuence practice, because how we think about environmental degradation and its causes can strongly affect how we create and implement possible solutions. The Environment as Part of Society So far, we have looked at the two main ways of thinking about the environment today and they often clash over the best environmental policies and forms of manage ment. For example, the dispute over logging in the Paciﬁc Northwest of the USA in the 1980s and 1990s was often polarized as jobs versus owls – in other words, the in strumental use of the forest for economic development versus the preservation of the forest for the intrinsic value of the species within it, especially spotted owls. But there is another way of thinking about the en vironment that has developed recently as a reaction against the other two, mainly within academia. This third way rejects the separation and (often negative) opposition between the environment and society implied by the ﬁrst two ways of thinking. It both refuses to ignore the en vironment’s inﬂuence on human development and also rejects the human arrogance implied by assuming that humans are all powerful. Instead, it emphasizes how the environment and society are intertwined, rather than separated or in opposition, using both policy concepts like sustainability and urban wildlife and theoretical concepts like hybrid natures. It is also more philosophical in character, compared to what we might think of as the more practical and political characters of the ﬁrst two, respectively. There is much more written on this topic in other articles, but it is worth noting here that I have arranged these three ways of thinking chronologically, to

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emphasize that the ﬁrst underlies the development of modern society, the second was a consequence of that development, and the third responds to the gaps in both. But this oversimpliﬁes, because one did not easily replace another as time passed; rather, they come frequently into conﬂict with each other, even today, over how best to understand and manage the environment in different times and places. This is a very important point to re member whenever we engage in environmental debates.

Other Themes in Environmental Thinking Having outlined the history and development of three ways of thinking about the environment, the rest of this article will consider some crosscutting themes in human geography more recently. The last 20 years saw the most activity in environmental research in the social sciences generally, as a consequence of environmental thinking rising up the political agenda and becoming an important social phenomenon in itself. The Contemporary Environmental Movement However, the product of this rising attention was not a single, clear block of environmental thinking, but rather a wide and loosely deﬁned set of groups and ideas about environmental policy and practice. A lot of work on environmentalism has been done outside geography, es pecially in political science (studying the groups) and in philosophy (studying their ideas). In geography, en vironmental groups are sometimes studied to see how much inﬂuence they have had on a particular environ mental policy. Such research usually studies what we can loosely call ‘reformist’ or ‘light green’ groups, which tend to be centrally organized and controlled and good at lobbying politicians and developing policy proposals for environmental reform (hence the name) – WWF is a good example. By contrast, more ‘radical’ or ‘dark green’ groups tend to be less centrally organized, less hier archical, and more interested in grassroots protesting, adopting artistic, confrontational, or even illegal forms of protest as well as nonviolent direct action through oc cupying threatened sites – Earth First! is a good example. These groups have been studied for what they tell us about environmental lifestyles or subcultures, rather than what they tell us about policy and politics. Of course, this dichotomy of ‘reformist’ and ‘radical’ oversimpliﬁes a complex political arena. Many environ mental groups do not ﬁt solely into one side or the other, because they have multiple strategies of lobbying and inﬂuence. For example, Friends of the Earth in some re spects is reformist, through lobbying parliament and working with business, whereas in other ways it is more radical through its structure of locally autonomous groups. But conceptually, this dichotomy helps human

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geographers and others to distinguish between environ mental thinking that seeks mainly to change politics and policies and environmental thinking that seeks to change cultural norms, such as about recycling and car use, and promote alternative lifestyles. We could see the latter as ‘cultural politics’ or a ‘politics of resistance’ to dominant systems, because it seeks political change through cultural activities, rather than through lobbying politicians. For example, the antiroad protests in the 1990s in England established camps on sites threatened by road building and these drew in a diverse range of protestors and de veloped alternative, non consumerist lifestyles (living in homemade shelters) and expressive, political art. This diversity of ideas and personalities within the environmental movement often results in conﬂicts over the best environmental pathway. For example, those more inclined toward reformism might favor improving the energy efﬁciency of car engines to mitigate against cli mate change, but more radical campaigners might want to ban certain forms of cars or their use in certain places and times. A reformist may see a radical as too extreme, revolutionary, and unrealistic, trying to change the world from a tipi, whereas a radical might see a reformist as only interested in small, incremental changes, in wishy washy, sticking plaster solutions that do not address the root causes of environmental problems, in ‘end of pipe’ cleanup of a problem, rather than its prevention. A good example recently is how the environmental movement has split in the UK over wind farms, some environmental groups seeing these as necessary forms of renewable energy and others seeing them as damaging wildlife (especially migratory birds) and scenic value. Environmental Policy and Decision Making Another major area for analysis by human geographers has been environmental policy on everything from re cycling to managing wild species in the environment. Although diverse, there are two foci worth highlighting brieﬂy. First is the dominance, over the last 15 years or so, of the concept of sustainable development (or sustain ability), especially in Europe. This was originally pro moted by the UN sponsored Brundtland Commission, especially through their report, Our Common Future, published in 1987. Sustainable development brings together economic development and environmental protection and thus attempts to resolve some of the tensions between the ﬁrst two ways of thinking at the beginning of this article especially through ideas of ecological modernization and environmental regulation. This is clearly a great challenge and has generated a lot of research into what sustainable development means, how it might be operationalized and how it can best be communicated. Research at different levels, from the

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global to the local and from the highly abstract to the eminently practical, suggests that the tensions between the economy and the environment cannot easily be re solved within existing systems of decision making and economics. Second, human geographers have been increasingly interested in how the public can be involved in en vironmental policy. This reﬂects the ‘participation’ agenda that developed in the 1990s, as part of Agenda 21, a blueprint for worldwide sustainable development agreed at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and in the UK in the Local Agenda 21 strategies developed by local author ities. Emphasizing participation is part of what people have called a move from environmental government, where managing the environment is largely done by the state in a top down approach, to ‘environmental gov ernance’, where managing the environment involves a wide range of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), uses nontraditional channels and policy instruments, such as public–private partnerships and emphasizes the need to involve ‘ordinary’ people in formulating and imple menting environmental policy. The argument is that, for environmental policy to be truly democratic, it should not be dictated top down by government to the public but should reﬂect the concerns of everybody in a bottom up or grassroots process. Moreover, if environmental policy is to work in practice, everybody must be able to adopt it or ﬁt into their daily lives. But involving the public is easier said than done. Environmental policy has a tradition of being quite technocratic and exclusionary, with decisions being made by closed circles of scientists and advisers. Some policies were traditionally made on a corporatist or bipartite basis, decided between government and business, so that environmental groups and the public were usually ex cluded. Changing this has been difﬁcult and requires us to improve processes of consultation over environmental decision making, particularly to encourage more inter active dialog between decision makers (including en vironmental scientists and others seen as ‘experts’) and the public. Attempts to achieve this have included ‘planning for real’ exercises, deliberative mapping, citizen juries, and the countrywide GM Nation? process in the UK in 2002–03. Environmental Awareness and Concern among the Public A central theme for many geographers researching en vironmental issues is how the public see the environment and how environmental concern is produced and pat terned. This is because the public are not merely passive recipients of environmental facts, but actively respond to and create their own environmental meanings from a diversity of sources, including not only the mass media

but also their own ﬁrsthand experiences of their en vironments and the ideas of their friends and families. There are also tensions between environmental awareness (factual knowledge about environmental change) and environmental meanings (how people feel about the environment) and between both these things and environmental behavior (what people actually do to put their knowledge and feelings into action – or not). Public opinion polls have consistently reported that concern about environmental change has been (rela tively) high since the 1990s. Yet, people’s behavior rarely matches their concerns, in terms of recycling, reducing emissions, voting for ‘green’ parties, or other pro environmental behaviors. This is referred to as attitude– behavior dissonance in psychology – we say or believe one thing but do another – and it remains a trying problem for researchers to explain. Politicians and campaigning groups often try to pro vide information about environmental change in the hope that this will cause people to change their behavior. For example, adverts encourage us to switch lights off, to car pool, and to turn the temperature down on our washing machines, to help reduce climate change. In sociology, this is referred to as the ‘deﬁcit model’ in the public understanding of science, because it assumes that people behave badly because they lack information and if that lack (or deﬁcit) is remedied through new and better in formation, people will change their behavior. But soci ologists and human geographers have shown that things are never so simple and that information does not ne cessarily change behavior, because many other factors – perceived moral norms, convenience, and personal agency – are involved. Cigarette smoking is one simple example. An expanding ﬁeld of research is therefore into green and sustainable consumption. Unlike research into en vironmental policy and regulation, this focuses not on national or local government activity, nor on groups within the environmental movement, but on individual choices and lifestyles and their aggregated effects on natural systems, agricultural production, and environ mental damage. Key issues here are how aware people, particularly householders, are about environmental change and their role in exacerbating or curbing it. Our purchases of everything from energy efﬁcient boilers to fast food can be indicative of how we think about en vironmental issues (or not) in our daily lives. Studies suggest that people have complex and multilayered no tions of environmental change and value. Simple cor relations between higher levels of environmental concern and age, gender, educational level, location, lifecycle, income, and occupation have been suggested, especially that women, younger people, those with more education, and those in more socially supportive occupations (teaching, healthcare, and local government) tend to be

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more sympathetic to environmental messages. However, the results of empirical studies remain inconclusive or contradictory. Corporate Environmentalism and Environmental Commodiﬁcation Business is another key actor in environmental thinking and management, traditionally associated with the ﬁrst way of thinking about the environment in seeing the environment as raw material for exploitation and proﬁt. But in the last couple of decades, many companies have expressed concern for environmental protection, in line with the second way of thinking, under pressure from the public, government, and the environmental movement. Some would argue that this move has been superﬁcial rather than substantial, a case of ‘greenwashing’ for public relations, rather than important operational change. We can trace this move back to the 1970s and the ‘limits to growth’ argument (above) about rising pollution because of economic growth, which cast business as the villain of environmental damage. This caused a backlash from business groups and other commentators against such ‘doom mongering’, but increasing environmental regulation in the 1970s and 1980s and environmental campaigning that targeted big business, such as early campaigns against nonreturnable Schweppes bottles by Friends of the Earth, added pressure to respond. But it was only in the 1980s that business really grasped the green nettle, because of more global attention and sci ence about environmental problems like ozone depletion, climate change, and deforestation. Moreover, this period saw business increasingly repositioned as part of the so lution, rather than solely part of the problem. For ex ample, the UN sponsored Brundtland Commission (see above) on sustainable development said that industrial growth was needed, but that it should change its form to be less resource intensive and more environmentally and socially beneﬁcial. There was then a general change, with big corpor ations in particular seeking green credentials and a role as the environmental solution or savior in the manner advocated by the Brundtland Commission, rather than the villain. In particular, companies set out to implement ‘good housekeeping’, which meant improving their own processes to reduce pollution (and save money), and also corporate social responsibility (CSR), which meant paying attention to their environmental and social im pacts as well as developing ethical policies and philan thropic activities. For some industries this was seen as a way to reestablish their social legitimacy and ‘license to operate’ by overturning a history of bad press about in cidents like benzene in Perrier water, Nike using sweat shops, Shell’s disposal of the Brent Spar platform, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

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These attempts have been widely criticized by human geographers and others, as ‘greenwash’, public relations exercises and simplistic technological ﬁxes rather than true changes in the relationship between business and the environment. Marxist geographers have used political economy approaches to analyze corporate environ mentalism and its commodiﬁcation of nature, seeing the ‘greening of business’ as a response to a crisis within capitalism, rather than a response to environmental damage. This argues that business has not moved away from the ﬁrst way of thinking introduced at the beginning of this article: that environmental resources exist to be exploited, particularly in order to accumulate wealth through notions of neoliberalism, free trade, and market led development. Further, recent interest as part of the ‘ethical turn’ in cultural and economic geography has considered fair trade, ethical standards, alternative food networks, and environmental certiﬁcation processes as examples of changing business practices. Although still often critical of market solutions and of big corporations, such analyses are attempting to see how far environ mental governance can involve business people, as well as householders and NGOs, in pursuit of more sustainable technologies and practices. Analyzing Environmental Thinking through Social Construction Underlying a lot of what has been written in this article is an argument about how we frame environmental issues. Before any policy or action can be taken about an en vironmental issue, before anyone can get concerned or campaign about it, we must ﬁrst identify it and give it a name. Climate change is a good example: if the US Government under George W. Bush argues that there is no conclusive evidence that climate change is a problem, then there is no pressure on them to take action to solve it. Analyzing such processes of identiﬁcation can use the theory of the social construction of reality, which posits that how we think about the environment is not a simple reﬂection of that environment but a social construct. We may know about the environment through ﬁrsthand in formation (observing the weather, walking through the local park, or visiting the seaside) and secondhand in formation (watching television or chatting to other peo ple) and we often change our minds from time to time. But we change our minds about the environment not primarily because the environment changes, but because we do. Hence, there is no single environmental ‘truth’ to discover, because our environmental issues depend on how we investigate and consider the environment. The idea of social construction has been around for 30 years now and seeks to understand how society makes sense of the world, particularly through endowing it with meaning and changing that meaning as society changes. It

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is sometimes misinterpreted to mean that there is no reality, no external environment, except in our collective imagination, but the social construction of environmental issues does not mean that such issues are imaginary. It does mean that we can only think about them in certain ways, often ways that we learn through our interactions with particular social groups in speciﬁc times and places. Hence, two people may think of the same hot day dif ferently – one as normal summer weather and one as evidence for global warming – and this matters because of what it tells us about social understandings and also because it may affect what different people do in re sponse, whether they put on more sunscreen or think about how they can reduce their carbon dioxide output. So, the social construction of the environment is about social meaning but it is also about the consequences for human action, and in that sense social construction can have a very real impact. Social construction is a theory applicable to a range of social issues, not just the environment, but the environ ment is a particularly interesting construct because it is often framed at a distance or a scale beyond people’s everyday lives, especially for global environmental issues like climate change, ozone depletion, and deforestation. In consequence, it is frequently framed through science, which may make it more difﬁcult for people to connect these global ideas with their own, often more local, ex periences. Human geographers have particularly ana lyzed such links across scales, not least to problematize the rather easy slogan of the environmental movement in the 1990s: think globally, act locally. Applying social construction to environmental issues also makes us think about how these issues are framed for us by various ‘claims makers’, such as environmental groups, scientists, big corporations, and journalists, who identify and deﬁne an environmental issue and bring it to our attention through the media. All these actors may ‘encode’ the environment in particular ways to suit their medium and their own agenda about what they want their audience to think. Hence the coverage of climate change will vary greatly between the BBC News at Ten O’Clock, Al Gore’s ﬁlm An Inconvenient Truth, and the pages of New Scientist. Often, a distinctive name or metaphor is coined, like ‘the greenhouse effect’ or ‘Frankenstein foods’, to convey very complex environ mental ideas through a simple and often highly emotional shorthand. But claim makers cannot control their audience’s re action. Some people will ‘decode’ the environmental meanings presented to them quite differently from how the producers intended. Geography matters: familiarity with and proximity to the environments being described may inﬂuence how people respond. People living around big factories and nuclear power plants understand the environmental impacts and risks of those sites in different

ways, inﬂuenced negatively by ‘folk memories’ of smells, accidents, and company publicity and positively by the employment provided, so their views may differ sub stantially from those of someone living far away. And research shows that, whatever the message about en vironmental change, we tend to distrust the messenger more if they come from industry or government than if they are seen as ‘independent’ scientists or pressure groups. Moreover, how we construct the environment can change rapidly, with some environmental issues going through a ‘life cycle’: they rise from relative obscurity to reach a high public proﬁle and enthusiasm for action, but then decline from prominence to a backseat in people’s minds. So, how environmental meanings are both pro duced and consumed is critical, because many layers of encoding and decoding accumulate over time. More recently, some researchers have criticized social construction for failing to appreciate environmental agency and seeing society as exclusively framed by human actors. In trying to move away from the perils of environmental determinism, some have argued that geographers and other social scientists have gone too far the other way, into social construction and the perils of social determinism by denying any power to environ mental processes. So, there has recently been a strong push to put ‘nature’ back in and not consider merely ‘social’ construction. In human geography, such thinking has been driven by ideas of cyborgs, actor networks, and hybrid natures from analyses in the sociology of science. Such ideas share a desire to collapse or blur dualisms like nature–culture and human–nonhuman in order to posit a world of networks and hybridity whereby entities of heterogeneous types come together to form and reform environmental systems. Rather than dividing up the world between nature and culture, between the rural and the urban, and between the wild and the tame, these ideas consider such divisions as delusions of modernity and seek instead a more inclusive ecological politics, whereby all actors – human, animal, plant, machine, and en vironment – are intimately interrelated and through those interrelationships continually reconstitute the world. This reﬂects the third way of thinking that was outlined above: one which does not seek to choose be tween environmental power and human power, but sees power as a product of that interrelationship. Scale: Global and Local Environments A key theme in all human geography is how things change across space and how places are differentiated. Environmental thinking reﬂects this well because many environmental issues are constructed as global issues, requiring global solutions and global collaboration. In the Space Age of the 1960s, photographs of the Earth taken from space became hugely popular, selling as posters for

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student rooms and being used as symbols by groups like Friends of the Earth, projecting the idea of a fragile planet ﬂoating in space, a Spaceship Earth operating within strict environmental limits (like Hardin’s lifeboat mentioned above). Ecology also scaled up to consider ecosystem ideas on a planetary scale and used the metaphor of Spaceship Earth to consider how best to manage and recycle the planet’s ﬁnite resources. There is a very speciﬁc example of such planetary thinking. The Gaia hypothesis was developed by James Lovelock in the 1970s, out of his contributions to the US Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s studies of the atmospheric composition of other planets in our solar system. His work made him think about why the Earth’s composition was so different, with far less carbon dioxide and so much more oxygen and nitrogen that are beneﬁcial to life. He came to argue that the Earth self regulates through its ecosystems, whereby all organisms contribute to the at mospheric balance and maintain things at a level that supports life. Although this started out as a scientiﬁc hypothesis, it has become much more than that – it has become a metaphor for planetary symbiosis and inter dependence, and Lovelock has also gone on to become an important commentator on environmental change more generally. Moreover, this global scale of environmental thinking is reﬂected in policy. Even early in the conservation movement, environmental groups sought international collaboration. The 1900 Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa (to prevent export to Europe) and the 1902 convention to protect birds useful to forestry and agriculture were signed by 12 nations and, although not strong on implementation, were the ﬁrst on paper to adopt an approach now very familiar to us. Today, many international environmental policies are led by the United Nations, such as the famous Earth Summits at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and at Johannesburg in 2002. Most high proﬁle environmental issues are global, as are their policies, like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that was set up to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. At the other end of the scale, human geographers have been busy trying to understand how people think about local environments. Driven by the humanistic approach and ‘cultural turn’, human geographers have explored the local and familiar, especially within environmental con ﬂicts, to illustrate how the environment is differently imagined and valued and to relate this to gender, edu cational background, and personality. We can see that in this sense there is not one ‘environment’ but multiple environments. At the same time, the recent ‘ethical turn’ has re asserted the importance of linking ideas and action and in pursuing environmental justice. Morally, the connection that each individual has with the (especially local)

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environment is argued to be useful for imbuing en vironmental citizenship and encouraging sustainable lifestyles. Environmental awareness and education are seen as valuable not only in democratically involving publics in environmental decision making, but also in implementing environmental policies through citizen action. In this way, the environment is internalized in the individual, even as global constructions of environmental change dominate the media headlines. Related to the arguments above about public partici pation, researchers have also increasingly sought to value lay knowledge about the environment, knowledge that is held by people not commonly regarded as ‘experts’ but who may be intimately involved in environmental change and at risk from its impacts. It is therefore important to analyze how the knowledge of people like farmers, users of a local park, and amateur naturalists can be legitimated and brought into environmental policymaking more ef fectively. This has been particularly important in devel opment studies, where lay knowledges about the environment in the Global South are seen as devalued by colonialist perspectives, but having great potential for scientiﬁc learning and even for future exploitation of species for agriculture and medicine. Creating Environments, Restoration, and Terraforming Most of this aricle so far is about environmental damage and the loss of environmental resources. So let us end with the opposite: the creation of environmental re sources. In order to redress environmental degradation, some are seeking to create lost environments and restore damaged ones. This is an exciting but controversial practice, for many reasons. Often referred to as ‘ecological restoration’, the pro cess of creating particular habitats and ecosystems, in whole or in part, has been increasingly researched by natural scientists, including physical geographers, since the 1940s, beginning with restoring prairies in North America. Such activities are sometimes seen as having great potential for ecological learning, through using the environment as a natural laboratory for testing theories about species recolonization and prey–predator rela tionships, reﬂecting the ﬁrst way of environmental thinking introduced in this article. But they are also often used to reﬂect the second way of thinking in seeking to protect valued habitats by recreating them in one place after they have been lost in another, because of human impacts like road construction or sea level rise. They can also reﬂect the third way of thinking by claiming en vironmental restoration as a holistic activity, involving science, morals, culture, and lay people. Examples of environmental restoration are recreating wetlands, remeandering rivers, and replanting forests.

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Reintroducing species is also a highly controversial ex ample. In the early twentieth century, the USA sought to eradicate the wolf in order to protect livestock for agri culture and deer populations for sport. The authorities classiﬁed wolves as ‘vermin’ and put a bounty on each wolf ’s head delivered to them, with the result that the wolf was soon largely eradicated as a species within the coterminous USA. After the policy ceased in 1936, sup port grew for the intrinsic rights of such animals to exist and fulﬁll their natural role as predators in controlling herbivore numbers. This prompted a movement to re store wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, where they are now an attraction for wolf watchers and scientists. They are also a target for critics: several were shot after being reintroduced, probably by local people who saw them as a threat to livestock and game species. Part of the controversy is what such restorations mean. Can they truly correct past environmental damage or are we simply deluding ourselves about the possibility of erasing our mistakes? Environmental philosophers have spent decades analyzing the (im)possibility of restoration and the morality of artiﬁcial environments, comparing restored environments to paintings faked in the style of a famous artist and passed off as the genuine article. More prosaically, geographers have considered the impact on policy of restoration, especially where it has been used to legitimate environmental damage caused by a new de velopment such as a motorway or quarry. Proponents have argued that the habitats and species damaged would be moved or recreated elsewhere as compensation for the damage, and that thus there would be no net loss and possibly even some planning gain through the new de velopment. Using ideas of restoration in this way is not merely about the philosophical possibility of faking the environment, but about how we think about the en vironment and make policy to manage it. In the most extreme form, restoration has been referred to as ‘terra forming’, echoing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in which a new planetary environment was recreated through a nuclear style bomb called ‘genesis’. Such ideas are thus an extreme expression of human power over the en vironment and its resources.

Conclusion A lot of material and a lot of time have been covered in this article, from early ways of thinking about the en vironment as a powerful force and a resource for human development, through fears of environmental damage to human powers of creating new environments. Human

geographers have therefore found many aspects of the environment to analyze over the decades and this will only continue, as environmental science and policy change and as we as a society continually reshape and reﬂect upon our ways of thinking about the environment. See also: Climate Change; Conservation and Ecology; Culture/Natures; Ecology; Environment, Historical Geography of; Environmental Justice; Environmental Policy; Environmentalism; National Parks; Nature, Social; Nature-Culture; Radical Environmentalism; Rio Summit; Social Studies of Scientiﬁc Knowledge; Sustainability; Sustainable Development; Wetlands and Reclamation; Wilderness.

Further Reading Adams, W. M. (2003). Future Nature. London: Earthscan. Benton, L. M. and Short, J. R. (1999). Environmental Discourse and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell. Burgess, J. (1990). The production and consumption of environmental meanings in the mass media: A research agenda for the 1990s. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 15, 139 161. Callicott, J. B. and Ames, R. T. (eds.) (1989). Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cosgrove, D. (1994). Contested global visions: One world, whole earth and the Apollo space photographs. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84(2), 270 294. Dobson, A. (1990). Green Political Thought. London: Unwin Hyman. Evans, D. (1997). A History of Nature Conservation in Britain (2nd edn.). London: Routledge. Macnaghten, P. and Urry, J. (1998). Contested Natures. London: Sage. McCormick, J. (1989). The Global Environmental Movement. Chichester: Wiley. O’Riordan, T. (1981). Environmentalism (2nd edn.). London: Pion. Palmer, J. (ed.) (2001). Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment. London: Routledge. Pepper, D. (1996). Modern Environmentalism. London: Routledge. Shiva, V. (1989). Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. London: Zed Books. Shiva, V. (1997). Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Boston: South End Press. Worster, D. (1989). Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.sd commission.org.uk/ UK’s Sustainable Development Commission. http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/ UN Division for Sustainable Development. http://unfccc.int/kyoto protocol/items/2830.php UN’s Kyoto Protocol website. http://www.nps.gov/ US National Parks Service. http://www.wwf.org.uk/core/index.asp WWF global network.

Environment, Historical Geography of S. W. Trimble, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA M. P. Conzen, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA E. K. Z. Zygmunt, University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Environmental History It is the study of environment over time, usually with more emphasis on political and economic aspects rather than landscape. Historical Geography of the Environment It is the study of past landscapes with the purpose of identifying and understanding environmental changes and problems, especially those caused by human agency. Human Impacts They are the changes in the environment caused by humans. Intended Impacts They are those so designed, such as building a water reservoir by damming a stream. Unintended Impacts They are those not expected along with human changes to landscapes. An example might be water loss from evaporation in the case of the reservoir.

Historical geography of the environment is the study of past landscapes with the purpose of identifying and understanding environmental changes and problems, es pecially those induced by human actions. In short, this approach shows how and why humans have transformed the natural landscape and what the consequences have been (see, for example, Figure 1). It is a tradition going back to ancient times and one that was warmly embraced and developed by nineteenth century geographers, such as the German natural scientist Alexander von Hum boldt, the English geologist Charles Lyell, the French geographer E´lise´e Re´clus, and the American natural scientist George Perkins Marsh. Such work has clearly demonstrated that severe environmental disruption was created at times by some of the earliest societies and has continued through the ages. Present environmental problems may be different but, relatively speaking, not necessarily worse than those created by humans in the past. The destruction of cropland or forest, for example, may have had similarly severe impacts on populations centuries ago as global warming is said to have on populations today. During the early modern period of geography (c. 1900–70), historical geography of the environment was a mainstay. Perhaps the most powerful voice was that of Carl Sauer who wrote widely and deeply on the subject. Sauer had a profound understanding of the physical as well as the cultural landscape and was especially con cerned about the long term effects of soil erosion among

other environmental problems. Another geographer prominent in the ﬁeld was H. C. Darby who, with his students, explained many present day physical features of the British landscape as having been created during historical time by human modiﬁcation. Yet another prominent geographer was Clarence Glacken whose philosophical Traces on the Rhodian Shore (1967) remains a classic statement of changing cultural perceptions of the Earth environment and people’s resulting choices about land use. A benchmark of sorts was achieved in 1956 with the publication of Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Edited by W. L. Thomas, it featured often inspired essays by prominent geographers like Carl Sauer and Arthur Strahler as well as many other natural scientists and has served as an inspiration for work since then. Among the human geographers who have carried on this tradition are Michael Williams, Hugh Prince, Robin Butlin, David Lowenthal, William Denevan, Leslie Hewes, and John Hudson. But starting in the 1960s, human geographers started showing less interest in this line of inquiry and more physically oriented geographers picked up the theme. Especially important were works of Karl Butzer (Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt), Claudio Vita Finzi (The Mediterranean Valleys), and I. G. Simmons (Changing the Face of the Earth: Culture, Environment, and History). The neglect of environment by social science trained historical geographers was inﬂuenced by pressures for methodological specialization within the discipline. These pressures relaxed the expectation that geographers would continue to be similarly well grounded in both physical and human geography. This estrangement par alleled a growing interest among human geographers in social theory, and the narrowed belief that, in terms of human activity, the social sciences had more to teach them than the physical sciences, and that the physical side of geography could be regarded as some kind of black box that could be left unexamined by them. This neglect is reﬂected in the magisterial four volume series by D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America, which, while being the most ambitious and accomplished single syn thetic work ever written by a historical geographer, nevertheless pays little direct attention to the speciﬁcally physical aspects of landscape. This same trend can be seen in the content of geography journals during the last decades of the twentieth century. Further evidence is

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Oak - Hickory forest with scattared pine Canebrake

Stream terrace (2nd bottom)

Soil

A. At the time of European settlement 3rd order stream valley

Dark alluvial and colluvial soils

5th order stream valley

Gullies Tress killed by rising water level Levees and valley fill of modern sediment

Saprolite

Backswamps Severaly eroded uplands

B. After the clearing and erosive cultivation of uplands 3rd order stream valley Partial to complete channel filling little overbank deposition. Regrowth of forests, predominantly pine

Saprolite Incipient backswamp

5th order stream valley

Drained backswamp Stream incised in modern sediment

Intensive conversion practices: Broad-based terraces, pasture in bermuda grass.

C. After the checking of erosion and the consequent incisement of the headwater system

Lake 3rd order stream valley Accumulation of presently migrating sediment channel Size of still aggrating. backswamp increasing

VA

5th order stream valley

nt NC mo SC

ied

Saprolite

P

AL

GA

Trees in bottomlands not shown for clarity.

Figure 1 Generalized evolution of the Southern Piedmont landscape 1700 1970 showing the changes of land use, landscape, and stream morphology. From Trimble, S. W. (1974, 2008). Man-Induced Soil Erosion on the Southern Piedmont, 1700 1970. Ankeny, IA: Soil Conservation Society of America.

supplied by the massive German compendium, Geography, Physical Geography, and Human Geography just published. From hundreds of pages of text, historical geography merits only 13 pages and environment receives a mere passing notice. Nevertheless, there are human geographers still pur suing the genre, and indeed there has been something of a renaissance in recent times. In addition to those already

mentioned, these include, in the United States, for ex ample, Lary Dilsaver’s writing on national parks, Craig Colten’s work on toxic wastes and New Orleans, Brad Baltensperger’s studies of the US Great Plains, and John Hudson’s work on settlement and environmental trans formation in the American Middle West. More generally indicative of this renewed interest, Alan Baker gives the genre a solid chapter on environment in his recent and

Environment, Historical Geography of

deﬁnitive international survey, Geography and History: Bridging the Divide. The vacuum created by the divergence of and non communication between human and physical geog raphers did not escape notice in other quarters, and historians have rushed into the void. Sometimes rela tively untutored in the physical aspects of landscape, they have nonetheless plunged into environmental work. Historians, of course, are primarily interested in the way people have perceived and made decisions about the physical environment around them and how this has af fected social relations, and not surprisingly the emphasis is more on the changing state of people’s awareness of environment than on the changing state of the environ ment itself, particularly in its spatial interconnectedness. Some of this historical work has an overtly political tone and embraces advocacy, and sometimes falls short of the expected environmental understanding. Nevertheless, this potent movement contains many gifted practitioners, among whom the most notable are William Cronon, Carolyn Merchant, and John Stilgoe. Accompanying and facilitating the growth of environmental history has been the rapidly growing professional group, the American Society for Environmental History. Its journal, Environ mental History, now in volume 13, succeeds Environmental History Review which began in 1976. Recent decades have seen the genre of historical en vironmental geography become to a large extent the domain of physical geographers and other natural sci entists, primarily in journal articles. Here, more emphasis is placed on the physical aspects, but the historical landscape dimension remains strong. Important con tributors have been Andrew Goudie, Heather Viles, H. Lamb, Andrew Warren, J. Grove, Angela Gurnell, Tim Burt, Ron Cooke, Janet Hooke, James Knox, and W. L. Graf. Graf ’s work has been especially inﬂuential because he has written several books and served on committees of the National Research Council of the US National Academy of Sciences. The genre, therefore, has continued to evolve. Andrews’s Goudie’s historically sensitive The Human Impact on the Natural Environment was ﬁrst published in 1981. Now in its sixth edition, it has been read by thousands of college students, faculty, and interested lay people. In 1990, a new compendium, The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years, was proffered with much fanfare as a successor to the 1956 classic, Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, but has not achieved the same visibility. The last decade saw the emergence of the impressive work, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: North America from 1500 to the Present, by Gordon Whitney. While the title and subtitle are overblown, as it does not cover all of North America nor even the United States, it does set a very high standard in its coverage of the

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northeastern region. It serves as an outstanding model for future work on the remainder of the continent, and, in deed, for other parts of the world. The increasing volume and methodological diversity of recent writing in the historical geography of the en vironment reveals a broad grouping along three lines, distinguishable more by precept than topical focus. In the ﬁrst instance, there are physical studies of environmental change in which humans have played a signiﬁcant role, including, especially, studies of changing ecosystems. For the most part, these contributions adhere to the direct, positivist assumptions of the exact sciences and have come to a large degree from geomorphologists and bio geographers. A striking exception, however, is Michael Williams’ ambitious synthesis, Deforesting the Earth: from Prehistory to Global Crisis. This group has enlarged dra matically in the decade or so surrounding the turn of the millennium and now represents perhaps the strongest sector of the subﬁeld. A second grouping concerns studies that examine the role of values, attitudes, and other perceptual inﬂuences on human behavior toward the physical environment. Some of the work explores unﬁltered human engagement with environmental circumstances, while other studies focus more on public discourses in relation to selected perceptions of the environment, the full range of which is well illustrated in Murphy and Johnson’s collection of critical essays, Cultural Encounters with the Environment. Overwhelmingly, both types deal with rural and so called wild contexts, but there is a growing interest in the limits of human technological subjugation of nature in urban settings, for which Blake Gumprecht’s ﬁne study of the Los Angeles River is representative. An insightful ex ample of the assertion of aggressive values more esthetic than utilitarian is Stephen Daniel’s engaging study of Humphry Repton and the landscape architecure of Georgian England. Lastly, a third grouping concerns the periodization and shifting directions of environmental politics, both as a reﬂection of social conﬂict over resource use and its environmental costs and as an arena for policy develop ment. Beloved of historians, this dimension has received growing attention from historical geographers, often with a more explicit grasp of the science behind environ mental understanding. Physical geographers contributing to this thread have often used their models of ecosys temic change to prognosticate future problems and needs, as has, for example, Andrew Marcus in the case of Chesapeake Bay on the American Atlantic seaboard. Social science historical geographers have examined political events and movements of the past to highlight critical mistakes and missed opportunities in managing the environment. Representative of this type of study are Colten’s recent examination of New Orleans, Wescoat’s study of water management in the Indus Valley, and, on a

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grander scale, Marcus Hall’s intercontinental treatment of environmental restoration. The importance of studying the earth environment from the perspective of historical geography has been validated by the quality and interdisciplinary acceptance reﬂected in the modern literature discussed. Most sig niﬁcant has been the trend to reunite the aims and methods of physical and human geography toward better explanation of the complex interactions of environmental and social systems, in which scholars working in the historical geography of the environment have played a beneﬁcial part. See also: Environment; Historical Geography; Nature; Nature, Historical Geographies of.

Further Reading Baker, A. R. H. (2003). Geography and History: Bridging the Divide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butlin, R. and Roberts, N. (1995). Ecological Relations in Historical Times: Human Impact and Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell. Butzer, K. W. (1972). Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Colten, C. E. (2005). An Unnatural Metropolis: Wrestling New Orleans from Nature. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. Colten, C. E. and Skinner, P. N. (1996). The Road to Love Canal: Managing Industrial Waste before EPA. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Cooke, R. U. and Reeves, R. W. (1976). Arroyos and Environmental Change in the American Southwest. Oxford: Clarendon. Cronon, W. (1983). Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang. Daniels, S. (1999). Humphry Repton: Landscape Gardening and the Geography of Georgian England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Dilsaver, L. M. and Colten, C. E. (1992). The American Environment: Interpretations of Past Geographies. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littleﬁeld Publishers. Dix, A. and Schenk, W. (2006). Historische Geographie. In Gebhardt, H., Glaser, R., Radthke, U. & Reuber, P. (eds.) Geographie, physische Geographie und Humangeographie, pp 817 829. Munich: Elsevier.

Glacken, C. (1967). Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought from Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Goudie, A. (2005). The Human Impact on the Natural Environment: Past, Present and Future, (6th edn.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Graf, W. L. (1994). Plutonium and the Rio Grande. New York: Oxford University Press. Gumprecht, B. (1999). The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hall, M. (2005). Earth Repair: A Transatlantic History of Environmental Restoration. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Lowenthal, D. (2000). George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Marcus, W. A. (1994). The Lower Potomac Estuary from tidewater to the Chesapeake Bay: Past trends and future needs. Potomac Valley Chronicle 1, 36 47. Meinig, D. W. (1980 2004). The Shaping of America, vols. 1 4. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Murphy, A. B. and Johnson, D. L. (eds.) (2000). Cultural Encounters with the Environment. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld. Prince, H. (1997). Wetlands of the American Midwest: A Historical Geography of Changing Attitudes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sauer, C. O. (1941). Foreword to historical geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 31, 1 24. Simmons, I. G. (1996). Changing the Face of The Earth: Culture, Environment and History (2nd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell. Stilgoe, J. R. (1982). Common Landscapes of America 1580 1845. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Thomas, W. L. (ed.) (1956). Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Trimble, S. W. (1974, 2008). Man Induced Soil Erosion on the Southern Piedmont, 1700 1970. Ankeny, IA: Soil and Water Conservation Society of America. Turner, B. L. (1990). The Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the Past 300 Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vita Finzi, C. (1969). The Mediterranean Valleys. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wescoat, J. Jr., Halvorson, S. and Mustafa, D. (2000). Water management in the Indus Basin of Pakistan: A half century perspective. International Journal of Water Resources Development 16(3), 391 406. Whitney, G. C. (1996). From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: North America from 1500 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Williams, M. (1989). Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography. New York: Cambridge University Press. Williams, M. (2003). Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Environmental Hazards G. A. Tobin, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA B. E. Montz, Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Disasters The result of (usually) extreme geophysical events interacting with the human-use system such that there is a negative impact on society – the actual event itself. Environmental Hazards The potential interaction between forces of the physical environment and the human-use system such that there is a negative impact on society – the potential for disaster. Vulnerability A human-induced condition governed by situational factors that limit social, economic, and political power such that individuals or communities are less able to cope with disaster.

The global toll from natural hazards in 2005 amounted to approximately 250 000 deaths, affected at least 150 mil lion people, and caused an estimated US$150 billion in damages. This was not an unusual year. Annual records show an increase in the incidence of disastrous events and signiﬁcant increases in economic losses to these events. These data reﬂect an underlying global hazardousness that presents many ongoing challenges. Addressing these challenges requires a multidisciplinary approach, one that encompasses all components of environmental haz ards, from an understanding of geophysical processes, such as the ﬂood, earthquake, volcanic eruption, or storm, to an examination of those human forces that make up society, the complex web of culture, economics, and politics, and technological resources and development. The ultimate goal of these studies has been to understand fully those processes that create, foster, and exacerbate environmental hazards with a view to informing effective mitigation planning. Geography, then, is well situated to take a leading role in such investigations.

Hazard Deﬁnition The literature on environmental hazards is confusing in part because of differential use of the terminology re ferring to hazards and disasters. In this context, en vironmental hazard refers to the interaction between the human use system and extreme geophysical events; in other words, hazard represents the likelihood of a dis astrous event occurring. By this deﬁnition, a hazard constitutes the threat to society; it is the potential for disaster to occur. Once the extreme geo physical event transpires, then this may (or may not) constitute a di

saster (Figure 1). The disaster designation only applies when there is a ‘signiﬁcant’ negative impact to society. However, even this terminology is vague since the scale of any impact is indeterminate, there being no generally accepted threshold in terms of deaths, damages, or peo ple affected, when this level has been reached. Does a disaster constitute 25, 50, or 100 dead, does it mean over $1 million in losses, or is it actually something more amorphous? From an environmental hazard perspective, humans must be involved in some way; a volcanic eruption in the Aleutian Islands or a major earthquake in Siberia where few people live would not normally be classiﬁed as a disaster under such a deﬁnition. Furthermore, the en vironmental and human use spheres do not merely overlap, but are integrated phenomena that together create the hazardous conditions and precipitate or ameliorate disaster impacts. An illustration of such haz ardousness is found in communities situated along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and in the Caribbean Islands. These communities are prone to hurricanes. When a hurricane makes landfall in this area, a disaster is almost certain to occur given the number of people exposed. For example, New Orleans, Louisiana is perhaps the epitome of such a setting, with much of the city located below sea level, thus requiring protection in the form of levees and ﬂood walls; Hurricane Katrina in 2005 demonstrated clearly how such hazardousness of place can evolve into disaster. More than 1000 people died and many thou sands were made homeless because of failure to

Sphere of physical environment

Sphere of human environment

Potential Actual

Potential Actual

Figure 1 The environmental hazard framework. The shaded area represents the hazard where forces of the physical environment conﬂict with the interests of the human-use system. When an extreme geophysical event actually occurs causing negative impacts to the human-use system then this may constitute a disaster. In reality, of course, both spheres are fully interlocked, interacting in all human endeavors.

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comprehend fully the interaction of physical processes and human forces.

Temporal and Spatial Trends Over the last 100 years there has been an increase in the prevalence of disasters and a corresponding increase in economic losses. These temporal patterns can be ex plained in part through better global monitoring and reporting of the occurrence of extreme events. However, the trend is also a product of the deﬁnition of disaster. Since disaster is often deﬁned by the number of people killed or affected, or by a simple measure of economic loss, global processes have led to increases in disaster incidence. The growth in global population alone means that more people are exposed and hence live in hazard ous locations. Furthermore, with more people at risk, so is more property at risk, thus increasing economic loss potential. Deaths from environmental disasters are difﬁcult to determine accurately although there is evidence that deaths have declined over time, at least in wealthier nations. Global spatial patterns of disasters show that most disaster related deaths occur in poorer nations, whereas 75% of economic loss accrues in the wealthy nations. This is hardly surprising. Wealthy nations have more resources than poorer nations with which to miti gate disaster impacts and protect their populations, but at the same time more property and goods are exposed to potential loss. However, simple statistics do not tell the whole story. Losses must be examined proportional to overall resources. For instance, to a Bangladeshi farmer, the loss of an animal in a typhoon, while probably not worth much in the global context, could be devastating if it means that farmer can no longer provide for his or her family. In contrast, the destruction of a car by a tornado to a wealthy European or American may constitute little more than a minor irritant. Such arguments can be ex tended to a global scale looking at the relative impacts among nations; it is important to stress that a million dollar loss is not the same throughout the world.

Modeling Environmental Hazards Much hazards research has sought to provide a model or framework through which disaster processes might be examined. Indeed, understanding the web of geophysical and human factors that together exacerbate or attenuate disaster has been an ongoing challenge requiring an interdisciplinary approach. The framework, shown in Figure 2, outlines those themes that are of concern. It is the combination of physical characteristics and political factors that serves to deﬁne risk. It is from the physical characteristics that we can determine probability of

occurrence while the political and economic factors determine severity of harm or outcome. Social charac teristics also come into play, but only as they are related to the other factors. By contrast, vulnerability is determined by all the elements in various combinations. However, it is through this lens of vulnerability, as shown in Figure 2, that environmental hazards can be viewed most product ively. Although the ﬁgure may suggest that all elements are of equal concern in all situations, this is not the case; indeed, not all variables may be relevant in any given situation, and some are certainly more signiﬁcant than others. The conditions are dynamic. For instance, political and economic factors, over which an individual has little control, dominate in some hazardous situations or in post event activities and priorities; in other instances, it is the relationship between the physical environment and social characteristics that deﬁnes what happens, either pre or post event. In addition, the context in which an event occurs makes a difference for all dimensions, as illustrated by the examples in the previous section.

Vulnerability As suggested above, a key concept in understanding en vironmental hazards is vulnerability and its role in ex acerbating or ameliorating the effects of extreme events. It is the interaction of physical and human environments that determines exposure and risk, but it is the combi nation of risk and vulnerability that reﬂects the degree to which societies and individuals are threatened by, or al ternatively protected from, the potentially disastrous impacts of these events. Vulnerability has been described as a human induced situation that results from the availability and distribution of resources throughout a society. This vulnerability may come from simple ex posure to the geophysical event or, more likely, is linked to prevailing social, economic, and political forces. It is abundantly clear that hazards do not affect everyone equally; some people and places are considerably more vulnerable than others. For instance, research has re peatedly demonstrated that some groups invariably suffer most in disasters, with higher levels of vulnerability correlated with higher levels of poverty, with the polit ically disenfranchised, and with those excluded from the mainstream of society for whatever reasons. The out comes of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 2004 Asian tsunami, and the 1995 Kobe earthquake would have been very different if signiﬁcant mitigation measures had been implemented or those in place had been effective, if so cial structures of communities had been different, or if individuals had access to additional resources. In this context, therefore, vulnerability is seen as a human condition, not simply as exposure to extreme geophysical processes. Yet, the event is a precipitating factor.

Environmental Hazards

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Hazard Dimensions

Physical forces Magnitude Intensity Frequency Duration Spatial extent Seasonality Speed of onset

Structural factors Individual Proximity to hazard Type of structure Empowerment Range of choice Health Social networks Freedoms/culture

Societal Land-use patterns Wealth distribution Resource management Development level Political structure Leadership support Freedoms/culture

Social traits Gender Age/education Ethnicity Family structure Length of residence Occupation/tenure Psychological outlook

Risk

Vulnerability

Contextual filters

Response Mitigation strategies Loss reduction strategies

Perceived/ actual Control Manage Cannot control/manage

Individual/group/ government Control Manage Cannot control/manage

Figure 2 Natural hazards and human response in context. Reprinted with permission from Tobin, G. A. and Montz, B. E. (1997). Natural Hazards: Explanation and Integration. New York: Guilford Press.

Physical Dimensions Hazards research has gleaned much from examining the physical forces that trigger disaster impacts and, in so doing, has leaned heavily on the natural sciences (Table 1). There are many common features shared by natural hazards, even those as apparently divergent as ﬂoods and droughts or tornadoes and earthquakes. For example, it is possible to classify natural hazards acc ording to different geophysical measures, each of which can have a direct impact on human behavior. These inc lude estimates of probabilities of occurrence for hurric anes and ﬂoods, calculations of differential magnitudes of geophysical forces for such events as earthquakes and volcanoes, assessments of intensity of damage from tor nadoes, and estimates of potential durations of droughts and ﬂash ﬂoods. The greater the magnitude and/or duration of an event, the greater the impacts are likely to be. In some cases, such as drought, action can be taken even while the event is ongoing, while the same cannot be said for quick onset events like earthquakes. For some events, speed of onset makes it possible for warnings with sufﬁcient lead

Table 1

Disasters classiﬁed by geophysical events

Meteorological Tropical storms/ cyclones Thunderstorms Lightning Windstorms Ice storms Cold waves Avalanches Hydrological Flooding Wildﬁre

Hurricanes Tornadoes Hailstorms Frost Blizzards Heat waves Fog Drought

Geological Earthquakes Volcanoes Lahars Tsunami Subsidence Sinkholes Extraterrestrial Meteorites

Liquefaction Lava ﬂows Ash falls Landslides Mudﬂows

times to allow for evacuation. In other events, such as earthquakes, warning is impossible, and in others, such as tornadoes and ﬂash ﬂoods, it may not be possible to provide location speciﬁc warnings or sufﬁcient time for evacuation. On the other hand, intensity is related to local context. The same magnitude earthquake will cause different levels of damage depending upon geological characteristics, building construction type, and organi zational response capabilities. Although it is not possible to develop a scientiﬁcally predictive model of human behavior and response based

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solely on physical or environmental criteria because of the many other variables that inﬂuence decision making, the signiﬁcance of physical criteria should not be over looked. Generally, appropriate responses are contingent upon a full appreciation of physical processes. For ex ample, hazard warning systems may be ineffective if the speed of onset is more rapid than anticipated, though in other circumstances they have saved many lives and much property. For example, hurricane warnings throughout the Caribbean have substantially reduced deaths in recent years. Further, the greater the frequency and the more intense the hazard experience, the louder the calls for action; it is these calls that often capture the attention of the political machinery and ultimately stimulate remedial action. Having said this, many miti gation measures for hazards have been implemented based solely on physical criteria. Building codes are often associated with projected earthquake or tornado magni tudes, and sea walls are designed to protect against given heights of tidal surges. Certainly, design standards must take into account the physical forces associated with natural hazards at a place, but determining the appro priate design level for safety is part of the human realm, and managers ultimately must make decisions about the value of life and property.

Human Dimensions: From Society to the Individual Whether during pre or post disaster periods or as long term responses, hazard zone activities are constrained by the social, economic, and political realities of a location. Perhaps the most basic example is the money needed to provide relief and undertake mitigation, which may not be available or forthcoming in poorer communities. Yet, it is not just the absolute availability of money for de velopment, planning, or hazard mitigation that is a problem; more often, it is the unequal distribution of resources that affects vulnerability. Research indicates that inadequate attention is often given to environmental hazards where the expense to protect against disaster cannot be justiﬁed, or where the risk of an area is not recognized or acknowledged. In deed, the hazard represents only one of a series of interlocking issues facing society; all demands must be assessed according to need. Overpopulation, land use patterns, availability of materials and technology, and the need for industrial development are all issues that are important and that require planning and the commitment of ﬁnancial, human, and natural resources. Embedded at a deeper level, these social, economic, and political factors interact to determine how society functions and even tually deﬁne levels of vulnerability and marginalization for various groups. These factors create constraints that

affect every level of society and they become clearer after an event has occurred and the distribution of impacts can be analyzed. Sometimes termed socioeconomic traps, these con straints perpetuate risk and foster vulnerability. It has been shown that not all individuals are equally vulner able; the risk to all inhabitants of hazard prone areas is high (as indicated by the frequency of disasters), but some groups and individuals are more vulnerable than others. At the global scale, ﬂoods, droughts, earthquakes, and other hazards recur with great frequency, bringing repeated incidents of death and destruction. Take, for instance, health impacts of environmental hazards where the same geophysical event can generate multiple out comes. Volcanic ash can be particularly debilitating for the very young whose lungs may not be fully developed and for the elderly whose lungs are under stress, while other adults may suffer fewer problems. Hence, different characteristics, including demographic and socioeconomic, lead to differential vulnerabilities. The same is true of other situations related to the human condition and physical well being. The logical solution would seem to be to ‘get out of harm’s way,’ but unfortunately, this option is not open to all individuals and, indeed, often is inappropriate from a societal perspective. For instance, rural land tenure issues and the decreasing ability of the rural poor to provide for themselves and their families, combined with increased investment in urban areas as well as increased oppor tunities for employment, can lead to the development of urban squatter settlements which are frequently located in the most hazardous sites. These changes, often generated through globalization forces external to the community concerned, exacerbate vulnerability. Therefore, the locus of social, economic, and political power is such that many individuals and communities cannot effect change to better their own situations or to promote structural change. This has important ramiﬁcations for environ mental hazards where the traditional response to disasters has been to return communities, along with prevailing socioeconomic structures, to those conditions existing prior to the event, thus continuing a cycle of disaster– damage–repair–disaster and doing little or nothing to reduce vulnerability. While exposure to some events may be reduced by mitigation measures, differences in vul nerability remain and the same individuals suffer the consequences. Blaming such individuals for their pre dicament is not constructive. Instead, we should examine the underlying reasons, and the structural constraints of people inhabiting such hazard prone areas to understand fully why they continue to inhabit high risk areas. Arguments that people should not continue to live in hazardous areas are moot when they have little or no choice. Instead, planning for hazards and even disaster relief programs must include sufﬁcient resources for all

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victims so that adequate new locations can be found, or so that rebuilding and new development are undertaken with the risk in mind. Too often, planning for hazards is nonexistent and disaster relief is concentrated on re building quickly and in place. Consequently, many in dividuals are usually unable to initiate changes in their living conditions to truly mitigate the hazard. Control rests with those having political and economic power who too frequently ﬁx the symptoms of the problem (such as a ﬂood or an earthquake) by repairing structures and returning the community to the pre event status quo, but who do nothing to remedy the root causes. Thus, the hazard is perpetuated. There may also be perceived economic advantages and compelling incentives to remaining in the hazard prone area. On one hand, property values may be lower than in ‘safe’ areas because the risk has been capitalized into the value of the land. The consequences of this may mean that hazard prone areas develop different socio economic traits compared to other areas; for example, many ﬂoodplains are characterized by low income households, the elderly, young families, people on as sistance, and mobile homes. On the other hand, many hazard prone areas, such as coasts, offer amenities that attract those able to afford such locations. Communities are loath to discourage such development because of perceived ﬁnancial beneﬁts. Decision Making When analyzing hazardousness as it varies from place to place or decisions that are made or not made to mitigate hazardousness, the political, economic, and social factors that put boundaries around individual and societal choices cannot be ignored. For example, the next earth quake in Afghanistan will almost inevitably lead to more female deaths than males purely because women have little access to hospital care. Hence, the key elements relate to individuals’ situational contexts, frequently as sociated with societal norms, which relate speciﬁcally to those variables that inﬂuence vulnerability. Many of these social factors affect perceptions of a hazard, which in turn determine human behavior. In deed, it is through the perceived world that individual decision making occurs. This perceptual context is dynamic and variable over time and space, and is perhaps most difﬁcult to model from a scientiﬁc per spective. Questionnaire surveys of disaster victims have attempted to elicit perceptual worldviews, but these provide merely snapshots of a changing and evolving scenario. What people say they will do under certain circumstances does not always coincide with what actually happens later. For instance, people be have according to perceived rather than objective reality; if a tornado hazard is considered a low risk or a

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hurricane is perceived as survivable, the individual concerned may take little or no action to mitigate impending events. Consequently, further work is nee ded to put perception and situation in context. Disaster experience affects individuals’ perceptions and in some circumstances generates what is called gambler’s fallacy. After a disaster has occurred, a common consensus is that another one is not expected for some time, that is, bad luck will be followed by a run of good luck. This is common in the United States with respect to ﬂoods. It is not unusual, for instance, to hear ﬂood victims’ state that they have experienced the 100 year ﬂood, and consequently will not experience a similar ﬂood in their lifetime. As many victims of the 1993 ﬂoods of the upper Mississippi River found out, this is a fallacious argument; severe ﬂooding occurred several times that summer in some communities and again just 2 years later in others. The implementation of mitigation measures can also lead to a false sense of security. The construction of a dam or levee to control ﬂood waters, the building of a sea wall to repel tidal surges, or elevating homes above ex pected storm surge levels generate feelings of safety such that all risk has been eliminated. However, such projects are designed to speciﬁc standards; so the risk remains that one day a larger event will occur. This false sense of security generates behavior that is not always conducive to minimizing losses. For instance, construction of structural measures or even the implementation of non structural adjustments, such as zoning ordinances, can initiate increased development on the ‘safe’ side of the project, a process termed the levee effect. Of course, all projects have limitations as deﬁned by the design stand ards, which will fail when compromised. Consequently, losses can be disastrous and, over the long term, possibly greater than if the project had never been implemented because of the increased development; there are many examples of increased losses, such as when levee systems fail, and New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina is a prime example. Therefore, attempts to control or even live with events inﬂuence individuals’ and communities’ per ceptions of risk and hazardousness.

From Mitigation to Resilience Individuals may or may not be willing or able to protect themselves from extreme events. As a result, various mitigation strategies are used in an attempt to protect communities and to increase resilience. This has traditionally been provided by structural meas ures, using engineering works to protect an area or buildings, but increasingly, nonstructural strategies, usually involving land management and policy ori ented approaches, have been implemented to reduce risk by avoiding development in hazard prone areas.

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In either case, those evaluating hazard mitigation strategies must consider not only the broader impacts of mitigation alternatives, but also the context in which strategies will be implemented. Structural mitigation makes places safe up to a design standard, as noted above. However, such mitigation does not eliminate the risk completely; so people remain vul nerable to disaster. In the United States, it is recom mended that those located in areas protected by levees still develop evacuation plans and purchase ﬂood insurance in case the levee fails. In all cases, though, the political will to implement such measures is not the only requirement; human, ﬁnancial, and technological resources are needed to ensure that appropriate measures are taken, that they are imple mented properly, that they do not burden different sectors of society, and that they improve community resilience, in addition to reducing risk. Because this involves the sharing and probable redistribution of these resources away from other priority areas, pol itical motivation is sometimes lacking. Mitigation policies that take land out of development whether to build a mitigation structure or to restrict the use of land and property at risk raise other issues. Land use regulations (such as zoning) limit what can and cannot be done with land. In some nations, land can be taken with little or no legal repercussions, but in others, the ramiﬁcations can be quite signiﬁcant depending on political situations. In the United States, land can be assumed under public ownership through eminent do main if it beneﬁts the larger population and just com pensation is paid. However, such a denial of land use rights to property owners has been challenged as un constitutional; some legal cases have demonstrated that the state has authority to do this under hazard miti gation strategies, while other court decisions have as serted the rights of the landowner. The rights of individuals in this instance must be evaluated against the common good. By comparison, centralized political systems may have fewer problems removing people from hazardous environments or keeping them from moving there in the ﬁrst place. For example, the Chi nese government has relocated thousands of people to construct dams and other water resource projects. In other instances, strong disincentives exist to keep people from moving to urban areas. While not all of these policies were enacted with natural hazards in mind, the success of hazard mitigation policies will differ de pending on political context.

Integration Environmental hazards incorporate physical and human elements of geographical research. Both are important to

understanding the nature of the events, their impacts, and any means for mitigation. The characteristics and impacts of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast of the United States, and in New Orleans in particular, are illustrative of this intersection of geographical themes. In this regard, natural hazards research has made tremendous progress, moving from almost exclusive concern with natural phenomena and technological ﬁxes to one that recognizes processes of the human use system, and speciﬁcally the complex web of social, political, and economic forces that exacerbate or attenuate the impacts of events. This has led us to the following conclusions: 1. Disasters are ubiquitous, and spatial patterns of particular events are generally well addressed and understood. 2. Risk or exposure to hazard is well deﬁned though not always acted upon since preparation and mitigation strategies are usually limited. 3. The temporal and spatial scales of events must both be evaluated in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of hazards and disaster. 4. Disasters involve a complex web of factors, including physical processes and human elements; social, eco nomic, and political forces in various forms and at local, national, and international levels interact with the geophysical world to exacerbate or attenuate hazardous conditions. 5. A clear understanding of vulnerability in all its con texts and an appreciation of the role of marginal ization are the keys to effective mitigation strategies and reduction of losses. 6. Individuals take actions to protect themselves from events based on situational and cognitive factors and are often constrained by circumstances often beyond their control. 7. Mitigation measures, whether structural, nonstructural, or both, can lead to a misplaced sense of safety. At the same time, they can be very effective at protecting communities and improving their resilience. See also: Environment; Environmental Justice; Globalization, Cultural; Globalization, Economic; Nature.

Further Reading Alexander, D. (1993). Natural Disasters. New York: Chapman Hall. Bankoff, G., Frerks, G. and Hilhorst, D. (eds.) (2004). Mapping Vulnerability: Disasters, Development and People. London: Earthscan. Cutter, S. L. (2006). Hazards, Vulnerability and Environmental Justice. London: Earthscan. Hewitt, K. (1997). Regions of Risk: A Geographical Introduction to Disasters. Singapore: Longman. Montz, B. E., Cross, J. and Cutter, S. L. (2004). Hazards. In Gaile, G. L. & Wilmott, C. J. (eds.) Geography in America, ch. 29, pp 481 493. New York: Oxford University Press. Oliver Smith, A. and Hoffman, S. M. (1999). The Angry Earth: Disaster in Anthropological Perspective. New York: Routledge.

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Slovic, P. (ed.) (2000). The Perception of Risk. London: Earthscan. Smith, K. (2001). Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster (3rd edn.). London: Routledge. Tobin, G. A. and Montz, B. E. (1997). Natural Hazards: Explanation and Integration. New York: Guilford Press. Wisner, B., Blaikie, P., Canon, T. and Davies, I. (2004). At Risk: Natural Hazards, People’s Vulnerability and Disasters (2nd edn.). London: Routledge.

Relevant Websites http://www.cred.be CRED: Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters.

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http://www.crid.or.cr CRID: Regional Disaster Information Center, Latin America and the Caribbean. http://www.em dat.net Emergency Disasters Data Base. http://www.colorado.edu Natural Hazards Center: University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, USA. http://www.reliefweb.int OpenForm Relief Web. http://ochaonline.un.org United Nations: Ofﬁce for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Environmental Health S. J. Elliott, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Confounding A variable is said to confound a relationship between an exposure and an outcome when it is a plausible, third variable that could potentially explain the relationship. For example, there is a suspected relationship between exposure to polychlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons and low birth weight babies. However, if the population of interest being studied also had high rates of smoking cigarettes, that third variable – smoking – may actually be the strongest explanatory variable. In short, the confounding variable(s) confound(s) the suspected relationship between exposure and outcome. Epidemiology The study of the distribution and determinants of health-related states or events in speciﬁed populations, and the application of this study to the control of health problems. Hazard A source of potential harm, damage, or adverse effect. Odds Ratio The likelihood of an outcome occurring, given the exposure of interest. For example, an odds ratio of 1.5 in a population exposed to high levels of smog means that an individual in that population has a risk of one and a half times that of an unexposed individual of dying prematurely. Risk The chance (or probability) that a person will be harmed or experience an adverse health effect if exposed to a hazard.

Introduction The relationship between human health and the en vironment is of great interest to researchers, policy makers, and the general public. Despite the realities of the situation, environment and health represent a ra ther nebulous construct: hard to see, hard to deﬁne, hard to measure. Einstein deﬁned the environment as everything that is not me; hence, impossible to meas ure. This article describes the evolution of the geog rapher’s interest in environment and health research; articulates the difﬁculties inherent in measuring the impacts of the environment on human health; and explores salient issues related to psychosocial health, environmental justice, and developing policy under scientiﬁc uncertainty.

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From Medical to Health The history of medical geography is well documented and need not be repeated here. It is important to set the stage, however, for the role of geographers in health re search in the present day. Brieﬂy, our current place within health research is the result of a tripartite evo lution of: models and deﬁnitions of health; medical to health geography; and, the rise of the population health perspective. The evolution of thinking about health as more than simply the absence of disease to complete physical, social, and emotional well being (World Health Organization (WHO)) set the stage for a revisiting of the biomedical paradigm and for the development of models of health and well being that emphasized not only mul tiple determinants of health but the role of the social, cultural, political, physical, and economic environments within which health and well being are shaped. Alter native health frameworks began to emphasize the role of socio environmental factors, in addition to lifestyle and biology, in the production of health and illness, while at the same time diminishing the role of the formal healthcare system. Health is now a resource for everyday living that allows individuals to manage, cope with, and even change their environments. During the late 1980s geographers began to explore their own role in research, relative to those evolving models and deﬁnitions of health. In the Canadian context, this took the form of lengthy but friendly debates and a change in the name of our professional association from medical geography to the geography of health and healthcare. Our UK colleagues soon followed suit. Overall, this was not seen as a move to exclude our colleagues working in traditional, disease ecology areas of research. Rather, the intent was to broaden our focus by formally embracing the evolving models and deﬁnitions of health. A substantial component of this exploration of our role within medical/health research was contained within a parallel exploration of the role of medical/ health geography within the larger subdiscipline of so cial/human geography. Concomitant with this shift was a shift from quan titative/positivist approaches to more theoretically informed, qualitative approaches. In this context, the questions have determined the method. That is, ex plorations of the meaning of health and illness in place require an alternative epistemology, one that recog nizes individual situated experience as a valid way of knowing.

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Within the broader health research community, at around the same time, we saw increasing empirical support for a population based framework for under standing the broader determinants of health. That is, there was increasing recognition of the decreasing roles of biomedicine, as well as the formal healthcare system in the production of health and illness, while the import ance of socioenvironmental factors and their interaction with individual level biological and behavioral variables took on increasing importance. These notions are codi ﬁed in the population health perspective. Although not without its critics, it has become the guiding framework for much Canadian, US, and European Union (EU) health and health promotion policy. This health frame work moves beyond traditional deﬁnitions of health as simply the absence of disease; embraces the evolving deﬁnitions that expanded to include social and emo tional, as well as physical properties of health; and opens the door to consideration of broader determinants of health that include the social, cultural, and physical en vironments, as well as individual lifestyle behaviors. The population health perspective was embraced by health geographers; questions of the intersection of in dividual level biological and behavioral variables with social and environmental factors are central to the health geography research agenda.

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Snow of London, England, who solved the mystery of the cholera outbreak of 1858 by mapping the location of deaths due to this infectious, waterborne disease. At the time, of course, most households did not have piped running water. Rather, there were – scattered throughout the urban neighborhoods of inner city London – stand ing water pumps from which local residents drew their daily requirements. When cholera started claiming so many lives in the mid 1850s, there was no apparent ex planation. At this time, there was no knowledge of the links between cholera and contaminated water. There were, rather, ill deﬁned notions that cholera – and other infectious diseases – were due to miasma or bad airs. Snow was obviously suspicious of these notions and de cided to map the deaths from cholera occurring across the city. What he found was that there was a cluster of deaths in the vicinity of the Broad Street water pump. The local water supply was drawn from the Thames River, commonly known to be essentially an open sewer for both industrial and human wastes. Several water companies drew their raw materials from the Thames, and ‘treated’ the water before distribution to local households. Clearly, some water companies did a better job than others. Snow ceremoniously cut the handle off the Broad Street pump in order to seal his discovery.

Natural Hazards From Health to Environment Clear articulation of what we mean by health is a useful point of departure for our understanding of the relation ships between environment and health. Deﬁning the en vironment is complex. In the context of environment and human health, we often think of the physical environment (e.g., air quality) and its impacts on human health (e.g., asthma). But what of the social environment (e.g., social capital), the economic environment (e.g., unemployment rates), the cultural environment (e.g., role of women), or the political environment (e.g., access to opportunities and institutions)? These environments, too, have been shown to inﬂuence human health. This is why the WHO, in a meeting in Sophia, Bulgaria in 1993, crafted a very broad deﬁnition of environmental health that includes quality of life in the concept of health and refers to the inﬂuence of the physical, biological, chemical, social, and psychosocial environments on human health. This deﬁnition has a further, prescriptive component addressing the correction, control, and prevention of those factors in the environ ment that can (potentially) adversely affect the health of present and future generations. The classic example of an environment and health relationship found in virtually every health geography text book, and expounded upon in every introductory health geography lecture, is the ingenuity of Dr. John

The work of early geographers (Burton, Kates, White) on the human impacts of natural hazards (e.g., ﬂoods, earthquakes, volcanoes) forms the foundation for the modern study of geographies of environment and health. Human impacts of these hazards focused on the loss of life and property, loss of community and social func tioning, loss of home, as well as perceptions of risk, the social ampliﬁcation of risk, and the role of individual choice with respect to risk and coping with/adapting to risk. This large body of literature can be summarized in a very few points: natural hazards and natural events are two very different concepts; natural hazards and their impacts are unequally distributed across space; natural hazards and their impacts are increasing with time. With respect to the ﬁrst point, there are catastrophic natural events that occur in our world on a regular basis: ﬁres, ﬂoods, droughts, earthquakes, and tornados. Indeed, some catastrophic natural events result in very positive beneﬁts (e.g., a lightening strike that causes a forest ﬁre can result in badly needed ecosystem regeneration). Natural events become natural hazards when they impact upon human populations. Further, the extent of the impact on human populations is affected by actions taken by humans in the social, political, economic, and cultural realms. For ex ample, the extent of the ﬂood damage wrought by Hur ricane Katrina in the US south in 2006 was exacerbated

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by the poor state of the levees originally constructed to protect residential areas from rising ﬂood waters. Another example is the Bangladesh Cyclone of November 1970, wherein one third of the population of low lying coastal areas/reclaimed islands died. There were a number of factors that contributed to this death toll, some very simple (i.e., the cyclone occurred at 11:00 p.m.; the only radio and telegraph station in the area closed regularly at 11:00 p.m.) and some more complicated (i.e., the gov ernment reclaimed low lying coastal areas and islands through sophisticated engineering technology and en couraged agricultural settlement in these areas). It is clear from the two examples cited above that natural hazards and their impacts are unequally experi enced across the globe. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the US south, for example, there have been heated debates about the response to the people of the area, claiming that the response was slow in coming and inadequate when it did arrive, primarily because those affected were primarily poor people of African American descent. The poor farmers of the low lying coastal zones of Bangladesh may have felt the same way. Indeed, be tween 1947 and 1981, as a result of ﬂoods, earthquakes, and cyclones, approximately 85% of all lives lost were in Asia; 4% in the Caribbean and Central America; and 4% in South America. Only 2% of lives were lost in Europe and only 1% in North America. Unfortunately, the toll (of human lives, social func tioning, property damage) of natural hazards will increase over time, not decrease. There are essentially three rea sons for this. The ﬁrst is the growth and changes in distribution of human populations. That is, not only is the human population growing exponentially over the sur face of the globe, but its distribution is rapidly changing from one of a rural–urban mix to one that is primarily urban. These large concentrations of human populations create the opportunity for hefty tolls from natural dis asters. The second reason is a simple one: we are getting better at recording the existence and parameters (i.e., magnitude, frequency, duration, spatial dispersion) of natural hazards, as well as their impacts (i.e., numbers of casualties, property damage, etc.). Finally, modernization of some developing countries has actually made them more vulnerable to acute natural events. For example, much commercial development in Kingston and other parts of Jamaica is taking place on ﬂood plains, as well as alluvial and unconsolidated soils, making them even more susceptible to earthquakes, as well as ﬂoods.

Technological Hazards Much of what we study in the present day from an en vironment and health perspective deals primarily with technological, human made hazards, as opposed to the

natural hazards discussed above. These hazards may be acute, such as an accident (e.g., the chemical plant ex plosion in Seveso, Italy; the nuclear accident at Cher nobyl; the train derailment at Bhopal, India causing a major chemical exposure) or they may be chronic (e.g., the virtual disappearance of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan; the contamination of the Great Lakes Basin in North America). Hazards may be point source (e.g., the Sydney Tar Ponds in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada – the most contaminated industrial site in Canada) or ambient (e.g., air pollution across the EU and much of the Western industrialized world). They may be known, well under stood, and well documented, scientiﬁcally (e.g., the effects of lead exposure on the intellectual and physical devel opment of children; the relationship between asbestos exposure and asbestosis of the lung) but many, if not most, are suspected, not well understood, the subject of equivocal science, and hotly debated in the literature, the policy realm, and the media. These include, for example, the relationship between low level exposure to electro magnetic ﬁelds (EMFs) and brain cancer. EMFs come from a range of small appliances found in most homes in the world (i.e., refrigerators, hair dryers, clock radios, microwave ovens) but the major source of public concern, and focus of most research, is overhead power lines that carry electricity. While some studies have shown a rela tionship between exposure and outcome, others have not. These are studies done by credible scientists and pub lished in respected, peer reviewed journals. However, the science remains equivocal. Other suspected hazards come into and out of fashion. For example, the potential for links between radon and lung cancer was of tremendous interest in North America and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Radon is a by product of the natural breakdown of uranium. As a result, it is naturally emitted from rocks, as well as in the uranium reﬁning process. Given that it is naturally occurring, its distribution is unequal across the globe. There are some areas of the world where it is naturally occurring in high quantities (e.g., Pennsylvania in the United States). However, it went out of fashion for a while; people forgot all about it as a potential risk for lung cancer. It has recently been making media headlines again, however, and home buyers are being encouraged to purchase radon detectors (at a cost of about US$20) to take into any new home they may be considering pur chasing. Further, some exclusive tourist resorts in Greece now produce warning pamphlets for their visitors on the potential relationship between radon exposure and lung cancer. This is due to the relatively high levels of radon being detected in Turkish baths and hot springs often frequented by European and North American tourists. Other environment and health relationships are seem ingly common knowledge. Included in this category would be the relationship between adverse air quality or air pollution and asthma. Again, however, a thorough

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search of the research literature ﬁnds only equivocal evidence for this relationship. Indeed, a study conducted in the late 1970s, early 1980s in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (a city located on the western end of Lake On tario that built its economy on steel production and other heavy industry), often held up as the gold standard for air quality and health research, ﬁrmly concluded that air pollution did not cause asthma; rather, air pollution could be responsible for exacerbating an already existing re spiratory health problem in young children. Indeed, re cent research about asthma from leading world investigators tells us two things: ﬁrst, that we know very little about what causes asthma; second, if we had to choose a culprit in terms of causation, we should focus as much on the indoor as opposed to the outdoor en vironment. This is where difﬁcult questions of policy arise: we still have to make decisions to set policy and guidelines, for example, around air quality in order to protect the health of the public. How do we do that based on such equivocal science?

Design, Measurement, and Evaluation At this point, the key question arises: given the level of interest and activity around environment and health re lationships, why is the science so equivocal? Essentially, this has a lot to do with the complexity of designing environment and health research, measuring exposures and outcomes, and evaluating the evidence. Design There are several different study designs to choose from in any health research endeavor. The strongest of these is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). Herein, the re searcher has control over both the exposure of interest, as well as the sample exposed. Typically, RCTs are under taken to test a new treatment for a known illness, often a newly developed pharmaceutical. As such, the researcher would select a control group (who did not get the newly developed pharmaceutical or would receive a placebo) and an intervention group (who would receive the newly developed pharmaceutical) and assess the impacts, (ideally in a double blind manner; i.e., neither the re searcher nor the subject would know if they were re ceiving the newly developed pharmaceutical or the placebo). Widely heralded as the strongest study design, yielding the most credible results, it is impossible for use in an environment and health study. For many reasons, including ethical ones, it would be impossible to expose, say, a group of children to lead for a period of time and then assess the impacts compared to a control group not exposed. As an aside, we often have access to ‘natural laboratories’ in environment and health research. For example, the 1976 explosion at a chemical factory in

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Seveso, Italy allowed researchers to follow the workers and residents of the surrounding community for the next 30 years to assess the long term health impacts. However, because this is not an RCT, the researchers cannot control for all of the potential confounding factors that may also be inﬂuencing the health outcomes of interest. Since we cannot do RCTs, then, in environment and health research, we are limited to observational studies – essentially, observing what has already happened. The ﬁrst form of observational study is the case control de sign. Herein, a number of cases are identiﬁed – for ex ample, a cluster of leukemia cases – and these individuals are studied for their exposure histories. This was the study design used in the famous case of Woburn, Mas sachusets. In this case, a seemingly inexplicable cluster of childhood leukemia cases occurred in a residential neighborhood in this small town. Area residents sus pected the local water supply as the culprit. The water had not been right for some time – it smelled of chem icals and caused rashes and burning on human skin. These area residents worked long and hard to convince local authorities and physicians that there was indeed a link between the leukemias and the water supply. A local industry was subsequently convicted of contaminating a city well, and the entire subject was made into a Holly wood movie, A Civil Action, staring John Travolta. A second type of observational study is the cohort study. Herein, we sample on the basis of exposure, as opposed to outcome (as in the case control study used as an example, above). Cohort studies can be one of two types: retrospective or prospective. In the context of the former, a cohort of individuals are identiﬁed who are thought to have experienced an exposure. The cohort is then studied to determine what, if any, adverse health effects they might have experienced in the past. This is the typical type of study done in environment and health research. Often, this is because a community realizes it may have been exposed to something (an air pollutant, a leaking landﬁll, a contaminated water supply) as a result of some ill deﬁned symptomatology or an inexplicably large number of cancer cases in a neighborhood. This self identiﬁed cohort may then be studied to assess po tential health effects experienced in the past during the exposure. An example here is the Sydney Tar Ponds in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. This site, known as the most heavily contaminated industrial site in Canada, saw approximately 100 years of coal smelting and steel pro duction, characterized by inappropriate waste disposal practices. The site is now contaminated with 700 000 tonnes of known carcinogens. Area residents living within 5 km from the site are very concerned about the impacts of the exposures on reproductive health outcomes. An ecdotal reports in the area reported higher than normal levels of miscarriages, still births, infertility, and low birth weight babies. A retrospective cohort study of the local

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residents documented the reproductive histories of 500 women living within 5 km of the site in order to assess whether the adverse reproductive outcomes they ex perienced happened at levels higher than would have been expected in an unexposed population. A prospective cohort study would also be character ized by sampling on the basis of exposure, but would follow the cohort forward in time to document any ad verse health outcomes. An example of a prospective co hort study in environment and health would be the explosion at the chemical factory in Seveso, Italy in 1976. Both workers and members of the local community were exposed to high levels of dioxin. A team of occupational epidemiologists followed this cohort forward for 30 years to assess whether or not adverse health outcomes oc curred in the cohort at rates higher than would have been expected in an unexposed population. Finally, from a humanistic perspective, we can conduct qualitative studies in environment and health. For ex ample, the study referred to above in the Sydney Tar Ponds not only involved a large scale epidemiologic sur vey of women’s reproductive histories, it also involved a smaller set of qualitative interviews with families living in the area in order to try to understand the psychosocial impacts of the exposure on their daily lives, as well as anxieties around reproductive health and decision making. Measurement Complicating things further are issues of measurement; that is, it is no easy task to measure exposures, outcomes, and ascertain the pathways through which individuals are exposed. Exposure When individuals report to their friends, family, physician, local public health ofﬁcial, and so on that they feel they have been exposed to some environmental hazard, it is very difﬁcult to measure that exposure. First, the exposure has happened in the past and recall bias (do you remember how often you spent time in your basement in the last 5 years? How much time you spent in the shower or bath? How much tap water you consumed? How much time you spent in the garden or yard of your house?) will impact on how accurately we are able to measure the exposure. Second, often the exposure comes from an illicit, undocumented source; for example, chemical contamination by an industry to the public water supply in Woburn, Massachusetts. Third, we rarely know what the exposure contains. For example, when Lois Gibbs ﬁrst discovered yellow ooze seeping into her basement in her Love Canal neighborhood home, all she knew was it was yellow ooze. Toxicologists then had to deconstruct the ooze; this is very difﬁcult to do. When a toxicologist goes ﬁshing for a toxin, s/he needs to know what s/he is ﬁshing for so that it can be identiﬁed. Are

we looking for polyaromatic hydrocarbons? Dioxin? Diel dren? Trichloroethylene? Each of these has a unique identifying character. We can’t just run yellow ooze through a chemical scanner and get a read out of what is in it. Fourth, we know very little about the synergies between chemical contaminants. That is, we may have some con ﬁdence of the relationship between trichloroethylene (a chemical primarily used in the process of dry cleaning) and bladder cancer, but what if the trichloroethylene is mixed with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)? Is there a synergistic effect that can actually cause more harm to human health than if one were exposed to these chemicals in isolation? This is why we often see the phrase chemical soup used when referring to the yellow ooze seeping out of Love Canal, or the waters of the Great Lakes Basin. Finally, all of this science is so very new to us. It is not that long ago (1950s, 1960s) that Dow Chemical spent much money and energy developing television advertisements about the wonders of chemicals and how they were going to change our lives. We still have much to learn. Sometimes our technology outstrips our knowledge – that is, we can now measure contaminants in such small amounts (from parts per million to parts per trillion) yet have very little if any knowledge of the impact of exposures at that level on human health. Outcome If we can ascertain what an individual or a community has been exposed to, we must then determine what health outcomes we should be documenting. This is a very dif ﬁcult task, for a number of reasons. First, we simply do not know how community based (as opposed to occupational) exposures to these chemicals will impact on human health. Therefore, we don’t know what to look for. In the highly regarded Upper Ottawa Street Landﬁll study undertaken in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, researchers documented entire health histories of area residents who unknowingly had been exposed to (illegally dumped) liquid industrial waste for over 5 years. Every organ system was examined. This was extremely time consuming, and resource intensive. But not knowing what to look for, these researchers looked for everything. What did they discover? Not much – some red, itchy eyes, some psychosocial stress. Why? It could be that the dose that area residents were exposed to was not sufﬁcient to have a health impact (it is the dose that makes the poison). Second, it could also be that, as in many cases, the health impacts experienced are ill deﬁned symptoms that are difﬁcult to trace to any speciﬁc exposure. For example, we often hear reports of headaches, rashes, stomach problems, sleeplessness, fatigue, psychosocial distress. These symptoms could be due to any number of factors; again, how do we control for all the confounding factors that exist in a community laboratory? The third reason why these researchers,

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despite their very thorough examination of the population, may have found very little in the way of health effects, relates to the issue of latency. That is, if we are concerned about cancers or some other type of chronic illness, it takes time (15 years? 20 years?) for such illnesses to de velop. Following an exposed cohort forward for 20 years is very expensive research and fraught with difﬁculties (e.g., control for confounders, sample attrition). In short, the measurement of health outcomes is no easy task. This is further complicated by the fact that we are often very interested in measuring not only the physiological health impacts of an exposure, but also the psychosocial health impacts. Psychosocial impacts can be deﬁned as the combination of distress, dys function, and disability manifested in a wide range of social, behavioral, and psychological impacts in indi viduals, groups, and communities as a consequence of actual or perceived environmental contamination. Psy chosocial impacts are important to study for at least two reasons. First, they are a health impact in and of them selves (recall the deﬁnition of health cited above); one cannot have full health when one is anxious, worried, distressed. Indeed, despite whether the exposure is actual or perceived, these are real effects that have real con sequences. As the sociologist, W. I. Thomas expounded in the 1960s, if a situation is deﬁned as real, it will be real in its consequences. For example, the study in the Sydney Tar Ponds in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada found no excess levels of adverse reproductive outcomes (i.e., still births, miscarriages, low birth weight). However, the perception of area residents of the impacts of the Tar Ponds on reproductive health was so strong that they were making decisions about fertility based on this per ception: some families were putting off having children until the site was cleaned up, others were deciding not to have children at all, still others were choosing to adopt from outside the community. The second reason why it is important to study psychosocial impacts of exposure is the relationship they have with physiological health. For example, when the chemical factory in Seveso, Italy blew up in 1976, workers and local residents received high doses of dioxin exposure; researchers who followed this cohort for over 30 years now expected to ﬁnd elevated rates of cancers, particularly liver cancer. They did not. They found, however, a ﬁvefold increase in cardio vascular disease. Why? These researchers did not really know. However, they speculate that the exposed cohort worried so much about whether or not they would de velop cancer, that they worried themselves into cardio vascular disease.

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communities are worried about their health. But before we can claim a relationship, there has to be a clear pathway for the exposure. For example, the contamination in Sydney, Nova Scotia from the Tar Ponds site was to a tidal estuary. A moratorium on ﬁshing was established; area residents do not obtain their water from this source. So, if there is an exposure, what is the pathway? Such pathways are clearer in the case of Bhopal, where a train derailment led to the release of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyante into the air. Individuals could then breathe this in; this is a pathway for exposure. Another clear example is the radiation ex posure at Chernobyl. It was relatively straightforward to document immediate exposure through documentation of radiation sickness and later through the consumption of contaminated crops and livestock. In short, a contaminant somehow has to have a route into the body – through ingestion, inhalation, or through the dermis.

Evaluation

Pathways

Once we have measured exposure and outcome, it be hooves us to evaluate the existence and strength of the relationship between them. We do this by calculating odds ratios; that is, the likelihood of an individual experiencing the health outcome of interest given the exposure of interest. For example, at Seveso, the researchers docu mented an odds ratio of 5 for cardiovascular disease, in dicating that those exposed were 5 times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease than those not exposed. An odds ratio of 5 in environmental health research is very high; typically, we see odds ratios between 1.5 and 2. While these odds ratios may be statistically signiﬁcant, they may or may not be clinically signiﬁcant. For example, studies between air pollution and premature mortality in Montreal, Canada indicate an odds ratio of about 1.03 of dying prematurely on a bad air day. While this is bor derline statistically signiﬁcant, we might consider it to be clinically signiﬁcant because we are applying that odds ratio to a large urban population (i.e., approximately 2 million people). Thus, this environmental exposure may not be a high risk but affects a lot of people. Perhaps then there should be a public health response. In addition, even if we have a relatively robust odds ratio, we still need to ascertain whether or not there is a causative relationship between x and y. In the 1970s, Sir Austin Bradford Hill gave an after dinner speech to the Royal Association of Physicians wherein he outlined what are now euphemistically known as the Bradford Hill criteria or the nine diagnostic tests of causation. Brieﬂy, Bradford Hill asserted that one could not claim causation unless most if not all of these criteria were met. They include:

There have been many situations where an actual docu mented environmental hazard exists, and individuals and

1. strength of association, 2. consistency of association,

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3. speciﬁcity of association, 4. temporality (i.e., that the cause comes before the effect in time), 5. existence of a biological gradient or dose–response curve, 6. biological plausibility of the association, 7. coherence of the relationship with what we already know, 8. experimental data, and 9. analogous evidence in the literature.

Conclusion Society ﬁnds itself, therefore, in a seemingly untenable position. In the face of existing (air pollution, waste, contaminated water, nuclear waste); (re ) emerging (West Nile virus, inﬂuenza); and new (global climate change, avian ﬂu) environmental risks, the public is demanding zero tolerance for risk. Indeed, in this postmodern society in which we live, the public feels an entitlement to an environment free of risk. There is a substantial literature on risk and risk perception. Sufﬁce it to say the public is guided in its perception of risk by two factors: what is unknown and what is dreaded. Further, there is sub stantial difference between the factors that affect the risk perceptions of experts (probabilities of mortalities) and the lay public (the dreaded possibilities; the potential impacts for self and family). Regardless, the public is just acquiescing anymore, particularly given the unequal na ture of the distribution of risks and beneﬁts in the context of environmental risk. The growing literature around environmental justice has documented the unequal treatment of some members of society with respect to those who are exposed and those who reap the beneﬁts. And of course, as in all other inequities it is the mar ginalized (the poor, those of color, Aboriginal persons, women, the disabled) who bear the brunt of the risk. While some have suggested that the risks we experience in our postmodern world have indeed become dem ocratized, there are others who strongly disagree. While residents of the entire globe may now be at risk for the public health impacts of global climate change, it is those in the marginalized groups who are least able to cope with the impacts. So, how do we move forward? Some would suggest that policymakers take the best of what they can from the

research and science that is available and follow the precautionary principle. That is, Article 15 of the 1992 Rio Summit on Building a Sustainable Earth essentially declares that we don’t have to have all the science in place before we are compelled – morally and ethically – to make a reasonable decision in order to protect the health of the ecosystem, including human health. In 1964 the US Surgeon General declared that smoking cigarettes caused lung cancer. Over the next 40 þ years, we have expended much public health effort to get that message out. However, it was not until 1994 that we ﬁnally understood the biological mechanisms involved. Should we have waited? See also: Development I; Development II; Health and Development; Health Geography; Health Inequalities.

Further Reading Beck, U. (1992). Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Bullard, R. D. (1994). Dumping in Dixie. Boulder: Westview Press. Burton, I., Kates, R. W. and White, G. F. (1993). The Environment as Hazard. New York: The Guilford Press. Greenberg, M. (ed.) (1987). Public Health and the Environment. New York: Guilford Press. Hill, A. B. (1965). The environment and disease: Association and causation. Proceedings of the Royal Association of Medicine 58, 295 300. Klinenberg, E. (2002). Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. National Institutes of Health (2004). Progress and Promise in Research on Social and Cultural Dimensions of Health: A Research Agenda. Washington, WA: National Institutes of Health. Slovic, P. (2000). Perception of Risk. London: Earthscan Books.

Relevant Websites http://www.cdc.gov Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA. http://www.europa.eu European Union Environmental Policy. http://www.hc sc.gc.ca Health Canada. http://www.un.org United Nations Millennium Development Goals. http://www.epa.gov United States Environmental Protection Agency. http://www.who.int World Health Organization.

Environmental Justice A. A. Lehtinen, University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Communities of Justice Alliances or co-associations, both local and translocal, that (re)produce the criteria, practices, and relations central to the shared formation of a sense of justice. Corrective Justice An ethical or juridical approach that aims at compensating the past injustices. Discursive Regulation Both informal and formal negotiations developed through market competition and socio-environmental pressure. Practices of local–global co-governing where all the concerned stakeholders, with their diverse expectations, condition speciﬁc operational spaces. Distributive Justice An ethical or juridical approach that focuses on the distribution of beneﬁts and burdens, including the outcomes of decisions or events. Modernization Development phase and paradigm that emphasizes human reason and rationality, accompanied by the ideas of linear progress and absolute truth as well as a conﬁdence on human ability to control nature. The modern world view also contains strong ideals of equality and liberty. Neoliberal Environmentalism The commodiﬁcation and privatization of natural resources by favoring the market mechanisms. Power Regimes The arrangements and conventions of governing the complex interrelations between public and private interests, also characterized by a vested presence of principles and norms that support the existing forms of domination. Procedural Justice An ethical or juridical approach that is concerned about the degree of inclusion and exclusion in decision making. Retributive Justice An ethical or juridical approach dealing with penalty or punishment for unjust conditions or actions. Risk Society A society where the production and distribution of social and environmental risks, including their latent and unpredictable transformations, have become a central characteristic. In risk progression the occurrence of a hazard meets the vulnerability of the community. Social Vulnerability The culturally inherited and socially produced skills, capacities, and conditions of an individual or community to cope with the changes in the environing world. The ability to resist and recover from harmful transformations.

The Environmental Justice Movement in the USA The Environmental Justice Movement emerged in the early 1980s in North Carolina, USA, due to a local dis pute over toxic waste dumping near a neighborhood of African American people. The movement emphasized from the beginning that environmental problems cannot be solved without unveiling the practices maintaining social injustices. Many of the traditional environmental organizations were targeted by this critique. The North American debate on environmentalism and justice has developed via deep contradictions, which reﬂects the delicate historical nature of the issue. Racial and other social questions are often intentionally avoided by dedicated nature conservationists and this frames the whole tradition, initially established through the strug gles for nature parks and wilderness areas. The history of the Western idea of nature is part of the history of the white middle class that had learned to appreciate the esthetic value of wilderness. Puriﬁed and thus white areas of nature therefore symbolize the areas of white power. This was made clear during the formative years of nature conservation in the USA when the indigenous First Nations were forced to leave their homelands which were overlapping with the proposed national parks of Yellowstone and Yosemite. Environmental history in North America is rooted to the expansive colonial control over the resources of newly settled areas. The European colonization of the continent turned into a cruel genocide of the First Nations. The frontier of the settlers progressed through the wilderness and this was considered synonymous with the dawn of civilization. The colonial success was com pleted by the transatlantic slave trade and later immi gration to urban ghettos colored by unfair divisions of welfare. Environmental justice issues turn therefore repeatedly into questions of environmental racism. The evidence telling that environmental risks tend to accu mulate on ethnic minorities starkly reminds the North Americans of their violent ethnic past. The historically speciﬁc sense of justice, built on the awareness of the interethnic violence behind the founding of modern North America, is present in the continuous re articulation of social and environmental inequalities, both local and global. The environmental justice issues are accordingly dealt with in two main forums. They are routinely taken care of by law experts in courtrooms while the critical alternatives are presented by the activist

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networks worrying about local–global injustices. The pragmatic lawyers and the forward looking activists share with many Europeans the ideal of just decision making and the belief in change for the better. However, despite the common background, the practical conditions and formulations of environmental justice are different in Europe.

The Sense of Environmental Justice in Europe The speciﬁc way of reacting in Europe to environment and justice questions is connected to the recent en vironmental history of the continent. The hardships in human–nature relations met during the last decades have profoundly modiﬁed the senses of justice. Concerns about highly modiﬁed food products are, for example, widespread in the European Union, and are bound to the continental food crises of the 1990s. The risks of high tech food industry have become evident both in the kitchen routines of families and in industrial food production, and this has fueled the debate on the unjust results of tightening technological dependencies. The handling of animals in the food industry has also brought up the question of animal justice. A new type of ethical environmental debate took shape in Europe in the aftermath of the explosion of a nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. The dramatic event reminded Europeans about the vulner ability of the technological age and it also revealed the alarming risks embedded in industrial culture. During the late spring weeks of 1986, radioactive rain polluted large areas of Europe. The clouds and rain showers fol lowed the main wind directions and thus did not respect any jurisdictional borders or varying state commitments to nuclear energy. The challenge to shelter oneself from the radioactive pollution largely uniﬁed people, but the degree of individual protection varied according to the ability or willingness to change one’s daily routines bound, for example, to employment histories, variations in wealth and health settings, risk awareness, home place attachment, and age identiﬁcation. The catastrophe also sharpened the claims for critical and ethical reﬂection concerning our duties toward those innocents suffering from our errors, including the coming generations. The drama of Chernobyl was a shock to Europe, and it led to critical rethinking about matters of industrial pro gress, environmental change, and social justice. Nuclear energy was regarded as a political, technical–economic, and moral question, and it was also seen as a condition without escape. It became an example of intergenerational (in)justices: whether positive or negative, we have to learn to live with the path dependencies developed by those before us.

Chernobyl left a mark on the European environmental consciousness, and the concern about the direction and justiﬁcation of modernization grew in importance. The critique of modernization challenged those popular postmodern promises that aimed at freeing us from the historical worries of the modern. The twentieth century ended with insecurity in Europe. The Risikogesellschaft, or the risk society, had emerged as a continuation to, and a reminder of, the earlier traumas of the continent: the birth of the risk society further confused Europeans still suffering from the deliriums of the colonial–imperial past, and it brought back the nightmares of the world wars and the Holocaust. The risk society debate re examined the ambivalent lessons of Enlightenment and progress. Finally, nature – the material sphere of our earthly being – was thoroughly contaminated, both the one surrounding us and the one in the form of intimate embodied experience. The nat ural realm, which had been carefully othered in the margins of Europe, returned in the form of radioactive rains, accumulations in various ecosystems, and new health risks. The boomerang of nature followed the logic that the othered Third World had earlier landed on the hearth of the continent. The idea of pure Europe was again challenged. The environmental history of late modern Europe helps us to understand the way that Europeans tend to deal with environmental justice issues, such as problems with human and animal rights, quality of food, rural and fringe areas, ethnic minorities, and ecological hazards and strains. The past is present in Europe either in the form of ethical re thinking, or alternatively, clothed in pro tective security measures at the gates of Fort Europe. This tension forms the core of the debate on the con stitutional renewal of the European Union. The vision of a strong federal bastion strikingly contrasts with the idea of democratic co jurisdiction. The dispute deals with the sociospatial dynamics and control of the communities of justice.

Global Environmentalism and Justice In the late twentieth century, global environmental concern became a key framework wherein a broad variation of changes in human–nature relations were interlinked. The global approach resulted in expansive programs in several ﬁelds of environmental governance, stretching from biodiversity conservation and atmos pheric emission regulations to certiﬁcates of green trade. Despite its widely welcomed launch, the global en vironmental turn has met serious opposition. Accusations of expert domination, ideological bias, technocratic re ductionism, ecological imperialism, and green devel opmentalism have surfaced, both from outside and from

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within environmental groups and organizations. Internal criticism has become the most inﬂuential as it has forced environmentalists to rethink their own role at the other end of the general antagonism between conservationists and developers. The practical methods and tools of global environ mentalism were questioned in particular. Its ideological framework also became a target of criticism: global man agement mentality, when tracing speciﬁc ecological caus alities and necessities, was seen as resulting in social and cultural ignorance. The development of environmentalism has evidently strengthened the role of Western ecological expertise in identifying and solving local and global environmental problems. Ecological expertise is increasingly accepted as the guiding knowledge technology in environmental management and it takes place at the cost of traditional and lay understandings of nature. It has, among other things, resulted in communicative problems. The vocabulary of experts often crucially differs from the lay modes of communication. The programs of nature conservation and environmental regulation repeatedly violate lay senses of justice. Due to the globalization of environmental concern, the question of justice is thus frequently faced. Whose environments are conserved? Whose expertise is ranked high? Who can afford, and who has the skills, to participate in the formulation of goals? Those asking these types of questions often underline the shortages of equity in decision making processes. These concerns are more or less explicitly inspired by the underlying philosophical debates on procedural justice or process equity. Due to globalization, and the following intensiﬁcation of contacts across major cultural borders, variations in the historical development of the sense of justice have emerged as matters of conﬂict. Tensions in environ mental appreciation are central to understanding the current forms of cultural confrontations, ranging from contested ethnic spaces in urban milieus to the defense of homelands by indigenous folks, and extending across all the spatial scales, from local disputes to global contests of the leading geopolitical allies.

Human Geography and Environmental Justice Human geographers have conducted both ethical and politico ecological studies on environmental discrimin ation and justice. The ethical orientation has, for example, aimed at formulating general principles to the fair division of good and bad environments. This has developed toward a meta ethical debate about the moral lessons that humankind needs to adopt to change the current alarming social and ecological trends on Earth.

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A healthy environment is seen in this type of ethical thinking as a foundational right for humanity. In addition, fair treatment of humans and nonhumans is often in cluded and then it is seen as important to recognize the value that environment has for all the inhabitants of our planet. The idea of a shared environment is central to the ethical geographical tradition. Ethically oriented geographers have in general fol lowed the philosophical ideas and traditions of justice and applied these to issues of environment and devel opment. These connections explain the popularity of the models of procedural, distributive, corrective, and retributive justice in geographical ethical thinking. On the other hand, the politico ecological tradition has emphasized the uneven characteristics of concrete social and environmental conditions. Environmental changes have been examined by focusing on the processes that cause inequality and injustice both in the politico economical practices and in the routines of everyday life. The scholars linked to this tradition have examined the transformations of natural–cultural ecosystems and communities under exploitative practices, the changing socio environmental roles of individual consumers and consumer groups, non and (inter)governmental forms of environmental regulation, as well as the features of neoliberal reorganization of local–global natures. The geographers working with political–ecological justice have a common interest related to the question of how the use of nature is intertwined with power. Their approaches include a critical engagement founded on historical analyses of uneven socio environmental relations, often followed by suggestions of policy changes and compensatory measures. A connection to the philo sophical discussion on corrective and retributive justice can sometimes be notiﬁed. Environmental racism has then been studied from indigenous and minority per spectives and they are often accompanied by proposals of compensating the past humiliation. Critical regional studies, on the other hand, have revealed the weakening of local living conditions caused by translocal develop ment projects overlooking the local preferences. Unequal progression of social and ecological vulner ability has been analyzed in a similar manner, identifying and criticizing certain patterns of risk production. Some political geographers have in parallel called attention to the multiscale nature of environmental justice problems. They emphasize the role of social and spatial processes in connecting individual articulations of injustice to broader changes in society. Local pollution, for example, can become an international question when linked to more general issues of industrial restructuring. Similarly, global biodiversity programs, as with any questions of inter species justice, rarely work without adjustments to meet basic human rights questions in regional implementation. In general, the scalar ambiguity

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of justice topics has been taken by political geographers as a challenge to develop analyses of political struggles within and across different sociospatial scales. The ways in which matters of justice are inserted into various geographical scales have in particular appealed to polit ical geographers. New animal geography has brought up the speciﬁc question of inter species justice: socially accepted and legitimized indifference in matters of nonhuman suf fering has gained critical attention and publicity. More over, intergenerational aspects of environmental justice have been introduced both by historical geographers concerned about the rights of the past generations in the current heritage restructuring and by those participating in sustainable development discourse. The worries about future generations are then seen as signs of sensitivity to the trajectories of power across the present and coming generations. Many critical geographers and political ecologists share the motive to reveal the practices of discrimination linked to the formation of sociospatial and ecological peripheries. The critical view concentrates on the shortages of participation and representation caused by the silencing and ignoring of certain members of the society by more or less explicit measures of ethnic, age, gender, regional, or class based discrimination, or by overlooking the nonhuman neighborhood. The practices of participation are then tied to the critical moments of inclusion and exclusion in decision making and daily routines. When analyzing the hindrances of participation, some human geographers have underlined the critical role of communities in (re)producing the notions of nature and the sense of justice. Community is accordingly seen as the idea, place, and the relations and practices that generate what is considered socially just and ecologically sound. The community, in the form of a locality, alliance, co association, or network, thus lays both the value basis and practical frames that condition the formation of environmental preferences and sense of justice. The community is the forum of co identiﬁcation by which the ideas and practices of culture–nature are formulated. This forum becomes comprehensible only while seen as developed from within the ideas, values, and experiences shared by the members of the community. The community based environmental justice approach requires sensitivity to the uneven distribution of risks, including fears of them, faced in the daily lives of communities. The questions are then: How do major environmental changes, and the culturally varying responses to these changes, take shape in different for ums? How and by whom are these changes articulated and justiﬁed? What are the outcomes of these changes? How are they distributed? These questions bring environ mental research close to issues of distributive justice.

Late Modern Communities of Justice Local power relationships have gone through profound transformations during the centuries of modernization. Translocal contacts have increased and this has brought along speciﬁc changes in local regime formations, eco nomic clustering, gender divisions, and intergenerational relations. This translocalization has in general differen tiated the local social groupings and increased local vulnerability to occasional interventions. Locality is in this respect perhaps a weaker actor today than ever before. This is much due to the non predictable clustering of interventions constantly dis placing the individuals and their communities. These processes are part of our everyday life world while making our daily purchases, for example. The certiﬁcates of sustainability, demanded by critical consumers and focused both on the products and the processes behind them, are presently under contested deﬁnition. The reading of these certiﬁcates has consequently become a necessity for the careful consumer. This development has not, however, brought along the disappearance of local identities and neighborhood ethics. Local communities are still important forums today for the development of the sense of justice. This has become evident in the criticism of the lengthening of product chains that has resulted in rising social and environmental costs of transporting. Regional preferences in production and consumption patterns, such as local food campaigns, have therefore been introduced as part of the sustainability repertoire. Human geographers have participated in the debate on community displacement by rethinking their approaches on places, identities, and situated ethics, and this work has contributed to the understanding of the dynamics of the ethical communities. These studies have informed us about the background of the local criticism against the pressures of straightforward trans localization. Criticism often rises from the experience of humiliation based on sociospatial marginalization, and it is often strengthened by deep, heritage like experiences of injustice. Social and environmental policy measures are confronted in the peripheries in the context of the local sense of justice which is more or less internally shared, and this often tends to differ from the external translocal principles of justice derived from more uni versal standards. On the other hand, the culture–nature relationship is also produced within the postlocal network com munities that we participate in through our daily prac tices. Today the impacts of these more or less ﬂuid co associations can even exceed the local community effects as conditioning factors of our life worlds. Within this postlocal framework, or sphere, the basic formulation of environmental values takes place without the personal

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experience of the immediate strength of the environing social nature. Nature increasingly turns into a product or a symbol that is meaningful to us in the form of questions about pollution control and green trade. In this view, the postlocal communities are stretched across the local–global chains of production and consumption, both material and immaterial, dominated by the networks of globally oriented organizations and corporations. Careful monitoring of these postlocal changes is important for the suppliers and clients of globalization leaders, but it has also become a necessity for the principal local–global actors themselves. They cannot, being thoroughly embedded in their operative networks, avoid the risks caused by continuous assessment of their competitive potential. Today, companies with global strategies need to be sensitive to the voices of their suppliers, consumers, shareholders, and other partners. A more respectful attitude toward social and environ mental pressure groups has also become a necessity. A bad image easily turns into credibility problems and worsening economic options. The postlocal networks of environmentalists need, in a similar manner, to be aware of the risks of becoming labeled as green imperialists or busy professionals for whom the planet Earth is primarily a management object. The postlocal actors participating in the global contest have faced new risks based on the ﬂuidity of their sociospatial environments. The credibility problems caused by wrong moves or bad images are easily reﬂected in the shrinking of their operative space. This type of new vulnerability has become an integral part of the local– global forums of discursive regulation, and many of the most successful global actors have become increasingly sensitive to questions of social and environmental responsibility.

Just Geography The community based environmental justice approach can also be extended to cover the questions of academic engagement. Research often ﬁnds legitimacy by aiming at bringing up facts and viewpoints that are only partially visible in the everyday life world. Research on human communities, for example, is in general supposed to add something analytical, interpretative, or summary like to the articulations and actual views produced by the subject actors of the case studies. Research might even become emancipating while opening new views on the questions under investigation. The political relevance of research depends on its capability to cope with the concrete social and environmental factors conditioning the action spaces of the subject groups. Here the question is, how much are the research motives shaped by the

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academic premises of the scientiﬁc communities and how well does the researcher identify her or himself as part of the communities in the study focus? Different identiﬁ cations and priorities result in different rankings of the most important research issues. The preliminary research design has thus a decisive impact on the political rele vance of the questions studied. Geographers sensitive to justice concerns cannot afford considering the subject groups merely as interesting cases for theory testing or instrumental means to succeed in the local–global merit markets. See also: Environmental Security; Ethnic Conﬂict; Human Rights; Place, Politics of; Social Movements.

Further Reading Abramson, A. and Theodossopoulos, D. (eds.) (2000). Land, Law and Environment. London: Pluto Press. Berglund, E. (1998). Knowing Nature, Knowing Science. Cambridge, MA: White Horse Press. Blaikie, P., Cannon, T., Davis, I. and Wisner, B. (1994). At Risk. London: Routledge. Cronon, W. (1996). Uncommon Ground. New York: Norton. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Howitt, R. (2001). Rethinking Resource Management. London: Routledge. Jones, M. (ed.) (2006). Special Issue: Essays on landscape, law and justice. Norwegian Journal of Geography 60, 1 127. Lehtinen, A. (2006). Postcolonialism, Multitude, and the Politics of Nature. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Low, N. P. and Gleeson, B. J. (1997). Justice, Society, and Nature. London: Routledge. Martinez Alier, J. (2002). The Environmentalism of the Poor. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. McCarthy, J. and Prudham, S. (eds.) (2004). Neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism. Geoforum 35, 275 393. Ossenbrugge, J. (1993). Umweltrisiko und Raumentwicklung. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Sachs, W., Loske, R. and Linz, M. (1998). Greening the North. London: Zed Books. Walker, G. and Bulkeley, H. (eds.) (2006). Geographies of environmental justice. Geoforum 37, 655 738. Wolch, J. and Emel, J. (eds.) (1998). Animal Geographies. London: Verso.

Relevant Websites http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/ Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. http://www.justiceandenvironment.org/ Justice and Environment Network, Central and Eastern Europe. http://www.cas.uio.no/Groups/lsclawjus/Landscap.htm Landscape, Law and Justice Group at the Center for Advanced Studies, Oslo, Norway. http://www.snowchange.org/ Snowchange Network/Climatic Change and Northern Indigenous Nations. http://www.unl.edu/geography/IPKRC/ The Indigenous People’s Knowledge’s and Rights Commission of the International Geographical Union.

Environmental Policy C. Cocklin, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction It is widely acknowledged that ‘policy’ is a term that evades precise and agreed deﬁnition. Indeed, there is the often cited metaphor that deﬁning policy is like trying to describe an elephant – easy enough to recognize if you have seen one before, but difﬁcult to describe to those who have not. Most deﬁnitions refer to policy, in one way or the other, as agenda setting combined with action. One useful way of representing policy is by estab lishing its relation to other aspects of decision making and action, as in the following hierarchical arrangement: Policy – the setting of direction and broad intent, • objectives (e.g., an objective to reduce greenhouse gas

• •

emissions); Program – a strategy and management framework for achieving policy (e.g., to achieve the policy by reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from in dustry); and Plan – a speciﬁc element or aspect of a program (e.g., encourage emissions reductions by providing subsidies to implement energy efﬁciency in industry).

It is common also to deﬁne policy with reference to a decision making process in which it is imbedded. Fig ure 1, for example, illustrates a ‘policy cycle’ that shows a sequence originating with the identiﬁcation of an issue or problem, agenda setting, and the enlistment of support, implementation, and monitoring and review. The clear implication is that policy is a systematic, ordered process by which issues are deﬁned and attended to in a logical sequence. This is what is sometimes referred to as the ‘rational’ or ‘prescriptive’ planning model. The risk in such rep resentations, though, is that they suggest that policy statements are systematically implemented in such a way as to give direct force to the stated policy imperatives. Alternative representations of policy point to the fact that there are uncertainties and ambiguities that typify planning and preclude the implementation of the so called rational model. For example, Lindblom’s well known representation of policy as ‘disjointed incre mentalism’ highlights the fact that policy problems are not always clearly deﬁned, that there may be conﬂict among goals and objectives, that alternatives are not fully

Problem definition

Identify options

Modify or terminate

Stake holder consultation

Review

Evaluate options

Implement preferred option

Evaluate outcomes

Monitor outcomes

Figure 1 The policy cycle. Modiﬁed from Thomas, I. (2005). Environmental Management: Processes and Practices for Australia. Sydney: The Federation Press.

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considered, and that rarely is there any one clear cut solution. It is also the fact that policy statements are in many instances instruments of ‘politics’ (in both public and private realms) as opposed to being genuine statements of intent.

Environmental Policy and Sustainability In the time since the term ‘sustainable development’ achieved widespread exposure through the publication of the Brundtland Report – ‘Our Common Future’ – environmental policy almost everywhere has been aligned with this term. The Brundtland deﬁnition – sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs – is undoubtedly the most widely cited. However, the voluminous literature around sustainability and sustain able development has spawned numerous others. For example, the ‘natural step’, a framework for organizations to orient their activities in support of sustainable devel opment, establishes four ‘system conditions’ for sustain ability: do not mine materials faster than they replenish, do not produce substances faster than they can be broken down by natural processes, do not harvest renewables faster than they are replenished, and human needs must be met fairly and efﬁciently. The interlocking circles representing the three arenas of environment, economy, and society – the ‘fellowship of the rings’ (Figure 2) – has also become a mainstay in deﬁning sustainability/sustainable development. The notion of the ‘triple bottom line’ is an immediate de rivative of this early conceptualization of the terms. These and the numerous other deﬁnitions that have been advocated have given rise to the comment that the terms sustainability and sustainable development have

become effectively meaningless. However, while some people have lamented the lack of consensus on deﬁnition, to do so overlooks the fact that communities and societies will always contest the relative emphasis that is given to economic growth, social justice, and environmental protection. It should therefore be taken as given that sus tainability will be subject to mediation through social contest and debate. The objective then shifts from a fruitless search for agreed meaning to one of understanding the many and often competing perspectives on sustain ability and to understanding how these contests play out in social space – the role of actors, the multiple constructions of meaning, power relationships, the authority of com peting knowledges and discourses, and the implications of the many and varied pathways toward sustainability. Thus, we can acknowledge that: sustainability involves balance and compromise • among social, economic, and environmental priorities,

• • •

•

or what is now popularly referred to as the ‘triple bottom line’. sustainability refers to ‘progress toward’ (or ‘retro gression from’) preferred futures, rather than to a deﬁned endpoint. This means that sustainability is not an absolute concept, but a relative one. deﬁnitions and interpretations of sustainability are socially contested, because people assign different priorities to social, economic, and environmental assets and outcomes. some indicators may point to communities that are progressing toward or retrogressing from sustainability (e.g., rising/falling incomes, increasing/decreasing population, and increasing/decreasing employment), but these indicators are not consistently reliable markers of direction. sustainability implies equity, both within con temporary society (intragenerational) and in terms of the legacy for future generations (intergenerational).

While it is important to acknowledge the vast literature that has emerged around the deﬁnitional aspects of sustainability, the important point here is that ‘sustain able development’, as imprecise as it may be, has become ‘the’ point of convergence for environmental policy internationally. It would be difﬁcult today to ﬁnd state ments of environmental policy that do not enlist the term in one way or another.

Biological system

Economic system

541

Social system

Figure 2 The three dimensions of sustainability.

The Internationalization of Environmental Policy Environmental policy entered the main stage in the late 1960s and early 1970s, following the publication of a number of inﬂuential works that documented the extent and severity of environmental degradation around the

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world. Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which documented the use and effects of agricultural chemicals is often held to have been the ﬁrst of these signiﬁcant contributions. Others of note include The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle, and Garret Hardin’s famous essay ‘The tragedy of the commons’. Amidst a precipitous rise in social concern about the environment, governments were pressured to respond through the development of environmental policy and its enactment through legislation and environmental management strategies. In this regard, the United States’ Environmental Policy Act was a landmark piece of legislation, followed rapidly by essentially similar regulations throughout much of the Western world. From these early days and through until about the late 1980s, the impetus came from concerns for environ mental degradation at national and regional scales and almost all of the environmental policy and legislation that came into force was, accordingly, national in its origins and scope. However, from about the 1980s, interest began to shift from environmental change that was nationally scaled to observed changes in environ mental quality that are transnational or have global reach. Acid deposition, depletion of the ozone layer, and human induced climate change are the archetypes in this regard. The history of international agreements on the environment can be traced back to the 1940s, but it was post 1980 that the number of agreements, treaties, and conventions proliferated, leading to the international ization of environmental policy. International policy in any domain can be difﬁcult since, as Timothy O’Riordan (1995) pointed out, it requires nations to surrender, in some measure, their national sovereignty – that is, ‘‘the freedom to act as a sovereign state must be circumscribed by an obligation to respect the legitimate interests of other sovereign states.’’ In order for this to occur, he suggests that three conditions must be met: Mutual advantage, which requires recognition by all states that cooperation and compliance is better than if one or more states does not observe the collective agreements; Credible threat, suggesting that there is accepted science in regard to the environmental threat and that noncompliance is not in the interest of nations individually nor collectively; and Credible enforcement, being recognition among nations that compliance will be enforced and non compliance will be penalized. This concise structure helps us to comprehend why, at a simple level, it has been easier to get international agreement on some issues than others. In the case of ozone depletion, for example, the science was relatively

unequivocal (credible threat), and it is reasonably clear that most nations were at risk to some degree from the further enlargement of the holes in the ozone layer (mutual advantage). In contrast, there was equivocation for a long time about the science of human induced climate change, and even now there is an acknowledg ment that some nations will beneﬁt in some ways from global warming (e.g., some Northern Hemisphere nations, such as Canada and Russia). These two ‘ambi guities’ go a long way in explaining why it has been so difﬁcult to achieve international agreement on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The issue of enforcement is a persistent concern in terms of international environmental policy and regu lation, and there is widespread acknowledgment that compliance is essentially voluntary – there is little in a material way that the international community can do to penalize noncompliance. Even so, international inﬂu ences on policy relating to the environment have increased markedly over the last three decades; with so many of the major threats to environmental quality being sourced internationally and having global consequences, the environmental policy agenda will inevitably remain an important expression of globalization.

From Government to Governance Environmental policy, conservation, and the management of natural resources were once the function of appointed ofﬁcials in the public sector. More recently, environ mental policy and management has been constructed as a broader project, requiring the direct involvement of communities, individuals, nongovernment organizations, and the corporate sector. Thus, a tendency has emerged for responsibility for environmental protection and management in support of the public interest to be as signed more broadly. Changes in the role of government as regards environmental policy have occurred in response to social, economic, and technological changes that societies have undergone in the past several decades. This includes a shift from ‘government’ deﬁned strictly by the nation state to a more inclusive concept of ‘governance’ which recognizes the contributions of various levels of govern ment (global and transnational/regional/local) as well as the roles of the private sector, nongovernmental actors, and civil society. The emergence of these new forms of governance has been attributed to the need for new institutions to ad dress the more complex problems of present day society. Ideology and economic globalization have also played a role in the shift from government to governance. Free market competition is now perceived by many actors as superior to government direction of the economy and

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commercial activities. This is partly the consequence of the fact that trade liberalization and privatization have diminished the ability of governments to directly control their economies. While some believe that globalization has made national governments less powerful, others argue that rather than simply eroding government power, globalization has changed the ways in which governments operate and inﬂuence situations. For example, the three key institutional sectors of society – government, market, and civil society – have begun to work in closer col laboration, partnering with each other in multiple and diverse ways when their goals are common. Of course, this is not to imply that they always, or even mostly work in partnership or have priorities that are aligned, but it does mean that they have so more often than they did, including in terms of environmental policy objectives. The nature of global governance on a range of issues, including the environment, is today best understood not only as what states do but also as a combination of that which the state, civil society, and markets do, or do not do. The concept of sustainability has raised many questions about the traditional development model and the relationship between society, economy, and the environment. It has also raised questions about the suitability of the traditional government model to meet the demands of managing the environment and economy sustainably. Thus, responsibility for environ mental management has been shifted upward to inter national bodies and to transnational companies, and downward to local governments, businesses, and resource users. In addition, individuals play a greater role in the environment as consumers, private owners of land, and participants in the policy discourse, as does civil society. The more prominent role that businesses and civil society groups have played in governance has not been without controversy. Some believe that only the state can act in the public interest, while industry and citizens are motivated by self interest. Others see all actors as mo tivated by self interest and, in this context, believe that competition and the market ensure the best outcomes – public and private. According to this view, civil society, consumers, and industry bear greater responsibility and share the risks, while the state maintains a role in setting standards and auditing performance. While the roles, responsibilities, and powers assigned to the respective actors remain a contested subject, it is widely acknowledged that the responsibility for the environment and sustainability has become a much broader project, no longer primarily the preserve of governments, but one involving civil society, the private sector, and the state. Thus, success in achieving en vironmental policy objectives and sustainable develop ment depends on the institutional capability of people in all arenas – the state, the market, and the community.

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Policy Cultures and Styles The acknowledgment that the governance of the en vironment and natural resources is evolving has been accompanied by an increasing recognition of the differ ences among policy cultures and styles. One of the main lines of distinction that has been drawn is between the command and control approach to environmental policy and regulation and the ‘cooperative’ approach to policy design, which relies more on voluntary behaviors than mandatory legal instruments. Further, it has been demonstrated that there are distinctive national ‘policy styles’ which, among other things, reveal different propensities to adopt coercive or cooperative policy designs. In seeking to explain the incidence of policy styles, Richardson et al. (1982) suggested that it arises from the convergence of: ‘‘(a) the government’s approach to problem solving and (b) the relationship between government and other actors in the policy process.’’ From these constructs, they derived a typology of styles that distinguish national approaches according to whether they are anticipatory or reactive and whether the approach is consensual or coercive. Policy styles will manifest themselves in speciﬁc aspects of policy design and implementation. Rayner (1993), for example, suggested that variations in political culture exert an inﬂuence on the selection of policy instruments. Thus, countries will differ in their reliance on regulatory, voluntary, and market based instruments ac cording to the prevailing policy style, which in turn may be inﬂuenced by the power exercised by different stake holders (such as civil society, industry, and government) and political culture. Differences in policy cultures and styles may also manifest themselves in the nature of ‘policy learning’. Dovers (2005) distinguishes four different forms of policy learning: Instrumental learning, which refers to reﬂection on the performance of policy tools; Government learning, being an evaluation of the performance of administrative arrangements and processes; Social learning, which evaluates constructions of policies and goals; and Political learning, an evaluation of how to inﬂuence political and policy processes. These forms of learning are essential to the effective monitoring and evaluation of policy. Clearly, the policies to which these processes of evaluation are applied vary with policy styles and cultures, and they will variably reinforce or reorient policy design and implementation in accordance with those same styles and cultures.

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Vo

nts trume

Regu atory ins

ins

tru me nt

s

ary nt lu

Motivational, information and education incentives

Pr

ic e

-b as

e d i n s tr u m e n

ts

Figure 3 Policy instruments. Adapted from Young, M., Gunningham, N., Elix, J. et al. (1996). Reimbursing the Future: An Evaluation of Motivational, Voluntary, Price-Based, PropertyRight and Regulatory Incentives for the Conservation of Biodiversity. Canberra: Department of Environment and Heritage.

Policy Instruments Policymakers can call upon on an array of mechanisms in support of environmental policy (Figure 3). The main categories of policy instruments are regulation (com mand and control), market based (economic) instru ments (MBIs), voluntary approaches, and education and information. The approaches are not mutually exclusive: all rely to some extent on education and information provision, which is signiﬁed in Figure 3 by the central placement of this category. For example, voluntary approaches include self regulation, while economic instruments might be underpinned by regulation. In concert with the changing nature of environmental governance generally, the balance in the use of these instruments is changing from what was once a pre dominant reliance on regulatory methods to a much greater resort to market based and voluntary approaches. Accordingly, greater responsibility is being transferred to the individual, either directly through the market as an instrument of policy or through policy prescrip tions that individualize the responsibility for the environment. In most nations, environmental policy has historically relied on the use of public regulation, which is often associated with command and control instruments, such as zoning, discharge standards, licensing, bans or limits on inputs and outputs, and requirements in terms of tech nology and design. Despite their widespread use, regu latory measures are considered by some people to be

inﬂexible, intrusive, and inefﬁcient; in many cases, they have failed to change behavior with respect to the environment. Accordingly, in recent years, there has been a trend in many Western nations toward self regulation, in which private interests (such as farmers, companies, and individuals), rather than governments, regulate to protect the public good. Examples of private interest regulatory mechanisms include industry codes of prac tice, environmental certiﬁcation, eco labeling programs and agreements between interest groups and industry. There is a growing interest in quality control codes and certiﬁcation systems, particularly in manufacturing, agriculture, and food processing industries. Although there is no legal enforcement, governments can inﬂuence the design, implementation, and impact of private regu lation in a variety of ways. Thus, governments are showing interest in a greater reliance on self regulation and voluntary standards, together with a statutory duty of care for the environment, on the basis that everyone who could inﬂuence the risk of environmental harm should be required to take all reasonable and practical steps to prevent any foreseeable harm from their actions. This is an important shift in the approach to policy implementation. The progressive shift of responsibility to individuals, ﬁrms, and communities has been accompanied by an emphasis on the development of voluntary or partnership programs involving individuals and community groups undertaking local projects for environmental remedia tion. The strategies of partnerships, self help, and com munity empowerment have been used to encourage participation and to promote the idea that environmental problems are best addressed through communities working together and with government and industry. Advantages might include increased public participation in decision making, which is now sometimes associated with what is called ‘deliberative democracy’. The positive rhetoric surrounding partnerships and civic environ mentalism is counterbalanced by a wide range of concerns, however. These refer to the implications of imbalances of power in partnerships, volunteer burnout in community based programs, an absence of strategic direction in terms of environmental outcomes, and a lack of adequate resources. To overcome the limitations of both voluntary and regulatory approaches, there has been an increasing interest in, and acceptance of, the use of economic in struments in support of environmental policy objectives. These market like mechanisms aim to internalize nega tive environmental externalities, for example, by creating markets in carbon, biodiversity, and salinity. Economic instruments provide ﬁnancial incentives/disincentives that, in many cases, are likely to engender better responses to environmental issues, while avoiding the complexities and prescriptive nature of legislation.

Environmental Policy

Although the enthusiasm for economic instruments is widespread, they have also been subject to critical assessment. There are equity issues and prospective operational problems arising from the deﬁnition of property rights and organizational capacity. A review of the use of economic instruments in the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development (OECD) nations revealed ‘no black and white picture of their general success’. The success of policy instruments relies on matching them to the particular ecological, political, and economic situation and to the capabilities of institutions and stake holders. It is not necessarily a matter of developing new tools and instruments, but designing a ‘mix’ of policy instruments that is best suited to the circumstance. It has also been established that the attitudes and outlook of stakeholders (e.g., industry, individuals, and land man agers) are fundamental considerations in bringing about changes in environmental practices. To succeed, new policy approaches require the cooperation of these stake holders. Thus, the effective and efﬁcient implementation of policy and management strategies by government relies, in part, on an understanding of what stakeholders regard as the key issues that inﬂuence those decisions that in turn impact on the environment, how they are responding to these issues, their disposition toward various policy and

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management tools, and their past experience in working with government agencies. See also: Environment; Environmental Justice; Environmental Regulation; Environmental Security; Governance; Public Policy; Sustainability; Sustainable Development.

Further Reading Barde, J. P. and Smith, S. (1997). Do economic instruments help the environment? OECD Observer 204, 22 26. Dovers, S. (2005). Environment and Sustainability Policy: Creation, Implementation, Evaluation. Sydney: The Federation Press. Lindblom, C. (1968). The Policy Making Process. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. O’Riordan, T. (ed.) (1995). Environmental Science for Environmental Management. Harlow: Longman Group. Rayner, S. (1993). Introduction to the special issue: National case studies of institutional capabilities to implement greenhouse gas reductions. Global Environmental Change 3(1), 7 11. Richardson, J., Gustafsson, G. and Jordan, J. (1982). The concept of policy style. In Richardson, J. (ed.) Policy Style in Western Europe, pp 11 16. London: George Allen and Unwin. Thomas, I. (2005). Environmental Management: Processes and Practices for Australia. Sydney: The Federation Press. Young, M., Gunningham, N., Elix, J. et al. (1996). Reimbursing the Future: An Evaluation of Motivational, Voluntary, Price Based, Property Right and Regulatory Incentives for the Conservation of Biodiversity. Canberra: Department of Environment and Heritage.

Environmental Regulation P. McManus, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Beyond Compliance A term used to describe a situation where a corporation exceeds the regulatory standards, possibly for ethical reasons, to gain competitive advantage or to improve public relations. California Effect A situation where a dominant trading partner can introduce more stringent regulations that other countries eventually follow so as to maintain trade links. Command and Control Regulation The direct regulation of an industry or activity by legislation that states what is permitted and what is illegal. Dual Standards Where a corporation applies higher standards in the country of its head ofﬁce, or in countries with similar environmental regulations and enforcement mechanisms, and applies lesser standards to their operations beyond their home base. Firm–Based Global Environmental Standards A uniform set of product and process requirements that must be adhered to by all of a ﬁrm’s activities around the world. Public-Sector Regulation This is the regulation of government departments and their activities. Race to the Bottom A scenario where environmental regulation is reduced in order to attract or retain businesses in a particular location. Regulatory Capture A situation where a government regulatory agency serves the interests of the industry it is supposed to regulate. Regulatory Convergence A situation where the regulations of a dominant trading partner are adopted in other jurisdictions in order to maintain export markets. Self-Regulation (Voluntary Regulation) Regulation of environmental, safety, or other issues by corporations, or an industry representative association, instead of government regulation.

Introduction Environmental regulation refers to the imposition of limitations or responsibilities on individuals, corpor ations, and other entities for the purpose of preventing environmental damage or improving degraded environ ments. In this article, the term refers to both the use of legislation through parliaments and the regulations established by organizations mandated to protect the

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environment. Environmental regulation is one possible approach to environmental management and is often used in conjunction with other compatible approaches. Regulation occurs in many spheres of activity. Environmental regulation has a long history, but it became increasingly important in the latter half of the twentieth century. The advantages and disadvantages of environmental regulation are common to many sectors where regulation has been adopted. These advantages and disadvantages have meant that while many people support environmental regulation, there are also groups lobbying to reduce the amount of environmental regu lation and to change the character of environmental regulation. Environmental regulation limits the unfettered growth of an individual business, but it provides the conditions for overall growth over a long period of time. This may be achieved by protecting the quantity of environmental resources (e.g., ﬁsh and trees) or the quality of the resources (e.g., by preventing pollution ﬂowing into water bodies). More recently, it has been recognized that higher environmental standards may enable a country to develop beneﬁcial domestic indus tries and achieve economic growth through export pro duction, or provide the clean up technology that can be exported to other countries that have degraded their environment.

History Early History of Environmental Regulation Many of the early examples of environmental regulation are either undocumented or subject to interpretation about the exact nature of the regulation and its effect iveness. One of the earlier examples of environmental regulation that is often cited, usually inaccurately, is the banning of coal burning in the reign of Edward I of England. Air pollution caused by the burning of cheap surface coal that had been imported to London by sea (hence the term sea coal) was considered a serious problem in London by the late thirteenth century. It appears that there were restrictions on burning coal from 1273. It is difﬁcult to say whether King Edward I or his successors favored regulating the burning of coal, or whether it was pressure from citizens that led to a proclamation in 1306 that prohibited the use of sea coal. The extent of the ban – whether this was limited to when parliament was in session, whether it included selling and burning,

Environmental Regulation

and whether it applied to both tradespeople and householders trying to keep warm – appears to vary in the literature. The enforcement mechanism, that is, the burning of sea coal was made a capital offence, is also disputed, as is the record of one offender being executed. Supposedly, citizens continued to burn sea coal in vio lation of the law, because few could afford the cost of wood. Whether accurate in all details or not, this story highlights many of the issues that need to be considered when imposing environmental regulations. Air pollution was a target for early environmental regulation because the perpetrators were relatively few, and there were many affected people. It is possible to discriminate against certain people through environ mental regulation. For example, in the regulation of London coal burning in the early fourteenth century, the lime burners who were blamed for early air pollution were also often accused of unfairly raising prices. Many colliers and some lime burners were Northerners, and this may have made them a deﬁnable target. The environmental regulation of air quality in the US arose because of health issues and concerns about the reputation of cities such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. In 1869, an ordinance was passed in Pitts burgh that made it illegal to burn soft coal in locomotives within the city boundaries. This was ineffective. In Milwaukee, a technical ﬁx was attempted, again without success. It was not until the 1890s that legal action started to become effective, and polluting industries often relocated beyond the city boundaries. By 1897, many large US cities had passed ordinances where the responsibility to control smoke emissions rested with ofﬁcials from the municipal health department. Regu latory responsibility resided with people, who had lim ited understanding of the processes that generated the smoke, but it avoided early regulatory capture as the interests of the industrialists and health ofﬁcials were not easily aligned. Apart from the removal of certain indus tries beyond the city borders, another important solution to the smoke problem was not regulation but substitution, whereby steam locomotives were replaced with electric rail systems in most of the larger US cities in the early twentieth century. Problems of smoke in cities persisted well into the twentieth century and have partly been addressed by the decline of some industries and their replacement by imports from countries such as China. Other early forms of environmental regulation were concerned with the separation of incompatible uses to avoid odors, noise, and loss of amenity to people. This often had a negative effect, however, as undesirable facilities were isolated and could cause environmental damage without being observed. An example of moving facilities away from people was the regulation of slaughterhouses and abattoirs. Formerly, the slaughter houses operated in residential areas, and blood was

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washed away down the streets. Beginning in Paris under the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806, the slaugh terhouses were reorganized as abattoirs outside of the city. The expansion of Paris necessitated further reorganization when new abattoirs were built at La Villette in the late 1860s and Vaugirard in the late 1890s. Other cities around the world adopted this example. In the case of Sydney (Australia), in 1849 the Slaughter Houses Act forbade new slaughtering operations within, and within 2 miles (3 km) of, the City of Sydney’s boundaries. In essence, early environmental regulation addressed visible environmental problems, particularly where there were few sources of the problem, many people impacted, health was an issue, and there were opportunities to reduce the problem by spatially separating the source from the receiving population. It is often referred to as command and control regulation. More Recent Environmental Regulation Environmental regulation occurred in the early part of the twentieth century, but it was often enforced at the city or state/provincial level. This led to discrepancies between jurisdictions, which could be exploited. The overall quality of the environment was not being addressed because of a lack of consistency in regulations. It also meant that companies operating in more than one jurisdiction had to follow a myriad of regulations. One example of different environmental regulations, and the use of environmental regulations in conjunction with other approaches, was how the City of St. Louis, in 1939, regulated against the use of high volatile coal. In the winter of 1940–41, the city secured low volatile coal from Arkansas and made arrangements with a railroad for its transport, so it could be available for domestic use at low cost. In contrast, the city of East St. Louis across the Missouri River continued to burn high volatile coal and suffered serious smoke problems. There was a signiﬁcant growth in environmental regulation in the 1970s, following the increase in en vironmental awareness in the 1960s. In the USA, the rise of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) saw a proliferation of new environmental regulations. The implementation of various measures (e.g., pollution control, waste management, and water issues) meant that the states were responsible for planning and imple menting these measures, albeit with EPA funding (which was a means of controlling the operations of potentially recalcitrant states). This approach has been criticized by many commentators, ranging from authors writing from a libertarian perspective who critiqued the rise of big government through to sympathetic critiques from authors who participated in this legislative expan sion, but believed that it added unnecessary costs to

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corporations, was unpredictable in its impacts, lacked effective coordination and sometimes simply transferred the environmental issues to other categories (a shell game) rather than effectively addressing environmental concerns. The 1980s were a time of reducing the role of the national government in the USA. President Ronald Reagan’s administrations (1981–89) attempted to reduce the role of the federal government in environmental matters through deregulation, defunding federal agencies and introducing tax cuts so that there would not be money available for future expansion and devolution of many functions to state and local levels. Hence, de regulation was achieved not just by changing or deleting the regulations but also by reducing the budget and staff available to implement and enforce the regulations. This example was followed in a number of other countries. Despite the ideologies and rhetoric of various political leaders, almost without exception, there has been an increase in regulatory activity, regulatory personnel, and regulatory budgets. The rare exception (see Figure 1) was the decline in real administrative costs of federal regulation in the USA during the early to mid 1980s. In the ﬁgure, the social category includes consumer safety and health, homeland security, transportation, workplace, environment, and energy. The formation of the EPA in the USA in 1970 partly contributed to the rise in social expenditures during the 1970s. The importance of en vironmental protection through regulation increased during the presidency of Bill Clinton (1989–97), but the biggest increase in social expenditure in recent years has been the regulation related to homeland security, par ticularly following the airplane attacks on prominent sites in the US on 11 September 2001.

The level at which environmental regulation occurs has also changed, with greater emphasis on international, supraregional (as in the European Union), and national regulation, in contrast to city or state based regulation. In some cases, the expansion in environmental regulation has also resulted from changes in economic structure, where previously state owned enterprises have been privatized and sometimes split into competing corpor ations. The privatization process has highlighted the need for regulation given that the government can no longer control the operations of the entity through ownership mechanisms.

Challenges for Environmental Regulation There are numerous challenges to ensuring effective environmental regulation. These challenges range from ideological opposition to regulators interfering in market economies through to challenges derived from the characteristics of the environment and activities to be regulated. The ideological position is particularly chal lenging, because it inﬂuences the level of support for regulation among the public, and it may inspire certain governments (generally Republican in the US and con servative parties in other countries) to not regulate activities or to deregulate existing regulated activities. This challenge is refuted by environmental protection organizations who argue that effective environmental regulation is important in supporting a clean, competitive economy that creates jobs, reduces business risk, and generates markets for environmental goods and services. There are also challenges within the ﬁeld of en vironmental regulation. A number of these challenges are

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discussed in the subsections below. These challenges include the global consequences of particular issues (e.g., activities contributing to climate change), activities that may severely impact the health of people (especially if there is a lag time between the cause and effect), activ ities that involve widely dispersed but very small sources of pollution, the issue of regulatory capture, the chal lenge of transnational corporations spanning regulatory jurisdictions, the increasing need to regulate public sector activities as the nature of government departments changes, the challenge to the legitimacy of environmental regulation resulting from clauses in international trade agreements, the rise of indigenous issues, and the legit imacy and jurisdiction of environmental regulation by governments (particularly in countries such as Australia and Canada), and the characteristics of particular environments and activities to be regulated. The issue of regulating particular environments is complex. The effective regulation of ﬁshing requires an understanding of ﬁsh breeding, habitats, numbers, and so on, in addition to an awareness of ﬁshing activity and the capacity and likelihood to overﬁsh. Given that the ﬁsh are underwater and do not stay still, there is a potential to overestimate ﬁsh numbers. Once regulations have been set, there is also the need to enforce these regulations because the nature of the industry (including unpatrolled oceans) means that there is greater potential for illegal ﬁshing, which has cumulative impacts on ﬁsh numbers. The environmental regulation of products, such as steel production, may be challenging for other reasons. If two pieces of steel appear similar, how does anybody know if one piece has been produced with signiﬁcantly more environmental degradation than the other? The production process needs to be regulated to ensure that environmental issues, as well as working conditions and payments, are addressed satisfactorily. The range of environmental issues to be regulated (including water, biodiversity, climate, pollution, noise, etc.), the forms and levels of regulation, and the divergent interests of various corporations, countries, and inter national organizations mean that environmental regu lation is a contested and controversial activity. Compliance and Beyond Compliance Compliance is a challenge, but there are many reasons why ﬁrms comply with environmental regulation, or in some cases go beyond what are the minimum environ mental regulations. Corporate executives are likely to weigh up the costs and beneﬁts of compliance and non compliance in relation to proﬁts, corporate image, and future regulation activity. There is also the risk of de tection, the severity of corporate and personal penalties (including ﬁnes and imprisonment), and the beneﬁts to the corporate image of being perceived as a good

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corporate citizen. There have been many debates about the impacts of environmental regulation on corporate behavior, including whether ﬁrms seek out locations of minimal environmental regulation. Recent evidence from the US suggests that rather than moving to pollution havens, many pollution intensive industries also have high demands for human and physical capital, and needs such as a highly skilled workforce are best met in de veloped countries which often have greater political stability and more stringent environmental regulations. The literature on corporate adoption of beyond compliance approaches highlights the advantage of being a ﬁrst mover and possibly setting the parameters for the regulation of other players in the industry. One outcome of the move toward incentives as an approach to environmental protection is that corporations have greater choice than simply whether they should follow regulations or risk detection and penalties. This greater choice has encouraged research into the internal dynamics of corporations, with one ﬁnding being that noneconomic factors are important in inﬂuencing whe ther a ﬁrm adopts a particular environmental course of action. The corporation, in this analysis, is not the decision making entity but the internal dynamics between executives who hold different values is import ant in the decision to move beyond compliance. This approach is important because if it is effective, it can be used in conjunction with environmental regulation to encourage better environmental outcomes in a way that is more efﬁcient in terms of the economic costs of implementing regulation. Of course, it is easier to comply with environmental regulations if those regulations are not very stringent. This may be the case where regulatory capture has occurred. Corporations could be complying with en vironmental regulations, but the environment is still being destroyed. Regulatory Capture One of the potential problems of all regulation, including environmental regulation, is the phenomenon of regu latory capture. This occurs when a government regu latory agency serves the interests of the industry it is supposed to regulate. It is believed that many organiza tions will try to reduce the effectiveness of their regu lators by gaining political control of the regulatory body, or by obtaining more information and employing more effective staff to counter the regulatory body. Over time, there is often a two way transfer of staff between the regulator and regulated industries, thereby bringing them closer to each other. The historian, Gabriel Kolko, claimed that regulatory capture was a normal part of the relationship between business and regulatory bodies. It happens because the businesses that are regulated have

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a high stake in the outcome of the regulatory practice and, therefore, devote attention and resources to ensuring the outcomes are good for their business. This often means developing relationships between the regulators and those who are being regulated. Eventually, it may happen that the businesses being regulated actually desire this regulation, because it can reduce the likelihood of new entrants entering the industry. This can be seen in some Australian states with regulation of the sex industry, where police may enforce a policy of containment, which allows existing premises to continue but restricts the establishment of new premises. Similar examples occur in environmental regulation, where there is no intention of destroying an industry, even an unpopular one, because it still con tributes to economic growth, employment, and makes products that people use. The regulation of the industry is, however, problematic because regulation is needed, but if regulatory capture has occurred then it is very difﬁcult for the regulation to be effective. Transnational Corporations (TNCs) One of the most challenging issues for governance is the operations of TNCs whose operations span many national regulatory jurisdictions. It is often argued that TNCs have grown beyond the control of national governments and that national governments should deregulate to remain competitive with other countries. This approach is also seen as a race to the bottom in terms of environmental, worker safety, and other stand ards. The growing importance of the environmental movement in the 1980s and 1990s, at a time of the new right political ascendancy in the United Kingdom, the US, and other countries, meant that environmental issues were often regulated despite the rhetoric of deregulation espoused by some governments. This regulation extends to the operations of TNCs, particu larly in relation to poorer countries. For example, in 1994, the dumping, in poor countries, of hazardous waste produced in wealthier countries was banned by the Basel Convention, largely out of concern that toxic traders were acting as brokers for the hazardous waste. It was also easy for TNCs with operations in many countries to ship waste to the site of poorest environmental regulation and enforcement, especially if accepting the waste was perceived as a way of generating income for the poorer countries. TNCs have particular characteristics that limit their ability to be regulated. They possess greater ﬂexibility, mobility, and leverage that local companies do not enjoy. By way of contrast, their activities also have a higher proﬁle, and they are often scrutinized more than local companies. TNCs also have the ﬁnancial, technological, and managerial resources to devote to environmental

issues and the ability to absorb the costs of regulation within their operations. They are also more likely to be aware of environmental management developments abroad. The concern of many environmentalists and corporate watchdogs is that, despite these advantages, some TNCs operate dual or varying standards, generally applying higher standards in the country of their head ofﬁce or in countries with similar environmental regulations and enforcement mechanisms, and applying lesser standards to their operations beyond their home base. The extent to which this occurs is debated, especially given the importance of other factors such as political stability in some countries with lesser environmental standards. It is, however, a particular concern for environmental regu lation when the resource in question is located in poorer countries with limited environmental regulations and little means of enforcing them. This situation occurs in African countries in relation to oil exploitation, with the example of the operations of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group and the impacts on the Ogoni people of Southeast Nigeria being well documented. It also occurs in forestry, where tropical rain forests, which are mostly located in developing countries, have been cleared by TNCs. Forestry is an example of the spread of TNC activity, where TNCs from countries such as Malaysia have been instrumental in the destruction of tropical rainforests in countries such as Papua New Guinea. The resultant impacts include loss of biodiversity, erosion on steep slopes when heavy rainfall occurs, and negative social impacts on indigenous people. The tragic case in Bhopal, India, in 1984, is an example of the consequences of poor management of dangerous operations in a developing country. The US headquartered company Union Carbide operated a pesticide plant that leaked deadly gas which killed thousands of people and caused illness for many thou sands more local residents. The public relations disaster that may affect a corporation involved in such damaging environmental activity, which would therefore affect its share price, is partly offset by the ability of TNCs to engage issue management corporations to reduce the impacts of the problem on the TNC. The debates about varying standards of operation by TNCs in respect of environmental regulation involve two main arguments. On the one hand, commentators argue that this is an approach by TNCs to increase their proﬁts. On the other, commentators argue that TNCs are increasingly applying best practice in developing coun tries, because it is to their advantage to standardize their operations across the corporation. This means that they are operating beyond compliance in developing coun tries. The issue of systematic attempts to evade higher levels of environmental regulation is an issue that is still debated.

Environmental Regulation

Recent studies argue that increasingly stringent end market environmental regulation, plus concern to protect a ﬁrm’s reputation and operating legitimacy, is leading to ﬁrm based global environmental standards that exceed the environmental regulations of many poorer countries. This means that TNCs are applying ﬁrm based standards uniformly to all plants worldwide, rather than attempting to meet the local regulatory requirements where a plant is located. This is seen as a way of promoting improved performance within a corporation at a time when environmental regulations are proliferating at local, national, and international levels. Despite the existence of ﬁrm based global standards, environmental improve ment is still primarily driven by national and inter national environmental regulations. International Trade Agreements As discussed in relation to TNCs, trade can potentially lead to an improvement in environmental regulations and, if they are appropriate and administered effectively, an improvement in the environment. Trade is also seen as promoting regulatory improvement if an exporter wants to market products where there are many potential customers and relatively strict environmental regulations. The exporter must meet the requirements of this market, and, in doing so, is likely to have their home country adopt similar standards so the exporter can have uniform production requirements (thus achieving economies of scale) and not be undercut by domestic competitors complying with lower environmental standards. This has been termed the California Effect, where a dominant trading partner can introduce regulations that other countries eventually follow so as to maintain trade links. It is a case of regulatory convergence, rather than a divergent regulatory scenario which would characterize ‘a race to the bottom’ as countries compete with each other to lower environmental regulations in order to attract and retain businesses. The California Effect is only possible if trade agree ments do not restrict the right of states to introduce environmental regulations. The environment may be protected through international trade agreements, or these agreements may be used to prevent environmental regulations being enacted in particular countries, where it is deemed that an environmental regulation is being used to restrict trade. These trade agreements include global agreements, such as those made through the World Trade Organ ization, and regional agreements between a limited number of countries, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada, and Mexico. While these agreements may contain environmental provisions, and in the case of NAFTA an environmental side accord and a Commission for

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Environmental Cooperation based in Montreal, there is concern about how to apply environmental standards within the conﬁnes of these agreements. One such dis pute between Mexico and the US was about protecting dolphins when ﬁshing for tuna. Voluntary (Self-) Regulation by Corporations and Industries Considerable attention has been given to the notion of self regulation by corporations of environmental, health, and safety matters. Advocating the use of self regulation is often a move by corporations that anticipate the introduction of government regulation, or the strength ening of existing regulation. The desire to self regulate is a tactic to either avoid this form of regulation, or possibly to be prepared for it by phasing it in through a process of self regulation. The advocacy of self regulation may also be based on a belief that TNCs are beyond regulatory control and, therefore, this would be a waste of resources, but it may be possible for the corporations themselves to develop and enforce their own rules to meet public ex pectations. There is a danger in environmental depart ments relying on data provided by corporations, as was demonstrated in Britain by the US owned chemical company Sevalco discharging cyanide into the Severn Estuary between 1998 and 2002. The company was later ﬁned for the discharges and for falsifying records to conceal the offences. While some commentators favor self regulation and incentive based approaches to environmental manage ment, other commentators argue that there is a need for an effective regulator, backed by sufﬁcient legislative power and ﬁnancial resources, to ensure environmental protection.

Conclusion Environmental regulation is necessary. It can prevent the worst excesses, and the existence of regulation and enforcement is itself an important deterrent. Environ mental regulation has resulted in environmental im provements, but it sometimes does impose what could be perceived as excessive costs on businesses. The costs and beneﬁts of regulation relative to other approaches should always be considered when contemplating how best to manage a particular environmental issue. Regulation is one of a number of tools to improve environmental quality, and it should be used effectively with other approaches such as incentives. While the history of environmental regulation shows that it has contributed to improved environmental outcomes, scientiﬁc evidence indicates that numerous environmental problems are worse now, and new issues emerge through technological developments in areas such as biotechnology, nuclear

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energy, and wind power that require some form of regulation. To leave each of these sectors unfettered may encourage competition and proﬁts within the sector, but at great expense to the rest of society and the environ ment. The economic costs of effective environmental regulation are signiﬁcantly lower than the environmental costs of irreversible environmental damage to the life systems of the planet. See also: Environment, Historical Geography of; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Governance, Corporate; Industrial Location; Industry, Historical Geographies of; Location Theory; Resource Industries; Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries; Waste Management.

Further Reading Anderson, T. L. (ed.) (1997). Breaking the Environmental Policy Gridlock. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University. Andrews, R. (1999). Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy. New Haven, CT: Yale. Angel, D. P. and Rock, M. T. (2005). Global standards and the environmental performance of industry. Environment and Planning A 37, 1903 1918. Brimblecombe, P. (1987). The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London since Medieval Times. London: Methuen. Cochrane, K. and Doulman, D. (2005). The rising tide of ﬁsheries instruments and the struggle to keep aﬂoat. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 360, 77 94.

Cole, M., Elliott, R. J. R. and Shimamoto, K. (2005). Why the grass is not always greener: The competing effects of environmental regulations and factor intensities on US specialization. Ecological Economics 54, 95 109. Dudley, S. E. and Warren, M. (2005). The regulators’ growing budget. Regulation 28, 6 7. ENDS (2004). Sevalco: Driving a coach and horses through self regulation. ENDS Report 359, 23 26. Fowler, R. J. (1995). International environmental standards for transnational corporations. Environmental Law 25, 1 30. Hood, C., James, O. and Scott, C. (2000). Regulation of government: Has it increased, is it increasing, should it be diminished? Public Administration 78, 283 304. MacGill, I., Outhred, H. and Nolles, K. (2006). Some design lessons from market based greenhouse gas regulation in the restructured Australian electricity industry. Energy Policy 34, 11 25. Network of Heads of European Environment Protection Agencies (2005). The Contribution of Good Environmental Regulation to Competitiveness. Copenhagen: European Environment Agency. http://org.eea.eu.int/documents/prague statement/prague statement en.pdf (accessed Aug. 2008). Prakash, A. (2001). Why do ﬁrms adopt ‘beyond compliance’ environmental policies. Business Strategy and the Environment 10, 286 299. Vogel, D. and Kagan, R. (eds.) (2004). Dynamics of Regulatory Change: How Globalization Affects National Regulatory Policies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.citra.duq.edu Center for International Regulatory Assistance: European Environmental Regulations. http://www.epa.gov United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Environmental Security J. Barnett, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Environment The biological, physical, and chemical components and systems necessary for the process of life. Environmental Change The short- and long-term changes in biological, physical, and chemical components and systems resulting from both human activities and natural processes. Environmental Security The assurance that individuals and groups have that they can avoid or adapt to environmental change without critical adverse effects. Insecurity The risk of loss or damage to a thing that is important to survival and well-being. Security Freedom from the risk of loss or damage to a thing that is important to survival and well-being.

The Environment and Security The concept of environmental security has different meanings and is contested. This arises from the merging of two powerful yet equally ambiguous concepts – environment and security – and the diverse array of disciplines and schools of thought that contribute to the study of these two concepts. The way a person or a group understands each of these concepts informs their understanding of the combined concept of environmental security. In general, the environment refers to the biological, physical, and chemical components and systems neces sary to sustain life. Yet, this is a broad agenda within which there are multiple issues, such as resource scarcity (diminishing supplies of inputs into human systems) and pollution (the contamination of inputs into human sys tems), occurring at multiple scales (from global to local) and in different ways and to different degrees in places around the world. Environmental problems are now prominent political issues as a consequence of the increased scale of con sumption and pollution in modern high energy societies, which has caused large decreases in primary forest cover; biodiversity losses; depletion of ﬁsh stocks; land degrad ation; water pollution and scarcity; coastal and marine degradation; the contamination of people, plants, and animals by chemicals and radioactive substances; and climate change and sea level rise.

Security, too, is a nebulous concept. It can apply to many different things that are valued (referent objects such as jobs, health, the state, and territory) and refer to many different kinds of risks (such as unemployment, hunger, change of government, and invasion). Yet, the most powerful discourse about security concerns national security and the risks to it that originate from ‘Other’ living both beyond and within the territorially bounded nation state. As geographers and critical international relations scholars have shown, national security discourse is a discourse that manufactures and sustains particular kinds of identity through constructions of difference. Its primary function is to secure the nation state by justifying disciplining institutions. However, the end of the Cold War coupled with in creased interdependence between societies and countries created space for new ways of thinking about security as they rendered problematic the simple imaginaries of world space that national security institutions perpetu ated. These changes have opened space to consider myriad local, national, and global interactions that create security and insecurity and the way some people’s security occurs at the expense of others. The concept of environmental security has been a central issue in this process of deepening the scale and broadening the con tent of security. The end of the Cold War triggered a proliferation of articles and new research projects on environmental security. Yet, there was another broad change in world affairs that was also important in the development of environmental security as a research and policy issue. The growth of environmental consciousness in developed countries was necessary for environmental problems to be seen as serious enough to warrant calling them a security issue. This began in the 1960s with some high proﬁle studies of environmental problems and growth in the number of environmental nongovernmental organ izations, including the creation of large, international, environmental nongovernmental organizations, such as the World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace. The 1970s saw the beginning of inter national summits on environmental issues and an asso ciated proliferation of international agreements on the environment. The ﬁrst major global environmental summit was the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Preﬁguring the contemporary idea of environmental security, in the 1970s and 1980s, a number of peace and environmental scholars began to highlight the inability of national security institutions,

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and in particular the military, to manage common en vironmental problems that pose threats to international stability and national well being. Then, in 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development released its landmark report titled Our Common Future, which popularized the concept of sustainable develop ment, and introduced the term ‘environmental security’. This report in turn lead to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, which has had follow up conferences in 1997 and 2002 and which gave rise to major multilateral environmental treaties on climate change and biodiversity. During the Cold War, the discipline of international relations dominated the study of security. This inﬂuence grew in part because of the retreat of geographers from the study of world politics due to the perceived role of geopolitical theories in justifying the world wars. How ever, as security has become more pluralized – away from states and war and toward people and the multitudinous risks they must manage – it increasingly becomes a general concept of social science, and geographers and in particular critical geopolitics have increasingly been engaged with this rethinking of security. The ways in which old and many new interpretations of security imagine the world as a series of bounded spaces that contain ‘Others’, and the problematic practices that ﬂow from this simple geopolitical vision have been powerfully critiqued by geographers such as John Agnew, Simon ´ . Tuathail. These Dalby, Klaus Dodds, and Gearo´id O insights carry over into the study of environmental se curity, particularly through the inﬂuential work of Simon Dalby. Geographers have also long been engaged with the study of environmental problems, a tradition that can be dated to early founders of the discipline such as Alexander von Humboldt and Peter Kropotkin. Research from human–environment geographers, such as Steve Lonergan, Michael Redclift, and Michael Watts, has also informed the study of environmental security. In these and other ways, geographers have been and continue to engage with research on environmental security. The plurality of meanings of environmental security can be categorized into six principal interpretations. First, environmental security can be seen as being about the impacts of human activities on the environ ment. Second, environmental security can be seen to be about the impacts of the military–industrial complex, including war, on the environment. Third, environmental change can be seen as a security problem common to all states, therefore requiring collective action. Fourth, environmental change can be seen as a threat to national security. Fifth, environmental change has been identiﬁed as a possible cause of violent conﬂict. Sixth, environmental change can be seen as a risk to human security. The following discussion focuses only on the last three of these interpretations, as they have been the

most prominent in terms of research and their inﬂuence on policy.

Environmental Change and National Security The majority of interpretations of environmental security work from existing theories of international relations – which by and large take the preeminence of national security for granted – and then factor in environmental issues. This was particularly the case in the early writings on environmental security, and it is one of the main reasons why there has been a lot of attention given to links between environmental change and violent conﬂict (since violent conﬂict is the preeminent concern of international relations). However, irrespective of whether environmental change is a factor in violent conﬂicts, it can in many less subtle ways undermine national security. In the ﬁrst instance, environmental change can weaken the economic base that determines military capacity. In many countries, natural resources and environmental services are important to economic growth, and income from primary sectors like agri culture, forestry, ﬁshing, and mining, and from environ mentally dependent services like tourism, can be lessened by environmental change. For example, China’s rapid economic growth – which has funded its military mod ernization program – is increasingly being seen to be ecologically unsustainable as water shortages, water pollution, air pollution, and land degradation all appear to be increasing. Most environmental problems that countries face are caused by endogenous activities. However, some problems are largely beyond their control. Examples of these include global emissions of ozone depleting sub stances increasing incidences of skin cancer in countries in the Southern latitudes, the long lived environmental (and social) impacts of nuclear weapons tests conducted during colonial times in French Polynesia and the Marshall Islands, the impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident on countries in Eastern Europe, the impacts of forest ﬁres in Indonesia on air pollution and health in Malaysia and Singapore, and the impacts of global emissions of greenhouse gases on low lying countries and countries with high climatic variability. It seems appropriate to call such transboundary ﬂows national security problems in as much as their impact can be equal to, or greater than the magnitude of impacts associated with war (measured in terms of, say, the effective loss of territory, the loss of life, increasing morbidity, or economic contraction). Nevertheless, there are problems associated with idea that some environmental problems are national security issues. The military threats that traditionally concern

Environmental Security

national security theory and policy are different from environmental threats in that they are deliberately im posed, and the cause of the threat is easily identiﬁable. In contrast, environmental risks are typically externalities of economic activity, and their causes are often uncertain. Linking environmental issues to national security also may not galvanize the kind of attention and action on environmental problems that traditional military threats do. Indeed, it may serve to strengthen existing security logic and institutions through, for example, strategies to engage the military in environmental activities, and preparations to ﬁght the so called environmentally in duced conﬂicts. As Simon Dalby has shown, environ mental issues can be appropriated by dominant security discourse in this way, because its uncritical categorization of space as national territory is deeply rooted, robust, and adaptable, and because this discourse serves state power. Nevertheless, in as much as some environmental prob lems cross boundaries and scales of analysis, and stimu late political action above and below the state, such as occurs on the issue of climate change, then environ mental change also challenges the power of national security discourse and its institutions.

Environmental Change and Violent Conﬂict One of the major ways that environmental change may undermine national security is if it increases the risk of violent conﬂicts that can have dramatic local impacts, repercussions on trade and may demand international intervention on humanitarian grounds. While such con ﬂicts may not be the most serious outcome of environ mental change on most countries, because of the inﬂuence of national security institutions on the security research agenda, there has been a lot of research on the cause–effect relationships between environmental change and violent conﬂict. Yet, for as long as this has been a focus of research, critics have argued that the connections between environmental degradation and violence are ambiguous because of the methodological and theoretical difﬁculties in distinguishing environmental factors from the many other causes of violent conﬂicts. These dif ﬁculties are somewhat irreducible given the nature of violent conﬂict. Nevertheless, emerging from this research are some compelling arguments that environ mental change is one of the many factors – albeit rarely the most important – in the generation of violent con ﬂicts within, if rarely between, countries. Perhaps the most inﬂuential work on the connections between environmental change and violence is by polit ical scientist Thomas Homer Dixon and his colleagues at the University of Toronto. Homer Dixon examined cases where there was violent conﬂict and then sought to

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determine the inﬂuence of environmental factors in their generation. This method has its limitations, in particular, it ignores the many instances where environmental problems do not result in violent conﬂict, and its search for environmental factors leads to a downplaying of other many, varied, and arguably more important causal factors in the conﬂicts in question. There is also a tendency in Homer Dixon’s work to ignore previous studies of the particular conﬂict and the very large body of work on environment, resources, and social responses conducted by geographers and sociologists. The ﬁndings of this research include that: scarcity of renewable resources can at times lead to violent conﬂict and social instability; unequal con sumption of scarce resources is a critical factor in violent conﬂicts; violent conﬂicts where environmental scarcity is a factor are more likely in low income, resource dependent societies; population pressure is a contributing factor to violent conﬂicts; and when mechanisms that enable adaptation to environmental scarcity fail violent conﬂict is a more likely outcome. An alternative approach to the connections between environment and violence entails quantitative analyses of aggregated data to test the relationships between various environmental and social variables, including resource scarcity, population growth, resource abundance, dem ocracy, and poverty. A common ﬁnding of many of these studies is that ‘strong states’ with a high trade/GDP ratio tend to be less prone to internal conﬂicts and are more capable of managing environmental degradation and change. In contrast, states undergoing signiﬁcant eco nomic and political transitions are relatively more prone to internal violent conﬂict. Most of this quantitative research ﬁnds that relative and absolute poverty are important variables. Many studies ﬁnd that it is the abundance of natural resources as much their scarcity that drives conﬂict. However, none of the ﬁndings of these quantitative studies are particularly conclusive, as they are signiﬁcantly constrained by the quality of data they use. More importantly, while they show weak cor relations among variables, they are unable to describe how the associations that they ﬁnd occur. In contrast to the effort to identify environmental factors in violent conﬂicts, there has been some research that seeks to learn from and explore peaceful responses to environmental change. For the most part, this research concerns cooperation between states over shared resources, in particular transboundary rivers and seas. Geographers such as Tony Allan, Steve Lonergan, and Aaron Wolf have been very inﬂuential in demonstrating that the connections between water and conﬂict are not as straightforward as commonly assumed, and that transboundary waters may be more likely to cement peace between countries than stimulate conﬂict. This explicit focus on peace has yet to focus on smaller scales

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of cooperation, and the endeavor as a whole has yet to reach a stage of critical mass whereby clear ﬁndings can emerge. Geographers have played an important role in quali fying and contextualizing the connections between environmental change and violent conﬂict. Research ﬁrmly grounded in long standing environment–society studies conducted by geographers, as well as anthro pologists, and sociologists, has offered more detailed insights into environmental problems and violence. These studies have highlighted the importance of unequal outcomes of social and environmental changes, including the inadequate distribution of the returns from resource extraction activities, declining agricultural production, and unequal access to economic and political resources. Many of these studies show that communities affected by externally imposed resource extraction activities rarely comply with these develop ments without some exercise of resistance. They suggest that the success or failure of nonviolent resistance strategies is critical to understanding the generation of violence (or peace). In these more qualitative studies, a range of economic, political, and cultural processes that structure both material and institutional forms of power are seen to be more important that scarcity per se. That these studies have more explanatory power suggests that ways forward in this ﬁeld lie in research that grounds the effects of environmental changes in the local contexts in which agents sustain their lives and livelihoods, and that much can be learned from researching processes as they happen, and regardless of whether violent conﬂict is an outcome.

Environmental Change and Human Security Global environmental change impacts most often and most severely on people that have less material wealth, for example, on people who are undernourished and/or without a reliable supply of safe water. Environmental insecurity – the double vulnerability that arises from both poverty and environmental change – is at its most obvious in low income societies. This is not to say that people in high income societies are immune from the risks of global environmental change, as was clearly revealed in the damage caused to some middle income households in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Nevertheless, as is the case with all environmental hazards, Katrina showed that it is the poor who tend to suffer the most, and that vulnerability to environmental change is socially differentiated across gender, class, race, and age. The poor and the marginalized tend to be more vulnerable to environmental change for numerous

interlocking reasons. They are typically heavily dependent on natural resources and ecosystem services whose abundance and quality is at risk from environ mental changes. They are more likely to live in places that are affected by environmental degradation and hazards because land is cheaper or free in these places. Their homes frequently do not have adequate waste disposal services and water supply. They cannot afford insurance and rarely receive compensation for losses they incur. The poor and marginalized are often more food insecure due to smaller landholdings and poorer quality land, and/or because they have little purchasing power in food markets. Their property and labor rights are nonexistent or minimal and variable. They have less capacity to exercise their skills and act on their values and aspirations because of barriers to accessing infor mation, health care, and education. They have little voice in the decisions that affect them, be they the allocation of food at mealtimes, the allocation of land among villagers, the formulation of social welfare and land use policies, the development of large scale infrastructure projects, and the formulation of disaster and environmental management policies. They therefore tend to be more exposed, more sensitive, and less able to adapt to environmental change. Geographers such as Hans Bohle, Tom Downing, and Michael Watts have made critical contributions to understanding the ways in which these social determinants structure vulnerability to environ mental change. It is therefore the larger context of modernity and its contrapuntal forces – the limited alleviation of environ mental constraints for some and the exacerbation of en vironmental problems for others, the attainment of a certain kind of material well being and power for some and the exacerbation of poverty and powerlessness for others – that gives rise to the problem of global environmental change and as a risk to human security. Human security is a variable condition where people and communities have the capacity to manage stresses to their needs, rights, and values. Environmental change is a human security problem when it undermines the needs, rights, and values that are important to individuals and communities. The growing attention paid to environmental change as a human security issue does not ﬁt so well with the national security policy community. It does, however, have some appeal to the development policy community and to environmental groups and organizations. In the future, it is likely that the concept of environmental security as human security will become more central in the ﬁelds of environmental studies and development studies, and ﬁgure more prominently in their respective policy domains. A key institution in this respect is the Global Environmental Change and Human Security project, in which geographers have been inﬂuential.

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Conclusions When a problem is identiﬁed as a security issue, it can lead to dramatic state action to address that problem – at least as evidenced by the large proportion of national budgets spent on defence. This is one of the intentions of those environmentalists who promote the idea of environmental security; they seek to make it a matter of ‘high’ politics that warrants extraordinary responses from governments equal in magnitude and urgency to their response to more orthodox security threats. As a con sequence, environmental security has to some degree raised the proﬁle of environmental issues among foreign and security institutions, as well as development and aid institutions, so that there is now a general recognition that environmental changes can in some sense be con sidered as security issues. However, calling something a security problem can also lead to state monopolization of solutions. The most inﬂuential interpretations of environmental security are those that ﬁt well the dominant approach to national security. The security policy community and the armed forces, especially in the United States, have largely accepted the arguments that environmental change may be a cause of violent conﬂict, and that environmental problems in other countries are threats to national security. So environmental security is still largely understood to be about threats to the nation state rather than to the environment per se, to other states, or to individuals. This suggests that while environmental security may have broadened the idea of security, it has been less successful in changing its scale of reference. There are nevertheless some good reasons for con tinuing to use the concept of environmental security. Understood in terms of human security, the concept has gained some purchase with development agencies as it helps to capture the environmental risks that create vulnerability. It better communicates the critical nature of environmental problems such as climate change on countries most at risk, or the health impacts of water pollution, than standard concepts like sustainability or vulnerability. It can also help integrate local (human security), national (national security), and global (inter national security) levels of environmental change and response. It also serves as a boundary object that helps link international relations with development studies and environmental studies, and people from diverse arms of government, civil society, and academia across both the developed and developing worlds to produce new fusions of knowledge and awareness. Finally, there is value in continuing to contest the legitimacy of the dominant

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security paradigm by pointing to the contradiction between simple state based and military approaches to national security, and the complex, multiscale, and transboundary nature of environmental ﬂows. Indeed, the relevance of environmental security will most probably increase as the impacts of certain environmental prob lems seem set to increase: concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are ever increasing, and so will sea levels and the intensity of climatic hazards, such as cyclones, ﬂoods, and droughts; problems of nuclear waste have not been dealt with and the stockpile is still growing; and water demand is increasing but supply is relatively ﬁxed. See also: Critical Geopolitics; Environment; Livelihoods; Rio Summit; Sustainable Development.

Further Reading Baechler, G. (1999). Violence Through Environmental Discrimination: Causes, Rwanda Arena, and Conﬂict Model. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Barnett, J. (2001). The Meaning of Environmental Security: Ecological Politics and Policy in the New Security Era. London: Zed Books. Conka, K. and Dabelko, G. (eds.) (2002). Environmental Peacemaking. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Dalby, S. (2002). Environmental Security. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Deudney, D. and Matthew, R. (eds.) (1999). Contested Grounds: Security and Conﬂict in the New Environmental Politics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Diehl, P. and Gleditsch, N. (eds.) (2001). Environmental Conﬂict. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Homer Dixon, T. (1999). Environment, Scarcity, and Violence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Myers, N. (1996). Ultimate Security: The Environmental Basis of Political Stability. Washington, DC: Island Press. Peluso, N. and Watts, M. (eds.) (2001). Violent Environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development) (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.cusa.uci.edu Center for Unconventional Security Affairs (CUSA) at the University of California, Irvine. http://www.envirosecurity.org Institute for Environmental Security. http://www.wilsoncenter.org The Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, including the inﬂuential Environmental Change and Security Project Report. http://www.gechs.org The Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) Project. http://www.unep.org The United Nations Environment Programme.

Environmental Studies and Human Geography C. Sneddon, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Environmental Policy The realm of public policy that deals explicitly with environmental concerns through creation, negotiation, and implementation of environmental legislation and regulations at local, national, and global levels. Environmental Politics The realm of politics that deals explicitly with social conﬂicts over the access and use of resources, conﬂicting discourses over nature, and debates over solutions to environmental deterioration. Human–Environment Geography One of the core areas of the ﬁeld of geography, focusing on the dynamic interactions, at multiple scales, between the social sphere and a range of biophysical systems. Interdisciplinarity An approach to education and research that emphasizes the need to employ and integrate multiple approaches to knowledge production in order to confront the full complexity of societal problems. Sustainability The assortment of theories and practices that deﬁne and put into practice a normative vision of how to reconcile human activities with the longterm integrity of the planet’s biophysical systems.

Introduction As academic disciplines, the ﬁelds of geography and environmental studies share common themes of study, theoretical perspectives, and methodological approaches. They also differ according to how their relative coherence as a distinct academic discipline, how they deﬁne and employ interdisciplinarity, and how they relate to public opinion and public policy. Human geography is the part of geography that explores the patterns and processes that shape social relations and delineates human interactions with the environment. Human–environment geography deals directly with the latter, and typically requires some understanding of the dynamics of climatology, geology, ecology, hydrology, biogeography, and geomorphology, in addition to the multiple historical and social processes that produce the diversity of cultural, economic, and political institutions across the planet. Human–environment geography, as with human geography, employs a diverse array of qualitative and quantitative methods and method ologies, including case studies, historical research, textual

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analysis, survey research, and statistical analysis among others. Environmental studies, in a fashion similar to human–environment geography, examines how human interactions produce environmental changes and how those changes in turn inﬂuence social dynamics. It is a broad ﬁeld of inquiry that includes within its purview both the natural environment and human produced environments such as cities and agricultural systems. Environmental studies is strongly oriented toward the study of current environmental problems and the com plex set of biophysical, economic, political, and cultural dynamics that have produced them. The problem oriented nature of environmental studies has produced a strong set of linkages between its practitioners and a variety of policymakers and advocates in government agencies, the popular media, independent research in stitutes, nongovernmental organizations, and community groups. Roughly 400 colleges and universities in North America offer an undergraduate program in environ mental studies, and there are over 220 graduate programs in environmental studies. According to Educational Directories Unlimited, an online guide to graduate pro grams, there are an additional 150 graduate programs in environmental studies and hundreds of undergraduate programs with an environmental studies orientation beyond North America. This represents a remarkable rate of growth for a discipline that originated in the late 1960s. While environmental studies is by deﬁnition an interdisciplinary ﬁeld of study that embraces education and training in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, a majority of programs at both the under graduate and graduate level are ﬁrmly oriented toward environmental science. The variety of disciplinary expertise and course offerings in environmental studies is quite broad. Topics of study in the biophysical sciences include environmental chemistry, environmental toxicology, geophysical sciences, conservation biology, wildlife ecology, and host of applied ﬁelds oriented toward natural resources such as ﬁsheries, forestry, water resources, and the like. The breadth of social science approaches within environmental studies is similarly wide, spanning anthropology, environmental sociology, environmental politics, environmental and resource economics, and geography. While ﬁelds from the hu manities are not as well represented in environmental programs, many programs do include a focus on environmental literature, ecocriticism, or similar areas of study. Finally, a signiﬁcant number of programs are

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oriented toward or include aspects of environmental engineering and public health, while many also have linkages with environmental law and public policy programs.

The Historical Roots of Disciplinary Identities The historical trajectories of human–environment geog raphy and environmental studies as academic disciplines and as approaches to the study of human–environment relationships provide a foundation for interpreting their current place within academia and within the public eye. Human–environment geography, as a core concern of the broader discipline of geography, has waxed and waned following the fortunes of its parent discipline from the time of geography’s formalization within European academic structures in the late nineteenth century and throughout its development, particularly in the United States, during the twentieth century. By contrast, environmental studies emerged as a response to mounting societal concerns over environmental pol lution, resource depletion, and nature conservation in the latter half of the twentieth century. Many of the earliest environmental studies programs in Canada and the United States came about in conjunction with the enactment of a signiﬁcant amount of national environ mental legislation in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The key differences that drive how scholars in human geography (and subsequently human–environment geography) versus those in environmental studies inter pret environmental change and human–environment relations derive from the quite different historical development of the two ﬁelds. A closer examination of these histories reveals, on the one hand, human– environment geography’s maturation almost entirely within the strictures of academic institutions and, on the other, environmental studies’ emergence in response to an array of external actors and events located within broader society. Geography, and as a result human geography, traces its roots to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it became more or less established as a scholarly endeavor in a variety of European and North American academic settings. Geography as the study of human–environment relations owes its early academic standing to the efforts of European practitioners – active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – such as Alexander von Humboldt and Frederich Ratzel in Germany, Elise´e Reclus in France, Joachim Schouw in Denmark, Vidal de la Blache in France, and Halford Mackinder in Great Britain. Oftentimes, these efforts to inculcate geography within academic insti tutions were directly linked to the nationalist sentiments

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and geopolitical aspirations of these scholars’ nation states, where the descriptions of the physical and human characteristics of new places were useful to ex panding colonial empires. These geographers, through their research, writings, and participation in public forums, sought to deﬁne geography’s unique place in academia as both a spatial–chorological discipline and a ﬁeld concerned with explaining the dialectical rela tionship between human activities and environmental processes. In the United States, the human–environment tradition in geography was carried forward in the early twentieth century by scholars such as William Morris Davis, Ellsworth Huntington, and Ellen Churchill Semple, all of who strongly advocated the idea that geographical circumstances determined human behavior. This perspective, now recognized as environmental determinism, was challenged later in the century through the work of Harlan Barrows, who called for stronger links between geography and the budding ﬁeld of ecol ogy, and Carl Sauer, whose unique vision of landscapes as mutually constituted by cultural and biophysical processes dominated discussions of human–environment geography certainly up to and including the 1960s. From the late 1960s to the present, however, geography’s concern with the human–environment condition has witnessed an efﬂorescence of theoretical and methodo logical approaches. These approaches – ranging from older traditions such as human ecology, cultural ecology, and hazards research through to more recent iterations such as political ecology and the social construction of nature school – have been inﬂuenced by a variety of social theories that became incorporated into the dis cipline during this period. The most prominent of these, from the standpoint of human–environment geography, include Marxist political economy, ecological Marxism, feminist theory, post structuralism, social constructivism, and more recently postcolonialism, science studies, and cultural studies. These perspectives have at times rested uncomfortably against human–environment geography’s continuing engagement with ecological theory and a broad array of biophysical sciences. During the past two decades, scholars working within human–environment geography have also widened their geographical purview. The array of approaches collectively identiﬁed as polit ical ecology have been particularly ardent about in vestigating human–environment relations in the Global South, where a majority of research has focused on the intersections among resource dependent communities, developmental states, and an evolving global economy. Tellingly, efforts to deﬁne the essential character of human–environment geography and its place within the social sciences by its practitioners throughout the twentieth century have taken place almost entirely within academic settings.

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Environmental studies, although its roots can in part be traced back to the nineteenth century and the seminal work of George Perkins Marsh, is a relatively young discipline in terms of academic recognition, becoming more or less ﬁrmly established in a variety of North American and European institutions in the 1970s and 1980s. In contrast to human–environment geography, the origins of environmental studies and the continuing activities of its practitioners are the result of a series of dialogs between academic institutions and individuals and events located within broader societal contexts. Authors whose scientiﬁcally grounded arguments were explicitly targeted at a broader audience – including Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle, Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, and a host of others – exerted signiﬁcant inﬂuence over the early development of environmental studies. Environ mental studies owes its existence, in large part, to the efforts of students and faculty who became intellectually and politically engaged with the debates over environ mental quality and resource exhaustion ignited by these widely read works and the ensuing public debates over their ramiﬁcations. In the United States, as support both within and outside of academia grew for programs of higher edu cation focused on environmental problems, a number of undergraduate programs emerged in the 1970s. These early programs, such as those at Dartmouth College and Middlebury College in the northeastern United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s, linked together a loose confederation of faculty whose primary research and teaching responsibilities tended to be identiﬁed with traditional disciplines. The primary goal at these and other liberal arts institutions was to raise awareness of the rapidity and intensity of environmental changes con fronting the planet and to educate undergraduate stu dents in both the fundamentals of environmental science and how environmental knowledge is applied in society at large through policy and advocacy mechanisms. At the graduate level, environmental studies became interlinked with applied sciences, focusing on the training of resource professionals who upon graduation typically found employment with state and federal resource management agencies or speciﬁc resource based indus tries. For example, a number of natural resource and forestry schools and colleges embedded within broader university settings, including those at Yale University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan, and many others, broadened their graduate educational pro grams to embrace growing societal concerns over the long term effects of pollutants, the global degradation of ecological systems, biodiversity loss, and, signiﬁcantly, the need to address these problems through policy measures. In addition, research and writing in environ mental studies have both critically analyzed and been

inﬂuenced by a range of philosophical perspectives, in cluding the ecocentrism of the ‘deep ecology’ movement, James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, and ecofeminism. Programs in environmental studies, in North America, Europe, and elsewhere, have increasingly taken a global perspective. This has manifested in two distinct ways. The ﬁrst concerns recognition on the part of scholars in environmental studies that the scope of planetary prob lems such as climate change, transboundary pollution, degradation of marine ecosystems, changes in biogeo chemical cycles, and biodiversity loss are genuinely global. Again, foundational publications identiﬁed with environmental studies – for example, The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and her co authors, the World Conservation Strategy by IUCN (World Conservation Union), and the assortment of publications put out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – bolster the claim of environmental studies scholars that biophysical processes transcend political boundaries and the resolution of global environmental problems’ demands an international perspective. The second global perspective focuses on questions com monly grouped under the rubric of environment and development studies. As questions over North–South relations, intergenerational equity, and sustainable development were catapulted into the public sphere by publication of the Brundtland Commission’s Our Common Future in the late 1980s and global fora such as the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) and the follow up World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 1992 and 2002, respectively, environmental studies began to embrace difﬁcult questions regarding rapid ecological changes in the developing regions of Latin America, Africa, and Asia in the context of industrialization, agricultural intensiﬁ cation, and diverse political settings.

Converging Identities and Themes Human geography and environmental studies converge in their embrace of a plurality of approaches to their core subject matter, and in their mutual concern with material transformations of the environment, human drivers of such transformations, and human conceptions of nature. Perhaps the most striking similarity between human geography and environmental studies is that both are fundamentally interdisciplinary in their outlook on knowledge production, although this becomes evident within the two ﬁelds in different ways. Both ﬁelds draw on multiple epistemological and methodological tradi tions – ranging from positivist to constructivist and from quantitative to qualitative – to examine the dialectical relations between social and biophysical changes. There are several hybrid approaches, inclusive of scholarly

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traditions beyond geography and environmental studies, which defy easy categorization, but include ﬁelds such as cultural ecology, human ecology, political ecology, environmental geography, and numerous others. The acceptance of interdisciplinarity as a fundamental con dition of human–environment geography and environ mental studies has provided a unique opportunity for researchers in both ﬁelds to employ multiple methods and transcend narrow discipline based topics and ap proaches. In environmental studies, in particular, it also signiﬁes recognition that the resolution of problems brought about by anthropocentric forms of environ mental degradation demands an approach able to understand and interpret the economic, cultural, and political aspects of biophysical change. Despite the similar claims of interdisciplinarity by advocates of both human–environment geography and environmental studies, scholars typically come to the ﬁelds via quite different educational pathways. Most faculty members in geography enter into academic positions thoroughly socialized into the traditions and conventions of the discipline, broad as these might be in terms of the physical and human branches. As a result, human geographers, and in particular human– environment geographers, tend to have at least tangential experience in reconciling their methodological predi lections with the substantially different and largely quantitative orientations of their colleagues in physical geography and the mapping sciences. Scholars within environmental studies programs, by contrast, tend to settle within their academic bases after attaining far more specialized degrees from a wide variety of natural and physical sciences (e.g., ecology, conservation biology, and biogeochemistry), social sciences (e.g., political science, economics, sociology, anthropology, history, and geog raphy), and humanities (e.g., philosophy and literature programs). Moreover, this fragmentation of disciplinary identities in environmental studies is in many cases reinforced by the institutional milieu in which programs reside. Many, if not a large majority of environmental studies programs, consist of loose confederations of individual faculty members whose primary intellectual attachment remains with the academic ﬁeld within which they received their graduate degrees. Institutionally, many faculties in environmental studies programs are more strongly linked to their primary departmental home – whether it be in chemistry, the biological sci ences, sociology, political science, or within a pro fessional school – than to their colleagues and students in environmental studies. While the reverse may also be true, the implications of this are profound. At one level, there are fewer institutional incentives within environ mental studies to undertake the necessary theoretical and philosophical work of carefully deﬁning, and on occasion defending, a shared intellectual identity. Such identity

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crises have also plagued human geography, and both ﬁelds at various times and places in their histories have had to defend their continuing relevance when threa tened by dwindling resources and academic hierarchies antagonistic toward their fundamentally interdisciplinary worldview. Thematically, environmental studies and human– environment geography encompass a similar collection of research topics. A ﬁrst revolves around the actual material transformations of landscapes and waterscapes precipitated by various human activities. A second area of shared inquiry concerns the creation and maintenance of institutions (e.g., social conventions, regulations, and policies) for governing, exploiting, and managing the environment. A third focuses on the roles played by different actors, collectively and individually, in facili tating, compounding, or mitigating biophysical changes that are ecologically and socially disruptive. Finally, a fourth region of shared concerns relates to human per ceptions of nature and how conceptions of nature have shifted over time. Within these broad areas, researchers in human–environment geography and environmental studies have carried out a host of interrelated research projects characterized by theoretical sophistication and empirically detailed accounts of human–environment relations in diverse locations and at household, com munity, national, regional, and transnational scales. More notable examples include: the multiple political and economic drivers of deforestation in regions as diverse as the northwest coast of North America, the Amazon River basin, and the island of Borneo; the multiple historical determinants of environmental change in the Sahel region of western and northern Africa; the transformation of various river systems across the planet via the con struction of large dams and irrigation infrastructure to promote both industrialization and agricultural intensi ﬁcation; the role of different state agents in facilitating, inhibiting, and reversing harmful ecological changes brought about by human production and consumption; and the shifting understandings of what constitutes na ture exhibited by different cultural traditions at different times and places. While the relative bias toward the en vironmental sphere versus the social sphere may be pronounced in many of these studies, all endeavor to balance knowledge of biophysical changes with know ledge of the human societies whose internal and external interactions with a host of cultural, economic, and pol itical forces produce and shape these changes.

Diverging Identities and Approaches In many ways, the divisions within environmental studies mirror the broad division within geography between the realms of the human and the physical. If anything,

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environmental studies is pulled in even more directions, attempting to straddle multiple fault lines within and between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. As a result, much of the work that comes to be associated with environmental studies might more accurately be described as the work of a chemist, Earth scientist, anthropologist, ecologist, or sociologist working within the broad rubric of environmental studies. Furthermore, most research produced by prac titioners of environmental studies tends to be published in journals that are more specialized in orientation. There are relatively few outlets for publication that are unequivocally geared toward a ﬁeld broadly deﬁned as environmental studies. Moreover, there are compara tively few, if any, professional associations or regularly scheduled conferences targeted speciﬁcally to scholars and educators within (in the broadest sense) environ mental studies. Thus, it is impossible to identify with any precision what a typical researcher in environmental studies might produce. Much of the interdisciplinary work of environmental studies is carried out primarily through curriculum development and teaching, not necessarily through collaborative research, although there are major exceptions. Human–environment geog raphy certainly suffers from a similarly fragmented identity, but the discipline of geography has a wide array of institutional norms and mechanisms (e.g., jour nals, professional societies, and regular meetings) that generate and maintain research afﬁnities for scholars of human–environment relations. Despite the observation that both environmental studies and human–environment geography champion a range of epistemological and methodological positions, the ﬁelds manifest this intrinsic interdisciplinarity in distinct ways. At the broadest levels, a majority of en vironmental studies programs in North America, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere emphasize environmental sci ence over approaches grounded in the social sciences or humanities. Within those programs that seek a greater divisional balance, faculty members in the natural sci ences and social sciences are more equally represented. With relatively few exceptions, programs with a signiﬁ cant number of scholars approaching environmental studies through a humanities oriented lens are rare. Inside those programs that have achieved a relative balance between environmental scientists and social scientists, the social scientists in such settings tend to be grounded more in quantitative social science tradi tions such as environmental and resource economics, and the policy sciences. Indeed, while a plurality of disciplinary training (e.g., the ecological sciences, en vironmental health, environmental economics, ecological anthropology, and environmental history) is well repre sented in environmental studies programs, methodo logical pluralism and a willingness to accept qualitative

approaches as viable and crucial are more contentious issues. In human–environment geography, one of the most obvious manifestations of interdisciplinarity is through an engagement with a diverse array of social theories and the methodological options such theories imply. The recent history of political ecology is instructive in this regard. At the time of its materialization as an important research area within geography and cognate disciplines in the 1980s, political ecology undertook a melding of political–economic approaches grounded primarily in Marxist theories and a reﬁned understanding of eco logical processes. The result was an approach that sought explanations of environmental transformations within a host of causal mechanisms, ranging from the land man agement decisions of individual farmers, to state initiated development programs and the policies of international ﬁnancial institutions. In subsequent years, human– environment geographers working within a political ecology framework expanded their theoretical repertoire to include, for example, feminist theories to interpret the gendered character of resource use and management, and post structuralist theories to demonstrate the historically and socially contingent character of how different actors perceive and act upon environmental changes. Concerns over power relations, culturally mediated understandings of nature, and the highly complex character of explan ations of environmental transformations led political ecologists to develop and employ an array of qualitative research designs and methods, including case study ap proaches, ethnographies, interviews, oral histories, par ticipant observation, and textual analyses. Thus, while interdisciplinarity in environmental studies is best rep resented by specialists from the natural and social sci ences engaging in collaborations with colleagues with different methodological tool kits, interdisciplinarity in human–environment geography is best represented by the diverse approaches, epitomized in the variety of social theories incorporated into geographical research, employed by single researchers and their collaborators. In part, due to speciﬁc institutional histories, there are important differences in how human geographers and practitioners of environmental studies, in general, ap proach the production of knowledge and, once produced, communicate geographical or environmental knowledge to different audiences. While these differences should not be overstated – there are individuals and speciﬁc pro grams that transcend this dichotomy – they are important to an understanding of each ﬁeld’s institutional cultures and broad outlook on research and education. Due to its historical development in response to public calls for research leading to resolution of environmental prob lems, environmental studies has a long tradition of direct engagement with representatives of government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and to some degree the

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private sector. For example, a good deal of the early research conducted by scholars in environmental studies during the 1970s was directly aimed at effecting changes in environmental policy. This also explains the strong presence of resource economics, environmental eco nomics, and, more recently, ecological economics within environmental studies programs, since many of the battles over environmental policy both past and present revolve around perceived trade offs between economic growth and ecological sustainability. The aims of policy oriented work in environmental studies revolve around the desire to insert the results of environmental research into policy discussions at multiple levels. By contrast, human–environment geography (and human geography more broadly) has largely abdicated formal engagement with public policy, oftentimes assuming a more critical stance toward the policy realm, particularly where gov ernment agents are concerned. While this can in part be explained by human geography’s intellectual history within academia, it is also a reﬂection of many scholars’ insistence that the state, whether through the actions of speciﬁc agencies or broad policy initiatives, is a central actor in contributing to environmental degradation. Under this view, a formal engagement with policymakers is perceived as unnecessarily restrictive in terms of the types of questions under investigation.

Lessons and Opportunities Human geography and environmental studies, as both disciplinary identities and broad approaches to the study of human–environment relations, share a great deal. Both are concerned with identifying, describing, and analyzing a broad range of biophysical and social processes, frequently with the goal of demonstrating more ecologically sustainable and socially just modes of human interactions with the natural world. Both are inherently interdisciplinary, attempting to carve out some semblance of internal coherence while embracing a plurality of epistemological and methodological approaches. This has led both ﬁelds to engage in a certain level of intellectual hand wringing – undoubtedly more prominent within geography – regarding the rela tive status of their professional identity within the broader contours of the academy. Although these identity crises play out differently depending on institutional context, all are reﬂective of both ﬁelds’ continuing struggles to come to grips with the tension between intellectual clarity and unity on the one hand and an embrace of pluralism on the other. The interrelated notions of sustainable development and sustainability constitute a potentially fruitful intel lectual region for collaboration between the two ﬁelds. Discourses and policies concerning sustainable develop ment, following formalization of the concept within

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a wide range of governmental and nongovernmental forums during the 1990s, have blossomed in recent years. The broad goal of sustainable development is to recon cile human social and economic practices with the long term integrity and resilience of the Earth’s biophysical systems. The struggle to deﬁne and institutionalize sustainability takes place at many institutional levels and geographical scales, and this effort holds signiﬁcant consequences for the way people are able to exert control over resources that inﬂuence the sustainability of their livelihoods. The explicit linking of human activities and biophysical dynamics within the broad rubric of sus tainability studies would seem to offer productive avenues of research, advocacy, and teaching for both human geographers and practitioners of environmental studies. Taking account of the quite speciﬁc intellectual his tories, different approaches to interdisciplinarity, and contrasting relationships with the nonacademic world ex hibited by environmental studies and human–environment geography, there are several ways in which the ﬁelds might beneﬁt from the experiences of the other. Environmental studies would beneﬁt from a deeper engagement with the wide variety of social theories and methodological ap proaches currently employed within human–environment geography. Human geography would proﬁt from a more direct effort to address its research toward a diverse audience of policymakers and citizens. Practitioners of environmental studies have been more adept in this regard. As a result, scholars in environmental studies can more readily make the claim that the knowledge they produce has a more direct impact on how environmental concerns are understood, and how biophysical entities are governed and managed. Yet, because of their general disinterest in theorizing the multiple social roots of environmental change, environmental studies scholars risk presenting an oversimpliﬁed and partial explanation of environmental degradation to policymakers and citizens. As public concern over environmental issues con tinues to increase into the twenty ﬁrst century and the complexity of human–environment relationships con tinues to increase, interdisciplinary modes of knowing will be crucial in increasing public knowledge of a host of biophysical processes and helping to apply this know ledge to the array of local, national, and global en vironmental problems that confront human–environment relations in the twenty ﬁrst century. The promise of the architects of research, education, and outreach initiatives in both human–environment geography and environ mental studies is that these highly interdisciplinary ﬁelds of inquiry are immanently qualiﬁed to address these problems. See also: Ecology; Environment; Environmental Policy; Environmental Regulation; Geography, History of;

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Environmental Studies and Human Geography

Interdisciplinarity; Land Change Science; Political Ecology; Space I; Space II; Sustainability; Uneven Development.

Further Reading Adams, W. M. (2001). Green Development: Environment and Sustainability in the Third World (2nd edn.). London: Routledge. Dickens, P. (1992). Society and Nature: Towards a Green Social Theory. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Maniates, M. F. and Whissel, J. C. (2000). Environmental studies: The sky is not falling. BioScience 50, 509 517. Nelissen, N., van der Straaten, J. and Klinkers, L. (eds.) (1997). Classics in Environmental Studies: An Overview of Classic Texts in Environmental Studies. The Hague: International Books. Neumann, R. (2005). Making Political Ecology. London: Hodder Arnold. Robbins, P. (2004). Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Turner, B. L. II. (2002). Contested identities: Human environment geography and disciplinary implications in a restructuring academy. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92, 52 74.

Environmentalism A. Davies, Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Environment Circumstances or conditions that surround an organism or ecosystem; the social and cultural conditions that affect individuals and societies. Environmental Of or pertaining to the environment such as environmental factors; environmental pollution; environmental disaster; environmental deterioration. Environmentalist Someone who is concerned with environmental issues. It is usually applied to those who are actively working to protect the environment from destruction or pollution. Environmental Ethics Reﬂection on the role and responsibility of humans to the environment and the question of whether the environment can be treated rightly or wrongly.

Environmentalism Deﬁnitions Despite general agreement that environmentalism refers to attention to interactions between natures and cultures there remains considerable contestation about the pos sibility of establishing a universally acceptable and un ambiguous description of the term and its associates (such as environment, environmental, and environ mentalists). Given that the words nature and culture have been identiﬁed as being as complex as life itself, it is unsurprising to ﬁnd a similar level of complexity in deﬁnitional debates surrounding environmentalism. While most general deﬁnitions propose that environ mentalism refers to concerns for environmental pro tection, particularly from the harmful effects of human activity, beneath the veneer of simplicity lies a host of ethical, political, and scientiﬁc questions such as what is the ‘environment’ and are humans part of, or apart from, it? What constitutes ‘protection’ and for what purpose? And ﬁnally, how is ‘harm’ established and by whom? Some analysts have replaced ‘concern’ with ‘advocacy’ in order to emphasize the politicized nature of environ mentalism, while others have introduced organizational or social movement dimensions to their deﬁnitions. However rather than resolving ambiguities these modi ﬁcations to general deﬁnitions serve to highlight the spectrum of positions that have come to be collected under the expanding banner of environmentalism. This spectrum of environmentalism is considered below

following attention to its origins and evolution. These temporal and ideological reﬂections on environmental ism set the scene for a discussion of current debates that reveal the signiﬁcance of geographical inquiry in environmental matters. Origins and Evolutions A lack of deﬁnitional clarity has implications for the identiﬁcation of precise roots and patterns of develop ment within the ﬁeld of environmentalism. It has been suggested that environmentalism emerged only relatively recently in response to tensions between economic development and its use of natural resources (or environmental goods), particularly through the resulting production of ‘pollution’ (or environmental bads) and resource depletion that became the focus for numerous analysts during the 1960s and 1970s. However, while it is widely acknowledged that popular attention to the potentially negative ramiﬁcations of human activities did increase during the latter part of the twentieth century, identiﬁable elements of concern for human–environment relations were evident in earlier periods. They can be seen in debates about preservation and conservation of nature through the formation of national parks – as illustrated in the works of John Muir and Gifford Pinchot – and in the romanticism of poets and artists – such as William Blake or William Wordsworth – who called for the protection of the inherent beauty of nature throughout Europe and North America during the nine teenth century. Excavating the foundations of modern en vironmentalism even further has led authors to identify diverse roots in scientiﬁc enquiry of the Enlightenment, political ideologies of ancient Greece, and interpretations of religious doctrines.

Eras of Environmentalism With such a long and diverse history, attempts have been made to delineate speciﬁc phases or eras of environ mentalism. There is common ground in many of these analyses in terms of an identiﬁcation of concern with industrialism and urbanism (and allied discussions of the need for conservation and preservation of rural and agrarian landscapes) during the late nineteenth century as the precursor of the modern environmentalism of the 1960s and 1970s. Key features of the modern era of environmentalism were the incorporation of societal considerations in debates, a widening of the social base of

565

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Environmentalism

environmentalists and the formation of pressure groups during a period of relative calm in western countries following the end of World War II. At the same time the effects of environmental catastrophes were being dis seminated to a wider public through the media and popular texts. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962, documented the impacts of the pesticide DDT on ecosystems and a decade later the Limits to Growth manifesto, developed by a team of systems scientists and computer modelers, challenged conventional wisdom of unfettered expansion and warned of impending limits – especially environmental limits – to human development and economic growth. Beyond this there is less coherence across analyses about distinct phases within environ mentalism. Some authors have emphasized its emergence as a mainstream feature in society and politics following the recognition of global environmental problems. Others focus on the growing diversity of organizational forms and concerns of environmental groups contrasting large

Table 1

transnational environmental groups with grassroots organizations or categorizing the different forms of action utilized from formal lobbying to civil disobedience. Contemporary environmentalism is then typiﬁed by diversity in ideas, practices, and organizational cultures to the extent that a number of subforms of environ mentalism have been identiﬁed. A selection of these forms is detailed in Table 1. Environmentalism or Environmentalisms? Considerable attention has been paid to deconstructing the various strands of environmentalism in an attempt to provide analytical frameworks for theoretical and empirical inquiry. Arne Naess produced a Deep to Shallow Ecology typology, while Robyn Eckersley constructed a classiﬁcation demarcating ‘ecologism’ from ‘conservatism’ and Andrew Dobson established a ‘green–green’ dichot omy. However the most cited framework is that of

Illustrative diversity of contemporary environmental movements

Forms of environmentalism Deep ecology views nature as having intrinsic value and adopts a strong ecocentric system of environmental ethics. It is effectively a philosophy that calls for a profound shift in our attitudes and behavior based on voluntary simplicity; rejection of anthropocentrism; reconnecting with nature; decentralizing power; celebrating cultural and biological diversity; a belief in the sacredness of nature. There is often a strong commitment to direct personal action to protect nature, improve the environment, and bring about fundamental societal change. Social ecology takes the position that most ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems and that therefore ecological problems cannot be clearly understood, much less resolved, without resolutely dealing with problems within society. The current ecological situation is seen to be the product of capitalism. As such social ecology presents a radical critique of current social, political, and anti-ecological trends. It claims to be a reconstructive, ecological, communitarian, and ethical approach to society. Ecoterrorism is typiﬁed by acts of violence, vandalism, property damage, or sabotage against individuals and companies in the name of environmentalism. The term has also been applied to crimes committed against companies or government agencies in order to prevent or interfere with activities allegedly harmful to the environment. Another example of ecoterrorism, sometimes referred to as environmental warfare, consists of the deliberate and illegal destruction, exploitation, or modiﬁcation of the environment as a strategy during periods of armed conﬂict. Ecofeminism is commonly characterized as an intellectual and practical movement based around the interactions of women and nature, and speciﬁcally concerns relating to the oppression of both women and nature through history. It is generally portrayed as a biocentric environmental movement although there are internal differences between ecofeminists about the relative importance of cultural and social concerns. Despite these internal politics the view that the oppression of women and nature are linked historically, materially, culturally, and ideologically remains the central tenet of ecofeminism. Bioregionalism is focused on a concern to reconnect humans with bioregions that are characterized in terms of the unique overall pattern of ecological, geological, and historical characteristics that are found in a speciﬁc place. People are also considered an integral aspect of a bioregion if they attempt to live and work in harmony with the bioregion. In terms of the practices of bioregionalists there is an emphasis on practical actions rather than protest and on lifestyle habits rather than calling for government legislation. Prometheanism (or cornucopianism/contrarianism/environmental scepticism) runs counter to the claims of other environmentalists that people are irreversibly damaging the environment. Environmentalists with this perspective believe that the beneﬁts of economic development, even if it has negative environmental implications, are more important to society than the damage caused. Within this movement concern has been expressed that the environmental crisis identiﬁed by other environmental groups is exaggerated and not based on sound science. Others believe that technological developments will resolve any damage caused. Free market environmentalism is an ideology that argues the free market is the best tool to preserve the health and sustainability of the environment. This position differs from the most common contemporary approach of looking to government intervention, through mechanisms such as taxation or legislation, to help prevent environmental degradation and is in stark contrast to social ecology positions. Political ecology prioritizes the interconnections between politics and the environment. Includes study of political struggles over natural resources or where outcomes of political struggles are deﬁned by access to natural resources.

Environmentalism

567

Environmentalism

Ecocentrism

Deep ecologists (Gaianists)

Intrinsic importance of nature for humanity Ecological (and other natural) laws dictate human morality The right of endangered species or unique landscapes to remain unmolested − biorights

Technocentrism

Soft technologists (Communalism)

Environmental managers (Accommodation)

Small scale and community identity in settlement, work, and leisure

Economic growth and resource exploitation can continue as long as: adjustments are made to economic mechanisms such as taxes and fees; legal rights ensure a minimum level of environmental quality; and adequate compensation is provided for those experiencing adverse environmental and/or social effects

Integrating work and leisure through personal and communal improvement Importance of participation in community affairs, recognizing the rights of minority interests with participation seen as serving both educational and political purposes Scepticism of modern, large-scale technology; central state authority; and anti-democratic institutions Critical of materialism for its own sake and assertion that economic growth can be geared toward providing for basic needs of those below subsistence levels

Acceptance of new project appraisal techniques and decision review arrangements to provide for genuine search for consensus among representative groups of interested parties

Cornucopians (Intervention)

Humanity can resolve political, scientific, or technological challenges Pro-growth goals define the rationality of project appraisal and policy formulation Optimism that humanity can improve the lot of the world’s people Faith in scientific and technological expertise in providing advice on economic growth, public health, and safety matters Suspicion of attempts to widen participation and lengthy discussion in project appraisal and policy review Belief that all impediments can be overcome given a will, ingenuity, and sufficient resources arising out of growth

Figure 1 Ecocentrism and technocentrism. From O’Riordan, T. (1976). Environmentalism. London: Pion.

ecocentrism and technocentrism produced by Timothy O’Riordan (summarized in Figure 1). O’Riordan made several amendments to his original dualism of ecocentrism and technocentrism, but the fundamental distinction between the desire to put the environment ﬁrst, and modify societal practices to achieve this (ecocentrism), and the commitment to human control and management of the environment for societal beneﬁt (technocentrism) remains intact. It is

the ecocentric position, most frequently espoused by some nongovernmental organizations and civil society actors, that presents the most signiﬁcant challenge to prevailing socioeconomic arrangements of contemporary society. Technocentric arguments, frequently articulated by big business and governments, tend to support the status quo. This distinction is also highlighted by Robert Garner in his analysis of approaches to environ mentalism in which he seeks to simplify the plethora of

568

Environmentalism

analytical categories into two main approaches – radical and reformist – that each contains particular economic, political, and philosophical perspectives. In essence he suggests that reformist positions are fundamentally human centered, seeking protection of the environment for the beneﬁt of humanity, and believing that this can be done without dismantling the structures of modern in dustrial society (similar to technocentrism). It is essen tially an optimistic position where economic growth and environmental protection are seen to be compatible ob jectives and faith is placed in scientiﬁc and technological innovations to provide satisfactory pathways out of any tensions encountered when trying to achieve both goals; an idea that has become synonymous with the term ‘ecological modernization’. In contrast, the radical per spective proposes much more dramatic change to polit ical, economic, and social structures in order to create a harmonious and sustainable relationship between society and its wider environment. It is however rare to ﬁnd individuals or organizations conforming completely to any one of the positions identiﬁed by analysts of environmentalism and there is a danger of overemphasizing a simple dichotomy between radical and reformist environmentalism. Indeed as O’Riordan noted, while reﬂecting on his own typology, the world does not divide neatly in ecocentric environ mentalists on the one hand and manipulative pro fessionals and administrators on the other. Rather a blurring of boundaries occurs depending on the par ticular issue under consideration, the socioeconomic context, and the institutional arrangements that prevail. Inevitably much complexity is lost when diverse thoughts and practices are polarized. Nonetheless, the two pos itions (eco and technocentrism) are still recognizable in many public debates about environmental concerns in the twenty ﬁrst century and nowhere more so than in the debates about ‘sustainable development’. As with environmentalism there has been a prolifer ation of attempts to specify exactly what sustainable development means since the ﬁrst ofﬁcial declaration of sustainable development by the World Commission on Environment and Development that society should meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Yet there are parallels in the debates about sustainable development and environmentalism that result from them both having common features of political concepts that call for some degree of social and economic change. There are those who call for a ‘strong’ interpretation of sustainable development and see environmental protection as a precondition for economic develop ment (which would be allied toward the radical or ecocentric positions of environmentalism) and those who turn this statement on its head and suggest that econo mic development is a precondition for environmental

protection as detailed in the technocentrism or the reformist positions. As with sustainable development, environmentalism seems to have a generally understood meaning in social and political circles (a ﬁrst level meaning), but beneath this general acceptance lies a deep core of contestation. Equally this deeper contestation is not restricted to critical engagements across the broad ecocentric– technocentric divide, but can also be found within apparently quite narrowly deﬁned environmental sub groups such as ecofeminism, deep ecology, and bio regionalism. For example, while there is general agreement that ecofeminism refers to an intellectual and practical movement based around the interactions of women and nature, and speciﬁcally concerns relating to the oppression of both women and nature through his tory, there are signiﬁcant internal politics among those who would identify themselves with the movement. Just as there is no one agreed form of environmentalism or feminism, ecofeminism remains a contested concept. The main division within ecofeminism is encapsulated by a distinction between cultural and social ecofeminism. Cultural (or radical) ecofeminism argues that women have a special relationship with nature because of their reproductive role such that their connections with nature emerge through their biological characteristics. Add itionally cultural ecofeminists suggest that there are strong spiritual bonds between women and nature which are suppressed by the patriarchal conditions that dom inate environmental protection programs and policies. These positions have stimulated a raft of criticisms, in cluding some from other ecofeminists, that the core cultural ecofeminist views are guilty of essentializing women, effectively reducing them to their biology without engaging with wider social and political issues. In contrast social ecofeminist positions emphasize the social and political aspects of women–nature interactions seeing nature as a political rather than personal category and rejecting biological determinism. Parallels are drawn between exploitation of nature and exploitation in society according to class, race, or gender. Therefore for social ecofeminists, connections between women and nature lie in the socially constructed practices, charac teristics, and roles relating to gender. Social ecofeminists are not without their detractors either though for a while avoiding essentialist criticisms other concerns have been voiced regarding the validity of making universal statements about women–nature interactions across cultures. This is particularly the case when many of the ecofeminists writing in western contexts have tended to be well educated, white, and afﬂuent. Despite these criticisms the central tenet of ecofeminism – that the oppression of women and nature are linked historically, materially, culturally, and ideologically – remains solid.

Environmentalism

It is not the case, however, that there is even common agreement that environmental problems require human attention at all. Recognized theoretically as an extreme position of the technocentric camp of environmentalism, there have been cases made, sometimes called Pro methean or cornucopian, which deny the existence of acute environmental problems. The argument of this position is that not only do humans have the ability to overcome any hurdles that face them; but that these challenges actually stimulate innovation and that many of the environmental concerns expressed by more radical environmentalists lack a rational, scientiﬁc basis. These positions emerged initially in response to the limits to growth debates of the 1970s where the suggestions of an imminent future of crisis and catastrophe were attacked. More recently the voices of a few high proﬁle contra rians, such as Wilfred Beckerman and Richard North, alongside the work of a number of think tanks including the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Cato Institute, have maintained a Promethean presence in environ mental discussions. Such reactions to environmental movements and ideas could be seen as a symbol of the successes made by environmental groups in gaining popular and political attention. Certainly claims of ‘greenwashing’ (see Table 2) within large corporations and the mimicking of environmental group tactics by pro development lobbies, such as the wise use move ment, suggest that environmentalism in its many guises is perceived as inﬂuential. As a result some researchers, such as Andrew Rowell, have urged environmentalists to be wary of a backlash against environmentalism. Geographies of Environmentalism Concern with nature and society relations has been a central component in geography since its formation as a discipline in late nineteenth century Europe and North America. It was a part of what David Livingstone de scribed as the ‘geographical experiment’ to bring together nature and society under a single conceptual umbrella. In this way geographers have contributed signiﬁcantly

Table 2

Deﬁning greenwasha

Greenwash Green*wash: (n) Disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image. Derivatives greenwashing (n). Origin from green on the pattern of whitewash. Green*wash: (grBen-w^osh) -washers, -washing, -washed (1) The phenomenon of socially and environmentally destructive corporations attempting to preserve and expand their markets by posing as friends of the environment and leaders in the struggle to eradicate poverty. (2) Environmental whitewash. (3) Hogwash. a

www.corpwatch.org.

569

to analyses of environmentalism whether through the deﬁnitional debates described above or through detailed examination of human interactions with the environment. Other key geographical concepts such as scale and place are also relevant to understanding environmental ism. For, in addition to embracing a wider variety of environmentalisms (both ideologies and practices), there has also been a conceptual shift in attention to different scales of environmentalism. Recognition of global en vironmental problems was matched by the emergence of global environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, World Wide Fund for Nature, and Friends of the Earth, but transnational environmental advocacy net works linking grassroots, citizen based organizations (e.g., GAIA, the Global Anti Incinerator Alliance) across the globe have also emerged. The scalar nature of environmentalism is perhaps most evocative in the context of climate change. At a global scale there are organizations such as ICLEI (International Council for Local Environmental Initia tives) who work with local authorities through their ‘Cities for Climate Protection’ campaign. Equally there are coalitions of groups campaigning for climate change action at national levels such as Australia’s ‘Climate Change Coalition’, the ‘Campaign against Climate Change’ in the UK, and the Bangladesh ‘Cam paign against Climate Change’. Many of these national campaigns seek to pressurize simultaneously national governments and international governance structures while also providing supportive structures for local cli mate initiatives. Irrespective of international or national support, innovative action is emerging at the local level with initiatives such as the ‘Big Clean Up’ in Auckland, New Zealand, and ‘Transition Towns’ in the UK. The transition movement currently involves around 20 groups of people living in towns, villages, districts, cities, and even a forest that have committed themselves to addressing issues related to climate change and peak oil through practical activities. Individuals are also being encouraged to consider their lifestyle choices through programs like ‘Global Action Plan’s Ecoteams’ and the Sydney based sustainable living program ‘Green Home’. Such actions, both across scales from the global to the local and from the grassroots to the transnational, can be seen as indicative of environmentalism’s incursion into mainstream politics and lived environments. In addition to recognizing scalar geographies within environmentalism there is a growing acknowledgement that both culture and identity play a signiﬁcant role in forming relationships between societies and environ ments. Up until the 1980s it was common for North American and European geographers to travel to other locations and report on their experiences. Most geo graphical studies drew on western philosophies of environmentalism to structure the interpretations of

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what they uncovered. Assumptions were often made that nonwestern cultures had not developed sophisticated environmental ideologies because they lacked awareness of the value of environments or because they did not have the resources to invest in protecting the environment (or indeed both). More recently there has been greater at tention to the nuances of indigenous environmentalisms in different locations and cultures. In particular the strengthening of political ecology and environmental justice movements has helped bring issues of environ ment and development in the global south to wider attention. The work of Arundhati Roy in relation to the Narmada Dam project in India and the activism of Ken Saro Wiwa, whose nonviolent campaign to protect the rights, livelihood, and environment of the Ogoni people ended in his execution by the military government of Nigeria are particularly visible examples, but there are many more organizations, issues, and perspectives across the global south. Together, philosophical theorizing and practical activism of many individuals and organizations, form a growing movement to transcend westernization in environmentalism and challenge assumptions that con cerns about environmental quality are the preserve of afﬂuent, industrialized societies. The Future of Environmentalism It is still a moot point as to whether the future of environmentalism will be illustrated by a convergence of perspectives from the current spectrum of positions or a further proliferation of activities, philosophies, and organizations. Equally there is no agreement about whether either of these two paths will lead to the death of environmentalism, as proposed by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, or its elevation to more inﬂuential levels. According to Bill McKibben, the future of en vironmentalism will likely depend on what happens to the environment in the future and whether that will lead to the development of some new metaphor, leader, or vision for a better world. Whatever happens it is likely that more unity in diversity within current environ mentalism and among environmentalists will be needed to tackle the big issues, such as climate change, that

require changes to entrenched patterns of trade and governance. See also: Conservation and Ecology; Culture; Ecology; Environment; Nature; Political Ecology; Radical Environmentalism; Sustainable Development.

Further Reading Baker, S. (2006). Sustainable Development. London: Routledge. Bauer, J. (2006). Forging Environmentalism: Justice, Livelihood, and Contested Environments. New York: ME Sharpe. Dobson, A. (1995). Green Political Thought (2nd edn.). London: Unwin Hyman. Dryzek, J., Downs, D., Hernes, H. and Schlosberg, D. (2003). Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eckersley, R. (1992). Environmentalism and Political Theory. London: UCL Press. Guha, R. (2000). Environmentalism: A Global History. New York, Harlow: Longman. Milton, K. (1996). Environmentalism and Cultural Theory. London: Routledge. Naess, A. (1973). The shallow and the deep, long range ecology movement. A summary. Inquiry 16, 95 100. O’Riordan, T. (1976). Environmentalism. London: Pion. Pepper, D. (1996). Modern Environmentalism. London: Routledge. Pepper, D., Webster, F. and Revill, G. (2003). Environmentalism: Critical Concepts. London: Routledge. Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge. Robbins, P. (2004). Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Rowell, A. (1996). Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement. London: Routledge. Simmons, I. (1993). Environmental History: A Concise Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Sutton, P. (2000). Explaining Environmentalism: In Search of a New Social Movement. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Relevant Websites www.climatechangecoalition.com.au Climate Change Coalition. www.globalactionplan.org.uk Global Action Plan. www.iclei.org ICLEI. www.transitiontowns.org Transition towns.

Epidemiological Transition K. McCracken Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia D. R. Phillips, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Acute Disease A disease of rapid onset and usually of brief duration. The term carries no connotations about the severity of a disease (cf. chronic disease). Chronic Disease A disease that persists for a long time. The term carries no connotations about the severity of a disease (cf. acute disease). Compression of Morbidity The proposition that, as mortality declines, ill health and disability will be compressed into the later years of life (due to improving living standards and medical and public health advances). Degenerative Disease A disease that involves the biological deterioration of the body (heart disease, some cancers, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.), usually, but not always, associated with aging – sometimes referred to as noncommunicable disease (cf. infectious disease). Epidemic A mass outbreak of a disease in a particular geographic area which spreads and then disappears relatively quickly. Epidemiological Polarization The coexistence of ‘old’ (pre-transition) and ‘new’ (post-transition) diseases in a country. Epidemiological Transition The shift in the major causes of death from infectious diseases (e.g., tuberculosis, diarrhea and enteritis, and pneumonias) and also famine to chronic and degenerative ailments (e.g., heart disease, stroke, and cancers) associated with the long-term decline in mortality from high to low levels. Infectious (Communicable) Diseases Diseases caused by pathogens (e.g., bacteria, viruses, protozoa, and endoparasites). Infectious diseases which are spread by direct contact with infected persons are often termed contagious (e.g., sexually transmitted diseases and ebola), although some writers use contagious more loosely as a synonym for all infectious diseases. Pandemic An epidemic that spreads over a very wide area, which can be continent-wide or worldwide (e.g., the 1918–19 Spanish Flu; the mid-fourteenth-century bubonic plague outbreak across Europe).

Introduction The term ‘epidemiologic(al) transition’ refers to the shift during the decline in mortality from high to low levels,

from an infectious disease dominated cause of death proﬁle (e.g., tuberculosis, smallpox, typhus, diarrhea, and dysentery) to one in which chronic degenerative ailments (e.g., heart disease, stroke, and cancer) predominate (Tables 1 and 2). The term was coined by Abdel Omran in a 1971 paper that by dint of the research it has sub sequently generated has come to be regarded as a public health classic. While Omran is deservedly credited with the foundation statement on the transition, the notion of such a transition though can be found in earlier work. For example, a 1962 United Nations study demonstrated how cause of death patterns change with changing life expectancy, while a 1969 paper by Frederiksen developed a typology outlining ‘predominant patterns of disease, mortality, and fertility’ in association with ‘state of soci ety’. In turn, the initial concept and framework enunci ated by Omran have been both substantially extended and widened. Today, the epidemiological transition is recognized as part of a wider ‘health transition’ and one strand of a suite of interconnected other transitions (Figure 1) – in fertility, age structure, nutrition, urbanization, technology, and social and economic development.

Omran’s Original Formulation of Epidemiological Transition Theory The ‘theory’ of epidemiological transition was described by Omran in 1971 as conceptually focusing on ‘‘the complex change in patterns of health and disease and on the interactions between these patterns and their demographic, economic and sociologic determinants and consequences.’’ Five basic propositions were advanced: 1. that mortality is a fundamental factor in population dynamics; 2. that during the transition, pandemics of infection are gradually displaced by degenerative and man made diseases as the chief form of morbidity and primary cause of death; 3. that the most profound changes in health and disease patterns during the transition occur among children and young women; 4. that the shifts in health and disease patterns that characterize the transition are closely associated with the demographic and socioeconomic transitions that are part and parcel of modernization; and

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572 Table 1

Epidemiological Transition

Epidemiological transition in (a) Sydney, Australia and (b) Mexico

Cause of death

% of death

(a) Sydney, Australia Respiratory diseases Diarrhea and enteritis Tuberculosis

1901 14.4 11.0 10.4

Organic heart disease Cancer

6.6 5.4

(b) Mexico Gastroenteritis Inﬂuenza and pneumonia Childhood diseases Heart diseases

Cause of death

Diseases of the heart Cancer Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) Diseases of respiratory system Accidents

1955 57 17.5 Heart diseases 15.5 Accidents 10.4 7.1

Malaria

Inﬂuenza and pneumonia Enteritis and other diarrheal diseases Malignant tumours (cancer)

5.1

% of death 1947 33.6 13.6 11.2

Cause of death

% of death 2000 02 27.2 26.0 10.7

5.8 4.4

Malignant neoplasms (cancer) Heart disease Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) Diseases of respiratory system Accidents and adverse effects

1980 11.6 11.0

Heart diseases Malignant neoplasms (cancer)

2002 13.9 12.7

8.8 8.6

Diabetes Mellitus Unintentional injuries

11.9 8.1

6.1

Cerebrovascular disease (stroke)

8.8 3.4

5.7

Sources: Sydney McCracken, K. and Curson, P. (2000). In sickness and in health: Sydney past and present. In Connell, J. (ed.) Sydney: The Emergence of a World City, pp 96 118; 352 356. Melbourne: Oxford University Press; Australian Bureau of Statistics, Unpublished data. Mexico Frenk, J., Bobadilla, J. L., Sepulveda, J. and Cervantes, M. L. (1989). Health transition in middle income countries: New challenges for health care. Health Policy and Planning 4(1), 29 39; World Health Organization, Burden of Disease Project (Web access).

Table 2

Leading cause of death proﬁles, selected WHO member states at different stages of epidemiological transition, 2002

Cause of deaths

% of deaths

Pre to early transition Ethiopia Lower respiratory infections HIV/AIDS Diarrheal diseases Tuberculosis Measles

14.4 11.5 6.0 3.9 3.7

Mid transition Bangladesh Ischemic heart disease Lower respiratory infections Tuberculosis Diarrheal diseases

11.7 11.2 6.7 6.2

Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) Late transition Japan Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) Ischemic heart disease Lower respiratory infections Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers Stomach cancer

5.8

13.8 9.6 9.4 5.8 5.2

Cause of deaths

Niger Lower respiratory infections Diarrheal diseases Malaria Measles Low birth weight

East Timor Tuberculosis Ischemic heart disease Lower respiratory infections Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) Meningitis

Russian Federation Ischemic heart disease

% of deaths

Cause of deaths

% of deaths

14.0 10.3 9.6 5.5 4.8

Zambia HIV/AIDS Lower respiratory infections Malaria Diarrheal diseases Tuberculosis

41.6 11.6 8.3 6.7 3.1

9.8 9.3 9.0 4.6

Yemen Lower respiratory infections Diarrheal diseases Ischemic heart disease Low birth weight

14.2 11.1 9.5 5.5

2.9

Road trafﬁc accidents

4.4

29.6

United States of America Ischemic heart disease

Cerebrovascular disease (stroke) Poisonings Self-inﬂicted injuries

22.2

Cerebrovascular disease (stroke)

6.8

2.8 2.5

6.5 5.3

Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers

2.4

Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Alzheimer and other dementias

Source: World Health Organization, Burden of Disease Project ( Web access).

21.3

3.8

Epidemiological Transition

573

Stage of demographic transition Pre-

Early

Late

Crude birth rate

Natural increase

Vital rates

Post-

Crude death rate ?

Stage of epidemiological transition Pestilence and famine

Receding pandemics

Degenerative and human-induced diseases

Delayed degenerative diseases and emerging infections

Stage of ageing transition Young

Youthful

Mature

Aged

Very aged

Hyperaged

Stage of nutrition transition Famine Diet Cereals predominant, low-variety diet

Receding famine

Degenerative disease

Behavioral change?

Fewer starchy staples; more fruits, vegetables, animal protein; low variety continues

More fat (especially from animal products), sugar, processed foods; less fibre

Higher-quality fats, reduced refined carbohydrates, more whole grains, fruits, vegetables Reduction in body fat and obesity, improvement in bone health

Nutritional status Children and women suffer most from low fat intake, nutritional-deficiency diseases emerge, stature declines

Continued female and child nutrition problems, many deficiencies disappear, weaning diseases emerge, stature grows

Obesity, problems for elderly (bone health, etc.), many disabling conditions

Figure 1 The demographic, epidemiological, aging and nutrition transitions. Sources: McCracken, K. and Phillips, D. R. (2005). International demographic transitions. In Andrews, G. J. & Phillips, D. R. (eds.) Ageing and Place, pp 36 60. London: Routledge.; Popkin, B. M. (2006). Global nutrition dynamics: The world is shifting rapidly toward a diet linked with noncommunicable diseases. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 84, 289 298.

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Epidemiological Transition

5. that variations in the pattern, pace, determinants, and consequences of population change differentiate three basic models of epidemiological transition. Stages of Epidemiological Transition The shift in diseases referred to in proposition 2 was argued to typically involve three major successive stages: Stage 1. ‘The age of pestilence and famine’, the era • before the transition, when mortality was high and

•

•

ﬂuctuating and dominated, as its name was intended to evoke, by the Malthusian ‘positive checks’ of in fectious disease, famine, and wars. Stage 2. ‘The age of receding epidemics’, ‘‘when mortality declines progressively and the rate of decline accelerates as epidemic peaks become less frequent or disappear’’. With the decline of infectious diseases the average age at death rises and degenera tive diseases become more important. Stage 3. ‘The age of degenerative and man made diseases’, when mortality continues to decline and the move from infectious to degenerative disease predominance is completed.

Models of Transition Three basic models of epidemiological transition were identiﬁed, although other variants have also been pro posed as noted below: 1. The ‘classical (Western) model’ in which the shift in total and cause speciﬁc mortality patterns occurred gradually and progressively over a century or more. Most Western European societies were seen as typi fying this pattern. 2. The ‘accelerated model’ in which the fall in the crude death rate and shift from an infectious to degenerative disease dominated mortality proﬁle occurred over a far shorter period of time. Japan was cited as especially exemplifying this model. 3. The ‘contemporary (or delayed) model’, character izing the ‘‘relatively recent and yet to be completed transition of most developing countries’’, Chile and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) being chosen as representative examples. Disease Determinants In turn, three major categories of disease determinants were outlined – (1) ‘ecobiologic’; (2) ‘socioeconomic, political, and cultural’; and (3) ‘medical and public health’ – and ascribed varying importance in the re spective models. The transition from infectious to de generative disease predominance in the classical

(Western) model was attributed primarily to ecobiologic and socioeconomic factors with medical factors ‘‘largely inadvertent until the twentieth century, by which time pandemics of infection had already receded signiﬁcantly.’’ In the case of Japan and other countries ﬁtting the accelerated model, the mortality revolution was seen as stemming from ‘sanitary and medical advances’ along with ‘general social improvements’. Imported medical technology and public health measures were meanwhile deemed paramount in the delayed model. To summarize, the picture painted was a linear one of more or less uninterrupted progression from stage 1 through to stage 3 in which degenerative and man made diseases displaced infections as the leading causes of mortality and life expectancy at birth rose from low vacillating levels in the 20–40 years range to over 50 years. Whether fully intended or not, the image conveyed was of a ﬁnite process, with stage 3 seeming to be the endpoint of human epidemiological evolution. Similarly, implicit was the idea of the transition as a universal process, an epidemiological destiny that all countries would ultimately experience. Omran subsequently produced further papers on epidemiological transition, some on the transition in general, others applying the theory to the United States. The only real elaborations upon the original formulation though were, one, to deﬁne the vaguely labeled ‘man made diseases’ (better termed ‘human induced’) as things such as ‘‘radiation injury, accidents, occupational hazards, carcinogens in the environment and in industry, and food additives’’ along with mental illness and drug depend ency and, two, to add a ‘transitional variant of the delayed model’. This additional model was to differentiate those developing countries that had experienced rapid mor tality decline in the 1940s, as per the delayed model, and which over ensuing decades had maintained the momentum of decline (in contrast to the slackening off found in many parts of the developing world) and also registered substantial fertility reduction.

Critiques and Extensions of the Theory The validity and universality of epidemiological transi tion as a concept in general and Omran’s theory in particular have been widely debated across a range of disciplines including geography, demography, epidemi ology, public health, medical and economic history, and health planning. Aspects that have attracted particular attention have been the notion of unidirectional se quential change, the seeming end state accorded the third stage and its implied vanquishing of infectious disease, the relative importance of different disease determinants, the limited attention given to morbidity, and the broad social and spatial brush of the model.

Epidemiological Transition

Linear Progression? The impression conveyed by Omran’s model is of smooth, uninterrupted advancement through the transition, the three eras occurring in clear, by implication, one way sequence. Subsequent empirical research, however, has largely invalidated this conceptualization, with demonstration that epidemiological reversal (‘counter transition’) can equally occur. The life expectancy declines associated with the African HIV/AIDS epidemic (HIV, human immunodeﬁciency virus; AIDS, acquired immune deﬁciency syndrome) are perhaps the most powerful illustration of this and the falsity of any notion of seemingly inevitable epidemiological improvement and progression through Omran’s stages. Zimbabwean life expectancy at birth for instance is estimated by the UN to have fallen from around 60 years in the mid 1980s to 37 at the end of the century; Botswana’s from 63 to 48; and Zambia’s from 51 to 34. A corollary of the AIDS epidemic has been a resurgence of tuberculosis morbidity and mortality following from the increased prevalence of immune system impairment. From having advanced to varying points within stage 2, these countries have been catapulted back to the pretransitional ‘pestilential’ era. Another well documented example of counter transition life expectancy decline is the experience of several of the former Soviet Union republics where the economic collapse, social disruption, and political upheaval following the dissolution of the USSR caused death rates, particularly among males, to soar. Similar reversal has also occurred among the United States inner city young black male population where a deadly epi demiological cocktail of violence, accidents, and HIV has sometimes emerged. Further Stages of Epidemiological Transition? The suggested ﬁnality of stage 3 in Omran’s model has subsequently also been proven premature by continuing epidemiological evolution in developed countries. This evolution has seen a very large decline in cardiovascular disease mortality, a pronounced delaying of deaths from the leading degenerative diseases (heart disease, cancer, and stroke) to later ages (the ‘rectangularization of the survival curve’), the rise of ‘social pathology’ deaths, the dual emergence of new infectious diseases (e.g., HIV/ AIDS and hepatitis C), and the resurgence of old ones (such as tuberculosis, in drug and multidrug resistant forms). Also, as the bottom panel in Table 2 indicates, while ‘late stage’ epidemiological transition countries all share degenerative disease dominated mortality proﬁles, important variations have evolved beneath that broad commonality. A critical component of modern day transition is the morbidity, as well as mortality, from psychosocial conditions, such as depression and stress, with associated physical ill health, sometimes suicides or

575

deliberate self harm, and loss of quality of life for indi viduals and families. Moreover, the often noted modern ‘epidemic’ of dementias associated with aging popu lations is crucial as these dementias, which have various underlying causes, result in huge morbidity and the need for care, place burdens on families and communities, and often lead to the death of the individuals. The increasing incidence and prevalence of many of these conditions have seen the transition model expanded to incorporate a fourth stage. This new era has been termed the ‘age of delayed degenerative diseases’, and some have suggested the label ‘hybristic stage’, to reﬂect the increasing inﬂuence of social pathological and life style related mortality (such as substance abuse, cirrhosis of the liver, suicide, homicide, and accidents). The development of this modern and emerging phase has varied both socially between groups in the population and geographically across regions and within urban areas. Lower socioeconomic groups, for instance, have often not enjoyed such large declines in heart disease and stroke as those of higher status. Likewise, hybristic social path ology mortality displays marked racial group differen tiation in the United States, Australia, and many other developed and middle income countries. For example, in the United States, accidents, assault (homicide), and HIV accounted for 14.1% of black male deaths in 2000, more than twice the equivalent proportion in the white male population. Yet, further stages of possible epidemiological evo lution have been touted. For example, a distinct new stage centered around the continuing re emergence of infectious and parasitic diseases has been suggested. Meanwhile, more recently speculation has been voiced about rising childhood obesity rates leading to an era of rising nutritional disorders and declining life expectancy in developed nations. Obesity is also becoming a major problem in developing nations in earlier stages of the transition and may slow down life expectancy progress there below what might have previously been expected. Research on the nutrition transition by Popkin and others offers many valuable insights in this area (Figure 1). In the light of developments over the past three to four decades, it would thus seem unwise to think of epi demiological transition as ever being complete. The Conquest of Infectious Disease? The move through the transition to an era in which in fectious and parasitic disease has been essentially van quished as a force in mortality has not transpired to the extent heralded by Omran. Indeed, the WHO has pointed out that numerous ‘new’ infectious diseases, or variants on known infections, are regularly discovered. Moreover, a million people a year, mainly children, die from malaria and almost 2 million from tuberculosis; the

576

Epidemiological Transition

majority in poor countries, and these two conditions alone cause many times more episodes of acute and chronic ill health. Certainly, degenerative conditions have replaced infections as the predominant killers in the more developed nations, but the optimistic 1960s pro nouncements of the era of epidemic disease coming to an end even in developed nations have proved seriously premature. Readily recognized and dramatic reminders are the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the emergence of drug resistant tuberculosis and pneumonia. Similarly, today, many parts of the world are braced for what the WHO and some others expect to be a pandemic of avian inﬂuenza if the H5N1 virus mutates into a form easily transmissible between humans. But also important is the continuing, though often overlooked, contribution of less spectacular infections to present day developed and especially developing world mortality. The International Classiﬁcation of Diseases (ICD) in advertently potentially encourages this underestimation. Over its various revisions, the ﬁrst chapter of the classi ﬁcation has been ‘infectious and parasitic diseases’, and commentators have frequently taken deaths in that chapter (now down to close to 1% of total deaths in most developed nations) as representing virtual elimination of infectious diseases as killers. However, buried away in the classiﬁcation are other deaths with infectious etiologies; those directly identiﬁed, such as inﬂuenza and pneu monia, but also numerous others – for example, liver cancer deaths resulting from hepatitis B and C, cervical cancer deaths due to human papillomavirus (HPV), some genito urinary conditions, rheumatic heart disease, and the like. Apart from this hidden side of infectious disease, there is the ‘associated’ role infectious conditions (such as inﬂuenza, pneumonia, and septicemia) play in many deaths and many drug resistant forms of infections can be transmitted within hospitals. Also overhanging all nations, more developed and less developed alike, are the threats of future pandemics of inﬂuenza (avian or other types) and other infectious outbreaks, along with the possibility of bioterrorism events. Explaining the Classical (Western) Transition The classical (Western) model transition from infectious to degenerative disease predominance has been ascribed as primarily due to ecobiologic and socioeconomic factors, rating medical factors as of scant importance (i.e., ‘largely inadvertent until the twentieth century’). This view was also very powerfully argued, both before and after Omran’s initial paper, in the writings of Thomas McKeown, with improvements in nutrition speciﬁcally nominated as the key factor. These claims have sub sequently become probably the most hotly contested aspect of the transition theory and the orthodoxy now is that both Omran and McKeown failed to give medical

factors due recognition. Both authors were probably correct in that curative medical advances played rela tively little part in reducing mortality until well into the twentieth century, but in viewing ‘medical factors’ in that narrow curative sense they are now generally seen as having undervalued the role of public health inter ventions – sewerage and drainage reforms, improvements in water and milk supplies, the removal of waste, laws against overcrowding, etc., although some argue that there is little evidence that nutrition improved. The Place of Morbidity? Although proposition 2 of Omran’s thesis speaks of both morbidity and death and elsewhere reference is made to ‘health and disease’ patterns, in fact very little attention was given to the morbidity side of the transition or to health in a wider sense than as indicated by changing cause of death patterns. This has left his theory open to the charge of being ‘insufﬁciently epidemiological’ and the broadening into a more genuine ‘health transition’ model. Riley and Alter were among the ﬁrst to extend Omran’s formulation to incorporate morbidity behavior during the transition, importantly showing that ‘mortality cannot be used as a proxy for morbidity’. While the mortality dimension of the transition involves gains in life expectancy, and in that sense health improvement and certainly quality of life, they made the point that the associated morbidity transition ‘‘is characterised by a shift from acute to chronic conditions, which can bring about an overall increase in the prevalence of poor health.’’ Riley and Alter saw their paper as contributing to a more complete theory of epidemiological transition and retained that descriptive title. Working around the same time however, Caldwell and colleagues introduced the term ‘health transition’ to widen the focus from just death and illness to health in its full positive as well as negative sense and to the cultural, social, and behavioral de terminants of changing health. The attention drawn to cultural, social, and behavioral determinants was a de liberate attempt to highlight factors other than medical interventions and income. One aspect of this widening of focus has been the development of the concept of ‘healthy life expectancy’ (or ‘health adjusted life expectancy’ – HALE), that is, the average number of healthy years of life remaining to a person of a given age in a particular population. This concept broadens the conventional mortality based measure of life expectancy to take into account the years of life free of disability. HALE is a conceptually more attractive and informative measure of health status through incorporating both morbidity and mortality, but caution needs to be exercised in interpreting published HALE ﬁgures for many less developed nations due to data availability and quality problems. For example, the

Epidemiological Transition

WHO’s estimate of HALE at birth (years) for Afghani stan in 2002 was 35.3, with an uncertainty interval of 26.7–40.4; for North Korea, 58.0 and 50.9–64.2; and for East Timor, 47.9 and 40.8–53.6. A Compression of Morbidity? With the widening of transition theory to incorporate morbidity has also come considerable debate about the quality of health over the years of additional life ex pectancy. Are the extended years of life principally years of good health, or simply extra years of poor health as postulated by Verbrugge in 1984 in a classic paper? The two scenarios have respectively become known as the ‘compression’ and ‘expansion of morbidity’ theses. The compression thesis, the optimistic perspective, argues that as mortality declines ill health and disability will be increasingly compressed into the later years of life due to improving living standards and medical and public health advances. The alternative view, the expansion scenario, argues instead that, while death rates from many chronic diseases have fallen, their incidence and prevalence remain largely unchanged, leaving increasing numbers of unhealthy survivors. Unfortunately, detailed data internationally are often too scanty to give deﬁnitive support to either scenario although HALE Project data from Europe suggest that, while European populations are aging, the proportions of older persons with disability are decreasing. These ﬁndings differ across various countries suggesting that dynamics of functioning may differ across cultures and indicating the need for research to clarify which potentially modiﬁable and culturally determined factors protect against functional decline. In speciﬁc cases, especially in the developed world, evidence is rapidly mounting for the compression thesis and changes (mainly decreases) in disability have been noted in countries such as the USA in speciﬁc groups. There is nevertheless debate about methodological issues and data interpretation, suggesting that declines in morbidity may be more gradual than some analyses suggest. Fries, in 2003, revisits his 1980 compression of morbidity paradigm, and notes USA data, which show morbidity decline has been about 2% per year, con trasted with mortality rate decline of about 1% per year. This supports a compression of morbidity argument, at any rate in the United States, at the population level. Perhaps the most important feature is that longi tudinal research now strongly links good health habits with long term reductions in cumulative lifetime dis ability. Fries notes that people with few behavioral health risks have only one fourth the disability of those who have more risk factors and it appears that the onset of disability is postponed from 7 to 12 years, far more than any increases in longevity in the respective groups. A crucial thing for policy, which links compression of

577

morbidity to aspects of epidemiological transition, is that rigorous research on health enhancement programs in older populations shows a combination of reduction in health risks, improved health status, and (key for policy) decreased medical care utilization. This means that current health policy initiatives might help increase and consolidate health gains, especially for older people and probably for all age groups. The exact role of lifestyle/ behavioral factors in compression of morbidity is nevertheless blurred; while behavior such as smoking has decreased and there has been improved screening for hypertension and some types of cancers, at the popu lation level their health gains might be offset by, for example, increases in obesity and, in later life, dementias, which are more or less worldwide phenomena. Another important practical and policy issue is that some argue the current improved trends in mortality are unlikely to continue without major breakthroughs in the basic sci ence of aging. Others have a more positive view and argue that mortality experts who have asserted that life expectancy is close to an ultimate ceiling have repeatedly been proven wrong. They suggest that, for 160 years, best performance life expectancy has steadily increased by a quarter of a year per year, an extraordinarily con sistent human achievement. In any case, compression of morbidity does seem to be happening (in the USA and presumably in many other developed economies), and this has important policy and ﬁnancial implications, especially in aging populations, as noted below. Intra-national Epidemiological Variety The picture drawn in the original statement of the epidemiological transition was essentially one of nation states at distinct epidemiological stages. Some recog nition that underneath the national aggregate pattern different groups in a population might experience epi demiological change differently was shown in proposition 3’s claim that children and young women experience the most profound changes in health and disease patterns during the transition. Later, in work on the transition in the United States, Omran extended the discussion of differentials to include race, outlining how the transition ‘‘among the non white population of the U.S. was slower than among the whites.’’ Beyond that, however, sub national epidemiological heterogeneity was not considered. Such heterogeneity, however, is intrinsic to the notion of transition, the passage from one epidemiological stage to another necessarily involving a period of time when different types of diseases coexist strongly in a popu lation. Cumulative cause of death graphs in some of Omran’s papers in fact clearly show that overlap stage in England and Wales and the United States, but the emphasis in those papers was on succeeding stages, not overlap.

578

Epidemiological Transition

However, this overlap has become of major signiﬁ cance to many present day less developed countries with the coexistence becoming entrenched. As described by Frenk et al., a new model of epidemiological transition is occurring where ‘‘the changes do not fully take place and where different types of disease coexist in the same population.’’ They labeled this as ‘protracted epidemi ological transition’. Countries in such overlap thus bear a double burden of disease – old pre transition style dis eases and new ‘modern’ health problems. In many cases this has led to ‘epidemiological polarization’, where dif ferent social classes and geographic locations have dis tinct epidemiological proﬁles. Richer groups and locations tend to be characterized by ‘modern’ disease proﬁles, while poorer groups and places often suffer more from old style diseases. This shows in many countries in a rural (old style dominance)–urban (new style domin ance) cleavage. Signiﬁcant polarization though is also frequently found within cities. Table 3 presents the ex ample of Cape Town, South Africa, highlighting the very different cause of death proﬁles of the poor Cape Flats district of Khayelitsha and the afﬂuent South Pen insula area. Caldwell notes that this is also happening in many societies of the Eastern Mediterranean Region where the less afﬂuent sectors have a high incidence of infectious diseases, especially among children, while the wealthier sectors show completely different patterns of illness. A focus on national averages thus masks the different ‘epidemiological worlds’ citizens of the same country can inhabit, doing a disservice to virtually all people. Indeed, the WHO’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health is paying special attention to inequalities in health between and within countries.

Epidemiological Transition and Health Planning Can a broad and long term model or concept such as epidemiological transition have any use for health and social care planning? Certainly in the ‘short term’ this utility is limited, but there are certainly some important implications for longer term policy that can be drawn. Table 3

In some ways, various policy implications of epidemi ological transition can be clearer in the developing world, where rapid transition is often occurring and where the overlapping stages of transition prove great challenges to healthcare and other human services planning. Take for example some sub Saharan countries which are facing the epidemiological challenges of the earlier types, in volving malnutrition or food shortage, infectious diseases (such as HIV/AIDS), multiple drug resistant tubercu losis and malaria, yet at the same time are facing epi demics of cancers and circulatory diseases, as well as growing populations of older people with new long term care requirements. These countries have to plan for a protracted period in which they will have to face this mixed transition, with huge implications for personnel and facility provision, as well as for their health tech nology and essential drugs needs. Today, in many countries, much of the future need for public taxation and retirement savings is predicated on the ‘moral panic’ scenario, which predicts an avalanche of older populations, by implication disabled, dependent, and costly to care for. However, if we look forward with knowledge of epidemiological transition, forewarned may be forearmed. Current trends in morbidity and mortality data suggest that we are doing something right. People are often living longer and, it seems, sometimes in healthier states. This will potentially have huge policy impacts. This is even if the most important policy has not yet systematically been implemented in many health systems – the postponement of disability through primary prevention. Future policy must therefore focus on ways to reduce morbidity from mainly nonfatal (but potentially fatal) diseases such as osteoporosis, rheuma toid arthritis, cognitive disorders (such as depression), and then dementias, especially Alzheimer’s disease. It is clear that long term spending on public (and private) healthcare and associated long term care may very well be affected by trends in epidemiological transition. Late stage ‘emerging’ epidemiological transition in particular therefore highlights how we should be looking at the conditions that will be the major challenges of tomorrow. Implicitly, of course, where there is proﬁt to be made, this is already being done by businesses.

Leading causes of death (%) in Cape Town and selected subdistricts of Cape Town, 2001

Cape Town

Cape Town subdistricts Khayelitsha (poor)

Cause of death (%) Homicide Ischemic heart disease HIV/AIDS Hypertensive heart disease Tuberculosis

(10.5) (8.1) (7.4) (6.4) (5.9)

Homicide HIV/AIDS Tuberculosis Lower respiratory infections Road trafﬁc accidents

South Peninsula (afﬂuent) (18.7) (15.0) (14.9) (5.2) (4.9)

Ischemic heart disease Hypertensive heart disease Diabetes Mellitus Homicide Stroke

(12.8) (7.8) (6.9) (5.7) (5.2)

Source: Groenewald, P., Bradshaw, D., Nojilana, B. et al. (2003). Cape Town Mortality, 2001. (Part I, Cause of Death and Premature Mortality; Part III, Cause of Death Proﬁles for Each Sub District.) Cape Town: City of Cape Town, South African Medical Research Council, University of Cape Town.

Epidemiological Transition

We see many examples in which pharmaceutical com panies are looking for the ‘holy grails’ of dementia treatments and those for cancers, and health technology researchers and corporations are stepping up the devel opment of early detection equipment, especially of the safe and noninvasive kind. By contrast, nonproﬁtable treatments and prophylaxis for poorer country conditions such as malaria are often overlooked by big business. In particular, the area of future health and welfare personnel needs and training is important. Stafﬁng re quirements in various medical and welfare specialisms will change over time. More important, perhaps, is the fact that today’s doctors and nurses often receive rather limited initial training in the needs of aging populations and the detection and management of many common chronic aliments, especially psychosocial and cognitive impairments which cause huge medical and social care workloads. Their needs are often as much social and supportive as purely clinical. Medical, nursing, and social work syllabi therefore can sensibly be reviewed in the light of the conditions that today’s students are likely to meet when they are working 10, 20, or 30 years later. In summary, the concept of epidemiological transition does seem to have utility and importance if used as a long term planning advisory framework. It is by no means an infallible framework, but used judiciously it is almost an essential component of long term health and welfare planning. See also: Demography; Diffusion; Disease Diffusion; Disease Mapping; Health Geography; Medical Geography.

Further Reading Caldwell, J. C. (2001). Population health in transition. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 79(2), 159 160. Caldwell, J. C., Findley, S., Caldwell, P. et al. (eds.) (1990). What We Know About Health Transition: The Cultural, Social and Behavioural Determinants of Health, 2 vols. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Frederiksen, H. (1969). Feedbacks in economic and demographic transition. Science 166, 837 847. Frenk, J., Bobadilla, J. L., Sepulveda, J. and Cervantes, M. L. (1989). Health transition in middle income countries: New challenges for health care. Health Policy and Planning 4(1), 29 39. Fries, J. F. (1980). Aging, natural death, and the compression of morbidity. New England Journal of Medicine 303, 130 136. Fries, J. F. (2003). Measuring and monitoring success in compressing morbidity. Annals of Internal Medicine 139, 455 459. Gribble, J. N. and Preston, S. H. (1993). The Epidemiological Transition: Policy and Planning Implications for Developing Countries. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Groenewald, P., Bradshaw, D., Nojilana, B. et al. (2003). Cape Town Mortality, 2001. (Part I, Cause of Death and Premature Mortality; Part III, Cause of Death Proﬁles for Each Sub District.) Cape Town: City of Cape Town, South African Medical Research Council, University of Cape Town. Jamison, D. T., Breman, J. G., Measham, A. R. et al. (2006). Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries (2nd edn.). New York: Oxford University Press and World Bank.

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Manton, K. G., Gu, X. and Lamb, V. L. (2006). Long term trends in life expectancy and active life expectancy in the United States. Population and Development Review 32(1), 81 106. Marmot, M. (2005). Social determinants of health inequalities. The Lancet 365, 1099 1104. McCracken, K. and Curson, P. (2000). In sickness and in health: Sydney past and present. In Connell, J. (ed.) Sydney: The Emergence of a World City, pp 96 118; 352 356. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. McCracken, K. and Phillips, D. R. (2005). International demographic transitions. In Andrews, G. J. & Phillips, D. R. (eds.) Ageing and Place, pp 36 60. London: Routledge. McKeown, T. (1976). The Modern Rise of Population. London: Edward Arnold. Olshansky, S. J. and Ault, A. B. (1986). The fourth stage of the epidemiologic transition: The age of delayed degenerative diseases. The Milbank Quarterly 64(3), 355 391. Olshansky, J., Carnes, B., Rogers, R. G. and Smith, L. (1997). Infectious diseases new and ancient threats to world health. Population Bulletin 52(2), 52. Olshansky, S. J., Passaro, D. J., Hershow, R. C. et al. (2005). A potential decline in life expectancy in the United States in the 21st century. New England Journal of Medicine 352(11), 1138 1145. Omran, A. R. (1971). The epidemiologic transition: A theory of the epidemiology of population change. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 49(4), 509 538. Omran, A. R. (1977). Epidemiologic transition in the US. Population Bulletin 32(2), 42. Omran, A. R. (1983). The epidemiologic transition theory: A preliminary update. Journal of Tropical Pediatrics 29, 305 316. Phillips, D. R. (1990). Health and Health Care in the Third World. London: Longman. Phillips, D. R. (1994). Does epidemiological transition have utility for health planners? Social Science and Medicine 38(10), vii x. Phillips, D. R. and Verhasselt, Y. (eds.) (1994). Health and Development. London: Routledge. Popkin, B. M. (2002). An overview on the nutrition transition and its health implications: The Bellagio meeting. Public Health Nutrition 5(1A), 93 103. Popkin, B. M. (2006). Global nutrition dynamics: The world is shifting rapidly toward a diet linked with noncommunicable diseases. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 84, 289 298. Riley, J. C. and Alter, G. (1989). The epidemiologic transition and morbidity. Annales de Demographie Historique 199 213. Rogers, R. G. and Hackenberg, R. (1987). Extending epidemiologic transition theory: A new stage. Social Biology 34(3 4), 234 243. Smallman Raynor, M. and Phillips, D. (1999). Late stages of epidemiological transition: Health status in the developed world. Health and Place 5, 209 222. United Nations (1963). Population Bulletin of the United Nations, No. 6: The Situation and Recent Trends of Mortality in the World. New York: United Nations. Verbrugge, L. (1984). Longer life but worsening health? Trends in health and mortality of middle aged and older persons. Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 62(3), 475 519. Wolf, D. A., Hunt, K. and Knickman, J. (2005). Perspectives on the recent decline in disability at older ages. Milbank Quarterly 83(3), 365 395.

Relevant Websites http://www.cdc.gov/ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://reves.site.ined.fr/en/ REVES Network on Health Expectancy. http://www.who.int/healthinfo/bodproject/en/index.html The World Health Report; Burden of Disease Project. http://www.who.int/social determinants/en/ WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health. http://www.who.int/classiﬁcations/icd/en/ WHO International Classiﬁcations of Diseases (ICD).

Equity J. Wiles, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand A. Kobayashi, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

What Is Equity? Equity is about social justice and fairness, and reﬂects a concern to reduce systematic discrimination and mar ginalization. Some have described equity as the absence of systemic disparities (e.g., in health outcomes, in major social determinants of health, access to health, access to employment, employment outcomes) between social groups who have different levels of underlying social advantage or disadvantage. For example, groups may be socially disadvantaged by virtue of being poor, female, disabled, ill, or a member of a racialized or minoritized ethnic, cultural, religious, or age group. The ethical principle of equity is that selective priority should be given to improving the situation of the most socially disadvantaged groups in a society, which may mean the readjustment of strict rules or structures, or the redistribution of the resources and other processes that drive a system of inequality. Others have described equity as inclusiveness and the afﬁrmation of opportun ities for all on the grounds that there is no such thing as a ‘level playing ﬁeld’. Still others associate equity with principles of human rights. The difﬁculty with deﬁning equity is that speciﬁc deﬁnitions have implications for the conceptually rigorous measurement and monitoring of, and accountability for, equity. Equity is not synonymous with equality. Whereas equality is generally about fairness deﬁned as sameness, equity is about addressing unfair difference. In a human rights context, ‘formal equality’ refers to the principle of treating everyone equally, regardless of the outcomes. ‘Substantive equity’, in contrast, refers to the principle of achieving a fair outcome. In order to achieve substantive equity, it is necessary to take positive measures to affect outcomes. Even so equality is to some extent value based, because people are not the same, and all treatment is based on some socially deﬁned and normative choice concerning the standard for sameness, especially when that standard is deﬁned according to the able bodied, white, middle class male. In a typical city, for example, everyone may have equal right of access to a service or employment, but they are not the same because a host of barriers (poverty, lack of transportation, racial discrimination) may prevent people from actually gaining access. In employing these different terms with respect to health for example, it is a value based decision to decide

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when the more frequently used term ‘health inequality’ becomes a health inequity. Margaret Whitehead dis tinguished between health inequalities as those differ ences relating to physical variation and freely chosen health damaging behavior, and health inequities as dif ferentials due to health damaging behaviors not based on informed choices (such as exposure to unhealthy living or working conditions, and inadequate access to health and social services). Health inequalities are either un avoidable or ‘fair’, whereas inequities are judged to be avoidable and unfair. Of course the difﬁculty in this is establishing agreement on precisely which differences in health outcomes and service uses are avoidable, to what degree they are so, and whether this is the same for everyone. As Whitehead concludes, equity in health ‘‘is concerned with creating equal opportunities for health, and with bringing health differentials down to the lowest levels possible.’’ As Table 1 suggests, while equity and equality are not synonymous, they are complexly related. Equity might be considered a speciﬁc or even ethical form of equality (for example relating to the third, fourth, and ﬁfth of Torstein Eckhoff ’s principles of equality). Equity implies something more than the fairly straightforward sameness implied in Eckhoff ’s ﬁrst and second principles of equality. Eckhoff ’s third and fourth principles refer to equality of outcomes, which are more easily measured

Table 1 1 2

3 4

5

Eckhoff’s principles of equality

Objective equality Relative equality

Equal amounts to each recipient (traditional equality) The ‘equity rule’, equality of outcome/input ratios, or equality relative to individual contributions Subjective Needs rule equality of outcomes taking into equality account need and/or desert Rank order If costs or investments of one group are equality higher than those of another, distributive justice requires their rewards should be higher too. Condition of equilibrium ‘felt justice’ normative expectations Equality of Complex because of complexity of term opportunity opportunity, historical antecedents of inequality

After Eckhoff, T. (1974). Justice: Its Determinants in Social Interaction. Rotterdam: Rotterdam Press; Cook, K. S. and Hegtvedt, K. A. (1983). Distributive justice, equity, and equality. Annual Review of Sociology 9, 217 241.

Equity

and more popular amongst policy makers than the ﬁfth principle of equality of opportunity, which is difﬁcult to measure and thus to monitor. Equal opportunity (also known as afﬁrmative action) describes an approach in tended to ensure people are not excluded from activities of society (education, employment, healthcare) on the basis of ‘immutable traits’ or social characteristics. For example, this might be practiced as equal oppor tunity employment, which includes practices that are ethnic identity or gender blind, or that involve afﬁrmative action or positive discrimination. In practice, methods for fulﬁlling equal opportunity can be difﬁcult, especially since it is difﬁcult to measure opportunity. Therefore equal opportunity is often said to exist when equality of outcomes exists, since outcomes can be measured more easily than opportunities. Equality of outcomes might be deﬁned as being when people of similar abilities reach similar results, or the attempt to reduce differences in material condition between in dividuals, households, or groups in a society. This is still problematic: how are similar abilities measured? And how are we to account for inequalities that are passed from one generation to another? Even so, equity of outcomes might take into account the varying need of different groups, or the distributive justice requirement so that where costs or investments are higher for some groups, their outcomes or rewards should be greater too. For example, a social group who have been systematically and historically racialized or minoritized could be said to have borne a greater social cost than that of privileged groups, and thus be entitled to measures that will remove barriers to achieving outcomes that are equivalent to other groups. It is possible to distinguish between two broad cat egories of justice principles: (1) those that rely on char acteristics of recipients (micro justice principles), and (2) those that do not (macro justice principles). In this entry, the focus is on macro justice principles related to power, social justice, and systemic fairness, as the term ‘equity’ has come to be used in geography. In evolutionary science, psychology, and economics, how ever, equity and equality are often deﬁned in micro justice principles. For example, equity is deﬁned as ‘you get out what you put in’, that is, more if you put in more, whereas equality is deﬁned as ‘everyone gets the same regardless of what they put in’. A large body of primate and human research deals with this exchange approach to equity, particularly with reactions to injustice. For example, individuals treated inequitably experience distress, especially those who are unrewarded. They respond by restoring equity, for example, they may alter their own inputs, alter their own outcomes, cognitively distort their own or their partner’s inputs or outcomes, or leave the situation (recent work by Sarah Brosnan on fairness and co operation amongst

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Capuchin monkeys, and the Swiss economist Ernst Fehr on economics of human equity, co operation, and altru ism reﬂects this). There is also a very speciﬁc ﬁnancial sense in which equity is used to mean the exchange value of a good or a resource controlled or held by the ‘owner’ above the value of any indebtedness on that good. The concept of equity as fairness stems from the historical legal sense of ‘maxims of equity’ from the old English form of law and the Court of Equity. In the latter sense, equity is associated with ‘natural justice’ or a speciﬁc set of legal principles which supplement strict rules of common law where their operation would impact harshly. This is the most closely related to equity as we are using it here. The implementation of equity programs in public policy is extremely uneven geographically. In addition to major differences internationally in the degree to which the concept of equity is recognized and policies imple mented, scale differences occur within national juris dictions from the local to the national level, between the public and private sectors, and depending upon form of equity. In Canada, for example, there have been national policies in place for more than two decades to require equity in hiring (called ‘employment equity’) in those areas under federal jurisdiction and for those groups (women, racialized minorities, persons with disabilities, and aboriginal persons) designated as under represented. Equivalent programs for employers under provincial jurisdiction or in the independent private sector, however, are extremely uneven. And, while antidiscrimination clauses exist in almost every aspect of legislation, con stituting formal equality, there are few other areas where positive equity policies are in place, including education and, in all but one province, accessibility for persons with disabilities. In the United States, in contrast, there is national legislation, the Americans with Disabilities Act, that covers accessibility for persons with disabilities, but in tense public debate over questions of afﬁrmative action in other areas. For example, the principle of afﬁrmative action in education became widespread during the 1970s in response to the civil rights movement, as universities, recognizing the systemic discrimination faced by mem bers of minoritized groups, established quotas for entry of those groups. The practice was challenged in a series of court cases, most notably that of Allan Bakke who, having been denied entry to the University of California medical school, took his case to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1978 that he should be admitted to medical school, but also conﬁrmed that afﬁrmative action policies undertaken by universities, and by inference employers, may consider race and ethnicity as one of a number of factors when offering admission or hiring. Students or employees could not be denied entrance or employment if race was the only factor considered. Both sides of the debate

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claimed victory. In recent years, however, afﬁrmative action policies have virtually disappeared in American universities, as state legislation has dismantled the prac tice based on the neoliberal principle of individual merit. Opponents of afﬁrmative action presume that the status quo is fair and equal; discrimination can and does occur, but must be proven on a case by case basis. Claims for ‘group rights’ or systemic programs of positive redress, rather than leveling an uneven playing ﬁeld, are seen from such a perspective to grant ‘special interest groups’ particular privilege, regardless of skill or merit. Proponents of equity often refer to John Rawls’ liberal concept of justice as fairness, or distributive justice. There are two principles to Rawls’ concept: 1. each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of lib erties for all (the liberty principle), and 2. social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: ﬁrst, they are to be attached to positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of op portunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest beneﬁt of the least advantaged members of society. (Rawls, 1971, 2001: 42) The ﬁrst principle, or the liberty principle, emphasizes sameness and collective equality. The second part of this is often called the difference principle, reﬂecting the idea that inequality is only justiﬁed if it is to the advantage of those who are least well off. This places priority on reducing systemic disadvantage. As Rawls described this in the 1990s the ﬁrst [principle] requires equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties, while the second holds that social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating beneﬁts for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society. These prin ciples rule out justifying institutions on the grounds that the hardships of some are offset by a greater good in the aggregate. It may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper. But there is no injustice in the greater beneﬁts earned by a few provided that the situation of persons not so fortu nate is thereby improved. (Rawls 1995: 13)

For Rawls, then, we cannot think about sameness or equality as a collective goal or ideal without a broader judgement of how that goal affects those who are already least well off or most disadvantaged. Inequalities are only just if they result in some beneﬁt for the least advantaged members of a group. The inequality between a doctor’s salary and a cleaner is only acceptable, for example, if this is the only way to encourage the training of sufﬁcient

numbers of doctors, preventing an unacceptable decline in the availability of healthcare services which would disadvantage everyone. In contrast to the distributive justice approach to equity which tends to emphasize the absence of socially unjust or unfair disparities, a rights based approach to equity emphasizes a more positive sense of equity beyond the absence of socially unjust disparities. The latter im plies the recognition of the need to consider the rights and needs of those who are vulnerable or disadvantaged, and for privileged groups to recognize these needs and their own advantages. The philosopher Amartya Sen has also been inﬂuential in inﬂecting nuance into discussions about equity and equality. For example, he argues that we cannot begin to discuss ‘why equality’ unless we also consider ‘equality of what?’ (e.g., incomes, wealths, opportunities, achievements, freedoms, or rights). This is also important in the equity discussion, since we might be discussing equity in terms of access to opportunities, experiences of systems and practices in institutions, material equity, equity in access to resources, equity in distribution of public goods, or equity of freedoms. This also raises the difﬁcult question of ‘equity for whom’, since if equity is about improving the conditions of the most marginalized groups, many groups can potentially lay claim to the position of being ‘most’ marginalized. In practice, strategies to improve the condition of one disenfranchized group (such as afﬁrmative action for employment matters) do not always improve the con ditions of other groups, and in the worst cases the success of one group in gaining ground in equity may actually be at the detriment of other systematically marginalized groups. This difﬁculty needs to be balanced against the strategic issues of getting equity on the institutional and policy agenda in the ﬁrst place. Sen’s ideas therefore promote policies that emphasize equity in a positive sense (rather than a focus on reducing inequity) in order to increase human capacity to ﬂourish as human beings. For example, the right to health as set forth in the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Constitution and international human rights treaties is the right to ‘the highest attainable standard of health.’ Paula Braveman and Soﬁa Gruskin suggest that the highest attainable standard of health could be understood as the standard of health enjoyed by the most socially advantaged group in a society. These at least reﬂect levels that are physically attainable, and minimum standards for what should be possible for everyone in that society in the foreseeable future. There are, however, problems with this principle: ﬁrst, what is the highest attainable standard – is it to be measured by life ex pectancy, longevity, quality of life, or access to prevent ive/primary or secondary care? Second, can we justiﬁably expect everyone to have those levels of consumption that the highest level of society has? How does this principle

Equity

relate to equity for nonhuman agents? Also, how do we deﬁne the most socially advantaged group? Is it to be a decision measured by economic wealth, longevity, quality of life, social status, security, freedom from conﬂict, op portunity, power to, power over, etc.? Equity thus also has the potential to be co opted, since it is likely that those in power are also those who determine at a societal level what is equitable and what is not. For example, in some situations where women are disenfranchized, those in power have argued that con ditions are not unfair but are appropriate given the dif ferent capacities and roles of men and women. They argue that it is a principle of equity, rather than equality, to treat women and men differently according to their different needs. Similar essentialist arguments have been used in the past and present to justify discrimination, unfair treatment, and even oppression on the basis of ethnicity, age, and disability. In these contexts equality can become a crucial reference point. Equitable procedures do not guarantee equitable outcomes. We need to think about equity in terms of procedures for access to opportunities and resources (e.g., to employment, health resources, environmental processes, and resources), and outcomes (e.g., experiences within workplace environments, policies and barriers that sustain unfair practices etc.). Equity could thus be thought of as procedural and consequential. Procedural (or instrumental) equity is about access to opportunities (e.g., equitable participation in decision making, equit able access to resources such as healthcare services, employment opportunities, or education), whilst consti tutional equity is about equitable ability to enjoy the beneﬁts and disadvantages of outcomes of decisions, and use of resources. Instrumental equity relates to the means to the end, a strategy or procedures rooted in social justice, for example, equity structuring how decisions are made, such as who should be interviewed and selected for an employment position, or how a resource should be used. Consequential equity is more related to an end, a goal, or something to be achieved. This might mean the experience of individuals from marginalized groups once they are in employment, so that they work in an environment that is socially just, or the socially just distribution of outcomes of decision making. Environmental equity is a good example. Pro cedurally, all groups, but particularly those most systematically marginalized and/or vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (and/or to strategies to address climate change), should have equitable involvement and participation in processes and decision making. Con sequentially, all groups, including those most privileged by the decision, should share the distribution of costs, burdens, and responsibilities of climate change and strategies, as well as the distribution of resources, bene ﬁts, and opportunities.

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Measuring Equity There are a variety of approaches to assessing equit ability. These might include parity (or equality) of pro cedure or outcome, proportionality (e.g., according to input), priority (e.g., according to need), classical utili tarianism (e.g., greatest good to greatest number), and Rawlsian distributive justice (e.g., inequalities are only just if they result in some beneﬁt for the least advantaged members of a group). Further, with respect to con sequential equity there are different perceptions of what a ‘fair’ or ‘just’ opportunity or outcome is and who is to deﬁne this. Often self interest inﬂuences the selection of criteria and determination of equitable decisions, and there is potential for great conﬂict over the assessment, deﬁnition, comparison, and aggregation of the welfare of different groups, parties, and nations. Conﬂicts between equity and economic efﬁciency also arise. Efﬁciency often implies maximization of output subject to resource constraints, but this can result in in equitable income distribution, and may lead to inequities across generations. The debate on sustainability, or the need to balance short term interests with the protection of the interests of future generations (such as the responsibility to provide them with opportunities), is a classic example of both the conﬂict around how to deﬁne efﬁciency and the short term versus long term interests. Further, there is tension between whether equity is to be deﬁned (and measured and monitored) as existing between individuals or groups within a population. In health and public policy, for example, researchers increasingly deﬁne equity as between social groups, especially between worse off and better off groups. Researchers such as Barbara Starﬁeld have been critical of deﬁnitions that measure differences between indi viduals because these disregard the ethical concern for distributive justice between groups, or that priority should be given to improving the situation of the most socially disadvantaged in a society. In 2000, for example, the WHO used the term ‘inequities’ to describe differ ences between individuals in a population. This was perceived as unethical because it masked the systemic injustices that lead to inequitable health outcomes. Im proving overall average health status may have no impact on the difference between the worst and least advantaged groups in a society, and may even exacerbate this dif ference. In contrast the focus in a group related deﬁn ition of inequity is on social disadvantage, implying a political commitment to social justice rather than a more individualistic focus on survival of the ﬁttest. This is also an issue of scale and measurement of equity. Whereas most research on determinants of health uses data at the level of individuals, equity research requires modelling the inﬂuences on the health of populations at various levels (community, local, state, or national) to encourage

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Equity

consideration of the impact of factors in the policy and political realms on factors at the community level, which in turn inﬂuence the factors at the individual level.

in labor markets, education, health, environmental issues, justice issues, and access to resources, and at a variety of spatial and temporal scales from localized to global, and immediate to long term.

Achieving Equity? Equity and Geography Equity is more effectively achieved by improving distribution between groups (of resources, of access, of outcomes) than by improving overall averages. Examples of national level strategies for achieving equity through redistribution include: progressive taxation systems; social safety nets to protect the very poor; providing social services for the population at large (particularly primary, generalized services that are accessible, e.g., affordable and high quality housing, public access to high quality education, preventive and primary health care rather than specialist tertiary care, good nutrition, and food security); responding to identiﬁed hardship; targeting speciﬁc groups for support; emphasizing polit ical and civil rights; promoting genuine democracy; and widespread participation in decision making processes. Institutional strategies for achieving equity include afﬁrmative action and positive discrimination at a pro cedural level, to remove barriers that have limited people who have been systematically disadvantaged. Institutional change also requires more structural changes such as pay parity within workforces and between occupations, changes to policy, and particularly changes in behavior and practice. There is a tension between having equity policies in place in an institutionalized environment and practical compliance with these, or enforcing compliance. Starﬁeld usefully synthesizes evidence from a range of case studies presented at a workshop on Using Inter national Experiences in Translating Health Equity Research into Policy, all of which suggest that addressing (health) inequities requires: and documentation of the problem; • recognition existing principles of justice and explicit goals for • attaining it (a clear and coherent ethical framework); speciﬁcation of alternative strategies (e.g., ad • dressing a particular diseasepolicy may be more effectively

• • •

approached through providing widespread basic pri mary services that are more acceptable to the affected population and its representatives); widespread participation (including those who are especially affected, e.g., engaging diverse communities); support at high levels of government and/or strong and dynamic leadership; and focus on distribution (between social groups) rather than improving overall averages. (Starﬁeld, 2006: 25)

While this workshop focused on equity and health spe ciﬁcally, these principles could feasibly be applied to the issue of equity in a number of situations, including equity

There are several ways in which geographers can con tribute to discussions about equity. For example, spatial and temporal scale are critical equity issues. There is a tension between inter and intragenerational equity, just as there is a tension between inter and intraregional equity. The aggregate geographical level at which equity is measured will have an impact on the degree of inequity (hence the political process of gerrymandering, or div iding an area unfairly to one’s own political advantage by concentrating the opposition’s strength into as few dis tricts as possible – or distributing it over many districts to dilute the strength of a social group). Equity needs to be understood as a systemic process operating at inter connected scales, so that equity at a global scale has implications for equity at national, regional, community, family, and individual levels. It also needs to be under stood as a form of strong discourse that produces nor mative notions of the human body and the places that human bodies occupy. In an afﬁrmative and very practical sense, work by geographers on the inter relationship of physical and social environments has shown how adjustments to physical environments can promote social equity. For example, functional limitations associated with physical impairments can be changed with basic measures and environmental design (e.g., installing railings, ramps at appropriate angles, appropriate ﬂooring or street ma terials, GPS navigation systems, etc., and providing physical training to increase strength). Socially, the de gree of impairment associated with many psychological and physical conditions is highly related to the degree of social stigmatization or acceptance of people with those conditions, a concept fundamental to the social model of disability. Other forms of physical access, such as access to transportation, also emphasize that equity can be a spatialized condition. Finally, the issue of equity appears increasingly in discussing access to the discipline of geography. The discipline has been dominated by males of European background since the Enlightenment and recent studies show that although the academy is becoming more diverse, change happens slowly. Analysts who have questioned why change occurs slowly ﬁnd that it is partly a question of scale: decisions are made at the level of individual departments, often on the basis that all can didates are treated equally, but the cumulative result when scaled up is a discipline that shows the systemic

Equity

results of years of differential access to education, of the location (in the world) of those who have enjoyed access to education, and the sociospatial reproduction of priv ilege. As geography struggles to achieve equity, so equity struggles over geography. See also: Environmental Justice; Gerrymandering; Human Rights; Inequality; Scale; Social Justice, Urban.

Further Reading Braveman, P. and Gruskin, S. (2003). Deﬁning equity in health. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health 57, 254 258. Burman, E. and Chantler, K. (2004). There’s no place like home: Emotional geographies of researching ‘race’ and refuge provision in Britain. Gender, Place and Culture 11(3), 375 397. Cook, K. S. and Hegtvedt, K. A. (1983). Distributive justice, equity, and equality. Annual Review of Sociology 9, 217 241.

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Eckhoff, T. (1974). Justice: Its Determinants in Social Interaction. Rotterdam: Rotterdam Press. Gender, Place and Culture (2006). Special Issue on Equity. Gender, Place and Culture 13(1). Hall, J., Murphy, B. L. and Moss, P. (2002). Focus: Equity for women in geography. Canadian Geographer Geographe Canadien 46(3), 235 240. Munasinghe, M. (2000). Development, Equity and Sustainability (DES) in the context of climate change. IPCC Guidance Paper, Oregon State University. Rawls, J. (1995). A Theory of Justice (rev. edn.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (ﬁrst publ. 1971). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Sen, A. (1995). Inequality Re Examined. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Starﬁeld, B. (2006). State of the art in research on equity in health. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 31(1), 11 32. Whitehead, M. (1992). The concepts and principles of equity and health. International Journal of Health Services 22(3), 429 445.

Error (Propagation and Modeling) S. Gopal, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Accuracy It is the degree to which information in a geographic information system (GIS) matches true or accepted values. Accuracy pertains to data quality and the number of errors contained in a map or GIS database. Ambiguity It arises when objects are assigned different labels by different national or cultural groups. Error or Confusion Matrix This is a statistical method of error analysis used in remote sensing in which a reference set of classiﬁcation data is compared to another dataset or ground truth. Error Propagation When maps contained in a GIS database are used as input to a GIS operation, such as in map overlay, then the errors in the input data layer will propagate or spread to the output of the operation. Errors continue to propagate when the output from one operation is used as input to an ensuing operation. Fuzzy Sets It is used as a representation scheme and calculus for representing the concept of a class with unsharp boundaries. It is basically a multivalued logic that allows more precise representation of transition zones and imprecise categories in GIS. Precision It refers to the number of digits used to report a measurement that is often related to the instrument’s measurement accuracy. It could also refer to the performance of an instrument in making repeated measurements of the same phenomenon. RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) It is the square root of the average squared difference between recorded measurement and the truth; it is roughly interpreted as the average difference or as the standard deviation of the error distribution. Uncertainty It is used to describe situations in which the digital representation in a GIS is incomplete or inaccurate in representation of reality. Vagueness It denotes the uncertainty that characterizes the positions of the boundaries of a zone and in its attributes.

Introduction In the last decade, there has been an explosion in the use of geographic information system (GIS). There is a widespread tendency among users to believe GIS outputs (e.g., maps) as being inherently accurate. Many

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researchers have raised the question about the quality of GIS end products since GIS data and analysis are subject to error. No map output and model produced from a GIS is truly error free since errors and uncertainty creep into a GIS in a variety of ways. Ultimately, errors undermine the purpose of GIS analysis and lead to increased un certainty in the validity of the conclusions that are drawn. Thus, there is a need to understand how errors arise and propagate through the GIS and impact the conclusions. In GIS context, the term error is associated with uncertainty, ambiguity, accuracy, and precision. Error refers to the difference between actual and represented value of a variable in GIS while uncertainty refers to our imperfect and inexact knowledge of the world. The two are often used synonymously. Uncertainty in GIS is present in the stages of conception, measurement and representation, and analysis. Conception errors arise since it is impossible to capture or create a perfect representation of the world in a GIS database due to uncertainty in conception. Many geographic data and deﬁnitions are characterized by ambiguity, vagueness, and spatial uncertainty. For example, mapping wetlands has proved to be a legal challenge since wetlands can be classiﬁed differently according to their respective func tions, values, and beneﬁts. In human geography, it is not easy to represent the true spatial coordinates of residents’ perceived neighborhoods. Nor is it easy to represent the true meaning of everyday spatial semantics such as ‘near’, ‘far’, ‘on’, ‘at’, and ‘in’. These terms are culture speciﬁc and are fuzzy concepts presented in the seminal work of Zadeh. Measurement uncertainty is inherent in both raster and vector data models of GIS. The Earth is not a perfect sphere, and hence, a range of mathematical approxi mations are made of it leading to many types of mea surement errors. Positional error in GIS refers to the measurement of position, where every coordinate (x, y, and z) may be subject to errors. Positional accuracy refers to the degree to which the measured positional infor mation matches true or accepted values. The mapping standards employed by the United States Geological Survey specify that: requirements for meeting horizontal accuracy as 90 per cent of all measurable points must be within 1/30th of an inch for maps at a scale of 1:20,000 or larger, and 1/50th of an inch for maps at scales smaller than 1:20,000.

The referenced Java applet shows a simulation of uncertainty in the survey of a square parcel of land.

Error (Propagation and Modeling)

Assuming that each corner point is subject to an in dependent error in both coordinates, a root mean square error (RMSE) of 2 m, the Java applet simulation tracks the changes in the average area, standard deviation, and other statistics as well as a display of a histogram of areas. The Java applet is platform dependent (and hence can be run on personal computers (PCs) and Macs) and enables a simple visualization of simulating uncertainty. A distinction is often made between accuracy and precision in measurement since they both refer to dif ferent aspects of the measuring instrument’s ability to capture reality. Accuracy is the degree to which infor mation in a GIS matches true or accepted values while precision refers to the performance of an instrument (such as a Global Positioning System (GPS)) in making repeated measurements of the same phenomenon. Pre cision in measurement does not guarantee accuracy. The measurement could be highly precise but inaccurate. Another deﬁnition of precision is more commonly used and refers to the number of digits used to report a measurement. In many GIS calculations, answers are overly precise (i.e., contain many decimal points) that are often spurious. While accuracy relates to validity errors, reliability refers to the consistency or repeatability in measurement, for example, a GPS instrument at a given location should consistently produce same latitude and longitude readings to be considered reliable. Note that the GPS could consistently produce same results and hence be reliable but not accurate. In human geography, almost always, we sample only a few individuals of the total population often resulting in sampling error. For example, we might take a sample of shoppers to measure shopping patterns in a local super market. The sample may not be a true representative of the total population. Sampling errors are more difﬁcult to characterize and correct than measurement errors. Most frequently, we assume a normal population. The type and magnitude of these errors can be determined by repeated subsampling or by more exhaustive sampling. There is extensive statistical theory for dealing with both measurement and sampling errors. Most often, an ‘expected value’ (usually given by the mean) and a ‘variance’ of a normal or Student’s distribution can be used to express the uncertainty of the expected value. If the distribution of errors is known to have a non normal form, the parameters can be estimated using a different distribution. Uncertainty may be introduced in representing the data in a GIS. In a vector database, error may be intro duced in map generalization process since detail is lost due to generalization at smaller spatial scales. For ex ample, a coastline is conceptualized as a discrete line object. The position of the coastline is uncertain at coarser scales. At a scale of 1:1 000 000, there is gross generalization as many irregularities and indentations

587

may be generalized. Figure 1 shows the details of the Florida coastline and Figure 2 shows the generalization of the same coastline map. It can be seen that the second map does not contain details in the coastline, including inlets, islands, and other irregularities in the shape of the coastline as in Figure 1. In a raster database, much research has been devoted to errors in thematic or categorical maps. Thematic maps are made for a speciﬁc purpose and portray information using some system of classiﬁcation for the landscape such as soil taxonomy, vegetation classes, and land use categories. In a thematic map, each location on the ground has to be assigned to a category (or class). Typically, the categories are easily differentiable in their pure states and become more ambiguous at the bound aries between the categories. For example, it is difﬁcult to distinguish cultural classes such as golf courses and parklands from natural vegetation using an automated classiﬁcation procedure. Similarly, it is difﬁcult to assign a single label to meadows and grassland since the dis tinction may be primarily a function of annual water balance and may vary year to year. This results in mis classiﬁcation errors due to uncertainty. The last type of uncertainty is in the analysis of geographic phenomena, particularly relevant in human geography, where the object of study is the individual. Most GISs use aggregate data about the individual due to privacy concerns or cost associated with data collection at the individual or household level. As a consequence, there is uncertainty in ascribing even the most dominant characteristics of areas to an individual. For example, if an individual is located in a cancer cluster, does it mean he/she has cancer? This is often referred to as the ecological fallacy where an incorrect inference is drawn about the characteristics of the individual using aggregate data. Related problem in GIS is called the modiﬁable areal unit problem (MAUP) described ﬁrst by Openshaw who did seminal work related to MAUP, and its two mani festations, zoning and scaling effects. Zoning effect refers to the variability in statistical results obtained within a set of areal units as a function of the various ways these units can be grouped at a given scale. Scaling effect refers to the variability in statistical results obtained from the same set of data grouped at different levels of spatial resolution (e.g., census blocks, tracts, counties, states, and regions). Regional geography, a branch of human geog raphy, is concerned with the delineation of regions, zones, or states, such that internal homogeneity within zones is minimized while between zone heterogeneity is maxi mized. MAUP introduces uncertainty in the character ization of the positions of the boundaries of a zone and its attributes. Statistics, including regression, correlation, and spatial autocorrelation, may vary markedly due to scale and zoning effects.

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Figure 1 Detailed coastline of Florida.

Scale effects can be visualized by mapping categories at each scale. For example, in a recent study on addiction and serious mental illness (SMI) in the US, local spatial autocorrelation was identiﬁed using local Moran’s I. Since the local Moran statistic decomposes Moran’s I into contributions for each location, Ii, the sum of Ii for all observations is proportional to Moran’s I, an indicator of global pattern. Thus, local Moran statistics can have two interpretations, as indicators of local spatial clusters and as a diagnostic for outliers in global spatial patterns. In the study on addiction and SMI, the following ques tions were addressed: 1. Do local clusters (regions where adjacent areas have similar values) or local spatial outliers (areas distinct from their neighbors) exist in the pattern of addiction and SMI in the US? 2. Are these local clusters and spatial outliers statistic ally signiﬁcant? Figure 3 shows the state level and substate level analysis for addiction to marijuana. Large areas of high use in California, Oregon, and Colorado are present in the substate (substate geography in the US census contains

aggregations of counties) local indicators of spatial as sociation (LISA) map but not at the state level LISA map. If only data at the state level were considered, one would mistakenly assume that marijuana is only a problem in the Northeast and not the West as well. In addition, the state distributions did not hold up to the rigorous sig niﬁcance tests of the Moran’s scatterplot. Such ﬁndings have implications for health policy and funding.

Error Modeling Error modeling deals with statistical tools for describing and modeling error and uncertainty. In this section, we describe the error modeling for categorical (nominal) and continuous (interval and ratio) data scales. Classes shown in a thematic map are categorical data and traditionally, the accuracy of a thematic map is determined empirically by comparing the map with corresponding reference or ground data. Often in remote sensing, an error or con fusion matrix is built, in which a reference set of classi ﬁcation data are compared to another dataset or ground truth. The product is a square ‘error matrix’ where the

Error (Propagation and Modeling)

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Figure 2 Generalized coastline of Florida.

columns and rows are the categories in the classiﬁcation. The reference classiﬁcation is represented in the columns and the ground truth in the rows. The diagonal elements of the matrix represent frequencies of agreement be tween the two classiﬁcations and measure accuracy in classiﬁcation, while off diagonal elements give the fre quencies of misclassiﬁed items by each category. Table 1 shows the confusion matrix for ﬁve land cover classes in a dataset. Columns in Table 1 represent ground truth and rows represent the land cover classes in a map. The accuracy of the classiﬁcation is the sum of the elements of the di agonal divided by the total number of sites or pixels (10 þ 6 þ 3 þ 10 þ 5 ¼ 34/50 or 68%). For example, there were only three instances of agreement between the GIS map and ground truth (of ﬁeld data) in the case of brush. Columns represent the entries that truly belong to a class that are actually recorded as such in the GIS. For example, of the seven instances of brush found in the ﬁeld, three were misclassiﬁed as conifer and one as hardwood. The columns of the error matrix represent the producer’s ac curacy because the producer is concerned with mini mization of error while the rows have been called the users accuracy because the user is interested in the contents of the GIS database. In the case of brush, producer’s accuracy is 3/7 or 43% while user’s accuracy is 3/10 or 30%. Omission error refers to the exclusion of an instance or a pixel that should have been included in the class (i.e., omission error ¼ 1 – producers accuracy ¼ 1 – 0.428 ¼ 0.57). Commission error refers to including a

pixel in a class when it should have been excluded (i.e., commission error ¼ 1 – consumer’s accuracy ¼ 1 – 0.30 ¼ 0.70). A more useful measure of accuracy is kappa statistic, which estimates the number expected by chance in each diagonal cell by multiplying the appro priate row and column totals and dividing by the total number of cases. Kappa K ¼ (d – q)/(N – q), where d is the number of cases in the diagonal cells, q is the number of expected cases in diagonal by chance, and N is the total number of cases or pixels. In this context, q ¼ 23.3. The kappa statistic for Table 1 is K ¼ (34 – 23.3)/ (50 – 23.3) ¼ 0.40. Kappa varies between 0 and 1 and values closer to 1 suggest greater accuracy. There are other ways of quantifying error in a thematic map including one based on fuzzy sets.

Error Propagation Modeling Error propagation modeling allows the GIS users for assessing the effects of known degrees of error in a model’s inputs and producing measures of conﬁdence in model outputs. Error propagation is an important issue in GIS map overlay or other operations, since input data from disparate sources are overlaid and each input layer may have a wide range of errors associated with it. For example, suppose two maps with accuracies of 0.75 and 0.80 are overlaid, the accuracy of the resultant map is the product of the errors associated with each input map layer, 0.75 * 0.80 ¼ 0.60.

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Error (Propagation and Modeling) Substate

State

Legend High 99% Cl High 95% Cl Low 95% Cl Low 99% Cl

Figure 3 LISA analysis of marijuana addiction at the state level and substate levels of US (based on National Survey on Drug Use and Health Survey Data 1999 2001).

Table 1 Class

Conifer Hardwood Brush Water Meadows Total

Error or confusion matrix

estimating categorical error

Number of pixels or instances of a class Conifer

Hardwood

Brush

Water

Meadows

Total

10 3 4 0 0 17

2 6 2 0 0 10

3 1 3 0 0 7

0 0 0 10 0 10

0 0 1 0 5 6

15 10 10 10 5 50

Error in a quantitative attribute (continuous data) can be conveniently deﬁned as the difference between ‘real ity’ and our representation of ‘reality’ shown on the map. For instance, if the rainfall at some location equals

20 mm, while according to the map it is 15 mm, the error is 20 – 15 ¼ 5 mm. Generalizing this example, let the true value of a spatial attribute (rainfall) at some location x be a(x), and let the representation of it be b(x). Then,

Error (Propagation and Modeling)

according to the deﬁnition, the error v(x) at x is simply the arithmetical difference v(x) ¼ a(x) – b(x). Note that the error v(x) is never exactly known, since if it was, then it could simply be removed. Rather, what we do know about v(x) is limited to specifying a distribution of pos sible values and can best be conveyed to the GIS user

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by representing the error as a random variable V(x). Statistical error modeling allows us to characterize un certainty in distribution of the variable. The error propagation problem can be formulated mathematically as follows. Let U be the output of a GIS operation g on the n input attributes Ai: U ¼ g(Ai, A2, An).

Class_names Evergreen needleleaf forests Evergreen broadleaf forests Deciduous needleleaf forests Deciduous broadleaf forests Mixed forests Closed shrubland Open shrubland Woody savannas Savannas Grasslands Croplands Cropland mosaics Snow and ice Barren or sparsely vegetated

(Annotation: the backgroup is water)

Figure 4 Land cover map of North America using fuzzy ARTMAP neural network classiﬁcation. Data from the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer sensor.

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The objective is to determine the error in the output U, given the GIS operation g (such as map overlay) and the errors in the input attributes Ai. The uncertainty of U is contained in its variance t2.

The error propagation problem is relatively simple when g is a linear function since both mean and variance of U can be analytically derived. However, the propa gation of errors through complicated dynamic spatial

Confidence scale First level agreement Second level agreement Third level agreement First level disagreement Second level disagreement Third level disagreement

Figure 5 Conﬁdence in land cover classiﬁcation using ten fuzzy ARTMAP neural networks.

Error (Propagation and Modeling)

models can only be assessed with powerful computational techniques. Most of these techniques model errors as stochastic variables. Analytical solutions for error propagation exist only for a limited number of relatively simple spatial functions. As a consequence, error propa gation in dynamic spatial models is mostly calculated by Monte Carlo simulation modeling. Error propagation has profound effects on GIS prod ucts and operations. For example, if there is an under representation of suburban regions (due to difﬁculty in assigning class labels to suburban and woodlands or grasslands) in a GIS map, the error may propagate through many GIS operations such that ﬁnal results in the GIS map may not truly represent suburban sprawl.

Visualization of Error and Uncertainty in GIS Error visualization is an important topic by itself. Improvements in multimedia technology, virtual reality (VR) environments (e.g., Maya), and programming lan guages (e.g., Java, Python), and increasing computation power available in personal computers and desktops have all contributed to an interest in visualization. Uncertainty data layer can be visualized as animated movies of simulations that give a graphic rendering of error land scape. Animation capabilities are present in ArcGIS, and Geoda. While animation provides an easy way to see all renditions of the uncertainty model, it is not impossible to infer quantitatively where the uncertainties are large or small. For example, Hengl and his colleagues used saturation intensity (HSI) color model to visualize multiple memberships and confusion between thematic categories. In the case of continuous variables, both predictions and the prediction error can be visualized simultaneously. These visualization techniques use principles of cartographic representation to produce the uncertainty landscape. Figure 4 shows the land cover map of North America using Fuzzy ARTMAP, neural network classiﬁer (Liu et al., 2004). There are 14 land cover classes. Due to various uncertainties, the automated neural network was not completely conﬁdent in all its predictions. Figure 5 shows a ﬁnal conﬁdence level map of ten independent neural networks obtained by pooling their classiﬁcation results together. One can think of each neural network classiﬁer to be an expert in a panel of experts whose consensus establishes the winning class for each pixel. There are levels of agreement (shades of green) and disagreement (shades of orange) among the experts shown in the conﬁdence map. There is some agreement over 60% of the map while there is disagreement over mixed forest, croplands, and woody savannas. Such a conﬁdence map gives additional information to the user

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of the map. The user may place less reliance on classes that exhibit greater degree of uncertainty.

Managing Error in GIS Practice Currently, there are three methods to cope with errors in GIS – ignore the issue, characterize uncertainty with statistical measures, for example, RMSE, probability conﬁdence, and variance, and ﬁnally, simulate equally probable realizations of the data (using Monte Carlo (MC) technique). Because of improved access to com putational power, many researchers are using the stat istical and computer simulation method to improve our understanding of errors in GIS. Software packages such as Geoda, IDRISI, and ArcGIS are capable of performing statistical error analysis as well as help in visualization. Managing error in GIS datasets is now widely recognized since failure to control and manage error can invalidate the results of a GIS analysis. The following procedures are prescribed for practical management of error – setting standards for procedures and products, making periodic data quality reports, measuring and testing products (such as kappa statistic), and calibrating a dataset (via sensitivity analysis) to ascertain how error inﬂuences solutions, and report results in terms of the uncertainties of the data.

Conclusion and Future Directions of Error Research Uncertainty and error analysis in GIS is important since it provides validation. Every GIS map should have an uncertainty layer associated with it, which will provide the user with additional information. The development of formal theoretical frameworks, programming languages like Python and Java, and the creation of new visual representations of error and uncertainty can help validate new theoretical models, enable better understanding of data, and facilitate better decision making using GIS. GIS is not about making pretty maps but rather about making valid decisions and robust spatial models. Thus, statistical modeling of errors, MC techniques, and visual repre sentation of errors and uncertainties should become the norm rather than the exception. See also: GIS and Cartography; GIScience and Systems; Neural Networks; Uncertainty.

Further Reading Burrough, P. A. (1986). Principles of Geographical Information Systems for Land Resources Assessment. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodchild, M. F. and Janelle, D. G. (eds.) (2004). Spatially Integrated Social Science. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Goodchild, M. F. and Janelle, D. G. (2004). Thinking spatially in the social sciences. In Goodchild, M. F. & Janelle, D. G. (eds ) Spatially Integrated Social Science, pp 3 22. New York: Oxford University Press. Goodchild, M. F., Yuan, M. and Cova, T. J. (2007). Towards a general theory of geographic representation in GIS. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 21(3), 239 260. Gopal, S., Adams, M. and Vanelli, M. (2007). Modeling the spatial patterns of addiction in the US. In Thomas, Y. F., Richardson, D. & Cheung, I. (eds.) Geography and Drug Addiction, Chap 25, pp 415 435. New York: Springer. Gopal, S. and Woodcock, C. (1994). Theory and methods for accuracy assessment of thematic maps using fuzzy sets. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 60(2), 181 188. Herskovits, A. (1987). Language and Spatial Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Heuvelink, G. B. M. (1998). Error Propagation in Environmental Modelling with GIS. London: Taylor and Francis. Liu, W., Gopal, S. and Woodcock, C. E. (2004). Uncertainty and conﬁdence in land cover classiﬁcation using a hybrid classiﬁer approach. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 70(8), 963 972. Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J. and Rhind, D. W. (2005). Geographic Information Systems and Science (2nd edn.). New York: Wiley.

Openshaw, S. (1984). The Modiﬁable Areal Unit Problem (CATMOG 38). Norwich: GeoBooks. Story, M. and Congalton, R. (1986). Accuracy assessment: A user’s perspective. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 52(3), 397 399. Veregin, H. (1994). Error modeling for the map overlay operation. In Goodchild, M. F. & Gopal, S. (eds.) Accuracy of Spatial Database. London: Taylor and Francis. Zadeh, L. (1965). Fuzzy sets. Information Control 8, 338 353.

Relevant Websites http://www.geog.ubc.ca Department of Geography at The University of British Columbia. http://www.itc.nl International Institute for Geo Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC). http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu National Center for Geographic Information & Analysis (NCGIA). http://www.colorado.edu University of Colorado at Boulder.

Ethical Issues in Research R. Dowling, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Ethics It is concerned with perspectives of right and proper conduct. Discussions of ethics in relation to research methods are a form of applied ethics. Institutional Ethical Review An institutional review is a review process held by an independent review board that provides protection for human research participants through the initial and ongoing review of research studies. Boards usually comprise highly qualiﬁed individuals representing a variety of scientiﬁc and nonscientiﬁc disciplines. Research Ethics Perspectives on the proper conduct of researchers during their interactions with research participants and the social, emotional, and political consequences of research methods. Situational Ethics Contextual ethical discussions, taking account of speciﬁc circumstances. Universalist Ethics Ethics or standards which can be applied and upheld universally.

Introduction Ethics are not abstract ideas that ﬂoat above people’s activities but permeate human behavior, relations, and decision making. As such, research methods in human geography necessarily involve ethical considerations. Decisions about which research topics to pursue, appropriate and worthwhile methods of investigation, ‘right’ ways to relate to sponsors and participants of research, and appropriate modes of writing and com munication of results involve ethical questions. These questions include: how researchers ‘ought’ to behave, the role of research in the pursuit of social change, and whether and how research methods are ‘just’. A number of different ethical perspectives on methods are adopted in human geography. Universalist ethics are used in processes of ethical review and in research adopting a scientiﬁc–positivist mode of enquiry. Situational ethics are more common in qualitative research, and more recently, relational ethics have been advocated, especially in critical human geography. This article provides an overview of how human geographers approach and ad dress the ethical aspects of methods. It begins with a brief history of methodological ethics in human geography and their variation across the discipline. It then outlines the key ethical issues and the diverse means through which

research ethics are governed. A consideration of ethical issues that pertain to the research methods of human geography raises more questions than answers. This article does not provide deﬁnitive solutions, but provides an overview of the ethical routes human geographers have taken.

Background History and Context Geographical research methods have always involved ethical considerations, but it is only in the last 40 years that published and formal reﬂections on ethics have become widespread. The publication of Mitchell and Draper’s Relevance and Ethics in Geography was a deﬁning moment in human geography’s engagement with ethics. Not only was it the ﬁrst book length treatment of research ethics in the discipline, but it also identiﬁed the two principal methodological aspects of ethics that have been of enduring concern to human geographers. The ﬁrst issue identiﬁed by Mitchell and Draper was ‘relevance’, which can be more broadly encapsulated as the social purpose of research. In whose interest is research in human geography? What is the societal role of human geographical research? Are human geographers disinterested observers who chronicle life’s happenings? What is the ‘right’ purpose of human geography research? What is the role of justice and advocacy for a more just society in the practices of research? The second key methodological aspect of ethics identiﬁed by Mitchell and Draper was ethical behavior in the actual conduct of research – researchers’ interactions with those they research, and the consequent issues like privacy and harm that arise. The issues raised and solutions proposed by Mitchell and Draper remained little examined outside a narrow ﬁeld for much of the ensuing decades. During the 1980s and 1990s, for example, ethical issues remained in the background of methodological discussions in human geography. While there was continued discussion about the social role of research, the ethical aspects of many research methods did not garner much interest. The mid to late 1990s saw a deeper and more widespread engagement with research ethics, linked to renewed interest in ethical philosophy, the widespread use of feminist and other critical theories to re evaluate geographical methods, and stronger concern with geo graphical methods in general. Journals such as Ethics, Place and Environment emerged, with a broad remit that includes research ethics, and ethical debates occurred

595

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within a number of subdisciplines, including, but not conﬁned to, geographic information system (GIS), cul tural geography, and medical geography. Currently, the proﬁle of research ethics within the discipline is strong, with geographers contributing to debate beyond the discipline. Within the context of this stronger proﬁle of meth odological ethics, human geographers’ engagement with research ethics is noteworthy in the diversity of ap proaches adopted and solutions advocated. The spectrum of philosophical and political stances embraced within the discipline engenders key differences in the social purpose of research and moral codes regulating the interactions of researchers with the people and social worlds they research. A simple yet powerful encapsu lation of this diversity is presented in Table 1. For heuristic purposes, it divides human geographers’ ethical stances into three main groups, and illustrates the research ethics that follow. In positivist human geography (as practiced, for instance, in most of contemporary GIS), researchers document the social world rather than being immersed in it, or play a role in changing it. Research stands outside politics and society, and is neutral, value free, and devoid of power relations. This stance is summed up in the use of the term ‘subject’ to describe people involved in research projects: they are the subjects of investigation, and the research process and researcher are objective. Quantitative methods generally endorse universalist codes of ethical review that focus on issues of privacy, anonymity, and informed consent. Qualitative human geography, in particular, as practiced in contemporary cultural geography, envisages research to be a part of, and constructive of, societal processes. Those researched are hence participants or respondents, and the research relationship requires recognition and negotiation of intersubjectivity rather than objectivity. Power relations, cultural and other stereotypes, and issues associated with personal interactions such as emotions are deﬁned as key

Table 1

ethical issues for these methods. Finally, in critical human geography, research, by its very nature, does and should effect social change. Action research method ologies emanate from this framework, with subjects/ participants identiﬁed as co researchers and co creators of knowledge. The key ethical issue in this framework is the purpose and use of research, and its potential to challenge and transform dominant power structures and relations. These three broad frameworks are neither mutually exclusive nor internally homogeneous. There exists some agreement on ethical issues across the spectrum. For example, elements of positivist human geography, and critical GIS, share critical geography’s position on what counts as ‘good’ and ‘just’ research. Similarly, both quantitative and qualitative researchers recognize the potential of these research methods to be disempowering. Further, qualitative methods may be used in an inter pretive, critical frame, or from a scientiﬁc basis. With the increasing adoption of mixed methods in human geog raphy, such intersections will also invariably increase. Relevance or the Social Purpose of Research For many human geographers, ethical issues arise in the deﬁnition of research questions and speciﬁcation of the methodological framework, before any speciﬁc methods are implemented. The issue of relevance became hotly contested in the 1970s, where criticisms were made of the interests served by research using a spatial science framework. In response, calls were made for geographers to do more than study society, and that they should be advocates who contribute to, and provide solutions for, socially signiﬁcant problems. The Detroit Geographical Expeditions, where university geographers sought to use university teaching and research to forge better social and economic outcomes for disadvantaged Blacks in Detroit, was an important early example of geographers as advocates.

Perspectives on research ethics in human geography

Role of research Power Representative term for those researched Researcher researched relationship Key ethical issues

Principles of ethical review

Positivist human geography

Qualitative human geography

Critical human geography

Observation documentation Absent or unimportant Subject

Socially, politically, and culturally embedded Recognized; critical reﬂexivity Participant

Action research

Objectivity

Subjectivity

Co-creation of knowledge

Anonymity Privacy Consent Universalist

Intersubjectivity Power relations of research

Situational

Co-researcher

Transformation of power relations Situational/Interactional

Ethical Issues in Research

Debates about relevance have continued since then, across divergent subﬁelds. In general, scholarship is criticized for its lack of normative ethics. In studies of disability, for example, calls have been made for geog raphers to explicitly adopt a normative ethics stance and use the aim of a more just society to frame their choice of methods. In contrast, the ethical basis and outcomes of GISs and geodemographics have been widely questioned. Is it possible for GIS to be used for socially beneﬁcial ends and avoid undesirable outcomes, especially given the methods’ original and ongoing links to military ap plications? Whilst some like Lafferty argue that picturing people as numbers and points in space is ethically problematic, others like Kwan and Pavlovskaya have developed a case for the role of GIS in critical and feminist geographies. Key Ethical Issues in the Methods of Human Geography Mitchell and Draper’s second sense of ethics as research ethics – or researchers’ relations with research subjects/ participants – has been the focus of considerable geographical engagement. The conduct of researchers – how they relate to, respect, negotiate with research par ticipants – has been termed research ethics, with two broad topics attracting most attention.

Consent, harm, and power relations

In most traditions of geography, research involves inter actions with people: in interviews, focus groups, obser vations, or ﬁlling in questionnaires. Many of the ethical discussions relate to understandings of how participants should be treated, and of the consequences of the research relationship. There is widespread agreement that ethical research practice in human geography in volves informed consent: that research subjects consent to being involved in the speciﬁc research project. Exceptions to informed consent, and in particular de ception, are rare in human geography. Unlike other ﬁelds such as psychology where quantitative methods are just as likely to involve deception, it is within qualitative frameworks that informed consent has been waived in human geography. Research on those in positions of relative power has occurred without fully informing participants of the purpose of the research. The justiﬁ cation given is that the research could not have proceeded with informed consent, that there was no potential harm to respondents, and that the social good that would result from the research outweighed the de ception. Ethnographies of sites like workplaces or tourist resorts have also involved deception, with the researchers not disclosing their research purposes but instead pre senting themselves as employees, tourists, or the like.

597

In these cases, the necessity of having an ‘authentic’ and ‘true’ experience is seen to outweigh the deception. Most traditions of human geography acknowledge that research interactions are not divorced from relations of power. Researchers may be more privileged than their respondents, or perhaps in a position of subservience if research involves elites. More generally, research in human geography is potentially exploitative – it uses other people’s time, opinions, etc., for personal or institutional gain. Moreover, the potential for exploitation is greater in some research methods and projects than in others. For example, researchers may bring and perpetuate ethno centrism and/or racism to their cross cultural research encounters. Research involving vulnerable populations such as children, people with mental illness, people who are homeless, communities in the developing world, and indigenous people has greater potential for exploitation. These potentials exist across the spectrum of quantitative, qualitative, and action research methods. Exploitation is an ethical issue, because it raises questions about what is ‘good’ or ‘right’ research practice and the potential for research methods to be socially or psychologically harmful to participants. The general consensus is that exploitation should be avoided, though very different mechanisms of avoidance or management of exploitation are advocated. One option is to make the research more of a two way relation through giving something back to participants. This could include reports of the research ﬁndings, transcripts of their interviews to review, and perhaps training as researchers. Financial payments are sometimes made, though these are controversial. While they are an acknowledgement of the time people give to the research, they do not obviate unequal power relations. In some cross cultural research settings, or action research frame works, exploitation is directly confronted through the in volvement of participants in the formulation of research questions, choice of method, and interpretation of the ﬁndings. Certain qualitative research methods such as in depth interviews raise additional questions about consent, harm, and power because of the more intense social and personal interactions involved. For feminist researchers, in depth interviews have been advocated as appropriate feminist research methods because they allow women to tell their stories in their own words. But they have also been criticized as unethical in exploiting gender stereotypes and women’s vulnerabilities. Similarly, it is acknowledged that interviewing couples (either separ ately or together) may create tension for the couple. Qualitative researchers also acknowledge that partici pation in research may involve emotional responses, and that ethical conduct involves attempts to ‘‘manage the research such that the emotions that are provoked do not harm the research participants or the researchers or the research itself ’’ (Ansell and Blerk, 2005: 72). Across these

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examples, a balancing of harm and beneﬁts is advocated as an appropriate ethical response. Privacy, conﬁdentiality, and anonymity

There is wide agreement in human geography and in legislative and professional codes of ethics that people participating in research projects have the right for their personal details to remain private. Research participants are guaranteed anonymity, that researchers will not release their details into the public domain, and that the publications resulting from the research will not allow them to be directly or indirectly identiﬁed. Pseudonyms for informants are almost universally used, and increas ingly common is the masking or omission of other identifying characteristics such as speciﬁc occupation, age, and family circumstance. Human geographers’ eth ical stance in relation to the anonymity of well known people, and/or those who represent public organizations or corporations tends to depart from the principle of anonymity. Research using interviews with CEOs of large corporations, for example, has identiﬁed informants on the grounds that permission has been granted and also that it is in the public interest for such individuals/ corporations to be identiﬁed. This is more common in political and economic geography. A peculiarly geographical take on anonymity is the debate on whether to identify the speciﬁc places that are being studied. The uniqueness of place – such as neighborhoods, cities, and villages – is often a key component of geographical research, and for some researchers places need to be identiﬁed to assure the relevance and validity of the research ﬁndings. For others, identifying places is ethically problematic for a number of reasons. Knowing the location is one way of identifying people, especially if it is a small place or a commercial establishment such as a restaurant. Thus, in Crang’s study of work cultures in an English restaurant, he gave a pseudonym to the restaurant and did not identify its exact location. Another argument is that the identiﬁ cation of places characterized by high levels of poverty, crime, or other elements of social marginalization is not ethical because of the possible consequences of such naming. Naming these sites may work to further dis advantage already marginalized groups and places, and thus it is not uncommon for studies in human geography to mask the identity of such research locations. Privacy and conﬁdentially take somewhat different forms in quantitative research that uses large scale secondary data at a ﬁne geographical scale. Publicly collected data such as the census, labor force surveys, and travel surveys are typically coded for geographical location. The agencies responsible for the collection and release of these data are concerned that individuals may be identiﬁed when details at small scales are made available. The most common response to maintain

privacy is that cells in data matrices are sometimes randomized to avoid such identiﬁcation. Recent technological advances have made privacy concerns more acute. In GIS, the processing and linking of a number of different datasets may enable individuals to be identiﬁed, thus losing their privacy. Remote sensing capabilities, and in particular, the increasing prevalence of unobserved satellites that repeatedly take images of the same location similarly infringe privacy. Rather than ban the use of such data, various masking techniques are advocated as a solution to the privacy concerns raised.

Governance of the Ethical Basis of Research in Human Geography Who ensures that geographical research meets agreed ethical standards? Four major answers to this question have been given within human geography, with the answer chosen dependent on the historical and geo graphical circumstances as well as the researcher’s ethical stance. The ﬁrst two means of making certain ethical research are informal, while the last two are legislative and institutional. One answer is that oversight of the ethical conduct of human geography research rests with individual researchers and a community of peers; that researchers’ capacity to act in ethically defensible ways is produced and guaranteed by their position as pro fessionals and by peer review processes. Research pro cesses undergo various processes of peer review – by funding bodies (e.g., Economic and Social Research Council and National Science Foundation), external collaborators, doctoral committees, and research super visors, and these processes include review of ethical conduct. The argument is that these procedures ensure that unethical research will not receive funding or endorsement. In qualitative research, a particular peer review guarantee of ethical conduct is advocated: ‘critical reﬂexivity’. Critical reﬂexivity, as summarized by England, requires researchers to be alert to the social and power relations that are enacted during qualitative research, and to make attempts to change the nature of these interactions during the research process. There have been criticisms of critical reﬂexivity, including the impossibility of total self reﬂection, its inability to ameliorate power relations, and its limitations in ensuring ethical conduct. Nonetheless, it has attracted support as a key ethical stance in an increasing cross section of the discipline, including social and cultural geography. A second form of oversight of ethical research prac tice, and one that became more pronounced in the late twentieth century, is the guidance and guarantee of ethical conduct by codes formalized by professional as sociations. For example, the British Sociological Associ ation and the American Sociological Association have

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developed ‘statements of ethical practice’ to guide the ethical conduct of research. In 1998 (and with minor revisions made in 2005), the Association of American Geographers (AAG) published its own ‘statement on professional ethics’, which included guidelines for the conduct of not only research, but also for relations with colleagues, students, and the broader community. The AAG statement is explicitly nonjudgmental and nonprescriptive. For the association, the statement: should be seen as the beginning of an ongoing, collective project aimed at promoting reﬂection on ethical matters and ethical accountability in geography. It is designed y to encourage consideration of the relationship between professional practice and the well being of the people, places and environments that make up our world. (American Association of Geographers, 1998: 8)

Common to such statements is their lack of binding force over the conduct of research; their efﬁcacy is in stead achieved through moral suasion and voluntary compliance. Legislative changes in the late twentieth century, coupled with more legalistic research environments across nations in which human geography ﬂourished, saw the formalization of ethical review. The third and fourth guarantees of ethical conduct in human geography are of this type. One is statements on ethical research by gov ernment agencies charged with the oversight of research. In Australia, for example, the guidelines of the National Health and Medical Research Council are binding over all university and other research and similar guidelines exist in other countries as well. These statements provide both general guidance and prescriptive rules about research conduct, consent, harm, deception, etc. They are universalist in nature, prescribing ethical practices based on a set of moral standards that are generally not context speciﬁc. They do, however, recognize the speciﬁcity of cross cultural research and research with other margin alized and vulnerable groups, and include speciﬁc rules for any type of research with these groups. A fourth type of ethical review, and one that has attracted most recent attention from human geography is review by human ethics committees. Most human geography research falls under the auspices of university ethics committees, though many human geography research projects will also need to engage with the ethics committees of hospitals, schools, charitable associations, or indigenous organizations. These committees differ from peer review, in that they are typically comprised not only of researchers but also of lay people and sometimes representatives of religious organizations. University and other institutional ethics committees have two main roles. The ﬁrst is an educative role, with most having a charter to provide guidance and information on research

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ethics, which often include concrete examples of ethical research practices. Second, these committees have an evaluative role, charged with assessing the ethical issues raised by research projects and speciﬁc methods, and judging the adequacy of proposed measures for address ing these issues. Review of geographical research by such committees can be wide ranging, encompassing many of the issues outlined in the opening section of this article, though typically the social purpose of research is not evaluated. They explicitly consider relations with research partici pants, and in particular, informed consent, harm, privacy, anonymity, and reciprocity (see previous section). These committees also consider additional issues. Potential conﬂicts of interest, especially in relation to the funding or sponsorship of research are of particular concern. These committees may also consider the personal safety of the researcher. Just as deﬁnitions of ethical methods and ethically sound geographical research are far from settled, the place of institutional ethical review remains the subject of some debate and sometimes intense criticism. The uni versalist ethical stance underpinning these codes has been the most frequently identiﬁed problem, because it is at odds with the situational ethics more commonly used in human geography. In applying and enforcing universal rules, it is at best difﬁcult, and at worst, impossible, for institutional ethical review to be situation speciﬁc. The validity of medical–scientiﬁc models, as the basis for evaluating the ethical aspects of research social sciences such as human geography, is also questioned. This criti cism more commonly emerges from human geographers using qualitative methods, who are critical of the medical scientiﬁc assumptions of objectivity and disembodied researchers. Nonetheless, institutional ethical review is likely to assume greater rather than lesser importance in the future of human geography. Attention has, hence, most recently turned toward ways of critically engaging with and transforming institutional review.

Summary What is ethical research in human geography is far from a settled question, and is unlikely to be so in the near future. What is settled is that all methods involve ethical questions, and that answers to these questions are dependent on the broad philosophical framework of the research. Across the frameworks, however, there is agreement on three important issues. The ﬁrst is that ethical issues can and do arise at any stage of the research process – in formulation of research topics, choice of methodology, interactions ‘in the ﬁeld’, analyzing results, and in writing. The second is that ethical issues rarely have simple solutions and require ongoing critical

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reﬂection. Finally, responses to ethical dilemmas in human geography are just as likely to involve a balancing of potential harm and beneﬁt as they are the application of universal ethical principles. See also: Critical Geography; Critical GIS; Cross-Cultural Research; Ethnography; Interviews: In-Depth, SemiStructured; Quantitative Methodologies.

Further Reading American Association of Geographers (1998). Statement on Professional Ethics. http://www.aag.org/Publications/ Other%20Pubs/Statement%20on%20Professional%20Ethics.pdf Accessed on Jul. 2008. Ansell, N. (2001). Producing knowledge about Third World women: The politics of ﬁeldwork in a Zimbabwean secondary school. Ethics, Place and Environment 4, 101 116. Ansell, N. and Blerk, L. V. (2005). Joining the conspiracy? Negotiating ethics and emotions in researching (around) AIDS in Southern Africa. Ethics, Place and Environment 8, 61 82. Crang, P. (1994). 1994 It’s showtime!’ On the workplace geographies of display in a restaurant in South East England. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 12, 675 704. Dowling, R. (2005). Power relations, subjectivity and ethics in qualitative research. In Hay, I. (ed.) Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography (2nd edn.). Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press. England, K. (1994). Getting personal: Reﬂexivity, positionality, and feminist research. Professional Geographer 46, 80 89. Kitchin, R. and Wilton, R. (2000). Disability, geography and ethics. Ethics, Place and Environment 3(1): 61 102.

Kwan, M.P. (2002). Feminist visualization: re envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geographic research. Annals of the Associations of American Geographers 92(4): 645 61. Howitt, R. (2005). Human ethics, supervision and equity: Ethical oversight of student research. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 29, 317 320. Israeil, M. and Hay, I. (2006). Research Ethics for Social Scientists. London: Sage. McLafferty, S. (2004). Women and GIS: Geospatial technologies and feminist geographies. Cartographica 40, 37 46. Meth, P. and Malaza, K. (2003). Violent research: The ethics and emotions of doing research with women in South Africa. Ethics, Place and Environment 6, 143 159. Mitchell, B. and Draper, D. (1982). Relevance and Ethics in Geography. London: Longman. Pavlovskaya, M.E. (2006). Theorizing with GIS: A tool for critical geographies?Environment and Planning A 38(11): 2003 20. Proctor, J. D. and Smith, D. M. (1999). Geography and Ethics: Journeys in a Moral Terrain. London: Routledge. Wilton, R. (2000). Sometimes it’s OK to be a spy: Ethics and politics in geographies of disability. Ethics, Place and Environment 3, 91 97.

Relevant Websites http://www.aag.org American Association of Geographers. http://www.nhmrc.gov.au NHMRC news and events. http://pre.ethics.gc.ca Selected human research ethics norms, organizations and resources.

Ethnic Conﬂict O. Yiftachel, Ben Gurion University, Beer-sheva, Israel & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Diaspora An organized ethnic community of long-term residence away from the historical homeland. Ethnicity Group identity based on belief in a common past and future, a shared culture, and association to a speciﬁc place. Ethno-Class A social position based on a combination of ethnic afﬁliation and economic position. Ethnocracy A regime under which a dominant ethnic group appropriates the state apparatus and shapes most public policies. Ethnonationalism Political mobilization aimed at achieving, consolidating, or protecting ethnic territorial sovereignty. National Self-Determination The ability of a nation to shape its collective identity and determine its preferred form of government. Spatiality The articulation of a human phenomenon in spatial terms, both discursive and material.

Introduction The world’s political map has been profoundly shaped by ethnic identities and conﬂicts over space. This article reviews and critically analyzes the political geography of ethnicity, focusing on the modern epoch. The main perspective advanced here is that the construction and evolution of ethnic identities are closely related to spatial conﬂicts. Hence, the very nature of ethnicity cannot be fathomed without ‘opening up’ its underlying geo graphical and political foundations. The article also reviews the historical construction of ethnicity; its relations with systems of spatial power, especially the colonial, national, and capitalist state; and recent trans formations in the wake of accelerating urbanization and globalization.

Deﬁning Ethnicity Ethnicity gained prominence during the 1970s, with the growing interest in social diversity and justice, and has since become one of the central questions of con temporary social science. Ethnicity is based on the Greek root ‘ethnos’, meaning ‘blood connection’, as distinct from the ‘demos’, which was a territorial–civil association. Over the centuries, ethnicity changed its

meaning, alternatively being associated with tribal, regional, religious, class, and national afﬁliations. In this article, as in the majority of contemporary writings on the subject, ethnicity will be deﬁned as group identity, based on common cultural afﬁliation and a belief in a shared ancestry and a common future. Ethnicity is predominantly linked to speciﬁc places, either existing or mythical, as a central pillar of identity construction. Ethnic identities – like all social constructs – are ﬂuid and malleable, tending to rise in social and political importance during periods of conﬂict, and wane during times of peaceful ethnic coexistence. It is useful to sharpen the above deﬁnition of ethnicity by highlighting two ideal types: ‘immigrant’ and ‘home land’. The purpose is not to create a (false) dichotomy of ethnic experiences, but to highlight dimensions of the phenomenon, which help explain the wide variety of ethnic groups, their boundaries, and goals. Immigrant ethnicity is based on a long standing dis tance from the homeland, and is typically characterized by a gradual process of integration and assimilation into the host society, although the extent of this process varies greatly between groups. Immigrant ethnic groups com monly struggle for civil rights and equality in the allo cation of public resources. The gradual assimilation and mobilization of most immigrant groups into host societies has often transformed their identity into what sociologist Herbert Gans termed ‘symbolic ethnicity’. Such identity maintains several cultural markers, such as holidays, religion, and food, which do not threaten the main values and practices of the host society, especially the state’s cultural orientation, its legal, economic, and pol itical systems. Symbolic ethnicity imposes negligible constraints on major life decisions of minority members, being expressed in their relative freedom on matters such as place of residence, marriage, work, politics, and leisure. Immigrant ethnicity thus generally marks a gradual erosion of the group’s structural distinction from the host society and from other immigrant minorities. On the other hand, homeland ethnicity is held by groups residing on the territory believed to be the ‘cradle’ of their identity and history. Drawing on the group’s geographical continuity and the corresponding preser vation of cultural and social boundaries, the distinction of the group is maintained, often quite intensely. Residence on homeland territory is often accompanied by the establishment of ethnic institutions (in areas such as education, culture, and religion) which reproduce cultural and social boundaries between the group in question and

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neighboring groups. Needless to say, homeland ethnicity is also subject to change, but its relative stability has been a source of cultural and political power. This power has been used extensively to transform homeland ethnic groups into national movements, by making inseparable the links between collective identity, power, and land, as powerfully illustrated by the (now replaced) national anthem in pre 1994 South Africa.

The Call of South Africa Out of the blue heaven, out of the depth of our sea Over our eternal mountains, where the cliff tops echo againy We will live, we will die we are yours, South Africay In the marrow of our bones, in our heart and soul and spirit Fatherland we will carry the renown of your name with honour True and faithful as Afrikaners children of South Africa

Yet, as the South African case demonstrates, what appears to be an ‘eternal’ identity is actually reshaped ceaselessly by political events, public discourses and practices, material processes, and cultural trends. It cannot be analyzed in isolation from other social relations, because it is constantly mediated by gender relations, class af ﬁliation, politics, and religious practices. Ethnic identities are often perceived as ‘threatened’ by the dynamics of assimilation, globalization, and immigration. Hence, the construction of ethnicity requires a constant practice of boundary maintenance, often achieved through social conﬂict, territorial struggles, and racism. The tension between the ﬂuidity of identity and the attempts by social powers (particularly national states and cultural elites) to maintain and deepen ethnic boundaries is a notable hallmark of ethnic identity and societal structure in the modern era.

Colonizing Ethnicity Modernity has brought about fundamental changes in the nature of ethnicity. As philosopher Charles Taylor, sociologist Anthony Smith, and anthropologist Ernest Gellner explain, the political and spatial reorganization of human society (marked by urbanization, industrial ization, nationalism, and colonialism) have profoundly broadened and politicized cultural identities. European colonialism, which saw the conquest and control of most of the globe by between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, had a central role in this transfor mation. In parallel, the modern nation state was created in Europe, elevating ethnicity to the level of state ideology, and fueling the stratiﬁcation of colonized identities, as discussed in the next section. The colonial period is critical because it set the scene for ethnic relations and conﬂicts to the present day. European

colonizers did not simply attempt to control and co opt local populations, as commonly practiced by earlier empires, but to comprehensively manage their identity, economy, and geography. European colonial rulers, aided by modern technologies and new forms of deadly vio lence, systematically registered and classiﬁed conquered populations as both ethnically (and often biologically) different and inferior. This created the foundation for centuries of systematic forms of global racism, based on the putative superiority of the white ‘race’. New geographies lay at the heart of the colonial period. As shown by geographer Derek Gregory, this was both physical and mental. Colonialism rearranged col onized societies by facilitating European settlement and exploitation of local labor and resources, destroying and displacing local societies and their living environments, augmenting local urbanization, and introducing urban and regional planning. In addition, colonized regions were exploited for geopolitical military reasons, and ‘modern nation states’ were carved out of a pre colonial diverse and complex political space, particularly in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. These measures cre ated a geography of long term ethnic conﬂict, whose ruptures and dislocations still fuel tensions across the globe, in locations such Peru, Rwanda, South Africa, and Sudan, through Lebanon, Iraq, and Israel/Palestine, to Pakistan, India, and Malaysia, to name just a few examples. Moreover, colonial geographical practices were accompanied by a discursive mental framing, which ‘scientiﬁcally’ rationalized European conquest as mod ernizing a wide range of ‘primitive’ tribes and nations through the imposition of European speciﬁc and pre dominantly Christian values. Colonial rule, framed as it was within the rising of global capitalist economy, also typically created patterns of uneven development and long term structures of economic dependency between the metropolitan (Euro pean) economies, and the colonial peripheries, as well as class stratiﬁcation within the colonies. It was common for colonial rulers to sharpen, and often invent, ethnic dif ferences within colonized territories, with the upwardly mobile local groups typically undergoing a process of Europeanization, later conceived as Westernization. The formalization of these identities as ‘ethnic’ (or ‘racial’, or ‘religious’, or ‘sectarian’), institutionalized social differ ence around the notion of ethnicity. To be sure, the co lonial inﬂuence also brought with it ideas of democracy, equality, and citizenship, but these egalitarian concepts seem to have often remained secondary to the manipu lation of primordial sentiments and mobilizations. The remaking of ethnicities during the colonial era was thus couched in patterns of cultural (European) domination. It established the foundation for Western control over what became the ‘Third World’, generating pervasive anticolonial insurgencies, resulting in the

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liberation of many colonized societies. Widely docu mented and analyzed in postcolonial studies, European colonialism has left deep footprints in postcolonial soci eties, often generating new rounds of ethnic conﬂict due to the prevailing logic of partition and state structures putatively ‘belonging’ to a dominant ethnicity. As noted, this idealized political geography imported and imposed European concepts of bounded ethno national identities, and forcefully superimposed them over a complex, dynamic, and ﬂuid space of intertwined identities in the colonized world. Another conspicuous legacy of colonialism has been a mass immigration from ex colonies to metropolitan centers, such as London, Paris, and Amsterdam. This postcolonial ‘ripple’ has recently destabilized the political geography of ‘metropolitan’ European and North American societies, and unsettled the image of their own nation state. Yet, the evolution of ethnic identities and conﬂicts cannot be solely attributed to European colo nialism, as they have re emerged in different guises during the postcolonial period. New forces have pro pelled the reformulation of ethnicity, including global ization, increased internal and international migration, economic restructuring, the rise of indigenous peoples, and internal political struggles for control of the nation state, to which we now turn.

Nationalizing Ethnicity The modern nation state has emerged as one of the most important loci of power during the modern epoch, if not the most important. As analyzed by political geographer Peter Taylor and legal geographer David Delaney, the state developed into a powerful ‘container’ of compart mentalized human societies, by combining the increas ingly important political principle of self determination with highly effective forms of human territoriality. The demarcated political territory was constructed as a ‘sacred homeland’, belonging to a people deﬁned gen erally in ethnic terms; that is, a cultural group holding a myth of common origin and kin relations, and a long historical afﬁliation with ‘its’ territory. This sentiment was echoed in the famous call by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck during the nineteenth century attempt to unite Germany: ‘‘Germans – think with your blood’’. In immigrant and settler societies the emphasis was naturally different, but also centered on the framing of cultural cum ethnic identity, through the promotion of notions such as ‘creed’, ‘founding fathers’, and ‘state ideology’. These were translated into the application of assimilation (‘melting pot’) policies, designed to create a homogenous nation. On the state level then, ethnic identities were widely transformed and institutionalized into state nationalism.

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Groups thus politicized and mobilized their members by strengthening, recreating, or inventing the historical connection of culture, people, and territory. The rise of nationalism began mainly in Europe and, as noted above, was associated with European colonialism, during which cultural and ‘racial’ identities became widely studied, formalized, and stratiﬁed. There were cases in which genuinely equal citizenship developed through the promotion of civic nationalism, but until the middle of the twentieth century, these were relatively scarce. The popularity of the nation state order grew steadily, and reached a peak during the Interwar period (1918–39), when it was introduced (often imposed) to eastern parts of Europe and on large parts of the colonized continents. Proponents of this order argued that the division of the world into a mosaic of discrete nation states (‘a state to each nation, and a nation to each state’) would enhance stability, democracy, and prosperity. However, as detailed below, this system has often exacerbated, rather than abated, ethnic conﬂict. The association between ethnic nationalism and conﬂict is often profoundly geographical, being linked to claims for exclusive control over mixed territories. For this kind of politics, then, national territory is a zero sum resource, which unlike other resources (e.g., economic growth, culture, or environmental assets) cannot be shared. This has provided the locus of numerous ethno national conﬂicts, with rivaling claims for sovereignty over the same territory. To complicate matters, the meaning of territory is often related to fractured and contested histories, drawing legitimacy from periods of varying ethnic control over the territory in question. These multilayered histories cannot be easily accom modated in the current uni dimensional political geog raphy of state power, generating conﬂicting claims, aggressive wars, and ethno national tensions. The recent examples of Kosovo, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Israel/ Palestine, Tamil Elam, the Baltic Soviet States, and Kashmir, all illustrate the enduring potency of ethno national territorial disputes based on fractured histories and contested visions over the same territory. The geography of ethnic conﬂict is closely linked to the political concept of self determination, which has been widely accepted as a legitimate political expression of peoplehood. It has thus provided an important or ganizing principle for world politics over the last century, by constructing a desired state of affairs whereby each nation can exercise its right for self determination on ‘its own’ homeland territory. Self determination created a direct link between identity, territory, and power, and has politicized the notion of the ‘homeland’. It had the effect of fueling, and even creating, political aspirations among many ethnic groups. The spatiality of the self determination principle has been critical to this development, as the attachment

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of the group to ‘its’ land has developed into a highly valuable asset in the pursuit of state power. The pro liferation of ethnonationalism is forcefully illustrated by the constantly rising number of UN member states – from 50 in 1945 to 192 in 2007.

Marginalizing (Minority) Ethnicities The dominance of the nation state order encountered an enduring complication – the persistence of minorities. Nationalist ideologies were commonly premised on the disappearance of substate ethnic differences, or alter natively on their permanent marginalization. This was augmented by the rising inﬂuence of capitalism and liberalism, both focusing on the individual as a producer, consumer, and political agent, thereby drawing attention away from the identity and plight of minorities. The seemingly ‘natural’ connection between ethnicity, homeland, and nationalism often involved the appropri ation of the state by a dominant ethnicity which usually crowned itself as representing the ‘true’ national spirit. This gave rise to a range of homogenizing and domin eering policies. However, this approach also created ‘trapped minorities’ – those facing discrimination due to their identities, but at the same time prevented from exercising their own self determination in the state’s homogenizing public sphere. The ‘entrapment’ of minorities, and the ensuing conﬂict is one of the most signiﬁcant legacies of state nationalism to this very day. This constellation led to continuing attempts to control and marginalize minorities. Geographers such as Alex ander Murphy, David Sibley, and Oren Yiftachel, and sociologist Michael Mann have documented the wide spread implementation of discriminatory policies. These may take many forms ranging from a denial of recognition of distinct minority cultures, such as practiced in France, Turkey, or Germany, to more overt discrimination (also termed ‘derogatory recognition’) evident in ‘ethnocratic states’ such as Israel, Malaysia, and Estonia. In extreme cases, oppression and conﬂict may lead to ethnic cleansing, as occurred in Cyprus, Palestine, Bosnia, or Sudan; and even to genocide, as horriﬁcally witnessed during the Nazi extermination of Jews, and in more recent times in Cambodia and Rwanda. The common denomin ator has been the constructed ‘eternal ownership’ of the homeland by the dominant ethnic nation and the questionable status of minorities. The concept of an ex clusive homeland can also cause a ‘chain reaction’ and mobilize minorities against one another. The logic of ethnic spatial purity is exempliﬁed by the following quotation from an ancient Sinhalese text, the Pujavaliya, often used in the current ethnic struggle in Sri Lanka to enshrine the dominance of the Buddhist Sinhalese over other communities residing in the island state.

This island belongs to the Buddha himselfy Therefore, the residence of wrong believers in this Island will never be permanenty Even if non Buddhist ruled Ceylon by force for a whiley Lanka is destined to be ruled by Buddhist kingdoms.

But the oppression of minorities is not universal. Some states have opted for maintaining a fragile status quo of majority domination without overt oppression. Other more democratic states have introduced policies of ac commodation, as documented by the thorough works of political scientists McGarry and O’Leary. These policies have ranged from accepting minority driven partition, as in the case of Malaysia–Singapore, Czechia–Slovakia, and some of the post Soviet states, or more commonly introducing power sharing and forms of spatial coexist ence embedded in the concept of ‘consociationalism’ or ‘new federalism’. In recent times a more open ended approach of multiculturalism has also gained promin ence, attempting to base cultural and regional policies on recognition of the identities and aspirations of minorities. These politics of recognition have been most evident in immigrant societies such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and also increasingly in policies toward minorities in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Table 1 summarizes the spatialities of three main approaches to policies toward ethnic minorities – oppression, status quo, and accommodation. These are not mutually exclusive, and the table treats them as ‘ideal types’ for analytical purposes. It is acknowledged that in reality, policies and spatialities are more complex and multilayered. Policies toward minorities, however, have never remained static. In recent years, following evidence that ongoing oppression of minorities generally spawns resistance and possible insurgence, many multi ethnic states have increasingly introduced accommodation policies. Despite this move, other states continue to oppress and marginalize minorities, thus maintaining a high level of ethnic conﬂict.

Urbanizing and Globalizing Ethnicity Urbanization has been one of the major geographical transformations of the modern era. In 2005, for the ﬁrst time in history, more people resided in cities than in rural areas, while in the West the ﬁgure is around 90%. Needless to say, urbanization means more than a mere spatial transformation, harboring profound economic, cultural, and political implications. These have intensi ﬁed in recent years with the acceleration of globalization, which elevates the scale of human activities beyond the state. Cities are vital connecting nodes in this process, as they facilitate the actualization of globalization processes (known as ‘regional integration’ or Europeanization)

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Table 1

Policy approaches to minority ethnic spaces

Ethnic space

Body Home Property Neighborhood Ghetto/enclave Turf Sacred Sites Shanty town City Land Region Territory/homeland Diaspora

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a schematic presentation

Policy options Oppressive

SQ

Accommodation

Forbid/marginalize Demolish/conﬁne Reduce value Undermine/conﬁne Create/preserve Undermine Minimize Criminalize Majority hegemony Expropriate/restrict use Deny, undermine Deny Sever links

Apathetic Conﬁne ‘Market forces’ Restrict control Preserve Restrict Condone Ignore Maj. control Little change Restrict Deny Restrict links

Facilitate Facilitate Develop Indifference Protect/open boundary Facilitate Expand Selectively legalize Power sharing Proport. allocation/restitut’n/compent’n Facilitate Autonomy Indifference

through their economic and cultural roles. The impact of urbanization on ethnic identities has been profound. It has changed the manner in which ethnic boundaries are constructed, the nature of interaction with other groups, and the characteristics of political mobilization. Cities constitute the hubs of economic, political, and cultural power, and the sites in which development and globalization actually take place. As such, they are vitally important for understanding the dynamics of ethnic identities and conﬂicts. Notably, urban ethnic dynamics are shaped by opposing and simultaneous forces, en hancing both assimilation and fragmentation. On the one hand, as shown by political geographer Peter Taylor, state regimes promoting national unity and economic growth saw the cities as critical for their project of creating a uniﬁed nation and economy. Urban sociologist Manuel Castells opened a new perspective by noting that cities became centers of collective consumption (for housing, education, health, and the like), thereby enabling the regime to integrate urbanizing populations into a rela tively homogenous collectivity. At the same time, however, as highlighted by geog raphers and urbanists Jane Jacobs, Doug Massey, and Fredrick Boal, countervailing forces of fragmentation have been at work, making the city a springboard for a new political geography of ethnic mobilization and conﬂict. While in the rural areas ethnic identities have been relatively (though of course not entirely) stable, in the city, the identity sphere became more dynamic. In the rural areas the construction of identities was closely associated with national claims for territorial control, while in the cities issues relating to civil status, economic position, and service provision became more prominent. This rural–urban difference should not be treated as dichotomous, but as a matter of degree and contingency. The relative openness, ﬂuidity, and instability of cities – in terms of housing, employment, or lifestyles – is

associated with a corresponding (relative) ﬂexibility of politics and identities. In addition, due to their global izing economic and cultural roles – and unlike rural areas – cities are centers of intra state and international im migration, which constantly reshapes the nature of ethnic spaces and relations. Therefore, as noted by urban scholars such as Scott Bollen, Ira Katznelson, Don Mitchell, and Kian Tajbakhsh, the city possesses ‘a promise’ to transform identities and society, and creates new forms of spatial coexistence, even in cases of pro tracted conﬂicts. Katznelson thus notes: Cities are porousy Liberalism is inconceivabley without the urbanization of early modern Europe, which became the location for political emancipation, from racial, ethnic and religious oppressionsy

Yet, structural forces such as expansionist or racist state nationalism, and uneven globalization and economic growth have often worked to thwart this promise. As shown by Oren Yiftachel these forces often produce ‘ethnocratic cities’, whereby dominant ethnic groups use the mechanisms of urban governance to further its power and material interests. Such cities are marked by high levels of coerced segregation, racial ghettoes, and per sistent conﬂicts, as shown by the examples of Paris, Jerusalem, Colombo, or Berlin. Signiﬁcantly, powerful ethnic groups use the development and accumulation processes governed by urban policy to buttress their dominant class position. Minorities are typically left on the margins of urban based accumulation, leading to the demarcation of segregated urban ‘ethno classes’ as elab orated below. In some cases, segregation may be largely voluntary, and acts as a form of conﬂict management. As shown by geographer Yizhak Schnell, this occurs mainly in cities accommodating groups separated by religious or racial afﬁliation, without explicit claims to a national control

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over space, such as Muslim groups in most European cities, Blacks and Hispanics in American cities, and ultra orthodox groups in Israeli cities. Conﬂicts abound in such cities, but their potential harm is reduced by patterns of voluntary segregation. Ethnic relations are particularly volatile in cities divided on ethno national lines, most notably in urban areas occupying sites of collective symbolic value. Plan ning scholar Scott Bollen has shown how protracted urban conﬂicts in cities such as Belfast, Jerusalem, and Sarajevo, are associated with broader national claims for territory. These tensions are commonly repro duced by urban policymakers, working under the as sumptions of their own national historical narratives. Yet, the inﬂuence is never uni directional, and urban policy can also aggravate, or appease, the larger national conﬂict. Other types of ethnic and racial conﬂicts are docu mented by geographer Jenny Robinson, who claims that ‘ordinary urbanism’, not associated with sacred or national locations, also typically produces local conﬂicts, thereby sharpening ethnic, class, and local identities. Hence, in a wide variety of settings, the city gives rise to the formation of ‘ethno classes’, being partially porous social groupings based on a combined cultural and eco nomic afﬁliation. Quite often, the more economically mobile sections of minority groups integrate and even assimilate into the mainstream and voluntarily lose their ethnic afﬁliation, or alternatively form a wide range of ‘hybrid’ identities. The economically deprived parts of the community typically remain quite segregated from the mainstream and subsequently maintain higher degrees of ethnic dif ference. These segments are likely to face barriers to assimilation, stemming from their marginalized position in the labor and housing markets. This is often enhanced by popular and institutional prejudice and by a politics of identity – all working to maintain the ethno class boundary. As shown by geographers Ash Amin, in im migrant cities, ethnic identities tend to strengthen with economic marginality, causing alienation and protest based on the coexistence of difference and deprivation. This alienation erupts in times of mass protest and vio lence, as occurred in Paris’s immigrant neighborhoods in late 2005, in northern cities of Britain during 2003, and Los Angeles in the early 1990s. Urbanizing globalization has also mobilized diasporas as a signiﬁcant political geographical factor. Improved communication technology and mobility have facilitated the maintenance of close contact with the homeland, and have coincided with the politicization of difference to create active diaspora communities. These communities tend to have a dual orientation: they struggle for their equality in the new location, and also maintain material, political, and emotional contact with their countries

of origins. This setting creates new global, transnational networks, mediated through urban ethnic communities. Another critical feature of today’s geography of ethnic conﬂict is the emergence of mass urban informalities. As illustrated by urbanists Ananya Roy and Mike Davis, globalizing urbanization governed by neo liberal states often results in the coerced and rapid rural to urban migration, and in the subsequent creation of unplanned and un serviced shanty towns, usually at the edge of existing urban centers. In parallel, large disenfranchised and often rightless populations ‘disappear’ into the urban mass, typically as domestic and illegal workers. To il lustrate the process, it may be enough to quote a 2006 report by the Chinese government, which notes that Beijing and Gunagzhou have each absorbed 3–4 millions people classiﬁed as ‘ﬂoating’ (unregistered and un authorized) during the last two decades. This process creates in effect a new situation which can be conceptualized as ‘urban apartheid’, where citi zenship is constructed on the basis of people’s origins, ethnicity, and class. Migrants fuel the urban economy with their labor and spending, but are prevented from attaining full urban citizenship, that is, full access to urban resources and representation. This emerging landscape of profound inequality forms the basis for enduring urban conﬂicts, and appears to sketch the political geography of ethnic relations for years to come.

Overview As shown above, the making of ethnic identities has been inseparable from the geography of political and social conﬂict. Ethnicity has been politicized during the era of European colonialism, and institutionalized by the par allel emergence of the nation state as the backbone of the world’s political order. Within this political geography, ethnic and cultural afﬁliations have become directly linked to the hierarchies of power and wealth. The nation state has both assimilated and marginalized minorities, generating conﬂicts and the sharpening of identities. In recent decades, accelerating urbanization and globalization have spawned new geographies of urban ‘ethno classes’. While ethno national and regional struggles over territorial control continue to rage, a new terrain of urban ethnic struggles has emerged over issues of segregation, economic mobility, and urban infor malities. The dynamic interaction of ethnic identities and human geography is therefore likely to shape world politics well into the future. See also: Diaspora; Ethnicity; Immigration I; Immigration II; Nation; Nationalism; Nationalism, Historical Geography of; Political Geography; Segregation; Space I; Space II; Territory and Territoriality; Urbanization; War.

Ethnic Conﬂict

Further Reading Amin, A. (2002). Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity. London: Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions; Government Printers. Bollen, S. (2007). Cities, Nationalism and Democratization. London: Routledge. Castells, M. (1999). End of Millennium. Oxford: Blackwell. Delaney, D. (2005). Territory: A Short Introduction. London: Blackwell. Jacobs, J. (1996). Edge of Empire. London: Routledge. Mann, M. (2004). The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McGarry, J. and O’Leary, B. (2004). The Northern Ireland Conﬂict: Consociational Engagements. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space. New York: Guilford.

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Murphy, A. (2002). The territorial underpinnings of national identity. Geopolitics 7(2), 193 214. Robinson, J. (2006). Ordinary Cities: Between Globalization and Modernity. London: Routledge. Sibley, D. (1996). Geographies of Exclusion. London: Routledge. Tajbakhsh, K. (2002). The Promise of the City: Space, Identity and Politics in Contemporary Social Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press. Taylor, C. (1992). The politics of recognition. In Gutman, A. (ed.) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, pp 25 73. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Taylor, P. (2003). Radical political geography. In Agnew, J., Mitchell, K. & Toal, G. (eds.) A Companion to Political Geography, pp 47 58. London: Blackwell. Yiftachel, O. (2006). Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/ Palestine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Ethnic Economies L. Lo, York University, Toronto, ON Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Afﬁrmative Action Policies Afﬁrmative action means positive steps taken to increase the representation of certain demographic groups such as women, ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, and the queer community in areas of employment, education, and business from which they have been historically excluded. The goal is to counteract past and present discrimination sufﬁciently that the power elite will reﬂect the demographics of society at large. Ethnoburb Ethnoburbs are suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas. Created through deliberate efforts of an ethnic group within changing global/national/local contexts, ethnoburbs have their own internal socioeconomic structures, and at the same time are connected to the mainstream society through information exchange, business connections, and social activities. They contain some features of an enclave, and some features of a suburb lacking a speciﬁc ethnic identity. They coexist along with traditional ethnic enclaves in inner cities, but are rapidly replacing them as more important new ‘ports of entry’ for immigrants. Institutional Completeness It is measured by the number and diversity of an immigrant group’s social organizations. It is achieved whenever the ethnic community could perform all the services required by its members, and members would never have to make use of native institutions for the satisfaction of any of their needs, such as education, work, food and clothing, medical care, or assistance. Middleman Minorities They are those ethnic entrepreneurs who trade in between a society’s elite and the masses. In the past, they most commonly established businesses in poor minority neighborhoods deserted by mainstream retailers and service industries and business owners belonging to the dominant group. In recent years, they have been found to open up businesses in afﬂuent and middle-class neighborhoods and have shown up in the primary sector of the mainstream economy. Rotating Credit Association It is an association formed upon a core of participants who make regular contributions to a fund that is given in whole or in part to each contributor in turn. Sojourning Orientation It refers to the tendency of those immigrants who have no wish to be permanent settlers but to eventually return to their place of origin.

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Introduction In an age of migration, ethnicity appears to have a role in transforming the social and economic landscapes of major cities around the world. At the turn of the twenty ﬁrst century, immigrants or the foreign born account for about 12% of the total population in the US. The pro portion is even higher in Canada (18%) and Australia (22%). These immigrant populations are diverse. As an example, immigrants from some 169 countries lived in the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area, making Toronto the most multicultural region of Canada, if not the world, and one of the highest immigrant populated cities in the world. Often, different immigrant groups settle in dif ferent parts of the city. Their rates of self employment and/or participating as employers in the economy also vary. They may or may not contribute to visible ethno commercial landscapes known as Chinatown, Little Havana, Little Portugal, or Curry Mile. Employed or self employed, they may or may not dominate certain niches of the economy as Italian men in construction and Filipino women as domestic caregivers in Toronto, and Chinese and Indians in the computer industry in Silicon Valley. Indeed, recent decades have observed an ethnic division of labor in the paid labor market and a pro liferation of small and medium size businesses owned and operated by recent immigrants. Ethnic economies emerge and/or revitalize. As immigrant self employment rate rises above that of the native born, several questions ensue. Does ethnicity make a difference in the geog raphies of economic life? Why do some immigrant and ethnic groups develop thriving business activity and notable economic landscapes? Are the factors internal to the group or the result of context? This says that to understand the emergence of ethnic economies, we need to know the causes of ethnic entrepreneurship.

Origin of Interest in Social Sciences and Human Geography The concept of ethnic economy is rooted in historical sociology and the thinking of some black Americans over a century ago. Classical sociologists such as Max Weber and Karl Marx believed that businesses in precapita list societies practiced favoritism, nepotism, communalism, and exceptionalism in their operations, and that their decision making was shaped by ethnoreligious relation ships rather than proﬁt maximizing motives. This thinking called attention to the notion of ethnic capitalism,

Ethnic Economies

referring to marginalized ethnic minorities such as Jews and overseas Chinese who specialized in market trading in traditional societies. The notion of ethnic capitalism was speciﬁcally advocated by some black American thinkers such as Booker Washington and Malcolm X; they em phasized economic power over political power, hence business ownership, as strategies for black advancement. The interest of social sciences in ethnic economies began in the early 1970s with the publication of Ethnic Enterprise in America by Ivan Light and the theory of middlemen minority by Edna Bonacich, both sociologists. Light’s empirical work, comparing Chinese, Japanese, and black self employment activities between 1880 and 1940, emphasized the importance of social trust and rotating credit associations in explaining differential self em ployment rates, thereby introducing the notion of ethnic entrepreneurship and ethnic capital. The theory of middlemen minorities that discusses how internal co hesion or solidarity among members of an ethnic group can foster their own trading society provides the back bone for developing the concept of ethnic economy. The concept was formally introduced a decade later by Edna Bonacich and John Modell. In ‘The Economic Basis of Ethnic Solidarity ’, they refer to an ethnic group’s self employed, employers, their co ethnic employees, and unpaid family workers as comprising an ethnic economy. Geography was notably absent until the notion of enclave economy emerged. The idea of an enclave economy transpired in the early 1990s out of an ensuing debate caused by the work of Kenneth Wilson and Ale jandro Portes on Cuban immigrant workers in Miami. Whereas ethnic economy is derived from the theory of middlemen minorities, ethnic enclave economy origin ates from dual labor market theory used to explain per sistent inequality in employment of marginalized groups. An ethnic enclave economy stands for the economic advantage due to the locational clustering of businesses established by members of an ethnic group. The belief is that clustering allows higher monetary returns for par ticipants in an enclave economy than they would have been able to obtain without that enclave structure. The implication is that an ethic enclave economy manifests itself as a monopoly sector which recaptures co ethnic spending as a result of both vertical and horizontal in tegration along ethnic lines. Ethnic enclave economy is a special case of ethnic economy. Spatial clustering is a major part of the attributes that make up an ethnic economy. This makes ethnic economy geographic in nature despite the recent begin ning of geographic research in this area. Geography has a long tradition in examining residential segregation and immigrant settlement/resettlement patterns. In a similar vein, just where immigrants work, where ethnic businesses locate, and how these relate to international migration, transnational capital, urban morphology, economic

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structure, and the location of other groups are of particular relevance to geography. This is especially so when we see that most taxi drivers in Ottawa appear to be Middle Easterners, whereas those in Toronto are South Asians; that housekeeping staff in North American hotels are mostly women from the Philippines, the Caribbean, or Latin America; that most street vendors in Lisbon are of African origin; that most corner convenience stores and dry cleaners in Toronto are run by Koreans; that signage in suburban shopping malls in Vancouver and Los Angeles is predominantly Chinese. This implies that the distri bution of people among different occupations, industries, sectors, and neighborhoods is not the outcome of a ran dom process of allocation. The underlying processes, complex as they may be, are inherently geographical, re ﬂecting the ways immigrant groups live or experience in the places they now call home, where they come from, how they are represented, and the practices they use to overcome barriers to social and economic integration in their adopted home.

A Typology Often the term ethnic economy is used rather loosely. It denotes the many different ways in which ethnic groups intersect with any sort of economic activity. The fol lowing summarizes what recent researchers come to terms with what has been a confounding literature. Ethnic-Controlled Economy An ethnic controlled economy encompasses a situation when co ethnic employees in a workplace, an occupation, or an industry in the general economy exert signiﬁcant and persistent economic power such that they inﬂuence wages, hiring, and working conditions. It denotes an ethnic economy where workers have de facto control due to their number, their clustering, their organization, or government mandates. Examples include how Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants, respectively dominated construction, sanitation, and school teaching jobs in the municipal ofﬁces of New York City in the twentieth century, and how African Americans now dominate public sector jobs in the US as a result of government mandate to improve their economic chances. Ethnic Ownership Economy An ethnic ownership economy, distinctive from an ethnic controlled economy, consists of co ethnic self employed and employers, their co ethnic employees, and unpaid family workers. It designates a business and employment sector that coexists with the general metropolitan econ omy. This is the most generally known concept of ethnic economy and the focus of this article. To complicate things, there are, however, different types of ethnic

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ownership economies (or ethnic economy hereafter). The mix of ethnicity of their workers and clients, the kind of goods and services they offer, the market space they command, the locale they are situated in, and the degree of formality in such organizational behavior as capital ﬁ nancing and hiring practices are criteria for distinguishing an enclave economy, an ethnic (non enclave) economy, and a mixed economy.

ethnic economy. While no standard measures exist, knowledge of the size, composition, and market orien tation of ethnic ﬁrms are often used to infer the type of economy to which an ethnic economy belongs. In that sense, an ethnic ownership economy can be broadly re deﬁned as an ethnic based economic structure consisting of a set of enterprises owned and managed by members of the same ethnic group, and running parallel to the larger metropolitan economy.

Ethnic enclave economy

An ethnic enclave economy is one in which all business owners, employees, and clients are of the same ethnicity. It largely serves the ethnic market with low order ethnic goods and/or mid order services. Firms are generally small and cluster around a territorial core. Informal economic practices are commonly alleged to be an in tegral part of an enclave economy. The most interesting aspect of an ethnic enclave economy is its spatial clus tering. The territorial core is usually where the ethnic group resides. Examples abound in Chinatowns and Greektowns. However, there are the rare cases where co ethnic residential concentration is absent. The Little India in Toronto, a commercial strip lined with South Asian restaurants, sari stores, and jewelers, is an example. While touted a tourist site, local South Asians living elsewhere in the metropolitan area still visit in droves on weekends. Ethnic (non-enclave) economy

An ethnic economy differs from an enclave economy in two aspects. Businesses neither target co ethnic clients nor cluster spatially. They locate within and outside ethnic areas and serve as intermediaries selling cultural products to tourists or the general population. They may also sell non cultural goods and services to other underserved minority populations. The Chinese green grocers of an earlier era, Korean convenience stores, and Thai restaurants of contemporary times are examples of ethnic economy. Mixed economy

A mixed economy consists of hybrid ﬁrms that utilize both ethnic and non ethnic resources and embody both formal and informal organizational behavior. Their markets are spatially and ethnically unbounded. Their businesses, not conﬁned to general retailing, may include manufacturing, specialist retailing, and service provision for consumers, as well as producers. Mixed economies are outcomes of maturing ethnic economies responding to a host of globalizing/transnational, and political/ institutional forces. They can simultaneously host an enclave component and an integrated component. The above describes ideal types. In reality, an enclave economy is a special case of an ethnic economy, and a mixed economy cannot exist without some traces of an

The Geography of Ethnic Economy The role geography plays is twofold. One concerns the notion of spatial capital recently emerged as a factor for the creation and sustenance of an ethnic economy. The other involves the impact that ethnic economic activity has on the metropolitan landscape. A geographical perspective looks at the relationship between ethnic economies and other geographically identiﬁable phenomena, such as residential segregation, underserved markets, or institutional distributions. It examines how location helps, hinders, or shapes ethnic economies. As discussed earlier, different types of ethnic economy fulﬁll different functions and have different spatial orientations. Firms that cater to co ethnics tend to congregate at its ethnic neighborhood. Otherwise, they can be more footloose. The spatial context shapes the practices and experiences of ethnic entrepreneurs, and the manifestation of ethnic economies. Ethnic communities trigger our imagination partially because of the businesses they contain. We all know of the ethnic places that ﬁgure prominently in our cultural imagination. They often form a major component of a city’s marketing emphasis. However, ethnic economic imprints go deeper than a few celebrated ‘towns’ and ‘villages’. With ethnic spaces continuing to ﬂourish under the guise of diverse groups and in unexpected locales, the implications of ethnic economies are more than visual. As immigrants become wealthier and more educated, ethnic economies expand to the suburbs and occur in multiple locales within the city. Suburban ethnic shopping malls, as in the case of Toronto and Vancouver, have been built to showcase Chinese businesses. Coexisting as they may be, these ethnic suburban malls have taken over their traditional downtown cousins as ethnic central places. These emerging landscapes speak to changes also in the way that neighborhoods in the city are structured and organized. Ethnic groups have the ability to imprint landscapes with meanings in ways both evident and subtle. With architecturally distinct buildings, particular institutions, statuary or other markers, signage, language, and spe cialty goods which are ordinary to the insiders yet awed to the outsiders, ethnic businesses make and mark ethnic

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places. The place making quality of ethnic economies stamps an ethnic identity onto a district and creates a special landscape. To members of the group, an ethnic place is a place of residence or place of work where socialization is conducted in their own language. It re inforces their ethnic identity. To nonmembers, it is a tourist spectacle, a mystery of a distant land. Ethnic economies operate at different scales, from local dependence to transnational linkages. Spatially, some are tightly bound and clearly deﬁned. Others may concentrate over several square miles. Ethnic economies have also proven to be a dynamic and mobile phenom enon. Long marked as an ethnic enclave, the character and landscape geography of Little Tokyo in Los Angeles has altered over the years by spatial processes operating at a variety of scales. In recent years, with a new gen eration of wealthier immigrants, the role of Chinatowns is diminished by the emergence of ethnoburbs. In Los Angeles, these new concentrations of ethnic business depend to a large extent on the ability of ethnic banks to ﬁnance their development through both mortgage lend ing and commercial loans. In Vancouver, the transfor mation was sparked by transnational capital. In Toronto, both small local Chinese developers and big mainstream developers took the lead to change the city’s northeastern suburbs into a landscape of Chinese malls.

entrepreneurial groups originate from Europe, including Jews and Italians, followed by those from the Middle East and East Asia. The least entrepreneurial are mostly visible minority immigrants from the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Ethnic entrepreneurs also appear sectorized, with Poles and Italians having a high stake in the manu facturing and construction industries; Korean, Chinese, Greek, Israeli, and Middle Eastern immigrants concen trating in the distributive services; and those from the US, Hungary, and South Africa focusing on business, personal, and public services. Immigrant self employment/entre preneurship not only varies among ethnic groups, it also differs between men and women, with men more likely to be self employed. In Toronto, the proportions of self employment for immigrant men range from 37.1% to 9.7%, those for immigrant women range between 20.5% and 2.7%. To understand these variations in form and function of ethnic businesses, we need to look at: Why do immi grants/ethnic minorities become entrepreneurs? Why is entrepreneurship more common among some groups than others? Why are some groups doing better than others who have entered the same country at the same time? How do different ethnic groups deal with the challenges of entrepreneurship? Answers to these ques tions are not independent of each other. The following explanations address the issues in varying degrees.

Ethnic Economies and Ethnic Entrepreneurship

Cultural Characteristics

Ethnic economies are varied. They can range from a few restaurants and grocery stores mainly serving a speciﬁc ethnic group to one that has a full range of economic activities. Ethnic economies are sometimes visible in a single concentration. Others extend across several sep arate locations. Alternatively, ethnic businesses may be dispersed throughout the metropolitan area. For ex ample, in Toronto, Korean owned convenience stores are all over the city despite the presence of a Koreatown in the city core. Similarly, Chinese owned restaurants serving Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and European continental and fusion food are everywhere, although there are as many as ﬁve China towns in the Toronto metropolis. Hidden behind the spatial manifestation of ethnic businesses are the varying rates of self employment and entrepreneurship across ethnic groups. Both historical and contemporary records show considerable disparities in business formation among various ethnic groups. Today, high entrepreneurial groups in the US are Arabs, Armenians, Chinese, Greeks, Italians, Japanese, Jews, In dians, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Koreans, and Persians in that order; Blacks, Mexicans, Vietnamese, and Puerto Ricans are the least entrepreneurial. In Canada, the most

The ‘cultural thesis’ suggests that some ethnic groups are conditioned with certain characteristics that make their people more inclined toward business. These cultural characteristics can be the habit of savings, an appreciation of deferred gratiﬁcation, the propensity to take risk, values often acquired through the process of social ization. They may also include norms that facilitate ob taining capital, sharing resources, or working together. With traditional middlemen minorities such as Chinese and Jews, the belief is their ancestral history provides them with a ‘tool kit’ that facilitates business develop ment. In recent decades, the business immigration pro grams in Australia, Canada, and the US have brought in many migrants with business acumen, and these business immigrants tend to come from certain regions of the world like Hong Kong, Korea, and Iran. The general argument is that there are cultural differences across space. The dynamics of social relations and cultural processes channel certain ethnic groups more readily into business development. Structural Push Disadvantage or block mobility theorists argue that dis crimination in the regular labor market imposes limi tations on an ethnic group’s economic mobility, and the

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disadvantage they face forces their group members into self employment or petite businesses. In the past, Chinese arriving in San Francisco and Vancouver and their des cendents were openly barred from professional practices and relegated to working in the gold mines or railway yards. Now immigrants arriving in Los Angeles, Toronto, London, and Sydney ﬁnd themselves disproportionately concentrated in low status, low paid, and insecure jobs even though they are more educated than the native born population. This is because their foreign credentials are not recognized and employers often demand local ex perience. Contemporary devaluation of human capital across international space has the same effect as the place based exclusionary practices of the past. When certain groups are excluded from the upper echelon of the labor market, they seek self employment or entrepreneurship as a survival strategy or a defense mechanism.

The ability to open and operate large and successful businesses depends on a group’s entrepreneurial capacity. Entrepreneurial capacity is measured by the availability of ethnic and class resources. Whereas ethnic resources, generated as a part of normal group life, are features (e.g., solidarity, sojourning orientation, values, and traditions) of a group that co ethnics utilize in economic life or from which they derive economic beneﬁt, class resources, in the form of cultural, human, and ﬁnancial capital, provide the necessary cultural and material endowments to ad vance entrepreneurialism. Class and ethnic resources are ideal types, easy to separate on paper, but often em pirically intertwined. Development of ethnic resources is often linked to one’s class position which affects one’s ability to mobilize ﬁnancial and/or human resources.

process is that it perpetuates an inward outlook of ethnic businesses and strong competition among themselves. Communities with a longer settlement history and with enclave economic activities promote community building and social capital formation. They are more likely to have a stronger ethnic network complete with their own set of institutions – cultural, religious, political, educational, and ﬁnancial. These institutions, in return, support a more matured business structure moving be yond ‘mom and pop’ operations of earlier immigrant communities. These enclaves have historically tended to locate in traditional inner city immigrant reception areas in compact sociospatial units in which a large number of immigrants from the same ethnic background have clustered. In these areas may be found most of the im migrant community’s cultural and religious institutions, as well as its services and businesses. Echoing Raymond Breton, we argue that given the number and diversity of these institutions and businesses, these groups have cre ated institutionally complete communities. This being said, however, institutional completeness as manifested by these groups was neither uniform nor static over time. In fact, the visibility and longevity of these enclaves is dependent upon not only the development of social networks, but also on the continuing construction of an institutional infrastructure. Thus, varying levels of institutional completeness create differences among immigrant groups in the avail ability and access to neighborhood based and group based resources. Concentrated ethnic economic activities broaden the base for social interaction and provide a critical economic base for the immigrant community to function effectively. In contrast, institutionally incomplete communities make it more difﬁcult for their members to gain formal credit and ﬁnancing.

Ethnic resources

Class resources

Ethnic resources, or the more trendy terminology of social capital, refer to ethnic ties and ethnic social networks. Close ethnic ties are important to those entrepreneurs lacking access to mainstream source of credit or assistance. A larger and more established ethnic/immigrant group provides the critical mass necessary to breed churches, mutual aid societies, rotating credit associations, business associations, and other types of ethnic institutions that provide formal as well as informal organizational resources for the group to get ahead than a small newcomer group. To the entrepreneur, ethnic social networks are sources of information, capital, and labor. They have been shown to be signiﬁcant in the development of businesses among the Cuban immigrants in Miami and Korean immigrants in Los Angeles. Social networks are critical to starting and maintaining a business, especially small and low barrier to enter types. They are community and often neigh borhood based. A consequence of such a geographical

There are two sides to class resources – material and cultural. On the material side, private property and wealth form the basis of ﬁnancial capital; wealthy groups respond more successfully to opportunities for formal sector entrepreneurship than poor groups. Wealthy immigrants need not rely on informal co ethnic loans to start a business, and can build larger ﬁrms. Similarly, possession of human capital, in the form of education, destination country ofﬁcial language proﬁciency, and work/business experience, makes more effective entrepreneurs. Cultural capital refers to the knowledge, skills, atti tudes, and values necessary to start and run a business in the market economy. It is an occupational culture trans mitted in the course of socialization both at home and in schools. Having an entrepreneur parent, working in a relative’s business, or studying business administration at school contributes to the culture of entrepreneurship. Evidence shows that among all ethnoracial groups, human

Resource Mobilization

Ethnic Economies

capital increases the rate of entrepreneurship. Class re sources have become increasingly important with the rising international migration of skilled workers, pro fessionals, and business people. Opportunity Structure Opportunity structure refers to market conditions and access to ownership. Business opportunity is affected by the local social–economic environment, as well as the larger political–institutional environment. On the socioeconomic side, market conditions may be ‘open’ or ‘closed’. An open market, which allows immi grant businesses to serve outside its own ethnic com munity, offers more entrepreneurial opportunities than a closed market serving cultural products to the ethnic community. Access to business ownership is largely de termined by the number of business vacancies, the degree of competition for those vacancies especially from the native born population, and government policies regu lating immigrant entrepreneurs. It is also impacted by the lack of interest from the native born population in cer tain businesses. Government policies setting the terms on which immigrants enter, deciding where in the country they settle, and affecting the ease with which businesses can be started affect the rate of immigrant entre preneurship. In this regard the treatment of Turkish workers in Germany as temporary residents, and the Dutch requirement that prospective entrepreneurs must show a need for their business, has a very different effect on entrepreneurship from the business immigration programs in Canada and Australia. Immigrants’ abilities to establish ﬁrms are determined not only by the extent to which they are legally permitted to set up a business, but also by factors such as taxation system, labor relations, residency status, job quality, health and safety laws, as well as their enforcement. In this re gard, the larger politico institutional context includes an array of regulatory structures and institutional contexts – not just those targeting immigrants – that promote certain economic activities and inhibit others. Immigrant entre preneurship may be higher in France because non citizens are excluded from most public sector jobs, yet lower in Canada because Canada has adopted afﬁrmative action policies that do not differentiate between citizens and landed immigrants in all public sector hiring. Also, while virtually everyone can establish a private business in the US, Germany and Austria require the application of spe cial licenses even to sell ﬂowers in restaurants and bars. Generally speaking, with the economic dynamics of a market in North America being different from those in Europe, these markets offer different opportunities and obstacles, demand different skills, and lead to different outcomes in terms of immigrant self employment rate and business success.

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The Two Sides of Ethnic Economy The self employed immigrants and their businesses con tribute to our metropolitan and national economies in several ways. First and foremost, ethnic businesses gen erate employment opportunities. Conservative estimates done in Toronto at the turn of this century found jobs created by the Somali ethnic economy, one of the smallest and most recent, accounted for about 7% of its labor force, whereas the Chinese with a longer history created employment opportunities equivalent to 34% of its labor force or 2% of the total labor force in the city. The job impact of ethnic economies cannot be ignored. Besides, another study found self employed immigrants who ar rived between 1980 and 1995 accounted for 1.7% of all self employed individuals in the country and generated 1.4% of the nation’s self employment income or 0.07% of the national income. Given the recency of this group, this is by no means a small economic contribution especially as some of them also generate employment income for others and add to the public coffer through other forms of tax contribution. More importantly, as an ethnic economy grows, it provides jobs not only for some of its co ethnic workers, but also for the general labor force. Although ethnic economies create jobs, there are often concerns about the quality of these jobs, in particular if they offer appropriate returns to human capital, and hence social and economic mobility. Many suggest that ethnic employers exploit especially their co ethnic em ployees, and that participation in the enclave ethnic market may prevent immigrant workers from ever reaching the general labor market. But evidence, while inclusive, shows that immigrant workers can move across ethnic boundaries and market sectors and away from the informal ethnic domain to the formal market that offers better working conditions and higher income. On a more positive tone, we can view enclave em ployment as a way earlier immigrants help later arrivals to establish themselves. The advantage of such employment is that barriers such as non recognition of credentials, lin guistic limitations, and discrimination are much less likely to present problems than in the mainstream labor market. Even though the enclave labor market pays lower wages, workers earn more than they would if they were un employed. Labor market segmentation theory also says that immigrants, as one marginalized group, are often employed in dead end, low skill jobs in the secondary market. Even when employed, immigrant workers may end up with little career mobility. An enclave economy at least offers im migrant workers a protected niche with some opportun ities for upward mobility, including self employment. Where spatial clustering occurs, agglomeration economies are in effect. Enclave businesses like grocery store and movie rental clearly beneﬁt from the concentration of potential customers. Co ethnic consumers, attracted to the

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neighborhood as a whole, bring in business. Distinct en clave economies such as Chinatown in New York or Curry Mile in Manchester are often tourist attractions in their own right and provide access to a wealthy tourist clientele. As an ethnic economy expands, ethnic business organ izations emerge. In addition to promoting entrepreneur ship among their members and forging internal cohesion, the organizations often open trade links and promote business interaction between the communities where im migrants settle and those in their countries of origin. Ethnic economies can be seen as contained and lead to social isolation and ethnic segregation. However, ethnic businesses can act as important agents for urban renewal, and help the neighborhoods to develop a place identity and revive their local economy. An enclave neighborhood collectively forms a tangible basis for the nurturing and maintenance of an ethnic identity. To be Chinese in Chinatown is to be reminded of one’s ‘Chineseness’. This in turn makes it more likely that one will continue to demand Chinese goods and services. In this way, ethnic enterprises collectively beneﬁt from their visible presence on the urban landscape in ethnic places. See also: Entrepreneurship; Ethnicity; Immigration I; Segregation; Segregation, Urban.

Further Reading Barrett, G. A., Jones, T. P. and McEvoy, D. (1996). Ethnic minority business: Theoretical discourse in Britain and North America. Urban Studies 33, 783 809. Bonacich, E. and Modell, J. (1980). The economic basis of ethnic solidarity: Small business in the Japanese American community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Collins, J., Gibson, K., Alcorso, C., Tait, D. and Castle, S. (1995). A shop full of dreams: Ethnic small businesses in Australia. Sydney: Pluto Press. Hiebert, D. (2001). The spatial limits to entrepreneurship: Immigrant entrepreneurs in Canada. Tijdschrif voor Economische en Sociale Geograﬁe 93, 173 190. Kaplan, D. (1998). The spatial structure of urban ethnic economies. Urban Geography 19, 489 501. Kaplan, D. and Li, W. (eds.) (2006). The landscapes of ethnic economy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld.

Kloorsterman, R. and Rath, J. (2001). Immigrant entrepreneurs in advanced economies: Mixed embeddedness further explored. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 27, 189 202. Kloorsterman, R., van der Leun, J. and Rath, J. (1999). Mixed embeddedness: Informal economic activities and immigrant businesses in the Netherlands. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 23, 253 267. Light, I. (1972). Ethnic enterprise in America: Business and welfare among Chinese, Japanese and Blacks. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Light, I. (2004). Immigration and ethnic economies in giant cities. International Social Science Journal 56, 385 398. Light, I. and Gold, S. J. (2000). Ethnic economies. New York, NY: Academic Press. Preston, V., Lo, L. and Wang, S. (2003). Immigrants’ economic status in Toronto: Stories of triumph and disappointment. In Anisef, P. & Lanphier, M. (eds.) The world in a city, pp 211 225. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rath, J. (ed.) (2000). Immigrant businesses: The economic, political and social environment. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. Rath, J. and Kloosterman, R. (2000). Outsiders’ business: A critical review of research on immigrant entrepreneurship. International Migration Review 34, 657 681. Waldinger, R., Aldrich, H., Ward, R. and Associates (eds.) (1990). Ethnic entrepreneurs. Newbury Park: SAGE Publications. Zhou, M. (2004). Revisiting ethnic entrepreneurship: Convergencies, cocntroversies and conceptual advancement. International Migration Review 38, 1040 1075.

Relevant Websites http://www.equalityhumanrights.com Employment data on Britain are available from the Publications and Resources page of the Equality and Human Rights Commission website. http://cmd.princeton.edu Its Data Archive page contains data collected by The Comparative Immigrant Entrepreneurs Project, Centre for Migration and Development, Princeton University. http://www.cis.org Reconsidering Immigrant Entrepreneurship: An Examination of Self Employment among Natives and the Foreign Born by Steven A. Camarota, available from the Publications page of the Centre for Immigration Studies website. http://www.statcan.ca Statistics Canada’s E stat System provides extensive data on migration, ethnicity and labor markets. http://international.metropolis.net The Immigrant and Ethnic Entrepreneurship Bibliography Database compiled by Jan Rath, University of Amsterdam is available from the Research and Policy page. http://www.eeoc.gov The US Equal Employment Opportunities Commission has Statistics for all US cities and states along the lines discussed for Los Angeles.

Ethnicity W. Li and E. Skop, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, and The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Ethnic Groups Are deﬁned as a unique set of individuals who share common interests based on mutual understanding, beliefs, and values, including a common homeland, a mutual language, a shared religion, and/or other contemporary and historical experiences. Ethnic Identity Is seen as a ﬂuid process by which individuals identify and are identiﬁed with a particular ethnic group based on key commonalities. Both primordial group ties and contemporary experiences affect how ethnic identities will be created, maintained, and manipulated in varying contexts. Ethnoscapes Are those material manifestations of ethnicity that are reﬂected in the built environment, such as commercial enterprises, social and religious institutions, building styles, and streetscapes that signify a particular ethnic group. Oftentimes, particular places acquire emotional signiﬁcance and symbolic importance for an ethnic group, who then consider the space an important component of their ethnic identities. Pan-Ethnicity A term that connects the role of government policy and the general public in the rise and reconﬁguration of ethnic identities. Local and parochial identities (Gujarati, Oaxacan, and Sicilian) give way to broader nationality groups (like Asian Indian, Mexican, and Italian), and even more general labels (like Asian, Hispanic, and non-Hispanic white). These umbrella classiﬁcations serve to ‘ﬁt’ seemingly divergent groups into broader categorizations created for administrative and resource-allocation purposes. The process also facilitates the process of racial formation, since ethnicity and national origin become conﬂated with racial classiﬁcation schemes. Minority or immigrant groups also maximize pan-ethnicity for economic pursuit and political mobilization. Reactive Ethnicity A perspective that argues that ethnic identities are created dynamically in relation to the host society. Structural inﬂuences (including residential segregation, economic competition, and levels of discrimination) take precedence over primordial attachments as the source of ethnicity and ethnic identity. Situational Ethnicity Results from multiple memberships in different social groups when an individual can identify himself/herself differently depending on the particular situation in question.

Symbolic Ethnicity The idea that individuals (especially third- and fourth-generation descendents of European immigrants in the US) voluntarily (re)construct the sense and feeling of belonging that ethnicity provides. Ethnic identity emerges as a nostalgic allegiance to the culture of the old country whereby individuals carefully and continually (re)choose traditions and ideals that serve them in varying contexts.

Introduction Though there is no authoritative deﬁnition that is uni versally accepted, most scholars agree that ethnicity is a social classiﬁcation that categorizes different groups of people by particular cultural characteristics. Ancestry is the most common identiﬁer of ethnicity, though many other cultural features have been used to differentiate ethnic groups, including a shared homeland, language, or dialect; religious faith or faiths, traditions, values and symbols, literature, folklore and music, food preferences, social and political ties that transcend kinship, neighborhood, and community boundaries, and/or migratory status. While some researchers continue to assert the primordial origins of ethnicity, increasingly, most scholars agree that ethnicity is also the product of structural forces, social organization, and cultural representation, rather than solely the result of innate characteristics and hereditary factors. In other words, ethnicity derives from both an internal sense of distinctiveness and an external perception of difference. Because there is a complex relationship between ethnicity as an analytical concept and ethnicity as it relates to various forms of social relations, the term is subject to ongoing debate. Three main approaches have emerged in the enormous literature on ethnicity to understand how groups conceive, maintain, and manifest their ethnic identities: the culturalists see ethnicity as primordial and unproblematic, the structuralists regard ethnicity as strategic and inten tional, and the constructionists view ethnicity as situational and dynamic. Culturalists tend to view ethnicity as a primordial attachment to collective memories and a common cul tural heritage. Particular cultural features (like religion, language, food, dress, and daily custom) are attributed to all the members of an ethnic group. As a result, ethnic groups can be easily identiﬁed and cataloged using key cultural features. Unfortunately, culturalists tend to treat ethnicity as unproblematic, stable, and inherent, whereby

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ethnicity acts as a unifying, powerful, and inﬂuential force in which all group members emotionally invest. Culturalists argue that ethnicity is persistent and pro vides structure, continuity, and meaning for members. Familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political traditions are maintained and recreated by members of the ethnic group through time and space. The structuralist paradigm that gained popularity during the social upheavals of the 1960s challenged the idea that ethnicity is somehow ﬁxed, natural, and in herited. Unlike culturalists, structuralists treat ethnicity as a reactive device utilized by ethnic groups in response to structural inequalities present in mainstream society. Structuralists argue that it is not enough to examine the internal ‘cultural content’ of ethnicity; more important are the external structural constraints in which ethnicity develops. The most critical structuralists argue that the staging of particular ethnic identities is more dependent on the beneﬁts collectivization may bring. Ethnic group actions are based, not on some cultural afﬁnity, but on the rational calculation of interest. Indeed, parochial loyalties (to linguistic–regional–religious subgroups) are dis regarded in the face of the competing claims and pres sures of other similarly constructed ethnic and racial groups. Ethnic solidarity is seen as being driven by eco nomic and political necessity, rather than as an inherent feature or natural bond of the ethnic group. The role of the individual is downplayed in the face of the more powerful claims of the group and group rights. The constructionists scrutinize the uneven and dif ferential ways in which individuals sustain and assert their ethnic identities in their everyday encounters. Constructionists argue that culturalists and structuralists oversimplify the actions of individuals and society; they suggest that ethnicity should be understood as a complex dialectical relationship between ethnic group members and the social structures that surround them. Con structionists recognize that while individuals are active agents in deﬁning their ethnicity, the process must be negotiated within a reactive, shifting environment. Con structionists propose that ethnic identity is situational and dynamic – in other words, ethnicity may be con ceived of differently by various members of the group where individuals may use the same ethnic label, but they construct their ethnicity based on shifting notions and interpretations of their cultural heritage. At the same time, ethnicity is not necessarily stable over time, and can be manipulated, altered, and transformed since ethnic categories are dependent upon broader social, economic, and political dynamics. Ethnicity, then, is a creative and complex response to both individual and societal forces. The formation and expression of ethnic identity is not a static process, but the result of both historical circumstances and individual negotiations to endow ethnicity and ethnic symbols with meaning.

The Role of Migration in Ethnic Identity Formation Ethnic identity formation is oftentimes intertwined with the process of migration, since immigrants frequently arrive in a new place where the dominant society exer cises much power in deﬁning difference. As they struggle not only to survive, but to prosper and build their lives with meaning and dignity, immigrants oftentimes utilize various ethnic attachments to create a sense of belonging amongst group members. Yet, because the host society utilizes its own ethnic categories to differentiate and label recent arrivals, with the country of origin typically serving as the most common delineator, the diversity that characterizes individuals when they emigrate (in terms of region, dialect, class, and religion, among other things) is disregarded for the categories that the host society uses to classify different groups. As a result of interactions with members of the dominant group and other minority groups in the host society, pan ethnic labels generally emerge and immigrants of disparate origin begin to unite around these simulated categories, primarily to protect their practical interests. Once members of disadvantaged immigrant groups utilize ethnic collective action to rally against economic and political exploitation by the dominant group, the process becomes known as ‘reactive ethnicity’. That is, the development of ethnicity may have its origins in a common heritage, but the persistence of ethnicity is the result of a group’s attempts to withstand structural disparities. Immigrants (and their descendents) fashion pan ethnic identities to enable greater inﬂuence in the economic sphere and facilitate political organizing. The Irish provide a powerful historical example of the ways in which immigrants take on the ethnic/racial structure in the US and use it to their own strategic advantage. As a minority population victim to racial and economic op pression present in the US during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, immigrants from Ireland created their own ‘Irish’ political identity to break through dis crimination barriers. With the help of the Democratic Party, and the incorporation of that group’s pro slavery and racist ideology, the ‘Irish’ differentiated themselves from ‘blacks’, the other predominant minority population in the US. In claiming ‘Irish ness’, immigrants from Ireland facilitated their economic and political in corporation and also engaged in the process of reactive ethnicity. According to the assimilation–acculturation model, eventually, distinct ethnic identities and ethnic attach ments should disappear as the descendents of immigrants (especially the second and third generations) take on the core culture and begin interacting with members of other ethnic groups, particularly on the intimate levels of friendship and family formation, without regard to ethnic

Ethnicity

differences. Ethnicity should remain important in only the most superﬁcial ways after assimilation occurs, as individuals choose symbols (like ethnic foods and festi vals) that require little effort to recreate, and that do not interfere with other aspects of their lives. This symbolic ethnicity (as the process is known) emerges as a nostalgic allegiance to the culture of the ‘old’ country whereby individuals carefully and continually (re)choose those ethnic traditions and ideals that serve them in varying contexts. This idea appears to be valid with regards to ethnic groups that ‘blend in’ with the host society (such as white European groups that migrate to immigrant receiving countries with a white majority). But the reality is that groups that appear to be different (particularly in terms of physical attributes, religion, and class) must continue to rely on ethnic collective action because so ciety is organized and ruled along racial and ethnic lines.

Ethnicity and Race It is impossible to talk about ethnicity without also talking about the issue of race. In the US, for instance, recent research encompasses the decisive role of ofﬁcial racial classiﬁcation schemes in reinforcing race and ethnicity as meaningful social categories. Identiﬁed speciﬁcally is the key role of the state’s recognition of race and ethnicity as the basis for incentive programs. The classiﬁcation scheme created by the US government for administrative and allocation purposes in 1977, for instance, resulted in the consolidation of the ‘ethno racial pentagon’. This ‘ethno pentagon’ not only institutionalizes particular ra cial/ethnic categories (including non Hispanic white, black, Hispanic, Asian, Paciﬁc Islander, and American Indian), but also reinforces the racialization process, whereby racial meaning and racial categories are ex tended to previously unclassiﬁed groups. All non white groups are known as racial minorities. Take, for instance, the term Hispanic, which was formerly thought of as an ethnic designation, but which is now a separate cat egory alongside other ‘racial’ groupings. Or consider that extremely broad ranges of national origin, ancestry, cul ture, and physical types are now lumped together into seemingly arbitrary categories that nonetheless end up having very real consequences in people’s everyday lives. And what happens to Middle Eastern Americans, or multiracial and multiethnic Americans, who reﬂect a wide variety of cultural and physical differences, but for whom a place in this ofﬁcial classiﬁcation scheme is not entirely resolved? Similarly, in Canada many non white ethnic groups are classiﬁed as ‘visible minorities’ in the census; whereas in the United Kingdom until not too long ago, all non white groups were simply referred to as black. Concomitantly, scholars argue that the emergence of equal rights legislation and afﬁrmative action programs

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induces minorities to rally as groups to make them eligible for certain structural beneﬁts. Thinking as a group be comes a reactive strategy to advance the interests and privileges of individuals. Caught in this system of ascrip tive racial and ethnic categorization, individuals come together to forge emotional links and alliances. Primordial ties do play a role in ethnic identity formation but within the context of the racialization process, which involves the sociohistorical dynamics by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed. When individuals are deﬁned as racialized minorities, the dominant group can exercise much power and priv ilege over individuals cast as the racialized ‘other’. Some scholars even argue that given historical colonial legacies and contemporary Western hegemony, white European groups, regardless of where they reside, possess the power to either assert or ignore their racial identities (i.e., their whiteness) whereas other groups often do not have that privilege. Indeed, researchers note the considerable range of alternative identities that whites can enjoy, suggesting that race allows them ﬂexibility in choosing their ethnic identities. Yet ‘visible’ minorities, even as they gain socioeconomic mobility, are subject to stigmatization and marginalization.

Ethnicity, Space, and Place Within human geography, a signiﬁcant literature has de veloped with regards to ethnicity, space, and place. Much of this research focuses on mapping the spatial distributions of racial and ethnic groups; whether by studying ethnic homelands or by analyzing the social and spatial assimi lation of ethnic minorities in a new destination – with special attention paid to the development of ethnic ghettos and ethnic enclaves. But recent critiques and theorizations have exhibited a greater sensitivity to the social con struction of ethnicity and the dynamics of racialization, with a particular focus on the sociospatial structuration of ethnic and racial communities and the spatialization of ethnicity and race in the contemporary world. Scholars articulate how various groups experience places as inclusive or ex clusive of them and others, and how the regulation of space reﬂects and reinforces the identities, privileges, and interests of some groups over others. Many geographers argue that, by mapping the spatial distribution of racial and ethnic groups, broader patterns and processes of settlement and adaptation can be understood. Also important, scholars suggest, is the de gree to which racial and ethnic distribution patterns change over time. This geographic research illustrates that racial and co ethnic distributions are not necessarily stable, and that spatial patterns and levels of segregation amongst and between racial and ethnic minority popu lations somehow measure the degree to which groups

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have become spatially assimilated. At the heart of this research is the idea that residential change and social mobility are inextricably interwoven. The assumption is that the movement of ethnic and racial minorities away from co ethnic concentrations indicates that social and structural barriers have weakened, thus suggesting even tual assimilation into the dominant society. There are many classic collections that study ethnic groups from this particular geographic perspective. These volumes gener ally rely on culturalist understandings of ethnicity, since ethnic attachments are taken as inherently given and primordial in nature, at the same time that ethnic com munities persist because of tight solidarity and the uni fying force of ethnicity. In these discussions, ethnic ghettoes and ethnic en claves are distinguished by their homogeneity, density, and old country ‘ﬂavor’. The links of shared history, family, emotions, interests, language, and organizational life bind residents together and reinforce the existence of ethnic communities. Each distinctive ethnic group creates and occupies a geographic area that becomes intimately asso ciated with that group. These ethnoscapes develop into centers of ethnic life concentrating residents, businesses, and places of worship within a delineated ethnic space. Neighborhoods are identiﬁed with particular groups, where members create their own social worlds, with cul tural and social institutions that satisfy residents’ desires to re create ‘home’. Ethnic ghettos and ethnic enclaves sometimes acquire place names symbolic of a state of origin, such as Little Italy, Chinatown, and Irish Town. Recently, geographical studies of ethnicity have ex perienced important changes in their use of social theory, the foci of research projects, and the breadth of meth odologies utilized. New questions have emerged around the issues of ethnicity and race, particularly in regard to (1) the forms of racism and racial inequality that operate through geographical patterns, processes, and ideas; and (2) the ways in which ethnic and racial boundaries (both material and ideological) become struggles of both ter ritory and positionality within society. In other words, recent works argue that the study of ethnicity cannot be understood apart from the spaces within which it takes place. Thus, scholars illustrate how ethnoscapes are more than a passive backdrop for the negotiation of ethnic and racial identities. Rather, they suggest that ethnic ghettos and ethnic enclaves (along with ethnic citadels, which are the ethnoscapes of the dominant culture) must be considered the sites and mediums of privilege, power, and prestige. Ethnic groups positioned in the poorest and most transitional areas, as well as those within the wealthiest neighborhoods, are spatial reminders of broader ethnic and racial divides (and socioeconomic hierarchies as well). Ethnoscapes are concrete spaces around which ethnic and racial categories are inhabited, naturalized, reinforced, and destroyed.

These new theorizations articulate how ethnic and racial identities are not only socially constructed but also spatially constituted. Within this sociospatial dialectic, there are several key contentions. First, space and place are fundamental to any understanding of ethnic and ra cial identity formation. Second, there are important territorial dimensions to the study of ethnicity and race; in that particular spaces both produce and reﬂect speciﬁc social ideologies. Finally, it is the mutual constitution of these spaces with social, cultural, economic, and political elements that consequentially interweave ethnic identity formation and the racialization process. As some scholars argue, the process of racialization is an essential aspect of how everyday geographies are made, understood, and challenged. Thus, geographers have much to contribute to the literature on racialization. Likewise, locating space in contemporary ethnic and racial formation processes can enrich our understanding of ethnic groups and their experiences in the global social order. Within this new scholarly arena, the decisive role of dominant groups in the social construction and classiﬁ cation of ethnic groups and racialized minorities is emphatically maintained. How the dominant group ‘sees’ ‘others’ is as important, if not more important, than how these groups identify themselves. This is primarily because the dominant group reserves for itself the luxury of dis missing racial identity while more oppressed groups are made daily aware of their ethnic and racial identities. Thus, the ways in which ethnospaces in turn both produce and reﬂect speciﬁc racial ideologies becomes critical. Instead of relying on the ‘mapping’ of ethnoscapes as a way to identify the spatial distributions and characteristics of ‘others’, some researchers outline how dominant groups formalize all ethnic and racial categories through institutional practice and material form. They reveal how certain ethnic groups become racially categorized during the time when the neighborhoods they live in become spatially segregated communities. But they also point out how the ethnospaces of the dominant group, which are usually taken for granted as invisible, ordinary, and mundane, systematically, though sometimes unconsciously, create particular spatial bound aries and spatial codes of exclusion. This process of dif ferentiation occurs because the dominant group cannot, or refuses to, recognize how they themselves embody par ticular ethnic and racial categories. By maintaining invisi bility, the dominant group remains racially undeﬁned, and social hierarchies can be rigidly reinforced. Another recent avenue of geographical inquiry ar ticulates how ethnicity and race (and the ethnoscapes that physically manifest these categories) become com modiﬁed. That ethnicity and race are potential products that possess a quality consumers might desire is the result of a variety of complex and highly disputed factors. But many scholars agree that in a world of globalization and diminishing spatial barriers to communication,

Ethnicity

movement, and exchange, originality, exoticism, and au thenticity become prized possessions. Some would even go so far as to say that the intensiﬁcation of contemporary neoliberalism and technology induced capitalist global ization means that ethnic identities will become even more important and salient in the coming years. Thus, ethnoscapes (which draw upon a variety of ethnic and racial identities, including whiteness) offer a kind of ‘ethnic tourism’ for individuals looking for a diversion from the homogeneity of everyday life. This process encourages the ethnic business community to reproduce ethnic and racial identities in proﬁtable ways to attract clientele. This process of commodiﬁcation has become an ever more recognized trend in which people’s actions and experiences as consumers have an increasingly for mative role to play in maintaining ethnic and racial difference.

Conclusion It is important to point out that despite its wide usage, ethnicity as an analytical concept in academia still lacks a universal deﬁnition. While most scholars agree that eth nicity is the product of structural forces, social organiza tion, and cultural representation, rather than solely the result of innate characteristics and hereditary factors, the term is used with varying meanings in different contexts, and those understandings change over time and across space. Moreover, the complexity of ethnicity is continually reasserted as transnational connections become more prevalent and the cross national movement and linkages of people, goods, information, and ﬁnancial capital increase. Thus, it is imperative that we study and analyze ethnicity under such changing dynamics, and take into consider ation the differences between Western and non Western countries, between immigrant home and host countries, and between domestic indigenous groups/nations and migrant populations and their descendants. Certainly, ethnicity affects societies deeply and in multiple ways that are not always easily identiﬁed, separated, and cataloged. Part of the task of understanding the inﬂuence of ethnicity is to try to identify and tease apart the many inﬂuences of this categorization while remaining conscious of the ways in which this classiﬁcation scheme is constantly

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transforming. In human geography in particular, the spa tiality of ethnicity should be given high priority in our understanding and analyzing of ethnicity in historical and contemporary contexts. In this way, we can begin to understand how ethnicity becomes a central determinant in perpetuating inequity in society. See also: Identity Politics; Immigration I; Other/Otherness; Race.

Further Reading Allen, J. A. and Turner, E. (1988). We the people: An atlas of America’s ethnic diversity. New York: Macmillan. Anderson, K. (1991). Vancouver’s Chinatown racial discourse in Canada, 1875 1980. Montreal, ON: McGill Queen’s University Press. Appadurai, A. (2003). Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy. In Braziel, J. E. & Mannur, A. (eds.) Theorizing diaspora: A reader, pp 25 48. London: Blackwell Publishing. Bonnett, A. and Nayak, A. (2003). Cultural geographies of racialization: The territory of race. In Anderson, K., Domosh, M., Pile, S. & Thrift, N. (eds.) Handbook of cultural geography, pp 300 312. London: Sage Publications. Hiebert, D. and Ley, D. (2001). Working paper series no. 01 08: Assimilation, cultural pluralism and social exclusion among ethno cultural groups in Vancouver. Vancouver: Research on Immigration and Integration in the Metropolis. Ignatiev, N. (1995). How the Irish became white. London: Routledge. Jackson, P. (ed.) (1987). Race and racism: Essays in social geography. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Kobayashi, A. and Peake, L. (2000). Racism out of place: Thoughts on whiteness and an antiracist geography in the new millennium. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(3), 392 403. Li, W. (ed.) (2006). From urban enclave to ethnic suburb: New Asian communities in Paciﬁc Rim countries. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press. Nash, C. (2003). Cultural geography: Anti racist geographies. Progress in Human Geography 27(4), 637 648. Omi, M. and Winant, H. (1994). Racial formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s (2nd edn). London: Routledge. Peach, C. (2000). Discovering white ethnicity and parachuted plurality. Progress in Human Geography 24(4), 620 626. Sibley, D. (1995). Geographies of exclusion: Society and difference in the west. London: Routledge. Skop, E. (2008). Saffron suburbs: Lessons learned from an Indian American Community. Chicago: The Center for American Places. White, P. and Jackson, P. (1995). (Re)theorising population geography. International Journal of Population Geography 1(2), 111 123. Wright, R. and Ellis, M. (2006). Mapping others. Progress in Human Geography 30(3), 285 288.

Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of D. P. Nally, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Accumulation by Dispossession A neologism coined by David Harvey to refer to the historical geography of capital accumulation through imperialism. Contact Zone The hybrid, improvisational space where different cultures meet and contend with one another. Ethnocentrism A deeply entrenched belief in the superiority of one ethnic group over another. Manichean A binary or dualistic mode of thinking and categorization. Primitive Accumulation The original process by which markets are established, capital is acquired, and capitalist relations of production are mobilized. Reiﬁcation The ideological process whereby human relations are abstracted from their social contexts and re-presented as ‘things’.

Introduction Although the word ‘ethnic’ dates back to Greek antiquity, deriving from ethnos meaning people, the term ‘ethnicity’ really only entered popular usage in the wake of World War II. Ironically the term was ﬁrst deployed as an ac ceptable alternative to the concept of ‘race’, which was mostly abandoned in the social sciences because of its association with Nazi policies. However, the word ethnic had an exclusionary meaning from the very beginning, serving to distinguish Christian and Jew from their pagan and Gentile neighbors in ancient times. Therefore, his torically speaking, the growth of a collective sense of solidarity and group cohesion depended upon the ele vation of anthropological differences and the segregation of human populations. In its more dramatic and virulent form these beliefs and ‘imagined geographies’ could spiral into fear, interethnic conﬂict, and collective violence. Today the term ethnicity is primarily used to refer to common religious, linguistic, or cultural characteristics that help differentiate one group of people from another. An ethnic group thus differs from a ‘community’ in so far as the signiﬁers of difference are usually perceived to be in some sense hereditary or pertaining to historical kinship. Thus, as in the distant past, an epistemology of ‘difference’ tends to deﬁne the calibration and promotion of ‘sameness’. It is hardly surprising therefore, that eth nicity is often used synonymously with the more hotly contested term ‘race’ and why race wars are frequently

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indistinguishable from ethnic conﬂicts. Where the terms are qualiﬁed, however, and nuance and distinctions rec ognized, most academics note the attributed ‘natural’ or biological aspects of race in contradistinction to the im puted ‘cultural’ moorings of ethnicity. However, in a more critical vein post structuralist scholars observe the social construction of both nature and culture and hence the ultimate artiﬁciality of racial and ethnic inscriptions. In popular parlance at any rate, both race and ethnicity tend to bleed into one another. It is also clear that the notion of territory proves central time and again to ethnic claims, controversies, and conﬂicts. This holds true on a number of fronts. For example, religious beliefs are very often associated with holy sites, chosen lands, and sacred spaces. Languages and dialects also tend to be geographically circumscribed. Similarly the ideology of the nation state (frequently, though not necessarily, promoting ethnic homogeneity) requires a sufﬁcient territorial basis in order to advance sovereign independence and guarantee future stability. In each case, boundary promulgation is an important aspect of ethnic selection and afﬁnity. Of course when considering the territorial dimensions of ethnicity there are other, more material concerns. Resources are obviously abundant in some places and not in others and ethnic conﬂicts all too often map the contours of resource allocation. In this sense ethnic an tagonisms are frequently the result of larger geopolitical strategies and power plays that generate and sustain human cleavages for material personal beneﬁt and gain. Referring to the ‘Age of Exploration’ in the ﬁfteenth century Karl Marx described the mass expropriation of foreign resources and the extirpation and enslavement of indigenous peoples as ‘primitive accumulation’ and more recent literature examines the ongoing specter of ‘accu mulation by dispossession’ in neoliberal economics and the US led ‘war on terror’. Marx also famously claimed that people make their own history, but not necessarily under the conditions of their own choosing. We might take this and indeed the foregoing discussion as implying that all identities – in cluding ethnicity – are both inscribed and ascribed. In other words, on the one hand, we can ﬁnd historical cases that demonstrate the ways in which ethnicities (or ethnic categories) are attributed to certain peoples in order to morally justify coercive actions, while, on the other hand, we can locate historical moments where these selfsame categories and identities are resisted, and other identities inscribed in their place, sometimes in order to advance

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alternative political goals. Hence ethnicity can be understood dialectically as a relentless juxtaposition and contestation over group identities forged in the mael strom of human interactions. In the subsequent sections of this article, three im portant aspects of ethnicity will be sketched out. First, the relationship between colonialism, ethnicity, and re sistance will be historically examined. Next, the contours of economic globalization will be explored in order to illustrate how uneven geographical developments can produce resistance movements based on ethnic dis tinctions. Finally, the case of ethnic differentiation and resistance will be considered in the context of regional and transnational migrations, diasporic cultures, and polyethnic immigrant societies.

Colonialism and Ethnic Identities The exercise of colonial and imperial power often rests on the social construction of ethnicity. We may deﬁne colonialism as the exercise of one country’s sovereignty – however provisional or incomplete – over another peo ple, their resources, and territory. Imperialism, on the other hand, commonly refers to more informal mech anisms for maintaining dominance over indigenous peoples. These deﬁnitions are fraught of course, but for our purposes they help distinguish control wrested by military force and economic leverage from the more subtle and dynamic ways in which cultural inﬂuence and dominance are asserted. Throughout history empires have sought to marshal superior strength to plunder other nations, polities, and regions. However, in the process of absorbing foreign territories empires fre quently try to impose sociocultural, religious, and lin guistic structures on the conquered population in the hope of securing submission. Colonialism and imperialism aid ethnic differentiation in two signiﬁcant ways. In the ﬁrst place, imperial and colonial powers often create or exacerbate differences between ‘colonial’ and ‘colonized’ subjects in order to justify la mission civilisatrice. In other words, the extension of sovereignty over other populations, their resources, and territories relies extensively on the ‘ethnocentric’ belief that the morals and values of the colonizer are in every way superior to those of the colonized. Indeed some observers have characterized the colonial world as essentially Manichean – or ‘divided into compartments’ – that serve to perennially partition ‘us’ over ‘here’ from ‘them’ over ‘there’. Frantz Fanon and other early anticolonial writers (such as Aime´ Ce´saire, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, and Jean Paul Satre) pointed to the ways in which Europe was quite literally the creation of the Third World: its enormous wealth stacked on colonial plunder and booty, so much so

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that many of the great capitals of Europe continue to reﬂect this stolen opulence. It is also argued that this level of expropriation extends to the psyche of colonized peo ples, who develop a sense of inadequacy that becomes the correlative to the colonizer’s feeling of superiority. In ad dressing the radical asymmetries that divorce the ‘native’ from the ‘settler colonizer’, postcolonial scholars have at tempted to theorize the ways in which ethnic identities are mutually constructed – and contested – through colonial encounters. So, for example, if French colonizers depicted Algerians as lazy, dependent, ﬁckle, licentious, and sub human this gesture allowed the French to conceive of themselves as precisely the opposite: industrious, autono mous, dependable, restrained, and civilized. Many scholars link such beliefs to the racist, pseudoscientiﬁc theories developing in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but whatever the origins, these representational strategies were an obvious fulcrum around which ethnic identities were forged. It is possible, therefore, to examine the ways in which ethnicity is produced or imposed at the ‘contact zone’ of two cultures. Indeed the charge of radical ‘otherness’ very often encourages the development of ethnic conscious ness and solidarity among colonized peoples. This growth of ethnic solidarity is frequently referred to as ‘ethnic nationalism’. While it ought to be noted that this form of nationalism is not conﬁned to imperial and colonial processes, it is nonetheless remarkably common to such historical encounters. In the case of English and later British colonization of Ireland, the Irish could choose to reject outright the im perial projections of ethnic inferiority and posit an alter native identity in its place. Therefore Irishness was often narrowly deﬁned as everything un English or British. Al ternatively the colonized Irish could turn those selfsame charges on their head, making a pejorative attribution a source of ethnonational pride. Thus, for example, the Irish re engineered the accusation of being a rebellious and warring population into proof of their martial prowess and guile. Moreover, if rural impoverishment and primitive living in Ireland enabled the projection of an urban, so phisticated colonial identity, Irish nationalists refracted those attributed faults so that rural Ireland came to sym bolize rustic and romantic living. Indeed during the late nineteenth century Irish ‘folk life’ was consistently rep resented as frugal, light hearted, and carefree, and always offset against a projection of the phlegmatic, doleful Anglo Saxon. The mutual constitution of ‘Paddy’ and ‘John Bull’ was always a dialectical shufﬂe between mi mesis – the desire for sameness – and alterity – the as piration to be quintessentially different. This colonial ‘mirror dance’, as the process has been called, is a common outcome of agonistic encounters and regularly creates the basis for anticolonial and post colonial ethnic afﬁnities. The assessment of these histories

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and processes continue to inspire controversy and critical debate. For instance many scholars lament the essentialist understandings of identity that undergird colonial, anticolonial, and postcolonial movements. These so called ‘antifoundationalist’ accounts critique the presumption that any authentic identity stands outside social analysis. Ethnicity, in this sense, is a historical formation, forged at the juncture of colonial imposition and indigenous re sistance. These critiques draw attention to the ex clusionary nature of ethnonationalism, which frequently reproduces the Manichean chauvinism it so stringently rejects. As an alternative political message, cultural the orists such as Homi Bhabha highlight the contingent, ‘hybrid’ nature of colonized subjectivities and argue this as an appropriate platform to envisage a postcolonial identity of resistance that nonetheless goes beyond the strictures of an exclusionary ethnonationalism. ‘Hybridity’ is simultaneously symbol and intervention. The message is that we don’t have to ‘polarize to polemicize’; that Western modernity was never a unilateral project; and that from the beginning minority groups and cultures (read ‘ethnicities’) run to the core of colonial and imperial identities. In contrast, other writers have argued that at certain moments ethnic or cultural differentiation can be politically important, and even necessary. The use of ethnic categories in order to further certain perceived emancipatory goals (to advance anticolonial struggles, for example) is sometimes referred to as ‘strategic essential ism’. Hannah Arendt captured the spirit of this concept when she reasoned that a Jew should always respond as a Jew when attacked as a Jew. Nevertheless, adopting es sentialist identities for ‘strategic’ purposes remains a fraught and complex position. In practice where ethnic identities are cultivated, and human differences under scored, there is often a vast gap between emancipatory and egalitarian politics.

Globalization and Ethnicity A number of scholars have argued that ‘economic glob alization’ is responsible for a surge in ethnic identities around the world. Economic globalization is sometimes used to suggest an increasingly internationalized econ omy, coupled with evermore interconnected modes of capital production. Thus promoters of new era economic globalization tend to celebrate the ‘ﬂattening’ of the world – through ‘time–space compression’ – as an in trinsic force for good, whereas critics of economic glob alization argue the unevenness of this restructuring and how it continues to reproduce social and economic inequalities. Although economic globalization might be acceler ating spatiotemporal convergence, as some commentators insist, the signiﬁcance of ethnic cleavages seems far from

waning. Indeed, ethnicity is frequently mobilized as the basis for resisting the homogenizing forces or particular local effects of globalization. Indeed, as ‘borders’ are rendered more porous (by capital ﬂows, institutional structures, multilateral policies, international forums, global travel, etc.) it is arguable that ‘boundaries’ become evermore important and social stratiﬁcation more en demic. The continued salience of ethnic identities is sometimes considered to be a knee jerk reaction to global communications technology, the preponderance of ‘Hollywood’, and the so called ‘Americanization’ of the world. For instance in 2010 it is predicted that India will become the country with the most English speakers in the world. To some commentators, the emergence of the Hindustani language ﬁlm industry in India, so called ‘Bollywood’ cinema, is an exemplary countercultural phenomenon that raises a signiﬁcant challenge to the dominance of Western media. Similarly the legalization of French as the sole ofﬁcial language in the Canadian province of Quebec can be viewed as a reaction to the increased globalization of the English language (some times referred to as ‘linguistic imperialism’). Thus an ideology of ethnic distinction regularly informs the practices that resist dominant or hegemonic cultures. One particular manifestation of ethnicity as resistance is the promotion and defense of indigenous rights in the face of the local effects of global economic activities. Indigenous peoples around the world have organized into local, regional, and global associations, councils, and other alliances to collectively challenge development activities that they believe contravene their interests. Where collective action has not worked, or has not ap pealed, some groups have resorted to systematic violence or terrorism to assert their rights or elevate their political status. The exploitation of oil resources by transnational corporations has inspired these different styles of resis tance. Two well publicized examples include the Huaorani people from the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Ogoni people of the Niger Delta. Since the 1970s, Christian missionaries, the petroleum industry, and un fettered logging have encroached on Huaorani land and only in recent years, as a result of indigenous political organization, have the Huaorani begun to claw back rights to their ancestral lands. This history is not unique to the Huaorani, but mimics the experience of many indigenous peoples in Latin America and around the world. Like the Huaorani, the people of Ogoniland fought a long battle against the interests of global petrocapitalism both within and beyond the Nigerian state. Most famously, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was established with the aim of resisting multinational oil (notably the Shell Petroleum Develop ment Company), promoting indigenous control over indigenous resources, redressing the effects of political

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marginalization, and securing recompense for environ mental contamination. Signiﬁcantly, the best known statement of this indigenous political program – known as the Ogoni Bill of Rights and submitted to the government and people of Nigeria in November 1990 – established the above claims on behalf of the Ogoni people, described as a ‘separate and distinct ethnic nationality’. The docu ment also reafﬁrmed the responsibilities of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to respect the rights of all ethnic groups, no matter how small, and irrespective of global crude prices. Nonetheless, since the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight Ogoni leaders by the Nigerian state in 1994, this conﬂict has descended into violence. Today, the people of the Niger Delta continue to stake their claim to oil proﬁts by mobilizing discourse around ethnic entitlements and using militant tactics of resistance, such as kidnapping foreign oil workers, thieving oil, and at tacking production facilities. The foregoing examples illustrate very well the practical difﬁculties faced by activists, governments, and international organizations seeking to protect indigenous peoples and minority ethnic groups faced with systematic discrimination and violence. So common are assertions of abuse by indigenous groups that corporations and de velopment agencies have created guidance frameworks, policies, and principles to ensure good relations between projects and indigenous peoples. For example, the International Finance Corporation’s Equator Principles and the World Bank’s Policy on Indigenous Peoples aim to ensure ‘free, prior, and informed consent’ of affected indigenous peoples. These approaches are premised on a ‘human rights’ framework and the duty of governments and corporations to respect these. However, the interpretation of these conﬂicts within the framework of human rights is not entirely un problematic. Governments frequently disregard inter national law to suit their own national agendas. Indeed the vast schism between rhetoric and practice has led many scholars to question the presumed distinction be tween civil rights enjoyed by most Western populations and the human rights usually ascribed to the world’s poor and oppressed. On the back of this, other critics believe the critical and political emphasis should lie elsewhere. Researchers working on India, for example, tend to prefer a class based analysis that attends to ways in which peasantries and small ethnic groups are forced to undergo proletarianization. Large scale development projects, like hydroelectric dams (sometimes organized in partnerships between the national government and de velopment institutions such as the World Bank) often sacriﬁce local land based livelihoods in the name of na tional progress. In addition to highlighting the material basis of exploitation this work suggests that in some cases ethnic identities might serve as an instrument of class oppression by preventing the reﬁnement of class

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consciousness among subjugated peoples. Clearly eth nicity means different things to people at different his torical junctures and in different geographical locations. Moreover, competing theoretical and political con structions of ethnicity can have a profound impact on indigenous cultures, including their efforts to instigate counter hegemonic strategies.

Multiculturalism, Diasporic Cultures, and Ethnicity The tenacity of ethnic identities is in no small part due to historical migrations of human populations, the develop ment of multiethnic immigrant societies, and the persist ence of ‘diasporic cultures’ retaining a shared sense of distinctiveness associated with a homeland, however mythical that designation/destination might be. In the so called multiethnic immigrant societies a key issue tends to be the intrinsic tension between ethnic identiﬁcation and citizenship. The former is almost by deﬁnition exclusion ary whereas the latter frequently appeals to the inclu sionary values of ‘multiculturalism’. To some degree this replays the familiar distinction between ‘ethnic’ and ‘civic’ nationalism. While ethnic nationalism is judged to em brace a hierarchical model of identiﬁcation, its civic vari ant is thought to assume a more horizontal social status order. Although this characterization has been criticized as too simplistic, its neat compartmentalization between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nationalisms seems to parallel more recent debates on multicultural values, usually deﬁned against ethnic identiﬁcations. Thus multiculturalism is usually represented as progressive, whereas ethnic identiﬁcation is considered to be ‘atavistic’ and discriminatory. However, as often is the case, these designations obscure a more complex reality. Two obvious examples of multiethnic immigrant soci eties are the United States of America and Australia. In both cases difﬁculties and tensions surface during com memorative events that recall, or more appropriately ‘perform’, political or civic foundation myths. In the case of the US, the Columbus Quincentennial commemor ations in 1992 were originally conceived as a celebration of the ‘Age of Discovery’ in which the ‘New World’ pioneer myth was repeatedly promoted. However, the com memoration proved immensely controversial as political activists used the occasion to highlight grievances of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, including their his tory of exploitation and their own sense of themselves as founding peoples. Similarly the slow recognition of Abo riginal land rights in Australia jars with the ofﬁcial mantra of multiculturalism. As in the US the existence of eth nically and racially based hierarchies stands at odds with the self projected image of multiethnic diversity and tol erance. Furthermore some critics have claimed that

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multiculturalism, and to certain degree cosmopolitanism, constitute a drive toward national identity deﬁned ex clusively by a dominant elite class. In this sense, we can read the above resistance to ‘corporate multiculturalism’ and ofﬁcial ‘national’ history as a determined reassertion of ethnicity from groups and peoples that continue to feel excluded and marginalized despite popular platitudes of cultural pluralism. In addition to domestic cultures within polyethnic immigrant societies, the historical migrations of popu lations have also created unique diasporic cultures that transcend state boundaries and often span the globe. The meaning of the term ‘diaspora’ has dramatically expanded in recent years. Traditionally, the word was associated with the expulsions of the Jews from Palestine, but more recently the concept has been generalized to refer to any ethnic population that has migrated to another country and yet continues to retain its own distinct identity. Moreover, because diasporic cultures are primarily anti assimilationist, they present a serious challenge to the ideology of the nation state. The migration that produces diasporic communities can be voluntary or compelled and this often relates to the degree of ethnic cohesion among the migrant com munity. Nevertheless there are important political and historical factors that need to be registered. The creation of the Jewish diaspora in the US, for instance, owes a large part to the genocidal policies of the Nazis. Over time American Jews consolidated their position and were able to advance their own domestic ‘and’ international interests. The forced transportation of Africans into slavery is another conspicuous example of compelled migration. However, in contrast to the Jewish experience, the imposition of slavery and racial segregation meant that American blacks remained excluded and largely disenfranchised. This exclusion in turn nurtured a long, largely nonviolent struggle for civil rights, which in a sort of Rawlsian way, was an entitlement claim by one group of people over the oppression of another. These distinct migrant histories and experiences have led one scholar to distinguish between ‘proletarian’ and ‘mobilized’ diasporas. Mobilized diasporas refer to mi grant ethnic populations with access to social and eco nomic capital. Their skills or knowledge are seen as valuable to native elites and they quickly achieve pos itions of signiﬁcant social status. Proletarian diasporas, in contrast, often migrate from developing countries be cause of poverty or political turmoil. They often lack basic education and skills and are therefore excluded from elite positions and consigned to low end jobs. The distinction between ‘proletarian’ and ‘mobilized’ dias poras helpfully historicizes some of the factors that nurture ethnic identities and conﬂicts. For example, the Irish in America began as a proletarian diaspora, but over time organized and extended their inﬂuence primarily at

the expense of other proletarian ethnic groups. The historic mobilization of Irish Republicanism depends to a large extent on the successes of the Irish diaspora in the same way that Zionism continues to rely heavily on the political activities of American Jews. Militant Islam also relies on a transnational network of training camps, international ﬁnancial banking, and a galvanizing sense of jihad that might be loosely described as diasporic. In this sense, the old association between transnational com munities, ethnic identities, and political activity con tinues today. Recent developments in transportation and infra structure, as well as cross border cooperation, mean that sizeable diasporas can develop in a relatively short period of time, as in the case of the Polish community in Ireland and Turkish community in Germany, for instance. In such cases there are many factors shaping ethnic for mation and potential intercommunal conﬂict including occupational segmentation, civic inclusion, residential segregation, language and religious differences, as well as broader geopolitical conﬂicts. It is arguable, for instance, that the ‘war on terror’ has mobilized ethnic violence against British Muslims and in some cases British Sikhs have been violently attacked because of their apparently ‘similar’ apparel. Such vicious behavior illustrates all too well the continued salience of ethnicity, not to mention the optical constructions that mark one human being as radically different from the next. Issues It would be too simplistic to say that historically, con quered populations fought for independence on ethnic grounds, whereas in the present ethnic groups ﬁght for inclusion in their host societies. Certainly the politi cization of ethnicity can be a powerful means of resisting inequalities, but it can also socialize individuals in ways that produce, maintain, and exacerbate violent inequal ities. Ethnicity continues to form the structural basis for genocidal policies throughout the world, and other vio lent and discriminatory practices including prohibitions on intermarriage, inequalities in schooling, unequal ac cess to the means of production, the global ‘war on terror’ and the waging of Islamic jihad, show signs of an en trenched ethnic status order. The fact that the vast ma jority of the world’s nation states are polyethnic seems to have done little to lessen the resilience of ethnic con sciousness. As the above examples illustrate, ethnic identities are frequently bound up with other forms of subjectivity and recent scholarship has begun to examine how ethnicity is interpellated with gender, sexuality, and class across different spatial and temporal contexts. Other scholars have pointed out that majorities are no less ethnic than minorities and that white identities, for ex ample, are socially constructed through a range of

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dominant discourses and practices that are equally im portant to interrogate. The political goal of much of this work is to de nat uralize and de ontologize ethnicity by illustrating its inherent constructedness. However more recent research, building on ‘postrace’ theorists’ attempts to undermine the representational economy of race, has urged for a more radical approach for working through and against ‘identity politics’. As well as critiquing the way con temporary theory is complicit in the reiﬁcation of eth nicity this emerging body of work proposes an alternative political platform based on resistance to ‘ethnicity’ itself. In other words, this work is committed to practicing a new political imaginary that goes beyond ontological determinism and opens the way toward what one scholar has termed ‘planetary humanism’. To some critics, this notion of existence without essence sounds airily re moved from the fault lines of political struggle, whereas for others a new and radically different epistemological structure is absolutely central to contesting the oppos itional identities and afﬁliations of political ethnicity. See also: Cultural Economy; Diaspora; Identity Politics; Migration; Multiculturalism; Nationalism; Race.

Further Reading Abizadeh, A. (2001). Ethnicity, race, and a possible humanity. World Order 33, 23 34.

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Anderson, K. J. (1991). Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875 1980. Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press. Anderson, J. and Shuttleworth, I. (2004). A new spatial ﬁx for capitalist crisis? Immigrant labour, state borders and the new ostracising imperialism. In van der Pijl, K., Assassi, L. & Wigan, D. (eds.) Global Regulation: Managing Crisis After the Imperial Turn, pp 145 161. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Armstrong, J. (1976). Mobilized and proletarian diasporas. American Political Science Review 70, 393 408. Bhabha, H. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Eriksen, T. H. (1993). Ethnicity and Nationalism. London: Pluto Press. Esman, M. J. (1986). Diasporas and international relations. In Sheffer, G. (ed.) Modern Diasporas in International Politics, pp 333 349. London: Croom Helm. Fanon, F. (1963). The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press. Gilroy, P. (1998). Race ends here. Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, 838 847. Hall, S. (1992). The new ethnicities. In Donald, J. & Rattansi, A. (eds.) Race, Culture, Difference, pp 252 259. London: Sage. Harvey, D. (2003). The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hobsbawm, E. (1990). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hutchinson, J. (1994). Modern Nationalism. London: Fontana Press. Lustick, I. (1993). Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria, Israel and the West Bank Gaza. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mallon, F. E. (1992). Indian communities, political cultures and the state in Latin America, 1780 1990. Journal of Latin American Studies 24, 35 53. Nayak, A. (2006). After race: Ethnography, race and post race theory. Ethnic and Racial Studies 29, 411 430. Olund, E. (2002). Public domesticity during the Indian reform era; or Mrs Jackson is induced to go to Washington. Gender, Place and Culture 9, 153 166. Taussig, M. (1993). Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. London: Routledge. Wilford, R. (ed.) (1998). Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition. London: Routledge.

Ethnography K. E. Till, Virginia Tech University, Alexandria, VA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Coding An iterative and analytical practice used to identify patterns, elaborate upon insights, and reﬁne ideas generated in the research process. Originating from the sociological tradition of grounded theory, there are many types of coding approaches used by ethnographers to analyze notes, documents, and material culture. Creative Analytical Ethnographies Such projects perform, rather than simply document, theoretical claims and include a range of representational strategies, including autoethnography, ﬁction stories, poetry, performance texts, polyvocal texts, visual presentations, allegory, conversation, and layered accounts. Fieldnotes Ethnographers write descriptive, reﬂective, and interpretive notes; create sketches and maps; and formulate questions about the everyday geographies, emotions, social spaces, and material encounters in the settings being researched. Fieldnotes may later be treated as textual objects to be coded, interpreted, and/ or analyzed. The ethics of recording (through notes, video, audio tapes, and maps) remain heavily debated. Memos Ethnographers write analytic essays to reﬂect, interpret, and record their responses to situations and the research process. This research and writing practice encourages ethnographers to question underlying assumptions that emerge in speciﬁc contexts and to scrutinize their varied relationships with research ﬁelds and partners. (Participant) Observation Ethnographers pay attention to, and may partake in, everyday geographies to become familiar with how social spaces are constituted in various settings. Observation contexts and knowledge production include social interaction, emotions, and embodiment. Transnational Ethnographies Projects that analyze the forms and effects of globalization through countertopographies, networks, and multiple sites of: consumption and production; tourism and whiteness; citizenship; critical, black, and/or queer political and philosophical thought; and movements of peoples, including refugees and expatriates across political territories.

Ethnography Ethnography is a methodological and practice based approach to understanding and representing how

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people – together with other people, nonhuman entities, objects, institutions, and environments – create, experi ence, and understand their worlds. Denzin and Lincoln deﬁne ethnography as a research strategy rather than methodology per se, because it entails a variety of research designs, methods, analytical tools, theoretical perspectives, and representational forms. Ethnography is time intensive, iterative, and open ended, and includes observing, lis tening, reﬂecting, experiencing, writing, and learning from peoples, places, situations, institutions, landscapes, and things. The questions ethnographers ask always change during the research process, because a signiﬁcant part of any study entails being sensitive to the political relation ships and ethical responsibilities associated with framing, generating, co creating, and representing knowledges. In geography, ethnographic research has long been a signiﬁcant methodology in cultural ecology, development studies, and feminist geography; more recently, it has be come established in social, political, cultural, and nature society geography, as evidenced by the ‘Doing ethnography’ sessions sponsored by the Qualitative Research Specialty Group at the annual Association of American Geographers meetings (ongoing since 2003) and similar sessions at Royal Geographic Society/Institute of British Geographers meetings (in 2007). Geographer ethnographers examine everyday processes of meaning making and materiality in a range of settings by focusing on spatial practices, including place making, inhabiting social spaces, consumerist spati alities, becomings, memory, transnational citizenship, and grassroots activism. While geographers still draw upon anthropological and sociological traditions, they now are making signiﬁcant contributions to transnational, collaborative, and creative analytical ethnographic research. The article overviews research techniques and approaches in critical ethnography and highlights recent work by geographers.

From Traditional to Critical Ethnography Historically, the ethnographer was a heroic ﬁgure, a de tached observer of ‘foreign’ cultures who collected ma terial culture, stories, even ‘primitive’ peoples, to advance scientiﬁc research on behalf of the colonial project. The ethnographer observed culture groups in their ‘natural’ settings, wrote scientiﬁc reports, took photographs, and gathered artifacts. As scientists, ethnographers were to maintain some level of distance, and hence objectivity, so as not to be disruptive of the activities and people under observation. By not interfering with ‘normal’ practices of

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‘a’ culture, there was also a reduced chance of the eth nographer ‘going native’. New ethnographic forms have emerged over the past 20–30 years that are considered ‘critical’ of underlying assumptions of traditional ethnographic research prac tices, documentary styles of representation. Since at least the 1970s, for example, ethnographers have questioned claims of scientiﬁc objectivity and of ‘ﬁelds’ existing ‘out there’ to be studied (colonized). The ethics of collecting data in a foreign place and returning to the (Western) university to ‘write up’ a study remains heavily debated. While multiple methods remain central to ethnography, the notion that a knowable object of study can be trian gulated has been challenged. Gillian Rose also argues that ethnographic practices such as reﬂexivity and posi tionality problematically assume that the researcher can render oneself fully transparent or place oneself on an even terrain of power with those researched. Mary Thomas has recently questioned the assumption that a researcher can ‘read’ personal narratives and interview transcripts as transparent representations of unconscious processes. The researcher’s body is also understood as a contested site of knowledge production. Critical eth nography, in other words, is an intersubjective form of qualitative research, whereby the roles of researcher/ researched, insider/outsider, self/other, body/environ ment, and ﬁeld/home are understood as shifting and multiple, and always negotiated through complex power relations. The sections that follow outline recent dis cussions that have emerged within critical ethnography and geography about research methods, approaches, and forms of representation.

Ethnographic Fields as Contexts for Social Interaction Ethnographers are often described as bricoleurs because they use multiple methods, depending on the project, including: interacting with others in social settings; writing ﬁeld notes and memos; sketching maps; working for an organization or community group; reﬂecting upon and engaging in conversations about being in and ex periencing social spaces and particular places; gathering visual, material, and documentary materials related to the research setting; asking others to document and describe their everyday worlds (such as through sketches, photo graphs, videos, soundtracks, and diaries); and conducting in depth to semi structured interviews, focus group interviews, and/or surveys. Justin Spinney, for example, has experimented with video ethnography, including collaborative video and music co editing, to research geographies of mobility. Spinney, a cyclist and commuter, ﬁlmed his and other cyclists’ journeys, as well as asked other cyclists to ﬁlm

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their own journeys, using helmet cameras and portable microphones. In addition, he randomly interviewed cyclists by distributed ﬂyers about his projects on people’s bikes throughout London. Spinney’s multiple methods not only attempts to gain more information about both the range of people who cycle, from commuters and bike messengers to leisure cyclists and bicycle motocross (BMX) and trials riders, and the skills these riders use to create spaces of freedom and ﬂexibility in the city. Through collaborative video editing with some of the people he has ﬁlmed and talked to, he wishes to under stand how the bike is both a social place and object/ assemblage that allows cyclists to enjoy embodied feel ings of riding. Observation, writing ﬁeldnotes, collecting material culture, and in depth interviews are the methods most commonly identiﬁed with ethnography and are also the most controversial, given ethnography’s colonial legacy. The status of the ethnographer as the expert arbiter of knowledge is not only questionable – analyses are widely read and challenged by the peoples studied – but so too is the assumption that a local ‘scene’ observed is typical for any social group. For this reason, Michael Angrosino and Kimberly Mays de Pe´rez suggest that observation should be thought of as a context for social interaction rather than as a social science method per se. As Dydia DeLyser explains, by partaking in everyday life as it is lived over many months and oftentimes years, even at tourist places such as ghost towns, the ethnographer is more likely to understand the ways that people experience and create their worlds. Through this close attention to lived and unspoken geographies about particular places, eth nographers may better understand the overlapping and often abstract processes that connect and separate, to borrow from Lila Abu Lughod, domestic, national, bio graphical, daily, spontaneous, and sociogeological spaces and times. The researcher’s own body, for example, is a signiﬁ cant place through which ethnographic research is con ducted. Geographers, Alison Bain and Catherine Nash, Heidi Nast, Hester Parr, Arun Saldanha, and Andy Tucker, in quite distinct ways, discuss how social inter actions, and viscous assemblages of human and nonhu man bodies, create public and private spaces in cities, neighborhoods, homes, and sites of leisure. A signiﬁcant part of their work stems from their experiences and in tuited understandings as embodied, sexed, gendered, and racialized researchers. Their observations of, and inter actions with, others helped them write about the ways bodies interact, meld, and constitute social spaces. Their work is different from traditional forms of participant observation, because they consider emotions and phys icality as important forms of knowing. By actively en gaging in social settings rather than observing events from a distanced perspective, these scholars also discuss

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the limits and possibilities of observation as an embodied research practice in particular situations. Parr’s observations of what constitutes normal bodily movements in public urban spaces, for example, allowed her to change her bodily presence to interact with and learn from marginalized peoples in streets, parks, and squares. Her work raised signiﬁcant insights about em bodied social relationships, including gender, sexuality, and health, as well as the problems with assuming that a researcher’s self/body is contained in the research process. It also resulted in formulating more participatory research strategies with individuals that had mental health prob lems. Yet, Parr also acknowledged the limits and ethical concerns of using the body as a covert research tool to observe and communicate with vulnerable peoples in public space. She argues that some social processes and interactions cannot always be researched with informed consent or through collaborative processes. Some indi viduals actively seek to avoid dominant institutional spaces; most of us also communicate in nonlinguistic ways. In such situations, working intersubjectively on an agreed upon project may not be possible, appropriate, or even ethical. Stuart Aitken and Doreen Mattingly also discuss the moral difﬁculties of speaking for vulnerable groups, such as children and teenagers, respectively, who cannot or may not be able to speak for themselves. Children and teenagers see things in environments that researchers do not see and experience worlds that adults may not understand. As Mattingly describes, while empathy and being open minded helps, well intended efforts, including community based projects, may not be enough. In addition to treating observation as a form of social interaction and embodiment, ethnographers learn about everyday spatial tactics, practices, and strategies from lis tening to people telling stories about the places and things that are important in their everyday lives. Richa Nagar’s ‘ethno geographies’ combine oral histories within geo graphically speciﬁc contexts and relations, making un expected connections across stories and spaces. Anna Secor used focus group discussions and observations to understand how individuals experienced being classiﬁed as either ‘citizen’ or ‘stranger’ in Istanbul. Some described everyday urban tactics, such as anonymity, as a form of resistance, whereas others co opted dominant strategies by identifying themselves as political subjects in schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Patricia Ehrkamp simi larly learned about the everyday spatial strategies of Turkish women living in Marxloh, Germany, by asking participants to draw mental maps of their neighborhoods. When asked why certain parts of their neighborhood were highlighted, crossed out, or not sketched in, these women responded that they avoided prominent male only Turkish teahouses and frequented female only and mixed social spaces that challenged masculinist forms of power re lations in their neighborhoods.

Ethnographers also pay attention to how material forms of situated knowledges embody the emotional geographies and worlds of others. Luke Dickens, for ex ample, followed grafﬁti crew members, individuals, art istic institutions, found objects, and events as they traveled through and create urban spaces, including materially, through ﬁlm, on the Internet, and by telling stories. Dickens tracked the journeys of grafﬁti writers, stencillers, artists, and others involved in London’s grafﬁti scene to understand how, through their various practices, they remade the street, art gallery, and city. Katie Walsh explored notions of belonging by British expatriates in Dubai through their attachments to things. She noticed that some objects, from an ugly, orange plastic bowl to a landscape painting, to pictures and postcards taped to walls, were given a special status in domestic spaces: many stories of (dis)location and attachment were em bodied in them. In a different setting, Mary Thomas used autophotography as a technique to learn more about teenage women in Charleston, South Carolina. Con sidered neither child nor adult, teens do not have many options to exist in cities without being considered dis ruptive, or even dangerous. By inviting teens to take pictures of the places they hang out in and then to tell stories about these pictures, Thomas was able to interact with young women through a familiar and playful me dium – disposable cameras and photo albums. They pointed to these pictures in their homes, often laughing at themselves and their friends in the images, as they retold stories about taking the photos, the places, or memories triggered by the images. Through these varied forms of communication, these teens expressed (in con tradictory ways) their fears and desires about difﬁcult topics such as teen sexuality, subjectivity, and belonging. As these examples suggest, when observation is understood as an interactive context, then writing ﬁeld notes about everyday geographies, emotions, ﬂuid social spaces, and material encounters should be considered a practice of discovery and analysis rather than a form of objective reporting that assumes that language is a transparent signiﬁer of witnessed events. Consequently, the ﬁeldnotes that ethnographers write will contain a range of descriptive, reﬂective, and interpretive notes, sketches, found objects, lists of people to contact, and questions that emerge as they work. To provide a space for reﬂection, interpretation, and their fears, eth nographers also regularly write memos that question their experiences and assumptions, pay attention to processes, consider the material and visual cultures in their study, and scrutinize their varied relationships with research ﬁelds and partners. Ethnographers also treat their notes as textual objects that can be interpreted and analyzed. Approaches used to analyze ethnographic ﬁeldnotes, documents, and other forms of visual and material culture may include:

Ethnography

open ended coding, qualitative or quantitative content analyses, narrative analysis, conversation analysis, forms of discourse analysis, semiotic analysis, hermeneutics, psychoanalytical analysis, and phenomenological ap proaches. Coding in particular is an analytical practice used to identify patterns, elaborate upon insights, and reﬁne ideas. While its origins stem from the sociological tradition of grounded theory, coding is no longer understood as an objective scientiﬁc practice. Instead, open coding is a form of brainstorming, whereby the researcher revisits materials in order to think about possible ideas, themes, and issues. Different types of fo cused forms of coding are used to identify variations and patterns in relationships. Overall, coding is an iterative analytic practice that directs the ethnographer to exam ine closely the materials generated in the research pro cess, breaking down a larger whole into parts, that will later again be scrutinized in different parts. What is not so apparent in the published texts of ethnographers is the almost obsessive manner in which ethnographers revisit their writings, sketches, codings, and other materials during the research process. They understand their writing as creative and imaginative spaces to explore, think through, and represent know ledges, desires, and fears. For Arun Saldanha, writing gives ‘existential embeddedness’. For Miles Richardson, ‘poetics in the ﬁeld and on the page’ are inseparable. As described in the next section, ethnographers often ex periment with forms of writing, such as trying out metaphors, ﬁrst and third person points of view, dif ferent narrative structures, or fonts and typeface possi bilities within the space of the page, as well as use images and other media to communicate complex temporalities and spatialities of the worlds they wish to represent.

New Directions: Transnational, Collaborative, and Creative Analytical Ethnographies Geographers are particularly sensitive to the different forms of power/knowledge that enable access for some individuals and prevent movement for others. Because of the kinds of questions geographers ask, they are begin ning to contribute in signiﬁcant ways to new forms of ethnography, in particular about transnational and mul titemporal spaces. Transnational ethnographic projects in geography analyze forms and effects of globalization through networks and multiple sites of: consumption and production; tourism and whiteness; transnational citi zenship; black philosophical thought; and movements of peoples, including refugees and expatriates, across poli tical territories. Cindy Katz’s concept of ‘countertopographies’, for ex ample, provides a political and methodological approach

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to understanding and countering the uneven effects of global capitalism. Based upon many years of research, Katz juxtaposed the circumstances of children in two places – Howa (Sudan) and New York City – to make unexpected connections across space and time between the simul taneous processes of displacement for youth experiencing their childhood during periods of economic transitions. Such an approach challenges the abstract mappings of global capitalism methodologically by producing ‘thick descriptions’ of global economic restructuring processes such as deskilling; disinvestment in social reproduction; or the exoticization of ‘remote’ places (such as Howa) as ‘objects’ of capitalism. For Katz, the concept of counter topography is more than comparing one locale to another or even building coalitions between diverse places: it offers a powerful alternative spatial abstraction to globalization. By tracing connections among particular historical geographies and abstract social processes, countertopographies may enable new political possibilities and spatial imaginaries. Katherine McKrittick’s concept of ‘cartographies of struggle’, while not explicitly ethnographic, also offers a powerful approach to transnational ethnographic re search. She looks to the literatures, philosophies, and material geographies of black women to connect their diasporic locations in Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, both during and after the transatlantic slave trade. McKrittick analyzes locations such as slave auction blocks, black Canada, and new France, as well as conceptual spaces of feminism to explore the ways that particular women created powerful senses of place and sites of struggle to inhabit, negotiate, and challenge dominant mappings of their bodies and worlds. While marked by the legacy of violence and slavery, McKrittick argues that these black geographies are alterable and can provide the opportunity for change. If ethnographic research is a practice of responsibility, to borrow from Marjorie Wolf ’s simple but proliﬁc in sight, than our work is a form of knowledge production that is never done in isolation. Indeed, ethnographers do not simply ‘collect’ forms of visual and material culture, or conduct interviews; they participate with others in its creation. Some geographers, drawing upon the work of feminist and local scholars, advocate participatory and community based research designs to develop cogen erative inquiry processes that decolonize knowledge productions and locate the research process outside of academic settings. Richa Nagar’s collaborative work with the Sangtin Writers is an example of a many year process that included sharing personal diaries, hosting public and collective conversations (within and across countries), conducting interviews with numerous grassroots activists, and collaboratively writing about their experiences with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and develop ment ideology in the Uttar Pradesh region of India. The

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Sangtin Writers, Anupamlata, Ramsheela, Reshma Ansari, Richa Singh, Shashibala, Shashi Vaish, Surbala, and Vibha Bajpayee, are village level mobilizers who worked with Nari Samata Yojana (NSY) in the 1990s, a well known women’s organization working with rural communities that later became the Sangtin group. As a scholar based in the US, Richa Nagar had come into contact with many of these individuals through her re search. After identifying their mutual frustrations about the problematic ways that outside agencies and re searchers take the ideas and voices of grassroots activists for their own agendas, they agreed upon trying out a longer term relationship to explore their mutual inter ests. Their story details this collaborative journey as well as their personal struggles and group successes. The Hindi edition of the book led to controversial public discussions about the issues confronted in the book, in cluding the sexist and patronizing attitudes rural women face when interacting with ofﬁcials of large NGOs. Ethnographers also try to establish responsible and respectful relationships with the peoples, communities, groups, nonhuman natures, and places they study through their writing as a practice of decolonizing methodologies. Jackie Huggins, Rita Huggins, and Jane Jacobs created a polyvocal text to describe their experiences returning to Carnarvon Gorge National Park in Australia. Jane Jacobs ﬁrst experienced this place as part of a national heritage and interpretive rock art trail that guides tourists to an aboriginal sacred space. For Jackie Higgins, a historian, and her mother Rita Higgins, this is as a place of homecoming, known to them and other Bidjara people as Koor amindanjee. It is a desert oasis in the sandstone tablelands of the Great Dividing Range, where their families and the ancestors who went before them would rest, get water, eat, and perform ceremonies. Their text describes the colonial power relations that continue to shape the meanings and possibilities of dwelling by problematizing their roles as historian, mother, daughter, geographer, or friend. In quite a different form, Annette Watson and Orville Huntington wrote a collaborative account about a Koyukon Athabascan moose hunting excursion that also departs from the ethnographic tradition of a Western scholar reporting upon local forms of knowing. But rather than intersperse personal accounts, Watson and Hun tington move back and forth between descriptive narra tives and theoretical insights (from both Western academic institutions and indigenous spiritual discourse), unresolved conversations between and moments of revelation. Their enfolding and unfolding narrative ab ruptly and often switches from Watson’s to Huntington’s ﬁrst person points of view to communicate how their ideas evolved. They experiment with co authorship not so much to ‘co produce’ knowledge from Western and indigenous perspectives, but to perform the ways that the hunt reproduces the spiritual practices that connect

hunter and prey. Signiﬁcantly, their writing practice il luminates the more abstract concept of Koyukon Atha bascan epistemic space, a space wherein the worlds of humans, nonhuman lives, objects, and environments must be understood as more than any individual self: together they become an event. Watson’s and Huntington’s work demonstrate yet an other way geographers are contributing to ethnography: through experimental forms of representation, or what Laurel Richardson describes as creative analytical practice. Such ethnographies perform, rather than simply docu ment, larger theoretical and conceptual claims, and may include: autoethnography, ﬁction, stories, poetry, drama, performance texts, polyvocal texts, readers’ theater, re sponsive readings, comedy, satire, visual presentations, allegory, conversation, and layered accounts. The work of Miles Richardson, a particularly eloquent and creative writer, poet, and ethnographer (and adopted geographer), demonstrates multiple genre writing practices. His most recent work draws from 40 years of research about Catholics in Spanish America and Baptists in the Ameri can South, and is tied to his personal story of becoming an ethnographer and anthropologist. Part autoethnography, part poetry, part performance text, Richardson’s vivid descriptions and intimate passages about his personal and ethnographic journeys with worshipers to holy places, pilgrimages, and ceremonies invites readers to consider, with the author, how death might be understood within the discourse of human evolution and in the context of post structuralist thinking. Karen Till’s ‘geo ethnography’ is an approach to re searching the complex spatial stories and social relations involved in place making, spatial hauntings, national identity formation, and memory work in Berlin. Using book sections, pages, narratives, and images in un conventional ways, she attempts to avoid a false sense of narrative coherence and thereby challenge traditional claims to ethnographic authority. Interlude writings, in the form of ﬁeldnotes and from a ﬁrst person point of view, provide an autocritque while connecting ideas across chapters; readers are introduced to places and mundane sites (fences, newspaper articles, citizen actions, and conceptual projects) that offer a different urban topography than the memory district of public places described in the formal chapters. These performative ethnographic fragments highlight how mundane experi ences in the city are also a way to understand spatial hauntings. Till understands the creative potential of ethnography as a place based form of memory work. In addition to written texts with maps, sketches, and photographs, geographers are now experimenting with public artistic practices as part of their ethnographic re search. Toby Butler created an audio walking tour called Memoryscape about the local histories of two parts of the river Thames in London that is available free of charge

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online and through city agencies. In one of the tours, Driftings, he followed a piece of wood along the river and created ‘stops’ where it hit the bank. After conducting extensive research at each stop, which included talking to people, interpreting the landscape, getting archival ma terials, and other methods, Butler created a guided tour with music, interview passages, and commentary, to invite local residents and tourists to experience their environ ments in new ways. Holly McLaren’s collaborative project, Bordering, was a scattered site exhibition and series of events in and around Oswestry, a small market town near the Welsh–English border. McLaren invited artists Ruth Jones, Stefhan Caddick, and Simon Whitehead and Tea to respond to this cultural and historic borderlands through new work that explores the ways that national borders shape knowledges and experiences of place. In addition to the curatorial role McLaren assumed in this project, she also set up an Internet blog where she posted her ﬁeld notes and memos; invited artists to respond to her and other artists’ ideas as they evolved; asked artists to post their concepts and ideas before and after the installation and exhibition; and invited locals and actual and virtual visitors to post their impressions during the process. The webpage, performance installations, exhibitions, walks, and the catalog explored the creative possibilities of transdis ciplinary collaboration about understanding the sensuous and ﬂeeting lived experiences of place through the cre ation and languages of site speciﬁc and performance art. As these examples demonstrate, ethnography as a methodology raises signiﬁcant questions about the status and situations of knowledges used and created in geog raphy. Ethnographers do more than consider what methods generate the best data in their research design, which is a common way that social scientists use multiple methods, such as structured interviews, survey results, or census data. As a research approach, ethnography makes explicit processes and power relations that are involved in knowledge creation and selection, and explore inter subjective and responsible approaches to conducting research with partners. See also: Auto-Photography; Embodied Knowing; Fieldwork; Interviews: In-Depth, Semi-Structured;

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Participatory Action Research; Representation and Re-presentation; Situated Knowledge, Reﬂexivity.

Further Reading Clifford, (1988). The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clifford, J. and Marcus, G. (eds.) (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Emerson, R., Fretz, R. and Shaw, L. (1995). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Katz, C. (2004). Growing up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Parr, H. (1998). Mental health, the body and ethnography. Area 30(1), 28 37. Richardson, L. (2003). Writing: A method of inquiry. In Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (eds.) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials (2nd edn.) pp 499 541. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Richardson, M. (2003). Being in Christ and Putting Death in Its Place: An Anthropologist’s Account of Christian Performance in Spanish America and the American South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. Rose, G. (1997). Situating knowledges: Positionality, reﬂexivity and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography 21(3), 305 320. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books Ltd. Spinney, J. (2006). A place of sense: A kinaestheitc ethnography of cyclists on Mont Ventoux. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24(5), 709 732. The Sangtin Writers and Nagar, R. (2006). Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism Through Seven Lives in India. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Thomas, M. (2007). The implications of psychoanalysis for qualitative methodology: The case of interviews and narrative data analysis. Professional Geographer 59(4), 587 605. Till, K. E. (2005). The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Watson, A. and Huntington, O. H. (2008). They’re here, I can feel them: The epistemic spaces of indigenous and Western knowledges. Social and Cultural Geography 9(3), 257 281.

Relevant Websites http://www.borderingart.org.uk/about.html Holly McLaren, Bordering webpage. http://stefanobloch.wordpress.com/ Stefano Bloch, Urban Aesthetics Research blog webpage. http://www.memoryscape.org.uk Toby Butler, Memoryscape webpage.

Ethnomethodology/Ethnomethodological Geography E. Laurier, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Accountability All human actions are essentially observable and reportable. What is unusual in ethnomethodology is that, not only can people tell us about their activities, but also that those activities are produced so as to be describable in certain ways; in other words, they are ‘reﬂexively’ accountable. Epistopics A series of epistemic themes and classical sources of theoretical problems in natural and social sciences such as observation, replication, measurement, imagination, and explanation. Ethnomethodology seeks a return to them as ordinary practices (e.g., birdwatchers observing eagles, neurologists redoing an experiment, economists measuring hospital efﬁciency, landscape gardeners imagining a new shrubbery, and explaining why one was so upset at work today) and in doing so remove the metaphysical aura of these grand topics. Haecceity What makes an object uniquely what it is, or, the ‘just thisness’ of a thing. In ethnomethodology, there is a desire to get away from assuming we know what even the most ordinary things are and follow what all the ‘this’ and ‘that’ are of any action, event, conversation, and so on. Indexicality A long-standing and underpinning term in ethnomethodology. Simply put, the relevance, meaning, appropriateness, and correctness of any expression varies as it is put to use in different settings, by different agents, and at different times. Indexicality causes endless problems for those who would try and replace subjective expressions with objective expressions. Nevertheless, and confusingly to many who would assume otherwise, indexical expressions can, and do, nevertheless have rational properties. Ironic Attitude A common stance of the social sciences toward members of societies’ understanding of events, that what is happening is ‘not’ what they think is happening; it only seems to be like that. From the point of view of the skeptical social scientist, something else is going on. Such an attitude usually substitutes the intelligibility of action at source with explanations from theory that thereby ironize the words and deeds of members. Reﬂexivity Related to accountability and indexicality, the concreteness, sense, and intelligibility of human actions are tied to the settings in which they occur, yet also, whose sense they produce. Ethnomethodology diverges from many of the social sciences who have treated a concern with reﬂexivity as allowing them to

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have a superior knowledge over the common sense of societies’ members. Respeciﬁcation Rather than building new theories or models of society, ethnomethodology respeciﬁes existing epistopics in the light of ordinary practice. There is a desire to investigate foundational matters in human geography and the social sciences more widely through carrying out empirical studies. Bewilderingly, for social scientists that hope for laws or unchanging rules that govern society, ethnomethodological studies do not lead to generalization, instead they surprise from actuality and, sometimes, a form of therapy for the troubles of generalization in the social sciences. Skepticism Related to the ironic attitude, ethnomethodology is a response to the skeptical attitude in the social sciences which constantly questions whether members of society see things as they really are or are being duped by other (usually larger) actors or foundational ideologies. Ethnomethodology does not seek to defeat the powerful skepticism of the social sciences, rather to show how it reduces, or just misses, all manner of wonderful sense and sense making in human practice. Unique Adequacy Worried about the social sciences’ tendency to miss the core of what constitutes numerous practical ﬁelds of activity, ethnomethodology suggests that its students should achieve at least a vulgar competence in the skills of the groups they are studying. If students remain incompetent in the practices they wish to depict, or to put it more politely, retain a disengaged perspective, they will miss what the activity consists of in terms of its skills, rules, morals, reason, order, and more.

Deﬁnitions Ethnomethodology is the study of folk or members’ methods for producing recognizable and reasonable so cial orders, its title deriving from related terms such as ethnobotany which is the study of folk knowledges of plants. It is as happy studying how street sellers pitch their wares as it is examining how social scientists code interview transcripts. Or, as Garﬁnkel put it during the Purdue symposium, [T]here are now quite a number of persons who, on a day to day basis, are doing studies of practical activities, of commonsense knowledge, of this and that, and of

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practical organizational reasoning. That is what ethno methodology is concerned with. It is an organizational study of a member’s knowledge of his ordinary affairs, of his own organized enterprises, where that knowledge is treated by us as part of the same setting that it also makes orderable. (Hill and Stones Crittenden, 1968: 10)

Moreover, they are both concerned with how it is that similar forms of agency or subjectivity or identity emerge differently in each and every place.

This simple deﬁnition belies a long standing conten tious relationship with the social sciences and an en gagement with ordinary practice in the face of theorization and modeling that is as powerful as it is puzzling.

One should be slightly, no ‘very’, cautious, about pro ducing headings that would count as a list of ‘key concepts’ in ethnomethodology. A central pursuit in ethno methodological studies is respeciﬁcation of concepts in the light of detailed investigations of particular cases and settings. Notionally, any concept is therefore liable to respeciﬁcation in the same way that concepts from social or cultural theory are open to their deconstruction by Derrideans. In that light, we should note the further har monies with a human geography inﬂuenced by post structuralism, in its many shapes and forms, that has sought to replace singular and overarching grand theory with more modest and plural theories. Ethnomethodology diverges from many of the more philosophically grounded post structural geographies by prioritizing detailed in quiries into practice. This empirical commitment and fo rensic investment in the details is not to everyone’s tastes. What is ‘methodological’ about ethnomethodology is the focus on the logic of methods, or in more familiar terms, the logic of practice. This focus is applied across the board from ordinary social situations such as queuing for a bus to social scientists doing standardized surveys. The lack of acceptance of an in principle distinction between social science methodologies and other more mundane practices had led to some hostility toward ethnomethodology. It has been taken to be bringing the social sciences down from their privileged epistemo logical position into the muddle of ordinary affairs, whereas what it was doing was raising mundane methods up to the level of more formal methodologies. In providing a brief list here, the aim is not to limit the concepts; it is instead to offer a ﬂavor of the sorts of concepts that have already been the subject of rigorous study by ethno inquirers.

Origins Ethnomethodology as a distinctive approach is commonly accepted to have been initiated by Harold Garﬁnkel in the 1950s in response to a series of problems he had come upon in the 1930s and then in pursuing his PhD in the 1940s under the supervision of Talcott Parsons. His initial work was contemporary with that of Ludwig Wittgenstein and C. Wright Mills, sharing their concerns with the limitations of rules, references, and individualism that had been handed on as solutions to the problem of meaning and intelligibility. It was the publication of ‘Studies in ethnomethodology’ in the late 1960s that really brought what had by then already become a congregation of practitioners (including Egon Bittner, Ed Rose, and Aaron Cicourel) to the attention of the social sciences more widely. At this stage it was centered around the University of California’s campuses and attracted a reputation for being both a committed community of scholars, and something of a cult, that it has never quite lost. It was also at this stage that Harvey Sacks was collaborating with Harold Garﬁnkel, a fruitful partnership that led to the initiation of conversation analysis as a fraternal twin of ethnomethodology. Ethnomethodology caught the atten tion of a number of young scholars who went on to be come signiﬁcant ﬁgures in sociology, such as David Sudnow, Lawrence Wieder, Don Zimmerman, Wes Shar rock, Peter McHugh, Jeff Coulter, and Rod Watson. During this period it also spread beyond the Anglophone academy, becoming established in France and Japan. While ethnomethodology does not appear to have been adopted as an approach by any particular human geographers during its inception, it was, and remains, congruent with the contemporary concerns of humanistic and phenomenological practitioners in the discipline. Indeed, with the return to prominence of cultural geography within human geography, there has come a renewed commitment to, and concern with, place over more abstract conceptions of space. Human geography today has a still deeper afﬁnity with the early and later concerns of ethnomethodology in its attendance to the conjointness of human practices and particular places.

Key Concepts

Accountability Where we might be used to thinking about accountability as deﬁnitively characteristic of institutions such as gov ernments and professional bodies to have to provide justiﬁcations of their collective actions, ethnomethod ology explores accountability as an accomplishment, background expectation, and ongoing concern of human action. It is used somewhat interchangeably with the compound word observable–reportable. What we do be it as, for instance, a local councilor or Simon’s girlfriend, has the characteristic of being always observable and reportable. All human practices, be they of the

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investigator or the member of cultures, are taken to be more, or less, accountable to those involved in them. How we ‘see’ and speak of the reason, morality, and motives of others (and of ourselves) is thoroughly bound up with the observability and reportability of those practices and equally our seeing and speaking has its observable and reportable characteristics. Reﬂexivity Where we left off with accountability is where we take up reﬂexivity. In the social sciences the dominant view of re ﬂexivity is that it is a privileged maneuver of social scientists that allows them one step up above naı¨ve uses and understandings of language. The social sciences are aware of how certain words or images are ideologically loaded, incorporate hidden meanings, and investigate their speech and writing for similar investments. Ethnomethodology puts reﬂexivity at the heart of its study of human affairs by treating it as incarnate in those human affairs. In line with raising members’ practices onto the level with the social sciences, members are equally capable of taking one step up and commenting on their and others modes of expression. Ethnomethodology cuts itself adrift by taking social order as locally produced in whatever settings, descriptions (or representations) of particular courses of action which are reﬂexive to those self same settings. Reﬂexivity thus over laps with accountability in the ongoing production of order in each and every place in the world. Mind Hopefully there will now be some familiarity with the ethnomethodological drift when it is added that a series of topics related to the study of mind such as motives, rea sons, intentions, perceptions, imagination, memory, and cognition are taken by ethnomethodology to be locally observable–reportable features of human action. Setting itself against ‘mental’ explanations of how people re member, reason, imagine, see, and so on, ethnomethod ology is concerned with how such apparently ‘private’ processes are publicly available. Not only are they publicly available, it is our ongoing concern to make them so.

Programs A recent collection of Garﬁnkel’s papers was entitled ‘The ethnomethodological program’; it might have been better expressed in the plural. Since its inception, ethno methodology has sired a number of more or less legitimate offsprings. To begin, once again, where we left off, with the concept of mind, this run of studies is concerned centrally with practical action and practical reasoning. In some ways it has had the longest run given that it begins with Gar ﬁnkel’s famous ‘breaching experiments’ which were

designed to cause the collapse of social order. Therein Garﬁnkel had his students carry out experiments which disrupted the intelligibility of various places, such as act ing as lodgers within their own home or refusing to pay the display price of items in shops. Rather than social order collapsing, as certain social theories had posited, it was kept in place, though not without all manner of trouble, complaints, and some pleasing discounts for Garﬁnkel’s students in department stores. As noted earlier, the most famous offshoot of ethno methodology is conversation analysis. Its concern is with the ways in which those who converse are also analysts of the conversation they are ongoingly having with one another. The name of this approach is in a classic ethnomethodological manner the study of the analysis done in, by, and with conversation rather than a pro fessional and/or scientiﬁc abstraction of conversation. However, and somewhat confusingly, conversation an alysis has also ended up becoming a technical study of language in interaction that in various ways supplants the methods of members with its own more technical lexicon. Conversation analysis began with Harvey Sacks looking at the detailed methods used by speakers during phone calls. His studies were unusual at the time for making extensive use of audio recordings of actual phone calls to a suicide helpline and between friends, along with other sources of conversation on the phone. Drawing on these materials he respeciﬁed a number of major philosophical topics such as measurement, observation, and, once again, mind. Of great importance were how speakers relied on and put to use membership categorization devices and the sequential properties of conversation. This work led ultimately to one of the most cited papers of all time in the social sciences on the turn taking mechanism. For analyzing transcripts con versation analysis has been taken up in human geography as an alternative to software assisted coding. Where the latter is driven by content alone, the latter is a meeting point be tween content and process. Conversation analysis helps us grasp not only what people have said but how they said it and what they were trying to achieve at the time. A third branch of ethnomethodology, and one that is perhaps the most obviously geographical, is workplace studies which takes as its concern the production of order in each particular setting of work. While these range across scientiﬁc laboratories, truck garages, martial arts studios, court rooms, classrooms, banks, and air trafﬁc control centers, they have a common concern with the routine features of each workplace as they are produced ongoingly, day by day. These features are not merely routine; they are also taken to be the objective, if disputable, phenomena of these workplaces. The constitutive gap between their ob jective qualities and their indexicality remains the sig niﬁcant focus for workplace studies. For a while it seemed like ethnomethodology, with its ethos of having its practitioners become their phenomena

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(e.g., to study law become a lawyer, to study jazz learn to play jazz piano), might disappear into other professional ﬁelds entirely. However, in two interdisciplinary realms it has reappeared as a signiﬁcant school: computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and science and technology studies. Whether ethnomethodology will become an es tablished program in geography is not yet clear. The grounds for the establishment of an ethno methodological program in geography would at ﬁrst glance be its harmonies with the archeological approach of Michel Foucault, the underpinnings it has provided in social studies of science and technology, and its ways of accessing and describing everyday life and the ordinary. There are at least two further passages from ethno methodology to human geography. The ﬁrst is in its treatment of speech as part and parcel of human action which allies it with the nonrepresentational work of Thrift and others. The second is in its reviviﬁcation of empirical work and ﬁeld studies which are there to respecify and put to rest a number of theoretical prob lems that beset human geography.

Central Misunderstandings Ethnomethodology seems to have been beset by more misunderstandings than most approaches in the social sciences. Had ethnomethodology come into being now rather than in the midst of the post war positivist dom inance in the social sciences, there might have been far fewer. To mention three here: 1. Ethnomethodologists collect and document various sorts of ‘folk wisdom’ that either underlie or distort more scientiﬁc knowledge of the world. From the Purdue Symposium: ANDERSON: y There is still the question of whether your concern is that of an outsider studying folk wisdom. GARFINKEL: NO! Once and for all, no! We are not studying folk wisdom in an ironic way. I am not saying that I know better. I am not armed with resources that would permit me to say, no matter how discreetly, ‘‘Look, does the botanist believe there are salt water ﬁsh in a fresh water lake? Get that!’’ Nor am I saying things like, ‘‘The Catholics believe that whatever it is; the Jews have the inside track on that one.’’ There is no irony. (Hill, 1968: 28)

An ethnomethodological geography would not supply ‘folk geographies’; to do so would be to ironize how knowing certain things constitutes certain com munities and equally how certain communities make sense of their actions. 2. Ethnomethodology is a method. Unsurprisingly, given the positioning of methodology in its title many as sumed that ethnomethodology is a methodology of

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the social sciences or is a variant on ethnography. It is neither. As noted at the beginning of this article, it is the study of methodologies, be they those of members of a queue at a bus stop or members of a neuroscience lab examining images from electron microscopes. 3. Ethnomethodological studies are microstudies. Be cause ethnomethodology remains stubbornly attached to studying the details of diverse local sites of action, such as looking for a book in a library, a conversation among teenagers, or learning to playing piano, it is often taken to task for missing structures that operate at a larger scale. However, the idea of how a larger context or scale exists in ethnomethodological studies is the same as the treatment of scale or context in actor network theory. Large scale structures are, in their haecceities, inevitably and reﬂexively en countered locally. The questions raised in ethno methodology and actor network theory are: how do they go about ‘localizing’ themselves and how do they go about ‘extending’ themselves into other places. More speciﬁcally the concern is whether, and how, larger contexts are made locally available and locally recognizable in any particular course of action.

Future Directions To maintain its vigor ethnomethodology has always hy bridized with other disciplines and crafts. As noted earlier the meeting of computing science with ethnomethod ology in the interdisciplinary zone of CSCW gave fresh impetus to its workplace investigations. The craft skills of writing software and building prototypes required the forms of detailed description of work practice that ethnomethodologists were exceptionally good at offering. Equally, the marrying of science studies and ethno methodology in the work of Lynch, Livingston, Bjelic, and others has brought a number of new concerns such as, to name but three, epistemology, evidence, and equipment. Where human geography might entwine with ethno methodology is, ﬁrstly, in its epistopics, some shared with the other social sciences and humanities, and others less so; context, observation, representation, and imagination to name but a few. Second, there are a number of ‘wild geographies’ which are of interest to human geographers and ethnomethodologists. The vernacular geographical knowledges emergent in endless varieties, such as what neighbors know about their neighborhood, how tourists ﬁnd their way around cities, how browsers search for books in libraries, and how people formulate their location during mobile phone calls. Ethnomethodology could offer a way for human geography to draw succor from these wild variants rooted in other life worlds than the academy.

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Critiques Over the years Bruno Latour has grown increasingly sympathetic to ethnomethodology. His initial responses were somewhat more critical than we now ﬁnd him. In particular he was uneasy about the lack of a ‘big picture’ or, rather, ﬁnding small things rendered large. Here, commenting on an ethnomethodological study of a laboratory. In reading the book, one has the same feeling as reading a newspaper through a microscope. Somehow the focus does not seem right, and one is tempted to ask, ‘Please, Mike, couldn’t you zoom a bit the other way, I can’t see a damn thing here’. (Latour, 1986: 545)

Latour is not suggesting that the details are not im portant. What he wants is the ethnomethodologist to travel away from the local worksite to see how it is connected to other worksites. There is no strong reason why ethnomethodologists do not follow chains of con nection between worksites, though they would be looking for a group of some sort whose daily business is to follow those sorts of connections rather than trying to invent a new methodology for the social sciences that provides a privileged perspective on the action. Perhaps the most substantial critique comes from Alan Blum and Peter McHugh whose school of analysis grew out of ethnomethodology. Theirs remain, like Latour’s, an understanding of ethnomethodology that is sympathetic, informed, and respectful. What formed their point of departure from ethnomethodology was a disinterest in doing ﬁeld studies and a return to theo rizing which, at ﬁrst brush, appears antithetical to the spirit of ethnomethodology. Yet, the sense of being a respeciﬁcatory response to theorists in the social sci ences is retained. Their critique of ethnomethodology resides in an argument more complex than be rehearsed here on whether irony is always invidious, what the nature of theorist and member relationship is, and the limits of convention. Ethnomethodology, argue Blum and McHugh, reafﬁrms convention when it could question it and refuses to exercise its authority to for mulate excellence for members. See also: Actor-Network Theory/Network Geographies; Ethnography; Non-Representational Theory/NonRepresentational Geographies; Regional Geography I.

Further Reading Bjelic, D. (2004). Galileo’s Pendulum: Science, Sexuality and the Body Instrument Link. New York: State University of New York Press.

Blum, A. and McHugh, P. (1984). Self Reﬂection in the Arts and Sciences. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Brown, B. A. T. and Laurier, E. (2005). Maps and journeys: An ethnomethodological investigation. Cartographica 4(3), 17 33. Button, G. (ed.) (1991). Ethnomethodology and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carlin, A. P. (2003). Pro forma arrangements: The visual availability of textual artefacts. Visual Studies 18(1), 6 20. Crabtree, A. (2003). Designing Collaborative Systems: A Practical Guide to Ethnography. Heidelberg: Springer. Crabtree, A., Nichols, D. M., O’Brien, J., Rounceﬁeld, M. and Twidale, M. B. (2000). Ethnomethodologically informed ethnography and information system design. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51(7), 666 682. Garﬁnkel, H. (1963). A conception of and experiments with trust as a condition of stable, concerted actions. In Harvey, O. J. (ed.) Motivation and Social Interaction, pp 187 238. New York: Ronald Press. Garﬁnkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Garﬁnkel, H. (ed.) (1986). Ethnomethodological Studies of Work. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Garﬁnkel, H. (2002). Ethnomethodology’s Program, Working Out Durkheim’s Aphorism. New York: Rowman and Littleﬁeld Publishers. Harrison, P. (2008). Corporeal remains: Vulnerability, proximity and living on after the end of the world. Environment and Planning A 40(2), 423 445. Hill, R. J. and Crittenden, S. K. (eds.) (1968). Proceedings of the Purdue Symposium on Ethnomethdology. Institute for the Study of Social Change, Purdue. Latour, B. (1986). Will the last person to leave the social studies of science turn on the tape recorder. Social Studies of Science 16, 541 548. Latour, B. (2003). Paris: Invisible City, Paris, http://www.bruno latour.fr/ virtual/EN/index.html, Photos by Emilie Hermant, Web Design by Patricia Reed. Laurier, E. (2001). Why people say where they are during mobile phone calls. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19(4), 485 504. Laurier, E. and Philo, C. (2004). Ethno archaeology and undeﬁned investigations. Environment and Planning A 36, 421 436. Laurier, E., Whyte, A. and Buckner, K. (2002). Neighbouring as an occasioned activity: Finding a lost cat. Space and Culture 5(4), 346 367. Livingston, E. (1986). The Ethnomethodological Foundations of Mathematics. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Livingston, E. (1987). Making Sense of Ethnomethodology. London: Routledge. Luff, P., Hindmarsh, J. and Heath, C. (eds.) (2000). Workplace Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, M. (1993). Scientiﬁc Practice and Ordinary Action: Ethnomethodology and Social Studies of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McHugh, P., Raffel, S., Foss, D. C. and Blum, A. F. (1974). On the Beginning of Social Inquiry. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mondada, L. (2007). Deixis spatiale, gestes de pointage et formes de coordination de l’action. In Barberis, J. M. & Manes Gallo, M. C. (eds.) Parcours dans la ville. Descriptions d’itine´raires pie´tons, pp 211 230. Paris: L’Harmattan. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A. and Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation. Language 50, 696 735. Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Weilenmann, A. (2003). ‘‘I can’t talk now, I’m in a ﬁtting room’’: Formulating availability and location in mobile phone conversations. Environment and Planning A 35(9), 1589 1605. Wylie, J. (2005). A single day’s walking: Narrating self and landscape in the South West Coast Path. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(2), 234 247.

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Relevant Websites http://www.mc.murdoch.edu.au Australian Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, School of Media Communication & Culture. http://www2.fmg.uva.nl Information on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, University of Amsterdam.

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http://www.iiemca.org The International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis.

Eurocentrism J. Sundberg, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Epistemology A theory about what constitutes valid or legitimate knowledge. Ontology The study of being or the nature of knowable things.

Introduction Eurocentrism has been variously deﬁned as an attitude, conceptual apparatus, or set of empirical beliefs that frame Europe as the primary engine and architect of world history, the bearer of universal values and reason, and the pinnacle and therefore model of progress and development. In Eurocentric narratives, the superiority of Europe is evident in its achievements in economic and political systems, technologies, and the high quality of life enjoyed by its societies. Eurocentrism is more than banal ethnocentric prejudice, however, as it is intimately tied to and indeed constituted in the violence and asymmetry of colonial and imperial encounters. Euro centrism is what makes this violence not only possible, but also acceptable or justiﬁable. As such, Eurocentrism is the condition of possibility for Orientalism, the discursive and institutional grid of power/knowledge integral to the production and domination of the Orient as Other. Sig niﬁcant critiques of Eurocentrism emerged in the context of post World War II shifts in geopolitical power, in cluding anticolonial and anti imperial revolutionary movements. Even so, Eurocentric epistemologies con tinue to haunt the production of knowledge in geography in signiﬁcant and disturbing ways. In conventional Eurocentric tellings, Europe is the engineer and architect of modern agricultural, cultural, economic, political, and scientiﬁc innovations, including capitalism, democracy, and industrial, medical, and green revolutions. Concepts like ‘the rise of Europe’ and ‘the European miracle’ exemplify Eurocentric models of history and development. Europe’s so called rise is ex plained in terms of superior social and environmental qualities deemed internal to it: inventiveness, rationality, capacity for abstract thought, outward looking, freedom loving, along with advantageous climate and geographies. Many of these cultural traits are said to be inherited from the Bible lands and ancient Greece and Rome – framed as Europe’s ancestral hearths – though their highest de velopment is said to have been achieved ﬁrst in imperial England and then the United States of America – hence

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the term ‘Euro Americanism’. In these narratives, pro gress and development ride what James Blaut calls ‘the westbound Orient Express’. As a consequence of the perceived historical move ment of the westbound express, ‘Europe’ has morphed into the ‘West’ and now the ‘Global North’. These ﬂuid geographic imaginaries may refer to not only Europe and white settler societies like the United States, Canada, and Australia, but also Japan and any other region or group that envisions itself as the possessor or inheritor of European culture, values, and academic, political, and economic systems. At the same time, however, particular places within the West such as the United States are privileged as the source of universal theory, while others like New Zealand are framed as limited by their par ticularities. Latin America and the Caribbean were col onized by Europeans, but are rarely included in the West. In short, it may not always be clear to what exactly these geographical imaginaries refer, but they are used as though they correspond to a commonsensical external reality. Through their repetition in everyday speech and academic and institutional narratives, that reality is continuously brought into being.

Eurocentrism in Action People the world over encounter Eurocentric images, attitudes, categories, and stories everyday. Whether glaringly obvious or mundane and unremarkable, Euro centric expressions constitute the texture of daily life for many people. Indeed, it is difﬁcult to encounter an arena of socioeconomic and political life that has escaped its hold. Although Eurocentrism is not a stable and trans historical mindset, an archive of codes, categories, and conceptual structures has emerged over time from which historically and geographically situated social actors may draw. As individuals recite and reconﬁgure these elem ents in new yet similarly structured ways, they put Eurocentrism into action. In other words, Eurocentric narratives are also doings: they produce the cosmologies and conceptual orderings they purport to describe. Stories about history and human development are prime sites of Eurocentrism in action. Murals gracing the halls of many a government building in white settler so cieties are especially obvious examples. The small town of Magdalena in Sonora, Mexico hosts a vivid illustration. Magdalena is an important destination for religious pil grims from northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, for it is where a beloved Italian Jesuit missionary,

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Father Eusebio Kino is buried. The mausoleum built around Father Kino’s grave in 1966 is adorned with a mural depicting his work in the region. A small plaque explains Father Kino’s life and describes his missionary efforts from 1687 to his death in 1711. Father Kino, the plaque indicates, founded 30 pueblos (settled communities of native peoples) and was a ‘‘defender of the indigenous peoples.’’ In addition: ‘‘He taught them to build homes and to carry out farming and herding.’’ The mural painted by Nereo de la Pen˜a tells a classic Eurocentric story about history, development, and colo nialism. In the segment pictured here, Father Kino is on the left, a Native American group on the right (see Figure 1). Each is portrayed prior to their encounter, which is depicted in the space between them. Father Kino is shown sitting on his horse, gazing into the dis tance, surveying the lands claimed by the Spanish Crown. The maps looming above Father Kino are indicative of his assignment as Royal Cartographer; as explained in the plaque, Father Kino was a ‘‘respected scientist who dis covered that Baja California was a peninsula and not an island as the cartographers of the time erroneously be lieved.’’ Despite the heat of the Sonora Desert, Father Kino is fully clothed in heavy black robes. As evidenced by his solitary stance in the desert, Father Kino is a fearless explorer, missionary, and colonizer. To the far right of Father Kino is pictured a group of Native Americans – portrayed as a nuclear family – from Pimeria Alta, the Spanish colonists’ name for northern Sonora and southern Arizona. In contrast to Father Kino, the native people are representatives of their kind rather than individuals with names. They are scantily clad: the

Figure 1 Father Kino’s mausoleum, Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico.

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children are completely naked while the adults cover their genitals with rough skins; the woman’s prominent breasts are bare. Lying at the feet of this native group are the fruits of their technological achievements: baskets and pottery. Their agriculture is portrayed as a chaotic patch of maize stalks; they appear to have no other food. The man and boy hold small, rustic looking weapons. Directly above the adult male’s head is a native symbol (although it looks more like a brand once used to mark slaves and cattle as property). The encounter between them is pictured between these two sets of images. Here, Father Kino is portrayed as a teacher: he instructs a native man, now wearing pants, how to use a horse drawn plow, a technology used in the Mediterranean. The result is a tidy, neatly ar ranged agricultural ﬁeld. Through religious instruction and technological diffusion, the image suggests, Native Americans are civilized and transformed into orderly and productive individuals. In what ways does this mural represent Eurocentrism in action? In other words, how does this mural reﬂect and reproduce a Eurocentric story? First, the mural suggests that history and development are driven by Europe. America is nothing – naked and unorganized – until awoken by a European man. Like many of its kind, this Eurocentric story of development reﬂects gendered hier archies: America is feminized, a Sleeping Beauty awaiting the touch and tutelage of her Prince. Second, Father Kino appears to explore and colonize alone, without the as sistance or participation of native peoples as guides or allies. Hence, the cartographic knowledge he produces is portrayed as the solitary outcome of his explorations.

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Europeans appear to be innately capable of conquest, colonization, and accurate cartography. Third, develop ment is unidirectional: innovation ﬂows from Europe to others. It is Father Kino who brings technology to the Americans, who only have baskets and pottery, which are associated with women’s work. In this way, native tech nologies are further feminized, while European technol ogy is pictured as a horse drawn plow driven by a man. Fourth, Europe gives, but is not transformed by the pro cess. As the embodiment of European civilization, scien tiﬁc knowledge, colonial power, and religious authority, Father Kino is already a fully formed individual. It is the naked, unnamed, and undeveloped native peoples who need formation. Through such framings, European and Indian become ﬁxed identities, hierarchically organized racial categories that purport to tell the truth about their inner qualities. Fifth, the relationship between adult and child is used as a metaphor for development and mapped onto the racial categories of European and Indian. In the mural, native peoples are infantilized and pictured as Father Kino’s pupils; in religious terms, he is literally their father. Through his instruction, they are guided through the stages of growth to become mature adults. Finally, colonialism is pictured as a benevolent process and is about spreading the fruits of European knowledge and development. The violence of colonialism is concealed and rendered unimportant to the overall story of progress. The mural points to key elements of Eurocentrism. First, Eurocentric modes of representation produce po larized and hierarchical stories featuring the West and the Rest as the primary characters. Regions outside of Europe only come on the stage of world history when they are colonized by Europe; their cultural and technological achievements may be appropriated, but their contributions to modern formations are occluded. As a consequence of such representational practices, world regions and cultures appear as autonomous, bounded units, each with their own characteristics. The interconnections between them are rendered invisible or unimportant. Second, Eurocentric representations make the West the beacon of enlighten ment and progress by concealing and denying the vio lence, genocide, and dispossession of colonialism. Western myths of modernity, Enrique Dussel argues, justify colo nialism in terms of the gifts of enlightenment and civil ization given to its victims. These elements of Eurocentrism are alive and well in schools and universities today. They are put into action through the continuing use of dualistic models that make Europe or the West the referents of analysis, the yardsticks by which to analyze and represent other peoples and places. In the nineteenth century, Western scholars deployed dualisms like civilized/barbaric or advanced/backward to organize the world’s people through reference to the racial superiority of Europeans. Since the mid twentieth century, knowledge is organized through dualisms like modern/

traditional, developed/undeveloped, core/periphery, or developed/developing. These dualisms replace notions of racial difference with cultural conceptions of development and progress. However, the dualisms of the past are not so different from those commonly used today: both sets of conﬁgurations make the West the referent of analysis; both treat each side of the dualism as a bounded and discreet entity unto itself; both posit evolutionary schemas through which societies inevitably progress; and both have their genesis in colonial or imperial relations of power. The discursive formations may have shifted but the underlying presumption of a superior white Western self as referent of analysis remains the same. The continuing authority of these dualisms as valid tools to organize and understand the world pivots on the erasure of their provincial origins. In addition, the intersection between academia and geopolitical power means that Western scholarship de ﬁnes the frames of reference with which others must engage to be intelligible/legible. European or Western theories, concepts, and models are held up as universally applicable and treated as valid tools with which to analyze the world in all times and places. Social scientists commonly deploy concepts like capital, class, and patri archy as though they can be applied universally without a prior analysis of if and how they are constituted and given meaning in particular places. As a consequence, argues Dipesh Chakrabarty, European or Western thin kers are the only ones alive in the social sciences, no matter how long they have been dead. For Chakrabarty, this form of Eurocentrism is evident when scholars the world over must refer to European history and concepts to obtain international recognition, but Westerners are not obliged to reciprocate. In short, ignorance of the non Western world and its scholarship does not affect the quality, objectivity, or reception of Eurocentric work.

Critiques of Eurocentrism and Their Limitations in Geography There have been critiques of colonialism and imperialism ever since there were colonial and imperial subjects. However, critical analyses of Eurocentrism as a totalizing meta narrative about world history and development emerged in the era of anticolonial and anti imperial revolutionary movements after World War II. Initially, these critiques were elaborated in the form of empirical debates about the privileged position of Europe in world history. The rise of Europe thesis postulates that Europe’s dominance on the world stage is the result of special qualities internal to it, which led it to catapult ahead of everyone else in the late 1400s by reaching the previously unknown continent now called America. Inspired by the revolutionary and anti imperial sentiment of the day, non European and European scholars alike drew on

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emergent empirical evidence to argue that Europe was not more progressive or technologically advanced than other societies in the 1400s and in fact, was on the margins of the world system at that time. Researchers also contested the argument that the Eurocentric capit alist world system is the result of European superiority and demonstrated how this system came into being through European colonial expansion and the systematic dispossession and underdevelopment of its colonies. Such studies treat the developed and underdeveloped regions, not as mutually exclusive and static categories, each with their own cultural traits, but as intimately linked in his torical, politico economical, and epistemological terms. Although these inﬂuential critiques have sparked new lines of inquiry in geography, Eurocentric versions of his tory and development continue to overshadow the discip line, structuring silences and limiting the kinds of questions that will be asked. In James Blaut’s view, the continued acceptance of Eurocentric interpretations must be under stood in the context of the West’s powerful position in global geopolitics. Eurocentrism, Blaut argues, is simply ‘‘the colonizers model of the world.’’ As such, criticizing Eurocentrism on the grounds that it is built upon factual errors, untruthful beliefs, or ahistorical visions of develop ment will not lead to its undoing. Contesting Eurocentrism and challenging its on going hegemony in geography ne cessitates analyzing the discipline itself at institutional and epistemological levels.

Eurocentrism and Geography’s Hallowed Halls Anthropology, geography, linguistics, and other social sciences were constituted in and through a colonial social order. Western academia speaks from this privileged position, a place of enunciation rooted in imperial power. Geography was instrumental in colonial and imperial exploration and mapping, as well as strategies of and justiﬁcations for dispossession. For instance, the Spanish Crown made the production of geographical knowledge integral to the consolidation of colonial power when it commissioned the Relaciones Geogra´ﬁcas in 1577. Spanish authorities obtained important knowledge about popu lations, languages, and physical terrain in New Spain, but they considered the maps they obtained to be useless failures because many reﬂected a native cosmology and therefore were deemed unintelligible. Geographical modes of looking at and representing the world, then, have been historically centered in and central to Euro pean colonialism; they also are Eurocentric. This history is key to the discipline’s formal in corporation into Western academic structures and the ethnic and gender composition of its practitioners. The continuing dominance of Western white men of elite or middle class standing in geography departments is

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evidence of this history. Indeed, geography as a discipline presumes and universalizes a white, Western masculine subject position as the norm, the frame of reference, and referent of analysis. Feminist geographers challenge geographical claims to universality on the grounds that they mask and protect very particular masculinist inter ests and perspectives; however, feminism has not been immune to Eurocentrism. Indeed, feminist geography has been accused of projecting a white, Western middle class feminine subject as the frame of reference and referent of analysis. Moreover, institutional practices in graduate pro grams, tenure and promotion processes, publication re view, as well as funding in Anglo American geography tend to privilege Anglo American scholarship and Euro centric ways of knowing and writing. European or Western scholars are the mainstay of scholarship. Latin Americanist geographers, for instance, are not obliged to refer to Latin American scholarship to produce work that will be given the stamp of approval in the ﬁeld. Geog raphers situated in other parts of the world, however, ﬁnd that they must engage Western scholarship to be recog nized as international. In Anglo American institutions, international is a circumscribed imaginary. Publishing in Latin American journals, for example, will not be given the same intellectual weight by tenure and promotion committees or funding agencies as Anglo American or European journals. In addition, the discipline of geography has difﬁculty attracting and retaining scholars of non European des cent. Indeed, individuals with established careers along with promising graduate students have left the discipline. As the dominant sociospatial experience in geography, whiteness distorts our intellectual production and en sures that Eurocentrism lives on in the discipline. Al though geography is not alone in its disciplinary history, ﬁelds such as anthropology have made more systematic and systemic efforts to transform their institutional structures, the gender and ethnic composition of their departments, and therefore the kinds of knowledge produced. Eurocentric Epistemologies To comprehend the continuing power of Eurocentric ways of knowing and conceptual strategies in the dis cipline, geographers are increasingly pointing to the hegemony of speciﬁc epistemologies and the ontologies they enable. As a discipline built on Western phil osophies, geography is structured by a set of ontological ruptures; speciﬁcally, the Cartesian split between mind and body, reason and material world, wherein rationality is framed as external to the body and embodied experience. In addition, this framework empties the body and material world of meaning and signiﬁcance

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Eurocentrism

while objectifying them as available for interrogation, measurement, and analysis. Given that Descartes pos itioned the mind in an instrumental relationship to the body and material world, this dualism also inscribes hierarchy and domination into the relationship between things. These ontological ruptures underwrite conventional notions of objective knowledge production as a de cor porealized and de contextualized process. Claims to ob jectivity and therefore universality are founded in the assumption – as in the act of taking on and taking for granted – of an unmarked rational gaze that is stripped of and separated from the body, material social relations, and geographical location. The ‘geographer as objective observer’, then, is fashioned as surveying the world from an elevated vantage point that is out of reach for those seen as closer to the ground, caught up in the corpore alities and banalities of daily life. This practice of self fashioning is built upon acts of exclusion: historically, only white Western men were deemed capable of bodily transcendence. Women and non Western peoples have been constituted as incapable of transcending their bodies and therefore seen as incapable of rationality and knowledge production. Knowledge is framed as the ex clusive property or expression of the geographer as ob jective observer rather than something that emerges from embodied interactions between geographers and other subjects or entities. These practices of self fashioning in geography ensure the perpetuation of Eurocentrism. Claims about ‘what’ the world is like – and therefore who ‘we’ are – are increasingly understood as grounded in speciﬁc epistemologies. In geography, certain epis temologies are validated and given preference over others. D. P. Dixon and J. P. Jones III identify the epis temology of the grid as particularly important, for it is the procedure for segmenting a dynamic, complex, and interconnected social reality to capture, measure, and analyze it. Imposed upon the world as a way of knowing, this grid has become inseparable from the social order it is meant to describe and analyze. Reality has come to seem segmented; the ontological boundaries between, for example, mind and body, culture and nature, structure and agency, public and private appear natural to the so cial order, rather than the outcome of speciﬁc represen tational practices. Categories are treated as ﬁxed and associated with speciﬁc characteristics. When privileged in geography, these epistemologies enable Eurocentric ontologies. When imposed upon other ways of knowing, they become tools of Eurocentric violence.

Undoing Eurocentrism Undoing Eurocentrism in geography is no small task. The colonial order of things constitutes the present and

therefore will surely inform the future. A wealth of geo graphical scholarship in the last decade has gone a long way in challenging Eurocentrism on empirical grounds. Rather than sustaining polarizing accounts that center on the West and the Rest, new research focuses on unearthing connections and co productions between people and pla ces. Geographers increasingly shed light on the dark side of modernity and illustrate how the everyday discourses and practices of colonialism are integral to the emergence of modern sociospatial formations. In short, efforts to de colonize knowledge are now widespread and may soon be mainstream. However, empirical efforts alone will not undo the prevalence of Eurocentrism in geography, for it is en trenched in our institutional structures and methodo logical frameworks. Although racial identity is not coterminous with a particular perspective, concerted ef forts to transform the gender and ethnic composition of geographical institutions will create space for other ex periences and interests. Following from this are strategies to de colonize pedagogical conventions and content. Do curricula in geography at undergraduate and graduate levels perpetuate Eurocentric histories, geographies, ontologies, and epistemologies? Do we encourage learn ing about other ways of knowing and being? Do we teach students to see how the privileges of Eurocentrism and whiteness work to sanction ignorance of the ontological and epistemological pluralism that make up our world? To what extent do we insist that researchers engage with a diverse range of scholarship? Do our pedagogical practices police students’ writing styles in order to pro duce de corporealized and de subjectivized narratives wherein the geographer is everywhere and nowhere? Are diverse methodological approaches encouraged, so that instead of studies on, geographers might collaborate with others to co produce knowledge? The subdiscipline wherein these questions are most actively engaged is feminist geography; women of color in particular push the discipline in new directions. Antiracist feminist research is built upon relational ontologies grounded in embodied epistemologies that move beyond the segmentation and hierarchy of the grid. In Katherine McKittrick’s work, for instance, black women’s geographies are treated as integral rather than marginal to regulatory systems of domination and clas siﬁcation. In addition, antiracist feminist geographers have spearheaded and institutionalized the notion of situated knowledge, which implies recognizing that knowledge comes from somewhere: geography, history, social position intersect to constitute knowledge that is necessarily partial, selective, and incomplete. As a methodological practice, situating knowledge enables the production of nongeneralizing knowledges that engage with and learn from other knowledges. To this end, antiracist feminist geographers also challenge the

Eurocentrism

discipline to pursue alternative research methods that enable engagements with other ways of knowing. One such strategy is collaboration and a number of antiracist feminist geographers have produced innovative works that topple the geographers’ position of authority and create spaces for exchange and surprise. Collaboration across social, political, and economic boundaries breaks up alliances between whites (whether conscious or not) that historically have worked to sustain white hegemony in academia. Situating knowledges and collaborating are strategies for undoing the Eurocentrism symbolized by Father Kino, sitting on a horse, elevated and separated from his subjects, whose authority as a producer of knowledge is founded in his position as a colonizer. The notion of walking together, feet on the ground, offers a more humble, corporeal metaphor for geographical research and promises to enable rich and exciting engagements with the ontological and epistemological pluralism that constitutes our world. See also: Feminism/Feminist Geography; Green Revolution; Orientalism; Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies; Whiteness.

Further Reading Abu Lughod, J. L. (1989). Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250 1350. New York: Oxford University Press. Amin, S. (1989). Eurocentrism (transl. Moore, R.). New York: Monthly Review Press. Blaut, J. M. (1993). The Colonizers Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History. New York: The Guilford Press.

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Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Coronil, F. (1996). Beyond occidentalism: Toward nonimperial geohistorical categories. Cultural Anthropology 11, 51 87. Dixon, D. P. and Jones, J. P. (1998). My dinner with Derrida, or spatial analysis and poststructuralism do lunch. Environment and Planning A 30, 247 260. Dussel, E. (1995). Eurocentrism and modernity. In Beverley, J., Aronna, M. & Oviedo, J. (eds.) The Postmodernism Debate in Latin America, pp 65 76. Durham: Duke University Press. Landers, E. (2000). La Colonialidad del Saber: Eurocentrismo y Ciencias Sociales. Perspectivas Latinoamericanas. Buenos Aires: CLACSO. Mahtani, M. (2004). Mapping race and gender in the academy: The experiences of women of colour faculty and graduate students in geography departments in Britain, the US and Canada. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 28, 91 99. McKittrick, K. (2006). Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Mignolo, W. (1995). The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Nagar, R. (2006). Playing with Fire: Feminist Thought and Activism through Seven Lives in India. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Pulido, L. (2002). Reﬂections on a white discipline. The Professional Geographer 54, 42 49. Slater, D. (1992). On the borders of social theory learning from other regions. Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 10, 307 327. Wolf, E. (1982). Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Relevant Website http://www.lib.utexas.edu Relaciones Geogra´ﬁcas Collection, Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin.

Europe M. Kuus, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary The European Union The European Union (EU) is a political project and a form of legal organization. Growing out of four decades of political integration in Europe, the EU was established by the Treaty on European Union (The Maastricht Treaty) in 1992. It exists ‘‘to organize, in a manner demonstrating consistency and solidarity, relations between the Member States and between their peoples’’ (Article 1 of the Treaty on European Union). The EU currently has 27 member states. Although the various treaties that form the legal basis of EU’s activities do not ofﬁcially confer legal personality on the EU, the Union does have a single institutional structure and a corpus of law (acquis communautaire). Adopted by the author from the glossary section of the EU homepage.

Introduction Europe is not simply a (sub)continent located between the Atlantic and the Urals. It is also a complex and contested idea and political project. The daily uses of the term ‘Europe’ are inextricably tied to a geographical imaginary in which Europe occupies a privileged position as a space of progress and enlightenment. Parallel with this valorization of Europe, as the term is increasingly used as shorthand for the European Union (EU), it has also become a codeword for faceless bureaucracy that undermines the continent’s deeply rooted national identities. This view also involves a geographic imaginary, one in which the continent of Europe is, or should be, a patchwork of territorially and culturally distinct nations. Close analyses of the (re)demarcation of Europe’s external borders and the (re)deﬁnition of political identities inside these borders are key themes in geographic scholarship on Europe.

The Borders of Europe The concept of Europe as a territorial unit with a distinct political identity is relatively recent. Although the term ‘Europe’ entered the vocabulary of the continent’s pol itical elite in the late Middle Ages, it denoted the realm of Christendom rather than a geopolitical or cultural entity. The modern conception of Europe as a territorial unit governed by the balance of power among key states and clearly set apart from non Europe emerged after the

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religious wars of the seventeenth century. It was, indeed, only in the eighteenth century, in the context of Euro pean exploration and colonialism, that secular theories about Europe’s borders, identity, and historic mission became mainstream. The burgeoning inﬂows of infor mation about distant places, the increasing trade and travel within Europe, and the intellectual currents of the Enlightenment created a sense of a common identity among Europe’s political elite. From the beginning, the modern idea of Europe emerged as a territorial concept. In particular, Europe was deﬁned in contrast to what was conceived as non Europe, especially the East. The political border of the emerging entity of Europe had no clear physical markers – although the cartographers of the Russian Czar Peter the Great placed it in the Ural Mountains in the 1700s. Deﬁning Europe, therefore, involved making place out of space and imbuing that place with an idealized notion of European ness. In particular, it involved deﬁning the East as fundamentally different from, and an external threat to, (Western) Europe. Even today, evoking Europe involves drawing explicit or implicit boundaries between the putative enlightened, peaceful, and progressive West – and Europe as its birthplace and a key center of gravity – and various relatively backward Easts. The concept of Eastern Europe is a key example of that process. It was invented in the eighteenth century, when the Ottoman Empire declined in power and Western Europe needed new markers against which to demarcate itself. Eastern Europe was deﬁned as being of Europe by geography, but as still being in the process of becoming European in a political and cultural sense. It emerged not as irredeemably alien, but as a halfway house between Europe and Asia: not simply backward, but a learner, an experiment, and a testing ground. A similar process of creating internal repositories of un European ness occurred with respect to the Balkans; that region, too, was invented, especially in the nineteenth century, as a part of European identity construction. To highlight these processes of boundary making is not to deny that the eastern and southern parts of Europe differ from the western part of the continent, and they have been markedly poorer than (the core of) Western Europe for centuries. It is rather to highlight a framework of meaning in which complex economic and political dif ferences are conceptualized in terms of proximity to, or distance from, the core or essence of European ness. Europe thus emerges not as a place but as a political idea. There has never been one clearly deﬁned unit of

Europe

Europe. We can rather think of its meaning in terms of a process of inscription in which places are included in an idealized European sphere by inscribing them with shades and degrees of European ness. Even during the Cold War, when the division of Europe into East and West was perhaps the most clear cut, Europe and European ness remained ambiguous and contested ideas. On the one hand, the Cold War geopolitical discourse tended to lump east central Europe together with the Soviet Union as the constituting ‘other’ of the West. Analyses of Central Europe frequently exoticized the region quite similarly to other ‘non Western’, and hence, ‘backward’ regions. At the same time, the Soviet Union and its satellite states were also viewed as capable of industrial, scientiﬁc, and technological development. They did not fully ﬁt the image of the backward and fundamentally un European East. They were never fully outsiders; they were rather conceived as having not yet begun to fully participate in European politics. After the end of the Cold War, questions about the borders of Europe intensiﬁed. The Cold War had im posed a political order that had muted questions about the essence and borders of European identity. These questions were re opened in the 1990s. The borders between East and West were not erased, however, but reconﬁgured. On the one hand, as the Soviet Bloc was no longer extant and east central Europe became the object of the Western led transition effort, the region was ‘downgraded’ on the scale of development and European ness. It became a space of Western tutelage, conceptualized as a variant of the Third World. On the other hand, the erstwhile Soviet satellite states came to be viewed as, at least potentially, a part of Europe. ‘Return to Europe’ became the central theme in the foreign and domestic policies of the postsocialist states, and these states’ integration with the EU was widely viewed as a uniﬁcation of Europe (Table 1). European ization as a move toward Europe became the key lens through which complex societal problems came to be understood. The concept of Central Europe is illustrative of the post Cold War re drawing of Europe’s political and cultural borders. That concept was invented in the 1980s by Polish, Hungarian, and Czechoslovakian dissident intellectuals. They deﬁned Central Europe in terms of Europe, as ‘the kidnapped West’ – a region that is cul turally in the heart of Europe, but politically incorpor ated into an alien and ultimately Asiatic Soviet sphere. They differentiated Central from Eastern Europe in terms of the presumed moral superiority of the fully European Central Europe over the less European Russia. Central Europe’s chief reason for being was – and is – to be distinct from Eastern Europe. The concept under mines the Cold War era demarcation of Europe, but not the overarching framework of Europe and the East. It is a

645

Table 1 Brief chronology of the development of the European Union, 1952 2007 1952

1957

1973 1981 1986 1993 1995 1999 2004

2005

2007

Creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) by Belgium, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands (Treaty of Paris) Two treaties of Rome, creating the European Economic Community (EEC, later EC for European Communities) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) Accession of Denmark, Ireland, and the UK to the EC Accession of Greece to the EC Accession of Portugal and Spain to the EC Foundation of the European Union (EU) as successor to the EC (Treaty of Maastricht, signed in 1992) Accession of Austria, Finland, and Sweden to the EU The Euro is ofﬁcially launched (comes into common circulation in 2002) Accession of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, The Czech republic, the Slovak republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta, and Cyprus the EU European Union opens accession negotiations with Turkey and Croatia. The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is granted candidate status Accession of Bulgaria and Romania the EU

Source: Author compilation from the European Commission website.

mechanism of shifting Eastness further east. Places like Croatia, Turkey, and Macedonia, to name the current applicants, can increase their European ness and shift themselves closer to Europe if they follow EU recom mendations. Thus, even though the EU and North American Treaty Organization (NATO) enlargement processes have undermined, perhaps even dissolved, the Cold War era division of Europe into two, they have simultaneously fueled a more complex division of the continent into the European core, and various eastern and southern peripheries that are inscribed with lesser degrees of European ness. In the West, Europe’s political and cultural border used to be relatively unimportant for decades following World War II, as Atlanticism provided the framework in which European identity was conventionally understood. However, the traditional Atlanticist conceptions of close political and cultural proximity between Western Europe and North America have come under pressures in recent years, most notably since the US led war in Iraq in 2003. Tensions between US foreign policy and European public opinion have fueled questions about whether Europe has developed, is developing, or should develop its own identity as a global political actor outside the framework of Atlanticism. Whatever the substantive differences between the policies of the United States and its European allies, these debates have shown that the US and Europe still tend to deﬁne themselves in relation to each other. In the West, too, the borders of European identity are central to political debate about Europe.

646

Europe

In the south, the Mediterranean still provides a seemingly unambiguous geopolitical and geo economic border. Yet, even there, questions about Europe’s political and cultural borders are gaining prominence. Increased immigration, itself a part of Europe’s colonialist and imperialist legacies, problematizes the traditional deﬁ nition of political and cultural Europe. The EU’s own external policies, most notably the European Neigh bourhood Policy, are altering the EU’s interactions with its southern interior. It is certainly premature to speak of open and porous borders, as the EU is keeping its insti tutions tightly closed. However, EU’s external policies in the Mediterranean increasingly deploy the concept of European norms and European neighborhood to effect democratization and inﬂuence political affairs in the re gion. This could propel a certain opening of the concepts of European identity, European values, and ultimately, Europe in a political and cultural sense. The key point of these examples is that the political project of European integration is closely tied to the idea of Europe as a geographical, geopolitical, and cultural entity. The bounding of Europe in a political and cultural sense is not an abstract matter; it is a part of the very fabric of Europe’s relations with the rest of the world. EU practices toward its eastern and southern exterior in creasingly frame differences not in terms of ﬁxed pos itions of inside or outside the Union, but in terms of a continuum of European ness. They deploy the argument of ‘all but membership’, advocating the operation of EU norms without formal membership. Until the 2007 en largement, the EU’s inﬂuence on the applicant states involved the carrot of eventual membership. It appears that no such direct promise is offered to today’s outsiders, as the enlargement processes have slowed down since the ‘big bang’ expansion in 2004. As a consequence, the EU’s external relations in its immediate neighborhood will be effected less through administrative mechanisms of ac cession negotiations and more through narratives of European identity and values. When political actors like Russia or Ukraine conform to the so called European norms, they are framed as moving to Europe; when they resist, they are framed as still distant from Europe and still in the process of learning European ness. The EU’s neighbors are not framed as ‘outside’ the European sphere; they are rather cast as further away from the core of the European cultural area. Yet these neighbors are not promised an ‘inside’ position either. Rather, they are in corporated into a spatial logic that assigns them onto locations on a scale of European ness. The metaphor of learning European norms denotes not simply a har monization of technical standards; it also inscribes a political and cultural hierarchy of European ness. To expose and unravel this hierarchy, current scholarship on the concept of Europe increasingly foregrounds the presence of the East in Europe and vice versa. The

scholarship is ﬁrmly situated in broader critiques of, and developments in, area studies and postcolonial theory. As a result, as John Pickles points out, the cartographies and geographies of ‘Europe’ are being destabilized and de colonized. Europe is becoming a more ambiguous and potentially a more open category.

The Nation-State in European Political Identity Parallel with the re demarcation of Europe’s external borders, there has also been a re scaling and re territor ialization of political identities inside these borders. This raises difﬁcult questions about the role of Europe’s tradi tionally strong nation states in European identity con struction. The growing inﬂuence of EU institutions is a catalyst here. True, the EU is a community of nation states, and intergovernmentalism is a key principle in EU insti tutions, especially in the spheres of foreign and security policy as well as justice and home affairs. The EU budget makes up less than 2% of the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of the member states. However, although the nation states maintain decisive role in a number of matters, EU regulations play an important role in ‘how’ the nation state regulates these issues. This role cannot easily be measured, but it is estimated that over 50% of national legislation of the member states is adopted in reference to EU laws and programs. Furthermore, Europeanization involves not only the technical transplantation of EU standards and procedures; it also transforms economic, political, and social processes. It not only regulates be havioral and policy outcomes, but also reshapes the pro cesses by which political subjects are produced. It is not imposed on political subjects, like nation states, from above; it is an integral part of decision making and identity formation at the state and local level. Europeanization destabilizes the territorial imagina tion in which political space consists of a patchwork of culturally distinct communities – nations. It challenges the traditional framework of discussing European identities in terms of categories like ‘the Finns’, ‘the French’, or ‘the Dutch’. They re territorialize identity upward toward the EU, downward toward cities and regions, and horizontally through cross border regions. There is a vibrant geo graphic scholarship on such initiatives. It shows a fascin ation with, and insurgence of, premodern and nonstate regionalisms, ranging from the large transnational net works around the Baltic Sea region, the North Sea region, and the Danube region, to the much smaller cross border regions like Galicja or Catalonia. This scholarship also foregrounds the deep entrenchment of the nation state in European political identities. The role of central state in public expenditures has not declined substantially, and the nation state remains the key mechanism of political

Europe

legitimation. Nationalism is reproduced not only ofﬁcial state policies, but also, and more importantly, through everyday life. Cross border cooperation does not neces sarily undermine nationalism; it can also entrench national boundaries. Although the state centric view has been de bunked, geographic research cautions against uncritical celebrations of new ‘neo medieval’ spatialities with over lapping spheres of authority. Regional and local identities are not necessarily more ‘natural’ or more progressive than national ones. Europe’s deeply territorialized national and regional identities have an uneasy relationship with European integration. The claims that EU rules contradict and undermine local traditions have been used for decades by the left and the right alike. Right wing populist move ments, in particular, view the EU as a force of top down globalization and rootless cosmopolitanism, one that erodes the essential link between land and people in Europe. The EU emerges in such arguments as the ul timate ‘other’ of such Europe of nation states. Across Europe, the deepening of integration and the expansion of the Union have been accompanied by greater emphasis on national and state sovereignty. For example, UK, Denmark, and Sweden have stayed out of the Eurozone in marked part due to popular concerns over sovereignty. The relative weakening of state authority has therefore not necessarily increased identiﬁcation with Europe; it has also fueled voter apathy and Euroskepticism. In the new member states, sovereignty has emerged as the rhetorical touchstone by which to express the dis illusionment with national governments as well as EU institutions. Populist politicians have used social issues like same sex marriage, abortion, and the role of religion in public life to mobilize sentiments of national excep tionalism and Euroskepticism. Ironically, the social issues listed above are in the jurisdiction of the nation state anyway; the rhetoric of sovereignty shows not just an attachment to the status quo but also a widespread ig norance of how the EU operates. EU institutions have taken notice of the absence of a European demos; at tempts to create a common European identity are among their policy priorities. Immigration is one of the most prominent and sen sitive political issues in today’s Europe. Throughout most of the post World War II era, most of Europe’s nation states have been highly homogenous. Europe is certainly diverse in ethnic and linguistic terms, but the individual nation states are often highly homogenous (Table 2). In the last few decades, there has been a relatively rapid increase of immigrant population, and even greater public perception of such increase. Although the majority of immigrants in Europe are from other EU member states (and are, hence, nominally ‘European’), migration has fueled tensions over the role of non nationals in the political and cultural life of the nation states. All EU

Table 2 countries

647

Foreign-born population in selected European

Country

Foreign-born population as share of total population, 2005

Austria Belarus Belgium Bulgaria Cyprus (Republic of) Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom

15.1 12.2 6.9 1.3 13.9 4.4 7.2 15.2 3.0 10.7 12.3 8.8 3.1 7.3 14.1 4.3 19.5 4.8 37.4 2.7 10.1 7.4 1.8 7.3 0.6 8.4 2.3 8.5 8.5 12.4 22.9 1.8 14.7 9.1

Source: United Nations ‘World Migrant Stock’ Database, 2005.

members imposed restrictions on the free movement of labor from the new member states in 2004 (and again in 2006, in anticipation of the 2007 enlargement). The marked presence of Muslims in Europe has highlighted unresolved questions about the meanings and limits of multiculturalism and republicanism. States are increas ingly demanding afﬁrmation of loyalty and belonging, and placing greater emphasis on the obligations of citi zenship. Immigration has also fueled the securitization of national identities and state institutions, that is, the framing of these identities as under threat, and therefore, in need of emergency assistance from the state. Immi gration and security concerns have thereby become powerful mechanisms of legitimizing state power. The underlying point here is that the re territorialization of political identity in Europe is not simply a trend in which the national scale loses and the local scale gains. Rather, multiple scales of identity construction, including the national, are deployed and reconﬁgured simultaneously.

648

Europe

Conclusion Geographic research shows that Europe is not simply a descriptive term but a powerful normative concept – closely bound up with geographical and territorial deﬁnition – that should be interrogated in its own right. Since the end of the Cold War, the concept of Europe has moved center stage in political rhetoric in Europe, and yet, evoking that concept activates several, sometimes contradictory, geographical imaginations. Europeanist geography picks apart the sim plistic narrative of a linear movement toward a uniﬁed Europe, in harmony with national identities and with the various outsiders, which represents Europe’s ‘true’ core identity. It shows that the bounding of Europe is best viewed in terms of a multi layered and contested process in which economic and cultural integration are sometimes on different pathways. The re inscription and re demarcation of Europe is not a practice that emanates from the center; it is also practiced on the margins, like the new member states. The normative space of EU inﬂuence, that is, the space in which the Union has a constitutive inﬂuence on social relations, is expanding, even if the Union’s membership remains unchanged for years to come. This process is open ended; it could both open up the concept of Europe and entrench current spatial hierarchies. As a range of complex social and political processes are explicitly or implicitly conceptualized in terms of European ness, the borders of Europe will not dissolve but multiply. See also: Communist and Post-Communist Geographies; Nationalism; Sovereignty; State.

Further Reading Agnew, J. (2005). Bounding the European project. Geopolitics 10, 575 580. Agnew, J. (2005). Territoriality and political identity in Europe. In Berezin, M. & Schain, M. (eds.) Europe Without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship, and Identity in a Transnational Age, pp 219 242. New York: Columbia University Press. Bialasiewicz, L. and Minca, C. (2005). Old Europe, New Europe: For a geopolitics of translation. Area 37, 365 372. Dunn, E. (2005). Standards and person making in east central Europe. In Ong, A. & Collier, S. (eds.) Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, pp 173 193. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Heffernan, M. (1998). The Meaning of Europe: Geography and Geopolitics. London: Arnold. Heffernan, M. (2007). Geography and the Idea of Europe (Hettner Lecture). Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.

Jones, A. (2006). Narrative based production of state spaces for international region building: Europeanization and the Mediterranean. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96, 415 431. Kaplan, D. and Hakli, J. (eds.) (2002). Boundaries and Place: European Borderlands in Geographical Context. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleﬁeld. Kofman, E. (2005). Citizenship, migration and the reassertion of national identity. Citizenship Studies 9, 453 467. Kuus, M. (2004). Europe’s eastern enlargement and the re inscription of otherness in east central Europe. Progress in Human Geography 28, 472 489. Mamadouh, V. (2003). 11 September and popular geopolitics: A study of websites run for and by Dutch Moroccans. Geopolitics 8(3), 191 216. McNeill, D. (2004). Urban Change and the European Left: Tales from the New Barcelona. London: Routledge. Moisio, S. (2006). Competing geographies of sovereignty, regionality and globalisation: The politics of EU resistance in Finland 1991 1994. Geopolitics 11(3), 439 464. Murphy, A. B. (1999). Rethinking the concept of European identity. In Herb, G. & Kaplan, D. (eds.) Nested Identities: Nationalism, Territory, and Scale, pp 53 73. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littleﬁeld. Neumann, I. B. (1999). The Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Paasi, A. (2001). Europe as a social process and discourse: Considerations of place, boundaries and identity. European Urban and Regional Studies 8, 7 28. Painter, J. (2002). Multilevel citizenship, identity and regions in contemporary Europe. In Anderson, J. (ed.) Transnational Democracy: Political Spaces and Border Crossings, pp 93 110. London: Routledge. Pickles, J. (2005). ‘New cartographies’ and the decolonization of European geographies. Area 37, 355 364. Scott, J. W. (2002). A networked space of meaning? Spatial politics as geostrategies of European integration. Space and Polity 6, 147 167. Shore, C. (1999). Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration. London: Routledge. Sidaway, J. (2001). Rebuilding bridges: A critical geopolitics of Iberian transfrontier cooperation in a European context. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, 743 778. Stenning, A. (2005). Out there and in here: Studying Eastern Europe in the West. Area 37, 378 383. Stolcke, V. (1995). Talking culture: New boundaries, new rhetorics of exclusion in Europe. Current Anthropology 63, 1 20.

Relevant Websites http://www.coe.int Council of Europe. http://www.ccre.org Council of European Municipalities and Regions. http://europa.eu European Union: In particular, see the Public Opinion Analysis section of the European Commission; Glossary section of the European Commission site. http://www.osce.org Organization for Security and Co operation in Europe.

Europe of Regions J. W. Scott, University of Joensuu, Finland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Cohesion Principle of promoting economic prosperity and social justice within the European Union (EU) in order to avoid socioeconomic fragmentation and greater regional disparities. Federalism Form of political organization deﬁned and guaranteed by national constitutions, in which the activities of government are divided between central and subnational governments in such a way that each level of government is responsible for speciﬁcally deﬁned tasks on which it makes ﬁnal decisions. Multilevel Governance A political concept that interprets contemporary political relationships within the EU, Europe as consisting of overlapping authorities and competing competencies at the supranational, national, and subnational levels. Regionalism The advocacy of a political system that divides national territories into partially autonomous regions and that involves a sense of loyalty to and an active representation of the interests of a particular region or of groups of regions. Regionalization A process of dividing national territories into subunits for purposes of political decision making and/or public policy. Regional Policy A policy that aims at decreasing socioeconomic differences within national territories (and the European Union) by providing incentives for investment and growth in speciﬁcally designated regions. Subsidiarity A principle according to which each level of political decision-making authority is responsible for those public tasks that it is best suited to fulﬁll. Structural Policy A policy that addresses the longterm improvement of growth and economic performance of states and regions through a variety of incentives, investments, and sectoral measures.

Introduction The development of the European Union (EU) has been closely associated with and inﬂuenced by regional scale and the evolution of regional perspectives on various political, economic, and social issues. Indeed, the mod ernization of regional development policies has been one of the most visible successes of European construction. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the idea of a Europe of Regions was a deﬁning element of the

European Community’s grand political project of inter state integration. In a strict sense, the Europe of Regions suggested a redoubled focus on socioeconomic equity (cohesion) within an enlarging political community as well as a shift in decision making powers away from the nation state. Conﬂating notions of economic com petitiveness, democratic governance, subsidiarity, and cultural identity, ofﬁcial policy discourse fed expectations that regions would be given a greater voice and more active role in formulating community policy. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 did indeed establish a basis for regional representation within the EU. However, many of the regionalist scenarios envisaged for post Maas tricht Europe have not materialized; ultimately, nation states remain principal actors within the EU and, generally speaking, there is little evidence of a serious challenge to a nationally deﬁned sense of identity and citizenship. Fur thermore, the ability of regions to actively participate within systems of multilevel governance is as varied as the political functions, roles, and territorial dimensions of the regions themselves. While several regions within the EU (e.g., in Spain and Germany) have become important political actors and have been able to enhance their inﬂuence within Eur ope, many others are little more than consultative bodies or quasi nongovernmental development agencies. Measured against initial expectations, the creation of new institutions representing regional interests within the EU has been rather modest as well. Reﬂecting a loss of momentum in European regionalization processes, contemporary debate on the future of the EU rarely mentions a ‘Europe of Regions’ in explicit terms. At present in fact, questions of national sovereignty and identity and the deﬁnition of speciﬁc roles of individual member states within the EU appear to have pushed regional issues somewhat to the sidelines. Despite this, however, regional scale remains a powerful leitmotiv of governance and development within the EU. This is due to the sheer scope of governance challenges facing an enlarged and extremely heterogeneous EU. Both political demands from the subnational level as well as a perceived need for more effective regional development policies and coordin ation mechanisms necessitate some form of regional participation.

Europe of Regions as a Political and Sociospatial Project Regions in Europe can be understood as subnational ter ritories where ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and/or eco nomic structural characteristics help create (actively or

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passively) a sense of common identity. Regionalism in Europe is thus in principle a political ideal that seeks to maximize the participation, inﬂuence, and development potential of regions within the wider context of interstate integration. This ideal, furthermore, is premised on the assumption that regions – because of the dense social, economic, and cultural relationships that provide them a sense of identity – are an essential locus of growth and democratic governance. Admittedly, this notion of ‘the region’ largely reﬂects a regionalist understanding that is historical in nature. Indeed, many regions within Europe have a powerful sense of local identity and distinctiveness that has emerged as a result of both experiences with and struggles over political autonomy. Ethnic, linguistic, and cultural traditions have also fostered a sense of regional uniqueness in many parts of Europe. Examples of such ‘historically distinct’ regions include Scotland and Wales in the United Kingdom. Scotland, for example, is in many respects a nonsovereign nation within the United King dom with its own parliament and social and religious in stitutions. Europe abounds with other examples of historically and culturally deﬁned regions that claim (and to an extent have received) a greater voice in political matters such as Wallonia and Flanders in Belgium; Cata lonia, Galicia, and Valencia in Spain; Alsace, Bretagne, and Occitania in France; and Southern Tyrol in Italy. Even the trinational Swiss–French–German Dreyeckland centered on the city of Basel has lobbied for a certain degree of recognition as a culturally cohesive and functio nally interdependent region. Furthermore, in some areas regional separatist movements present a serious challenge to national authority. The Basque country which straddles parts of Northeastern Spain and Southwestern France (the Paı´s Basco and Pays Basque, respectively) is a case in point. Corsica’s demands for autonomy from France are another. Another type of politically visible region in Europe is characterized by subnational levels of government in federal states. The German states (La¨nder), which share power with the national government, also possess a certain degree of regional identity although many of them were created as amalgamations of historical regions. Originally, the notion of a Europe of Regions was informed by a set of demands formulated by advocates of subnational representation within European institutions. This set of demands included (1) recognition of the cultural diversity of regions, (2) creation of a regional parliamentary body with formally deﬁned decision making powers and guarantees of participation in de cision making processes, (3) the formal recognition of subsidiarity as a political principle (this demand was in fact enshrined in Article 3b of the Maastricht Treaty and later in both the Amsterdam and Nice Treaties), and, ﬁnally, (4) guarantees of the right of subnational gov ernments (regions, provinces, etc.) to address grievances

directly to the European Court of Justice. Europe of Regions thus describes a political project that aims both to broadly promote regional development and to strengthen the governance role of subnational units (re gions) within the EU. Indeed, the EU Commission sug gests that a more direct experience with European integration and greater understanding for the importance of promoting integration can only develop out of a sense of regional–local empowerment. It must be emphasized that Europe of Regions, both as a concept and a political project, has evolved in response to long standing tensions within the EU. Debates over the remits of EU institutions and the degree of federalization of decision making processes continue to mark divisions between member states. At the same time, however, regions with increasing or well established political bases and/or economic clout have clamored for greater self determination and have criticized what they see as centralizing tendencies within the EU. Governance and Cohesion: Policy Roles of Regions within the EU From an ofﬁcial EU standpoint, the achievement of co hesion and good governance are central goals of inter state integration. With the objective of economic and social cohesion, the EU aims at ‘‘reducing disparities between the levels of development of the various regions and the backwardness of the least favoured regions or islands, including rural areas.’’ Cohesion policies, such as those deﬁned in the EU’s 2000 Lisbon Agenda, seek to promote growth, competitiveness, and employment while emphasizing environmental sustainability. With good governance, on the other hand, a responsive and demo cratic institutional architecture are understood to be prerequisites for integration. The 2001 white paper on European governance has deﬁned ﬁve principles that underpin good governance: openness, participation, ac countability, effectiveness, and coherence. With govern ance the EU aims at a process of community building based on common rules as well as on adherence to a comprehensive set of political and ethical values. Within this metadiscursive context regional scale is judged to be of central importance. It is here – at least theoretically – where the EU’s multiple objectives of economic dyna mism, efﬁciency, democracy, and empowerment translate into concrete development projects. Indeed, for over 30 years regions have represented a central focus and addressee of EU policies. The European Regional Development Fund was established in 1975 in order to address industrial crises and underdevelopment within member states. During the ﬁrst years of the Fund’s existence, the European Commission acted as an adminis trator on behalf of national development interests, dis bursing regional assistance according to ﬁxed quotas.

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However, progressive reforms of the ERDF in the 1980s, accompanied by the accession of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain to the Community, established a new regional development agenda with a much more differentiated ap proach. With the establishment in 1988 of the Structural Funds (in effect consolidating all regional and sectoral aid programs within one policy instrument) regional policy was essentially denationalized; the EU assumed a major role in deﬁning speciﬁc target areas and regional problems to be addressed. Furthermore, many regions have been able to develop policy partnerships directly with Brussels, drawing up strategic plans and projects that subsequently have re ceived support from Brussels. Since 1988, numerous pro grams and initiatives have been launched with the express goal of creating new development perspectives for per ipheral areas, agricultural regions, regions in industrial de cline, areas undergoing rapid structural transformation, etc. In addition, European policy established a framework for cooperation and knowledge exchange between different regions in various areas of economic, social, and spatial development. Some of the – evocatively named – structural initiatives have included RESIDER (restructuring of steel making regions), LEADER (development strategies for rural regions), KONVER (conversion of military instal lations to civilian use), RENAVAL (assistance to regions characterized by large shipbuilding industries in crisis), and RECHAR (assistance to mining regions). With the current programming phase (2007–13) of the European Structural Funds, emphasis has been put on the notion of territorial and socioeconomic cohesion and a streamlining of com munity initiatives. Cohesion focuses on economic devel opment in poorer regions (‘convergence’), the enhanced economic performance of more prosperous regions (‘com petitiveness and employment’), and cross border net working between different types of regions within the EU (‘territorial cooperation’). Figure 1 provides an overview of the eligibility of European regions for convergence and competitiveness programs. In addition to regional policies, spatial planning at the EU level also promotes a decidedly regional perspec tive within the larger post 1990 geopolitical context of European development. This has culminated in the elaboration of a European Spatial Development Per spective (ESDP). Although not a community level policy in the sense of agriculture or regional development, ESDP is a policy framework of an advisory nature agreed by the European Ministers of Spatial Planning in 1999 that enshrines sustainable economic development and socioeconomic cohesion. Central to ESDP is a focus on regional urban systems, urban–rural relationships, access to development opportunity structures, and a concern for a diverse natural and cultural heritage. In terms of the policy objectives mentioned above, Europe of Regions suggests a long term strategy of cre ating ﬂexible territorial contexts for governance and

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socioeconomic cohesion within the supranational frame work of the EU. By the same token, it is important to mention that since the mid 1990s there has been a dis cursive shift increasingly away from empowerment and cultural variety cum identity toward a more neoliberal interpretation of cohesion, namely, one that favors entrepreneurial spirit, the role of small and medium size enterprises (SMEs), regional innovation, and culture as an economic asset. Regional Institutions and Organizations in Europe One of the most important demands of European re gionalists is that of a greater regional voice with regard to various societal issues – both within member states and the EU. As a result, the political project of a ‘regional Europe’ has taken concrete institutional form. Presently, a variety of organizations dealing with different policy agendas operate at the European level, several of them including regions outside the EU 27. Among these bodies are the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR, established in 1971), the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions of Europe (CPMR, created in 1973), the Assembly of European Regions (AER, founded in 1985), and the Congress of Local and Regional Author ities of the Council of Europe (founded in 1994). The most authoritative regional institution to date is the Committee of the Regions (CoR), a political assembly made up of 317 representatives of local and regional au thorities. Established in 1994 as a result of the Maastricht Treaty (Article 198a), the CoR is a consultative body that facilitates subnational representation in the development of EU legislation. In addition, CoR attempts to provide a direct institutional link between local governments, citi zens, and the EU. As stipulated in the Treaty, the Euro pean Commission and Council are required to consult CoR on legislation with clear regional and local ramiﬁ cations. Within the Maastricht framework ﬁve policy areas for local/regional consultation were identiﬁed (economic and social cohesion, trans European infrastructure net works, health, education, and culture). With the Amster dam Treaty of 1999 these policy areas were expanded to encompass employment policy, social policy, the en vironment, vocational training, and transport. Outside these areas, the Commission, Council, and European Parliament have the option to consult the CoR on issues judged to have important regional or local implications. The CoR can also draw up an opinion on its own ini tiative, which enables it to put issues on the EU agenda. Another important level of institution building in the sense of a Europe of Regions are semiformalized networks that operate as lobbies, discussion forums, and platforms for joint projects. There are numerous examples of these networks including the EUROCITIES network of major

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European cities and METREX, The Network of European Metropolitan Regions and Areas. In addition, many subregional networks ﬂourish. Prominent among these are those that focus on cooperation between Baltic Sea regions and regions (e.g., the Baltic Sea portal, the Baltic Islands network, and the Baltic Euroregions network).

Regionalization Processes and Patterns In addition to regional policies and institution building, the Europe of Regions has also been characterized by a process of regionalization: that is, of a gradual creation of regional administrative units entrusted with various public policy remits. European regional policy began in the late 1980s to direct development aid to speciﬁc subnational and cross border contexts. This reform was reinforced by parallel processes of regionalization in which subunits of member states, such as France, Spain, Italy, and the UK, were ac corded a larger role in deﬁning their futures and inﬂu encing European policy. Regionalization has proceeded apace with the most recent EU enlargements in 2004 and 2007 as new member states with generally centralist tra ditions have experimented with the reorganization of ad ministrative space. In this latest regionalization phase, EU requirements have played an essential role; administrative decentralization has been made a prerequisite for the disbursement of structural development funds. The process of region building within the EU has, of course, been uneven. This is partly due to the lack of a unitary framework that deﬁnes regions as such, for ex ample, in political and functional terms. While often based upon historical and cultural traditions, other regionalizing policies have been adopted by states as a means of ra tionalizing administration, managing internal change, and satisfying EU demands. As a result, the participation of regions within national and European policymaking pro cesses is dependent on their status within national con texts; Spanish regions, the Comunidades Auto´nomas, might have considerably more powers than Re´gions in France but lack the basic and constitutionally deﬁned co decision making powers of German La¨nder. At the same time, there are few regions below the level of the German La¨nder that enjoy political legitimation. Devolution in the UK has been an issue of according Wales and Scotland greater autonomy but rather less one of empowering the English regions in administrative political terms. The situation is similarly heterogeneous in the new member states of the EU. In 1999, Poland opted for a dual system similar to that of France in which the regions, wojewo´dstwo, are represented by regionally elected ofﬁcials and ap pointed agents of the central government. Hungary, on the other hand, has created seven new regions that are ba sically vehicles for regional development policies and

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managed largely by Quasi Nongovernmental Organisa tions (QUANGOs) ﬁnanced by the central government. Cross-Border Regions as a Case in Point Regions on the internal and external borders of the EU represent a speciﬁc case of regionalization. Here, the EU has played a crucial role in supporting local and regional cross border cooperation as these are seen to be important aspects of interstate integration and a mechanism for deepening relations with non EU neighbors. It has also been argued that transnational regionalism contributes to community building through promoting processes of so cial learning and that political support of cooperative projects addressing speciﬁc regional problems will help create a citizen’s Europe. INTERREG, now in its fourth phase (2007–13), has supported numerous transboundary and transnational cooperation projects between regions (Figure 2 indicates the regions eligible for INTERREG IV funds). Financed out of the EU’s structural funds, INTERREG has disbursed well over h10 billion making it the community’s largest structural initiative. In addition, programs targeted for Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, most prominently PHARE and TACIS, have provided supplemental funds for cross bor der projects in regions on the EU’s external boundaries. So called Euroregions were pioneered and developed as locally based cooperation initiatives in the Dutch– German border regions as early as the 1960s. Indeed, the Dutch–German EUREGIO, a Euroregion with its own local council and close ties to German and Dutch state agencies, has served as a model of sorts for the devel opment of border region associations both within and outside the EU. Figure 3 depicts one of the German– Polish border regions where Euroregions have been established since 1993 in anticapation of Poland’s EU membership. The Euroregion ‘Pro Europa Viadrina’ has its administrative center in the twin cities of Frankfurt (Oder) and Slubice. The main goal of Euroregions and similarly named organizations is to promote binational initiatives that address speciﬁc economic, environmental, social, and institutional problems affecting their re spective regions. These associations, many with cross border local government associations, represent an additional tier of regional administration and play a vital role in channeling European regional development aid into the border regions. According to the organizational principles of the original EUREGIO, community based associations designed along these lines have established secretariats to deal with day to day management. In order to structure their long term operations and, at the same time, satisfy new European requirements for re gional development assistance, Euroregions periodically deﬁne Transboundary Development Concepts (TDCs) that identify principal objectives of transboundary

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Figure 3 German Polish Border Region (Euroregion Pro Europa-Viadrina with ‘‘twin cities’’ on the border. Source: Brandenburg Ministry for Infrastructure and Spatial Planning).

cooperation and deﬁne possible courses of action. TDCs build the basis for concrete projects, proposals for which can then be submitted to the EU, national governments, or other funding sources for support.

Criticism of the ‘Europe of Regions’ Concept European regionalism is not without its contradictions. Despite decades of regional support there remain great regional differences in the levels of development and socioeconomic well being. As the EU Commission’s Third and Fourth Reports on Social and Economic Co hesion document, despite increases in general welfare, the imbalances between Europe’s core areas and its vast peripheries remain and that depopulation of many rural zones continues unabated. Furthermore, regional dis parities as well as cultural and political heterogeneity are certain to increase as a long term result of enlargement. Discourses of interregional competition and economic

efﬁciency, often informed by neoliberal ideology, clash with principles of solidarity and spatially balanced eco nomic development. The normative assumptions that inform the EU’s re gionalist perspectives have thus been subject to ample critical scrutiny. One issue in this context is the one sided inﬂuence of powerful and prosperous regions in Western Europe and their attempts to deﬁne the EU’s regionalist agenda. For example, the regions of Catalonia, Lombardy, Baden Wu¨rttemberg, and Rhone Alpes which form the self styled ‘Four Motors’ of economic development in Western Europe, maintain a club like character, and have attempted to inﬂuence European discourses on govern ance and regional policy. As a result, such regional strengths have contributed to exacerbating core–per iphery differences not only in economic but also in political terms through the emergence of powerful lob bies centered upon prosperous urban regions. For the weaker or rather artiﬁcially created regions, many of them that are little more than arbitrarily deﬁned ad ministrative units, it seems doubtful that they can develop

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Figure 4 Campaign poster of the Coalicio´ Valenciana denouncing illegal immigration, insecurity, Catalan inﬂuences, and a lack of attention to ‘Valencian’ interests.

an autonomous basis for economic growth and political power. The experiences of new member states, such as Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic, are indica tive of this situation; regionalism in post socialist Hun gary has not been the outcome of internal political, economic, or cultural developments. Instead, it is a pol itical process initiated in response to integration into the EU and that has resulted in ad hoc regionalist arrange ments. Under such circumstances, regional economic dynamism and competitiveness could, ironically, largely depend on levels of state support and state involvement in promoting speciﬁc initiatives. In addition, the cases of Greece, Portugal, and other countries indicate that re gional boundaries can be shifted for politically expedient reasons, such as responding to changes in EU eligibility rules for development aid. Finally, regionalism is not by deﬁnition a necessarily progressive concept. On the contrary, it can give sus tenance to reactionary, particularistic, and exclusionary political forces that share little of the political idealism of Brussels. While perhaps not part of the mainstream, these regionalist groupings inﬂuence debates regarding iden tity and citizenship and the general openness of Euro pean society. The Coalicio´ Valenciana (see Figure 4) is a good example of this tendency; in their 2007 local elec tion campaign in the Autonomous Community of Val encia they have deﬁned corruption, illegal immigration, and insecurity, and, curiously, the advance of ‘Catalanism’ as major threats to Valencian interests.

endogenous economic dynamism appear reserved for the most prosperous and politically well organized regions. In addition to this, progressive enlargements of the EU, and the historic 2004 accession of 15 new member states in particular, have added new layers of complexity to the regional map of Europe. Continued ﬁscal retrenchment will increase divergence between prosperous and poor regions. Furthermore, the extent to which decentral ization might provide greater powers to the new regions of Central and Eastern Europe is as yet unclear. What economic, social, cultural, and political roles might then regions realistically fulﬁll in terms of the construction of a European political community? There is no clear answer to this. A Europe of Regions can be interpreted as an attempt to reconcile seemingly antagonistic tendencies of centralization and local empowerment and, at the same time, promote the idea of an integrated European social, economic, political, and cultural space. However, it should be emphasized that there is no single regional idea or uniform concept with which to frame regions as politic ally meaningful actors within the EU. Europe of Regions can therefore be characterized as an uneven political project, as a long term debate over the role of local so cieties and changing perceptions of the governance role of the state; it is indicative of a negotiated and by no means always harmonious rescaling and reconﬁguring of Euro pean governance upward toward international organiza tions, downward to cities and regions, and horizontally across nations, regions, and communities.

Conclusions: Where does the Europe of Regions Stand Today?

See also: Europe; New Regionalism; Region; Regional Development, Endogenous; Regional Integration; Regionalism.

Measured against initial expectations, the concept of a Europe of Regions has provided rather mixed results. On the one hand, regions have become a major focus of EU structural policies and billions of Euros have been allo cated for development projects in a wide variety of re gional contexts. On the other hand, power sharing and

Further Reading Allen, J., Massey, D. and Cochrane, A. (1998). Rethinking the Region. London: Routledge. Anderson, J. (2001). The rise of regions and regionalism in Western Europe. In Guibernau, M. (ed.) Governing European Diversity, pp 35 64. London: Sage.

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Ash, A. (1999). An institutionalist perspective on regional economic development. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 23, 365 378. Ash, A. and Tomaney, J. (1995). The regional dilemma in a neo liberal Europe. European Urban and Regional Studies 2, 171 188. Brenner, N. (2000). Building ‘Euro Regions’. Locational politics and the political geography of neoliberalism in post uniﬁcation Germany. European Urban and Regional Studies 7, 319 345. European Communities (2004). A New Partnership for Cohesion, Convergence Competitiveness, Cooperation. Third Report on Economic and Social Cohesion. Luxembourg: Ofﬁce for Ofﬁcial Publications of the European Communities. European Communities (2007). Growing Regions, Growing Europe. Fourth Report on Economic and Social Cohesion. Luxembourg: Ofﬁce for Ofﬁcial Publications of the European Communities. Hadjimichalis, C. and Hudson, R. (2007). Rethinking local and regional development: Implications for radical political practice in Europe. European Urban and Regional Studies 14, 99 113. Hueglin, T. (1986). Regionalism in Western Europe: Conceptual problems of a new political perspective. Comparative Politics 18, 439 458. Jones, B. and Keating, M. (eds.) (1995). The European Union and the Regions. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Keating, M. (2001). Rethinking the region. Culture, institutions and economic development in Catalonia and Galicia. European Urban and Regional Studies 8(3), 217 234. Keating, M. and Hooghe, L. (2005). By passing the nation state? Regions and the EU policy process. In Richardson, J. J. (ed.) European Union. Power and Policy Making (3rd edn.), pp 239 255. London: Routledge. Loughlin, J. (ed.) (2001). Subnational Democracy in the European Union: Challenges and Opportunities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Painter, J. (2002). Multi level citizenship, identity and regions in contemporary Europe. In Anderson, J. (ed.) Transnational Democracy: Political Spaces and Border Crossings, pp 93 110. London: Routledge. Pa´lne´ Kova´cs, I. (2008). Regionalisation in Hungary: Options and scenarios on the ‘road to Europe’. In Scott, J. (ed.) New Regionalism

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in Socio Political Context: Space Making and Systemic Transformation in Central Europe and Latin America. Aldershot: Ashgate (in press). Sagan, I. and Lee, R. (2006). Spatialities of regional transformation in Central Europe and the administrative spaces of the EU. In Sagan, I. & Halkier, H. (eds.) Regionalism Contested. Institution, Society and Governance, pp 163 176. Aldershot: Ashgate. Scott, J. (ed.) (2006). EU Enlargement, Region Building and Shifting Borders of Inclusion and Exclusion. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Relevant Websites www.a e r.org Assembly of European regions. www.aebr.net Association of European border regions. www.ben.org Baltic Euroregion network. www.balticsea.net Baltic Sea Region Portal. www.cpmr.org Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions. http://www.coe.int Congress of Local and Regional Authorities. http://www.cor.europa.eu Committee of the Regions. http://ec.europa.eu EU Cohesion Reports and spatial planning documents website. http://www.4motors.org Four Motors. http://europa.eu Interactive maps of EU and regions in member states. http://forum.europa.eu.int Multimedia link of Eurostat Portrait of the Regions. http://ec.europa.eu Multimedia link of the European Union DR REGIO.

Evans, E. E. M. C. Keane, St Mary’s University College, Belfast, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evans, Estyn E (1905–1989) Emyr Estyn Evans was the most inﬂuential geographer working in Ireland in the twentieth century and, although the core of his work was the interpretation of the people and landscapes of Ireland, he was in no sense parochial. A pioneering researcher and charismatic teacher, his ideas continue to have an international reach. He was born on 29 May 1905 to the Reverend George and Elizabeth Evans in Shropshire, England, where his father ministered to a Welsh speaking Presbyterian congregation. The family soon returned to rural Wales and many of the ideas which later informed his schol arship may be traced to these borderland beginnings and to his experiences of the cross currents between non conformist and Anglican beliefs and between Welsh and English cultures. His familiarity with the countryside and with country people convinced him that they are the principal bearers of heritage and they, thus, became the focus of his life’s work. The years 1922–25 at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, where Evans studied geography and an thropology under Professor H. J. Fleure, were formative. Although Fleure’s background was in natural history, he promoted a humanistic trilogy of geography, anthropology, and history which reﬂect an integrated worldview and excluded contemporary ideas of racial purity. Evans later observed that Fleure had taught him to study regional social evolution as a continuous interaction between people and their environment and, through ﬁeld work in Wales and Wiltshire, had initiated his lifelong commitment to prehistoric archeology. For his MA (1931) thesis he ex plored the late Bronze Age in Europe, and in 1939 he was awarded a DSc for his accumulated scholarship. Earlier, in his outstanding BA dissertation on the Pyrenees, which preﬁgured his belief in the processes of cultural continuity and synthesis, Evans showed his fa miliarity with the ideas of the French geographers, es pecially Paul Vidal de la Blache. The thinking of the geohistorians of the Annales school also resonated with him, particularly their analyses of mentalite´s, Marc Bloch’s insistence that land, life, and history were in separable, and Fernand Braudel’s genius for synthesis. An early reference to mental outlook in his portrait of France later resurfaces as regional personality in his ac claimed Mourne Country. For Evans, the interconnection between habitat, heritage, and history, what he called human ecology, was the dynamic which gave each place its unique personality.

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Evans’ core work concentrated on elucidating the ecology of the cultures of Ireland, and from this concern grew a mutual and lasting bond between himself and Carl Sauer. His preferred method was ﬁeld study, weighing up what he could discover on and in the landscape with what he could glean from talking to the people who inhabited it. Irish Heritage and Irish Folk Ways established his dis tinctive voice and gained him a wide and, ultimately, international readership. His archeological excavations up until 1939 demonstrated the reality of the Irish Neolithic. He was convinced that Ireland’s island status and geo graphical isolation on the Atlantic fringe had ensured the continuity of artifacts and institutions from prehistory. His insistence that the intermingling of newer arrivals with settlers from the prehistoric past had been continuous rather than episodic was at variance with a nationalist orthodoxy, particularly that which argued that a Celtic invasion had created a discontinuity with the prehistoric. More recent excavations and improved scientiﬁc dating techniques have shifted the balance of evidence towards Evans’ continuity thesis, and a more generous view of the soundness of his scholarship has emerged. Evans had a pluralistic vision of culture in which na tional identities exhibit regional variations. These are cre ated by the adaptation and absorption of new arrivals and modulated by habitat, heritage, and history. He envisaged the Irish province of Ulster (with its individual personality) as one strong regional variant: Ireland in microcosm with its fragmented, regionalized subcultures. His explanation, corroborated by other studies, lay in the isolating effect of the border landscape, meaning that it remained the most Irish of Irish regions until the seventeenth century plan tation. However, in a society of contested identities and spaces, such an explanation has been read as scaffolding Ulster nationalism, in spite of Evans’ self imposed avoid ance of the controversies of politics and religion. In 1928, Evans founded the ﬁrst geography department in Ireland at the Queen’s University of Belfast. He struggled against resistance to the emerging discipline and the lack of resources afforded to it until an honors school was approved in 1947, two years after he had been appointed professor. Apart from sabbaticals in the US, Queen’s was to be his base for 40 years, after which he spent 2 years as the ﬁrst director of the Queen’s Institute of Irish Studies, ﬁnally retiring in 1970. Evans was a member of the Royal Irish Academy, president of the geography (1957) and anthropology (1959) sections of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and president of the Institute of British Geographers (1970).

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He was awarded six honorary degrees, the Victoria medal of the Royal Geographical Society (1973), a merit award from the Association of American Geographers (1979), and a CBE (1970). He produced seven major books, an array of academic papers, archeological surveys, excav ation reports, and more ephemeral public talks, ﬁeld ex cursions, and media contributions. Some of these were published posthumously in Ireland and the Atlantic Heritage. His material legacy, the Ulster Folk and Transport Mu seum (1958), records for posterity shared rural roots of a divided society in diverse parts of a complex region. Estyn Evans was an inﬂuential ﬁgure in the develop ment of cultural geography as a coherent ﬁeld of enquiry in the twentieth century. Although his concerns were local, they were part of a universal process and the human ecological approach he evolved to illuminate regional personality was more than just the synthesis of habitat, heritage, and history; it extended to the psy chological and spiritual realms. He was no stranger in his latter years, then, to geography’s cultural ‘turn’.

Evans, E. E. (1942). Irish Heritage: The Landscape, the People and their Work. Dundalk: Dundalgan Press. Evans, E. E. (1951). Mourne Country: Landscape and Life in South Down. Dundalk: Dundalgan Press. Evans, E. E. (1957). Irish Folk Ways, London. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Evans, E. E. (1966). Prehistoric and Early Christian Ireland: A Guide. London: Batsford. Evans, E. E. (1968). The Irishness of the Irish. Belfast: The Irish Association for Cultural, Economic and Social Relations. Evans, E. E. (1981). The Personality of Ireland: Habitat, Heritage and History (2nd edn.). Belfast: Blackstaff Press. Evans, E. E. (1984). Ulster: The Common Ground. Mullingar: Lilliput Press. Evans, G. (1996). Estyn: A biogeographical memoir. In Evans, E. E. (ed.) Ireland and the Atlantic Heritage: Selected Writings, pp 261 268. Dublin: Lilliput Press. Evans, E. E. (1996). Ireland and the Atlantic Heritage: Selected Writings. Dublin: Lilliput Press. Fleure, H. J. (1971). Emyr Estyn Evans: A personal note. In Buchanan, R. H., Jones, E. & McCourt, D. (eds.) Man and His Habitat: Essays Presented to Emyr Estyn Evans, pp 1 7. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Graham, B. J. (1994). The search for the common ground: Estyn Evan’s Ireland. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, New Series 19, 183 201.

See also: Anthropology and Human Geography; Cultural Geography; Geohistory; Heritage and Culture; Heritage and Identity; Historical Geography; Land Change Science; Landscape; National Schools of Geography; Nationalism, Historical Geography of; Place; Possibilism; Regional Geography I; Sauer, C.; Sense of Place; Vidal de la Blache, P.

Relevant Websites

Further Reading Campbell, J. A. (1996). The writings of E. Estyn Evans 1926 88. In Evans, E. E. (ed.) Ireland and the Atlantic Heritage: Selected Writings, pp 261 268. Dublin: Lilliput Press. Evans, E. E. (1937). France: A Geographical Introduction. London: Christophers.

http://www.uftm.org.uk This is the website of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum which highlights a memorial to the work of E Estyn Evans. http://www.ulsterhistory.co.uk Ulster History Circle: this website provides a picture of Estyn Evans and another of the blue plaque which identiﬁes his home in Belfast as that of Estyn Evans, the geographer.

Evolutionary Algorithms N. Xiao, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Efﬁciently solving optimization problems has been a great challenge to researchers from a wide range of dis ciplines, including computation science, mathematics, operations research, and geography. A typical example of such optimization problems is the traveling salesman problem that requires searching for a path such that a salesman can visit each of a set of cities exactly once and return to the starting city in the least cost (measured by the overall time or distance). The difﬁculty of solving this type of problem is that the time required to ﬁnd an op timal solution may become exceedingly prohibitive for problems with large sizes (measured by the number of input). It has been proved, for example, that the com putation time used to solve the traveling salesman problem grows exponentially with the number of cities, which makes it one of the most difﬁcult optimization problems to solve. For many optimization applications, though a global optimal solution is useful, ﬁnding a high quality solution (i.e., optimal or near optimal) in a reasonable time frame may become more important in a practical sense. Based on this belief, researchers have developed a variety of heuristic approaches, which can be used to ﬁnd good solutions efﬁciently though the optimality of solutions found cannot be guaranteed. A particular type of heur istic approach is called metaheuristics, which provide general frameworks to address a variety of optimization problems. Typically named after their metaphors or origin, metaheuristic approaches include artiﬁcial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms (EAs), Lagrangian re laxation, simulated annealing, and tabu search. Different from other metaheuristic approaches, EAs are based on the maintenance of a population of solutions to the problem being solved. EAs represent a problem solving paradigm in artiﬁcial intelligence with an aim to develop computer programs that can be used to search for solutions with limited human input. Since the 1960s, researchers in different countries started developing a family of solution approaches that share a set of char acteristics. The work of Rechenberg and Schwefel has led to the emergence of evolution strategies (ESs) that can be used to solve real valued parameter optimization prob lems. Fogel and his collaborators developed evolutionary programming (EP) that is suitable to search for ﬁnite state machines in artiﬁcial intelligence domain. Holland developed genetic algorithms (GAs) using binary strings

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as a generic representation of solutions. Koza’s genetic programming (GP) evolves computer programs as pars ing trees. These procedures have been found robust in solving optimization problems in various ﬁelds such as engineering design, operations research, and spatial op timization. Three major academic journals have been dedicated to this area, including Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, and Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines.

Design of Evolutionary Algorithms To develop an EA, regardless of its ﬂavor, one needs to include the following basic components: 1. a population of individuals, each of which represents a solution to the problem being solved; 2. a ﬁtness function that can be used to evaluate each individual; and 3. a reproduction process that selects (parent) solutions from a current population and creates (offspring) in dividuals that form the next generation of the population. With the above components, an EA can be generally outlined as follows: 1. randomly generate a population of individuals 2. repeat (a) compute the ﬁtness of each individual in the current population (b) create a new population of individuals by se lecting parent individuals from the current population and recombining them to form new individuals (c) modify individuals in the new population using a mutation operation (d) replace the current population by the new population 3. until termination criteria are met. The general EA procedure can be illustrated using an example that maximizes function f (x1, x2, x3) ¼ x21 x2 x3, where x1, x2, and x3 are integers in the range from 0 to 7. To design an EA for this problem, a binary rep resentation can be used so that each of the three variables is represented using three bits and the length of an in dividual solution is therefore 9. Individual 011001010, for example, represents a solution of (3, 1, 2) that yields an

Evolutionary Algorithms

objective function value of 6. In this example, the ob jective function is directly used as the ﬁtness function. Suppose a population contains four individuals. A hypothetical initial population of four individuals, along with their corresponding decoded variables and ﬁtness function values, are shown in Figure 1a. Figure 1b shows a scenario where parent solutions are selected from the initial population and are used to generate four new individuals. Note that the initial individual with the highest ﬁtness value is selected twice, reﬂecting the concept of ‘survival of the ﬁttest’ – better individuals have a higher chance to be selected. Figure 1c shows the impact of a mutation operation. It can be noted that the best individual in the resulting offspring has a higher ﬁtness value. A commonly used termination criterion is the total number of generations that can be determined by prior trials of the algorithm. Another useful termination con dition is based on the improvement: an EA stops when it cannot achieve signiﬁcant improvement. The mutation process is often conducted with a relatively low probability, meaning only a small portion of the population is altered. It should be noted that most of the terms (e.g., popu lation, mutation, and selection) used in an EA have their biological roots. An individual is often called a chromo some; for each element of an individual, a possible value is

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called an allele; the recombination operation is called crossover in many contexts, especially in GAs.

Representation and Evolutionary Operations The binary representation (Figure 1) has its limitations when real numbers or other types of data must be used. Though this can be addressed by specifying the precision of each variable and then transforming them into in tegers, a more straightforward (and perhaps more nat ural) way is to directly use real numbers. For the example problem in Figure 1, if the integer requirement is re laxed, a string of three real numbers (x1, x2, x3) can be used to represent a solution. In this case, the one point recombination method (see Figure 1b) will become naı¨ve because merely switching the elements between two parent solutions will not provide enough search power. New recombination methods can be derived using a general form: xi0 ¼ f (xi1, xi2), where xi0 , xi1, and xi2 are the i th element in the new and two parent individuals, respectively. A commonly used form is xi0 ¼ (1 ai) xi1 þ ai xi2, where ai is a random number between 0 and 1. A number of mutation operations can be designed for a real valued representation. A uniform random form can

0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0

f (2, 5, 4) = −5

1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0

f (4, 6, 2) = 8

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1

f (5, 3, 3) = 19

0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0

f (1, 2, 6) = −7

(a) 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 0

0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1

f (2, 7, 3) = −6

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1

1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0

f (5, 1, 4) = 20

1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0

1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1

f (4, 7, 3) = 6

1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

f (5, 2, 2) = 21

0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1

0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1

f (2, 7, 4) = −6

1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0

1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0

f (5, 1, 4) = 20

1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1

1 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1

f (4, 5, 3) = 8

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0

f (7, 2, 2) = 45

(b)

(c)

Figure 1 An example of EA. (a) An initial population of four individual solutions using a binary representation. For each binary string, every three bits starting from the left represent an integer ranging from 0 to 7. The ﬁtness value of each individual is also shown. (b) A recombination operation called single point crossover for two pair of solutions selected from (a). The recombination process works by switching the bits after a randomly determined position. The shaded cells are used to illustrate the effect of the operation. (c) A mutation operation applied to the four new individuals in (b); note that only two bits (shaded) are undergone the mutation process.

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be used to yield a random number uniformly distributed between the lower and upper bounds for an element of the solution that undergoes a mutation process. A normally distributed mutation can be designed as xi0 ¼ xi þ N(0, si), where si is a user speciﬁed standard deviation for the i th element.

Fitness Evaluation and Selection Given the representation of a solution, an evaluation function must be deﬁned to compute the ﬁtness of each individual. Though this function is not necessarily the objective function of the original problem, it is nor mally derived from the objective function so that a solution that is closer to the optimum is assigned a higher ﬁtness value and a solution further away from the optimum has a lower ﬁtness value. In some circum stances, one can use the rank of each individual as a ﬁtness value. The selection operation is inspired by the notion of ‘the survival of the ﬁttest’ of the Darwinian evolutionary theory. Two types of selection procedure are commonly used in EAs. The ﬁrst type is the proportional selection in which the probability that the i th P individual is se lected can be calculated as pi ¼ f i = Nj¼1 fj , where fi is the ﬁtness function value of the i th individual and N is the number of individuals in a population. This pro cedure is also called the roulette selection because it is similar to the mechanism of a roulette wheel. The second type is called tournament selection in which a ﬁxed number (deﬁned a priori ) of individuals are randomly picked from the population and the one with the highest ﬁtness value is selected. In general, a selection operation is directly related to the reproduction process by determining which indi viduals in the current generation will survive. In GAs, the population size is normally maintained constant and the new generation of individuals is used to replace the current generation. For example, the four individuals in Figure 1c will become the individuals in the next gen eration. In a more general context (especially in evo lutionary strategies and evolution programming), however, the following two types of selection and reproduction methods can be deﬁned. 1. (m þ l) selection. Here, the population size is m, and l new individuals are created using recombination and mutation operations. Then, the best m individuals are selected from m þ l (parents and offspring) individuals to form the next generation of the population. 2. (m, l) selection. With m individuals (old generation), a total of l (l > m) individuals will be created. Then the best m individuals are selected from the l individuals to form the new generation.

Constraint Handling For many real world optimization problems, the feasi bility of their solutions is often deﬁned by a set of con straints. The traveling salesman problem, for example, requires that a tour should not repeat any city that has already been visited and that the tour should include all cities. In EAs, constraints can be handled in three different ways. The ﬁrst method is based on a penalty function that decreases the ﬁtness function value of individuals that violate constraints and therefore decrease their chances of survival. The second method is to use algorithms to force feasibility of every individual in the population; these algorithms normally repair infeasible solutions during the recombination and mutation processes to make them feasible. The third type of method is based on constraint preserving evolutionary operations that will not create infeasible solutions; these approaches are often based on a particular encoding/decoding strategy such that infeasible will not occur during evolutionary processes. A typical example is a particular EA designed for the traveling salesman problem. Let n be the length of a sorted list of cities. When n ¼ 5, the cities can be listed as C ¼ (1 2 3 4 5). A chromosome is a string of n integers, where the value of the i th element ranges from 1 to n i þ 1. For a chromosome of (2 3 2 1 1), the ﬁrst element is 2, meaning the ﬁrst city to visit is the number 2 element in C. Now, remove the number 2 element from list C and look at the next number in the chromosome. This number is 3, which refers to the third number in the remaining list of C, and therefore the second city to visit is 4. This process con tinues until the tour is constructed as 2 4 3 1 5. This en coding/decoding strategy will guarantee the feasibility of solutions created by a traditional cross point recombination and random mutation operations.

Exploitation, Exploration, and Diversiﬁcation The impact of selection techniques on the overall con vergence of an EA is measured by selection pressure, the preference given to the best solutions in the current population. A low selection pressure may make an EA similar to a random search where good solutions found are treated equally as low quality solutions. A high se lection pressure, on the other hand, often causes the best solutions found to be trapped into some local optima because a few good solutions at the early stage of the evolutionary process may quickly take over the entire population. To address this dilemma, one must consider the bal ance between the exploitation of information obtained so

Evolutionary Algorithms

far and the exploration of new information that is yet to discover. A selection operation is exploitative because it tends to choose good solutions and eliminate undesirable ones. Recombination and, especially, mutation operations are explorative because they are designed to introduce new individual solutions to the population. A key concept for the design of EAs is diversity, measured by the overall difference among all individuals in a population. A diverse population will reduce the chance of an EA to be trapped in local optima and will increase the chance of exploring new information. Though diversity can be achieved by simply increasing the use of mutation, doing so may not be able to preserve a number of good solutions in the population. A common way of maintaining diversity is through a sharing function: ( shðd Þ ¼

1 0

ðd=sshare Þa

if d osshare otherwise

where d is a distance measure between any two solutions, sshare is a user speciﬁed distance threshold, and a is a user speciﬁed coefﬁcient (often set to 0.5, 1, or 2). Using this function, a niche count Pcan be computed for each indi vidual solution: nci ¼ j shðd ij Þ, where dij is the distance between individuals i and j, and nci is the niche count of the i th individual in a population. For an individual, a high niche count means there are many similar solutions (deﬁned by d) and the solution is overrepresented. 0 Therefore, by calculating a shared ﬁtness as fi ¼ fi/nci, where fi is the original ﬁtness of the i th individual, it is possible to give underrepresented solutions (with low niche count) a high chance to survive. A drawback of using the sharing function is the pos sibility of losing the best solution found. To address this issue, a mechanism called elitism is often employed so that the best solution found so far is always maintained in the population throughout all generations.

Schema Theorem To explain why GAs (and EAs in general) work, Holland deﬁned a schema as a similar template that describes a subset of strings with similarity at certain string positions. He introduced a ‘don’t care’ symbol (*) to represent a string element that can be either 0 or 1. For example, the schema 11**1 is a template of four possible strings: 11111, 11011, 11101, and 11001. The order of a schema is de ﬁned by the number of its ﬁxed positions (0’s and 1’s), and the deﬁning length of a schema is the distance between the ﬁrst and last ﬁxed positions. According to these deﬁnitions, 11**1 has an order of 3 and a deﬁning length of 4. In a GA, if a schema can yield a high ﬁtness during an iteration, it will have a greater probability of being selected into the next generation. That is, the instances of

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this schema will increase in the next generation. This observation leads to the schema theorem: short, low order, above average schemata receive exponentially in creasing trials in subsequent generations. Based on this theorem, the building block hypothesis can be derived: a GA seeks near optimal performance through the juxta position of short, low order, high performance schemata, called building blocks.

Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms Many real world optimization problems involve mul tiple, often conﬂicting objectives. Political redistricting, for example, requires subdivision plans satisfy population equality and compactness, and possibly other objectives. Different from a single objective optimization problem, in which an optimal solution can be considered to be better than all other feasible solutions, a multiobjective optimization often has multiple optimal, or non dominated, solutions. Figure 2 illustrates an example with two objectives where the thick curve represents the locations of the nondominated solutions in which pre ferring a solution over the other means a gain in one objective but a simultaneous loss with respect to the other objective. To successfully solve such problems, it is important to ﬁnd many (if not all) optimal solutions and examine the trade offs among them. Two major types of EAs have been developed to solve multiobjective optimization problems. Aggregating ap proaches are the ﬁrst type that often uses a weighting scheme to scalarize the vector of multiple objective val ues into a single value (ﬁtness) and then a regular EA is applied. To implement this approach, the scalarization functions must be based on the relations among object ives, which may not be known in many real world situations. The second type of approach to multiobjective opti mization has attracted more attention in the literature, especially when the goal is to search for a variety of trade off solutions. The majority of these methods takes the notion of nondomination and then maps it to ﬁtness evaluation. In general, an individual will receive a high ﬁtness value if it is not dominated by any other indi viduals and it is located in a neighborhood (in a space formed by the objectives) with a relatively small number of other individuals. Suppose the black dots in Figure 2 represent the individual solutions in an EA population for one generation, solution B will be more favorable than A, though both are nondominated. In the context of multiobjective optimization, the diversity of a population has two perspectives. First, the solutions need to be dif ferent in the solution space formed by the parameters to be optimized. Second, solutions are also preferred to be different in the objective space formed by the objectives.

664

Evolutionary Algorithms Objective 2

A

B

Objective 1

Figure 2 The trade-off between two objectives. Both objectives are to be minimized. The shaded area represents the objective space formed by all possible solutions, where each location represents a possible solution to the problem.

B

(a)

(b)

4

2

5

1

(c)

3

A

(d)

(e)

Figure 3 An EA for solving site search problems. Each cell represents a land parcel that is often associated with an acquisition cost.

For multiobjective EAs, the latter version of diversity seems to be more important because one may hope a diverse population in the objective space will promote the chance to reach the optimal front (e.g., the thick line in Figure 2). More importantly, a diverse population will lead to a relatively even distribution of EA solutions on the front.

Spatial Optimization Using Evolutionary Algorithms A signiﬁcant number of optimization problems in geog raphy involve searching for an optimal conﬁguration of discrete spatial entities or activities with respect to a set of objectives. Examples include location–allocation problems, regionalization problems (school or electoral redistricting problems), and land acquisition problems. Many of these problems also have multiple objectives, especially for decision problems in the public sector that involve a variety of social, economic, and environmental factors.

For some spatial problems, it is straightforward to formulate them in an EA framework. To solve the p median problem, for example, a solution can be simply represented using a string of unique integers, each re ferring to a facility location. For other spatial optimiza tion problems, however, their spatial constraints will require a more careful EA design. Site search problems, for example, are often solved when a contiguous set of land parcels must be acquired so that the acquisition cost is minimized. To solve this kind of optimization problems with spatial constraints, it is important to incorporate spatial topological relationships into the evolutionary operations. Figure 3 illustrates the operations of an EA that can be used to solve a site search problem. Here, a contiguous set of ﬁve land parcels are to be acquired. Figure 3a shows a feasible solution where acquired parcels (shaded) are contiguous. Figure 3b shows an infeasible solution where acquired parcels are not contiguous. An initial ization process is demonstrated in Figure 3c where a seed parcel (marked as 1) is used to start a growth process

Evolutionary Algorithms

(in a sequence indicated by the order of the numbers) that continues until a full solution is created. Figure 3d shows the creation of a new solution by recombining solutions in Figures 3a and 3c. Note that the recombined solution often contains more than the required number of parcels and a repair process is needed to ensure a feasible solution. The repair process continuously removes par cels that can be excluded from the solution without violating the continuity requirement. Parcels in the parent solutions but not in the new solution (after repair) are marked in a ﬁll pattern. Figure 3e shows a mutation operation that creates a new feasible solution based on the solution in Figure 3d. Here, parcel A can be removed from the current solution without creating an infeasible partial solution. Parcel B can be added into the current partial solution (after A is removed) without violating the contiguity requirement.

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Finally, it is worth noting the no free lunch theorems, which suggest that ‘for any algorithm, any elevated per formance over one class of problems is offset by per formance over another class’. In the context of EAs, it is implied that EAs are not superior to other search algo rithms, when all optimization problems are considered. Though these theorems are not necessarily suitable to a subset of optimization problems, EAs do not run without limitations. An obvious drawback of EAs is their com putation complexity. Though EAs are more efﬁcient than many exact approaches, they may not be as efﬁcient as other metaheuristic methods (e.g., tabu search and simulated annealing) that do not perform on a population of solutions. For a particular set of problems, it will be a useful practice if the analyst is aware of the limitations and select the ‘ﬁttest’ approach. See also: Location Analysis; Location Theory.

Critics and Future Research Schema theorem has been regarded as a foundation of EAs. A major problem with this theorem is the implicit assumption that the building blocks of a problem are independent, which may not hold for many GAs. Though some efforts have been made to understand EA dynamics using alternative theoretical analyses (e.g., Markov models and statistical mechanics models), a conclusive prediction of EA convergence is still yet to emerge. As a heuristic approach, an EA cannot guarantee that the optimal solution be found for every problem inci dence. For some engineering problems where the opti mum is required in a controlled system, this limitation may be signiﬁcant. It should be noted, however, that for many real world problems, the problems are often ill structured, meaning that many important social, eco nomic, political, and environmental factors are not in cluded in the optimization model. The optimal solution to such an ill structured problem may not be optimal when those factors are considered. Therefore, ﬁnding suboptimal solutions in an efﬁcient manner may be de sired in many circumstances. As a beneﬁt of using EAs to solve these problems, it is possible to yield a diverse set of high quality solutions that can be subsequently examined by analysts and decision makers. In this way, EAs are search procedures that can be used to help humans learn about the problems being solved before a ﬁnal decision can be reached.

Further Reading Bennett, D. A., Xiao, N. and Armstrong, M. P. (2004). Exploring the geographic consequences of public policies using evolutionary algorithms. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94(4), 827 847. De Jong, K. A. (2006). Evolutionary Computation: A Uniﬁed Approach. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Deb, K. (2001). Multi Objective Optimization Using Evolutionary Algorithms. Chichester: John Wiley. Fogel, L. J., Owens, A. J. and Walsh, M. J. (1966). Artiﬁcial Intelligence through Simulated Evolution. New York: Wiley. Goldberg, D. E. (1989). Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and Machine Learning. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Holland, J. H. (1975). Adaptations in Natural and Artiﬁcial Systems. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Koza, J. R. (1992). Genetic Programming: On the Programming of Computers by Means of Natural Selection. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Michalewicz, Z. (1996). Genetic Algorithms þ Data Structures ¼ Evolution Programs. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Rechenberg, I. (1965). Cybernetic Solution Path of an Experimental Problem. Library Translation No. 1122. Farnborough: Royal Aircraft Establishment. Schwefel, H. P. (1981). Numerical Optimization for Computer Models. Chichester: John Wiley. Simon, H. A. (1960). The New Science of Management Decision. New York: Happer and Row. Wolpert, D. H. and Macready, W. G. (1997). No free lunch theorems for optimization. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 1(1), 67 82. Xiao, N. (2008). A uniﬁed conceptual framework for geographical optimization using evolutionary algorithms. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98(4), in press.

Existentialism/Existential Geography D. Seamon, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA J. Sowers, Missouri State University, Springﬁeld, MO, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Body-Subject The preconscious intelligence of the lived body manifested through action; plays a major role in the habitual, routine aspects of the lifeworld. Dasein Human being-in-world and referring to the lived fact that human beings are always and already inescapably immersed in the world in which they ﬁnd themselves. Existential Geography A range of geographic approaches that insist human experience, awareness, and meaning must be incorporated into any study of peoples’ relationships with space, place, and environment; closely related to humanistic geography and phenomenological geography. Existentialism A way of philosophy that works to understand the basic structures of human existence so that individuals can create useful meaning in their lives through free and informed understanding and action. Lifeworld The tacit, taken-for-granted context, tenor, and pace of daily life to which normally people give no reﬂective attention; a major focus of phenomenological investigation. Phenomenology A philosophical approach that examines and describes phenomena – that is, things and experiences as human beings experience those things or experiences. Place A fusion of human and natural order and any signiﬁcant spatial center of a person or group’s lived experience.

Introduction Existential geography refers to a range of geographic approaches that insist human experience, awareness, and meaning must be incorporated into any study of peoples’ relationships with space, place, and environment. Exis tential geography is most closely related to the larger movement of humanistic geography, which arose in the 1970s as a critical response to positivist research that, at the time, dominated the discipline. In emphasizing the conceptual and applied need for understanding the lived relationship between people and their geographical worlds, humanistic geographers argued that positivist geography reduced environmental and place experience and meaning to tangible, measurable, quantitative units, and relationships expressed spatially and materially – for

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example, symbols on maps, points on graphs, physical linkages in ﬂow diagrams, or ﬁgures in equations. Today the term ‘existential geography’ is rarely used because the point of view and subject matter are sub sumed in different ways by more speciﬁc topical and conceptual labels that include phenomenological geog raphy, phenomenological ecology, environmental her meneutics, ecopsychology, environmental philosophy, and place studies. Geographers of postmodernist, post structuralist, and critical theory persuasions claim that their approaches reinterpret, improve upon, and supplant earlier existential–geographical work, though geogra phers and other environmental researchers who continue to work in the existential tradition strongly disagree.

Existentialism and Phenomenology Philosophically, existential geography is most closely related to the continental traditions of existentialism and phenomenology. Associated especially with the twen tieth century philosophers Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, Martin Buber, and Gabriel Marcel, existentialism is a way of philosophy that works to understand the basic structures of human ex istence so that individuals can create useful meaning in their lives through free and informed action. Existen tialism insists that philosophy must arise from a person’s own life and from his or her own particular individual, historical, and societal situation. ‘‘Existence precedes essence,’’ proclaimed Sartre, meaning that human beings experience their world ﬁrst and only then endow it with self conscious meaning, whether personal, cultural, ideological, or scholarly. Existentialists claim that earlier Western philosophy was too much concerned with reason, ideas, and abstract theory. Instead, philosophy must start with one’s own experience and personal understanding, which can be studied, clariﬁed, and thus enriched. Reason can con tribute to this effort, but all other aspects of human being – for example, bodily, sensuous, sexual, emotional, interpersonal, cultural, societal, and transpersonal di mensions – must also be considered and given a place. The philosophical tradition of phenomenology be came important to some existentialists because it offered a practical method for probing and under standing the nature and quality of human existence, though this was not the original aim of phenomen ology’s founder, philosopher Edmund Husserl, who

Existentialism/Existential Geography

instead had developed the phenomenological method as a means to identify invariant structures of cognitive consciousness. Because Husserl viewed consciousness and its essen tial structures as a pure ‘region’ separate from the ﬂux of speciﬁc experiences and thoughts, his style of phenomenology came to be known as ‘constitutive’ or ‘transcendental’. Eventually, however, other phenom enological philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau Ponty reacted against Husserl’s trans cendental structures of consciousness. These ‘‘existential phenomenologists,’’ as they came to be called, argued that such transcendental structures are questionable be cause Husserl based their reality on speculative, cerebral reﬂection rather than on actual human experience taking place within the world of everyday life. In 1927 in his Being and Time, Heidegger argued that consciousness was not separate from the world and human existence. He called for an existential correction to Husserl that would interpret essential structures as basic categories of human experience rather than as pure, cerebral consciousness. In 1945 in his Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau Ponty broadened Hei degger’s correction to include the active role of the body in human experience. Merleau Ponty sought to re interpret the division between body and mind common in traditional Western philosophy and psychology. This ‘existential turn’ of Heidegger and Merleau Ponty shifted away from Husserl’s focus on pure intellectual con sciousness and toward a reﬂexive understanding of everyday human life and its lived meanings.

Central Existential Claims As the preceding account suggests, there are great range and variation in the approaches and conclusions of ex istential and phenomenological philosophers. Both Camus and Heidegger, for example, repudiated the ‘ex istentialist’ label, while Sartre would eventually attempt to reconcile his existentialism with Marxism. These contrasting understandings of existentialism have led to different uses and points of view on the part of geog raphers claiming some degree of existential perspective in their work, thus, for example, Tim Cresswell, in his 2004 Place : A Short Introduction, ﬁnds a continuation of earlier existential perspectives in current post structural and postmodernist geographies, while Stuart Elden, in his 2001 Mapping the Present, argues that Heidegger’s phi losophy played a major role in the historical theories of critical theorist Michel Foucault, particularly his understanding of what Elden calls ‘spatial history’. In spite of the wide range of ways in which existen tialism has been interpreted – both by its original founders and by geographers later drawing on the

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tradition – one can identify several conceptual claims that mark out a certain amount of common ground. These claims have been central for many (but not all) geographers seeking to make use of existential principles. 1. To study human beings existentially is to study human experiences, meanings, actions, situations, and events as they happen spontaneously in the course of daily life. On the one hand, the world in which we ﬁnd ourselves is inexhaustible and much more than each of us as unique individuals can ever experience or know. On the other hand, existentially, the world is only what each of us uniquely experiences and understands it to be. 2. There is no world ‘beneath’ or ‘beyond’ the world of our primordial lived experience, which is always and already before us as the world for which we have no choice but to have. Through knowledge, effort, and will, a person or group may over time have some possibility to change the constitution and tenor of their world, but in any particular moment of experi ence, our world is as it is; it cannot be otherwise. 3. Human awareness and consciousness are always in tentional – that is, necessarily oriented toward and ﬁnding their signiﬁcance in a world of emergent meaning. We are never just aware but always aware of something, whether an object, living thing, idea, or the like. This always present quality of intentionality is an invariant feature of human existence and demonstrates that human experience, action, and meaning always unfold in relation to the world in which we ﬁnd ourselves. 4. This intentional relationship with the world means that person and world are not separate and two but indivisible and one. Human beings are inescapably immersed and enmeshed in their world – what Mer leau Ponty called ‘body subject’ and Heidegger called ‘Dasein’, or ‘being in the world’. Because of this lived reciprocity between self and world, one cannot assign speciﬁc phenomena to either self or world alone. Everything experienced is not only ‘given’ but also ‘interpreted’, is ‘of the world’ but also ‘of the person’. 5. This lived reciprocity means that each person’s ex istence gives meaning to his or her world, which in turn gives meaning to that person’s existence as it emerges for both himself or herself and for others. This lived reciprocity also means that traditional philosophical dualities – for example, self–world, subject–object, body–mind, perception–cognition, thinking–feeling, personal–transpersonal, people–en vironment, individual–society, nature–culture, and so forth – must be called into question, revisioned, and rephrased through existential–phenomenological ex plication. One of the most difﬁcult challenges is to describe the lived reciprocity of person and world in

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language and conception that do not fall prey to tra ditional philosophical dichotomies. 6. The everyday structure through which this lived reciprocity unfolds is the lifeworld – a person or group’s day to day world of taken for grantedness that is normally unnoticed and therefore concealed as a phenomenon. One aim of existential study is to disclose and describe the various lived structures and dynamics of the lifeworld, a focus that has become central to existential–geographical research. 7. There are three dimensions of lifeworld that all must be considered in a thorough existential–phenomeno logical understanding of human existence, experience, and meaning: (1) a person or group’s unique personal situation – for example, one’s gender, sexuality, physical and intellectual endowments, degree of ableness, and personal likes and dislikes; (2) a person or group’s unique social, cultural, and historical situ ation – for example, the time and place in which one lives, economic and political circumstances, religious and societal background, and technological infra structure; and (3), a person or group’s situation as it involves their being typical human beings sustaining and sustained by a typical human world – for example, the lived fact that we are bodily beings who are always and already ‘emplaced’ physically in our world.

Existential Perspectives in Geography Foreshadowed by the humanist work of earlier geog raphers such as Johannes Grano¨, J. K. Wright, Clarence Glacken, and David Lowenthal, the existential tradition was initiated in the early 1970s largely by three geog raphers: Edward Relph, Yi Fu Tuan, and Anne Buttimer. The ﬁrst explicit discussion of the value that an exis tential approach might have for geography was in a 1970 Canadian Geographer article by Relph, who drew on the insights of existential phenomenology and emphasized that all knowledge arises from the world of experience, including peoples’ everyday understanding of their geo graphical world. In his popular 1974 Topophilia, Tuan examined the positive, affective bond between people and place, while Buttimer, in a 1976 article in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, considered how the phenomenological notion of lifeworld might offer insights into sense of place, social space, and time–space rhythms. The most inﬂuential study in this early work was Relph’s 1976 Place and Placelessness, an existential phe nomenology of place, which he deﬁned as a fusion of human and natural order and any signiﬁcant spatial center of a person or group’s lived experience. The ex istential crux of place experience, Relph claimed, was insideness – the degree to which a person or group

belong to and identify themselves with a place. Relph argued that the existential relationship between inside ness and its experiential opposite outsideness is a fun damental dialectic in human experience. Through different degrees of insideness and outsideness, different places take on different meanings and identities for dif ferent individuals and groups (see Table 1). For Relph, ‘existential insideness’ is the foundation of the place concept because, in this mode of experience, place is experienced without any directed or self conscious at tention, yet is laden with signiﬁcances that are tacit and unnoticed unless the place is changed in some way – for example, one’s home and community are destroyed by natural disaster. The ﬁrst comprehensive work to demonstrate the considerable topical range that existential approaches could offer geography was David Ley and Marwyn Samuels’ 1978 Humanistic Geography : Problems and Pro spects, an edited collection that included Samuels’ chap ter, ‘Existentialism and human geography’. In this and later work, Samuels drew on Martin Buber’s ideas re garding the signiﬁcance of spatiality in human life to call for geographical research on what he called a ‘‘biography of landscape’’ – the lived foundations of geographical and spatial patterns, interconnections, and attachments. In practice, conceptual and applied efforts to identify and explore such ‘existential origins’ continued to be conducted by geographers and other environmental re searchers drawing on the perspective of existential phenomenology.

Major Themes in Existential Geography Since the 1970s, partly through the conceptual foun dations established by Buttimer, Ley, Relph, Samuels, and Tuan, existential work examining human beings’ lived relationship with the geographical world has steadily continued, though overshadowed in the last two decades by the more vocal efforts of postmodernist, post struc tural, and critical geographies. Most broadly, the aim of current existential–phenomenological work is to under stand how qualities of the geographical world, such as place, home, journey, mobility, habitual embodiment, natural landscape, and so forth, found and contribute to human existence, both broadly, in relation to human nature generally, and, speciﬁcally, for persons and groups living in particular places, cultural contexts, and histor ical moments. Three themes are highlighted here to exemplify this work: (1) lived body, (2) place, and (3) a lived environmental ethic. 1. Research on the lived body examines ways in which our existence as bodily beings contributes to our lived geographies. The fact that we are solid, upright bodies gives us a sense of immediate centeredness to space

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Table 1

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Relph’s modes of insideness and outsidenessa

1. Existential insideness A situation involving a feeling of attachment and at-homeness. Place is ‘‘experienced without deliberate and self-conscious reﬂection yet is full with signiﬁcances’’ (Relph, 1976: p 55). One feels this is the place where he or she belongs. The deepest kind of place experience and the one toward which people probably all yearn. 2. Existential outsideness A situation where the person feels separate from or out of place. Place may feel alienating, unreal, unpleasant, or oppressive. Homelessness or homesickness would be examples. Often, today, the physical and designed environments contribute to this kind of experience ‘unintentionally’, e.g., the sprawl of suburban environments, the dissolution of urban downtowns, or the decline of rural communities. 3. Objective outsideness A situation involving a deliberate dispassionate attitude of separation from place. Place is a thing to be studied and manipulated as an object apart from the experiencer. A scientiﬁc approach to place and, typically, the approach most often taken by planners, designers, and policymakers. 4. Incidental outsideness A situation in which place is the background or mere setting for activities, e.g., the landscapes and places one drives through as he or she is on the way to somewhere else. 5. Behavioral insideness A situation involving the deliberate attending to the appearance of place. Place is seen as a set of objects, views, or activities, e.g., the experience one passes through when becoming familiar with a new place ﬁguring out what is where and how the various landmarks, paths, and so forth all ﬁt together to make one complete place. 6. Empathetic insideness A situation in which the person, as outsider, tries to be open to place and understand it more deeply. This kind of experience requires interest, empathy, and heartfelt concern. Empathetic insideness is an important aspect of approaching a place phenomenologically. 7. Vicarious insideness A situation of deeply felt secondhand involvement with place. One is transported to place through imagination through paintings, novels, music, ﬁlms, or other creative media. One thinks, e.g., of Claude Monet’s paintings of his beloved garden Giverny, Thomas Hardy’s novels describing nineteenth-century rural England, or John Sayles’ ﬁlms portraying conﬂicts within and between particular American communities and regions. a

Source: Relph, E. (1976). Place and Placelessness, pp 51 52. London: Pion.

and – in conjunction with upright posture and bin ocular vision – orients us within a sixfold directional axis of up–down, front–back, and left–right. We ex perience the world largely through the ﬁve senses, and existential–phenomenological research has studied how each sense offers a different but complementary way of knowing the world. Existential–phenomeno logical studies of the lived body have also examined speciﬁc environmental experiences of particular individuals or groups, thus Jonathan Cole and Kay Toombs explored how less abled persons’ loss of mobility leads to a changed interaction with the sur rounding physical and human world, while sociologist Chris Allen examined the bodily encounters and re sulting social geography of visually impaired children. Beyond bodily structure and process, there is re search on the prereﬂective but learned intention ality of the body, which Merleau Ponty termed body subject—the preconscious intelligence of body manifested through action. For geography, one of the most signiﬁcant aspects of body subject is its auto matic, taken for granted ability to work in extended ways over time and space. One can ask how routine behaviors of individuals coming together regularly in space can transform that space into a place with a regular dynamic and character. David Seamon has explored how such ‘place ballets’ can be established

and sustained through environmental design and policy. 2. The theme of place has been a central focus in ex istential–phenomenological work since the seminal studies of Buttimer, Tuan, and Relph highlighted above. In philosophy, Edward Casey, Jeff Malpas, and Robert Mugerauer have written book length accounts arguing for place as a central ontological structure founding human experience. As Casey wrote in his 1993 Getting Back into Place, ‘‘place, by virtue of its unencompassability by anything other than itself, is at once the limit and the condition of all that existsy To be is to be in place.’’ (Casey, 1993: 15–16). Much of this place research has focused on par ticular groups’ lived relationships with particular places; one early example was David Ley’s study of African American neighborhoods in inner city Philadelphia presented in his 1974 The Black Inner City as Frontier Outpost. More recent efforts include Ray Oldenberg’s 1989 The Great Good Place, which high lights ‘third places’ – public or semipublic establish ments where people informally gather and socialize; Mindy Fullilove’s 2004 Root Shock, a study of the traumatic impact that urban renewal had on African American neighborhoods in several American cities; and Douglas Rae’s 2003 City, an examination of tra ditional American urbanism grounded in lively streets

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and place based community, using the city of New Haven, Connecticut, as a study focus. 3. Research involving a lived environmental ethic con siders ways whereby people might become more sensitive to and involved with the natural world so that their wish and will to care for the environment becomes stronger and more durable. Mugerauer, Relph, and philosopher Ingrid Stefanovic have all drawn on Heideggerian thinking to suggest possible ways whereby people might better care for the natural world. In his 1981 Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography, for example, Relph developed the concept of environmental humility – a way of seeing and understanding that is responsive to the best qualities of the Other and that might foster a compassion and gentle caretaking for places, people, and the things of nature. In a related way, Stefanovic drew on Hei degger’s understanding of place and emplacement as means to reconsider the nature of environmental and economic sustainability.

Criticisms of Existential Geography With the development in the 1980s and 1990s of post modernist, post structural, and critical geographies, ex istential and humanistic geography has faced numerous conceptual and ideological criticisms that can most broadly be described by charges of: (1) essentialism, (2) authoritativeness, (3) voluntarism, and (4) an ideo logical bias toward bounded, static, exclusionary places. As indicated by the writings of Buttimer, Relph, Samuels, and Tuan, early existential work in geography focused largely on human typicality with the result that critical and social constructionist critics label existential studies as essentialist – that is, presupposing and claiming an invariant and universal human condition only revealed when all ‘nonessentials’ such as culture, economics, or history are stripped away, leaving some inescapable core of human experience and existence. A second, related criticism, leveled especially by feminist geographers, is that the existential approach is authoritative, in that it privileges the interpretive sensibilities of academic ex perts who arbitrarily claimed to provide an accurate depiction of the geographical situations and experiences of more ordinary human beings. This depiction, the feminist critique argues, is in fact grounded in an implicit masculinist point of view assuming that the experience of (mostly) academically trained men could represent all human situations – for example, the experiences of women, gays and lesbians, the less advantaged, particular racial and ethnic groups, and so forth. As already pointed out, however, any thorough ex istential presentation of the geographical lifeworld re quires that, in addition to human typicality, researchers

must also recognize and examine the personal and cul tural dimensions of particular environmental and place experiences; the already cited work of Allen, Cole, Fullilove, Oldenburg, Rae, and Toombs are convincing examples of the conceptual and lived effectiveness of existential work dealing with speciﬁc individuals, groups, and places. Existential researchers claim that their people and place portrayals, grounded in the openness of phe nomenological method, are more accurate and fair than social constructivist or critical accounts that too often force ﬁt their subjects through some predeﬁned set of cultural, political, gender, or socioeconomic ﬁlters, and thus end in lifeworld misrepresentation and distortion. A third criticism of the existential approach is that it is voluntarist – that is, that it tacitly views society and the world as a product of intentional, willed actions of in dividuals. This criticism arises from critical geographers, especially neo Marxists and feminists, who give attention instead to the broader societal structures and power re lations that underlie particular lifeworlds and places. As a way of philosophy that highlights self awareness as a vehicle of personal and societal change, the existential perspective places greatest emphasis on individual free dom, understanding, and agency. On the one hand, there is an underlying ideological assumption that individual will and personal growth provide the major means for making a difference in the larger world. On the other hand, an existential approach can examine power, ex clusion, resistance, justice, political process, and other central emphases of critical geographers, though little work has been done in this direction, perhaps because most existential thinkers instinctively favor an interest in experience, selfhood, and personal and group autonomy; one exception is political theorist Daniel Kemmis’s 1990 Community and the Politics of Place and his 1995 The Good City, the Good Life, two books that explore how citizens’ sense of responsibility for the place in which they live might facilitate a civilized politics. A fourth criticism of the existential approach is that it portrays lifeworlds and places as bounded, static, exclusionary, and reactionary; that place, insideness, dwelling, and rootedness are ethically favored over nonplace, outsideness, journey, and mobile, shifting modes of life and styles of identity. This criticism has been brought forward by post structuralists, who em phasize relativist, shifting meanings, and distrust any kind of permanent conceptual or lived structures. Existential thinkers respond that these post structuralists misread existential conclusions and that, throughout existential– geographical work, there is a ﬂexibility of conceptual expression – a recognition that an excess of place can lead to a provincialism and callousness to difference just as an excess of journey can lead to a loss of identity or an impartial relativity that allows for commitment to nothing. One central question that thinkers like

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Kemmis, Oldenburg, and Seamon address is whether, through design and policy, progressive, connected places can be made that draw together human diversity through everyday environmental co presence and co awareness – for example, the potential that a small grained, permeable pathway system has for bringing people of difference together in city districts through informal, serendipitous sidewalk and street encounters. Post structural critics are also concerned that exist ential work too often seems a nostalgic paean to pre modern times and places. How can authentic places, at homeness, and dwelling exist in a postmodern era of human diversity, rapid technological change, glo balization, and geographical and social mobility? This criticism, however, ignores a central conclusion of exist ential thinkers such as Relph, Casey, Malpas, Mugerauer, and Stefanovic: that regardless of the particular cultural, technological, or historical situation, people will always need place because having and identifying with place are integral to what and who we are as human beings. From this perspective, the postmodernist devaluation of place as it supports individual and group identity and solidarity is questionable existentially and potentially devastating practically. Instead, the crucial theoretical and real world question is how a conceptual and applied understanding of place might lead to the making of actual places that draw together diverse individuals and groups through a shared sense of environmental involvement and attachment. In our mobile, ever changing, globally dominated world, one of the few real world ways to ac commodate a pluralistic society may be the power of place to gather human differences together spatially, and thereby sustain the autonomy of individuals and groups as, at the same time, they feel a sense of belonging and commitment to the larger place of which they are a part. See also: Body, The; Critical Geography; Cultural Geography; Feminism/Feminist Geography; Humanism/ Humanistic Geography; Phenomenology/ Phenomenological Geography; Place; Positivism/ Positivist Geography; Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography.

Further Reading Allen, C. (2004). Merleau Ponty’s phenomenology and the body in space encounters of visually impaired children. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22, 719 735.

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Casey, E. (1993). Getting Back into Place. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Cloke, P., Philo, C. and Sadler, D. (1991). ‘Peopling’ human geography and the development of humanistic approaches. In Approaching Human Geography: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Debates, ch. 3. New York: Guilford Press. Cole, J. (2004). Still Lives: Narratives of Spinal Cord Injury. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hay, P. (2002). Reclaiming place: Seeking an authentic ground for being. In Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought, ch. 6. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Hubbard, P., Kitchin, R., Bartley, B. and Fuller, D. (2002). Thinking Geographically: Space, Theory and Contemporary Geography. London: Continuum. Johnston, R. J. (1997). Humanistic geography. In Geography and Geographers, ch. 6. London: Arnold. Malpas, J. E. (1999). Place and Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mels, T. (ed.) (2004). Reanimating Places: A Geography of Rhythms. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Mugerauer, R. (1994). Interpretations on Behalf of Place. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Relph, E. (1976). Place and Placelessness. London: Pion. Seamon, D. (ed.) (1993). Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing: Toward a Phenomenological Ecology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Seamon, D. (2000). A way of seeing people and place: Phenomenology in environment behavior research. In Wapner, S., Demick, J., Yamamoto, T. & Minami, H. (eds.) Theoretical Perspectives in Environment Behavior Research, pp 157 178. New York: Plenum. Stefanovic, I. L. (2000). Safeguarding Our Common Future. Albany, NY: State University Press of New York. Toombs, S. A. (1995). The lived experience of disability. Human Studies 18, 9 23.

Relevant Websites http://www.phenomenologycenter.org Center for Advanced Study in Phenomenology. http://www.arch.ksu.edu Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology Network, College of Architecture, Planning and Design at Kansas State University. http://www.environmentalphilosophy.org International Association for Environmental Philosophy. http://www.uri.edu Merleau Ponty Circle, University of Rhode Island. http://www.phenomenologyonline.com Phenomenology Online. http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu Research on Space and Place Website, University of Central Florida. http://www.spep.org Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. http://pages.slu.edu Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences, Saint Louis University. http://plato.stanford.edu Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Existentialism, Stanford University.

Experimental Design S. Bell, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Between-Subjects Experimental Design An experiment in which each case is exposed to only one level of the independent variable. Dependent Variable Those variables in the experiment that are measured and/or observed. Dependent variables will respond to predetermined variation in the independent variable in ways will either support or reject the hypothesis. Hypothesis A statement about the relationship between experimental variables that can be tested by conducting a controlled scientiﬁc experiment. Hypotheses are often associated with a researcher’s best guess as to the outcome of an experiment. Independent Variable Independent variables are set or determined by the researcher prior to the experiment’s outset. Population The universe from which samples are taken and to which results are generalized. Sample The subset of the population that is involved in the experiment. The existence in the population of a pattern observed or identiﬁed in the sample can be determined using the theory and practice of statistics. Within-Subjects (Repeated Measures) Design An experiment in which each case is exposed to all levels of the independent variable.

Introduction Experimental design is the process of carrying out re search in an objective and controlled fashion so that pre cision is maximized and speciﬁc conclusions can be drawn regarding a hypothesis statement. Generally, the purpose is to establish the effect that a factor or independent variable has on a dependent variable. The principles of experimental design play an important role in research that does not follow the strict tenets of hypothesis testing and this article holds relevant information for this type of research. However, this article is primarily focused on planning research that will utilize experimental design in order to test and validate the relationship between and among experimental variables. Important topics germane to experimental design include hypothesis statements, experimental control, specifying independent and depen dent variables, selection and assignment of samples or participants to conditions, collecting data, and selecting valid statistical tests. Through accurate and precise

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empirical measurement and control an experimental de sign increases a researcher’s ability to determine causal relationships and state causal conclusions. Experimental design as a subset of scientiﬁc investi gation is a popular and widely used research approach. The essence of experimental design and perhaps the most important reason researchers choose to design and conduct experiments is the precision with which one can analyze the relationship between and among variables and to make that analysis as objective as possible. To look at it from another perspective, experimental design minimizes ambiguity and attempts to eliminate con fusion. A true experimental design relies on testing the relationships between and among variables; generally speaking, one variable, the independent variable, is con trolled in order to measure its effect on other, dependent, variables. A central concern of any researcher using ex perimental design must be control; in experiments, the researcher chooses an intervention, associated with the independent variable, and controls how that intervention is applied, or introduced, into the research setting. If the experimental design is applied correctly, then a causal relationship can be established between the independent variable and dependent variable(s). There are several steps in the development of an experiment. The researcher must generate a research question, state a testable hypothesis, determine how to control variability during the experimental process, select or develop intervention conditions, sample from a population in order to assign them to experimental conditions, and determine what empirical measures will be made (and how data will be recorded). There is often an important and intimate relationship between the ex perimental design and the type of data that is collected and statistical approach that will be used to analyze the data. In geography, and cognate disciplines that are interested in spatial variation, there is a subset of research that deals with data that does not conform to all of the assumptions central to traditional statistical tests. As a result spatial statistical tests have been developed to ac count for the unique character of spatial data; these differences will be covered brieﬂy in a later section de tailing spatial statistical approaches in geography.

Developing and Stating a Testable Hypothesis Initially, developing and stating a testable hypothesis is the principal requirement of using an experimental

Experimental Design

design to conduct research. A hypothesis is based on a careful reading and consideration of past research and represents a researcher’s ‘best guess’ as to how something happens or how two or more variables will interact with one another. An experiment is an attempt to create an environment that tests the hypothesis such that the outcome is as close to reality as possible. There are several components of experimental design that play a role in maintaining experimental control and allowing researchers to make statements regarding the generaliz ability of their results beyond the conﬁnes of the con trolled experimental setting. Immediately preceding the development of an experiment, one must decide upon a testable hypothesis; this, in turn, is based on a the se lection of a general topic of interest and perhaps the development of a ‘science question’ that is the product of reasoned exploration of theory and past research, previ ous experimental outcomes, and considerable thought by the researcher. The choice of a research topic and even the statement of a research question (or a science ques tion) is a relatively exciting and loosely governed process; it is here that a researcher can let their mind wander and consider all the possibilities that scientiﬁc inquiry offers. As these exciting times coalesce into more formal and clearly stated questions, the researcher must then do the ‘heavy lifting’ associated with turning their wild ideas into testable hypotheses. Jeffrey Lee suggests that hypotheses can be developed in one of four ways: analogy, induction, deduction, and intuition; each offers its own advantages and presents speciﬁc challenges. A prerequisite for any scientiﬁc en deavor that relies on the development of a testable hy pothesis is the expertise of the researcher. Developing a hypothesis through ‘analogy’ relies on being able to see the similarity between different but related phenomena or processes. Knowing how water moves through one type of soil might help develop a hypothesis regarding its ﬂow through other materials, soil types, or under dif ferent conditions. Through ‘induction’ a researcher can exploit their scientiﬁc and theoretical knowledge to de velop a hypothesis to test the generalizability of a dis crete observation. ‘Deductive’ hypotheses are based on a sound understanding of the processes and properties that underlie observable and testable phenomena. When ‘intuition’ is the basis for hypothesis generation, the researcher looks for what ‘seems right’ with little back ground to guide the reasoning behind the stated hypothesis. Once a testable hypothesis is developed and stated, the work on experimental design can begin. Independent of how much time and effort went into the generation of the hypothesis, the researcher must accept that the quality of the hypothesis remains unknown until it is tested. While there are several different approaches that can be used to develop a testable hypothesis, performing

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the test requires close adherence to the principles of science. Furthermore, careful and controlled thought and the deliberate application of reason will be central to the success of one’s experimental design and their ability to test the stated hypothesis (in experimental jargon the researcher wants to accept the alternative hypothesis by refuting the null hypothesis).

Experimental Variables One of the ﬁrst steps in the experimental design process is the selection of variables, both independent and dependent, associated with phenomena that will be measured. Dependent variables are those that are meas ured and/or observed during the experiment while independent variables are set or determined by the re searcher prior to the experiment’s outset. When designed appropriately the independent variables are intended to have some bearing on the dependent variable during the experiment (the hypothesis states there will be an interaction or effect). In most scientiﬁc experiments, the independent variable, or factor, in an experiment has predetermined levels, usually nominal, which are also called conditions. This fact generally leads to the use of analysis of variance (ANOVA) statistical tests. With the introduction of more than one factor, each with two or more conditions, the research can establish not only the effect of a single factor (usually called a main effect) but also interaction among factors (called interaction effects). For instance, let us consider a study interested in how age and spatial ability are related to one’s ability to point to locations in a recently experienced environment. An equal number of female and male participants of three distinct ages (9 years, 13 years, and adults) are asked to follow a multi turn path through an urban environment. At the end of the path, participants are asked to point to several locations along the path. This experimental design has the potential to test main effects of age (is pointing accuracy greater for older participants?) and sex (is point accuracy different for males and females?) as well as more complicated interaction effects (do sex differences in pointing accuracy vary with age?). Dependent variables can often be measured at a variety of levels, nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio; in some situations the researcher can choose the level of precision they wish to have, in others the variable can only be measured in one way. In the example above, the dependent variable is pointing accuracy, which could be measured by the amount of difference in degrees between a target’s actual direction and the participant’s indication of its direction. Constants are another important factor in experimental design; these are elements in the experiment that do not change over its course.

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When putting all of these elements together, it is important to keep in mind that the best way to establish relationships between and among variables, particularly causal relationships, is to establish an experiment that allows for empirical observation resulting in measures that can be compared among or between the variables. On a related and complicating topic, geographers are often faced with a lab versus ﬁeld dilemma, most of what we are interested in studying or explaining happens in a naturalistic setting which has much more in common with a ﬁeld based experiment. However, establishing an experiment in a naturalistic setting is complex and the researcher runs the risk of introducing confounding variables that are not controlled and might not even be known by the experimenter. The experiment might be affected by variables that cannot be controlled yet are related to and change the value of the dependent vari able(s). There is no correct answer to the question, ‘‘should my experiment be based in a lab (more control) setting or a naturalistic (ﬁeld) setting that might offer greater ecological/external validity?’’ A lab setting offers more control, but the extent to which one can generalize lab based ﬁndings will always be debated; on the other hand, establishing causality between two variables is easier in a lab setting. Some researchers will call ex periments that lack complete, or lab based, control quasi experiments, even though it is possible to create ﬁeld based experiments that include manipulations of independent variables in order to observe measurable changes in a dependent variable.

Direct and Indirect Measurement In geography, as is the case in many disciplines, the measurements we make in an experiment may be direct or indirect. Indirect measures are those that rely on an inference between what is observed and the phenomena of interest. For instance, the decisions associated with how to navigate from one location to another are gen erally made in one’s head as a result of a variety of cognitive structures and processes loosely associated with our cognitive map. In order to understand the nature of this decision making, it is often only possible to observe (and measure) the spatial behavior that results from the decision making process. If we are interested in exam ining whether humans are spatially rational decision makers when navigating we might state a hypothesis like ‘‘humans will consistently choose the shortest path be tween two points when navigating through the environ ment,’’ in turn we can have participants in our study walk from an origin to a destination and observe what paths are selected. The ﬁnal step would be examining how many participants chose each path (shortest and others) or to measure the amount of difference (in length) there

was between the various paths chosen and the shortest path. The former is an example of choosing a nominal measurement approach (different paths), whereas the latter is a ratio measure (metric distance of each path traveled).

Within and between Case Experimental Design The nuts and bolts of experimental design deals with how cases are assigned to levels of one or more in dependent variables. When an independent variable is manipulated so each case is tested at all levels of the variable, then the experiment is a repeated measures design. If each case is only exposed to one level of the independent variable, and other cases are exposed other levels, then the experiment is a between subjects or be tween case design. Repeated measures designs require slightly different statistical tests, require fewer cases/ participants for the same statistical power, and provide the research with more control over potentially con founding variables. In spite of these important beneﬁts of a repeated measures design, between subjects designs are required in many situations where a repeated measures design is impossible or inadvisable. Inadvisable situations include settings in which exposure to one condition may affect the state of the case for later conditions or in an experiment using human participants where exposure to a test condition might cause learning, or will beneﬁt them in later conditions. Impossible repeated measures ex periments might include situations in which the cases have unique characteristics that cannot be held constant. Such is the case in many comparative studies that are interested in comparing two distinct places or populations.

Spatial Statistics and Experimental Design While traditional experimental design involving the use of hypothesis statements, controlled interventions, ob jectivity, dependent and independent variables, sampling techniques, correlation and causality, measurement, and bias, there are aspects of what we study that have re quired geographers and cognate researchers to develop tools that do not strictly conform to the tenets of ex periment based scientiﬁc exploration. The use of census and other population surveys, remotely sensed imagery and other ‘samples’ that represent the known population or reﬂect a single point in time are not necessarily in tended to be a representative sample of other times or places, and the presence of spatial dependence between observations results in an inability to meet some of the assumptions associated with traditional stochastic

Experimental Design

statistical methods that are normally applied to experi ment based data collection. The systems that geog raphers study are often complex and hard to replicate; furthermore, when our sample is the population (census and other population level datasets), it is virtually im possible to obtain (determine) the data distribution under the null hypothesis, each of which is an assumption of traditional statistical methods and an assumed com ponent of experimental design. Geographers have de veloped two responses to these problems that generally apply one of two strategies: new spatial statistical meth ods (spatial autocorrelation and spatial regression) that account for spatial dependence, and the application of traditional experimental design and stochastic statistics in ways that are congruent with the traditional assumptions of both to as great an extent as is possible. In the latter case, geographers might relax, or ignore, some of the assumptions of traditional experimental design or sto chastic statistics in order to beneﬁt from the control offered by these techniques. Spatial analytic and spatial statistical methods are arguably the most important approach to overcoming statistical assumptions that are to sampled nonspatial data. For geography they are becoming an increasingly important contribution to researchers both within and beyond geography. Geographic theories are gaining ex posure in disciplines not traditionally associated with a spatial or geographic perspective. Furthermore, geog raphers are offered an opportunity to challenge and develop new theories that are spatial and geographic in nature. Researchers in natural, social, and medical

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sciences are relying on exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial analysis, spatial statistics, and cartography to ex plore important research topics far beyond the capacity of researchers in geography. Some of these developments can be traced to the emergence of GIS, integrated computing systems for handling, analyzing, and repre senting spatial data. However, for the most part spatial statistics have been the product of geographers de manding and developing new techniques for problems that have an important spatial component. Without an appreciation for the role that space plays, it becomes more difﬁcult to verify the role played by other non spatial variables. Geographers have been essential for the development of techniques (statistical and otherwise) that allow for the measurement and control of spatial effects in univariate and multivariate analysis. See also: Hypothesis Testing; Map Perception and Cognition; Mental Maps; Mixed and Multiple Methods; Naturalistic Testing; Quantitative Methodologies; Sampling; Scale Analytical; Scientiﬁc Method; Statistics, Inferential; Statistics, Overview.

Further Reading Lee, J. A. (1999). The Scientiﬁc Endeavor: A Primer on Scientiﬁc Principles and Practice. San Francisco, CA: Addison Wesley Longman. Montello, D. R. and Sutton, P. C. (2006). Introduction to Scientiﬁc Research Methods in Geography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Exploration S. A. Royle, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Age of Discovery A period from the ﬁfteenth to the seventeenth centuries when European maritime nations explored the world in search of trade goods such as gold and spices, supplementing earlier penetrations overland. The Age was associated with technical developments in ship design, which permitted safer open ocean travel; improvements in cartography and navigation; also the development of capitalism and other advances in this early modern era in Europe. Chomolungma The Tibetan name for Mount Everest, meaning ‘goddess mother of the world’. Circumnavigation The act of traveling around the globe and returning to one’s starting point. The route should include crossing two regions at opposite ends of the globe (antipodes). Traditionally circumnavigations referred to voyages by sea; in modern times air travel has also been included. The ﬁrst undisputed circumnavigation was the expedition led initially by the Portuguese sailor Fernando Magellan in 1519–21. Merchant Companies Chartered European trading companies active in the commercial penetration into Asia and elsewhere during the Age of Discovery and later. Examples include The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies (the East India Company, chartered 1600) and the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (chartered 1602). Northwest Passage A sea route connecting the Paciﬁc and Atlantic Oceans via the north of Alaska and the Canadian mainland. European explorers sought this route to the riches of Asia from as early as the ﬁfteenth century but never successfully and only in 1906 was the ﬁrst passage made, and that in a small ship by Roald Amundsen. Ships capable of dealing with ice can navigate the route, but it has never proved to be commercially viable. Spice Islands A name used for the Molucca Islands (Malaku), although sometimes others in the region are included such as Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and Celebes. Their products, particularly spices like cinnamon, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, were prized during the early European penetration into Asia. Third Pole The highest point on the Earth’s surface, thus Mount Everest or Chomolungma.

This article considers the early commercial and then colonial imperative for exploration, moving from the

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exploration of encounter, the ‘discovery’ of place to ex ploration in detail, and the knowledge of place. This latter was often associated with the administration and/or exploitation of territory through colonialism. Later, a search for scientiﬁc knowledge became more prominent, joined but not entirely replaced by an attitude which regarded exploration as something of a sport – the Mallory tradition – although a quest for glory of some sort had accompanied much exploration throughout its history.

Travelers’ Tales From well before the age of print, adventurers would return and scribe accounts of strange lands for curious people. The publication by Marco Polo (1254–1324), his Description of the World, written after his experiences in Asia in the thirteenth century was only the most exotic of the genre. There were more prosaic works. For example, Giraldus Cambrensis (c. 1146–c. 1223), as well as writing on his own country of Wales, composed Topographica Hibernica in 1188 after a visit to nearby Ireland during the era of Norman expansionism from Britain into that is land. Sometimes people followed in the explorers’ foot steps (or wakes), moving to the new (to them) lands to trade or settle, stimulated by the travelers’ tales. It is even thought that Greenland may have been given its in appropriate name as an inducement to migrants after the Vikings had found and settled in parts of that icy land mass in AD 982, living there for about 500 years. They continued to explore westwards and there was a Norse settlement on Newfoundland, at what is now called l’Anse aux Meadows for at least a few years after the year 1000. Christopher Columbus’ party were certainly not the ﬁrst Europeans to see what became North America.

‘Because It Is There’: The Mallory Tradition of Exploration One traveler who wrote an account of his journey was Robert Falcon Scott (1868–1912) who memorably pen ned ‘‘Great God, this is an awful place’’ in his tent in Antarctica shortly before his death in 1912 on the return of the British expedition from the South Pole, where they had been only the second party there, beaten by the Norwegians led by Roald Amundsen (1872–1928). Scott epitomized a certain strand of exploration: relatively wealthy people taking themselves to the furthest or

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highest places for the sake of it. Echoes of Scott are still heard: the British adventurer Sir Ranulph Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes, third baronet (usually known as Ran Fiennes (born 1944)), was the ﬁrst man to reach both poles by land as part of the Transglobe Expedition of 1979–82 and, with Mike Stroud (born 1955), the ﬁrst to walk across Antarctica in 1993. A decade after Scott’s death, Englishman George Mallory (1886–1924) was to try to climb Mount Everest ‘because it is there’, although, it seems, he did not actually recall making his famous remark. He and Andrew Irvine (1902–24) died on the mountain in 1924, having perhaps been the ﬁrst people to reach the ‘third pole’, the world’s highest point. The earliest conﬁrmed ascent was not until 1953, an exped ition sponsored by the Alpine Club of Great Britain and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). The announcement of the achievement of this British expedition was made the day before the coronation of Elizabeth II and the news was swept into the celebrations. Elizabeth II is also queen of New Zealand and could thus knight one of the successful climbers, New Zealander Edmund Hillary (1919–2008). Hillary’s companion on the ﬁnal ascent was a Nepalese man who climbed Everest not just because it was there but because he had been working as a high altitude porter to expeditions since the 1930s. The Nepali atop, to him, not Everest but Cho molungma was a Sherpa. Sherpas are actually an ethnic group found in Tibet and northern Nepal but the name is usually associated with the occupation of portering, and for many years Hillary’s companion was popularly known as Sherpa Tenzing (1914–86); the second of the paired names: Hillary and Tenzing. More recently, in the era of postcolonial awareness, references to Tenzing tend to drop ‘Sherpa’ in favor of Tenzing Norgay and he takes ﬁrst place sometimes, as with the annual Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon. Hillary himself spent much of his later life involved with development and environmental work in Nepal, but one implication from the way in which the story of 1953 was originally portrayed is that exploration is an activity undertaken by people from rich countries and that poor countries, with less noteworthy citizens, are places to be explored.

Exploration and Economic Gain That exploration takes place from relatively rich coun tries is a commonality throughout its history, but the Mallory tradition is relatively recent, a product of an age and society able to free up the resources necessary to fund such nonproductive activity. Exploration’s story is more than ﬁlling in blanks on the map or seeking entries in record books. Rather, it was for long associated with economic gain. One of exploration’s great sagas is the search for the Northwest Passage, a route sought to

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facilitate trade between Europe and Asia via the north of what is now mainland Canada and Alaska. This beguiled Arctic explorers from the time of John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto, c. 1450–c. 1499) in the late ﬁfteenth century, through a series of men who have left place names to mark their failed attempts: Martin Frobisher (c. 1535–94), John Davis (c. 1550–1605), Henry Hudson (c. 1570– c. 1611), Robert Bylot (ﬂ. 1610–16), and, later, John Franklin (1786–1847). Ironically, after all that British effort it was none other than Roald Amundsen in Gjøa, who ﬁrst completed the journey along the length of the passage in 1903–06. Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811), the no table French maritime explorer of the eighteenth century, was a mathematician who made important astronomical observations on his circumnavigation of the globe but also claimed territory for France, including Tahiti in 1768 (fallaciously, as an English navigator, Samuel Wallis (1728–95) was there a few months earlier). de Bou gainville’s contemporary, British captain James Cook (1728–79), surely the man who ‘discovered’ more of the world than anybody else (a ship on his third expedition was even called Discovery), had a scientiﬁc mission for his three great voyages (1768–71; 1772–75; 1776–79) but he also claimed much territory for Britain, while his notable achievements in surveying and improvements in navi gational techniques led to commercial beneﬁt. ‘Dis covered’ was placed in inverted commas above to denote that most of Cook’s and other explorers’ discoveries are merely the identiﬁcation for a domestic audience of places hitherto unknown to them. Local people knew they were there. Only a few places such as some un inhabited Atlantic islands were truly discovered by Europeans, examples being Bermuda (c. 1505, Juan de Bermudez, Spanish, died 1570), St. Helena (1502, Joa˜o da Nova Castella ( Juan de Nova), a Spaniard working for Portugal, died 1509), and the Falkland Islands (1592, John Davis, English), although there may have been earlier sightings back to Amerigo Vespucci (an Italian working for Portugal, 1454–1512) in 1501 or 1502. Zheng He It was not just Europeans who were exploring in early periods; the best known of the Asian travelers is the Chinese admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho, 1371–1433) who commanded or organized seven voyages from China to Arabia, India, Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf, and the east coast of Africa between 1405 and 1433. A recently discovered map purports to be a copy of a 1418 original and may indicate that Zheng He circumnavigated the world a century prior to Fernando Magellan’s accepted claim of having commanded the ﬁrst expedition to do so from 1519 to 1522. Zheng’s voyages were exploration of a type that was to become common elsewhere. There was

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government involvement; the state on whose behalf the voyages were made was relatively more advanced than the places to which sailed her admiral (or his com manders, Zheng did not always go himself). Further, the purpose of the voyages was to enrich the sponsoring state. Among the largest ships in the huge Chinese ﬂeets were those designed to carry back the treasure. Another element was the beginnings of colonialism, including the establishment of a Chinese outpost at Malacca on the Malay Peninsula and Zheng described the people of the countries beyond the horizon as ‘subjects’ of China. However, shortly after the last of these voyages, the Chinese rulers became focused on their homeland and both the voyages and the nascent colonialism they incorporated ceased.

The Age of Discovery Instead of China, it was Europe, which from the ﬁfteenth century until into the seventeenth century developed the classic exploration model in what has become known as the Age of Discovery. Henry the Navigator One important actor was Henry the Navigator (1394– 1460), son of the King of Portugal. A devout Catholic, Henry as a young man was involved in crusades against Muslim holdings in North Africa. He went on to organize voyages further down the coast of Africa and into the Atlantic, many of whose islands were truly discovered by Portuguese seafarers and some of which, such as the Azores, were colonized and exploited for timber and agricultural products. Henry sponsored many voyages to Africa without signiﬁcant return, until in the 1440s the use of an advanced craft, the caravel, enabled his captains to reach further along the west coast of Africa where gold and slaves were obtained. This stimulated the interest of the private sector in exploration and trade and com mercial expeditions began to be operated with some success under license from the Portuguese authorities. By 1454, other trading peoples such as the Venetians and Genoese were taking part in Portuguese voyages, while the pope had recognized the claims of Portugal to the islands and coastal lands her captains had found. In the decades after Henry’s death his country’s explorers pushed Portugal’s inﬂuence ever further east. Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450–1500) sailed round the Cape of Good Hope in 1488; Vasco da Gama (c. 1469–1524) led a ﬂeet to India in search of spices in 1497, and Goa was established as a permanent Portuguese settlement on the west coast of India in 1510, in the manner of African settlements such as Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea Bissau) taken in 1446. Later, in 1557, the Portuguese were to establish a

trading enclave on the Chinese coast at Macau, which was governed by Portugal until 1999. Gold, God, and Glory Meanwhile, Portugal’s neighbor, Spain, was exploring islands and coasts on the other side of the Atlantic, em ploying Spaniards and other Europeans such as Amerigo Vespucci of Florence (after whose ﬁrst name it is thought America is named) and Christopher Columbus (Cristo´bal Colo´n, 1451–1506) of Genoa. The Spanish were seeking a western route to Asia and Columbus thought that in 1492 he had reached that continent, not that he had (re ) ‘discovered’ the new world. As with Portugal, the Spanish established colonial settlements, such as at Hispaniola in 1493. The Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 formally divided the two Iberian nations’ spheres of inﬂuence on either side of a north–south meridian drawn to the west of Portugal’s Cape Verde Islands. Land to the west, namely America except for Brazil, was for Spain; that to the east was for Portugal. The motivation for these early voyages of exploration has long been summed up in the alliterative phrase, ‘gold, god, and glory’. From the early activities under Henry the Navigator, European Christians, particularly Catholics, were convinced that by spreading the word of their God they were doing his work. Later, souls ‘saved’ were perhaps some compensation for those lost to the spread of Prot estantism in Europe. The pursuit of glory was signiﬁcant in the Age of Discovery and remained a motivation throughout the history of exploration: who now knows the name of the third man atop Everest, despite his effort and personal achievement being identical to Tenzing and Hillary? (It was Ju¨rg Marmet (born 1927) of the 1956 Swiss Mount Everest and Lhotse Expedition.) Gold itself was a key driver in the early European penetrations of South America as in the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and the Aztec Empire under Herna´n Corte´s (1485–1547) from 1519 to 1521. Perhaps the Aztec leader, Moctezuma (Montezuma II, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, c. 1466–1520), had been foolish to have given the Spaniards extravagant gifts in gold when he ﬁrst encountered them. In a similar vein, the second expedition to Peru in 1526 of Francisco Pizarro (1475–1541) came across gold and during the ac tual Conquest of Peru in 1532; famously the ransom for the Inca, Atahualpa (c. 1502–33) involved the ﬁlling of a large room with gold and silver artifacts. Early Circumnavigations Often, usually, trade goods other than gold were the reasons why voyages of exploration/exploitation were sponsored. The famous circumnavigation of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (Ferna˜o de Magalha˜es, 1480–1521) of 1519–21 at the service of Spain was ac tually another attempt to ﬁnd a westward route to the

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Spice Islands (Malaku, formerly called the Moluccas in what is now Indonesia). Magellan himself did not make it all the way round – he was killed in the Philippines in 1521 – and only one of the ﬁve ships that had left Seville in 1519 returned there, under Juan Sebastia´n Elcano (1476–1526). Magellan discovered the route from the Atlantic to the Paciﬁc between the South American mainland and Tierra de Fuego, now called the Strait of Magellan rather than the name Magellan gave it, Estreito de Todos los Santos. Further, while Magellan cannot be said to have discovered the Paciﬁc Ocean in any sense, his party were the ﬁrst explorers to have entered it from the east and the name of the ocean is that which Magellan gave it. However, despite its considerable achievements regarding exploration, this had been a trading voyage. Magellan had not set out to circum navigate the globe and it was probably Elcano who ac tually took the decision to push on from the Spice Islands ever westwards via the Indian Ocean in Victoria, rather than returning the way they had come. The other sur viving ship, Trinidad, attempted to return via the Paciﬁc but was captured by the Portuguese and was wrecked in a storm. Victoria reached Seville with just 18 survivors, but with 26 tons of spices, mainly cloves (actually worth more than their weight in gold) and cinnamon. The expedition turned in a small proﬁt. The English sailor, Francis Drake (1540–96), made the second circumnavigation from 1577 to 1580, a venture described as a voyage of discovery, but there was also a proﬁt motive, this time from plunder of Spanish treasure ships in the New World. Drake also beneﬁted from the ‘glory’ aspect of exploration, being knighted and be coming a popular hero. His ventures against the Spanish were part of a confrontation that brought England and Spain to war. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 in which Drake played a key part, Spanish maritime power waned and nations from Northern Europe began to play a greater role in exploration and the trading to which it was linked.

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tea (the famous tea clipper, Cutty Sark, was an EIC ship). However, in its early period, EIC voyages were scoping ventures, searching out possibilities for trade, and might be seen as exploration. The English had made a re connaissance expedition to the East from 1591 led by James Lancaster (c. 1554–1618). Lancaster went on to command the ﬁrst voyage of the new EIC from 1601 to 1603 and was knighted after he brought it to a successful conclusion. Like Sir Henry Middleton (ﬂ. 1580–1606) who commanded the second EIC voyage in 1604–06, Lancaster left a record of his exploits and, like much literature on early exploration, these accounts have been republished by the Hakluyt Society. The trading companies had, on paper, mighty powers. Thus, the Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC, founded 1602) was entitled to annex land in for eign countries, build forts and settlements, maintain an army and navy, declare war, and make treaties with for eign rulers. The companies usually co operated with local rulers about their land holdings given the difﬁculty of protecting these small enclaves; the main Dutch base in the east at Bantam in Java was held under treaty with the sultan from 1596. Such arrangements were unsatis factory given the constant need for collaboration with local authorities; better that land be directly controlled. This gave an impetus to further colonization, a process already established by Spain and Portugal. Some of the seventeenth century colonies actually belonged to com mercial companies operating under charter, including in what later became the United States. Company colonies were not a success. For example, while Virginia was at ﬁrst a colony under the control of the Virginia Company (chartered in 1606), ownership was transferred to the crown in 1625 because of problems with its sharply dif ferentiated society, high mortality rates, and a massacre by indigenous people in 1622. Colonialism later, with just a few exceptions, became again a state venture.

Colonialism and Exploration Merchant Companies Some of the activity was not by states themselves, but by chartered merchant trading companies such as those es tablished in the Netherlands, France, Brandenburg, and Denmark. One of the most signiﬁcant was The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, known just as the East India Company (EIC), founded in 1600. The EIC became a massive trading organization, which also administered the subcontinent of India, before being liquidated in 1858. EIC activities by the end of the seventeenth century had become set as the routine (if never banal, given the dangers) transportation from the Orient to Europe of spices and other comestibles such as

Colonialism was and had always been associated with exploration given that colonialists need to investigate their actual or potential territories. There is a change in emphasis here from what might be termed exploration as encounter to exploration in detail, from claiming terri tory now known to exist to getting to know the territory, the better to administer and exploit it. One of the ﬁrst examples is that of Hernando de Soto (c. 1496–1542), a Spaniard who had been with Pizarro in the Conquest of Peru and had become wealthy on the plunder therefrom. In 1539, he led an expedition to what is now the south of the United States seeking, as always, a passage to the Orient and gold but also with the aim of establishing colonial settlements. His party traveled

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through areas, including present day Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, and they may well have been the ﬁrst Europeans to see the Mississippi. de Soto, who died on the exped ition, failed in all his objectives. His surviving men limped back into Spanish Mexico in 1642 in penury, without gold, in poor health, and wearing only animal skins. However, the records of the exploration are in valuable scientiﬁcally as they detail aboriginal culture prior to contact with Europeans other than their own party, ironically societies which they helped in large part to devastate, not through conquest but rather the trans mission of diseases to the aboriginal peoples against which they had no immunity. Finally, de Soto’s explor ations were the basis for the Spanish claim to large parts of what is now the southern USA. In similar vein was the expedition led by Meriwether Lewis (1774–1809) and William Clark (1770–1838) of 1804–06. In 1803, the recently established USA had ac quired from France through the Louisiana Purchase over 2 million square kilometers of territory west of the Mississippi. President Thomas Jefferson set up this ex pedition party, the Corps of Discovery, with the principle aim of establishing practicable water communication across the continent for the purposes of commerce, with subsidiary aims of studying local people, botany, geology, etc. Starting in Illinois in May 1804, the party reached the Paciﬁc Ocean and, after overwintering at Fort Clatsop in Oregon, began the return journey in March 1806 reaching St Louis in September carrying signiﬁcant in formation, including scientiﬁc samples and maps re garding the geography of the new territory of the United States. The Lewis and Clark expedition helped open up the new land for the fur trade initially and later more extensive settlement and also strengthened the US claims to further areas beyond the Louisiana Purchase, namely Oregon Territory. A less well known but equally valid example of ex ploration associated with the acquisition of territory re lates to the British occupation of the Falkland Islands from 1833. In that year, after a complex history of settlement and ownership, the British navy established authority over the islands. There was a need to create a more substantial presence than the handful of people supported by naval rations who lived in the one settle ment there in the 1830s. The Colonial Land and Emi gration Commissioners were instructed to report on economic prospects for the Falklands and suggestions included use as a penal settlement, a refreshment station for ships rounding South America, a military base, and an agricultural colony, suitable, it seemed, for a small body of people of frugal and industrious habits – Scottish is landers were suggested. A new lieutenant governor, Richard Moody (1813–87), was sent down replacing the last of the naval ofﬁcers in charge and tasked to explore

the area under his command. In 1842, within 3 months of his arrival, Moody presented an extensive document of 15 000 words of detailed topographical and geological description including a land classiﬁcation. This was ex ploration with a focus on economic opportunities: pas toralism, hunting and ﬁshing, and growing vegetables. He identiﬁed plenty of building stone, peat for fuel, and kelp for manure near the coasts. A generation later when the British, at ﬁrst through the Hudson’s Bay Company, were settling Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada, people there went to explore, to see what there was. It is perhaps appropriate that this ex ample of exploration in detail was carried out in a place named for George Vancouver (1757–98), whose voyages in this area were exploration as encounter. The ﬁrst private settler, W. Colquhoun Grant (ﬂ. 1820–57), published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1857 a lengthy account of the island and its potential, including timber and coal supplies, harbors and ﬁsheries, and prospective agricultural land, also sections on the native peoples; all ‘the results of personal observation’, one of the sections being a ‘trip round the island’. Grant looked to Vancouver Island ‘being settled by bodies of independent freeholders accustomed to rely on themselves for support’. Within 3 years Facts and Figures Relating to Vancouver Island and British Columbia Showing What to Expect and How to Get There by the island’s surveyor general, J. Despard Pemberton (1821–93) had appeared to further encourage such migrants.

Exploration and the Search for Knowledge By the late nineteenth century one can begin to recog nize an alternative trend to the type of economic ex ploration epitomized by The Corps of Discovery, as exploration entered what might be termed its search for knowledge phase, which itself slipped into the Mallory tradition of the twentieth century. What might seem to be a parallel to Lewis and Clark is the 1860–61 Australian expedition of Burke and Wills. However, there are signiﬁcant distinctions. One was that this expedition was organized not by the government but privately by the Royal Society of Victoria. Also, in con trast to Lewis and Clark, the aim here was somewhat nebulous, being principally to cross the country from Melbourne to the north coast. Robert Burke (1821–61) and John Wills (1834–61) were not particularly experi enced or equipped with the skills they would need for such a venture and on the return leg from the Gulf of Carpenteria both leaders and all but one other member of the main expedition died a slow but according to Wills’ last journal entry a not particularly unpleasant death, the ngardu they found to eat providing substance but

Exploration

insufﬁcient nourishment. The sole survivor, John King (1838–72), was rescued by a relief party. The expedition certainly saw more white Australian penetration into the interior of the continent than hitherto, but its utility to science and geography was largely limited to a negative, showing that there was no inland sea. The distinctions between Lewis and Clark and Burke and Wills are important. The ﬁrst was a state sponsored ex pedition tasked with scientiﬁc but also utilitarian pur poses; it was exploration to practical ends in a tradition stretching back centuries. The latter seemed to have been more a journey for its own sake and it was a society venture. At this period geographical societies became more involved with exploration. Particularly notable in this regard is the British RGS. One of the recipients of a gold medal for exploration from the RGS was the polymath Francis Galton (1822–1911) who wrote Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa in 1853. The motivation for his expedition he had made clear in an article in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in the ﬁrst para graph of which he wrote ‘‘urged by an excessive fondness for a wild life, I determined to travel for a second time in Africa’’: exploration as personal fulﬁllment. The RGS is most known at this period for the sponsorship of the search for the source of the Nile by John Hanning Speke (1827–64) in 1860–63, which stimulated a bitter dispute between Speke and his former traveling companion, Richard Burton (1821–90). The day Speke was due to have a public debate with Burton, he was killed in a hunting accident, with some suggestion that it was suicide. Speke’s travels around Lake Victoria did have some impact on the later scramble for Africa. However, searching for where the Nile starts was not of itself of direct economic utility, it was not the equivalent of looking for potential trade routes to the Spice Islands or for the Northwest Passage. Not all late Victorian African exploration was for intellectual curiosity or to satisfy personal vanity. Indeed, David Livingstone (1813–73) went to Africa for missionary work and to campaign for an end to illegal slavery, but was also involved in seeking for routes across the continent to help open it up for trade and other outside inﬂuences. This particularly re lates to his Zambezi Expedition of 1858–64, which was sponsored by the British government and took place after he had left the London Missionary Society. However, it is hard not to see source of the Nile type exploration as other than the pastime of a then wealthy and arrogantly conﬁdent nation, which had proﬁted from less altruistic and more proﬁtable foreign journeys in earlier eras, in cluding those associated with the slave trade. This im perial grandeur perhaps died with Scott (1913) who wrote ‘‘for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a

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fortitude as ever in the past;’’ an heroic end which meant he did not come home beaten by a Norwegian, a man often scorned by Britons because he ate his sled dogs. However, ‘Englishmen’ or at least those descended from Britons like Edmund Hillary were to have some success in exploration’s Mallory tradition, though of course Mallory himself (and Irvine) also had heroic deaths en gaged in the pursuit of glory.

Postcolonialism Early literature on exploration was dominated by the reports of the explorers themselves, including the logs of navigators (many now available in modern editions through the ofﬁces of the Hakluyt Society, named for the English travel writer Richard Hakluyt (c. 1552–1613)). Scholars would compile collections of such accounts, perhaps adding commentaries. Purchas, His Pilgrimes, published from 1613 to 1625 by the clergyman Samuel Purchas (c. 1575–1626), who did not travel himself, is an example. Such works celebrated exploration, as did the later imperial narratives of adventurers such as Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904). Though assuring the reader of his How I Found Livingstone that he ‘had met in the United States black men, whom I was proud to call friends’, he was nonetheless prepared to have recalcitrant African members of his party to ‘‘ﬂogged with ‘the Great Master’s’ donkey whip.’’ It is easy to render oneself ap palled by the arrogance and cruelty of a man like Stanley looking back from another era, but certainly literature has since set such attitudes ﬁrmly into a postcolonial critique. Modern writing such as that by Miles Ogborn considers rather the operation of the exploration and subsequent colonization process, in his case with a focus on the EIC. The change to the world brought about by exploration has been immense and can never undone, despite mod ern recognition of the negative impacts it had upon people whose lands were explored and often sub sequently colonized. However, there is at last a recog nition that the take on the world of ‘‘the Great Master’’ need not be the last word through the reversion of many places to their pre exploration, pre colonial names, including Everest as Chomolungma; New Zealand as Aotearoa, Easter Island as Rapa Nui, and the Queen Charlotte Islands as Haida Gwaii. George Dixon (c. 1755–1800) named these islands for his ship, itself named for the wife of the British king, George III. Such tribute presumably meant little to the local people, the Haida. The original and now restored name Haida Gwaii means ‘our land’ or ‘islands of the people’, a people who were reduced in number by introduced disease from around 12 000 upon European ‘discovery’ to about 700 by 1900.

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See also: Imperialistic Geographies; Trade, Transport and Communications, Historical Geographies of.

Further Reading Ambrose, S. E. (1996). Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. New York: Simon and Schuster. Amundsen, R. (1927). My Life as an Explorer. London: Heinemann. Bonyhady, T. (1991). Burke and Wills: From Melbourne to Myth. Balmain, NSW: David Ell Press. Cameron, I. (1974). Magellan and the First Circumnavigation of the World. London: Wiedenfeld and Nicholson. Dreyer, E. L. (2007). Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming Dynasty, 1405 1433. New York: Pearson Longman. Ferna´ndez Armesto, F. (2006). Pathﬁnders: A Global History of Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Galloway, P. (1997). The Hernando de Soto Expedition: History, Historiography, and ‘‘Discovery’’ in the Southeast. London: University of Nebraska Press. Hordern, N. (1971). God, Gold and Glory. London: Aldus Books. Markham, C. R. (ed.) (1877). The Voyages of Sir James Lancaster, Kt., to the East Indies, with Abstracts of Journals of Voyages to the East Indies, during the Seventeenth Century, Preserved in the India Ofﬁce. And the Voyage of Captain John Knight (1606), to Seek the North West Passage. London: Hakluyt Society. Ogborn, M. (2007). Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Riffenburgh, B. (1993). The Myth of the Explorer: The Press, Sensationalism, and Geographical Discovery. London: Belhaven Press and Scott Polar Research Institute. Scott, R. F. (1913). Scott’s Last Expedition. Vol.1. Being the Journals of Captain R.F. Scott, R.N., C.V.O. Vol. 2. Being the Reports of the

Journey and Scientiﬁc Work Undertaken by Dr E.A. Wilson and the Surviving Members of the Expedition. London: Smith, Elder. Speke, J. H. (1863). Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood. Struzik, E. (1991). Northwest Passage: The Quest for an Arctic Route to the East. Toronto: Key Porter Books. Wallis, J. P. R. (ed.) (1956). The Zambezi Expedition of David Livingstone, 1858 1863. London: Chatto and Windus. Williams, G. (ed.) (2004). Captain Cook: Explorations and Reassessments. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/discovery/ Discoverer’s Web: this is a website managed by Andre Engels of the Netherlands which has itself extensive collections on exploration and many links to material on discovery and exploration in all areas of the world. http://www.hakluyt.com Hakluyt Society: as its website states, ‘‘the Hakluyt Society seeks to advance knowledge and education by the publication of scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material.’’ It has been publishing books on exploration since 1847. The Society is named after Richard Hakluyt (1552 1616), who published collections of material on English exploration. http://www.rgs.org Royal Geographical Society: housed in London, it holds an extensive archive of exploration material especially of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The holdings are open for public consultation. http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk Scott Polar Research Institute: named for Captain R. F. Scott, it is part of the University of Cambridge. It is a center for research into polar regions and has extensive library and on line collections of material.

Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis S. Dall’erba, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary LISA Statistics Indication of the extent to which there is a signiﬁcant spatial clustering of similar values around a speciﬁc observation. Moran’s I Statistics that measure global spatial autocorrelation. It corresponds to the degree of linear association between the value of a variable at one location and the spatially weighted average of neighboring values. Moran Scatterplot Graphical display of the value of a variable at one observation (on the horizontal axis) against the standardized spatial weighted average (average of the neighbors’ value) on the vertical axis. Spatial Autocorrelation Correlation between the value of an observation and the value of neighboring observations. Spatial Heterogeneity Variability or difference between the values of observations over space. This variation may follow speciﬁc geographical patterns such as east and west, or north and south. Spatial Weight Matrix Matrix whose cells display the degree of connection between all the observations of our sample.

Introduction Exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) has greatly beneﬁted from the integration of spatial statistical methods to the geographic information science (GIS) environment. A substantial collection of spatial data an alysis software is currently available to the practitioner, which should sustain the level of success this ﬁeld has experienced over the last few years. ESDA allows con sidering the spatial context in which most geographically referenced events take place. These events cannot be viewed as disjoint and spatially independent, otherwise conclusions about the data and, more importantly, the oretical considerations regarding the social processes that occur across space would be overlooked. Traditionally, there are two spatial effects that ESDA is able to highlight. They are called spatial autocorrela tion (or spatial dependence) and spatial heterogeneity. Spatial autocorrelation can be positive or negative. Positive spatial autocorrelation refers to the idea that nearby observations tend to display similar attributes. It refers to a geographic concentration, similarity, or clustering of a particular phenomenon. Spatial

autocorrelation arises from different factors. As stated in Tobler’s ‘ﬁrst law of geography’, nearby locations are more likely to have more in common than locations that are more distant. Spatial autocorrelation may also come from the fact that the data are affected by processes spread over different locations and/or from a variety of measurement problems, such as a mismatching between the administrative boundaries used to organize the data and the actual boundaries of the processes under study. Spatial heterogeneity means that the value of obser vations is not homogeneous over space. This variation may follow speciﬁc geographical patterns, such as east and west, or north and south, also called spatial regimes or spatial clubs. Both spatial effects are related since the same inﬂuences captured by spatial autocorrelation can account for spatial heterogeneity. ESDA is a step by step process which often starts with aspatial tools, such as choropleth maps and box plots that display the distribution of a variable and identify outliers. However, both tools are considered aspatial because they do not pay attention to the spatial linkages that inﬂuence the distribution of a variable. In order to ﬁll this gap, we need to turn to the deﬁnition of spatial interactions via a spatial weight matrix and then to associated spatial ESDA tools. Practitioners often choose ﬁrst a Moran’s I statistics for global spatial autocorrelation. It reveals the degree of linear association between the value of a variable at one location and the spatially weighted average of neighboring values. A more detailed picture of the spatial distribution is then offered by Moran’s scatterplot, local indicators of spatial association (LISA), and Getis–Ord statistics which measure local spatial autocorrelation and, eventually, re veal spatial heterogeneity. These last three tools compute, for ‘each’ observation, the degree of spatial clustering of similar values around that observation. While all these steps are performed and developed below on area data, it is important to note that ESDA can be applied to other types of observations such as point data, ﬂow data, etc.

Nonspatial Tools Choropleth Map The ﬁrst step of an ESDA is to perform a so called choropleth map, which simply displays the distribution of the variables under study. For the sake of clarity, we use the example of the distribution of per capita gross domestic product (GDP) across the 145 regions of 12 countries of the European Union in 1989. Their distribution, relative to the European average, is shown in Figure 1.

683

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Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis

Relative per capita GDP 1989 <75% 0

75−100%

100−150% 1000

>150%

Miles 2000

Figure 1 Choropleth map: relative distribution of per capita GDP across the regions of Europe in 1989 (in 1990 Euro prices). This ﬁgure has been realized using ArcView GIS 3.2 (Esri). Reprinted from Dall’erba, S. (2005). Distribution of regional income and regional funds in Europe 1989 1999: An exploratory spatial data analysis. Annals of Regional Science 39, 121 148.

Europe is marked by a clear core–periphery pattern, with the core (the darker color) composed of the richest regions, whereas the peripheral regions (Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the southern part of Italy) are the poorest ones (per capita GDP is below 75% of the average). Note that the choice of four categories is simply due to the political concerns typical of the case under study. Intervals of the categories could also have been chosen to be equal or according to the quantiles of the distribution of our variable. While a choropleth map allows visual izing the distribution of a variable, it does not tell us much about the persistence over time of this distribution nor the signiﬁcant presence of the spatial effects we introduced earlier. Before we go any further, we need to say a few words on the spatial weight matrices that will be used in the spatial analysis. Visualizing Extreme Values Like the choropleth map above, the box plot is another basic tool that depicts the aspatial distribution of a variable. A box plot displays the median, ﬁrst, and third quartile of the distribution (respectively the 50%, 25%, and 75% points in the cumulative distribution) as well as outliers. An observation is called outlier when its value is above or below a given multiple of the difference be tween the ﬁrst and third quartile. The standard multiples are 1.5 or 3. Here is the corresponding formula with the case of 1.5 as a multiple: outlier oQ 1 1:5 * ðQ 3 Q 1 Þ

4Q 3 þ 1:5 * ðQ 3 Q 1 Þ, where Q1 and Q3 are respect ively ﬁrst and third quartile of the distribution. Figure 2 displays an example with the same variable as above and a multiple of 1.5. The bar in the middle of the dark area corresponds to the median while the upper (resp. lower) part of the dark area is the third (resp. ﬁrst) quartile of the distribution. The thin line on the upper part of the ﬁgure is called the hinge, here corresponding to the default criteria of 1.5 times the difference between the ﬁrst and third quartile. The ﬁgure indicates that ﬁve regions display some ex treme values of per capita GDP. They are the outliers: Hamburg and Damrstadt (Germany), Ile de France (France), Brussels (Belgium), and Luxembourg. They all belong to the core regions of Europe. Visualizing outliers can be done by linking the box plot to a box map or by representing the distribution according to the standard deviation of the variable. In the latter case, outliers are observations outside of the standard ½m 2s; m þ 2s range, where m is the mean and s the standard deviation.

Spatial Weight Matrix A spatial weight matrix is a matrix whose cells display the degree of connection between all the observations of our sample. Traditionally, connections are based on pure

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685

international connections between all regions is k ¼ 7. Different kinds of weight matrices can be built (great circle distance with a cutoff, contiguity matrices, share of common borders, etc.), and their choice is always some what arbitrary. In the case of a k nearest neighbors weight matrix, we recommend limiting the number of neighbors to 10% of the total number of observations. It is common practice to use the inverse of the distance (1/d ) or of the squared distance (1/d 2) in order to reﬂect the greater degree of connection between closer observations. An other common practice consists in normalizing the out side inﬂuence upon each region by row standardizing each matrix (i.e., the row elements of the matrix are divided by the sum of the elements by row) so that each row sum is one. Row standardization means that it is relative and not absolute distance that matters.

(145)

Global Spatial Autocorrelation Join Count Statistics GDP89

Figure 2 Box plot of the distribution of European regional per capita GDP in 1989. This ﬁgure has been created in Geoda.

geographical distance as the exogenous character of distance is unambiguous. This aspect becomes necessary when, at a later stage, spatial econometric regressions are run. (Note that in the case of per capita GDP, the true connections between regions are not based on dis tance but on factors such as interregional migration, trade ﬂows, knowledge spillovers, etc. However, such data do not exist for the European regions yet.) We base our spatial weight matrices on the great circle distance for dependence to be considered in any direction. More precisely, we base our weight matrices on the k ¼ 10, 15 nearest neighbors. The form of the spatial weight matrix is the following: 8 > < wij ðkÞ ¼ 0 if i ¼ j wij ðkÞ ¼ 1 if d ij rDi ðkÞ for k ¼ 10; 15 > : wij ðkÞ ¼ 0 if d ij 4Di ðkÞ

½1

where dij is the great circle distance between centroids of regions i and j. Di (k) is the critical cutoff distance deﬁned for each regions i, above which interactions are assumed to be negligible. In other words, Di (k) is the kth order smallest distance between regions i and j such that each region i has exactly k neighbors. In the spatial weight matrix above, the weights (1 or 0) capture the spatial relationships between geographic observations. It is worth mentioning that in the European context, the minimum number of nearest neighbors that guarantees

The simplest measures of spatial autocorrelation are for qualitative (binary) variables that take the value 0 or 1. These measures are called join count statistics because they measure the number of times a join corresponds to a similar or dissimilar value in the neighboring location. Because areas with observations 1 (resp. 0) are refereed as black (resp. white), there are three types of join counts: BB ¼ 12 BW ¼ 12 WW ¼ 12

XX i

j

i

j

i

j

XX XX

wij xi xj 2 wij xi xj wij ð1

xi Þð1

xj Þ

½2

There is positive spatial autocorrelation if the BB or WW joins dominate; there is negative spatial auto correlation if the BW joins are more numerous. Inference is based on the approaches which are listed below for Moran’s I and Geary’s c. Moran’s I and Geary’s c Moran’s I and Geary’s c are the best known statistics to measure global spatial autocorrelation of a quantitative variable. They correspond to the degree of linear asso ciation between the value of a variable at one location and the spatially weighted average of neighboring values. Formally, the Moran’s I is given by I ¼

N S0

P P i

j

wij ðxi P i ðxi

xÞðxj xÞ

2

xÞ

½3

where N is the number of observations, wij is the degree of connection between the spatial units i and j, and xi is

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the variable of interest in region i and S0 ¼

XX i

wij

j

that is, the sum of all the weights. If the spatial weight matrix is standardized, N ¼ S0, the Geary’s c is given by N 1 c¼ 2S0

P P i

j

P

xj Þ2

wij ðxi

i ðxi

xÞ

2

½4

with the same notation as above. Moran’s I values larger (smaller) than the expected value E(I ) ¼ 1/(n 1) indicate positive (negative) spatial autocorrelation. In our case, with k ¼ 10 neigh bors, I ¼ 0.481 (calculations have been performed in SpaceStat) while E(I) ¼ –1/144 ¼ –0.00694. This indi cates the presence of positive spatial autocorrelation, that is, in our case study, wealthy regions tend to be geo graphically clustered and poor regions tend to be close to each other as well. The distribution of the regional per capita GDP in Europe is therefore certainly not random. This result is conﬁrmed by the Geary’s c coefﬁcient (0.511) which is smaller than its expected value, 1. Had the c coefﬁcient been larger than 1, we would have concluded that a negative spatial autocorrelation exists. This would have suggested a chess board pattern of spatial dissimilarity that is rarely found in spatially ref erenced data. It is good practice to perform both statistics with various weight matrices and over several years (if available) to conﬁrm your results. Signiﬁcance tests for the I and c statistics are often based on a standardized z value whose mean and standard deviation can be calculated according to dif ferent approaches: normal distribution, the random ization assumption, or the permutation approach. For instance, the results above were calculated using a per mutation approach with 10 000 permutations. It means that 10 000 resampled datasets were automatically cre ated for which the I (or c) statistics are computed. The value obtained for the actual dataset has then been compared to the empirical distribution obtained from these resampled datasets. While the previous spatial statistics can detect global spatial autocorrelation, they are not able to identify local patterns of spatial association, such as local spatial clusters or local spatial outliers. In addition, positive global spatial autocorrelation does not indicate whether one is dealing with a cluster of high or low values. The identiﬁcation of observations that belong to a clustering of high (low) values is based on the results of a Moran scatterplot.

Local Spatial Autocorrelation Moran Scatterplot The idea of the Moran scatterplot is to display the value of an observation (on the horizontal axis) against the

standardized spatial weighted average (average of the neighbors’ value, also called spatial lag) on the vertical axis. Expressing the variables in standardized form (i.e., with mean 0 and standard deviation equal to 1) allows the assessment of both the global spatial association, since the slope of the line is the Moran’s I coefﬁcient, and local spatial association (the quadrant in the scatterplot). As shown in Figure 3 the Moran scatterplot is therefore divided into four different quadrants corresponding to the four types of local spatial association between an observation and its neighbors: 1. Quadrant I (on the top right corner) displays the observations with a high value (above average) sur rounded by observations with a high value (above average). This quadrant is usually noted as HH. In our case study, this would correspond to rich regions surrounded by rich regions. 2. Quadrant II (on the top left corner) shows obser vations with a low value surrounded by observations with high values. This quadrant is usually noted as LH. This would correspond to poor regions sur rounded by rich regions. 3. Quadrant III (on the bottom left) displays obser vations with low values surrounded by observations with low values, and is noted as LL. This corresponds to poor regions surrounded by poor regions. 4. Quadrant IV (on the bottom right) shows observations with high value surrounded by observations with low values. It is noted as LL. This corresponds to rich regions surrounded by poor regions. Figure 4 displays the Moran scatterplots of regional per capita GDP for 1989, with k ¼ 10 nearest neighbors. Regions located in quadrants I and III refer to positive spatial autocorrelation, the spatial clustering of similar values, whereas quadrants II and IV represent negative spatial autocorrelation, the spatial clustering of dissimilar values. Positive global spatial autocorrelation, which was previously detected by the value of Moran’s I, is reﬂected by (1) the positive slope coefﬁcient of the linear re gression of the spatial lag value on z, (a slope of one, passing through the origin, would indicate perfect spatial association) and (2) the fact that most of the regions are located in quadrants I and III. Those are regions re spectively located in the core and the periphery of re gions. Conversely, HL and LH type regions are often regions located at the border between peripheral and core regions. Overall, the results of the Moran scatterplot indicate that the spatial distribution of regional income is more complicated than the simple core–periphery framework previously detected in the choropleth map. Moran scatterplot is also a useful tool for the de tection of spatial heterogeneity. Indeed, from Figure 4 it is clear that most European regions are either in the HH or in the LL quadrants which means that the distribution

Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis

687

3 LH

HH

Spatial lag (standardized)

2

1

0

−1

−2

HL

LL −3 −3

−2

−1

0

1

2

3

Per capita GDP 1989 (standardized)

Figure 3 Moran scatterplot of regional per capita GDP in 1989. This ﬁgure has been performed in Matlab. Reprinted from Dall’erba, S. (2005). Distribution of regional income and regional funds in Europe 1989 1999: An exploratory spatial data analysis. Annals of Regional Science 39, 121 148.

Out of sample Negative Positive

Figure 4 Getis Ord statistics on the per capita GDP in 1989. This ﬁgure has been realized using ArcView GIS 3.2 (Esri) and the Getis Ord statistics have been computed in SpaceStat.

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Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis

of the variable studied (per capita GDP in 1989) is not homogeneous over space. Further tools are used below to detect whether these two spatial clubs are consistent. Finally, note that Figure 4 corresponds to a so called univariate Moran scatterplot because we use the same variable on the x and the y axis. A multivariate Moran scatterplot can also be done. It corresponds to a case where the y axis is calculated on another variable (a different year, a different variable or both) than the variable used in the x axis. The case where the two axes are based on different years is referred to as spatial– temporal dependence. Getis–Ord statistics The G statistics developed by Getis and Ord provide an alternate measure of global spatial association (G) and ob servation speciﬁc (Gi and G * ) measures of local spatial as sociation. These last statistics detect the presence of local spatial autocorrelation: a positive value of this statistic for observation i indicates a spatial cluster of observations with high value of the variable of interest, whereas a negative value of the Gi or Gi* statistics indicates a spatial cluster of observations with low value around observation i. Formally, the Gi statistics can be written as follows: P Gi ¼

j ai

P

wij ðd Þxj

j ai

xj

½5

where wij(d) are the elements of the matrix whose dis tance cutoff is d. The matrix used for the calculation of this statistic does not necessarily have to be symmetric and binary. The difference between Gi and Gi* is that the latter statistics provide a measure of spatial clustering that includes the observation under consideration, while Gi does not. In other words, j ¼ i is included in the sum (in the denominator) in Gi* statistics. These statistics imply a two way split of the sample which can be useful for the determination of spatial re gimes or spatial clubs. Applied to our case study, the two clubs (rich surrounded by rich and poor surrounded by poor) are represented in Figure 4. Spatial heterogeneity, previously detected in the Moran scatterplot, seems to be consistent with the Getis–Ord statistics as well. Note, however, that we did not pay attention to the signiﬁcance level of the statistics for Figure 4. If we had included the signiﬁcance level, 68 of the 145 statistics would have been nonsigniﬁcant. Local Indicator of Spatial Association The Moran scatterplot displayed above does not give any indication on the ‘signiﬁcance’ of spatial clustering. We therefore need to calculate LISA statistics for each ob servation to obtain an indication of the extent to which there is a signiﬁcant spatial clustering of similar values

around a speciﬁc observation. LISA statistics, developed by Anselin, are used for the detection of signiﬁcant local spatial clusters (also called ‘hot spots’) as well as for the diagnostics of local instability, signiﬁcant outliers, and spatial regimes. The local Moran’s statistics for each re gion i can be formalized in the following way: Ii ¼

X xi wij xj m0 j

with

m0 ¼

X xi 2 i

n

½6

with xi (xj) is the observation in region i ( j) (each measured as a deviation from the mean value) and the matrix w is row standardized. The sum of LISAs for all observations is proportional to a global indicator of spatial association. Since we use a row standardized matrix, the average of local Moran statistics is also equal to the global Moran’s I statistics. The results from the application of LISA with k ¼ 10 nearest neighbors are displayed in Figure 5. The sig niﬁcance level is based on a conditional permutation approach with 10 000 random permutations of the neighboring regions for each observation. The pseudo signiﬁcance level is 5%. Regions revealing a signiﬁcant spatial association of per capita GDP (HH or LL) are mostly those previously detected as core (HH cluster) and peripheral (LL cluster) regions. Indeed, in the ﬁgure, 83% of the local statistics that are signiﬁcant are either HH or LL type, reﬂecting the global trend of positive spatial association and spatial heterogeneity since the clusters represent different val ues of per capita GDP. The ﬁgure also indicates that some regions display signs of signiﬁcant negative spatial autocorrelation (LH or HL type). As explained above, those are regions with a level of per capita GDP sig niﬁcantly different than the one of their neighbors, such as Madrid in Spain for instance (HL type). Finally, it is important to pay attention to the problem of multiple statistical comparisons that the LISA statistics above may present. This problem comes from the fact that the neighborhood sets of two regions may contain common regions. In order to correct for the error on the appropriate signiﬁcance level due to multiple com parisons, we need to compute a Bonferroni pseudo sig niﬁcance level ( ¼ a 5% pseudo signiﬁcance level in our case). The Bonferroni procedure consists in adjusting downward the alpha level of ‘overall’ signiﬁcance (5%) by the number of comparisons (k ¼ 10) in order to ﬁnd the ‘individual’ signiﬁcance level ( ¼ 0.5% or 5% Bonferroni pseudo signiﬁcance level). Software We seek to provide the reader with a brief review of the software currently available to perform ESDA. We realize this section is doomed to be quickly obsolete given the

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Nonsignificant HH LH LL HL

Figure 5 LISA statistics on the per capita GDP in 1989. This ﬁgure has been realized using ArcView GIS 3.2 (Esri) and the LISA statistics have been computed in SpaceStat.

speed at which this ﬁeld evolves. Some of the oldest software includes the ‘Spider/Regard’ toolboxes which allow ‘geographic brushing’; SAGE which adds ESDA capability to the standard ArcInfo GIS environment; and the DynESDA extension for ArcView. ArcGIS Geosta tistical Analyst allows exploring the spatial distribution of data, but not necessarily with all the tools described above. Currently, the most complete software is Geoda and SpaceStat. Despite its old fashioned interface and performance constraints for large datasets, the latter provides very useful capabilities. It requires an ArcView extension for visualization. Geoda is a more recent and user friendly software that allows both ESDA and some (limited) spatial modeling capabilities. CrimeStat is a Windows based software that interfaces with most desk top GIS programs. Primarily devoted to ﬁghting crime, it has been very popular with police departments around the country. ArcGIS Desktop 9.0 Spatial Statistics Geo processing Toolbox Patch contains performance im provements for cluster and outlier analysis, hot spot analysis, and spatial autocorrelation. Other toolboxes, but which require some programming skills, include the ‘tmap’ function developed in Stata; the ‘spdep’ and ‘DCluster’ functions in R; PySpace and STARS (space– time analysis of regional systems) which are written in Python and, ﬁnally, the Matlab Arc Mat and econo metric routines.

Looking Ahead We live in an exciting period when spatial statistics have tremendously beneﬁted from technical and theoretical advances in GI science. It is very likely that these prow esses will continue in the decades to come. However, with the use of spatial statistics becoming more popular across different ﬁelds, there is a clear need to tighten the interaction between the methodologies, the computa tional capabilities, and the speciﬁcities inherent to each discipline. For instance, many disciplines deal with linkages that are not based on pure geographical distance but, instead, rely on more sophisticated concepts of space (such as economic, social, or political distance). It is not an easy task though since it would require a rethinking of the current statistical methods. Another aspect to be developed focuses on the exploration of patterns of ﬂow data, since reducing transportation costs and more gen erally technological improvements have tremendously increased mobility. In addition, previous ESDA tools do not necessarily allow the user to capture the full extent of a variable distribution as the value in one observation is often compared to the average of the sample or neigh boring observations. With the size of the samples becoming bigger, the chances for a distribution to be multimodal (i.e., displaying signs of multiple clusters) increase. In this case, we recommend complementing an

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ESDA with the increasingly popular tools such as density functions, Markov chains, stochastic kernels, and their spatial version. Finally, the outcome of an ESDA will never be more than a detailed description of the distri bution of a variable over space. Its capacity to measure the relationships between several variables is very lim ited. The natural subsequent step is therefore a thorough estimation of the workings of the system under study. This could be done, for example, using spatial econo metric techniques where the interaction between variables and spatial effects are formally tested and measured. See also: Spatial Autocorrelation; Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of; Statistics, Descriptive; Statistics, Spatial.

Getis, A. and Ord, J. K. (1992). The analysis of spatial association by use of distance statistics. Geographical Analysis 24, 189 206. Haining, R. (1990). Spatial Data Analysis in the Social and Environmental Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Le Gallo, J. (2004). Space time analysis of GDP disparities among European regions: A Markov chains approach. International Regional Science Review 27, 138 163. Le Gallo, J. and Dall’erba, S. (2006). Evaluating the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of the European convergence process, 1980 1999. Journal of Regional Science 46, 269 288. Ord, J. K. and Getis, A. (1995). Local spatial autocorrelation statistics: Distributional issues and an application. Geographical Analysis 27, 286 305. Rey, S. J. and Montouri, B. D. (1999). US regional income convergence: A spatial econometric perspective. Regional Studies 33, 143 156. Upton, G. and Fingleton, B. (1985). Spatial Data Analysis by Example. New York: Wiley.

Further Reading

Relevant Websites

Anselin, L. (1995). Local indicator of spatial association LISA. Geographical Analysis 27, 93 115. Anselin, L. (1999). Interactive techniques and exploratory spatial data analysis. In Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J. & Rhind, D. W. (eds.) Geographic Information System: Principles, Techniques, Management and Applications, pp 251 264. New York: John Wiley. Anselin, L. (2005). Exploring Spatial Data with Geoda: A Workbook. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Anselin, L., Florax, R. G. J. M. and Rey, S. (2004). Advances in Spatial Econometrics: Methodology, Tools and Applications. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. Cliff, A. and Ord, J. K. (1981). Spatial Processes, Models and Applications. London: Pion. Dall’erba, S. (2005). Distribution of regional income and regional funds in Europe 1989 1999: An exploratory spatial data analysis. Annals of Regional Science 39, 121 148. Fotheringham, A. S., Brunsdon, C. and Charlton, M. (2000). Quantitative Geography, Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

http://www.csiss.org Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. http://www.esri.com ESRI: GIS and mapping software, ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst. http://www.geoda.uiuc.edu Geoda. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu Inter University Consortium for Political and Social Research: CrimeStat. http://www.spatial econometrics.com Matlab spatial toolboxes. http://www.spatstat.org Open source software for spatial statistics. http://regionalanalysislab.org Regional Analysis Laboratory: STARS. http://www.terraseer.com Terraseer, Inc.: SpaceStat. http://www.shef.ac.uk The University of Shefﬁeld: SAGE.

Export Processing Zones F. Wu, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Backward Linkage The linkage of the enterprises (in the EPZs) through using local materials and services. Free Trade Zones It is equivalent to export processing zones. In some cases, in more developed economies, a free trade zone may be an exclusive duty-free trade area without manufacturing activities. Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) The rules of the MFA set textile and clothing quotas through bilateral negotiation, which allowed selective quantitative restrictions when an increase in imports threatened or damaged the industry of the importing country. On 1 January 1995, it was replaced by the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing.

Introduction According to the World Bank, export processing zones (EPZs) are industrial estates that are fenced in for pro ducing manufactured goods for export. In short, they are trade enclaves that import raw materials, process them, and then export to the world market. The intermediate goods and materials are treated as duty free. EPZs usually enjoy more ﬂexible regulation control and tax concessions. Publicly funded EPZs are developed through government funded infrastructure, although infrastructure may also be developed through develop ment corporations. The goods produced are not allowed to be sold in the domestic market, although some (such as the Dominican Republic’s EPZ and Mexico’s EPZ) allow a limited amount to be sold in the domestic market, or even free sale to the domestic market (Manaus EPZ of Brazil). EPZs are a prelude to the wide adoption of liberal trade policies. In the early stage of development, EPZs combine industrial parks and free trade zones. The terms are interchangeable. Similar terms include free zone, special economic zone (SEZ), and maquiladoras. Because they originated from the use of labor by multinationals in a conﬁned zone, the diffusion of technology may be limited. Many EPZs perform well in terms of employ ment generation and foreign exchange earnings but not in terms of backward linkage. The operation of manu facturing activities may be isolated from domestic producers. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), EPZs in total employed 41.9 million workers

worldwide, among which Asian EPZs employ 36.8 mil lion, and Central America and Mexico 2.2 million (Table 1). China alone employed 30 million workers in its EPZs. However, because Chinese EPZs include SEZs, including in fact whole cities opened up for the world economy, the actual number of workers in strictly deﬁned EPZs may be smaller than the ﬁgure cited. Because of rising labor costs, Central America and Mexico have lost employment in recent years to lower cost economies such as China. Many EPZs in Central and Eastern Europe will disappear once their economies join the EU. The geographical distribution of EPZ employment is shown in Table 2. EPZs have become an important export base for de veloping countries. Major exports from EPZs include electronics, garments, telecommunications equipment, and auto parts. These goods are particularly labor in tensive, and their assembly requires repetitive but non standard labor input that has not been totally automated. According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), China, Malaysia, and Mexico export telecommunications equipment from their EPZs, and Bangladesh has ex perienced a signiﬁcant increase in garments export, partially due to the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA). The emergence of EPZs reﬂects the shift in devel opment strategy from an import substituted one to an export oriented one. EPZs are used to increase export. Often the development of EPZs is associated with trade liberalization. China designated four cities as SEZs and many more speciﬁc development zones on a smaller scale, known as economic and technological zones (ETZs). Other zones include high tech development zones and free trade zones.

Table 1 Employment in EPZs in the world estimated by the ILO (2003) 1975 No. of countries with EPZs No. of EPZs Employment (millions) of which China of which other

1986

1995

1997

2002

25

47

73

93

116

79

176

500

845 23

3000 43

18 5

30 13

0.8

1.9

Note: The table is compiled by the ILO from its various publications. The information on EPZs is summarized from a total of 108 countries. Data from International Labour Ofﬁce (ILO) (2003). Employment and Social Policy in Respect of Export Processing Zones (EPZs). Geneva: ILO.

691

692 Table 2

Export Processing Zones

Geographical distribution of EPZ employment in 2002 03

Region

No. of EPZs

Total employment

North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Indian Ocean Middle East South Asia Southeast Asian Mexico and Central America South America Transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe Paciﬁc Europe North America Total

16 50 4a 38 48 100 82 134 93

440 515 431 348 127 509 691 297 36 824 231

14 65 2 ( þ 366 parks) 502

13 590 50 830 330 000 41 934 133b

2 241 821 226 130 245 619

a

Including the whole island of Mauritius. Including the employment of 30 000 000 in China. Data from International Labour Ofﬁce (ILO) (2003). Employment and Social Policy in Respect of Export Processing Zones (EPZs). Geneva: ILO. b

In recent years, EPZs have developed more in the form of high tech industrial parks, which emphasize technological development rather than low skilled material processing. For example, in Shanghai, Jingqiao EPZ and Waigaoqiao Free Trade Zone are only two of the zones within the vast Pudong new district, which now spearheads high tech industrial development and ﬁnancial and trade functions. The national level zones in China increased to 54 in 2003. When China joined the WTO in 2001, these zones began to lose their com petitive advantages. The government tried to transform the manufacturing EPZs into multifunction zones.

Rationale The development of EPZs is justiﬁed by a number of motivations: to generate employment, to produce foreign exchange earnings, to promote exports, to provide a catalyst effect on local ﬁrms about how to export to the world market, to use trade enclaves to diffuse knowledge, know how and management skills to local ﬁrms, and to stimulate industrial development in the host country. All these objectives are not without their caveats. For ex ample, the objective of diffusing technology cannot be easily achieved, because EPZs are fenced off from the domestic sector. The gap between local suppliers and the enterprises operating in EPZs may be too large to bridge, and thus it is difﬁcult to diffuse technological develop ment. Job generation is also not necessarily true. Most jobs are limited to low skilled and low income sectors. EPZs may not be the only way to generate foreign exchange earnings. This effort is not always successful. Such a goal may be better achieved through opening up the whole economy rather than isolated trade enclaves such as EPZs. Firms in EPZs, although they may increase exports, may import more than domestic ﬁrms, because

they are more familiar with international suppliers. Thus, the increase in exports may not produce net foreign exchange earnings. EPZs promote gross exports, but, measured in terms of net exports, the promotion of ex ports may not live up to expectations. Because of the poor quality of local suppliers and weak backward link age, the effect of diffusion of export knowledge may be limited. Technology transfer is much hoped for in EPZ de velopment. Through the spillover effect, export oriented ﬁrms in EPZs may develop backward linkage with local ﬁrms, for example, using raw and intermediate materials from the host country. Thus, local ﬁrms may initially act as suppliers for foreign ﬁrms and then become capable of exporting the processed product to the world market. But foreign managers are more familiar with international suppliers and tend to have a low propensity for using local suppliers. Special regulations may prevent them from ac cessing local suppliers. For lower rank processing, such as the garments industry, production is labor intensive and low tech. The technology is mature and has been stable for many years. There is very little effect of technology ad vance and diffusion. EPZs are often used as a way of cir cumventing trade quotas, besides utilizing cheap labor. For higher rank goods, it is also questionable whether local ﬁrms are able to develop the technology to produce these products, because most foreign ﬁrms tend to locate their production sections in EPZs while keeping their research and development (R&D) in developed countries. But more recently, along with the transition of EPZs to high tech zones, multinational companies (MNCs) such as Microsoft have begun to develop their R&D facilities in developing countries such as China and India. Besides the transfer of ‘hard’ technology, it is also hoped that EPZs can help to introduce ‘soft know how’ related to knowledge about selling export goods in the

Export Processing Zones

world market. Although EPZs have clear physical boundaries, foreign ﬁrms inside EPZs may produce a catalyst effect by demonstrating entrepreneurial skills. This may be very helpful for those countries that are not familiar with international trading. EPZs thus may pro mote trade, not only by foreign ﬁrms but also by local ﬁrms. Although EPZs are initially developed as enclaves, the host country often hopes to use EPZs to bring know how into the local economy. EPZs are often justiﬁed by their catalyst effect through demonstrating the way to export manufactured goods to the world market. But in order to achieve this goal, EPZs should be connected through backward linkage with the domestic sector. This often proves to be difﬁcult, because the local sector may not have the emulation capacity. Thus, the spread of export knowledge across the boundary is not effective. Because of poor infrastructure outside EPZs and some times unstable political situations, such capacity may not exist in developing countries. As a result, EPZs continue to exist as trade enclaves and fail to be integrated with the local economy as a whole. The diffusion of EPZ know how depends upon overall progress in economic development in the host economy. If EPZs are used as an initial step to open up the whole economy, the establishment of EPZs then may help to diffuse knowledge of the world market. If EPZs are used only as a temporary measure to fence off competition from the world market while producing foreign exchange, the diffusion of EPZs may be limited. The overall eco nomic performance of the host economy also affects the absorption of know how. The most successful diffusion of EPZ know how is in the newly industrialized economies, where the local economy is export oriented. The devel opment of EPZs thus facilitates such a direction.

Labor Issues Because of the concern over labor issues, the ILO spe cially recommends that the development of EPZs should support both economic and social advancement. The issue of labor is critical for EPZs because export pro cessing is based on the intensive use of labor. EPZs are especially useful when there is a high level of surplus labor, regardless of the number of jobs generated. Because of the existence of unemployment and surplus labor in many developing countries, there is a need to generate jobs. The development of EPZs may be seen as a useful policy. For example, EPZs in the Dominican Republic and Mauritius are helpful, because high unemployment coexists with a signiﬁcant number of surplus workers. The local economy simply cannot cope with such a scale of job generation. But the quantity of employment generated by EPZs is limited, compared with the unlimited supply of labor.

693

While one major objective of EPZs is job creation, the actual jobs created by EPZs are usually low quality, using low cost and cheap labor. Excessive working hours are another issue. EPZ employment has seen a highly un balanced gender structure. A signiﬁcant proportion of these jobs use female workers. In garment industries, over 80% of the jobs can be female, because the enterprises seek a lower wage. Because of labor intensive operations, ﬁrms located in EPZs use female workers. The real effect of job creation is not as strong as expected. Tax con cessions are often justiﬁed by employment creation. But it is still debatable whether EPZs are effective in employ ment generation. Some evidence suggests that, despite all the govern ment investment in infrastructure, the number of jobs generated is limited. If the same amount of resources were invested in alternative domestic small and medium enterprises, the effect of employment generation could be more signiﬁcant. On this front, Asian EPZs seem to perform better than African EPZs in that they do absorb surplus migrant labor from rural areas. In sub Saharan African EPZs the goal of generating employment is not exactly achieved, due to political instability; most African EPZs perform poorly, except for Madagascar and Mauritius. In Kenya, for example, a survey shows that payment to zone workers is even lower than outside EPZs. This phenomenon is not seen in East Asian countries such as China. In theory, the enterprises in the zone contain modern premises and should provide a better working environment. The jobs created in EPZs are of low security. This is associated with the footloose nature of ﬁrms in EPZs. They choose to locate in EPZs because of the low labor cost or beneﬁcial trade situation (e.g., to use a trade quota). These factors may disappear, and the enterprises may then relocate to competing EPZs. Foreseeing the increase in labor costs and unionization, some enterprises have begun to reduce their workforces through voluntary resignation. The wage for female workers is lower because they are temporary workers. Many may return to rural areas when they marry. The employer tends to discriminate against female workers by suppressing their wages. Women’s jobs are more routine and labor intensive, which does not help to develop their skills. To maintain ﬂexibility, some EPZ ﬁrms also try to subcontract their work to local ﬁrms that use lower paid workers. This further aggravates the problem of employment insecurity. Some jobs are sea sonal and are only created when there is an order. To attract investors, the host country may also relax labor laws in EPZs, prohibit labor unions, or restrict labor union activities. In developing countries, even when such a labor law does exist, its implementation is often ineffective. There is a lack of supervision. The govern ment may have a misperception that more stringent labor

694

Export Processing Zones

regulation would reduce their competitiveness. It must be recognized that for EPZs productivity, rather than the cost of labor, is what matters. Government mediation and support services should not be seen adding to labor costs. Good labor relations enhance productivity and help to develop a stable labor force. The major constraint in the initial stage may be because the employer tends to stress ﬂexibility instead of long term development. In general, because of restriction of union activities, unions are weaker in EPZs. There is a lack of long term social se curity in EPZs. In the long run, the cost saving strategy, that is, simply constraining the cost of labor, may not enhance the competitiveness of EPZs. Competitiveness is built on many factors. Some EPZs have a poor physical and in stitutional environment. Thus, policies to provide train ing and labor development so as to enhance the quality of the labor force are important. Employment security helps to maintain a skilled and stable labor force, which is critical for the development of EPZs into potential dri vers for the economy. Establishing local labor unions for zone workers may cause capital ﬂight. As they expect a trade enclave not to have unions, enterprises may relocate to other places. To solve this problem, regional labor unions may be set up to strengthen regional labor solidarity. This may be effective in retaining ﬁrms that aim at the regional market, as shown in South Korea’s experience. The ﬁrms are concerned about their corporate image and the marketability of their products in the region, and decide to remain in the EPZ despite the rising cost.

Environmental Protection The lack of environmental protection in EPZs is another concern. This is because control over industry is more lax and also the concentration of industrial activities in the zones causes the concentration of pollution. EPZs are set up for job creation and generating foreign exchange earnings rather than as places for high quality living. Environmental quality is thus not emphasized in EPZ management. On the other hand, the problem of lax environmental protection is not speciﬁc to EPZs but exists in many developing countries. There is a lack of any system of comprehensive environmental protection for domestic enterprises. The problem of pollution is serious in some cases. Given modern infrastructure, EPZs may in fact bring in an opportunity to enhance en vironmental protection. Building the capacity for treat ment into EPZ infrastructure is important, although this may be a cost to the EPZ. But along with the transfor mation of EPZs into economic development zones, environmental quality is becoming essential for the competitiveness of zones.

Setting up too many EPZs can also cause a problem over the inefﬁcient use of land in developing countries. In China, development zones are developed not only for promoting exports but also for land acquisition. Through setting up zones, the local government can get more land leasing premium through real estate development. This causes the problem of encroachment on rural land. As many zones are developed in more developed and densely populated costal areas, the fast expansion of development zones jeopardizes fragile ecosystems.

The Life Cycle of EPZs Like all products, EPZs have a life cycle. The timing of the setting up of EPZs is important. Many successful EPZs were set up in the 1970s when there were fewer competing zones. Some EPZs, such as the Mauritian EPZ, beneﬁt from preferential trade agreements to enter the European and US markets under MFA. When an EPZ reaches a mature stage, the cost of labor becomes higher and is no longer competitive. After operating for some years, tax incentives may no longer be applicable to some ﬁrms. This raises the question of whether these ﬁrms will remain in the EPZ. Gradually, the comparative advantage of cheaper labor is lost. Firms in EPZs respond to rising labor costs by reducing their employment and using subcontracts and ﬂexible labor contracts to reduce their commitment to the place. They also update their pro duction by using automation and product differentiation. The attractiveness of EPZs in terms of labor cost is then diminished. The relocation of standard labor intensive processing work seems inevitable. However, not all ﬁrms do relocate to other places. Some enterprises may shift to more technologically intensive products. For the pro duction of complex products, other advantages may be come more important, such as geographical proximity to the major market. For example, the EPZs in Mexico have seen rising costs recently but still have the advantage of being close to the US market. Without new advantages, EPZs may be forced to compete with each other by reducing labor costs, a phenomenon known as the ‘race to the bottom’. Sup porting the development of high tech industries and/or nonstandard and just in time products may be the way forward. Through economic restructuring, EPZs may evolve into high tech industrial parks or production zones producing higher valued added goods. Tax con cessions may not be the only way forward, because this may undermine the capacity of the local government to upgrade their science and technological infrastructure, in turn constraining the potential for upgrading the eco nomic structure of EPZs. Evidence from South Korea’s EPZ (Masan Free Ex port Zone), for example, shows that some ﬁrms may

Export Processing Zones

remain in the zone when faced with rising costs, because of other advantages. When an EPZ is fully developed, the infrastructure improves, and administration services be come more experienced. Investment in EPZs is a sunk cost for investors, preventing them from relocating. Cultural and language afﬁnities are also important factors to draw investors into a place. For example, the Masan FEZ is targeted at Japanese investors and the Japanese market. Through long term Japanese investment, many managers and workers in the zone can understand Jap anese and the Japanese management style, and thus can communicate with investors and customers in Japan more smoothly. Similarly, Taiwanese ﬁrms beneﬁt from their language afﬁnity with the mainland of China. The EPZ in Madagascar is known as the Zone Franche because there is a large French speaking population. Along with overall trade liberalization, some of the speciﬁc advantages of free trade policies possessed by EPZs in developing countries may no longer be an at tractive point. The development of the WTO gives wider access to the US and European market. For example, ETZs in Madagascar are used to circumvent certain trade quotas. Asian countries, having used up their quotas for the US market, began to use the Madagascan ETZs as a production base. The phasing out of MFA may ser iously undermine their competitiveness. For many late comers in African EPZs, it becomes difﬁcult to emulate Asian export oriented growth strategies to develop manufacturing industries for the global economy. The WTO rules out export subsidies, but some lower income economies (per capita national income below US$1000) enjoy exemption until 2007. The rule prohibits direct and main tax exemption in more industrialized developing economies. For some African countries, this may provide a chance to develop EPZs into high value added devel opment zones. It is not the right time to set up EPZs that mainly rely on advantages in labor costs. EPZs should no longer be conﬁned to the processing of imported raw and inter mediate materials. Newly established EPZs are facing tougher competition, and are more likely to have a comparative advantage in more complex products such as electronics. However, moving to complex products re quires a higher quality of labor force in the host country. Education will be crucial for this objective. Also, main taining a stable and skilled labor force is important. The government should emphasize better labor training, ra ther than simply constraining the labor cost by, for example, reducing labor union activities. Development zones should be used on a manageable scale to experi ment with new economic regulations that suit com petition in the world market. The host country should explore other advantages of EPZs besides tax and pref erential trade treatment, which could include geo graphical location within regional integration. The

695

availability of regional production networks may also be a reason for some ﬁrms to remain in mature EPZs, as the production of complex products requires just in time production and geographical proximity. Nearly all mature EPZs face the problem of rising costs. It is therefore critical for them to upgrade their structure. But investment in infrastructure requires some initial input. Foreign transnational corporations are un likely to initiate this upgrading process because they are the most likely to reduce employment and use pro duction automation. The contraction of employment can be disruptive, not only reducing productivity but also causing social instability. Labor disputes can undermine the strength of EPZs and is detrimental for upgrading the economies of EPZs. The capacity of the government is important to sustain the competitiveness of EPZs and help them transform into high tech parks. The integration of EPZs with the overall economy is the key to success. The government should review policy periodically to suit new conditions and foster backward linkage. EPZs should be used as a window to further expand trade and production capacity rather than re maining as isolated trade enclaves. Generating employ ment and foreign exchange earnings is now becoming secondary to technology transfer and the introduction of management and knowledge through EPZs. To achieve this objective, it is important to develop the domestic sector to become partners with ﬁrms in EPZs. The overall trend is that EPZs will become comprehensive development zones.

The Future of EPZs EPZs are created under speciﬁc circumstances – de veloping countries have abundant labor resources, while capital becomes mobile in the global economy. The combination of labor and capital in EPZs provides a chance for developing countries to absorb foreign direct investment (FDI) and be linked to the global economy with the minimum impact on the domestic economy, as the goods produced in EPZs are exported. The con sequence is that this policy indirectly protects domestic ﬁrms that do not have international competitive capacity. For developing countries that are in the earlier stages of opening up their economies, the EPZ policy is a useful experiment. The demonstration effect can help the re form of the whole economy toward more export oriented growth. China seems to suggest this route of growth, with EPZs being part of the overall reform package, which will eventually spread over the coastal region and to inner and Western regions. But such a spreading out effect may not easily be achieved. According to United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the production of EPZs focuses on low skills and low

696

Export Processing Zones

technology. The sectors are concentrated in garments, toys, footwear, electronic assembly, and light machinery goods. The material processing industries are low value added sectors, and the FDI absorbed in these sectors is ‘low quality’ in terms of the potential for technological advancement. Even when productive capacities are de veloped, with separation from the local economy, low technology transfer, and weak backward linkage, EPZs may not be able to overcome this growth trap and fully develop into engines for future growth. Because WTO rules are against subsidies for export, direct exemption from taxes in EPZs in countries that exceed US$1000 annual per capita income for 3 years is seen as a subsidy for exports. This requires the phasing out of EPZs’ tax incentives. Some EPZs are taking this chance to evolve into industrial and science parks and beginning to integrate with their local economies. See also: Foreign Direct Investment; Globalization, Economic.

Further Reading Boyenge, J. P. S. (2003). ILO Database on Export Processing Zones. Geneva: International Labour Organization (ILO). Cling, J. P., Razaﬁndrakoto, M. and Roubaud, F. (2005). Exporting processing zones in Madagascar: A success story under threat? World Development 33, 785 803. Dowla, A. (1997). Export processing zones in Bangladesh: The economic impact. Asian Survey 37(6), 561 574. International Labour Ofﬁce (ILO) (2003). Employment and Social Policy in Respect of Export Processing Zones (EPZs). Geneva: ILO.

Jauch, H. (2002). Export processing zones and the quest for sustainable development: A Southern African perspective. Environment & Urbanization 14, 101 113. Jayanthakumaran, K. (2003). Beneﬁt cost appraisals of export processing zones: A survey of the literature. Development Policy Review 21(1), 51 65. Johansson, H. and Nilsson, L. (1997). Export processing zones as catalysts. World Development 25, 2115 2128. Landingin, N. and Wadley, D. (2005). Export processing zones and growth triangle development: The case of the BIMP EAGA, Southeast Asia. Journal of International Development 17, 67 96. Lee, Y. S. (1999). Labor shock and the diversity of transnational corporate strategy in export processing zones. Growth and Change 30, 337 365. Madani, D. (1999). A Review of the Role and Impact of Export Processing Zones. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Mireri, C. (2000). The impact of export processing zone development on employment creation in Kenya. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 21, 149 165. Sargent, J. and Matthews, L. (2001). Combining export processing zones and regional free trade agreements: Lessons from the Mexican experience. World Development 29, 1739 1752. Sargent, J. and Matthews, L. (2004). What happens when relative costs increase in export processing zones? Technology, regional production networks, and Mexico’s maquiladoras. World Development 32, 2015 2030. Schrank, A. (2001). Export processing zones: Free market islands or bridges to structural transformation? Development Policy Review 19, 223 242. Zee, H. H., Stotsky, J. G. and Ley, E. (2002). Tax incentives for business investment: A primer for policy makers in developing countries. World Development 30, 1497 1516.

Relevant Websites http://www.ilo.org International Labour Organization. http://www.wto.org World Trade Organization.

Extended Metropolitan Region V. F. S. Sit, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Global City Region A term invented by Scott to reﬂect the post-1980 ‘large scale metropolitan urbanization’ gravitating around key metropolitan sites in the emerging global economic order. Among them many have been named megalopolises and had been signiﬁcant in national and global inﬂuence before the recent round of economic globalization. They also include key metropolitan regions and their extending periphery in Paciﬁc Asia, and Central and South America. Megalopolis A term coined by Gottmann to mean a very large and spreading urban complex, with some open land and farm land, formed when builtup areas, widespread over an extensive area due to the popular use of the automobile, enlarge to such an extent that they become linked together. Megalopolises are formed in the northeastern seaboard of the US, or along the northern shore of the Inland Sea of Japan. The component centers are not distinct from each other in income level or level of economic development. The megalopolis is thus typical of mega-urban region development in advanced economies. Metropolitan-Based Region (MBR) In parts of the industrialized world, like Israel, a new metropolitan region, has emerged. It is composed of the metropolis and a surrounding territory. While the metropolis seems to be stagnant or declines in growth, particularly in population, the surrounding territory has been growing rapidly, both economically and in population due to intensiﬁed linkages with the metropolis. It is this wider spatial process of consolidation within the MBR that has strengthened the economic role and inﬂuence of the metropolis. Such growth in the surrounding territory is not suburbanization but a result of the unique combination of agglomeration diseconomies of the metropolis and the agglomeration economies that attracted activities to its hinterland. Metropolitan Interlocking Region (MIR) It is a term coined by Zhou to refer to the six large urban clusters in China. The three largest clusters have been the basis for the three extended metropolitan regions (EMRs) in this article. Conceptually, the MIR is regarded as similar to the megalopolis, though it exhibits ‘Chinese characteristics’ such as: each contains two or more cities with a population of over 1 million; a large international seaport with over 100 million tonnes of annual throughput; an international airport; and a total

population of 25 million. The component parts of the MIR are linked together by efﬁcient one-day transport.

Deﬁnition Paciﬁc Asia had been the world’s fastest growing region in the decades of 1980–2000. Admist their hectic eco nomic growth, countries in the region such as China, South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia had experienced rapid urbanization around their major cities, often the national capitals and port cities, that took the form of ‘regional urbanization’, that is, the urbanization of former rural areas around these urban cores. Such a pattern of concentrated growth has led to the formation of a large mega urban region around the former metropolis, that is, the formation of an extended urban region from the core metropolis that is dubbed as ‘‘extended metropolitan region’’ (EMR). The EMR is a term coined by McGee and is believed to be a local response in Paciﬁc Asia to increasing eco nomic globalization, for the EMR doubles as a work bench for the global production system and a local logistics and marketing hub for multinational corpor ations (MNCs). The EMR shows a unique spatial structure with different growth patterns in its component spatial parts. Within it, the old urban center, or a few neighboring and functionally closely linked large cities, forms the core (Figure 1 and Table 1). While the core is growing slowly with lower fertility and lower net mi gration, the peripheral and/or interstitial areas around the core, originally rural areas and small towns, have experienced rapid economic development leading to hectic structural transformation and population growth. The latter have been represented by urban expansion, rapid population growth, and large net migration in crease. In short, greater involvement with global eco nomic processes in the core has led to an overspill of lower skill and land intensive activities into peripheral areas which has caused the transformation of such areas. In the regional scale in social science research, the EMR represents a new regionalism which has import ance in economic planning and political governance, largely due to the territoriality of globalization that has led to the ever more intensive concentration of capital, people, institutions, and technology in localized urban clusters. These ‘new’ urban regions are assuming im portant roles as: (1) a fundamental basis for economic and social life, (2) a vital relational asset for distilling

697

698

Extended Metropolitan Region

2

Shanghai EMR

JIANGSU Nantung Changzhou Wuxi

1

Suzhou

West Shanghai SHANGHAI

East Central

Huzhou

2

Jiaxing

ZHEJIANG 0

1

3

500 km

3

Beijing EMR

Hong Kong EMR

Qingyuan GUANGDONG Sanshui Zhaoqing

Guangzhou Huidong Dongguan Huizhou Huiyang

Foshan

Jiangmen

BEIJING

Keiping Taishan

Shunyi

Qinhuangdao

Mentaugu Fangshan

Shenzhen Zhongshan Zhuhai

Changping

Tongxian Daxing

PROVINCE

HONG KONG

MACAU

Tangshan

TIANJIN Langfang

HEBI PROVINCE

0

50

100 150 km

Provincial/provinciallevel boundary

Municipal boundary District/county boundary Core city Inner ring Outer ring

Figure 1 The three coastal EMRs of China. Source: Sit, V. F. S. (2005). China’s extended metropolitan regions: Formation and delimitation. International Development Planning Review 27(3), 297 331; Jones, G. W. (2002). Southeast Asian urbanization and the growth of mega-urban regions. Journal of Population Research 19(2), 119.

learning based competitive advantage, and (3) a meso level of analysis within which to examine the new era of ﬂexible capitalism. They are thus different from other

mega urban regions such as the megalopolis, metro politan based region, and global city region. As the focal point of economic growth in many such nations that

699

Extended Metropolitan Region

Table 1 EMR

Selected extended metropolitan regions in Asia Area (km2)

Pop. and growth rate (%)

Density (Pop./km2)

2000

1980 90

1980

Population (in 1000) 1980

1990

1990 2000

2000

Bangkok Core Ring Total

1565 6200 7765

4691 1947 6644

5876 2706 8582

6362 3760 10 080

2.28 3.35 2.59

0.80 3.34 1.62

3000 314 855

4038 606 1298

Jakarta Core Ring Total

664 5312 5916

6481 5413 11 894

8223 7676 15 899

8385 12 749 21 134

2.41 3.55 2.94

0.20 5.20 2.89

9760 1019 1990

12 689 2388 3536

636 2927 9394 12 967

5926 2820 2932 11 678

7948 4107 3908 15 963

9933 5049 4806 19 788

2.98 3.83 2.92 3.18

2.25 2.09 2.09 2.17

12 497 1403 312 901

15 617 1724 511 1526

615 3800 4415

8364 4934 13 298

10 613 7974 18 587

9853 9463 19 316

2.41 4.92 3.41

0.74 1.73 0.39

13 600 1298 3012

16 021 2490 4375

Manila Core Ring(1) Ring(2) Total Seoul Core Ring Total

Source: Sit, V. F. S. (2005). China’s extended metropolitan regions: Formation and delimitation. International Development Planning Review 27(3), 297 331; Jones, G. W. (2002). Southeast Asian urbanization and the growth of mega urban regions. Journal of Population Research 19(2), 119.

possess comparative advantages for harnessing the pro cesses of globalization, the EMR will continue to attract attention in discussions on economic development and urban growth in the less developed countries (LDCs).

Formation and Spatial Structure In the late 1980s, some researchers had noted the de velopment of large areas of ‘desakota’ (semi rural, semi urban, or rural–urban transitional zones) around major urban centers in Southeast and East Asia, leading to the formation of a new type of mega urban region – the EMR. The latter is regarded as a distinct component of recent urbanization in Paciﬁc Asia, a dynamic transactive region that deﬁes all levels of conventional rural–urban thinking. The key cities in Southeast and East Asia on which the EMRs were often based were already eco nomic foci of their respective countries before the 1980s. They possess obvious advantages for foreign direct in vestment (FDI) and export oriented economic growth after these nations de regulated and embraced economic globalization since the 1980s. In particular, the ‘global shift’ associated with the New International Division of Labor (NIDL) has given momentum to their growth. Agglomeration economies underpine the comparative advantages of these major metropolises such that they continue to exert a powerful magnetic attraction for investment and services toward themselves, while at the same time stiﬂing the potential for urban and in dustrial dispersal. The resultant increase in export oriented manufacturing and logistics (which include the

warehousing, distribution, and transportation for both exported and imported goods for the national market) have fuelled economic and urban growth around them, leading to the formation of the desakota zone whose name derives from the Indonesian terms for town and village. The desakota contains not just the conventional range of rural and agricultural operations but a mixture of activities of a nonagricultural nature and some of urban characteristics, with comprehensive sets of economic, social, and cultural links with the nearby metropolis. Thus ‘regional urbanization’ takes the spatial form of extension of the core metropolis in desakota growth, often joining together into one urban region of func tionally linked towns and cities in the vicinity. ‘Glocali zation’, that is, the functional and spatial processes that enable the metropolis to continue to grow in increasing economic globalization, is therefore the major process behind EMR formation. Through ‘glocalization’ or EMR formation, these countries are able to engage and, more importantly, to retain their stake in the global and re gional economies. The Hong Kong EMR (Hong Kong as its core and the Pearl River Delta its periphery) and the EMRs in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines demonstrate that economic globalization in the form of FDI in labor intensive, export oriented industries has been the main force behind EMR formation. The spatial characteristics of these EMRs are also distinct from those of a meg alopolis. Within each EMR there is a socioeconomic and population gradation that descends from the core to the periphery to reﬂect the functional/economic division of

700

Extended Metropolitan Region

labor between these two component parts, and the spatial difference between them, to underline their different economic and infrastructural milieux. For example, FDI in the tertiary sector of the EMR is mostly attracted to the core, while FDI in labor intensive industries, ware housing, transport, and recreation is largely located in the periphery. These two spatially distinct roles within the EMR are integrated in the ‘front shop–back factory’ model as revealed in the Hong Kong EMR case. More precisely, service activities, including producer services and international trade, are located in the core city to support the overall role of the EMR as a production and marketing platform in NIDL and international sourcing, while production processes depending on cheap and unskilled labor are largely found in the periphery. As illustrated by Table 1, in Thailand, the Philip pines, Indonesia, and South Korea (countries which vary in size from about 90 000 to over 1 million sq km) the respective EMRs cover a territory of 4415–12 967 sq km, with a population of 11–21 million. In terms of area, each occupies less than 5% of the country concerned. How ever, they are the national capitals, the most important international ports, and the most highly urbanized and developed regions of these countries. They are also the main recipients of FDI (e.g., 46.8% in Bangkok; 35% in Jakarta), and national nodes for integrating with the global economy in the form of international trade and passenger ﬂows. The spatial expansion of the core city into its im mediate former countryside to form the EMR has been a means for keeping down the critical costs of land and labor, and for avoiding the growth restraining concerns of congestion, pollution, and shortage and high cost of space in the core metropolis. As referred to before, it is a form of glocalization, by which these metropolises have re mained competitive and capable of attracting further inﬂows of FDI in increasing economic globalization to function as low cost production centers and local marketing and logistics hubs for MNCs. The Bangkok EMR, which comprises the Bangkok Metropolitan Area (1565 sq km) as the core city, and the surrounding ﬁve provinces (6193 sq km) as its periphery, may illustrate such a glocalization process. Between 1980 and 1995, the core city was rapidly ‘Manhattanizing’, that is, becoming more specialized in high level producer services such as banking and ﬁnancing, and taking on an urban landscape characterized by a skyscraper style of modern intelligent ofﬁce blocks. Measured in investment terms, it had registered a 150% growth in its banking, ﬁnance, and real estate sectors. It also had absorbed 83% of Thailand’s total investment in services. The periphery, comprising the surrounding cities and the desakota area, contained 64% of the EMR’s investment in manufacturing and accounted for 23% of Thailand’s total investment in manufacturing for the same period.

Indeed, glocalization reﬂects the functional and spatial processes of EMR formation as: (1) the core city becomes increasingly specialized in producer services; and it also includes a concentration of hotels and tourist facilities, modern international transportation and communication infrastructures such as airports, seaports, and ‘info ports’, which enable it to serve as the national/regional hub for international and domestic cargo, passenger, and infor mation ﬂow and (2) labor and land intensive activities, including manufacturing, warehousing, and recreational facilities have been decentralized and expanded into the periphery. In summary, EMR formation represents a more thorough going integration of Paciﬁc Asia and its cities into the global system while the traditional core– periphery relation was an inadequate way of encapsu lating the present role of these city regions in the post 1980 world economy – a trend that was said to have been accelerated in the 1990s. The Chinese EMRs are typical in terms of the dy namics of EMR formation and its spatial processes and characteristic features, as among the Asian Paciﬁc countries, China has been vigorously de regulating, pursuing reforms to attract FDI, and actively partici pating in the global economy. These efforts have been generalized by the rubric of the ‘open and reform policy’ that started in 1978. At present, the country is the world’s second largest host to FDI, with the US being the world leader. Out processing, which is a form of LDC partici pation in NIDL based on cheap labor and efﬁcient access to global markets, accounted for over 50% of China’s total international trade and has been a key dynamic in the nation’s rapid economic growth in the past two decades. The last two processes have been concentrated in the country’s coastal region where three EMRs have been taking shape (Figure 1). They reﬂect the locations of China’s major port cities and the earlier and privileged policies in the open and reform policy that these locales have enjoyed. However, like some Western scholars, many Chinese researchers have confused the Chinese EMRs with megalopolises and created a new term – the metropolitan interlocking regions (MIRs) – for these urban clusters of China. They nevertheless admit the connection between the global economy (particularly trade), dense and interactive urban growth within the region, and the coordinating role of the central city in MIR formation.

EMR Delimitation Existing EMR studies usually intuitively take the largest city of the country as the core city, and its adjacent ad ministrative units, very often provinces, municipalities, or counties that are believed to have received the dispersal of economic activities from the core city, as the periphery or

Extended Metropolitan Region

ring. In short, they use the central metropolis as the core, while contiguous administrative units that satisfy selected demographic, density, and employment criteria are in cluded as the ring. The latter comprises sometimes the inner ring (30–50 km from the core) and the outer ring (50–100 km from the core). Such deﬁnition is not a problem in itself, though it is not scientiﬁc. In the four cases in Table 1, the core city is small (615–1565 sq km in size) while the periphery may be four to six times the core area. Population growth and the ‘regional urbanization’ in these EMRs, take place mainly within the periphery, whose population growth rate varies from twice to 20 times that of the core city. With the exception of the Seoul EMR, which lies in a country with a very high level of urbanization of over 77%, the EMR periphery in Paciﬁc Asia in general comprises a substantial rural population. Like other Asia Paciﬁc studies, Chinese scholars have also paid little attention to the scientiﬁc delimitation of the EMR. The ﬁrst serious attempt to delimit a Chinese EMR quantitatively was made by Ning. For him the EMR is composed of a number of metropolitan regions contiguous to each other. Each metropolitan region should have a central city with a population of over 200 000. The ring of the region comprises surrounding rural counties that: (1) are intensively linked to the central city, and (2) have achieved a high degree of ur banization and industrialization, measured by the con tribution of nonagricultural activities to GDP (>75%) and employment (>60%), and transportation connect ivity with the central city. Sit’s 2005 attempt is so far the most scientiﬁc. Based on submunicipal, that is, urban district and county data, he used variables on economic growth, economic globalization, (measured by FDI inﬂow and international trade), producer services, and rural– urban use mix to delimit the core, inner, and outer rings of the EMRs in China (Table 2). As shown in Table 3, the Chinese EMRs are of roughly the same size, about 30 000–40 000 sq km in area, with a radial extent of about 150 km, and a population of 20–40 million. They are comparable with each other, Table 2

though a few times larger than other EMRs in Asian Paciﬁc. All three have very high overall population densities. In terms of size of their economy measured by GDP, both the Shanghai and Hong Kong EMRs exceed US$100 billion. This is comparable to a medium sized and medium income level country. The gradation from the core to the outer ring in population density, per capita GDP, and intensity of export has been obvious (Table 3 and Figure 1). In the past 20 years, the three EMRs have dominated China’s export oriented economy. In 1999, they ac counted for 73% of China’s FDI inﬂow, 73.1% of its total exports, and contributed 30.7% of the country’s GDP, although they occupied only 1.24% of the nation’s ter ritory and accommodated 7.53% of its total population (Table 3). Of the three EMRs, the Hong Kong EMR has an economic size about 70% larger than the Shanghai EMR as measured by GDP. It is also a much more open economy in terms of utilized FDI and exports. This is contrary to the ﬁndings of many proto EMR studies by mainland Chinese researchers, who regard the urban cluster in the Yangtze Delta as the most important eco nomic region in the Chinese economy. This message is easily understood as the Hong Kong EMR possesses Asia’s largest international port cluster and airports cluster. As Table 3 illustrates, in 1999, the EMR handled 56.6% of China’s total exports (US$67.4 billion in value) and absorbed 57% (US$37.3 billion) of its total FDI inﬂow. Favorable geographical locations, appropriate open and liberal policies, and modern infrastructure have en abled the three EMRs, particularly the Hong Kong EMR, to be hubs for domestic and international ﬂows of people, materials, and capital, and production centers of export oriented industries. They are at present a global factory for the production of light manufactures of low skill inputs, for example, textiles, garments, toys, footwear, consumer electrical and electronics, and computer parts and peripherals. They are equally signiﬁcant bases for China’s import substitute consumer industries, which are

Criteria for delimitating the three EMRs

Per capita GDP (f) Actualized FDI per 10 000 f GDP (f) Export/GDP (%) Tertiary sector/GDP (%) Primary sector/GDP (%) a

701

National

Three coastal clustersa

Delimitation indice Core

Inner ring

Outer ring

6387 535 19.7 33.0 15.7

11 728 655 35.5 39.1 11.0

423 456 41310 453.3 460.0 o5

417 592 4983 435.5

411 728 4655 419.7

o7.5

o15.7

The criteria have been applied to ofﬁcial statistics of various provinces and subprovincial regions for 1999 based on the administrative divisions of that year. Data computed by author from various ofﬁcial economic yearbooks of 2000. The three coastal clusters refer to the provincial units included in step 2. Using these more globalized provinces’ averages as baselines generates areas of higher level of development and of more intensively globalized economy. Source: Sit, V. F. S. (2005). China’s extended metropolitan regions: Formation and delimitation. International Development Planning Review 27(3), 297 331; Jones, G. W. (2002). Southeast Asian urbanization and the growth of mega urban regions. Journal of Population Research 19(2), 119.

702 Table 3

Extended Metropolitan Region

Key economic and social data for the three EMRs, 1999

EMR

Area (sq. km)

Population (10 000)

GDP (f100 mil.)

Beijing: Core Inner ring Outer ring Subtotal

1112 11 066 19 038 31 216

947 684 860 2512

540 930 2632 4102 (31.8%)

1394 1736 2227 5357

7.2 29.8 4.0 41.0

3.6 113.4 40.0 157.0

Shanghai: Core Inner ring Outer ring Subtotal

812 11 811 28 983 41 586

738 914 2280 4032

1153 4006 3395 8554 (31.6%)

1755 4786 8844 15 385

15.0 36.9 12.1 64.0

100.0 144.5 81.5 326.0

Hong Kong: Core Inner ring Outer ring Subtotal

1100 9478 32 244 42 822

684 903 1402 2989

8091 4038 2400 14 529 (95.6%)

2510 3018 8436 13 964

252.0 60.0 61.0 373.0

1000.0a 360.0 314.0 1674.0

Three EMRs as % of national total

1.24b

7.53b

30.7b

Industrial output (f100 mil.)

26.7b

Utilized FDI (US$100 mil.)

73.0b

Export (US$100 mil.)

73.1b

a

Include half of Hong Kong’s re exports, that is, US$75.8 billion. Include Hong Kong and Macau. Bracketed ﬁgures are ratios of export value to GDP. Source: Sit, V. F. S. (2005). China’s extended metropolitan regions: Formation and delimitation. International Development Planning Review 27(3), 297 331; Jones, G. W. (2002). Southeast Asian urbanization and the growth of mega urban regions. Journal of Population Research 19(2), 119. b

equally highly globalized in the form of joint ventures and technology transfer, for example, the auto and household appliances industries in Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta (PRD). The Hong Kong EMR has exempliﬁed the path of EMR formation centered around a major port city of long experience in producer services, supported by a legal system with international credibility, being an international ﬁnance and trading center, an entrepot with excellent port facilities, besides having post war industrialization experience that provides it with accumulated expertise in marketing, design and production management, while the PRD’s large labor and land resources complement the manufacturing process that is decentralized from yet dependent on, as well as supportive of the core city.‘

EMR: Management EMRs are expanding rapidly in Paciﬁc Asia due mainly to glocalization there in the past two decades. They are at present in the midst of a structural change to meet in tensiﬁed inter urban competition across nations, par ticularly nations within Paciﬁc Asia which has been the world’s most dynamic growth engine since the 1980s. With worldwide economic integration, the accelerated ‘regional urbanization’ in the form of the EMR has made traditional concepts of the city and the related urban and regional planning and development strategies increas ingly problematic and present many challenges to re searchers and policy makers in the twenty ﬁrst century. Their growth and development have also enhanced regional competence by bringing together nearby

administratively independent territorial units of different comparative advantages into a single urban economic region. So far, the growth has mostly been the outcome of economic forces rather than of direct government promotion. Keen competition among them, however, has pushed some of them toward further improving their competitiveness through a new level of intra EMR cooperation in which governments have played a leading role, such as coordination in pan EMR projects and policies in infrastructure, trade and tax, and in place marketing in the global market through trade fairs, exhibitions, and trade promotion. For example, Hong Kong’s intra EMR initiative has resulted in closer eco nomic partnership agreement (CEPA), with the mainland of China, an important step forward (Hong Kong SAR Government). In Indonesia, the Special Region of the National Capital of Jakarta has been created to coordinate development and planning of the Jakarta EMR or Jabotabec. Intra EMR cooperation with a co ordinated and uniﬁed development vision for the com ponent administrative areas and ensuring intraregion economic policies has now been generally accepted. The setting up of pan region institutions for such purposes, for example, under CEPA, for implementing the agreed policies, has become an urgent planning agenda in the central and relevant local governments of respective nations. Although the term EMR was raised as early as 1989, our understanding of the EMR is still inadequate, both conceptually and quantitatively, for addressing pressing issues of planning and policy formulation raised by it for achieving development through harnessing the forces of

Extended Metropolitan Region

economic globalization. Their obvious competitive ad vantages in the era of economic globalization means that EMRs will continue to be the major growth centers for many LDCs. How to better understand them and to harness their special features and advantages for further growth should therefore be an important item on the nation’s drawing board. For example, with the deepening of economic globalization and competition among Asia Paciﬁc’s mega urban regions, China’s EMRs have to stay competitive internationally, in order to be the country’s primary future growth platforms and key to further economic development. The Chinese central and local governments should not only provide a stable and fair legal and social environment for enterprises and individuals within the EMRs. In addition, they should take action to induce more polarization, that is, concentrated development for scale economies and specialization economies, and economic globalization by: (1) abridging administrative hurdles for the ﬂow of people, materials, and capital between different com ponent parts of the EMR and to achieve integrative planning within the EMR based on a common develop ment vision, and (2) adopting the right policies for attracting FDI and for achieving further international competitiveness. Besides adding impetus to national economic growth, as fast growing large urban units, EMRs have also created quality of life and environmental problems, as well as problems of regional disparity. Firman has listed a number of environmental issues caused by the rapid growth of Jabotabec in Indonesia: (1) loss of farmland, (2) degradation of water resources, (3) commercial agri culture in upland areas, (4) replacement of mangroves by housing, (5) rapid increase in urban solid wastes, and (6) air pollution. Accompanying and making these issues increasingly problematic are also faults in local govern ance, for example: (1) violation of land use plans by local governments for encouraging business activities, (2) ab sence of metropolitan authorities above local govern ments to coordinate sectoral planning in the EMR and lastly, (3) in plan implementation, local governments compete, instead of cooperate with one another over metropolitan development planning. Thus, it is generally agreed that concerns over future growth of an EMR are not simply ones of economic development and ability in harnessing globalization forces. Environmental and social sustainability are equally important for its continued growth and development. The authorities, too, have to pay attention to redressing regional disparity caused by polarized development in the form of EMR growth. The large scale inﬂux of population into the EMR’s ring has caused strains on the urban regions’ resources, environ ment, and social stability. The pending rapid structural change of EMRs economically into economies of higher order and higher value added activities, and further

703

spatial dispersal of the low skill and labor intensive ac tivities beyond the EMR into remoter provinces, such as the case of China, have also cautioned the need for new and coordinated policies both at the regional and na tional level. Quite obviously, new institutional changes above what has been mentioned are required for coping with both these economic and noneconomic concerns within and outside the EMRs. Mega urban region growth in developing countries represents the best and worst of the development process. EMRs are not only places where highly productive and innovative economies are present, but where multi faceted market failures will likely happen in future, leading to issues of environmental and social stability and overall sustainability of development. EMR authorities may submit to these pressures passively, or engage actively in institution building and policy making in an effort to avoid the negative side effects of development and of rigid management, and thereby continue to turn globalization as far as possible to their maximum beneﬁt. See also: Foreign Direct Investment; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; New Regionalism; Region; Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries; Transnationalism and Labor Geography; Urbanization.

Further Reading Bar El, R. and Parr, J. B. (2003). From metropolis to metropolis based region: The case of Tel Aviv. Urban Studies 40(1), 113 125. Firman, T. (1995). The emergence of extended metropolitan regions in Indonesia: Jabotabec and Bandung metropolitan area. Review of Urban and Regional Development Studies 7, 166 188. Gottmann, J. (1961). Megalopolis: The urbanized northeastern seaboard of the United States. New York: K.I.P. Jones, G. W. (2002). Southeast Asian urbanization and the growth of mega urban regions. Journal of Population Research 19(2), 119. Lo, Fu chen and Marcottullio, P. J. (eds.) (2000). Globalization and urban transformations in the Asian Paciﬁc region: A review. Urban Studies 37(1), 77 111. Macheod, G. (2001). New regionalism reconsidered: Globalization and the remaking of political economic space. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25(4), 804 829. McGee, T. G. (1989). Urbanisasi or kotadesasi? Evolving patterns of urbanization in Asia. In Costa, F. J. (ed.) Urbanization in Asia, pp 93 108. Honolulu: UHP. McGee, T. G. (1995). Metroﬁtting in emerging mega urban region in ASEAN: An overview. In McGee, T. G. & Robinson, I. M. (eds.) The Mega urban regions of Southeast Asia. Vancouver: UBC Press. McGee, T. G. (1998). Globalization and rural urban relations in the developing world. In Lo, F. & Yeung, Y. M. (eds.) Globalization and the world of large cities, pp 471 496. Tokyo: UNU. Ning, Y. (1998). New urbanization process: On China’s urbanization dynamics and characteristics. In Xu, X., Xue, and Yen, X. (eds.) China’s Rural urban Transition and Coordinated Development, pp 201 207. Beijing: Science Press. Scott, A. J., Agnew., Soja, E. W., and Storper, M. (2001). Global city regions. In Scott, A. J. (ed.) Global City Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy, pp 11 32. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Sit, V. F. S. (2001). Increasing globalization and the growth of the Hong Kong extended metropolitan region. In Lo, F. & Marcotullio, P. (eds.) Globalization and the sustainability of cities in the Asia Paciﬁc region, pp 199 238. Tokyo: UNU Press. Sit, V. F. S. (2005). China’s extended metropolitan regions: Formation and delimitation. International Development Planning Review 27(3), 297 331.

Zhou, Y. X. (1991). The metropolitan interlocking regions in China: A preliminary hypothesis. In Ginsburg, N., Koppel, B., and McGee, T. G. (eds.) The Extended Metropolis: Settlement Transition in Asia, pp 89 111. Honolulu: University of Havwaii Press.