The Dictionary of Human Geography (115 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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local knowledge
A term coined by the English philosopher Gilbert Ryle, and popu larized by the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1983). Local knowledge re fers to the double idea (1) that all knowledge is geographically and historically bounded, and (2) that the local conditions of its manufacture affect the nature of the knowledge produced. Note that local knowledge refers to the context in which knowledge is produced, not the geo graphical domain to which knowledge applies. The physicist?s string theory, for example, is a piece of local knowledge even though its explanatory province is infinitely large, even beyond the known universe. To take in turn the two parts of the definition: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Knowledge is historically constrained, and produced within particular material settings that include geographical site, particular kinds of human bodies, and specific types of buildings, machines and equipment. The key word is pro duced. Producing knowledge contrasts with the conventional view that know ledge is acquired through discovery (dis cover, literally to uncover). In the discovery view, knowledge is assumed to be free floating and pre existent, requiring only the right conditions to be revealed. For knowledge to be produced, however, suggests something different; that there is an active process of creative construction ?on site? according to specific local rules and conditions. An example is graduate students making vig orous use of large desk calculators in the statistics laboratory at the University of Iowa in the late 1950s, and in the process producing geography?s quantitative revoLution (Barnes, 2004b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The material and historical setting, and associated social interests, enter into the very lineaments of knowledge. Know ledge does not come from the sky, from heavenly inspiration, but from engaging in particular kinds of social practices that are historically and geographically grounded (see situated KnowLedge). Knowledge is irreducibly social, never in nocent, always coloured by the context of its production. This does not mean that it is singularly determined by its context. Multiple responses to any situation are possible, though their range will be con strained by the places and predicaments that have in various ways, sometimes un remarked and unconscious, both sum moned and shaped them. Examples are legion: environmentaL determinism ex pressed (and helped to legitimize) the ra cist and imperialist impulses of late nineteenth century Europe; regionaL science represented the instrumentaL ist, mascuLinist and economistic senti ments of much of mid twentieth century America; and postmodernism reflected a late twentieth century consumer capital ism constituted by flickering images and fabricated identities. In each of these cases, the knowledge that emerged is shaped by the particular, non repeatable constellation of forces, causes and deter minations found at a given time and place. One can begin to trace their effects, and they clearly travel and will be found in other times and places too, but not in the exact same combination with the same consequence. Each local context will be different, producing different knowledge. The important corollary is that universal claims to truth are unsupportable. Know ledge is always made inside the bubble of local context, with no means of moving outside for ?a god?s eye view? (Haraway, 1991c, p. 193). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The issue of local knowledge has been central recently in at least two disciplines. First, in anthropology, Clifford Geertz (1988, p. 137) argues for the impossibility of?telling it like it is?, because ethnographic accounts are as much about the world of the ethnographer as the world that is represented (and transpar ently obvious in early ethnographies; Geertz, 1988: see also Ethnography). A recent com plication is the effect of an increasingly fluid, mobile and hyperactive world, which seem ingly undermines the idea of fixed local know ledge. The problem is that while knowledge is produced at local sites, it increasingly travels. The response has been to examine networks of knowledge, conceived as inter local inter actions. Local knowledge travels, but it never achieves universality. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Second, in the field of history and philosophy of science, ?telling it like it is? is also not an option, since Kuhn (1970 [1962]) devised his concept of a paradigm. Science is conceived as being shot full of social interests, reflecting the time and place of its manufacture: it is local knowledge. Initially the Edinburgh School, and feminists such as Haraway (1989), provided detailed, historical studies, laying bare the local social interests at play. Other work for example, Latour and Woolgar (1979) concen trated on specific local sites, such as the labo ratory, and concomitant micro practices of research and relations of power that produce knowledge. The point, as Rouse (1987, p. 72) writes, is that scientists ?go from one local knowledge to another rather than from universal theories to their particular instantiations?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In spite ofgeography?s historical concern with the local, the discipline?s recent past has been dominated by a quest for universal knowledge. After the Second World Warmuch of geography, or at any rate those areas colonized by spatiaL science, was bound up with the search for grand theory and its universals, predicated on EssEntialism and fouNdationalism. Things have changed since the 1990s with the advent of postmodernism and post structuraLism. Although the term ?local knowledge? is rarely used as such, the sentiments that it expresses are now found in recent works on disciplinary history (Livingstone, 2003c: see geography, history of), around biophysical process in nature (Castree, 2005a) and economic geog raphy (Gibson Graham, 2006b [1996]). tB (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Rouse (1987, ch. 4). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
local state
The set of institutions of the state that have sub national territorial remits. The local state includes elected local govern ment as well as local agencies ofpublic admin istration and public service provision and local regulatory and judicial authorities. However, it does not include all the actors involved in local governance, some of which are drawn from the private and voluntary sectors. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The concept of the local state came to prominence with the publication of Cock burn?s The local state: management of cities and people (1977). Cockburn argued that the local state should be understood as an integral part of the capitalist state as a whole, and that it operates to sustain the social relations of cap itaLism at the local level through its manage ment of social reproduction. Rejecting this approach, Saunders (1979) proposed a ?dual state? thesis that theorized the state in terms of two distinct roles: the promotion of produc tion (the sphere of the central state) and the maintenance of consumption (the sphere of the local state). In this view, the local state is concerned particularly with providing the means of coLLective consumption, such as housing and local public services. These two positions were representative of a more gen eral debate about the degree of autonomy of the local state. Is the local state merely an arm of the central state operating at the local level, or does it have at least some effective inde pendence? All large nation states find that some system of local administration is a prac tical necessity to cope with the complexities of managing extensive territories. However the autonomy of local state actors varies con siderably according to the legal, constitutional and fiscal framework within which local institutions operate and the extent to which they can be ?captured? by political parties or interest groups opposed to central government policies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The concept of the local state was particu larly important in geographical research during the 1980s (e.g. Clark and Dear, 1984; Duncan and Goodwin, 1988). This was in part a reflection of the conflict ridden nature of central local relations during the political ascendancy of the New Right. Since then, a number of factors have contributed to a decline in the use of the concept. First, the hEgEmoNY of neo liBEral models of social and economic development in many countries has curtailed the scope for the local state to pursue alternative political strategies. Second, the recognition that non state actors play im portant roles in shaping local areas has con tributed to a shift in research focus away from theories of the state and towards theories of governance. Third, extensive research on the re scaling of the state has drawn attention to the relational nature of scalE, and challenged the notion that particular kinds of institutions or practices necessarily operate at particular spatial scales. Fourth, the idea that ?the? local state exists as a unified or coherent entity has (NEW PARAGRAPH) been undermined by new theoretical perspec tives including post marxism and various forms of post structuraLism. jpa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Brenner (2004); DiGaetano (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
local statistics
A local statistic is often a numerical value describing some aspect of a locality or its population (e.g. the percentage unemployed) and offering greater detail than more aggregate regional or national statistics. The meaning is similar in spatiaL statistics, where local statistics are values obtained for geographical subsections of a larger study region, often compared to each other or to an average. Here they contrast with global methods, including regression analyses fitted for the entire region, that risk missing statistically significant and geographically localized variations in the relationships between variables. Local statistical methods include point pattern anaLysis, geographicaLLy weighted regression and local indicators of spatial association (Anselin, 1995). rh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Fotheringham, Brunsdon and Charlton (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
locale
A setting or context for social inter action, typically involving co present actors. In structuration theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984), locales provide the resources on which actors draw. Different kinds of collectivities are associated with characteristic locales (Giddens, 1981, p. 39): the locale ofthe school is the classroom; that of the army, the bar racks; and so on. Despite his emphasis on co presence, Giddens (1984, p. 118) also suggests that locales may range ?from a room in a house . . . to the territorially demarcated areas occu pied by nation states?: as Thrift (1983) empha sizes, ?a locale does not have to be local?. jpa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Thrift (1983). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
local-global relations
A concept that seeks to capture the dialectical nature (see diaLe ctics) of the connections between global processes and local forces. The term ?local global? resonates differently for different scholars, resulting in a number of different approaches to the intersections of local and global forces. Some scholars have pursued empirical cases in which they identify strong global forces especially those of modernity and the market that impact and alter local places and customs. An example of this type of scholarship can be found in Allan Pred?s (NEW PARAGRAPH) work on late nineteenth century Stockholm, where the rapid growth of capital ist production processes greatly affected the language and symbolic codes of the city resi dents (see also Pred and Watts, 1992). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A second type of research investigates the ways in which local places and cultures incorp orate and/or transform global processes. Particularly prevalent in the work of cultural anthropologists, this body of scholarship eschews meta narratives of global capitalism and emphasizes instead the power of diverse local traditions in altering the meanings and workings of global processes. A good example is Watson?s (1997) edited volume investigating the localization of American corporate and culinary culture (via ethnographies of McDonald?s) in numerous cities of East Asia. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A third body of research attempts to com bine and transcend these earlier formulations by arguing for a process of gLocaLization, foregrounding the ways in which the local and the global are completely interwoven and impossible to pull apart. Economic geograph ers who seek to emphasize the inter textual, multi layered nature of scaLe have employed this concept (Swyngedouw, 1997; Brenner, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . It has also been used frequently by those interested in the changing nature of cm zenship and the hybrid qualities of identities formulated in conditions of transnationality (Yuval Davis, 1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A number of critiques have been levelled at all three of these employments of the local global conceit. The strongest has emerged from the feminist literature, which has inter rogated the binary nature of the paired words as well as the often uncritical and ungrounded invocations of both the global and the local (see also Freeman, 2001). As Hart (2001, p. 655) notes: (NEW PARAGRAPH) In addition to active/passive and dynamic/ static, these [binaries] include economics/ culture, general/specific, abstract/concrete and, very importantly, dichotomous under standings of time and space, in which time is accorded active primacy while space ap pears as a passive container. This conflation of ?the global? with dynamic, technological economic forces restlessly roving the globe defines its inexorable and inexorably mas culine character. By the same token, ?the local? appears as a passive, implicitly femi nine recipient of global forces whose only option is to appear as alluring as possible. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Other critiques include the observation that many of the local global narratives that scholars employ have focused on the moment of impact between global and local processes, and as a result have underplayed the ongoing power dynamics between local local forces (Ortner, 1995). By the same token, the actual workings and trajectories of perceived global forces such as capitaLism are often assumed rather than investigated empirically, leading to a blind spot with respect to global global dynamics. This latter critique has been taken to the extent of questioning the very nature of capitalism itself (Gibson Graham, 2006b [1996]). A final, more implicit critique has emerged with the literature on transnation aLism, wherein scholars have preferred to priv ilege the ongoing movements between scales and across borders rather than the perceived static conceptualization of both scales and borders that is suggested by the local global terminology. Km (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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