The Dictionary of Human Geography (116 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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locality
A pLAce or region of sub national spatial scaLe. Locality studies were a promin ent feature of British urban and regional re search in the 1980s and 1990s. They developed from attempts to understand the process of socio economic restructuring and the role of place and spatial variation within it. Locality was a key organizing concept for three research programmes funded by the UK?s Economic and Social Research Council in the 1980s: the ?Changing Urban and Regional System? initiative (CURS), the ?Social Change and Economic Life? initiative (SCELI) and the ?Economic Restructuring, Social Change and the Locality? programme. At the centre of each was a series of studies of the impact of restructuring on particular places or regions. A key concern of these ?locality studies? was to collect detailed empir ical evidence to assist the identification of the nature, causes and consequences of spatial differentiation in processes of change (Cooke, 1989). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The research raised a series of metho dological and theoretical issues that became bound up with wider and sometimes acrimo nious debates. These included: the delimita tion of localities for research; the relationship between locality studies and critical reaLism; the extent to which localities should be seen as ?pro active? agents of their own transform ation; the politics of the ?empirical turn?; the question of whether a concern with local dif ference risked limiting the scope for general ization and theoretical development (Smith, 1987); and the gendered implications (see gender) of most locality studies? focus on the sphere of waged labour and their limited treat ment of cultural relations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since the end of the formal research pro grammes, the concept of locality has been much less prominent in the geographical lit erature, but two more recent developments during the 1990s may be noted. First, there has been a much stronger emphasis on rela tional and networked concepts of locality and on the links between localities and other spatial scales. Murdoch and Marsden (1995) draw on actor netwoek theory to suggest that ?localities should be seen as constituted by various networks operating a different scales? (p. 368), while Amin (2004b) has proposed a wholly non territorial view of places as ?unbound?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Second, many of the issues highlighted by the localities debate have been translated into new conceptual frameworks. For example, the upsurge of interest in gLobaLization during the 1990s has involved a recasting of the issue of local specificity in terms of global local relations, while the further development of cuLturaL geography has seen increasingly sophisticated treatments of the relationships between politics, place and identity. jpa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Duncan (1989); Environment and Planning A (NEW PARAGRAPH) (1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
localization
A term often contrasted with gLobaLization and meant to capture the importance of pLace based activities. Localization refers to the necessary embedd edness of economic processes, which always reflect their social, political and geographical context. All activities require some degree of spatial fixity and many obtain significant advantages from being geographically local ized. These advantages include economies of aggLomeration as well as more sociocultural advantages pertaining to face to face contact, the formation of personal netwoeks, and the creation of centres of innovation and know ledge (Amin and Thrift, 1994a). Km (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Amin and Thrift (1994a); Cox (1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
location quotient
A quantitative measure used to describe the concentration of a group or an activity in a locality or region relative to that of a larger area such as the countrywide or national norm. The quotient is the ratio of the (NEW PARAGRAPH) local concentration to the national figure, and location quotients have been widely used to measure regional employment specialization. For example, if locality A has 53.2 per cent of its employed population working in manu facturing and the national percentage is 28.6, then the quotient for region A is 53.2/ 28.6 = 1.86. A quotient greater than 1.0 indi cates greater concentration in the region than the national norm, and a value less than 1.0 indicates relative absence. Location quotients provide a simple way of making economic base theory operational. lwh (NEW PARAGRAPH)
location theory
A historically and intel lectually varied body of theory and tech niques concerned with the explanation and sometimes prediction of the location of indi vidual and aggregate economic activities. Until around 1980 location theory was a dis tinct canon, with a well defined history, core issues and methods, and a roll call of alumnae. No more. Location theory is less shapely, more voluminous, spilling out of its earlier constraints, but more interesting as a result. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Scott (1976a, p. 106) claims that the first location theorist was Sir James Steuart (1712 80), a Scottish political economist. Most other histories, however, start with the German loca tion school, whose first member was Johann Heinrich von Thunen (1783 1850) (Blaug, 1979; Ponsard, 1983). A Prussian landowner, agriculturalist, political reformer and embryonic neo classical economist (Alfred Marshall said, ?I loved von Thunen above all my masters?; quoted in Blaug, 1990, p. 23), von Thunen crafted an abstract location model using a method he called ?Form der Anschaung?. Deploying calculus and capacious observations made from his coun try estate, he developed a theory of concentric agricultural land use based on the variation of land rent by location (see von thunen modeL). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Alfred Weber (1869 1958), brother of soci ologist Max, was a second member of the German school (?the true heir of von Thunen?; Blaug, 1979, p. 28). Although much of his work concerned cultural history, he also experimented with a method of establishing the most profitable location for a factory in his quest to understand the origins of aggLomeration in an early twentieth century Germany racked by a pervasive sense of crisis in its great cities. His discussion isolated the relative geographical pull of factors of production conceived initially on a triangular grid, and he used both a physical model (the Varignon frame) as well as complex mathematics (so complex that he needed help from Georg Pick, the mathematician who assisted Einstein in formulating relativity) to derive a solution for optimal location (minimizing costs, maximizing revenue). (NEW PARAGRAPH) August Losch (1906 45) and Walter Chris taller (1893 1969) round out the school. Christaller, who was trained as a geographer, developed centraL pLace theory in the 1930s both to explain the location of different kinds of services and also to undertake regional plan ning. Its geometries assumed a truly grotesque form when Christaller was employed by the Third Reich's Planning and Soil Office in 1940: he proposed to deploy the theory to re configure the geography of Poland following its depopulation by relocation, deportation and extermination (see holocaust). Losch, an economist trained at Bonn University, inde pendently developed his version of central place theory during the same period, but unlike Christaller couched it in mathematical terms as spatial equilibrium, with services, industry and consumers arranged within a hexagonal net of market areas. Like Christaller, there was a normative impulse to his project, but Losch despised Hitler (as did Alfred Weber), and died from deprivations he suffered in maintaining his values against those of the Nazis (see fascism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The contributions of the German location school were rigorous, conceptually pointed and abstract. Theirs was a world apart from the a theoretical approach that dominated economic geography until the mid 1950s, in which location was ?explained' by merely inventorying a set of ad hoc, unique geograph ical factors. Isard (1979, p. 9) recalls that eco nomic geographers at that time had ??little concern for analysis' and that they made ?no attempt' even ?to fuse . . . location[al] factors into a simple cost calculus'. Isard's own re gionaL science movement, which for a period was symbiotically linked with economic geography, helped from the outside to push the sub discipline into the mould of the German locational school and which Isard (1956) was also concerned to extend. A similar move to reshape the field came from inside the discipline, with the attempt to establish human geography as spatiaL science during the quantitative revoLution of the late 1950s. Work at two of the earliest sites of that revolution was explicitly directed towards creating a location theory that was systematic, general and empirically exact: McCarty, Hook and Knox (1956) at Iowa drew on correLation and regression techniques to explain regional industrial loca tion, while Garrison, Berry, Marble, Nystuen and Morrill (1959), including several of his soon to be famous graduate students (the ??space cadets?), combined German location theory with demanding statistical analysis in their studies of highway development in Washington State. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Haggett?s influential (1965) book, Loca tional analysis in human geography, summarized and solidified the new approach to location theory (see also locational analysis). It was to be formal, empirically rigorous, and under girded primarily by neo cLassicaL Economics (both indirectly via the German school and regional science and directly from mainstream economics). A central topic was the firm, a staple of neo classical micro economic analy sis and underpinned by assumptions of rational choicE thEory and perfect compe tition (many small producers, none of which control price). The theory of the firm was translated directly into spatial terms by Isard, and later in economic geography by Smith (1981a [1971]). But chinks in the armour of classic location theory were soon revealed. First, the determinacy of rational choice was shown to be unrealistic, and ideas of ?bounded rationality?, or ?satisficing BEhaviour? were preferred, producing a literature on the BEhav ioural geography of firm location (Pred, 1967, 1969). Second, perfect competition was demonstrably imperfect for understand ing the contemporary world of transnational corporations, leading to an alternative litera ture on the ?geography of enterprise? (later ?corporate geography?) focused on firms as institutions, decision making hierarchies and branch plant economies (McNee, 1960; Hayter and Watts, 1983). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The disquiet only got worse. David Harvey, who earlier in his career had drawn on classical and neo classical models of agricultural loca tion, including von Thiinen?s work, and ex plored general models of the evolution of spatial patterns, turned to marxism, and par ticularly Marx?s own writings, in the early 1970s and pursued a radically different ap proach. His subsequent analysis of the histor ical geography of capitaLism, brilliantly realized in The limits to capital (Harvey, 1999 (NEW PARAGRAPH) ), did not so much ignore the questions of traditional location theory as pose them in another register altogether. His emphasis was less on accounting for the locations of economic activities than in disclosing the con nections between the crisis ridden dynamics of capitalism and its uneven dEvElopmENt as a spacE Economy. Doreen Massey?s work around the same time was indebted to Marx ism too, but it had a much more direct impact on location theory. Like Harvey, she was trained in the orthodox approach, even study ing briefly with Isard. Her reformulation began in the early 1970s with a detailed internal critique of orthodoxy arguing that applying neo classical economic theory to lo cation generates fundamental and irreparable logical contradictions. The alternative that she constructed over the next decade or so com bined the theoretical postulates of poLiticaL Economy with the philosophical armature of rEaLism, culminating in her watershed book, Spatial divisions of labour (Massey, 1984). This was crucially important because it demon strated that location theory need be neither formal nor neo classical, and because it con siderably expanded both what could count as factors bearing on location (in her case, cLass and gEndEr, politics and culture) and what could constitute theoretical explanation (in her case, a ?geological metaphor?, taking the form of layers of investment; Barnes, 2001). Massey?s larger point was that the object of location theory sites of economic activity could not be separated from the wider, geo graphically variegated social setting of capital ism. Her argument was starkly reinforced by the setting of her own study: the massive DEiNDUStriaLizatiON of the UK during the late 1970s and early 1980s (see also division of laBour; locality studies). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A similarly inspired argument emerged shortly afterwards among a group of economic geographers in California, although their context was utterly different: the study of vibrant capitalist production associated par ticularly with high tech and high end eco nomic activities. Scott (1988b) developed what he called ?neo Weberian? location theory drawing eclectically on the work of neo Marxist economicst Piero Sraffa (see neo ricardian Economics) and that of institu tional economists Ronald Coase and Oliver Williamson (see institutional Econom ics). Storper and Walker (1989) elaborated an ?inconstant geography of capitalism? roiled by technological change and social conflict. They stressed the tightly inter linked ?nEtwork? character of activities (NEW PARAGRAPH) in which social and economic institutions cross cut and interleaved within specific regional formations. The consequence was a rediscovery of the idea of industrial districts, first recognised by Alfred Marshall at the turn of the twentieth century: dense geographical nodes of (NEW PARAGRAPH) tightly knit complementary manufacturing (NEW PARAGRAPH) activities, sustained by strong formal and informal social connections which (NEW PARAGRAPH) Storper (1997b) labelled ?untraded interde pendencies?. During the 1980s and early 1990s, ?industrial districts? seemed to be the answer to every (important) location theoretical question. Industrial districts were variously linked to post Fordism (and often presumed as its characteristic locational form); to high tech industries and the inFormation economy (the stress on social connections seemed uncannily made for their study: see Saxenian, 1994); and to an emerging institutional and ?cultueal turn? within economic geog raphy itself. (NEW PARAGRAPH) But the shortcoming of the concept of in dustrial districts, as with Massey?s geological metaphor, was its confinement to the local rather than its ability to address a scaLe in creasingly on the lips of economic geographers (and everyone else?s as well): the global (see gLobaLization). One solution was to argue that the global was nothing more than an interlinked set of industrial districts Scott?s (NEW PARAGRAPH) answer, and at one time, Amin and Thrift?s (1992) too. Another was to continue with the network idea but to expand it to the whole world. Location theory?s charge was to represent and explain network relations that is, social and economic institutional linkages wherever they were found across the globe. This approach, also called ?the relational turn?, drew upon actor netwoek theory and was not only concerned with social and economic relations, but with material ones too through the incorporation of commodity chain analysis (for examples, see Dicken, Kelly, Olds and Yeung, 2000; Dicken, 2003; Hughes and Reimer, 2004; Yeung, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Location theory, as its long history makes clear, is no autonomous creation, propelled by its own logic. The logic is only that of its human creators, reflecting their own changing circumstances: from life on an isolated farm to life in an interconnected gLobe. The vitality of location theory is a consequence of economic geographers keeping abreast of the restless world that they inhabit. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes (2003); Storper (1997b). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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