The Dictionary of Human Geography (122 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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mean information field (m.i.f.)
The repre sentation of a distance DECAy relationship by a rectangular spatial grid, used in Torsten Hagerstrand?s (1916 2004) classic studies of migration and DlffUSlON (see Hagerstrand, 1967). The m.i.f. was used in simulation models, in which the central square in a 5 x 5 grid represented a migrant?s origin, and the probabilities in the other 24 squares indicated the likelihood of them being the des tination: the probabilities were either obtained from empirical analyses of migration patterns or pre defined arbitrarily. Running the model many times generated an average pattern of the likely population distribution following a period of migration or the spread of an innov ation such as a new practice or a disease. (See also agent based modelling.) Rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
measurement
A classification of data types, the characteristics of which are important in determining what quantitative analytical pro cedures can be deployed. Four levels are gen erally recognized: (NEW PARAGRAPH) nominal each individual is allocated to one selected from an exclusive list of categories; (NEW PARAGRAPH) ordinal each individual is allocated to one selected from an exclusive list of rank ordered categories; (NEW PARAGRAPH) interval in which individuals are assessed on a continuous quantitative scale; and (NEW PARAGRAPH) ratio in which the values on a quantitative scale can be relatively evaluated. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Thus, for example, 10 million people live in either Birmingham (UK) or London which is a nominal allocation; London is bigger than Birmingham, which is ordinal; London has 9 million residents and Birmingham 1 million, which is interval; and London is nine times larger than Birmingham, which is ratio. Data from all forms of measurement can be ana lysed quantitatively, but different procedures are applied to different measurement types (cf. CATEGORICAL dATA ANALySIS; GENERAL LINEAR MOdEL; REGRESSION). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
media
Cultural technologies for the com munication and circulation of ideas, informa tion, and meaning. These are usually taken to include various mass communication media such as books, newspapers, radio, television, film and now various forms of ?new media?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the past two decades, research on media related topics has flourished in hUMAN geog RAPhy, without adding up to a theoretically or methodologically coherent agenda for media research. In cultural GEOGRAPhy, media texts are often taken as a resource for analysing various forms of representation (of LANd (NEW PARAGRAPH) SCAPES, PLACES, IdENTITIES, CITIES etc.). In economic GEOGRAPhy, there is also a bur geoning literature on media production, dis tribution and consumption, given a further boost by the growth of digital media econ omies and culture industries. Nevertheless, the inherent SPATlALlTy of media processes has attracted surprisingly little attention from geographers. Early work by Pred (1973) reconstructed the geographies of pre tele graphic information circulation through news papers in the USA in suggestive ways, but his main focus was on using these dlffUSlON pro cesses to recover the emerging system of inter dependencies between cities, rather than providing a close reading of the media reports themselves. More recent work in human geog raphy has focused on the forms of social inter action that different media help to constitute (Adams, 1998). But in the main it is scholars working outside GEOGRAPhy who have pro vided most insight into the spatialities of media and communications. Thompson (1995) provides the clearest articulation of the study of media with the central concerns of social ThEORy, and in the process develops an analysis of the spatial and temporal consti tution of social relations and institutions. He argues that different media and communica tions practices uncouple time and space, enab ling the transmission of symbolic forms over time and space without physical transporta tion of objects; and they thereby enable new forms of simultaneous co presence between spa tially and temporally distanciated subjects and contexts (see also time space diSTANCiATiON). This type of analysis implies thinking of ?media? as a process of mediation operating ?wherever human beings congregate both in real and in virtual space, where they commu nicate, where they seek to persuade, inform, entertain, educate, where they seek in a multi tude of ways, and with varying degrees of suc cess, to connect one to the other? (Silverstone, 1999, p. 4). (NEW PARAGRAPH) As in other disciplines, media research in geography is prone to overestimate the causal power of media practices, and to make func tionalist assumptions about the degree to which social fORMATlONS are held together by the mass mediated circulation of values over integrated political, economic and cul tural territories (see fUNCTlONALlSM). There is a tendency to assume that suBjECTiviTy is media dependent, and to presume that either the content of media texts or the patterns of ownership and control of media production and distribution are highly determinate in shaping patterns of belief, knowledge and practice. Media research in geography could benefit from taking seriously Garnham?s (2000, p. 5) claim that ?the central question underlying all debates about media and how we study them concerns the way in which and the extent to which humans learn and thus how through time identities are formed and actions motivated?. Combining Garnham?s question of whether and how people learn through their engagements with media practices with Silverstone?s idea of media as processes of medi ation points towards a more coherent agenda for media research: one that investigates how the spatio temporal organization of media practices helps to distribute different possibil ities of agency and communicative competency (Couldry, 2006) (a project that also bears dir ectly on recent discussions of public geog RAPhlES, since a crucial question concerns precisely how publics are produced). cb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnett (2003); Couldry and McCarthy (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) medical geography A concern for ?medical geography? has been around for centuries, since Hippocrates, the Ancient Greek scholar associated with the origins of modern medicine, stated the importance of ?airs, waters, places? as an influence on human health, achievements and history. Such an en vironmental perspective has prevailed in many situations over the centuries, supplemented on occasion by a spatial perspective, and nowhere more obviously than in the celebrated case of Dr John Snow in mid nineteenth century London. Snow ascertained from empirical ob servations on the spatial distribution of cholera outbreaks something about the causal factors, contaminated water from a particular pump, within the transmission of this malaise. It is easy to detect the deep historical roots of med ical geography, then, as a particular way of connecting many dimensions of human ill health to a variety of environmental precondi tions through the analysis of spatial patterns (revealing something about causes or vectors of transmission). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In more recent times, formalized in the First Report of the Commission on Medical Geog raphy to the IGU (May, 1952), a sub discipline of medical geography has arisen within aca demic geography and on the fringes of medical and related sciences. Prompted by contribu tions by the likes of May (1958) and Stamp (1964), the sub discipline flourished, becoming the basis for research groups organized nation ally (e.g. the AAG Medical Geography Special ity Group; the CAG Health and Health Care Study Group; the RGS IBG Geography of Health Research Group) and with an inter national profile through the IGU Commission on Health and the Environment, International Medical Geography Symposia held since the 1980s, its own specialist journal Health and Place (founded 1995) and enduring prominence in the leading interdisciplinary journal Social Science and Medicine. Periodic worries have plagued the identity of the sub discipline, how ever, with some objecting about too close a link with the concepts and practices of Western bio medicine, thus failing to take seriously alterna tive and ethno medicines rooted in quite other personnel, practices and places (Gesler and Kearns, 2002). Some (esp. Kearns, 1993; cf. Mayer and Meade, 1994) have speculated about the need for a broader characterization of the field as health geography or even ?post medical geography?, where health is defined as more than just the medically ascribed absence of ill health and health care as more than conven tionally designated ?medical? interventions (Gesler and Kearns, 2002, p. 9; Parr, 2002: see health and health care). The conceptual bor rowings and methodological practices of the sub discipline have also varied through time, with an empiricist and positivist stream deploy ing quantitative, modelling and GIS techniques being gradually supplemented and on occa sion challenged by a diversity of approaches derived from Marxian political economy, (NEW PARAGRAPH) HUMANISM, POST STRUCTURALISM, fEMINISM (NEW PARAGRAPH) and quEER theory (Litva and Eyles, 1995; Philo, 1996; Milligan, 2001, Ch. 9; Parr, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is often suggested that medical geography splits into the ?twin streams? of ?geographical epidemiology? and ?health systems planning? (Mayer, 1982), or ?geography of disease/ill health? and ?geography of health care? (Litva and Eyles, 1995); although Gesler and Kearns (2002, p. 8) respond that these streams ?have increasingly merged and . . . become more like a braided river?. One broad trajectory connecting with population geography?s interest in mortality and morbidity has studied geographical variations in ill health at a range of scales from the global to the local, examining many different manifestations of ill health for evidence of clear patterns in maps of prevalence and impact. Initially the interest here was disease, with the earliest studies con centrating on the obvious ecologies of diseases such as malaria in tropical settings (Pelzer, (NEW PARAGRAPH) pp. 335 43: with links back to the colo nial origins of geography), but with subse quent studies soon considering all parts of the globe (Howe, 1977). The ?natural? environment, in all of its climatic, topographic, fluvial, pedological and vegetative complexity, was inspected for its correlations with different diseases chiefly those known to be infectious (tuberculosis, smallpox, influenza, HIV AIDS), but also those with less certain aetiolo gies (the cancers, heart conditions, bone and nervous disorders) creating an approach to medical geography readily positioned within the orbit of tracing human environment rela tions (May, 1958; Learmouth, 1988; Meade and Erickson, 2000; Curtis, 2004, Ch. 6). An offshoot here shifted to a more narrowly con ceived spatial epidemiology, building from basic mapwork to more advanced spatial statistical techniques modelling the time space DlffUSlON of contagious illnesses (spe cifically influenza and HIV AIDS) from person to person, place to place and through settlement hierarchies (Gould, 1993; Cliff, Haggett and Smallman Raynor, 2004: for a rather different/critical take, see Brown, 1995 and disease, DlffUSlON Of). Human movements obviously shape such diffusion patterns, and some time ago Maegraith (1969) mused on what ?jet age medical geog raphy?, speeded up by the pace of world wide travel and migration, might eventually look like. (NEW PARAGRAPH) This first stream of medical geography has been complicated by a concern with facets of ill health for which the metaphor of disease is arguably less relevant, things such as malnu trition, obesity and stress, and extending to the vexed domain of ?mental illness? (as in Giggs, 1973, recognized as a classic of medical geog raphy: see DlSABlLlTy). Aspects of the social environment have also begun to feature, call ing attention to phenomena such as employ ment, income, housing quality, lifestyle issues and related factors that predispose the ill health of (certain) peoples in (certain) places, and demanding that medical geography foster dialogues with the likes of social GEOGRAPHy, urban GEOGRAPHy and other sub disciplinary geographies (a decisive point made by Hunter, 1974; also Mayer and Meade, 1994). Add itionally, as Dorn and Laws (1994, p. 107) underline, it becomes important to register the human BODy as more than just ?a host to some lesion or pathology waiting to be ??dis covered?? by the medical practitioner?, and thus to recognize the variability of the human body, complete with differing material circum stances and cultural ascriptions bound up with its particular place in socio spatial hierarchies of DlffERENCE (Dear, Wilton, Gaber and Takahashi, 1997). Variable configurations of the body, marked by class, ETHNlciTy, gen der, ageing, SExuALlTy, being a traveller or a refugee and so on (as discussed by Curtis, 2004, chs 3 and 4; see also Gesler and Kearns, 2002, Ch. 6), explain the greater or lesser likelihood of (certain) population cohorts in (certain) places ?getting sick?, being interpreted as ?sick? and in need of assistance or avoid ance, or as themselves being the possible sources of ?sickness? in others (as happened with the Chinese in nineteenth century San Francisco: Craddock, 2000a). The emerging picture hence becomes less the hypothesized causal relations between easy to define envir onments, stable resident populations and their ill health indicators, maybe cross cut by the migrations of people bearing diseases, and more a mosaic of ?health inequalities? traced out across diverse, multiple and fluid bodies and places, wherein ecological influences enter into entangled admixtures alongside ones more obviously social, cultural, economic and political in origin (Curtis, 2004: echoing (NEW PARAGRAPH) Eyles and Wood, 1983; Jones and Moon, 1987; Gesler and Kearns, 2002). Further challenges are posed by Smith and Easterlow (2005) when critiquing the ?strange geogra phies? of health inequalities research that emphasize how places determine (variable resilience to) death and disease, but neglect how such placed ill health is itself bound into a more systematic operation of ?health dis crimination? notably within labour and housing markets fundamental to ?the struc turing of society and space? (a thoroughly compositional matter, not a mere contextual effect). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The second stream of medical geography, concerned with health care as linked into health systems and planning, appeared in the 1960s when researchers began to study the spatial distributions of medical facilities. Questions were asked about spatial regularities in the locating of both hospitals of various kinds (Mayhew, 1986) and surgeries run by GPs, dentists and other primary service providers (Curtis, 2004, 133 43), as linked to the accessibility and utilization of such faci lities (Joseph and Phillips, 1984), and spatial mismatches were identified between provision and demand as a potential input to the more efficient spatial planning (location allocation modelling) of healthcare systems (Clark, 1984). More recently, it has been argued that the basic geometries of health care cannot be explained solely by the principles advanced in spatial science but, rather, by recognizing the competing pressures on health managers in choosing where to locate facilities which arise from a wider socio economic landscape that is itself unevenly constituted at a range of spatial scales (Mohan, 2002). Beyond such decisions, moreover, researchers have explored the polit ical economy of health care, whether delivered by the wELfARE state (a public sector sup posedly guaranteeing equality of access to all), an emerging shadow state (comprising voluntary sector involvement) or an increas ingly neo liberal state in which all actors are compelled to pursue private sector prin ciples, entering or creating MARkETS (internal or otherwise) to ensure competition and effi ciency gains, and aiming at deregulation (even as legal administrative demands are continu ally reinserted). More baldly, ?there has been explicit recognition by health geographers of the underlying social forces that create inequ alities, often expressed in terms of the impact of the capitalist economic system on health care provision? (Gesler and Kearns, 2002, p. 51; see also Jones and Moon, 1987). Part of this story has also been the growing com modification of health care, turning it into something that ?customers? elect to ?consume?, quite likely using their (or others?) capital in the process, not a bundle of resources avail able to them as matter of right. The ?selling? of medical facilities, loosely equivalent to the marketing of places discussed by urban geog raphers, has become a sub theme in the ongoing research of Kearns and co

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