The Dictionary of Human Geography (126 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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militarism
The extension of military influ ence into civilian political, social and cultural spheres. This is achieved through both the direct extension of the immediate influence of state militaries and the indirect influence of military agendas on political institutions, social norms and cultural values (see Woodward, 2005). In his farewell address to the nation in 1961, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the ?acquisition of unwarranted influence? by what he called ?the military industrial complex?: since then, the connections between militaries, defence industries and the global arms trade have become ever more intimate, but over the same period the multiple extensions of militar ism have prompted many analysts to identify an even more extensive military industrial media entertainment complex (MIME). Geographically, militarism is manifest in mili tary control of place, space and landscape; military influence over civilian law enforce ment and legal geographies, and the militar ization of security; military research within universities and research and development organizations (for militarism in geography, see Barnes and Farish, 2006; Barnes, 2008b); and military themes in popular geopolitics, linked to the dissemination of distinctive IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHIES through films, novels, video games, web sites, and television drama and news (see, e.g., Power, 2007; Stahl, 2006, and Stahl?s documentary film on the militarization of American popular cul ture, ?Militainment Inc.?: description and trailer at http://www.freewebs.com/apocali cious/militainmentinc.htm). In these various ways, militarism serves as an ideology that makes particular claims on notions of citizen ship (Stahl, 2006; Cowen and Gilbert, 2008) and, not least through its appeals to particular (NEW PARAGRAPH) notions of masculinism, also legitimizes and even glorifies the pursuit of war. (See also MILITARy GEOGRAPHy.) Dg/SG (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes and Farish (2006); Stahl (2006); Woodward (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
military geography
The study of geograph ies of military activities and operations. Facilitating the military activities and oper ations of nation states was central to the emer gence of modern GEOGRAPHy as a formal academic discipline. The enlistment of geog raphy in the service of empire has become a commonplace of the history of geography (see GEOGRAPHy, HlSTORy Of), and the foundation of the Royal Geographical Society in Britain in 1830, for example, was closely associated with the desire to formalize geographical know ledge to be put to work in the extension and management of the British Empire through exploration and survey, often closely con nected with military personnel and military objectives, and through the conduct of mili tary campaigns (Woodward, 2005). Some his torians point to the Franco Prussian War of 1870 1 as a major spur to the institutiona lization of the discipline in EUROPE: the unexpected victory of the Prussian army was attributed, in part, to its superior training in geography. Across the Atlantic, a sub discipline identified as military geography could trace its origins to the establishment of schools of geography at military establish ments such as the US Military Academy at West Point in the early nineteenth century. These versions of military geography were not only instrumental (as one would expect) but also largely descriptive, and they empha sized the use of geographical knowledge, particularly location via CARTOGRAPHy and map reading and physical terrain to facilit ate military operations. Perhaps the closest connections between in service military geog raphy and the academic discipline came during the Second World War, when many professional geographers collaborated in the production of detailed regional geogra phies, for use in identifying targets and con ducting offensive campaigns (Clout and Gosme, 2003; Barnes and Farish, 2006). Geographical knowledge remained crucial to the subsequent conduct of the cold war, and its ?hot' campaigns in Indochina and elsewhere. Much of the traditional function of regional intelligence in the USA was contracted to programmes in area studies rather than geography, while the armed forces and intelli gence agencies (onboth sides) placed a premium on surveillance from air and space platforms, and new technologies of remote sensing, satellite photography and the like. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The repeated emphasis on regional know ledges and regional intelligence, even in more sophisticated, space sensing technical forms, may seem to reduce military geography to what Woodward (2005) calls a ?largely a theoretical, descriptive regional geography', divorced from intellectual developments in the academic discipline at large. There are elements of truth in this, but two caveats are crucial. First, the technical elaborations of regional intelligence could be conceptual ones too; Barnes and Farish (2006) identify a series ofvital connections between these seem ingly commonplace activities and the concep tual ferment of spatial science and the quANTlTATlVE revolution, and it is surely no accident that the Office of Naval Research in the USA took such a close (and often finan cial) interest in what might otherwise seem remarkably abstract spatial modelling and geographical research. Second, advanced mili taries (and the paramilitaries that they now often find themselves fighting) have recog nized the need to think of what the US Army now calls ?battlespace' as more than physical terrain. Wars have always depended on the visualization of space, but ?battlespace? not only has a much more complex geometry than conventional battle fields or theatres of war it is no longer possible to make clear, linear separations between fronts (even during the First World War the front line decomposed into a bewildering maze of trenches and dugouts; contemporary conflicts transpose these geometries to the large scale) but it is also increasingly understood as a human geog raphy. The Pentagon has become increasingly preoccupied with urban warfare, which has required the construction of new, militarized models of cities and urbanization, particu larly in the global south, a development that Graham (2009c; see also 2004a) calls ?a new military urbanism', while the experience of military occupation (see occupation, mili TARy) and the revival of counterinsurgency in the wake of the American led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq has prompted the US military to undertake a cultural turn of its own in order to map ?the human terrain' in ways that resonate, however awkwardly and imperfectly, with contemporary developments across the social sciences (Gregory, 2008b, 2009c). (NEW PARAGRAPH) All of these issues can be studied critically, as most of the references above testify. But while Palka and Galgano (2000) suggest that writings such as these have cast ?a persistent shadow on military geography as an academic discipline?, critical interventions in military geography, seeking to enlarge its compass beyond military circles, have only become a sig nificant strand of work in hUMAN GEOGRAPhy in recent years: and over that same period many advanced militaries, particularly in Europe and North America, have redoubled and rethought their interventions in the production and appro priation of geographical knowledge. Signifi cantly, these have involved far more than the direct application ofgeographical methodologies and knowledges to ?kinetic? (offensive) and now ?non kinetic? operations: they have also involved a deepening engagement with the idEOLOGy of MILITARISM. dg/SG (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Flint (2005); Woodward (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
mimesis
Described in ancient aesthetics as the ?imitation of nature?, mimesis is generally concerned with how representation in art is related to truth, or how effectively a copy may mirror or make present an original scene or perception. Can the image reproduce an actual object as it is? Or does it merely repro duce the appearance of the object as it looks, as semblance? The question, famously allegorized in Pliny?s tale of a contest staged between two fifth century painters, features centrally in Plato?s analysis of vision and epis TEMOLOGy. Plato?s answer is that representa tion is not only antipathetic to reality, but that the degree to which it aspires to lifelikeness is the degree to which it is adulterated, or dis torted. While this remarkably ?modern? pos ition prefigures present day debates from Marxian critiques of C0MM0dlTy fetishism to the unmasking, within post structuralism, of ?given meaning? the mimetic tradition has been notably resilient. From the Italian humanists onwards (see hUMANlSM), it has been thought of as the desire to bring nature towards its specular perfection. As an aesthe tic formulation, mimesis also has applica tions within political PhlLOSOPhy, especially within ENLlGhTENMENT struggles between custom and reason. Thus for Edmund Burke, as for David Hume, the perpetual forging of resemblances forms the condition for all human sociality: ?It is by imitation, far more than precept, that we learn everything . . . It is one of the strongest links of society; (NEW PARAGRAPH) it is a species of mutual compliance? (Burke, 1906). (NEW PARAGRAPH) If mimesis in aesthetic theory refers us to the consensual and reproductive in social terms, it is no surprise that the concept has been vari ously modified and attacked in contemporary cultural and critical theory. Thus Adorno (1977), Lacoue Labarthe (1989) and Derrida (NEW PARAGRAPH) not only variously demonstrate how mimetic imitation subtends all of our institu tions as well as our concepts of history and language. They also argue the ways in which a critique of mimesis requires us to rethink the relation between nature and technology, and to re conceive the mediations between lived experience and aesthetic expression. From a different perspective, Homi Bhabha?s (1984) deconstructive appropriation of the mimetic principle has become a critical concept in post colonial analysis, in which the colonized sub ject?s mimicry of colonial knowledge systems serves to estrange the basis of an authoritative discourse and so registers as a form of counter domination (see post colonialism). jd (NEW PARAGRAPH)
minor theory
A way of thinking that takes off from and builds upon Deleuze and Guattari?s (1986) notion of minor literature. It offers a means of working with material that self consciously refuses ?mastery? in practices and claims, striving instead for a self REfLExiVE scholarship that subverts ?major? ThEORy from within. Minor theory is a different way of ?doing theory;? a way of reading, writing, and talking that is insistently material embodied, sensual, positioned and refuses to ignore the different political economic and social condi tions in which knowledge is produced and shared. It recalls Adrienne Rich?s (1976) anguished call to ?think through the BOdy? in the hopes of making a materialist knowledge streaked with the peculiar temporality and sPATiALiTy of EVERydAy LlfE (Katz, 1996). This siTUATEd kNowLEdGE is interstitial with and inseparable from ?major? productions of knowledge, and uses displacement to expose and chafe their limits so that they crack. In these cracks new knowledge and practice can emerge, but the process itself is transforma tive. In dynamic relation major theory, minor theory, and the relations that hold them in tension are reworked. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Deleuze and Guattari (1986) focus on the writings of Franz Kafka, a Czech Jew living in Prague, who wrote in German. They argue that Kafka was doubly displaced in this ?major language?, which was neither his mother tongue nor the language of his community, but that he pushed this displacement to its limits to create what they call ?lines of escape?. Minor literature is about the conscious use of displacement to call into question and change dominant modes of writing and using language. By extension, minor theory is intent on making alternative suBjECTlviTlES, spatial ities and temporalities. It seeks to rework major theory from within, destabilizing received modes of knowing and the power/ knowledge that produces and frames their objects. What is constituted as major or minor is historically and geographically specific. Deleuze and Guattari make clear that the major and minor are not different languages but, rather, different ways of working with the same language. This work or play can enliven and renovate language (and theory) so that it is made to express something new because the limits of its traditional forms are breached. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The idea of ?becoming? is crucial to Deleuze and Guattari?s notion of the minor. ?Becom ing? suggests change and mutability, but also movement that ruptures, decomposes and recomposes. ?Becoming? invokes temporality, but its space is one of betweenness. Both work against the sort of dualism that would pit major against minor, or vice versa, but if the notion of becoming is to produce a critical politics, it must be understood as positioned somewhere (Braidotti, 1994; Katz, 1996). As a mode of thinking relationally, minor theory offers a means to reframe and move through theoretical impasses between, say, marxism and fEMlNlSM or local and global (cf. Massey, Allen and Sarre, 1999; Anderson 2000b). It can be a powerful strategy for recognizing and re imagining DlffERENCE; of thinking race through class through gender, for instance, and through the iterative displacements such work calls forth, creating new spaces of and for political practice and engagement. Ck (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Anderson (2000b); Massey,Allen and Sarre(1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
mobility
There are two main uses of the term in human geography: (1) the movement of people, ideas or goods across territory (phys ical mobility); and (2) change in social status (social mobility). Reflecting current interest, the journal Mobilities was instituted in 2006. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Human mobility occurs over varying tem poral and spatial scales, with migration re ferring to mobility that involves a change in residential location, whether within a city or across continents and daily mobility, including commuting, referring to movements that do not entail a change of residence. Involving any one of a variety of means (e.g. feet, automo bile, train, bicycle, airplane, wheelchair), mo bility incurs costs in both time and money. As the costs of mobility have fallen (for example, the cost of sending a letter; the cost of travel between London and Mumbai), the separation between places has shrunk, a process known as time space convergence, which has contrib uted greatly to globalization. In addition to incurring costs, mobility the ability to move between and among places, whether on a daily basis or over the LlfE course also confers benefits; indeed, humans could not exist with out some form of mobility, and at every geo graphical scale we have been consuming ever more of it. Because mobility is important for accessibility, it is often considered an import ant component of independence and quality of life (Hanson and Pratt, 1995), such that popu lations who lack the temporal or financial re sources required for mobility (e.g. the elderly, children or working parents with young chil dren) become the focus of concern and mobil ity enhancing programmes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) With the advent of telecommunications, physical mobility is no longer required for spatial interaction, and geographers have devoted considerable attention to understand ing the complex relationship between physical mobility and virtual mobility (e.g. shopping for books on the internet after browsing in a local bookstore). Whereas physical mobility does not require NETWORkS (one need not cross a meadow on a path), it is certainly enhanced by them, as movement is easier on a network than off of one. Virtual mobility does rely on network structures. For both physical and virtual mobility, networks are crucially important in channelling and shap ing mobility patterns. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Social mobility, which refers to upward or downward changes in the socio economic sta tus of individuals or households, has drawn considerable attention in urban and social geography. Of particular interest has been the relationship between social mobility and spatial mobility; in theories associated with the CHICAGO school of urban sociology: for example, the upward social mobility that accompanied the assimilation of immigrants into American society took place via residential movement ever outwards from the urban core. Like other forms of mobility, social mobility also involves networks; the size, social compos ition and spatial location of a person?s network of social contacts can affect the probability of (NEW PARAGRAPH) upward or downward mobility (Granovetter, 1982; Hanson and Pratt, 1991). SHa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cresswell (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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