The Dictionary of Human Geography (138 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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North-South
The phrase gained in popular ity in the 1970s as a way to describe richer, industrial countries on the one hand (the North) and poorer, mainly non industrial countries on the other (the south). The phrase had the advantage of moving beyond the First, Second and Third Worlds. Although the South clearly referred to mainly ex colonial or developing countries in Latin america, africa and asia, it seemed a more neutral term than the third worLd. It also spoke to the fact that Southern countries were reorgan izing themselves politically in the 1970s. In the 1950s, the Third World referred to a group of non aligned countries determined to forge a new way in the global political economy. In the 1960s, the meaning of the Third World was changed to define a group of countries that were marked by what was then called underdeveLopment. The idea that these countries might have significant geopoLiticaL or geo economic power was not taken seriously. This changed, however, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) drove up oiL prices fourfold in 1973 4. The success of this action encouraged a broader group of developing countries, the Group of 77 formed in 1964 at the first UN Conference on trade and deveLopment to press for a New International Economic Order. It was partly through the Group of 77's demands for fairer and more stable trading arrange ments, more aid, special financial facilities and greater voting rights in the UN that a notion of the South was born. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the 1980s, the Americans and other Northern powers roundly defeated their de mands for a New International Economic Order. However, a group of well meaning social democrats in the North did speak back (NEW PARAGRAPH) to the South's demands through the first and second reports of the Brandt Commis sion: North South (1980) and Common crisis (1983). Although Brandt Commissioners tried to direct attention to the widening (and in their view dangerous) gaps between North ern and Southern countries, not much hap pened. Indeed, it can plausibly be argued that the end of the cold war weakened South ern countries, particularly in sub Saharan Africa (Dodds, 1999; Fawcett and Sayigh, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . These countries were no longer im portant to either the USA or the former Soviet Union. The irony, then, or the tragedy, is this: in the 1970s, a map of the world that sought to depict the global North was clumsy in the extreme. It stretched to include mainly temperate regions both sides of the Equator, pulling together North America with Australia and New Zealand. Most of the world?s land mass, in any case, is north of the Equator. The South mainly occupied a more discrete space in the sub tropical and tropical worlds. By the end of the century the conceptual integrity of the North seemed to make more sense, bolstered in part by gLobaLization. The South, for its part, has found it increasingly difficult to advance a coherent political posi tion. The Group of 77 now has 133 members, but is largely impotent in the face of the North's veto on key economic and political changes. sco (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dodds (1999); Payne (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
nuptuality
The extent of marriage (or mar riage rate) within a population. As research in demography associated being married with elevated fertility, delaying the age of marriage is argued to reduce fertility, such as occurred in some European countries in the early expand ing phase of the demographic transition. However, sensitivity to the growing diversity of partnering and parenting arrangements in contemporary society complicate this thesis, and have contributed to considerable interest in family and househoLd organization (e.g. Duncan and Smith, 2002; Wright, Houston, Ellis, Holloway and Hudson, 2003). Ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bongaarts (1982). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
objectivity
The term ?objectivity? has at least three distinct meanings in geography. The first is a relatively common everyday one, where objectivity is associated with impartiality or disinterestedness. Here, one or another approach is said not to have a particu lar axe to grind, or any pre set principles or ideological positions to defend. This common sense understanding of objectivity has a paral lel in some of the humanities and professions, where objectivity derives from professionals following well established codes to guide the careful marshalling of evidence, cross checking of sources and accurate and unbiased presentation of information. Objectivity, in this sense, is thought to derive from careful gather ing of information, mastery of the evidence and ?balance? in presenting an argument. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In a more profound sense, objectivity as an element of scientific method refers to claims about the characteristics of an object that are said to exist independent of our perception of it. In this view, objectivity presupposes some form of unmediated or direct observation what Haraway (1985) called the ?god trick? and became the basis for the claims by object ivist science that it was merely mirroring nature in a form that was unmediated and ?value free? (see cartesianism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since the 1970s, many human geographers have reacted against the objectivist conception of objectivity. Drawing from hermeneutics, they acknowledged pre judgements (?preju dices?) as indispensable to a developing, dialo gical process of understanding. Drawing on feminism and marxism, they argued that all claims to objectivity are ideological, denying their histories, commitments and embedded ness in particular social institutions (see ideoLogy). As Habermas (1987a [1968]) pro posed, knowledge and human interests are always necessarily connected. Critical human geography insisted on the need for an ideology critique to unmask the actors, interests and consequences of such claims to objectivity (Gregory, 1978a). A transcendental or univer sal ?god?s eye? view of objectivity was displaced as critical human geographers turned to ana lyses of the role of social interests, human agency and institutions in shaping existing and possible worlds (Harvey, 1974b). Thus, a third meaning of objectivity sees knowledge (including scientific knowledge) as always historically and socially constructed out of specific projects in particular times and places: knowledge is always produced by someone; knowledge and human interests are always inextricably linked; and the production of knowledge is a social practice like any other with its own commitments, forms of embeddedness and geographies (see situated knowLedge). The turn to critical human geographies of this kind marked a rejection of grand narratives, and initiated a period of rich methodological experimentation and the writ ing of more fallible and open geographies (Natter, Schatzki and Jones, 1996, p. 1). jpi (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Occidentalism
The systematic construction of ?the west? (?the Occident?) as a bounded and unified entity. Occidentalism is often trea ted as the inverse of orientaLism: just as Western cultures systematically construct(ed) stereotypes of ?the Orient?, so non Western cultures produce(d) their own stereotypes of ?the Occident? (Carrier, 1995). Hence Occidentalism has been described as an inver sion of the Western imaginary, ?the world turned upside down?, or as a counter discourse to Orientalism (Xiao me Chen, 1995). Bonnett (NEW PARAGRAPH) has provided one of the most sophisti cated and sensitive readings of Occidentalism in these terms. Writing against those who re gard the idea of asia as yet another exterior, European construction, he reads two authors, one Japanese and the other Indian, to show how they used their independent construc tions of the west to explore non Western forms of modernity. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In contrast to all these versions, however, Edward Said, one of the main architects of the critique of Orientalism as a system of power knowledge, insisted that ?no one is likely to imagine a field symmetrical to [Orien talism] called Occidentalism? because the imaginative geographies produced by non Western cultures were not bound into a system of power knowledge comparable to the tensile strength and span of modern coLoniaLism and imperialism (Said, 1978, p. 50). For Said, the distinctive quality of Orientalism was its structural involvement in globalizing (NEW PARAGRAPH) projects of domination and dispossession. For this reason, Coronil (1996) prefers to treat Occidentalism as the condition of possi bility of Orientalism itself: ?the conceptions of the West? that underwrite that make possible its own representations of non western cultures. This tactic reminds us that Orientalism not only constructs ?the Orient? but also simultaneously constructs and privil eges the West as Subject (see eurocentrism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Occidentalism in a more populist sense gained new impetus in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington on 11 September 2001. A com mon response was to ask ?Why do they hate us?? and to look for answers among ?them? rather than ?us? and, in particular, ?their? sup posed hostility to the political and cultural formations of a universal modernity. So, for example, Buruma and Margalit (2004) pro vided a thumbnail sketch of Occidentalism as ?the West in the eyes of its enemies? and sought to locate ?today?s suicide bombers and holy warriors? within a larger history of ?hatred? and ?loathing? of the West and all works. Theirs was a remarkably shallow reading, which revealed more about the authors than their object of enquiry, and in this sense was another mapping of the Occidentalism that Coronil had so presciently in mind. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bonnett (2005); Coronil (1966). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
occupation, military
The assumption of effective control through military action by a sovereign power over a territory to which it has no legal title. Military occupation is thus distinct from military rule, though both may rely on the suspension of the pre existing rule of law, the imposition of martial law (cf. exception, space of) and the violent domination of the civilian population (see, e.g., Hudson Rodd and Hunt, 2005). Occupations have taken place throughout human history, most obviously in the expan sion of empires through conquest and annex ation, and these often involved transfers of population: slaves to Rome, Roman settlers to the colonies. But since the Second World War modern occupations have been governed by international law that both proscribes the acquisition of territory by force (so that occu pations are supposed to be temporary affairs) and specifically forbids population transfers. The same body of law requires the occupying power to restore and maintain public order, to respect private property, and to safeguard the health and welfare of the occupied popula tion. In practice, however, as Benvenisti?s (2004) review of twentieth century occupa tions reveals, these obligations have been more honoured in the breach: most either de nied their status as Occupying Powers (even though international law makes it clear that occupation is a matter of fact, not intention or proclamation) or assumed wide discretion ary powers. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Military occupations raise at least three sets of crucial geographical questions: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Strategy. What are the objectives of military occupation? Some are the result of military success in war: they may be directed towards permanent annexation and the creation of tributary states for geopolitical and geo economic reasons (e.g. the Nazi occupation of continental Europe between 1939 and 1945, or the Soviet occupation of much of Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1989); or they may be temporary (but nonetheless protracted) af fairs directed towards the replacement of one political system by another (e.g. the US occupation of Japan, 1945 52: see also geopolitics). Many contemporary occupations are the result of international interventions to end regional or civil war (?peace keeping?; e.g. the NATO occupa tions of Kosovo and Bosnia from 1995 to the present), though some have entailed the use of military violence on a scale that recalls Tacitus? description of the Roman occupation of Britain: ?They create a devastation and call it peace.? Still others are attempts to create buffer zones to guar antee security (e.g. the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, 1982 2000: and see Schofield, 1993). But many occupations have a mix of motives occupation is rarely a coherent or transparent project and while modern occupations often cloak themselves in the rhetoric of ?liberation?, they often have long term, transformative ends in view (Bhuta, 2005) and the pres ence of foreign troops often meets fierce resistance from the occupied population. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Logistics. What power geometries are necessary to maintain control over an occupied population (e.g. Weizman, 2004)? Military occupations depend on the spatial circulation of information (intelligence about the occupied population and its activities, military orders and public announcements), on supply networks to provide essential resources for occupiers and occupied, and on the capacity to mobilize troops to enforce public order. In most cases, cities function as the pivots for all three, but during the US occupation of Afghanistan, for example, it was (and remains) far from clear how far the author ity of the USA and its proxies extended into the countryside. The crucial import ance of cities also makes them centres of rebellion and resistance to military occupa tion (Gregory, 2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contact zones. Many of the relations imposed by occupying armies are intrinsic ally violent including sexual violence, arrest and imprisonment, forced labour and even genocide but the occupied also view interactions across the contact zone in complex ways: Why are some con strued as collaboration, others as doing business to survive and yet others as resist ance? During the US occupation of Iraq from 2003 onwards, resistance increased to the point at which it became increasingly difficult to distinguish occupation from the continuation of war (Gregory, 2004b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is not necessary to maintain a massive and permanent military presence to continue an occupation: Israel?s continued control over Gaza and the West Bank rests on its capacity to mobilize military force at will (?incursions?) and on the continuing development of colonies (?settlements?) as the eyes of what Segal and Weizman (2003) call ?a civilian occupation?. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Benvenisti (2004); Weizman (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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