The Dictionary of Human Geography (149 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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political economy
The study of the relation ship between economic and political processes. Aristotle?s Politics distinguished between oikos, the operation of the househoLd (on patri archaL principles) to meet daily needs, and the polis, the domain of public association and political life. In the early seventeenth century, political economy began to be used in France to discuss how economic activity might con tribute to the powers of the sovereign and the prosperity of his subjects. This made economy a public rather than private activity, and located the problematic of political economy at the scale of the state (and implicitly as a european concern). Mercantilists explored how the sovereign/nation could prosper from running a trading surplus at the expense of other nation states. The physiocrats, motiv ated by economic crises in France, argued that the source of wealth lies in agriculture: the ?natural' fertility of the nation. Physiocrats began to argue that the sovereign should not govern the economy too much. (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the mid nineteenth century, British pol itical economy began to emerge, crystallized around the earlier ideas of Adam Smith (1723 90), flourishing into a school of thought of global influence throughout the nineteenth century. Experiencing Britain's shift from a society founded on landowning and rural agri cultural economic activities to an urban and industrial capitalist society (see industrial revoLution), as well as the wealth brought to Britain as a result of unequal trading networks with its colonies (see coLoniaLism) and less industrialized European neighbours, it came to be argued that national wealth was embed ded in labour rather than land (a Labour the ory of vaLue), and that crucial driving forces were the division of Labour, the extension of the market, and free domestic and inter national trade. Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, James and J.S. Mill conceived the relationship between economic activities and the national polity in terms that aligned political economy with Lockean LiberaLism. Freedom was founded in men (sic) owning private property, and political intervention into their activities was an invasion of liberty and privacy. With this geographical shift from monarchical France to democratic Britain, the political came to be equated with the national state rather than the sovereign. (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the end of the nineteenth century, polit ical economy had split into two very different, (NEW PARAGRAPH) Marxist and liberal, schools. Refining Ricardo?s labour theory of value, Marx argued that capitalism exploits workers, and that the crucial relationship between political and eco nomic processes is the way in which capitalism engenders, and is shaped by, political struggle between classes (see Marxist economics). In his view, capitalism was an advance over pre vious modes of production, as it promoted the autonomous individual in the workplace and in political life, but sooner or later would founder on class conflicts that neither the mar ket nor the state could finesse, giving way to a more collective, political economy founded on communism or socialism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the 1890s, partly in response to Marx?s critique of capitalism, a marginalist, subjectiv ist political economy emerged almost simul taneously in Britain, France, Austria, Sweden and Italy. William Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, Carl Menger and Knut Wicksell argued that value was determined by con sumers? utility, not labour value (see utility theory). Using a pleasure/pain calculus, they argued that the marginal utility of everything that is, the extra pleasure from obtaining an extra unit of a commodity is inversely pro portional to supply. In free markets, con sumers would thus pay the right amount for everything purchased: its marginal utility to them. The American John Bates Clark extended the calculus to labour and capital, concluding that labour and capital will always be paid fairly in free markets, according to their marginal productivity to society. This school of neo classical economics came to describe itself as simply ?economics?, because in this view the economy, if left alone by the state, would maximize social welfare all by itself, harmoniously coordinating citizens? desires. In short, the political could be evacu ated in favour of the economy, to the benefit of society. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Just as liberalism has conservative and pro gressive variants, so does liberal political econ omy. Conservative, Lockean liberalism argues that freedom is the result of maintaining a min imal ?night watchman? state; progressive liber alism (beginning in late nineteenth century Britain and migrating to the USA during the twentieth century) argues that state interven tion is necessary to secure the freedom and well being of those impoverished by capital ism. The former school, now associated with the project of neo liberalism and its architects Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, became global common sense. It still sees itself as undertaking political economy (publishing in the Chicago school?s Journal of Political Economy), and pays close attention to political processes, but only because such processes ten dentially undermine what it regards as the proper functioning of a capitalist economy. The latter school flourished in Britain and Europe during the Great Depression and until the mid 1970s, under the magisterial influence of John Maynard Keynes. As fordism or Keynesianism, it pursued the principle of con tinual state intervention to manage the contra dictions of capitalism to the benefit of the nation and its least well off citizens, and saw itself as inheriting the mantle of the ?classical? nineteenth century political economy of Smith, Ricardo and Marx. This rapidly fell from favour in the context of the crises of post war Fordism and the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions, although contemporary economic commentators such as Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Krugman seek to keep the flame alive. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Whereas liberal political economy domin ates political science and economics, at least in the global north, political economy in geography is usually taken to mean some variant or critical elaboration on the line of thought precipitated by Marx. During the 1970s, radical geography successfully dis placed liberal market oriented approaches to economic geography, associated with loca tion theory and spatial science, and diver sified itself. In sum: versions of marxism, from dialectical to analytical, articulate a political economy approach centred on class struggle. realism examines how the necessary economic relations and political conflicts of capitalism are complicated by differences in geographical context. regulation theory explores state economy relations at various scales, comparing Fordist and post Fordist regimes of accumulation across space and time. Approaches via governmentality argue for more attention to everyday behaviour, the conduct of conduct, rather than the state, as shaping state civil society relations. Approaches influenced by feminism and post structuralism draw attention to gender and identities other than class as emergent domains of inequality and conflict under cap italism. social movements approaches theorize the emergence of social contestations of capit alism (see also resistance). The cultural turn stresses the importance of discourse and representation to the dynamics and contradic tions of capitalism. Diverse and community economies approaches emphasize the ongoing importance of non capitalist economic and social relations, while approaches informed by post coLoniaLism pay attention to the geo graphically differentiated ongoing imprint of a colonial past, and question norms of progress and well being associated with European capit alism (see also post dEVELOPMENT). If there is one thing shared across these different, at times hotly debated, critical approaches to economic geography, it is a resonance with Marx's polit ical economic conception of capitalism. es (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes (1996); Lee and Wills (1997); Sayer (1995); Sheppard and Barnes (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
political geography
A subdivision of human geography analysing ways in which politics and conflict create spaces and pLaces and, in turn, are themselves partially deter mined by the existence and nature of geo graphical entities. The division of human geography into the broad spheres of economic, socio cultural and political geography topics reflects the pre eminence of disciplinary boundaries in academia. However, contempor ary geography reflects criticism of disciplinary constraints and, in turn, political geography has become more eclectic and connected to other spheres of human geography. To under stand the importance of this trend, a brief his tory of political geography is necessary. (NEW PARAGRAPH) At the outset of the development of modern human geography, political geography played a central role. Indeed, the term political geog raphy was applied in a general sense to human aspects of geography and served as an adjunct of history. The establishment of geography as a university discipline created the initial sub disciplines of colonial geography, commerciaL geography and political geography; a reflec tion of the discipline's role in imperiaLism. The key text for the new sub discipline was Friedrich Ratzel?s (1897) Politische geographie, which used an organic theory of the state to connect cultures with environments within dynamic state Borders. Ratzel's influential text connected political geography to social darwinist ideas whereby a hierarchy of com petitive cultures was defined by their differen tial ability to utilize the environment, with the most successful cuLture having the right to establish a state in a particular territory. The result was the concept of lebensraum, or living space, which would later prescribe Germany's right to move its boundary east wards into territory populated by Slavs. (NEW PARAGRAPH) At about the same time, Sir Halford Mackinder was both establishing political geography in universities in Great Britain and creating a political geography framework to advocate British imperialism. Also, influ enced by social Darwinism and the organic theory of the state (O Tuathail, 1992), Mackinder is best remembered for claiming that political geography had a role in formu lating grand geo strategic plans. His ?geo graphical pivot of history' article (1904), later known as the heartLand theory, defined a historical geography of European continen tal powers in perpetual conflict with maritime powers. In the context of Germany's growing challenge to Britain, Mackinder saw techno logical change facilitating German control of Eurasia and subsequent global dominance. His solution was a strong British Empire to counter the threat. In the USA, Isaiah Bowman promoted a political geography to serve the needs of governments defining an ever increasing role in world politics (Smith, N., 2003c). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Mackinder and Ratzel illustrate some important features of the early political geog raphy with contemporary implications. First, they utilized grand universal theories of dubi ous strength to offer academic authority to state specific foreign policy choices. Second, they connected the establishment and vitality of political geography to national security threats and the ability to offer ?practical' advice. Third, the analysis was state centric, identifying states as the only important actors. Fourth, the theoreticians were socially privil eged, white males, but, and fifth, they still claimed to ?know' the world and classify large swathes of territory as the venues for particular behaviours or characteristics. In Haraway's (1988) phrase, they practised a ?god's eye view'. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The relationship of political geography to foreign policy was epitomized by portrayals of General Karl Haushofer as the ?evil genius' behind Adolf Hitler's Second World War plans for world domination (O Tuathail, 1996b). Greatly exaggerated by American media, the end result was a tarnished image for political geography, as it became associ ated with German geopolitical expansion (cf. geopolitik) . The sub discipline withered as a research enterprise in universities on both sides of the Atlantic, ironically at the same time that the US government was expounding geopolitical theories as it achieved the status of superpower. Political geography was pushed into the academic doldrums, although it continued to be taught in many institutions, albeit with somewhat ?dated' textbooks and approaches. Its focus became a functional view of the state that promoted national inte gration and the accumuLation of capitaL. Two types of states were identified; independ ent sovereign states and dependent countries (colonies and other possessions) (Hartshorne, 1950). The latter were largely ignored as were the power relationships between rich and poor, or colonized and colonizing states. Without the previous environmental frame work and with little political purpose, political geography lost its coherence and relevance (Claval, 1984). Instead, political geographers described political events (such as elections) or features (such as boundaries) in an attempt to oil the wheels of state integration and capital growth. Political geography remained state centric, but inward looking rather than geo strategic, and normative rather than prescriptive. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Political geography, as with all academic studies, is a product of its social and intellec tual contexts. Global competition between states and concepts of social Darwinism stimulated Mackinder and Ratzel, and post war prosperity fuelled the blandness of func tionaLism. In the 1960s the global politics of the Vietnam War and internal crises mani fested in race riots were linked to a growing intellectual engagement with the work of Karl Marx (see marxism). Political geography was not immune, and over time a critical political geography began to emerge. The process was a step by step identification of social issues and marginalized groups, adoption of new and fertile social theoretical frameworks, and the recognition of different useful methodologies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Initially, two broad themes were explored, both relying on spatial analytical techniques: the distribution of resources and opportun ities in cities (Cox, 1973), and eLectoraL geography (Taylor and Johnston, 1979). Both branches brought the belated introduc tion of analytical techniques to political geog raphy. However, these were seen as inadequate in discovering the causes of social inequality. The parallel emergence of radicaL geography was seen by some as a means of identifying underlying structures that were producing social inequality and related polit ical confLicts. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The urban problems of racial strife and eco nomic disparity and the global problems of war and gross economic inequality provoked different uses of radical literature. David Harvey?s (1999 [1982]) Limits to capital deployed the work of Karl Marx to explain how the production of urban spaces was a necessary and contested part of capitaLism. On the other hand, Peter Taylor (1985) adopted the neo Marxist worLd systems the ory of Immanuel Wallerstein to situate states within the dynamics of the capitalist world economy. The product was a concentration on the political geography of geographical scaLe with the local/urban, nation state and global scales being identified as interlinked. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Institutional support for political geography blossomed to match the changing intellectual climate. The journal Political Geography Quarterly (later Political Geography) was estab lished in 1982. The first edition of Peter Taylor's (1985) textbook Political geography: world economy, nation state and locality and a host of conferences and related edited volumes (Burnett and Taylor, 1981) identified the sub discipline as a reinvigorated component of human geography. (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, in the 1990s human geography took what has been labelled the ?cuLturaL turn' and engaged with social theorists other than Marx (see sociaL theory). The result was a challenge to what was perceived as the existing reification of scale and the concentra tion upon economic structures. The politics of the production of scale was theorized with increasing sophistication, and feminist geo graphers and queer theorists (see feminist geographies; queer theory) demanded focus upon the scaLes of the body and the househoLd. Political geography became increasingly eclectic as cuLturaL geography emphasized the political conflicts inherent in cultural constructs and political geography included the cultural representation of polit ics. The boundaries of the sub discipline became increasingly blurred (Painter, 1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH) One outcome was a renewed interest in the topic of geopoLitics. Since the Second World War, political geography had defined itself as different from geopolitics. The topic of crit ical geopolitics (O Tuathail, 1996b) focused on the existing geopolitical practices of states and deconstructed the rhetoric of politicians and ?experts? to illuminate the underlying power politics. Critical geopolitics also pro moted a concentration on non state actors, such as sociaL movements and indigenous groups, which also reflected calls for increased study of race, gender and sexuaLity (Kobayashi and Peake, 2000; Staeheli, Kofman and Peake, 2004); though these topics and theoretical perspectives are not yet fully integrated into political geographical analyses. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The concentration upon the state, nation aLism and international politics, or formal (NEW PARAGRAPH) Politics, which had led the revival of political geography, was complemented by attention to the politics of representation and governance, or politics with a small ?p? (Flint, 2003a). The philosophies of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, amongst others, challenged the structuralism and economism of some versions of Marxist theory, and geographers used these works to focus upon topics of governance (Hannah, 2000) and social constructions of space (Mohan and Mohan, 2002). Feminist scholars challenged the binary nature of exist ing theories and analyses (Staeheli, Kofman and Peake, 2004). In turn, the discipline saw an explosion of journals (Space and Polity, Geopolitics, Society and Space) as well as a surge in the publication of textbooks as political geog raphy classes became more common in univer sities (Flint and Taylor, 2007 [1985]; Jones, Jones and Woods, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A coherent political geography played a key role in establishing the modern discipline of geography. However, the price of a dubious theoretical foundation was application in the name of imperialism and war. Contemporary political geography is eclectic and constantly engaging in self critique challenging the pri oritization of particular theories and social groups, and identifying key actors beyond the state. The result is a number of creative ten sions. Within the sub discipline, competing theoretical perspectives vie for attention. Also, as the ?war on terror? has become a dom inant context (see terrorism), the issue of relevance has reappeared; producing a ten sion between social scientists critical of foreign policy, on the one hand, and administrators and politicians looking for geography to pro vide the tools and analysis to facilitate coun ter terrorism. cf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Agnew (2002); Cox and Low (2003); Flint (1999); Painter (1995); Staeheli, Kofman and Peake (2004); Flint and Taylor (2007 [1999]). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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