The Dictionary of Human Geography (150 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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pollution
Substances released into an envir onment that cause harm to living organisms or built structures (e.g. roads, buildings). The substances may be human made or natural (see environmental hazard; hazard). Harm occurs when the receiving environment cannot easily assimilate the type or quantity of sub stance released. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The effects of pollution range from aesthetic nuisance through to economic loss, health damage, death and long term environmental degradation. The release of pollution may be sudden, or it may involve a slow accumulation of substances, such as the concentration of heavy metals, herbicides and pesticides in food chains. The impacts of pollution may also be gradual or sudden. The impact may be short lived or exist for a long time. It may be local, widely dispersed or far from the source of pollution (see acid rain). Pollution may be described by its medium (e.g. air or water pollution), its character (e.g. noise pol lution and acid rain) or its source (e.g. indus trial pollution). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pollution is both physical and socially con structed (see social construction). Bickerstaff and Walker (2002) demonstrate the moral geography of pollution, risk, responsibility and blame in an English city. Pollution may be regarded by some people as an ?accident?, or understood by others as the deliberate and inevitable consequences of pro duction processes. Sections of the environ mental movement have strongly criticized production processes that generate pollution. Increasingly, efforts are being made to ?close the circle? by using former wastes from pro cesses as inputs into new production pro cesses, in what is known as ?industrial ecology?. Regulations are enforced to prevent the deliberate emission of pollution that is considered unacceptable. Sometimes the pol lutant must be treated to a standard before it is emitted. The setting of standards and their enforcement vary throughout the world because the receiving environments are differ ent, and partly because of desires to maintain economic growth. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Concern about pollution rose dramatically after more than 4,000 people died in a photo chemical smog in London in December 1952, and following the publication of Silent spring by Rachel Carson in 1962. Kates (1995) observed that the sharp decrease in pollution after the UK?s Clean Air Act of 1956 was part of a longer trend to improved air quality, resulting from the displacement of coal as a source of energy. Rachel Carson identified the dangers of a new pollutant, the insecticide DDT (Carson, 1962). It was the forerunner for concerns about many human produced substances, ranging from pesticides through to nuclear industry waste. Continental and global scale pollutants such CFC emissions, acid rain and pollutants that contribute to global warming have caused most concern for governments, the environmental move ment and citizens in developed countries. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pollution is an important aspect of envir onmental justice in the USA (see Pastor, (NEW PARAGRAPH) Morello Frosch and Sadd, 2005), where pol lution and other differences in environmental quality are seen as discrimination, and increas ingly in other countries (see Walker, Mitchell, Fairburn and Smith, 2005). In areas said to be in a state of underdevelopment, it is often the local forms of pollution, such as the lack of clean drinking water, that cause the greatest immediate concern. pm (NEW PARAGRAPH)
population density
The number of persons divided by the area that they occupy. Within urban geography, neighbourhood and housing based measures of density became part of discussions about urbanism, which linked context to the well being of population groups. Within demography and population geography, density is mostly calculated at a national and regional scaLe, and sheds light on links between environmental conditions and population well being (see maLthus modeL; overpopuLation). However, wide variations between countries in rates of urbanization and the availability of cultivable land under mine the use of the simple measure in a com parative sense, and have led some to favour physiological density, which divides the number of persons by the area of potentially productive land (Sambrook, Pigozzi and Thomas, 1999). The availability of geo referenced data and flexible models is supporting the further devel opment of density related cLassifications (Hugo, Champion and Lattes, 2003). ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Plane and Rogerson (1994, ch. 2). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
population geography
Scholarship on the geographical organization of, and connections between, groups. Between 1953 and the 1990s, popuLation geography defined itself as the systematic study of ?(1) the simple description of the location of population numbers and characteristics ... (2) the explanation of the spatial configuration of these numbers and characteristics ... (3) the geographic analysis of population phenemona (the inter relations among areal differences in population with those in all or certain other elements within the geographic study area)? (Zelinsky, 1966, pp. 5 6). Accordingly, the sub discipline thought of populations as groups synonymous with political jurisdictions (e.g. urban resi dents, Australians), ethnic and national iden tities (e.g. latino/as), phenotype (e.g. white, black), and demographic events (e.g. migrants, the elderly, families, baby boomers, refugees). As links between cLassifications such as these (i.e. the construction of knowledge) and the circulation of power became acknowledged, views on how populations were made and maintained, and for what purposes, have greatly expanded. This enlarged reading of groups also takes into account the relations and connections between groups, as with work that examines the meanings of whiteness in the context of blackness, or the experiences of migrancy in relation to those of sedentarism. Scholarship similarly investigates more plural views of geographical organization that go beyond the one time focus upon areal differ entiation in space to recover and rework ideas about pLace and environment. For some, the widening agenda threatens the integrity of the vision for the sub discipline first proposed by Trewartha in 1953; for others, growing plural ity signals strength and the relevance of the field to other branches of geography and to society more generally. The recent rebranding of the flagship journal to Population, Space and Place has occurred with the rise of critical accounts (see criticaL human geography), and at a time of increasing ?post disciplinarity? (Conway, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contributions to population geography have long been cross disciplinary, not least because ?geographical' epistemoLogies (par ticularly those related to environment, place and space) have been variously developed as part of enLightenment thinking in different disciplines, including economics, sociology and demography. Classical economic thought (NEW PARAGRAPH) most notably the maLthusian modeL argued that population growth rates could lead to the demand for food (resources) exceeding the capacity of the environment to supply necessary inputs. Neo Malthusian work has expanded the concept of carrying capacity to include social and cultural factors, and use has been made of large scale simuLa tions and modeLs, including the Limits to growTh model. Neo Marxist critiques and views of a population environment resource ideoLogy nexus have served to complicate ideas about overpopulation and drawn greater attention to political factors (see poL iticaL ecoLogy). (NEW PARAGRAPH) While accounts concerned with environ ment drew attention to the links between population, scarcity and production, approaches focused upon place saw important links between population, culture and produc tion/consumption. Reflecting the still influen tial ideas of the French g?ographie humaine school, Beaujeu Garnier (1956 8) believed that by studying the ?ways of being' of populations, the field could integrate liveli hood (or environmental and economic possi bilities for production) with a concern for norms, values and cultural change. This inte grative account of population and nature society links resisted the compartmentaliza tion of population issues as separate from eco nomic or cultural concerns, took for granted who or what constituted a population and continues to prove difficult to apply (compare Bruhnes' 1910 treatment of settlement geog raphy with contemporary work on gLoBaL cities). (NEW PARAGRAPH) After the Second World War, population geography became institutionalized as a sub discipline concerned with empiricist and positivist statements about spatial variations in the distribution, composition and growth of populations. The call to arms had been issued by Trewartha (1953), who saw a synthetic geography that existed for, and began with, people (populations) and their geographical organization. Trewartha made his case as spatiaL science gained prominence, ensuring that a view of space as a container through which the order of population phenomena could be both described and, through the development of theory, explained and modi fied (see Location theory) permeated the field. Inspired by new data and international collaborations, and drawing on the contribu tions of demography in general, and demo graphic transition and stable population theory more specifically, population geography contributed work on the diffusion of vital transitions (notably Zelinsky's pioneering 1971 hypothesis of the mobility transition), spa tial variations in the components of population change (fertiLity, mortaLity, migration) and composition (particularly on ageing), and the development of more accurate and sub national population projections and Life table methods (Jones, 1981; Woods, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Interest grew in the disaggregated behaviour of individuals with, for example, rationaL choice theory and sociaL physics frameworks extended to model migration decisions at residential and regional scales (see also BEhAViourAL geography; regional science). The growth of studies in medicaL geography on morbidity, mortality and geo graphical variations in accessibility to heaLth care combined with the relative neglect of fer tility to leave commentators both bemoaning the migration centred foci of much work and debating the need for continued disciplinary border crossing to rejuvenate the field. While links with demography remain strong, the consolidation of fields such as spatial demog raphy and geodemographics (Woods, 1982; Wachter, 2005) have occurred alongside, but not to the exclusion of, alternative treatments of space (White and Jackson, 1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The well known critiques of Enlightenment knowledge that had taken root in human geography in the 1980s impacted upon the field in at least two ways. In methodological terms, greater emphasis was placed upon qualitative methods and ?mixed? methods of approaching human subjects, and taking feelings, aspirations and discourses more ser iously. Life course frameworks extended Life cycLe explanations of, for example, house hoLd formation, location and dissolution pat terns to take account of interdependent spatial and temporal contexts, and better integrate accounts of structure and agency along struc turatioNist lines (Van Wissen and Dykstra, 1999). The rapid development of microsimu Lation, agent Based modeLLing and geo graphic information science in general further exploited new data products, deepened the field's already strong engagement with puBLic poLicy and business planning, and fur ther extended (some have argued, democra tized) how population groups are defined, by whom, and for what purpose. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Indeed, the question of how knowledge about the geographical organization of popu lation reflects and reinforces the circulation of power in society continues to shape the direc tion of the field. In particular, a number of commentators have questioned the categories used in the study of populations and, most poignantly, the question of how populations are classified, named and legitimized as objects of study and policy. post structuraL views argue that populations are socially con structed institutions that both enable and counter inequality and oppression in society. Drawing on Michel Foucault, research has examined the use of political technology and discourse by states to create inferior others that legitimize political projects. Examples include the deployment of race based classifi cations to underwrite ethnic cLeansing and genocide, including the Nazi hoLocaust, and the exploitation of gender and sexuaLity norms against civilians and refugees in wars. post coLoniaL research has investigated the link between population classifications, cen sus and registry systems, and the mapping of ethnic populations to further coLoniaL ends, and the neo colonial use of discourses of migrancy to legitimize deveLopment agen das including structural adjustment programmes (Kosiriski, 1984; Lawson, 2000). Drawing on feminist geographies and social geography, the field has re examined the meaning of concepts of demography, including age (literatures on cHildRen?s geog raphies and ageing), reproduction, disease, disability, death and dying (Pratt, 1999; Valentine, 2001; Kalipeni, Craddock, Oppong and Ghosh, 2004; Silvey, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The diverse readings of space, which increasingly call upon notions of environment and place, run through the field?s expanding engagement with the economic, cultural and, to a lesser extent, ecological dimensions of globalization and neo liberalism. Research on global cities explores patterns of skilled migration, the diversification offamilies and households, and variations in experiences of settlement, incorporation, assimilation and social exclusion among immigrant com munities (Clark, 1998; Beaverstock, 2002; Wong, Yeoh and Graham, 2003). Balancing production centred accounts of family migra tion, an emphasis upon gendered migration has drawn attention to factors of social repro duction and institutional context among domestic workers and persons trafficked (Boyle, Halfacree and Robinson, 1998). The growing social and spatial plurality of house hold living arrangements has been linked to ageing and immigration, and has sparked new research on the demographic transition. Historically, low levels of fertility have been connected to the interplay of changes in con cepts of self and a range of state policies, including housing supply and social support. Similarly, the variable ways in which states mediate transnational and diasporic com munities, including border controls, remit tance management and through discourses of long distance nationalism, have witnessed a more explicitly integrative approach, combin ing economic, cultural and political readings (Samers, 1997; Jackson, Crang and Dwyer, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) There are a number of key engagements within population geography that relate to the direction of travel and the broader influ ence of its scholarship. The simultaneous embrace of plurality, and the deepening meth odological specialism of many approaches, ensure that time honoured questions about intellectual coherence and vitality remain. While there is an implicit suggestion that mod eration and balance (in approach, in topic and so forth) will best serve ongoing research needs and meet funding expedients, there is a tendency to define balance in terms of the long standing demographic approach to the field. That is, migration is seen as exerting an overdue influence on research agendas, at the expense of work on fertility (and to a lesser extent mortality and composition, which are the subjects of other fields of enquiry within geography). Under post structural and critical readings, however, this divide is artificial and problematic. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Similarly, spirited debates on methodo logical pluralism have supported the develop ment of mixed methods approaches almost to the exclusion of single method techniques, which are seen as the preserve of more special ized fields, including spatial demography. Methodological specialization has tended to exaggerate a divide between those using quan titative, qualitative and ethnographic tools at a time when many agendas require flexible and plural approaches. The growth in interest in participatory geographies represents another opportunity for reflection about the relation ship between knowledge and power in the field. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Furthermore, it remains largely the case that analyses of risk remain absent from debates within the field, despite increased public attention to matters of securitization, broadly defined (see security). Given the profound implications of well documented ecological and cultural transitions, to name two, for the geographical organization of populations and the structure of society, work is needed to understand the roles that groups play in affect ing global futures. ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bailey (2005); Findlay (2004); Jones (1981); Kalipeni, Craddock, Oppong and Ghosh (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Plane and Rogerson (1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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