The Dictionary of Human Geography (160 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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productivity
A measure of output relative to input, usually expressed as the ratio of the returns from sales to the costs of production. The term was developed in analyses of the efficieNcy of manufacturing industry, where it is equivalent to the rate of surplus value or rate of exploitation in marxist ecoNomics. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The higher the amount of vaLue added in the production process relative to the costs incurred (of labour, materials and fixed cap ital), the greater is the productivity. In primary industries, however, productivity usually implies the ratio of production per unit area of land rather than to its (imputed) cost. (NEW PARAGRAPH) With the growth of service industries in advanced capitaList societies, attempts have been made to measure productivity in sectors other than manufacturing not least in higher education! though the concept of value added is not readily applied in many such situations. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
profit cycle
A sectoral approach to under standing changes experienced by regional economies, developed by economist Ann Markusen as an alternative to the product LiFe cycLe model. Instead of focusing on regularities in the changing scale of output or changes in the qualitative characteristics of a product and its production process over time, Markusen (1985) argued that the economic variable most crucial to determining industrial change is the rate of profit. Drawing her inspir ation from both Marx and Schumpeter, she argued that change within an industry should be understood in terms of two central pro cesses, each of which is pursued by firms to increase market power and hence profit rates: (NEW PARAGRAPH) innovation and (ii) imperfect competition. She proposed a five stage modeL through which industries move: (NEW PARAGRAPH) New industries are born and core products are being designed: a regime of zero profits. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Once an innovation is commercially suc cessful, and so long as its production is concentrated in the hands of a single (monopoly) firm, super profits are likely. (NEW PARAGRAPH) As patents expire and/or imitation and in novation diFFusion facilitates entry by new firms, the market power once held by the monopoly firm dissipates. Profits decline to normal profit levels as the industry moves towards market saturation. It is only at this stage that conditions resemble perfect competition. (NEW PARAGRAPH) If some firms increase their market shares through mergers and acquisitions, this move towards oligopoly will raise profit rates to normal plus levels. But if the indus try evolves along a path of predatory pri cing and excessive competition, profit rates will be squeezed to normal minus levels. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Once the sector matures to obsolescence, negative profits will ensue. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Markusen argues that ?distinct spatial tenden cies' accompany each stage of a sector's pas sage through the profit cycle (1985, p. 24) (see table). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The approach is a suggestive one, but it was roundly criticized by Storper (1985) for its essentiaLism. While he accepted that the modeL was one of the most effective ways to comprehend ?multilocational, large scale pro duction systems and sectoral location patterns over time', he saw it as a premature formaliza tion and argued for a much more historically informed analysis of the dynamics of geo graphical industriaLization. msg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
property
Relationships between persons with respect to the use or benefit of valued things. Legal scholars tend to see property rights as residing in the ?jural relations' between individuals, rather than in the thing itself. If I claim a property right in a thing (such as land), what is really being asserted is that I can exclude you from access to it (Macpherson, 1978a). The Law of property concerns itself with the legally recognized dis tribution of rights, benefits and responsibilities associated with the objects of property. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Variations can occur in terms of the range of objects over which property rights are rec ognized, the extent of rights that are recog nized and the entities that can bear such rights. These can all be construed very broadly: for example, the objects of property can include not only land (Land tenure) and money, but intangibles such as names, know ledge and shares in joint stock companies. Despite this diversity, Western liberal societies (see LiberaLism) tend towards a strikingly narrow view of property, summarized by Singer (2000) as the ?ownership model'. Private property, the default category here, is viewed in largely asocial terms: The owner is assumed to hold a full bundle of property rights (alienation, use, exclusion etc.), and is expected to be motivated by self regarding behaviour. state intervention is presump tively suspect, and must be justified in rela tion to the prior and superior rights of the owner. A rich corpus of writing explores and critiques various justifications for private property (Macpherson, 1978b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This model, it has been noted, exerts a powerful imaginative hold, shaping collective understandings of the possibilities of social life, the ethics of human relations and the ordering of economic life (Blomley, 2005). In response, scholars have criticized prevailing views of property: Singer (2000), for example, characterizes the ownership model as both descriptively and normatively flawed. One central argument, variously phrased, is that property is irreclaimably social and political in its constitution and effects (Alexander, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Property rights, insists Underkuffler (NEW PARAGRAPH) , ?are not simply private interests with which the state neutrally coexists. Property rights . . . are collective, enforced, even violent decisions about who shall enjoy the privileges and resources which this society allocates among its citizens? (p. 146). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Given its historical development under a liberal capitalist society (see capitaLism), many critics have cast property rights in a negative light, pointing to the manner in which privatized property rights instrumentally and ideologically underpin cLass rule, patriarchy and coLoniaLism. However, recent years have seen an attempt to uncover the progressive potential of property both private and col lective (Blomley, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Property is a political instrument, an element in social struggle, an object of consumption and a site for identity formation. Given its importance, it is heartening to note some interest in geography in property. Blomley has sought to uncover the ways in which conflicts over inner city gentrification frequently invoke property claims, refracted through representations of local Landscapes (Blomley, 2004b; Mitchell and Staeheli, 2005). Everyday understandings of domestic and pubLic space are also seen to entail surprisingly complex and overlapping ren derings of public and private property (Blomley, 2004a). The dynamics of coLoNiALism are also shown to entail the simultaneous reworking of space and property (Forman and Kedar, 2004). Property, of course, extends beyond claims to land: Sarah Whatmore (2002a), for example, traces the intersecting geographies of landed and inteLLectuaL property rights. Geographers have also expressed interest in common property: David Harvey (2003b), for example, has argued that the encLosure of the commons, rather than an episode of early capit alism, continues across the globe (see primitive accumuLation), as does political organizing in (NEW PARAGRAPH) defence of common rights (gLobaL commons; primitivE accumuLation). nkb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Corr (1999); Geisler and Daneker (2000); Nedelsky (1990); Rose (1994); Verdery and Humphrey (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
propinquity
A measure of nearness or prox imity, usually with reference to distance, but also to time. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
prostitution
Broadly defined, prostitution refers to the exchange of sexual services for money or payment in kind. Though often socially marginalized, the prostitute has remained a central figure in geographical debates concerning both the gendering of space and the spatial regulation of conduct. Notably, it is the place of women sex workers that has attracted most attention. While some accounts have been excessively voyeuristic and uncritical, work informed by feminist theory has generated some insightful geographical commentaries on the regulation of female sexuaLity and the role of space in the main tenance of heteronormativity. Broadly speaking, these document the spatiaLity of prostitution on at least three related scaLes. First, attention has been focused on the more or less enforced movement of women sex workers across international boundaries, a phenomena that appears to be growing as criminalized global networks extend their range and influence (Samarasinge, 2005). Reading these movements as indicative of gen dered global inequalities, increasing stress is also being placed on the formation of a dia sporic sex workers? movement opposed to enforced prostitution (Doezema and Kempadoo, 1998: see sLavery). Second, on a national scale there has been a strong emphasis on the connections between prosti tution Laws and the particular concerns and anxieties projected on to the bodies of prosti tute women. This literature often has a strong historical dimension, tracking the moral and political debates encouraging the use of par ticular forms of surveiLLance and biopower to categorize and control sex work (Howell, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Finally, there is an established tradition of urban research that documents the micro geographies of sex work in red Light dis tricts. One important strand of this explores the relationship between sex workers and local residents, with a particular focus on the nimby campaigns of displacement that are often associated with incipient gentrification (NEW PARAGRAPH) (Hubbard, 2004). In all cases, research sug gests the gendered inequalities of sexual commerce produces a series of spaces where women?s sexuality can be bought and sold by men with relative impunity, albeit that these spaces may be important in the forging of new geNder ideNtities and formations (Law, 1997). In this sense, the relative silence on forms of male sex work poses some interesting questions about gender inequalities within and without the discipline. ph (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hubbard (1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
proto-industrialization
A term proposed by economic historian Franklin Mendels (1972) to denote ?the rapid growth of traditionally organised but market oriented, principally rural industry?. Whilst the presence of such industries had long been recognized, Mendels presented proto industrialization not merely as a description of (pre )industrial organization, but also as an expLaNatioN of industrial change, arguing that it ?preceded and prepared for? industrialization. In emphasizing the continuities between trad itional systems of domestic production and the centralized and mechanized factory sys tem, Mendels? thesis is central to the broader reconceptualization of industrial revolution as an evolutionary and gradual process. Two different models have been proposed, each with its own empirical and conceptual emphasis. Ecological models focus on the pre conditions for proto industrialization, par ticularly the ways in which under employed peasaNt labour was drawn into industrial pro duction. There is little consensus on the type of agrarian economy that would favour such development, with rural industries emerging in both arable areas (with seasonal unemploy ment) and pastoral regions (with diurnal time budgets). In reality, much depended upon the social and institutional environment of the area, especially land holding and the type and flexibility of labour skills. Once established, it is argued that comparative AdVANtage led to a growing division of labour between specialist industrial and agricultural regioNs. However, this not only makes unwarranted assumptions about individual and collective rationality, but also fails to acknowledge the importance of other variables, such as the presence of com mercialized mercantile and urban networks (Stobart, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Economic models focus on the structural rela tionship between the peasant/artisan and the (NEW PARAGRAPH) merchant/capitalist. The artisan househoLd sought to balance production and consump tion by adjusting the level of engagement in manufacture for the market, whilst the mer chant collected together the products of domestic labour and consigned them to dis tant markets. Although mutually dependent, the interests of these two parties were inher ently contradictory. When prices fell, artisans increased production to maintain household income, thus saturating the market and wor sening the recession. When prices rose, artisan households could more easily satisfy their needs and production slowed, just when mer chants would seek to take advantage of increased profits. This conflict is seen as being resolved through the increasing control exer cised by merchants over the production pro cess. Initially, this involved a shift from the Kaufsystem of independent artisan production to the Verlagssytem of putting out, wherein the means of production remained in the hands of the merchant, who effectively employed dependent outworkers. This was subsequently superseded by a merchant led centralization of production into proto factories (Kriedte, Medick and Schlumbohm, 1981). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This version of proto industrialization as a theory of industrial change has been chal lenged from three very different directions. At the level of the peasant household, de Vries (1994) has argued that consumption as well as production became ever more market oriented, increasing household specialization and growing consumption inspiring an artisan centred ?industrious revolution?. At a broader scale, studies of regional industrializa tion have emphasized that the logic of capit aLism was played out differently in different places: factory production was one of a range of possibilities, which included workshop based flexible specialization as well as hybrid factory workshop systems (Berg, 1994). More fundamentally, others have questioned whether proto industrialization was, indeed, a necessary stage in industrial development, arguing that the switch from organic to mineral resources was the real key to indus trialization. jst (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Berg, Hudson and Sonenscher (1983); Houston and Snell (1984). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
psychoanalytic theory
Originating in the late nineteenth century in the work of Sigmund Freud (1986 1939), psychoanalytic theory and practice offers a distinctive way of thinking about the human mind and of responding to psychological distress. Psychoanalysis has travelled widely from its central European origins, and has evolved into a complex, multifaceted and internally frac tured body of knowledge, situated at the inter face between the human and natural sciences, and between clinical practice and academic theory. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Notwithstanding critiques of its eurocentric origins, psychoanalysis has been taken up in many different cultural contexts, perhaps most notably in LatrN america, but also in India, Japan and elsewhere. Its geography and spatiaLity have become topics for geographical study, albeit primarily within the Anglophone literature (Kingsbury, 2003; Cameron, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Along with the more general rise of psycho logical thinking, psychoanalytic ideas have had a pervasive influence on such arenas of life as child rearing, education and popular culture. Within the academy, psychoanalytic theory has been taken up most extensively in the humanities and more sporadically in the social sciences, including human geography, where a distinct sub discipline of psychoana lytic geography has shown tentative signs of formation since around the turn of the twenty first century. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The unconscious is perhaps the most fun damental and defining idea of psychoanalysis, albeit one that has a much longer history. For Freud, only a small proportion of the human mind is knowable through rational thought. The greater part is outside conscious aware ness and full of hidden dangers. It makes its presence felt in a variety of ways, including dreams, slips of the tongue, the clinical method of?free association? and other actions the motivations for which are not discernible by, and are often contrary to, conscious intent. The psychoanalytic unconscious acts as the repository for experiences, thoughts and feel ings that are unacceptable to, and are repressed by, the conscious mind. The uncon scious therefore exemplifies a means by which rational human agency is ?de centred' in the sense of not being the driving force of human action, an idea that has been highly influential in human geography. The radical otherness, profound strangeness and disruptiveness of Freud's concept of the unconscious is empha sized by Felicity Callard (2003) in her review of geographers' engagements with psychoana lytic theory. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Freud developed his ideas over a period of nearly 50 years. Not surprisingly, there are shifts, tensions and ambiguities within his work. Moreover, he founded an approach taken up by many others, who have variously extended, challenged, supplemented and reworked his ideas. One of the most influential lines of differentiation within the psychoana lytic tradition lies between those theorists who attach primary importance to the psychic life generated by the instinctual drives of the human organism, including especially drives towards pleasure and towards death or anni hilation, and those theorists who attach pri mary importance to the psychic life generated by a different kind of drive or condition of existence, namely the drive to relate to others. Among the former, the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901 81) has been especially influential, while the latter has given rise of object relations theory and other relational approaches to psychoanalysis, developed through such theorists as Melanie Klein (1882 1960) and Donald Winnicott (1896 1971). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Human geographers have engaged with dif ferent strands of psychoanalysis for a variety of purposes. One of the earliest examples in the Anglophone literature was methodological in focus and drew as much on psychoanalytic practice as theory: Jacquelin Burgess and col leagues (Burgess, Limb and Harrison, 1988) applied ideas from group analysis (a form of psychoanalysis that focuses on the relationship between individuals and their social context) to facilitate the exploration of environmental values in focus groups. Continuing this methodological theme, others have appealed to key ideas informing psychoanalytic prac tices to deepen and enrich understandings of the dynamics in play within research encoun ters (Bondi, 2005). Yet others have drawn on approaches derived from Carl Jung's analytic psychology to facilitate research participants to connect with unconscious childhood experience (Bingley, 2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Several human geographers have deployed psychoanalytic theories to develop accounts of human subjectivity and its spatial forms. In a highly influential contribution, David Sibley (NEW PARAGRAPH) examines geographies of exclusion combining Melanie Klein's object relations account of the unconscious expulsion of feared and dreaded aspects of our selves with the post Lacanian psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's discussion of the fascination and horror, preoccupation and repulsion, associ ated with that which is expelled. Using these ideas, Sibley (1995) illuminates the profound emotional power of exclusionary processes for the different groups whose members identify with each other and against others in ways that generate highly potent lines of demarcation. While Sibley?s (1995) account draws primarily on object relations psychoanalysis, Robert Wilton (2003) draws on Freud?s concept of castration together with Lacan?s reworking to explore how the geographical exclusion of dis abled people may serve to shore up illusions of ?ableism? (cf. disabiLity). Lacanian readings of Freud are also evident in geographical accounts of topics such as racism (Nast, 2000) and embodied experiences of cities (Pile, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A product of nineteenth century European culture, Freud hypothesized that the repressed unconscious contains much material of a sex ual nature, which would be highly disruptive if allowed to break through into consciousness. He argued that in order to grow up in socially acceptable ways, boys and girls were called upon to repress their ?natural?, sexual (or libid inal) desires. Normative heterosexual mascu linity and femininity were theorized by Freud as demanding psychical achievements. Although aspects of his theories of gender and sexual identity have been highly contro versial, his approach has also been welcomed as a resource for challenging assumptions about what is ?natural?, and for elaborating a theory of subjectivity as situated in a zone of creative interplay between the ?personal? and the ?cultural?. For this reason, some feminist geographers have turned to psychoanalysis in their theorizations of the interplay between gender, sexuaLity, subjectivity and space, and to contribute to critiques of the ?mascu Linism? of dominant forms of knowledge (Rose, 1996; Nast, 2000: see feminist geog raphies). Against critics who consider psycho analysis to be an intrinsically individualistic theory and practice, these applications find that it offers a powerful way of understanding how social and cultural milieux are embodied and personalized by human individuals, as well as how unconscious aspects of human life are manifest in the social world. Lb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bondi (2005); Callard (2003); Craib (1990); Sibley (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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