The Dictionary of Human Geography (164 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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probLeM, ecoLogicaL iNfereNce and the ecoLogicaL faLLacy. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contemporary use of quantitative methods in human geography entails exploring patterns and processes involving large numbers of decision makers, seeking order in often complex situations (Haggett, 1990). Even when data are available on individual decision makers, the goal is to distil general patterns as in Rushton?s distinction between behaviour in space and rules of spatial behaviour. Unlike other approaches to human geography, there fore, spatial science is macro/meso in scaLe, rather than micro though it may deploy micro scale data in its search for macro/meso scaLe patterns. Its findings might pose ques tions that can only be addressed by studying individuals, but its core methodologies focus on wholes rather than parts. (NEW PARAGRAPH) This approach is the only one possible given certain subject matter. Patterns of (changing) regional development and underdevelopment, for example, can only be studied as statistical aggregates as can many indices linked to this concept, such as inflation, unemployment rates, land values, house prices, producTiviTy and so on. Aspects of our worlds are only ac cessible in such formats, and are sensibly ana lysed quantitatively. In other cases, whereas individual level data are available (or can be obtained through bespoke surveys) on ill (NEW PARAGRAPH) ness, turnout at elections and so on much can be gained from aggregating them and studying general patterns, of morbidity and mortality rates, for example. Much work in, (NEW PARAGRAPH) for example, popuLaTioN, MedicaL, sociaL and eLecToraL geography is of this type though such sub disciplines are not con strained to spatial scientific approaches. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A further justification for macro /meso approaches lies in the probabilistic nature of much of our understanding and representa tion of the world. It is generally accepted that smoking causes lung cancer, for example, but not all smokers get lung cancer and not all people who get lung cancer have smoked. It is a probabilistic relationship. Part of the rea son why we cannot say that smoking causes lung cancer without qualification is because other variables can either accelerate or decel erate, even block, the processes involved; part also reflects our incomplete knowledge (constrained because of the difficulties of con ducting controlled experiments). Similar argu ments apply to a whole range of behaviours studied by (physical and well as human) geog raphers: the processes involved are so complex and difficult to unravel because we cannot conduct experiments (although a range of new techniques may be of value in such situations: Sherman, 2003; Dunning, 2008). Hence work in spatial science is almost of necessity condi tional: it represents the state of our current understanding and can only be phrased in probabilistic rather than deterministic terms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The meso /macro patterns in many aspects of contemporary society that are quantitatively described and analysed by social scientists are relevant to people?s daily lives and experiences (NEW PARAGRAPH) the ?meaningful nature of life? explored in other geographical practices. Levels of ethnic segregaTioN in urban neighbourhoods and schools (see urbaNizaTioN) provide contexts within which not only lives are (partially) lived, but also people?s life chances and relationships are influenced. Geographical concentrations of poverTy similarly structure many people?s life chances, while biased elec tion results reflect the operation of the aggre gation and scale issues underpinning the modifiable areal unit problem (Johnston and Pattie, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Alongside their intrinsic interest and im portance to understanding spatial patterns and behaviour, therefore, meso /macro scale work is relevant to pubLic poLicies either studies of their impact on geographies or analyses of geographical patterns that call for public intervention. Geographies of MorTaL iTy, for example, may identify areas where further investment of medical resources is warranted. Much public policy has impacts direct and indirect on topics of interest to (NEW PARAGRAPH) human geographers and, although directed at individuals, is delivered to areas, as with the location of healthcare clinics: if the world op erates through spatial aggregates, then it should be analysed accordingly (though not exclusively so). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Similarly, whatever the immense variety of human spatial behaviour, the public policy that intervenes in it in some way (and much private sector policy too) is almost invariably phrased in aggregate terms. New highways are planned to link places where demand either currently outstrips supply or modelling sug gests that it soon will. New commercial estab lishments are located where potential (NEW PARAGRAPH) (unfulfilled) demand is deemed greatest (and usually implies some distance decay pattern in usage, as represented by the gravity model): much applied geography (such as that using geodemographics and other spatial analytical procedures) is based on this aspect of Tobler?s law. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Many aspects of the positivist approach have long been abandoned by almost all spa tial scientists: they adopt some of its precepts particularly that the things they study can be observed and measured; that the statements which they derive can be tested for their ver acity; and that their studies can be replicated. For them, knowledge production involves careful observation, measurement, analysis and interpretation, generating statements that identify synoptic patterns the broad pictures that might then be decomposed to see how they are produced and what they mean for the people who live in them. They do not as Fotheringham (2006, p. 239) puts it ig nore ?all the emotions and thought processes that are behind what is sometimes . . . highly idiosyncratic behaviour?: they accept those as valid topics for study, calling for different ap proaches. For spatial scientists, a whole range of subjects can be addressed at the aggregate level using quantitative methods, from which valid generalizations can be drawn to illumin ate aspects of the human condition. And these can be linked to studies using non quantitative practices as proponents of ?mixed method? stress. Quantitative methods thus remain at the core of the geographical enterprise. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Selected reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Fotheringham, Brunsdon and Charlton (2000); Haggett (1990); Wilson and Bennett (1985). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
quantitative revolution
The ?radical trans formation of spirit and purpose? (Burton, 1963, p. 151) that Anglo American geography experienced during the 1950s and 1960s fol lowing the widespread adoption of both infer ential statistical techniques and abstract models and theories. In the process, the dom inance of an old idiographic geography char acterized by a focus on areaL differeNTiATioN was displaced by a new NomoTheTic geog raphy conducted as spatial science. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The quantitative revolution first emerged in the mid 1950s as a series of local affairs crys tallized around one or two key individuals. In the USA, the Department of Geography at the University of Washington in Seattle was key, as was the University of Iowa in Iowa City. At Washington, it was the presence of Edward Ullman and William Garrison that was crucial, and at Iowa, Harold McCarty. In 1954 Gar rison gave the first advanced course in statis tics in a US Department of Geography, and the following year his Washington students, nicknamed the ?space cadets?, were among the first on campus to make use of the new IBM 604 computer (also a national first). Those students subsequently proved critical in diffusing the quantitative message, which they did by quickly establishing themselves and their research agenda at several presti gious US universities during the early 1960s, including Chicago, Northwestern and Michi gan. Outside the USA, Peter Haggett and Richard Chorley in the UK (affectionately de scribed by David Harvey as the ?terrible twins? of British geography) and Torsten Hager strand in Sweden were central in establishing a European beachhead. (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the mid 1960s, a network was in place that connected quantitative researchers and Departments of Geography on both sides of the Atlantic. Holding it together were two new sets of geographical practices: technique based practices that included computerization, and the study and application of ever more com plex statistical and quaNTiTaTive meThods; and theory based practices that involved concep tualizing location and space in rigorously abstract terms. Before the 1950s, human geography was resolutely a theoretical (see also empiricism). The quantitative revolution brought a cornucopia of theoretical models typically imported from other disciplines. From physics came graviTy models and later ENTropy maximiziNg models; from eco nomics, often by way of regioNAL science, came the models of a dispersed German school of location Theory; from sociology came the urban models of the Chicago schooL, together with urban fACToriAL ecol ogy and the raNk size ruLe; and from geometry via teanspoetation studies came netwoeks and graph theory. And from the philosophy and history of science came a model of ?the structure of scientific revolu tions? (see paeadigm) that could be used, rhet orically at least, to legitimize the quantitative revolution as a genuinely scientific revolution. In the process the dominant stream of research in human geography moved from a field based, craft form of enquiry to a technical, desk bound one, where places were analysed from afar. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Peter Gould (1978), one of the revolution aries, labelled the era of the quantitative revo lution, ?The Augean period?, after the mythic Augean stables that after thirty years of neg lect were cleaned all of a piece by Hercules. Equating quantitative revolutionaries with Hercules and an earlier non quantitative geog raphy with the Augean stables speaks to at least two sociological processes marking the revolution. (1) The heroic depiction points to the quantitative revolution?s profound mascu linism (and, arguably, to its whiteness too). Initial proponents and expositors were all men; there were virtually no substantive stud ies of women; and the disembodied, totalizing knowledge produced was phallocentric (see phallocenteism: see also situated know ledge). (2) The cleansing metaphoe indicates how desperately keen revolutionaries were to quarantine themselves from the past. Partly this was intellectual, but, as Taylor (1976) argues, it was also for internal sociological reasons. To move ahead, to secure early pro motion and status, it was necessary to do something different. For a group of very bright, young, ambitious and competitive male scholars, the quantitative revolution was the perfect vehicle. (NEW PARAGRAPH) At some point in the late 1960s, or early 1970s, the grip of the quantitative revolution on the discipline loosened. There are at least two reasons. First, a different kind of world was emerging that was more restless, and less innocent than before. Great debates were hap pening around issues of poveety, civil eights, the environment, gendee and racial equality, and wae, but the quantitative revolution seemed unable or unwilling to address them. The ensuing eelevance debate of the early 1970s left quantifiers flat footed. As Harvey (1973, p. 129) damningly put it, ?There is an ecological problem, an urban problem, an international trade problem, and yet we seem incapable of saying anything of depth or pro fundity about any of them. When we do say something, it appears trite and slightly ludi (NEW PARAGRAPH) crous. In short, our paradigm is not coping well. It is ripe for overthrow.? Second, an aca demic generation had passed since the first quantifiers, and the time was ripe for change. A new vocabulary was forged to mark off the old from the new, in this case, one principally derived from maexism (Harvey, 1973). There were other, immediate contenders too, includ ing a humanistic geogeaphy that sought to develop human geography?s connections with the humanities rather than the social sciences. But the important point, and why the quanti tative revolution remains a watershed in geo graphy?s recent history, is that Marxism and its successor projects persisted with a theoretical vocabulary. (It is as well to remember that the humanities are every bit as ?theoretical? in their sensibility as the social sciences.) Certainly the meaning of theoey altered, as many different avenues were explored, but the continuity of a theoretical vocabulary has proven more im portant in subsequently shaping the discipline than rupture. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
queer theory
A panoply of always question ing and destabilizing theoretical and intellec tual movements that centre on the significance and complexities of sexualities and genders. It emerged in the 1990s (see de Lauretis, 1991) within the humanities, but has travelled into the social sciences, and so into human geo geaphy. By its very nature, the term resists being pinned down or essentialized. Above all, queer theory draws on both senses of the term ?queer?. It refers both to an array of non normative sexualities and/or desires (lesbian/ gay/bisexual/pansexual/asexual/transsexual/ transgendered (see psychoanalytic the oey), and invokes the sense of challenging norms of sexuality by referencing the curi ous, odd or strange (de Lauretis, 1991; Jagose, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Two uses of the term are apparent. First, queer theory is used loosely to describe any theoretically inflected work in gay and lesbian studies. Using the term in such a way frus trates queer theorists who valorize the per spective?s unabashedly and relentless push to critique. Second, and more precisely, as an instance of post steuctuealism and post modeenism, queer theory epistemologically challenges the ubiquity of heteeonoemativity (see homophobia and heteeosexism). It perpetually and relentlessly destabilizes our quotidian ideas by rejecting any fixed or stable notions of sexuaLiTy and geNder, their repre sentations or their effects (see esseNTiaLisM; feMiNisT geographies; perforMaTiviTy: see also Jagose, 1996; Sullivan, 2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The dilemma with any dictionary definition of this term is that it is meant to refuse fixing or defining, or delimiting a research trajectory, because such a move logically excludes facets of sexualities, or strategies to rethink them. This conundrum reflects the tendency of dominant discourses to assimilate any moves that resist or stand outside of them (see dis course). Thus there is a discernable anxiety about whether the radical potential of this term is being evacuated as its popularity grows and it is stretched to cover any work being done by or about gays and lesbians (Sothern, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Queer theory?s relationship with geography has been two directional, if rather uneven. Queer theorists demand that geographers rec ognize and attend to their own heteronor mativity, but it also introduces the problematic of homonormativity, which is to say, the discip lining effects of privileging and imposing any sexuality or desire to the exclusion or stigma tization of others (Sothern, 2004). It has en abled geographers interested in sexuality and space to maintain a focus on pLace, yet also incorporate an appreciation and awareness of movement, MigraTioN, pLaceLessNess and multiple scALes (e.g. Knopp, 2004). Geog raphers, historians and architects have tried to point out that queer theory?s roots in the humanities, often marked by a suspicion of eMpiricisM, and penchant for discourse analy sis of literary TexTs, open it to charges of a rather unqueer geographicaL iMagiNaTioN, where the materiality of the world is some times lost in a sea of TexTuaLiTy. While queer theorists have been willing to appreciate the significance of spaTiaLiTy and NaTure socieTy dualities (Halberstram, 2005), they have been rather slow to acknow ledge the work of geographers who themselves are informed by queer theory. Mb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Jagose (1996); Sullivan (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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