The Dictionary of Human Geography (169 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
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redlining
A mortgage lenders? practice of mapping high risk neighbourhoods by encirc ling them with red lines. Lenders refuse to extend loans in these ?redlined? areas because of fears of default. Redlining discriminates against ethnic minority, low income, female headed and ?non traditional? households because of the neighbourhoods in which they live. The practice has been widely pro hibited but still occurs informally (e.g. estate agents/realtors ?steering? clients into select neighbourhoods). Severe consequences ensue for cities, including vacancy, dereliction and neighbourhood decline (Darden, 1980). Recent research suggests that lending discrim ination is contingent on a combination of the ?race? of prospective borrowers and the char acteristics of neighbourhoods in which they hope to buy (Holloway, 1998). em (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Darden (1980). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
reductionism
The methodological presump tion that complex phenomena or events can be explained by their reduction to simpler, more fundamental entities. For example, rather than to talk about human behaviour it is better to talk about genes, or even more fundamentally strands of DNA molecules. Or, rather than talk about lightning, it is better to speak about an electrical discharge, or more fundamentally the flow of electrons. Reductionism as a strategy is especially common in the natural sciences that strive to decompose phenomena or events into their most basic constituents or causes. For example, under ontological reductionism, the properties of matter are reduced to sub atomic particles, quarks and leptons. Or under meth odological reductionism, the world, the universe and everything else are reduced to a single explanation, string theory. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Reductionism is also found in the social sciences, including human geography. The exemplar is methodological individualism. In this case, the complexities of human behav iour are reduced to the single fundamental cause and typically cast as individual rational choice. While it might appear that the diverse decisions involved around, say, choosing where to live, or from which retailer to buy or where to site a new factory have nothing to do with one another, in reality, say meth odological individualists, they all obey the same fundamental logic of rational decision making. The facts and circumstances of each particular case can be eliminated because they are reducible to a more elementary set of formal axioms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) While reductionism as a methodological strategy is powerful and productive, seemingly yielding ever more secrets of nature and social life, it has been criticized on a number of grounds: (NEW PARAGRAPH) The relationship among phenomena is holistic rather than reductionist. That is, the system as a whole determines how its parts behave. Reductionism therefore necessarily fails. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Some entities, by their very nature such as human motivations, emotions or sparks of creativity are simply not divis ible into constituent parts; there is always a ?ghost in the machine?, to use Arthur Koestler?s (1967) phrase. Humans can not be reduced to Pavlovian salivating dogs or Skinnerian rats in a maze. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Some phenomena or events are charac terized by the property of emergence; that is, interactions of elements produce ef fects that cannot be predicted by examin ing the properties of those individual elements themselves (see also context uaL effect and composmonaL theory). (NEW PARAGRAPH) There is often something important in (NEW PARAGRAPH) the original facts and setting that is lost when it is reduced to a different form. Translations are never perfect, and im portant contextual factors useful in ex planation may be lost when (NEW PARAGRAPH) reductionism is applied. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In human geography, reductionism was most strenuously applied during the period of the quantitative revoLution and spatiaL science. Then the complexities of geograph ical landscapes were reduced to supposedly more fundamental entities, such as the postu lates of geometry or the axioms of rationaL choice theory. Even after this period, reduc tionism remained important within the discip line. radicaL geography, for example, was often characterized by economism; that is, the reduction of spatial relationships to eco nomic ones. Historically, however, the discip line has always emphasized the importance (NEW PARAGRAPH) of context, attempting to keep geographical facts intact rather than reducing them to something else. This sensibility has taken on greater theoretical momentum in the wake of post structuraLism and postmodernism, movements entering geography in the 1980s and associated with an explicitly anti reductionist agenda. Critiques of reduction ism, and attempts to develop non reductionist research strategies, are found in feminist geography (Pratt, 2004), cultural geo graphy and economic geography (Gibson Graham, 2006). tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dupre (1993); Koestler and Smythies (1969). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
reflexivity
Reflection upon the conditions through which research is produced, dissem inated and received. Emphasis on reflexivity often accompanies discussion of positionaL ity. Debates on reflexivity have emerged from feminist research (England, 1994; Rose, 1997b), associated in particular with Donna Haraway?s argument that all knowledge is situated knowledge (Haraway, 1991c), cri tiquing a ?god trick? of disembodied, objective scientific neutrality. Reflexivity entails consid eration of a variety of factors: personal biography, social situation, political values, situation within the academic labour structure, personal relationship to research respondents, relations of authority within the research pro cess and so on. Reflexivity is thus a complex field, concerning epistemoLogy, politics and methodoLogy. Rose (1997b) critiques claims to ?transparent reflexivity?, whereby an author assumes that reflexivity can produce a full understanding of researcher, researched and research context. Rose argues that such an approach risks playing a ?god trick? of its own: ?we may be performing nothing more than a goddess trick uncomfortably similar to the god trick? (p. 311). For Rose, attention should instead be directed towards the uncer tainties of research practice, and the emer gence of difference through the research process, reflexivity becoming ?less a process of self discovery than of self construction? (p. 313). What might appear as failure from a perspective seeking transparent reflexivity becomes the spur to another mode of per formative reflexivity, ?webbed across gaps in understandings, saturated with power, but also paradoxically, with uncertainty? (p. 317). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In emphasizing self conscious reflection, the term ?reflexivity? tends to downplay another meaning of the term ?reflex?, namely the (NEW PARAGRAPH) automatic or unthinking reaction to events. Commentary on reflexivity and the situated ness of knowledge is not new, though the vocabulary of such commentary may have changed. In 1963 English surrealist painter Conroy Maddox (Levy, 2003) produced ?The Theorist? (see figure), an oil painting suggesting a particular attitude of mind, the figure almost sculptured into the armchair, at one remove from the external world, whose relationship to that world is suggested by the scissors forming the face. Maddox offers a picture of a situated instrumentalist, with theory a device through which the world can be accounted for, itemized, cut up. Maddox?s image of the theorist personifies an outlook on the world that has been the target of those concerned to emphasize reflexivity, and the situatedness of knowledge. In keeping with surrealism?s interest in the unconscious, Maddox captures a certain image of a theoret ical unconscious, whereby one whose work is defined by theory risks their mind being col onized by indoor abstraction. Maddox might have found it ironic that reflexivity can itself on occasion be couched through abstract theoretical language. dmat (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Rose (1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
refugees
The term ?refugee? is widely used in popular culture, legal circles and humanitar ian emergencies. Broadly speaking, it means people who have been involuntarily displaced from their homes and dispossessed of their livelihoods, normally without the protection of their own government. The media often refer to environmental refugees displaced from their land by soil erosion over time, economic refugees fleeing conditions of poverty in their home countries, or even refugees as people within the borders of their home country dis placed by natural disasters (e.g. Hurricane Katrina in the American South in 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In international humanitarian Law, how ever, the term ?refugee? is more precise. It refers to people from one country who flee political persecution or violence to seek asy lum in another country. The political perse cution and exodus of the Protestant Huguenots from France during the late seven teenth century is often described as the first modern refugee movement. Since then, refu gee movements have been related to post coLoniaL geographies (e.g. the partition of Pakistan from India in 1947), coLd war geo politics between rival superpowers and their allies (e.g. Cubans in the USA), geo economic conflict related to land and resources, and wars of nationaLisM and independence. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since the mass displacement of people in Europe during the Second World War, the concept of ?refugee? has taken on particular legal meanings. The 1945 United Nations Charter outlines a framework for the provision of political and legal protection to refugees, displaced persons and other vulnerable groups. In 1951, the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was drafted; it came into effect in 1954. Along with the 1967 Protocol, these legal instruments represent the pillars of international refugee law. The 1951 Convention definition includes anyone who ? . . . as a result of events occurring before 1 January 1951 and owing to well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, reLigion, nationality, membership of a par ticular social group or political opinion, is out side the country of his [sic] nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual resi dence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.? (NEW PARAGRAPH) While 147 nations are party to either the 1951 Convention or its 1967 Protocol (see below), it remains both explicitly and impli citly Eurocentric (see eurocentrisM). From its conception, the Convention clearly demar cated geographical and historical limits. It was designed to apply to refugees in europe displaced by events that occurred priorto 1951. The Convention is characterized by its Eurocentric focus and strategic conceptualiza tion. The Convention definition of refugee is spatially coded as European. Substantively, its emphasis on persecution based on civil and political status as grounds for refugee status expresses the particular ideoLogicaL debates of postwar European politics, particularly the perceived threats of communism and another holocaust. In emphasizing civil and political rights, the Convention has had the effect of minimizing the importance of other rights. The European geographical focus and emphasis on civil and political rights in the Convention have generated an exclusionary geography of asylum that is the source of contentious contemporary debate (Hyndman, 2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The Convention definition implicitly cre ates a hierarchy of rights, privileging political and civil rights of protection from persecution over economic, cultural and social rights and scales of violence broader than individual per secution. The definition was also an expres sion of Cold War geopolitics, grounded in relational identities of communist East and capitalist West. Notwithstanding the objec tions of several delegates from developing countries faced with responsibility for their own refugee populations, the goal of the Western states was achieved by limiting the scope of mandatory international protection under the Convention to refugees whose flight was prompted by an event within Europe before 1951. While states might opt to extend protection to refugees from other parts of the world, the definition adopted was intended to distribute the European refugee burden with out any binding obligation to reciprocate by way of the establishment of rights for, or the provision of assistance to, non European refugees. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees amended the 1951 Convention. While it rescinded the spatial and temporal restrictions of the Convention by lifting the Europe based, pre 1951 stipulations, it merely created equal access for all member nations to a legal instrument that remained substantively Eurocentric in focus. In africa, the perceived inadequacy of this pair of legal instruments resulted in the drafting of a legally binding regional policy by the Organization for African Unity (OAU). The 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa not only broa dened but also reformulated the definition of refugee. It included the 1951 Convention definition, but added the provision that gener alized violence associated with coLoniaLism and other kinds of aggression as grounds for seeking asylum. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In 1966, two legally binding human rights instruments were created to protect civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights most closely expresses the emphasis of the Convention. It ensures respect for demo cratic principles and non discrimination. The Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights includes provisions that are more applicable to developing countries than to highly industrialized ones, such as the right to food, shelter, and basic medical and educational services. While the first covenant applies to indi viduals, the second refers to particular groups of people. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In recent years, human geographers have generated a considerable body of work on the subject of refugees, probing the geopoLitics that displace them (Le Billon, 2008), the governance/governmentality of international humanitarian assistance that assists refugees and manages their mobility (Hyndman, 2000), and the politics of resettlement in a new country (Black and Koser, 1999; Dahlman and O Tuathail, 2005b). Those displaced by conflict and threats of persecution, but not across inter national borders, are referred to as internally displaced persons (IDPs). They are conceptually and politically related to refugees, but are still technically under the legal protection of their home governments as nationals (see Brun, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Geographers have been particularly active in tracing refugee participation in trans national political, economic and social circuits that traverse international borders (Al Ali and Koser, 2002; Bailey, Wright, Mountz and Miyares, 2002; Nolin, 2006). Another emerging research focus among geographers has been the tactics of exclusion employed by states of the global north [including Australia] to keep asy lum seekers and other migrants at bay, away from their sovereign shores on which they could claim rights to seek asylum and other legal entitlements: references to the ?externalization of asylum? in Europe and the ?Pacific Solution? in Australia represent two cases in point (Hyndman and Mountz, 2008). Related to these tactics are geographies of containment in which displaced persons find themselves in ?protracted refugee situations? (PRS), spend ingyears and sometimes decades in limbo, living in camps and without legal status. The United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (NEW PARAGRAPH) calls this widespread phenomenon, which affects more than 8 million refugees, ?refugee warehousing?. (See also camp; excep tion, space of.) jh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) UNHCR (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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