The Dictionary of Human Geography (173 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
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relevance
Concern over the relevance of geography has been expressed since its foun dation as a discipline; for example, in the pro motion of geography as a practical science of empire. Consideration of how relevance has become a prominent word in geographical debate at specific times shows how ?relevance? can act as a marker for disciplinary disputes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the early 1970s, economic crisis, environ mental resource debate and international con flict shaped debate on relevance, along with the sense that spatiaL science was becoming too abstract to gain purchase on pubLic poLicy issues (Johnston and Sidaway, 2004, Ch. 9). At the 1974 Institute of British Geographers conference, IBG President J.T. Coppock, building on earlier appLied geography, out lined geography?s possible relevance for governmental, planning and environmental agendas (Coppock, 1974). Among responses was David Harvey?s ?What kind of geography for what kind of public policy??, questioning how definitions of relevance had been shaped by political and economic circumstances: ?The debate over relevance in geography was not really about relevance (whoever heard of irrelevant human activity?), but about whom our research was relevant to and how it was that research done in the name of science (which was supposed to be ideoLogy free) was having effects that appeared somewhat biased in favour of the status quo and in favour of the ruling cLass of the corporate state? (Harvey, 1974b, p. 23). Exploring contradic tions between policy demands and humanistic scholarship, Harvey sought a diaLecticaL understanding ofrelevance: ?The moral obliga tion of the geographer, qua geographer, is to confront the tension between the humanistic tradition and the pervasive needs ofthe corpor ate state directly, to raise our consciousness of the contradiction and thereby learn how to exploit the contradiction within the corporate state structure itself? (p. 24). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Relevance re emerged as a marker for debate in the late 1990s, prompted by concern over geography?s cuLturaL turn, and worries that in a period of notionally social democratic government in the UK and the USA, geog raphy was missing a policy opportunity. A 1999 issue of the Scottish Geographical Journal addressed relevance in terms of recent theor etical debates (Scottish Geographical Journal, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , Michael Dear discussing postmodern ism and relevance as pertinence, political com mitment, and policy application, while Susan Hanson posed relevance as a feminist geo graphical concept, working within and across different scales (see feminist geographies). Martin (2001b), however, argued that particu lar uses of such theory were producing an increasingly irrelevant geography. With an element of envy at economists? apparent policy influence, Martin suggested that much contemporary economic and sociaL geog raphy had little policy or social relevance, due in part to the cultural turn. Martin pre sents a particular sense of relevance, and a particular characterization, even caricature, of ?irrelevant? and theoretically indulgent cul tural enquiry. The terms of debate are further explored by Staeheli and Mitchell (2005), who address ?the politics of relevance? and ?the social practices that condition relevance? (p. 357) through interviews with public space researchers and analysis of Association of American Geographers publications. The pub lication of Staeheli and Mitchell?s article in the AAG?s Annals underlines how relevance debates have proceeded through institutions representing the discipline. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Those wary of instrumentaLism in geog raphy may in turn be wary of calls for rele vance: pertinence may pass, commitments may wane and the relevant may become the untopical. It is important to appreciate and critique debates on relevance according to the temporality of their arguments, and to consider how geographical work not seeking immediate impact may nevertheless achieve different kinds of political and cultural influence. dmat (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Johnston and Sidaway (2004); Staeheli and Mitchell (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
religion
Geographers approach the study of religion in a number of ways, from examining spatial patterns arising from religious influ ences, to the diffusion of religious beliefs and organizations, the relationship between religion and population, the impact of religion on Landscape and landscape on religion, religious ecology, and the politics and poetics of religious landscapes, community and iden tity (Kong, 1990, 2001a). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The relationship between religion and geog raphy may be traced to early Greek geograph ers, in their concern with cosmological models that reflected a world view shaped by religion (see cosmoLogy). In the sixteenth and seven teenth centuries, the main preoccupation was ?ecclesiastical geography?, the mapping of the spatial advance of Christianity in the world, propelled by the desire to disseminate the Christian faith. ?Biblical geography? also developed during this time, involving attempts to identify places in the Bible and to determine their locations. In the late seventeenth cen tury, and particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nature was seen as a div inely created order for the well being of all life. Scholars adopting the physico theological stance ardently defended the idea that in living nature and on all the Earth, there existed evidence of God?s wisdom. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, following the lead of Montesquieu and Voltaire, the influence of the environment on religion was studied. Geographers adopted a highly deterministic approach when they sought to explain the essential nature of various religions in terms of their environments (see environmentaL determinism). This changed in the 1920s, when Max Weber?s writings marked a turning point by inverting the earlier environmentally deterministic doctrine to focus on religion?s influence on social and economic structures, and environmental and landscape change. Further, in the 1960s and 1970s, with envir onmental and carrying capacity concerns, interest focused on the roots of environmental crisis, and a school of thought emerged that degradation was the result of the Christian belief that God gave humans dominion over the Earth. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographies of religion were sporadic for much of the twentieth century, and without major breakthroughs in perspective and approach, but especially from the 1990s onwards, the field has been reinvigorated. Kong (2001a) characterizes the emerging body of work as framed by an interest in the politics and poetics of sacred space, identity and community. Such research acknowledges that sacred space is contested space, just as the sacred is a contested category. Similarly, reli gious identity and community are subject to negotiations, embedded in relations of power, domination and resistance. Kong (2001a) urged geographers of religion to develop ?new? geographies of religion that emphasize different sites of religious practice beyond the ?officially sacred? (churches, temples, mosques, synagogues and the like); different sensuous sacred geographies; different religions in differ ent historical and place specific contexts; dif ferent geographical scales of analysis; different constitutions of population and their experi ence of and effect on religious place, identity and community; different diaLectics (socio spatial, public private, politics poetics); and different moralities. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since then, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (see terrorism) have prompted new analytical attention to religion: most obviously to the rise of a distinctly radical or political Islam (Watts, 2007) and here it is important to attend to the culturalist constructions of what Mamdami (2004) calls ?Good Muslim, Bad Muslim? but also to the roles of Christianity, Hinduism and Zionism in shap ing both provocations and responses to polit ical violence (e.g. Gregory, 2004b; Oza, 2007: see also just war). But this new interest in religion is not only political: the so called ?moral turn? in geography, towards a renewed concern with ethics, has prompted Cloke (NEW PARAGRAPH) and others to reflect on the place of the spiritual within human geography, and Proctor (2006) and his collaborators to pro pose a new conversation between geographers on religion. Lk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Holloway and Valins (2002); Kong (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
remote sensing (RS)
Literally, the sensing (study) of an object using instruments of observation that are remote from (not touch ing) the object. This includes medical scan ning but, more commonly, the object is the Earth, which aerial photography and satellite based sensors are used to observe. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The basis of RS is that different types of vegetation, landform and land cover can have distinctive spectral signatures, meaning that they emit and reflect electromagnetic radiation in different ways. The truth of this is evident by observing that features of the Landscape have different colours and temperatures. However, RS involves more of the electromag netic spectrum than our human senses allow access to, using infrared detection, thermal scanners, radar and microwaves, for example. RS can be passive, detecting natural radiation from an object; or active, targeting energy (such as laser pulses) on to the object, from the RS device. (NEW PARAGRAPH) RS has its origins with Gaspard Felix Tournachon, a French photographer and bal loonist who took aerial photographs of Paris in 1858. It was developed during the twentieth century world wars and the coLd war (a flash point of which was when Gary Powers? ?spy plane? was shot down over the Soviet Union, in 1960) and today is used for environmental analysis and monitoring as well as military surveiLLance (see miLitary geography; war). In all cases, however, and despite the authority of techno science invested in them, (NEW PARAGRAPH) RS data can be ambiguous, requiring careful interpretation. (NEW PARAGRAPH) One problem is that as RS signals pass through (for example) cloud cover and the atmosphere the signals are degraded. Second, although commercial satellites now offer very precise imagery (1 5 m resolution), if these are unavailable and if an object is smaller than the resolution offered by the sensor, then its spectral properties will be mixed with others around. Third, objects can be obscured by others above; for example, vegetation below a tree canopy. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In any case, human geographers may be less interested in land cover per se and more con cerned with Land use, or the social meaning given to places. A spectral signature is a co production of nature and science; the way in which places are constructed and used is infused with social praxis and signification. There is no necessary one to one relationship between the science and social science. (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, an interesting development within RS has been to use methods of iMAge classification that incorporate geographical thinking. Standard methods of cLassification generally are probability based (and Bayesian, notably the maximum likelihood approach: see bayesian anaLysis). If it is known (from direct evidence) where various land cover types are located on some parts of the RS image, then it is possible to extrapolate and determine that the spectral signatures of other parts of the image more likely indicate one land cover type than any other. A more geographical approach is to classify pixels within the context of what is around them; to extract information about spatial configur ations and associations that may say more about the land function than an aspatial ana lysis of land cover alone. Such techniques include space syntax (related to graph theory). rh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Campbell (2002); Hillier and Hanson (1989); Lillesand, Kiefer and Chipman (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
rent
Formally defined, rent is any payment to a factor Of Production over and above that necessary to keep it in its present use. While any factor of production can potentially accrue rent it is the analysis of only one factor (NEW PARAGRAPH) land that dominates the discussion of rent within geography. This is partly because the payment for land is pure rent (a consequence of the fact that land costs nothing to produce, and not the case for other factors), and partly because land is bound to location, thus lend ing itself to geographical analysis. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Rent is the price of land, and because land is differentiated by both quality and location, each land plot will have a different rent level. Two quite different approaches have been deployed to explain differential land rents. The orthodox view of neo classical econom ics treats land as any other coMMOdity, with rents set by forces of supply and demand. Rent is determined as in a giant auction, with rational buyers and sellers of land meeting to haggle over price. Those plots of land with characteristics most demanded given the avail able supply will fetch the highest rents, and in the process determine land use. In contrast, Marxist economics emphasizes the power of different social classes in determining rent levels. While land characteristics play a role in setting rent, they are always subordinate to a set of wider social relations characterizing caPitALisM around the inequality of power and resource ownership. Without inclusion of this larger context, no analysis of rent is complete. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Both traditions have provided analyses of the role of land rent within explicitly geog raphical settings. The von thuNEN model is the best known within the neo classical tradition (Chisholm, 1979). Assuming that agricultural crops are cultivated at varying distances around a town, which is also the sole market, a competitive bidding process among farmers results in plots of land closer to the town centre receiving differentially higher rents than those farther away. In this case, the spatial pattern of land rents is explained by differential savings in transport costs that allow farmers closer to the town to bid higher rents than farmers farther out. Rents are thus set by the supply and demand for plots of land differentiated by location. The von Thiinen model has also been extended to explain rents within the city. William Alonso?s bid rent approach (see alonso model) draws upon differential trans portation costs of coMMuting along incomes to explain urban land rents and residential land use patterns. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The Marxist approach to rent is most asso ciated with writings by David Harvey (1999 [1982]) and Neil Smith (2008 [1984]). Harvey draws directly on Marx?s categories of absolute and monopoly rent to stress the role of cLass power in determining rent levels. Landowners use their clout either to restrict iNvestMENt in the case of absolute rent, or to constrain the supply of land in the case of (NEW PARAGRAPH) monopoly rent, to raise rents artificially above levels they would otherwise attain. Harvey ini tially applied the idea of monopoly rent to the city, but it has been Smith who has systemat ically worked through a Marxist analysis of urban rent. Key for him is the idea of the rent gap, which represents the difference between the actual rent charged for a given plot ofland, and the potential rent that could be charged if that plot was developed according to its best use. For Smith, the rent gap is a result of the inherently uneven deveLopment of capital ism. Only when the rent gap is significantly large will it be filled by landowners and capit alists colluding in a process of redevelopment, and producing maximum potential rents. Rent levels are not the consequence of unfettered market forces, but the deliberative power of social classes to intervene and manipulate for their utmost gain. tjb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Sheppard and Barnes (1990). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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