The Dictionary of Human Geography (188 page)

Read The Dictionary of Human Geography Online

Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
8.02Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
social movements
The organized efforts of multiple individuals or organizations, acting outside of formal state or economic spheres, to pursue political goals. They are commonly organized around either particular groups for example, the working class or particular goals for example, access to health care. Their demands may be focused on the state (e.g. new laws), on economic actors (e.g. wage demands), on society as a whole (e.g. the chan ging of norms relating to race or sexuality) or on any combination of these. Social move ments can radically transform society: consider feminism or environmentalism. Yet as loose networks of actors with many informal elem ents, they present methodological challenges: it is often difficult to show that x protest or NGO producedy effect; to determine whether a given actor is part of a movement; or to predict whether, when and how a movement will arise from given social conditions. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Early, major approaches to social movement theory conceived of social movements as (NEW PARAGRAPH) phenomena within civil society, a sphere regarded as distinct from, but complementary to, the state and the market, one containing the informal norms and institutions necessary to the ongoing reproduction of the economy and the state, as well as forms of social par ticipation and difference not strictly tied to economic class or legal citizenship status (see Urry, 1981). Marxist theories saw social movements, notably the labour movement, as direct results and expressions of political economic conflicts. Many early sociologists, following Emile Durkheim, adopted func tionalist perspectives that interpreted social movements within organic, equilibrium oriented conceptions of society; social mo vements were spontaneous phenomena produced by the need for individuals and groups in the rapidly shifting geographies and economies of modern capitalist societies to continually rebuild informal norms and institutions, create new relationships, and bring their material existences and expect ations into alignment. From the 1960s on, liberal rational choice theories became dominant: Mancur Olson and others analysed social movements as collective action strategies by which rational individuals pursued their (calculable and known) self interest. Interest consequently shifted from why social move ments existed and what effects they produced, to a focus on how they pursued their goals. Questions regarding how movements mobilize resources and supporters, frame issues, identify and exploit political opportunities, and change over time dominated social movement theory for the subsequent few decades. (NEW PARAGRAPH) More recently, the ?new social movements? (NSMs) that have appeared and grown around the world since the 1960s have become central topics in the field. Theorists have argued that these NSMs, such as envir onmentalism and the peace movement, differ from ?old? social movements in critical respects. Posited differences include claims that NSMs: are more issue specific; cut across class lines; use unconventional tactics; express not only instrumental goals, but meaning, identity and multiple subject posi tions; and are less likely to turn to established political parties and channels to achieve their goals. All of these claims warrant careful scrutiny. Most recently, geographers have begun to theorize how central geographic concerns such as space, place and scale matter in social movements? formation and operations (Miller, 2000; Wolford, 2004; McCarthy, 2005). jm (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Della Porta and Diani (1999); Laclau (1985). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
social network
The people especially kin, friends and neighbours to whom an individ ual is tied socially, usually by shared interests and, in many cases, values, attitudes and aspir ations. Most people are members of several such networks, which may overlap only slightly in their home, family, neighbour hood, workplace and formal organizations, for example. Such networks may be spatially con centrated, as both cause and effect: people may chose to live close to others already in their network(s), and may develop ties with neighbours. Such networks are the main medium for interpersonal interaction, and therefore a core element of any social structure (NEW PARAGRAPH) hence concerns regarding the potential consequences of declines in their strength (cf. sociaL capitaL). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Social networks provide the matrices through which much information flows and is evaluated. As such they are central compon ents in models of change that involve inter personal interaction, much of which has a spatial component (cf. contextuaL effect; diffusion; eLectoraL geography; neigh bourhood effect). They are often modelled formally as graphs, with individuals repre sented as nodes linked by ties along which information flows (see graph theory): those ties can be evaluated quantitatively according to the intensity of interaction between the two individuals. Such a representation enables analyses of, for example, the key roles of cer tain individuals as nodes linking otherwise separate networks and their potential to act as change agents by channelling new informa tion into a network. Research on such flows has suggested that weak ties (Granovetter, 1973) are often more important than strong ones as change stimuli. Strong ties usually link people with much in common whereas weak ties (links to acquaintances rather than friends, for example) may connect people with less in common, and therefore bring new information and ideas to their contacts. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Within geography, the importance of social networks has been recognized in the study of economic organization and change, as in the development of new high technology indus trial regions (such as Silicon Valley in California: see Malmberg, 1997; Scott, 2006), in electoral studies (Huckfeldt and Sprague, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , and also in work on the exercise of power within policy communities, where int erest groups interact with politicians and (NEW PARAGRAPH) public servants. (See also actor network theory; network society.) rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Scott (1999); Sorenson (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
social physics
An approach that suggests aggregate human spatiaL interaction can be explained and predicted using theories and laws from physics. H.C. Carey (1858) first codified social physics when he proposed that use be made ?... of the great law of molecular gravitation as the indispensable condition of ... man [sic]?. But it was prim arily John Q. Stewart (1950), professor of astronomy and physics at Princeton University, together with geographer William Warntz (1965), who first systematically pros ecuted social physics under the rubric of macrogeography, a short lived movement, but one that helped pave the way for the sub sequent success of spatiaL science within human geography. The Newtonian gravity modeL remains the best known example, sug gesting that humans interact over terrestrial space as do heavenly bodies in the celestial system. The model gives a good empirical fit, but its predictions are less satisfactory, and its causal explanation worse. The lack of explanatory purchase, as Lukermann (1958) pointed out in a early critique, is because the assumptions made in the physical models are not met in the human realm: ?the lacuna is of the order of two worlds? (Lukermann, 1958, p. 2). There is nothing wrong with analogies per se, but for them to succeed there must be certain core similarities between the analogy and the analogized. For many critics of social physics, the similarities between human and celestial movements were not just hard to find, they were simply not there to be found. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes (1996, chs 4 and 5). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
social reproduction
The term encompasses the daily and long term reproduction of the means of production, the labour power to make them work and the social relations that hold them in place. It includes the ?fleshy, messy? and diffuse stuff of everyday life, as well as a congeries of structured material social practices that unfold in dialectical relation with production. At its most rudimentary, social reproduction is contingent upon the biological reproduction of the labour force both day to day and generationally through the production, acquisition, distribution and/or preparation of the means of existence, including food, shelter, clothing and heaLth care (Katz, 2001b). But any labour force is historically and geographically contingent, and so the notion extends to the reproduction of a differentiated and differently skilled labour force and the broad range of cultural forms and practices that create, uphold and rationalize these differences. Thus education, the legal system and mass media are arenas of social reproduction, helping to inculcate and naturalize what Pierre Bourdieu (1977) called the habitus. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Social reproduction is defined and secured through a fluid assembLage of sources associ ated with the state, capitaL, the househoLd and civiL society. The balance among these varies historically, geographically and by cLass, and its precise determinants are often the outcome of struggles in the workplace, community and home. If a social formation is to continue, then consumption, produc tion, circulation and exchange of goods, of knowledge, of values must be ongoing. While social reproduction implies endurance, it should not be understood as stasis. Involving the lively practices of everyday life and the myriad efforts to secure these, social reproduc tion actively makes the conditions of ongoing production (cf. resistance). In this way, social reproduction is a critical concept: immanent in its material social practices is the possibility of rupture, renovation and transformation. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Social reproduction has political economic, cultural and environmental aspects. The first includes the reproduction of labour power, the material social practices that sustain class and other modes of difference, and the discursive and other work that makes these distinctions common sense. The cultural aspect of social reproduction includes the production and exchange of knowledge and skills, along with the spaces in which they are carried out and given meaning. This knowledge enables all forms of work, but also contributes to iden tity and social group formation as well. The environmental aspect of social reproduction refers to the making and maintenance of the forces and material grounds of production, including tools, machinery and factories, but also the environmental resources and poLiticaL ecoLogies that enable ongoing production. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Social reproduction has been associated with marxism, but much of the attention to it has come from feminists working in or against that tradition. This scholarship brings into critical tension the social relations (NEW PARAGRAPH) of class, gender and sexuamy, demonstrat ing the ways in which they build upon, strengthen or undermine one another under particular historical and geographical cir cumstances (e.g. Marston, 2000). Feminist geographers have also revealed the ways in which processes such as gLobaLization, labour migration and economic restructur ing are reworked by incorporating social reproduction in their analyses (e.g. Kofman and Raghuram, 2006). ck (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dalla Costa and Dalla Costa (1999); Mitchell, Marston and Katz (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
social space
With some notable exceptions, human geographers traditionally conceptual ized space as a blank canvas upon which human activities are played out. This led to the adoption of a eucLidian notion of space and technologically astute attempts to map the way space is territorialized via economic, pol itical and social action. In the social sphere, this reinvention of geography as a spatiaL sci ence triggered multiple attempts to utilize census data to identify where residents shared similar characteristics or lifestyles, with tech niques of social area analysis facilitating the identification of more or less homogeneous social areas. While some of this work perpetu ated the ecoLogicaL faLLacy (implying that all persons in a given area shared similar social characteristics), more individually centred methods of social network analysis pro vided empirical evidence of the way in which individuals? social worlds characteristically revolved around a localized set of social spaces. Here, the time geography associated with Torsten Hagerstrand and the Lund School offered a different take on the spatial ity of social practice, giving some important clues as to how social activities are distributed across time and space. Elsewhere, humanistic geography explored the emotional and even spiritual ties that bind societies to spaces, albeit often talking about the construction of place rather than the making of social space (Cresswell, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Reacting against these types of analysis, the historical and geographical materiaLism that emerged in the 1970s ushered in a rather dif ferent interpretation of spatiality, whereby space was deemed to be inherently caught up in social relations, both socially produced and consumed. Perhaps most influentially, Henri Lefebvre (1991b) insisted that there can be no ?pre social? or natural space, as, at the moment that it is occupied through social activity, it becomes relativized and historicized space. Inferring that every society and every mode of production creates its own space, Lefebvre further distinguished between the abstract spaces of capitalism, the sacred spaces of the religious societies that preceded it and the contradictory and differential spaces yet to come. In outlining this history of the production of space, Lefebvre implied that the division of the world into a mosaic of social spaces is in no sense natural, but is a process that needs to be understood critically (and dialectically): in his words, ?social space is a social product? (Lefebvre, 1991b, p. 32: see dialectic). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The idea that space is not passive in the constitution of society is now dominant in human geography, manifest in numerous studies of the conflicts inherent in both the production and consumption of social space. Key here is the notion that these conflicts are not necessarily between different groups, but are between different forms or conceptions of space (Shields, 1991). Adapting Lefebvre?s terminology, it is suggested that spontaneous and fully lived ?spaces of representation' may often clash with official ?representations of space', with the former occasionally breaking through abstract capitalist logics to produce differential spaces. Studies of spatial prac tices as diverse as skateboarding, tagging, driving and free running may thus point to the possibilities of producing new social spaces where human sociality is given full reign and where play is privileged over work (Thrift, 2003; Latham and McCormack, 2005). In this regard, the rise of non representational theories can be interpreted as an important part of geographers' ongoing attempts to elu cidate the materialities rather than just the meanings of social space. ph (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Holloway and Hubbard (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

Other books

Penthouse by Penthouse International
Snake by Kate Jennings
A Venetian Reckoning by Donna Leon
Stuart, Elizabeth by Without Honor
Blades of the Old Empire by Anna Kashina
Be Mine at Christmas by Brenda Novak
Red Glove by Holly Black