The Dictionary of Human Geography (196 page)

Read The Dictionary of Human Geography Online

Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
11.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
structural adjustment
A series of economic measures, often imposed on governments (NEW PARAGRAPH) receiving loans from the internationaL mon etary fund or the World Bank, designed to encourage exports and increase the resources that governments have available for dealing with short term balance of payments crises. Typical structural adjustment programmes include measures such as reducing govern ment spending, cutting or containing wages, liberalizing imports and reducing restrictions on foreign investment, devaluing the currency and privatizing state enterprises (see also neo LiberaLism; privatization). jgl (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bello (1994); Payer (1974). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
structural functionalism
A tradition of sociaL theory most closely associated with the American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1902 79), whose central proposition was that the structure of any social system cannot be derived ?from the actor?s point of view?, but must instead be explained by the ways in which the ?functional imperatives? necessary for the survival of any social system are met (Parsons, 1951: see also functionaLism; system). Parsons insisted that the analysis of any social system requires the conjunction of static (?structure?) and dynamic (?function?) components, and constantly accentuated the need to grasp the dynamics of social systems. He attributed crucial importance to the inter changes between systems and between subsys tems, and in his later formulations developed a more formal cybernetic model of society that drew upon biology as much as it did classical social theory. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Parsons? influence on modern social theory was extraordinary, even though his views were subjected to a sustained and at times devastating critique. For all his interest in dynamics, it proved difficult to incorporate structural trans formation into his model. For all his interest in generalization, his model of the social system seemed to be based on the USA as global exem plar. Today, Parsons? influence is perhaps great est in Germany, where Luhmann (1981) and Habermas (1987) have made critical yet cre ative appropriations of some of his ideas. Parsons? shadow over human geography has been much shorter. Systems analysis and sys tems theory in geography had quite other sources, usually far removed from social theory. Even so, Parsons loomed large in Duncan?s (1980) critique of the ?superorganic? in Sauer?s cuLturaL geography and worLd systems anaLysis has been criticized as ?Parsonianism on a world scale? (Cooper, 1981). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Alexander (1983); Duncan (1980). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
structuralism
A set of principles and pro cedures originally derived from linguistics and linguistic philosophy that seek to expose the enduring and underlying structures inscribed in the cultural practices of human subjects. There have been various structural isms, all of them dominated by ?French? (or at least Francophone) theory, and particularly by Roland Barthes (1915 80) in literary theory, Claude Levi Strauss (1908 ) in anthropology and Jean Piaget (1896 1980) in psychology. The ideas of all three were introduced into Anglophone human geography in the late twentieth century: Harvey (1973) briefly toyed with Piaget en route to a more vigorously materialist analysis of the structures of the space economy of capitaLism; Gregory (1978a) drew upon Levi Strauss in his search for a mode of ?structural explanation? to dis place the positivism on which spatiaL science relied; and Duncan and Duncan (1992) used Barthes as a way station in their journey towards reading Landscape not as morph oLogy but as text. (NEW PARAGRAPH) As these descriptions suggest, human geo graphy?s engagement with structuralism was short lived and functioned as a transition to other approaches that were explored in much more depth. In the most general terms, Peet (1998, p. 112) argues that ?the move towards structuralism, never complete in geographical thought, represented a search for greater theoretical coherence and rigor?. But it did not, in itself, provide a satisfying solution to the problems of empiricism that provoked human geographers to pursue it in the first place. They turned, instead, towards various forms of marx ism, including a structural Marxism derived from the writings of Louis Althusser (1918 90) and Nicos Poulantzas (1936 79), whose analytics of power and process left its marks primarily in economic, political and urban geography; towards the philosophy of reaLism, whose modes of structural explanation were more sen sitive to historical and geographical specificity than any structuralism; and towards various forms of post structuraLism, which promised a more incisive analysis of desire, discouRse and subjectivity. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Peet (1998, pp. 112 46). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
structuration theory
A social theory devel oped by the British sociologist Anthony (NEW PARAGRAPH) Giddens (1938 ) that seeks to elucidate the intersections between human subjects and the social structures in which they are involved. Giddens? original purpose was to solve the classical problem of social order. In his view, explanations of social life typically privileged either ?agency? (the intentions, meanings and actions of subjects) or ?struc ture' (the logics, limitations and systems of society). Instead, Giddens proposed to treat the production and reproduction of social life as an ongoing process of structuration. In this view, ?structure' is implicated in every moment of social interaction ?structures' are not only constraints but also the very conditions of social action and, conversely, structure is an ?absent? order of differences, ?present' only in the moments of social inter action through which it is itself reproduced or transformed (Giddens, 1979, 1981, (NEW PARAGRAPH) 1984). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Three concepts were crucial to this model: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Reflexivity: The production of social life is a skilled accomplishment on the part of knowledgeable and capable human sub jects (see human agency). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Recursiveness: ?Structure? is both the med ium and the outcome of the social practices that constitute social systems: rules and resources are drawn upon by actors from structures of signification, domination and legitimation, and these structures are in turn reproduced or transformed through those social practices (see figure). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Regionalization: The continuity of social life depends on interactions with others who are either co present in time and/or space (time space routinization; cf. time geography) or who are absent in time and/ or space (time space distanciation). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Giddens argued that these propositions make it possible to analyse the interconnection of routinized and repetitive conduct between act ors with long term, large scale institutional development in a depth that is denied to both classical social theory and historical materialism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Giddens fashioned structuration theory through a wide ranging series of philosophical and theoretical critiques of other writers. Some of his critics complained that it was impossible to rework such radically different ideas into a coherent synthesis; others noted that Giddens worked at such a high level of abstraction that it was far from clear how his general ideas could be brought to bear on empirical enquiry (Gregson, 1989). Although the same agency structure dualism bedevilled human geography, most human geographers sought a more historically and geographically inflected version of structuration (Thrift, 1983; Gregson, 2005). Aware of parallel debates in social history, and usually more sympathetic to marxism than Giddens, they mapped the variable and differential intersec tions of ?agency? and ?structure? in the produc tion and transformation of specific places, regions and landscapes (Gregory, 1982; (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pred, 1985; Harris, 1991). For, as Hannah (2006a, p. 243) put it, ?neither term of the structure agency duality is of much analytical use in the unmarked, abstract, universal form?: (NEW PARAGRAPH) The important thing about subjects striving to make lives and worlds is not the abstract philosophical principle according to which we are all competent actors always able to do otherwise, but the concrete, positioned and marked performances through which we (re)produce or transform specific social meanings. And the important thing about the structures that prevent differently positi oned subjects from doing or being just any thing we want is not their general presence and effectivity in every sociaL formation but their specific characteristics as contested and contestable social constructions, often originating with dominant social groups. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The central term that most human geog raphers derived from Giddens? project was that of practice, at once situated and embodied, and this continues to inform much research in the field. But the concept has been extended through ideas of performance and the incorp oration of affect to such a degree that most human geographers have travelled a consid erable distance from the formal corpus of structuration theory (see, for example, non representationaL theory). In fact, it was always more of a ?sensitizing device? than a research programme, providing a high level view of different positions within modern social theory a sort of panoramic mapping rather than a hierarchy of concepts that could inform ground level studies. Giddens? work is now valued less for its abstract formulations than for its substantive identification of two issues that continue to haunt the world in the early twenty first century. His early insistence on the significance of political vioLence for the conduct of political and social life was remarkably prescient (Giddens, 1985: see also war), while discussions of gLobaLization and the prospects for social democracy continue to be informed, at least in part, by his argumen tation sketches of the contours of what he called ?high? modernity (Giddens, 1990). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gregory (1994); Gregson (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
subaltern studies
A body of historiography initiated in the late 1970s by Indian and English historians critical of ?colonialist and bourgeois nationalist elitism? in the writing of Indian history, specifically from the Cambridge School (Guha and Spivak, 1988). Under Ranajit Guha?s founding editorship, the editor ial collective included Shahid Amin, David Arnold, Partha Chatterjee, David Hardiman and Gyanendra Pandey, later expanding with Gautam Bhadra, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Sumit Sarkar, all of whom had written import ant monographs. The first edited volume, Subaltern studies: writings on Indian history and society, was published in 1982. The collective drew on British social history and its renovation of Antonio Gramsci, from whom the concept ?subaltern? was adapted. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The timing of this critique of Indian nationaLism (particularly Marxist national ism) after the suppression of the Naxalbari peasant insurgency and its ?Maoist? urban allies, and after Indira Gandhi?s 1975 7 dicta torial emergency is crucial. The first volumes the collective produced explored peasants? conscious agency and autonomous subaltern politics (which Cambridge historians had ignored in their emphasis on vertical ?factions? in Indian nationalism), a comment on the bankruptcy of institutionalized Indian marx ism. From rumour and militancy under the paternalist mantle of Gandhianism to mis matches between elite and subaltern notions of political community to the disruptive effects of mill workers? religiosity on industrial discip line, the first four volumes of Subaltern Studies energized debate within Indian history on cLass, subaltern/elite boundaries and popular politics (Ludden, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the late 1980s, shifts between insiders and outsiders in the collective moved subal tern studies into a second phase of historiog raphy, concerned less with a sphere of subaltern politics than with the construction of subaltern power/knowledge and critique of ?the enLightenment Project?. While one for mer insider, Sumit Sarkar, bemoaned ?the decline of the subaltern in Subaltern Studies?, others saw it as serious response to outsider critiques of ?subaltern autonomy?, as well as an exploration beyond Gramsci to Michel Foucault?s conception of the subject of power, and to Jacques Derrida?s deconstruction (see Chaturvedi, 2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH) These intellectual shifts, combined with the edited collection by Guha and Spivak (1988), brought subaltern studies to a US and hence global academic audience; Edward Said?s introduction to the collection ushered its arrival as the most prolific strand of post colonial thought. Volumes to follow heigh tened critique from insiders and outsiders on (NEW PARAGRAPH) gender, caste, untouchability, charges of bias towards the Bengali intelligentsia, Law, vio Lence, literary and oral traditions, diaspora and South India. The collective is now more intellectually eclectic than ever: it continues to be read and responded to from across the world, with a breadth of readership rare for a school of thought emerging from the south. To be sure, this is partly a consequence of the visibility of key diasporic Indian intellectuals. Subaltern studies has breathed new life into debates over colonial governmentaLity, post colonial nationalism, representation and popular histories of the present (see coLoni aLism; post coLoniaLism). As one instance of reception, Frederick Cooper (1994) argues against the idea of an abstract, generalized, binarist colonial rationality and for a dynamic conception of subalternity that ?put[s] the pro cess of making history into the picture? (p. 1516). The persisting question is whether the collective remains engaged with subalterns in the noun form used by Gramsci, while also developing more sophisticated tools for engaging subaltern as an adjective, as in ?sub altern power/knowledge?. The interaction between the first two phases of the collective remains a useful and potentially radical device in understanding spatially layered politics today in the shadows of twentieth century empires and nationalisms, and their twenty first century successors. sc (NEW PARAGRAPH)
subject/subjectivity
This grounds our understanding of who we are, as well as our knowledge claims. All geography presumes some notion of subjectivity: even ?objective? spatiaL science rests on a theory of subjectiv ity as a foundation for ?objective? knowledge. But different theories of the subject provoke different geographical narratives (and vice versa). marxism assumptions about the cen trality of cLass to subjectivity have prompted studies of geographies of labour organization, as well as homeownership, residential segre gation and suburbanization, many of the lat ter aimed at understanding the dissolution of class consciousness in Anglo American coun tries in the twentieth century. humanistic geography, with its emphasis on the ethical responsibility for human agency and the full ness of human experience beyond economic calculation, invites studies of the social con struction of meanings in different Landscapes, and the inauthenticity/authenticity of particu lar landscapes. Until recently, much of sociaL geography involved locating stable, coher ently formed identities (such as ethnicity or race) in particular pLaces. This was the expli cit objective of sociaL area anaLysis. The influences of identity politics and post structuraLism from the mid 1980s led geog raphers to be attentive to a wider range of identifications (e.g. disabiLity; gender; sexu aLity) and problems of overgeneralization. Within feminist geographies, for example, there is now more sensitivity to how the experiences of different groups of women vary, within and across space. From the perspective of post structural theories of the subject, this focus on multiplicity is not enough; identity politics (which receives credit or takes the blame for the proliferation of politicized identifications through the 1980s and 1990s) has been criticized for taking the fact and sta bility of identities for granted, and for failing to problematize the processes through which identities are created and differentiated (see recognition). The subject is even more fully de centred in actor network theory, with the emphasis on the agency of non human actants and ?a distributed and always provi sional personhood? (Thrift, 2000a, p. 214). Criticizing actor network theory for an account of subjectivity that flattens human powers of imagination and processes that are not readily reducible to an object world, Thrift (2000a) has articulated a non representationaL style of thinking that focuses not on individual agents, but on ?a poetic of common practices and skills? (p. 216, original emphasis) in which ?persons become, in effect, rather ill defined constellations rat tling around in the world? (p. 220). A very different rendering of the subject through psy choanaLtic theory has also received more attention since the mid 1990s, in what some have labelled the ?psychoanalytical turn? in geography (Philo and Parr, 2003). Callard (2003) has argued, however, that geographers have tended to assimilate psychoanalysis as yet another version of sociaL construction to a disciplinary culture that values agency, resist ance and liberatory cultural politics, and have missed what is most valuable and distinctive about psychoanalytic theory; namely, a theory of the ?intractability of the unconscious and its imperviousness to political goadings, and the anarchic and implacable movement of the drives? (p. 300). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Debates about the human subject are vast; they lie at the heart of twentieth century Western phiLosophy. They are, then, difficult to summarize (for one attempt, see Pile and Thrift, 1995). One organizational device is to distinguish between humanist and anti humanist conceptions of subjectivity (Soper, 1986). In geography, this distinction is often articulated through debates about agency and structure (see structuration the ory). Emphasizing human agency, humanist versions of subject formation take identity as given in experience. ?Man' (some feminists argue that the gendering of this term is by no means incidental: see masculinism; phallo centrism) is at the centre of the world and, in order to be fully human, has the ethical responsibility to act autonomously, to claim his agency (e.g. Ley and Samuels, 1978). Anti humanists de centre the subject insofar as they interpret subjectivity as an outcome of subjection to societal ideologies or regula tory techniques, and question the capacity and the authority of individuals to direct their actions self consciously and autonomously. In the most influential anti humanist structur alist account of subjectivity, Althusser argued that subjectivity, especially notions of indi viduality and citizenship, are ideological con structs (see ideology; structuralism). We are interpellated or ?hailed' as particular sub jects through the institutions of the family, education, religion and state, and through our own daily practices in relation to them. Subjectivities are built up through these prac tices of subjection, but these are multiple and sometimes conflicting, always constituted in particular contexts. Despite the seeming role for geography (as context) in Althusser?s account (Probyn, 2003), in the discipline of geography his theory of the subject often has been rejected as narrowly economistic. In cultural studies, particularly film studies, Althusser is credited with exactly the opposite effect, for opening a realm for ideology separate from the economy. Drawing on psychoanaly sis, Althusser posited a more psychologically complex subject for Marxist theory. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There is considerable variation among post structuralist theories of subject formation, but they have two broad characteristics: they view subject formation as an effect of power rela tions; and they posit the boundaries that define identity as intertwined with processes of disidentification, such that the effect of identification is a fragile and contradictory achievement. To give a sense of the former, in Foucault's post structuralist anti humanist history of Western subjectivity, subject posi tions are seen to be constructed within and through discourse. He argues that, from the eighteenth century, discourses of sexuality and individual rights have altered our percep tions of subjectivity and society, and have acted as techniques of disciplinary control (see disciplinary power). They introduced new identities (e.g. the homosexual, the per vert, the hysterical woman), territorialized bodily pleasures as sexual, and brought the individual into new relations with the social through biopower. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The intertwined processes of identification and disidentification work differently in differ ent theories. Psychoanalytic theories have offered rich resources for thinking about the difficulties of recognizing difference, traced from a young child's initial difficulties of regis tering sexual difference from a loved parent. From the perspective of post colonialism, theorists such as Homi Bhabha have drawn on Freud's notion of the fetish (which func tions as a mechanism for both recognizing and disavowing sexual difference) as a way of interpreting the ambivalences of colonial discourse and relations between colonized colonizer. The concept of abjection, which describes a process by which what is reviled in oneself is denied and relocated in another, offers another means for theorizing stigmatiz ing discourses of orientalism, racism, able ism and homophobia and heterosexism. If psychoanalytic theories draw our attention to the processes whereby what is unbearable or disallowed in oneself and our loved ones is cast outside and used to stigmatize others (but imperfectly our identity is constantly haunted and destabilized by what is disavowed or abject), deconstruction offers a reverse perspective, of the way in which identity is always defined in relation to and inhabited by what it is not (the constitutive outside). Recognizing the exclusions that found every identity, and the necessity of keeping this pro cess of boundary construction and the purifi cation of space in view (Sibley, 1995), have been important ideas for recent theorizing about citizenship and radical democracy (see private and public spheres). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Anti humanist accounts have been criti cized for closing off the possibilities and responsibilities of agency, rights, ethics and politics. Four responses suggest the opposite. First, discourses are polyvalent: they structure identities without determining them. The identity of ?homosexual' can become a resource for persons thus identified when they demand rights in the name of this identity. So too, the meaning of the term ?queer' has been reworked, from a stigmatizing identity to a critique of heteronormativity (see queer theory). Second, individuals are subject to multiple discourses and subject positions, and it is at the disjuncture between various subject positions that agency can be located. Third, identities arise through repeated per formates, and this opens possibilities for vari ation and change, ones that are closed off by positions that see identities as stable (see PErforMANCE; performativity). A fourth response is that psychoanalytic theories that explore the effects of the unconscious widen responsibilities insofar as they call into ques tion our responsibilities for actions of which we are not conscious, such as racism and het erosexism (Culler, 1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A key area of contemporary theorizing explores the possibilities for new processes of subject formation whereby we come to under stand ourselves and others without creating stigmatized others and hierarchies of differ ence (in which some groups are seen to be superior to others). The concepts of cyborg and hybridity are two ways of disrupting ideas of pure identities and rigid boundaries. Non representational thinking offers another model in which: ?intermediaries and mediaries multiply, so that the ??human?? ??subject?? migrates on to many more planes and is mixed with other ??subjects?? in increasingly poly morphous combinations? (Thrift, 2000a, p. 220; see also assembLage). Theorists of radical democracy, such as Mouffe, are scep tical about such possibilities and place emphasis instead on a continual questioning of the inevitable process of boundary con struction that must, they argue, necessarily exclude. To evade these exclusions is impos sible, but we can insist on a public sphere in which the lines that discriminate inclusion from exclusion are actively contested (for a summary of these arguments, see Pratt, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Others emphasize the need to shift the orizing from ?the? subject to intersubjectivity (Rose, 1999b; Probyn, 2003). For Probyn, this draws us back to the ?hard facts?, such as material inequality, that make such relations and connections difficult. (NEW PARAGRAPH) If theories of subjectivity have always informed geography, what is perhaps newer is the extent to which geography is now woven into theories of the subject. Probyn (2003) notes the interrelations between the retheori zation of space and subjectivity: ?[t]hinking of subjectivity in terms of space of necessity reworks any conception that subjectivity is hidden away in private recesses . . . Thinking about how space interacts with subjectivity entails rethinking both terms, and their rela tion to each other? (p. 290). Where one is located is constitutive of (and not incidental to) perceptions of self. Thus for Foucault (1980d), the designs of European schools and homes were both reflective of and instru mental in creating the sexualized nuclear fam ily. And one may see oneself differently in different pLaces: Blunt (1994) has argued that nineteenth century British bourgeois women travellers were defined predominantly in terms of (a rather frail) femininity at home, but in their travels in Africa, for example their gendered identity receded (and their health improved), and their race and class positions came to the fore. Constructing a stable boundary for one?s self is an achieve ment: Davidson (2001) describes the fragility of this construction for those suffering agora phobia. The construction of coherent places and identities are intertwined social pro cesses: Anderson (1991b) describes how the construction of chinatown as a stigmatized place apart from the rest of Vancouver was instrumental in cohering a white British Columbian identity. Non esse:nriaList read ings of subjectivity, in which identifications are conceived as the outcome of power laden social processes (i.e. not as natural), thus have been read back into the production of space. Places are conceived as open ended sites of social contestation, and spatial politics involve attending to the moments of closure whereby the identitites of places are stabilized and particular social groups claim a natural right to that space or are entrapped within them. This can involve a dense layering of different subject positions: Anderson (1996) reworks her earlier argument about the pro duction of Chinatown by considering how gender discourses underwrote discourses of nation and race in early twentieth century British Columbia. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographies are also at the centre of recent efforts to think about new subject formations of hybridity, multiplicity and flexible borders. Spatial metaphors of nomad, MoBiLity, travel, BorderLand, third space, networks, con nectivity and viscosity, space off and paradox ical space are some of the terms used to conceptualize these subjectivities. In some of these discussions, geography functions only as Metaphor, but the prevalence of geographical terminology in discussions of identity also reflects processes of transnationaLisM and gLoBaLization, and increasingly complex geographies of subject formation, which may lead to pluri local identifications (distributed across and located in different places) or, iron ically, the intensification of localized identities (Watts, 1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Theories of subjectivity have led geograph ers to rethink epistemoLogy, methodoLogy, theory and representational strategy. Calls for refLexivity reflect the understanding that knowledge is a social construct contingent on social location: theories of the unconscious indicate the limits of self reflexivity and the limits of knowledge (Rose, 1997b). Theories of mobile, fragmented identities have encour aged different mapping and writing strategies (Massey, 1997; Pred, 1997). Emphasis on affect and non cognitive aspects of experi ence within non representational styles of thinking have led to many suggestions for the oretical and methodological innovation (Thrift, 2000a; see also QuaLitatiVE methods). Her engagement with psychotherapy has led Bondi (1999) to read differently: she draws the distinction between intertextual and experi ential reading practices. gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Culler (1997); Pile and Thrift (1995); Probyn (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

Other books

Proserpine and Midas by Mary Shelley
Sheikh's Unlikely Desire by Lynn, Sophia
The Max Brand Megapack by Max Brand, Frederick Faust
Hunting Lila by Sarah Alderson
Rapscallion by James McGee
True by Erin McCarthy
Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist
God In The Kitchen by Williams, Brooke
Hideaway by Alers, Rochelle