The Dictionary of Human Geography (207 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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transactional analysis
In economic geog raphy, a method of determining the number of firms in an industry and the nature of exchanges between them. It is based on the proposition that ?the economic institutions of capitaLism have the main purpose and effect of economizing on transaction costs? (Williamson, 1985, p. 17). Thus it may be cheaper for a firm to produce a commodity ?in house? through an internal transaction, in order to exploit internal economies of scope or to reap internal economies of scaLe, or it may be cheaper for a firm to acquire the same commodity through an external transaction (e.g. subcontracting), the cost of which may be reduced by the clustering of suppliers near to the firm (see cLuster). This type of analysis illuminates one of the forces said to propel the aggLomeration of productive activities. Transactional analysis is also an ap proach used in psychology and psychotherapy; advertised as explicitly post Freudian, trans actional analysis in this second sense places its focus on interpersonal interactions (cf. psychoanaLytic theory). Approaches of this kind, so Bondi (1999) argued, suggest various affinities with some versions of humanistic geography. msg/bg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
transculturation
The entwining and entan gling of different cultural forms and practices to produce new ones (cf. hyBridity). The term was originally proposed by Cuban eth nographer Fernando Ortiz (1881 1969), who contrasted transculturation to acculturation. Acculturation involves the adjustment of a sub ordinate culture to the impositions and exac tions of a dominant culture, a process of learning and even ?acquiring? the idioms of the dominant culture, whereas transculturation in volves a dialectical relation of combination and contradiction (see dialectic), a process of cultural loss as well as gain, that produces new, original forms (see also cuLture). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ortiz developed the concept in his master work, Cuban counterpoint (1940). As the title suggests, transculturation has something in common with studies of contrapuntaL geographies: it is about the interplay between different cultures situated within a global force field. The book was a study of the col onization of his native Cuba, where Ortiz identified a series of remarkably rapid cultural readjustments forcefully made by different peoples in a stream of migrants (Spanish, Af rican and others), ?each of them torn from [their] native moorings, faced with the prob lem of disadjustment and readjustment, of deculturation and acculturation in a word, of transculturation? (1995 [1940], p. 98). This may not have been a one sided process of adjustment and compliance, but it was none the less a violent one: ?All, those above and below, living together in the same atmosphere of terror and oppression, the oppressed in ter ror of punishment, the oppressor in terror of reprisals, all beside justice, beside adjustment, beside themselves. And all in the painful pro cess of transculturation? (p. 102). The subtitle of Ortiz?s text is also critical: Ortiz?s analysis was a profoundly materiaList one that fo cused on the significance of non human actors (what actor network theory would call ?actants?). He described tobacco and sugar as ?the two most important figures in this history of Cuba?, and showed how different groups of people exercised power through their alliances with them. The cultural forms and practices of colonizers and colonized were thus reworked through their material, practical involvements with these two commodities. As anthropologist Fernando Coronil puts it in his introduction to Ortiz?s text, on this reading commodities are ?not merely products of human activity, but active forces which constrain and empower it? (see commodity). (NEW PARAGRAPH) If Ortiz?s work is not understood in relation to Cuba and Latin america more generally, it becomes a traveLLing theory that runs the risk of losing its political force (Lund, 2001). That said, transculturation has acquired con siderable significance in post coLoniaLism and studies of traveL writing, where it has allowed more subtle analyses of the consider able cultural traffic that constituted the ?con tact zone? between colonizer and colonized (NEW PARAGRAPH) (Pratt, 1992). But little of this work has seized upon the materialist dimensions of Ortiz?s work (cf. Coronil, 2000). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Coronil (1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
transfer pricing
The setting of transfer prices for products (goods and services) moving between semi autonomous divisions (cost or profit centres) within large organiza tions. The practice is most often associated with transnationaL corporations (tncs), which respond to variable corporate tax regimes, to tariff and other barriers to trade, and to dif ferential exchange rates by setting prices for internal transactions between establishments lo cated in different national jurisdictions in ways that minimize costs or maximize gains. For ex ample, firms may charge high prices for semi finished products shipped for further processing to plants located in jurisdictions with high rates of tax, so that they reduce the tax take on profits generated by finishing processes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) As the gLobaLization of investment, pro duction and trade proceeds, both the possibil ities for and the extent of transfer pricing are likely to increase. Dicken (2007, p. 239) points out that ?in general, the greater the differences in levels of corporate taxes, tariffs, duties, exchange rates, the greater will be the incentive for the TNC to manipulate its trans fer prices?. TNCs have a strong incentive to engage in transfer pricing and the very large, highly centralized, global TNC has the great est potential for doing so. The problem, as Dicken recognizes, is that it is exceptionally difficult for governments (or researchers) to obtain evidence about its extent. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Transfer prices are set by and within firms and, at one level, are purely managerial, in volving the monitoring and control of individ ual cost and profit centres. But at another level, the judicious use of internal transfer pri cing facilitates the avoidance of tax and min imizes the cost of trade barriers. Firms can optimize their financial relations with the jur isdictions in which they are located and so minimize payment of tariffs, for example, or shift accounted profits from locations within high tax regimes to locations with low rates of corporate taxation. TNCs can also get around difficulties associated with fluctuating exchange rates which, on the open market, might tend to over or under pricing of prod ucts in transactions taking place between units of the same TNC located in different currency spaces. By disembedding themselves in such ways, TNCs are able to reduce their costs and increase their profitability at the expense of the jurisdictions in which they operate. rL (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dicken (2007, ch. 8). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
transferability
One of Ullman?s (1956) bases for spatiaL interaction covering both transport costs, which reflect the character istics of the transport system and the com modity being moved, and commodity?s ability to bear those costs. Precious metals have high transferability, for example, because they are easy to handle and transport costs are small (per unit weight) relative to their total value; plate glass has low transferability be cause it is difficult to handle and has relatively low value. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
transgression
The act of crossing accepted limits, of breaking rules or exceeding bound aries. Transgression challenges but also re veals and underlines the values considered to be ?normal? and ?appropriate? in particular geographical and social settings. It works within and plays upon given spaces and con ditions, rather than operating from outside them or seeking to constitute a new space or system. Through the process and the reactions to it, norms and codes about what is prohib ited and considered proper are highlighted. For Bataille, whose writings have been par ticularly influential on understandings of the concept, the ?experience of transgression is indissociable from the consciousness of the constraint or prohibition it violates; indeed, it is precisely by and through its transgression that the force of a prohibition becomes fully realized? (see Suleiman, 1990, p. 75). Transgression and the taboo therefore coexist in a complex relationship, with the former not denying the latter but transcending and com pleting it (see also Foucault, 1977b [1963]; Jenks, 2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH) geography is important in the constitution of limits and in demarcations of high and low, normal and deviant, clean and polluted and the like. While space is used as a means of social control by the powerful, the resulting socio spatial orderings and codings may also be potentially transgressed. Despite many celebratory accounts of transgression, Stally brass and White (1986) insist that there is nothing inherently politically progressive or conservative about the process. In their in vestigation of the construction of European bourgeois identity that ranges across sociaL formations, space and the body, they exam ine the ways in which that identity was de fined through the exclusion of what it deemed ?low?, and how that expelled low ?other? be came a focus of desire as well as disgust. In their view, transgression is often ?a powerful ritual or symbolic practice whereby the dom inant squanders its symbolic capital so as to get in touch with the fields of desire which it denied itself as the price paid for its political power? (1986, p. 210). The continual ?redis covery? of the carnivalesque within modern cuLture and its importance as a semiotic realm is related to its rejection in the constitu tion of bourgeois culture?s self identity. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Analysing transgression is therefore a sig nificant means of understanding not only mar ginal acts, but also the processes by which the normal, the central and the dominant become defined. Transgression?s power comes in par ticular from its ability to expose the construct edness of socio spatial orderings, and hence their openness to criticism and to reconstruc tion. Transgression is distinct from resist ance, according to Cresswell (1996), in that it does not rest on intentionality, but on its effects and on the reactions it precipitates. These cannot be defined in advance, but have to be examined in particular geographical and historical contexts. ?Transgression?s effi cacy lies in the power of the established boundaries and spaces that is so heretically subverts,? he states. ?It is also limited by this established geography; it is always in reaction to topographies of power? (Cresswell, 1996, p. 175). Yet, as he remarks, transgression can contain ?the seeds of new spatial orderings?. It may, through becoming part of strategic strug gles, go beyond temporary tactical incursions to contribute to social and spatial transform ation. dp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cresswell (1996); Stallybrass and White (1986). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
transhumance
Socially organized seasonal movements of livestock along altitudinal and bioclimatic gradients, usually in response to changing availability of forage or water. These movements differ from those associated with nomadic pastoralism (see nomadism) in that only a portion of the family (or other social unit) associated with the herd makes the journey, while the remainder of the family remains at a more permanent dwelling. The term was originally used in europe (the French verb transhumer means to move live stock) to describe the movement of shepherds (NEW PARAGRAPH) and their flocks between lowland pastures in the winter and highland pastures in the sum mer months, to take advantage of snow melt. Such movements are historically tied to pas toralism in mountainous areas and dryland regions with seasonal rainfall. mt (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Stenning (1960). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
transnational corporations (TNCs)
capitaL moves around the globe in three forms: embodied in materials, goods and services, it enters into trade flows. Invested in stocks, bonds, foreign currency holdings and the like, it moves as financial capital (see Finance; hot money). Transnational corporations (TNCs) invest their own capital resources in other countries in order to engage in their ordinary business of extracting, producing and/or selling materials, goods and services. This is also known as foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI may involve the creation of an operation from the ground up a ?greenfield investment?. More commonly, it involves buy ing an already existing foreign company. In either case, effective control over the offshore operation remains with the parent company, even if it does not own 100 per cent of the foreign asset. Return on investment may be in the form of royalties, interest or profits and these may be reinvested in the offshore site, repatriated to the parent corporation or invested elsewhere altogether. (NEW PARAGRAPH) FDI grows out of the combined exigencies of international competition and the push of capital accumulation as a company amasses more capital than it can conveniently or prof itably reinvest in its original market. This im plies a longer term commitment of resources to a particular foreign site than either of the other forms of international capital mobility, and corporations undertake it for a number of reasons. Control over naturaL resources is a classic motivation and the one most likely to draw a company into remote parts of the world. Tapping into low cost and non unionized LaBour markets is another. FDI may be a way of internalizing transaction costs across borders and taking advantage of economies of scope, greater capital resources or tech nologies in order to gain a competitive ad vantage in foreign markets. A TNC may buy out a foreign company in order to gain access to proprietary technology or to reduce the in tensity of competition in its business. Or it may be intent on gaining access to or improv ing its position in important foreign markets and sees operating in the market as a better means to this end than exporting from home. This may be: because it can provide better service or respond more quickly to shifts in the market; because it will benefit politically from being perceived as a local company; be cause it avoids tariff barriers and transport costs, or because it can keep a closer eye on the competition (Schoenberger, 1997; Dun ning, 2002a; Dicken, 2003; Ietto Gillies, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The geography of TNC investment may be counter intuitive. Conventional economic theory supposes that capital will flow from places where it is abundant and the price cor respondingly low to places where it is scarce and therefore expensive. This implies a flow from advanced industrial countries to less developed countries across the board. Other theories anticipate that capital will flow from high cost areas to low cost areas, again imply ing an outflow from advanced countries, with high labour and regulatory costs, to the Third World (see new international division of LaBour) (Dunning, 2002b; Dicken, 2003). Most non resource FDI, however, flows among advanced industrial countries. US TNCs in manufacturing and services, for ex ample, invest mostly in western Europe and Canada. European TNCs invest heavily else where in Europe and in North America. A smaller share flows to just a handful of newly industrializing countries (NICs). Even TNCs from some NICs are investing now in North America and Europe: in 2005, a Chinese cor poration, Lenovo, bought the personal com puter business of IBM. Market access seems to matter more than costs. Further, since FDI is so often made via acquisition rather than as greenfield investment, it is likely to go where the largest number of potential acquisitions is located advanced industrial countries (Schoenberger, 1997; Dicken, 2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Despite this skewed distribution in favour of advanced industrial countries, TNCs oper ating in developing regions still have a tremen dous impact in part because they may be quite large relative to the local economy. This is especially true of resource extraction operations, although even these are con centrated geographically in a relatively small number of host countries (Bridge, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Why FDI does not flow more generally across the surface of the Earth is an interesting problem. Its orientation to rich (North America and the EU) and/or fast growing (e.g. Asia) markets is an important factor. economies of scaLe in many of the most important FDI industries (e.g. mining or chemicals) favour geographical concentration. Progress in automation has reduced the importance of labour costs in many sectors, making it feasible to remain in high labour cost countries. Meanwhile, poorer countries, besides having very restricted markets, also have poor physical and institutional infra structures, which makes operations both more costly and riskier. Although usually seen to be in the vanguard of gLobaLization, there are reasons to suppose that TNCs are hedging their bets. Their operations are cer tainly international, but they are not quite global as yet. (NEW PARAGRAPH) TNCs are the permanent object of heated political debate. Some believe that they will foster economic growth and modernization in the developing world by importing capital, technology and managerial techniques that will then filter out into the host economy. stages of growth theorists see TNCs as the perfect vehicle for overcoming barriers to de veLopment and promoting regionaL conver gence. Others believe they are responsible for ?underdeveloping? the Third World by domin ating local markets and draining capital in the form of profits from south to North in short, that they are the modern form of imperiaLism and a major factor promoting dependency and uneven deveLopment. Many see them as responsible for the deindustriaLization of formerly prosperous regions (Tabb, 2002; Cuyvers and DeBeule, 2005). TNCs have been charged with collaborating with oppres sive governments in order to ensure access to resources and therefore being implicated in the violation of human rights and of vioLence against local populations (Peluso and Watts, 2001; Frynas and Pegg, 2003). Their presence raises questions of sovereignty and the integ rity of the nation state even in the most developed countries (Dicken, 2003). esch (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dicken (2003); Harvey (1999 [1982]); Peck and Yeung (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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