The Dictionary of Human Geography (214 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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utilitarianism
A theory of ethics originating in nineteenth century Britain, prescribing the greatest good for the greatest number. The good is defined by acts that promote happi ness, satisfaction or pleasure of the immediate actor and those affected by the act (and making utilitarianism part of a larger philo sophical approach known as consequentialism). Utilitarians further assume happiness is quan tifiable, thereby allowing calculation over an entire population: the world is as good as it can ever be when collective pleasure is maximized. Jeremy Bentham (1748 1832) developed the theory and John Stuart Mill (1806 73) elabor ated it. Both intended utilitarianism to bolster their favourite political philosophy, LlbERAL ism: only when people are free to choose will the greatest good for the greatest number be achieved (Mill?s ?liberty principle?). Criticisms of utilitarianism are legion and include an (NEW PARAGRAPH) inability to quantify happiness (Bentham?s ?felicific calculus? is chimerical), that different people?s happiness is incommensurable, that the consequences of an action may take a very long time to figure (when asked in the 1980s what he thought of the French Revolution, Chou En lai said, ?It is too early to say?), and a fixation on consequences at the expense of intentions (good utilitarian acts may be carried out for monstrous reasons). Utilitarianism only lightly brushed geography. A form of utilitarianism was found in the theory of neo cLassicaL economics that was briefly taken up in economic geography. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Singer (1993); Sinnott Armstrong (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
utility theory
The basis of neo cLassicaL economics, which rests on the doctrine of consumer sovereignty and an ideological belief in both individualism and libertarianism that individuals are the best judges of their own needs. A consumer?s utility function is identi fied based on either assumed or revealed pref erences and predicts choices, constrained within the available budget (cf. reveaLed preference anaLysis). Utility theory has provided the base for much work on travel behaviour and the choice of shopping centre to patronise, referring to destination, modal split (choice of travel mode), and choice of route (cf. discrete choice modeL). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Golledge and Timmermans (1990). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
utopia
Conventionally refers to an ideal society, state or commonwealth in which the problems of the present have been trans cended. This is often projected as an imagin ary world in another space or time, as implied by the roots of the term coined by Thomas More in his 1516 book Utopia, which plays upon the Greek words eu topos (?good place?) and ou topos (?no place?). Colloquial usage tends to present utopias as impossible social and political schemes, and hence a domain of escapism, impractical dreaming or authori tarian attempts to construct perfect societies. Yet utopias take many different forms and have a variety of functions, meaning that the concept is highly contested (Levitas, 1990). Utopias find expression in fictional depictions of the good society in Literature, fiLm or other media; in experiments to establish ideal communities; in the desire for radical change expressed in many political struggles as well as visions, theories, plans and performances; and, according to some commentators, in an array of everyday activities that anticipate better worlds. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographical concerns are central to utopia, as its etymology suggests, with many utopias being set in remote locations or based on spa tial designs for cities, architecture, landscapes or environments. These utopias typically express a belief in the power of space to shape human activities, whereby an ordered space becomes a means to contain social process, exclude historical change, and ensure har mony and stability (Porter and Lukermann, 1976). Such a spatial emphasis is apparent in the long association between utopia and cities, and in the influence of utopian thought on urbanism (Pinder, 2005). Projecting differ ent spaces can defamiliarize and challenge what exists, allowing imaginative exploration of alternative ways of living and being. Such utopias may function to provoke, to open senses of possibility. Their imaginative failure may also be of interest, in terms of what it reveals about current limitations and con straints. Yet attempts to realize utopias based on static spatial forms have been fraught with problems and contradictions, especially concerning their authoritarianism, required to fix geography and freeze history to create this ideal realm, and the need to reconcile this with the social processes involved in their materialization (Harvey, 2000b). The particu lar interests driving their visions of order have thus come under critical scrutiny (Pinder, 2005c). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Recent years have witnessed many claims about the ?end of utopia?, precipitated by events such as the collapse of commuNism regimes and by claims that utopian thought is necessarily authoritarian if not downright dangerous. Yet some geographers have argued for a revitalization of utopianism to counteract pronouncements that ?there is no alternative?, and in the process sought to reconceptualize utopias not in terms of blueprints but in more open and process oriented ways. For the utopian is a vital moment in critical the ory. Benhabib (1986, p. 226) identified the task of critique as the pursuit of both the explanatory diagnostic and the anticipatory utopian, but for the most part even crmcaL human geography has shown more of an interest in analysis and prescription: witness the speed at which discussions of Harvey?s (1973) Social justice and the city moved away from the first two words of the title, with their intimations of ethics and politics, and fastened on the last two. But Harvey (2000b, p. 196) has now returned to these themes to advocate a ?spatiotemporal? or ?diaLecticaL utopianism? that is ?rooted in our present possibilities at the same time as it points towards different trajectories of human uneven geographical developments?. While he still insists on the need to define choices and confront issues of closure so as to define ?that port to which (NEW PARAGRAPH) we might want to sail?, other critics, some influ enced in particular by feminism and by critical debates within utopian studies, have empha sized a partial and fluid approach to utopia. This gives a central role to desire and to moving beyond present limits into spaces and futures that are necessarily as yet unknown. dp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Harvey (2000b); Levitas (1990).
value-added
A process that adds value (as reflected in price) to some commodity. Typically, value is added when labour is applied to a material, transforming it into something more useful (cf. Marxist econom ics). Value can be added sequentially, at dif ferent stages in the production process, as material is turned into a component, which is added to others to make a finished article, which is then packaged and marketed, for example. A value added tax usually applies a fixed percentage to the price of a good or service; this discriminates against poorer people, who pay the same tax as the rich when they purchase the same thing. dms (NEW PARAGRAPH)
values
The principles or standards inform ing individual or group ideas and beliefs. Geographers have considered values held by both individual geographers concerning their subject matter, and by individuals and groups concerning society and nature. The evolu tion of debate over values in geography reflects different associations of the term, whether social, economic, political, environmental or moral. There is, however, common rejection of the separation of fact from values; in par ticular, the promotion of fact as self evident and value free in empiricism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Values were a central question for humanis tic geography in the 1970s. Anne Buttimer?s Values in geography (1974), produced for the Association of American Geographers? Commission on College Geography, sug gested that geographers consider the values motivating and informing their analyses: ?the present time is in many ways ripe for the expression of our caring presence to the world via an authentically lived profession of geog raphy? (Buttimer, 1974, p. 15). Buttimer reflected upon her own values, informed by personal history, Christianity and existential ism, and their shaping of geography as ?one of the regions of my care? (Buttimer, 1974, p. 4). Discussion of values shaping earlier and current geographical thought, and their consequences for disciplinary identity and geography?s engagement with the wider world, followed. Buttimer asserted phenomenology and existentialism as approaches placing val ues at the centre of human experience. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Responses from Blaut, Gibson, Hagerstrand and Tuan supplemented and critiqued Buttimer; in its presentation of debate, Values in geography offers a fine insight into questions then shaping human geography. In 1996, Progress in human geography accorded it the status of a ?classic? text; Buttimer reiterated its relevance while regretting the ?extremely anthropocentric bias in the whole discussion? (Buttimer, 1996, p. 518). The human valuing of the non human had, however, informed other humanistic geographies, as in Burgess and Gold?s collection Valued environments (1982), which highlighted the human creation of worlds of meaning, whether around public symbols or fields of everyday care: ?the close and enriching affective bond between people and the environments they create, inhabit, manipulate, conserve, visit or, even, imagine? (ibid., pp. 4 5). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Environmental values have remained an important subject for human geography, as in recent work on animals and moral geogra phies. Smith (2000a) addresses the role of intrinsic, anthropocentric and biocentric values in debates over environmental ethics. Harvey (NEW PARAGRAPH) offers a contrasting perspective on the valuing of environment, connecting values and monetary value. Wary of conservative appeals to values as a realm of permanence and stabil ity, Harvey seeks ?to replace the fixed idea of ??values?? with an understanding of ??processes of valuation?? ? (ibid., p. 11), and pursues a dialectical understanding of values and soci ety: ?Values inhere in socio spatial processes, and the struggle to change the former is simul taneously a struggle to change the latter (and vice versa)? (ibid., p. 12). The process through which nature is valued whether through supposedly inherent value, monetary value or metaphor becomes a nexus for understanding and intervening in the relations of society and environment (ibid., ch. 7). Discussion of values is here, as elsewhere, shaped by the definition of the term employed, and must be understood in relation to the political and social imperatives shaping an author?s work. DMat (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Buttimer (1974); Harvey (1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
vector data
Vector is a primary data type encoding geographical phenomena in GIS (another is raster). It is based on recording point locations (zero dimensions) using x and y coordinates, stored within two columns of a database. By assigning each feature a unique ID, a reLationaL database can be used to link location to an attribute table describing what is found there. Line segments (one dimensional) have two points: a start and end node. Polylines are connected line segments; for polygons (two dimensional) the start and end node is the same. topoLogy may also be encoded. Vector objects are discrete but sometimes represent continuous fields; for example, as contours. rh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) O?Sullivan and Unwin (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
vertical theme
A method of exploring change in cuLturaL Landscapes by describing the processes visibly effecting that change. Attention to ?vertical themes? is an enduring feature in historicaL geography, but follow ing the template set out by H.C. Darby the traditional approach has been to identify pro cesses in landscape terms: thus in Darby?s (1951) essay on the changing English land scape, six vertical themes were identified: clearing the wood, draining the marsh, reclaiming the heath, the changing arable, laying out the landscape garden, and urban industrial growth. It would be possible to identify quite other themes in altogether dif ferent terms the transition from feudaLism to capitalism, including accumulation by dispossession, for example, and civil war and the consolidation of the modern state all of which left their marks on the landscape. But Darby was concerned to distinguish historical geography from history, and so insisted on processes that could be located directly within the Landscape. He subsequently used ?vertical themes? defined in less restrictive terms, but still expressed in cartographic narrative form (diachronic analysis), to connect a series of cross sections through the landscape at particular dates (synchronic analysis) in his New historical geography of England and Wales (1973). (See also sequent occupance.)cw/jw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Darby (1951, 1962). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
verticality, politics of
A term devised by Israeli architect and analyst Eyal Weizman (2002) to describe the three dimensional relations between power, sovereignty and territory. Weizman?s argument is both gen eral and particular. Most generally, he argues that territory must be conceptualized not as a flat map in two dimensions but as a three dimensional space. Sovereignty has had a ver tical dimension since at least the nineteenth century through claims over subsurface resources (Braun, 2000), and since the Convention on the Regulation of Aerial Navigation (1919) individual states have rou tinely claimed complete and exclusive sover eignty over the air space above their territory. Indeed, modern war has come to rely on air power to such a degree that Graham (2004b) insists that the key vector of military power is now vertical and that it is necessary to formu late a ?vertical geopolitics?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Weizman?s core argument, however, is that these general claims have assumed a particular and intense significance during the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. He has shown how the Israeli political strategy of colonizing the West Bank has involved extraordinary three dimensional contortions of space to separate Israeli from Palestinian areas while maintaining Israeli control over both. Weizman emphasizes the intricate parti tioning of the West Bank, the grid of Israeli colonies on the hilltops, and the network of Israeli by pass roads, tunnels and checkpoints that work to produce ?parallel geographies? of First and third worlds, ?inhabiting two distinct planes in the startling and unexpected proximity that only the vertical dimension of the mountains can provide?. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Campbell (2004); Weizman (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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