The Dictionary of Human Geography (216 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
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visual methods
The history of geographical knowledge is replete with visual images of many kinds created in order to describe par ticular places. Although what constituted adequate description was often debated, the recent interest in visual methods in Anglo American geography has been prompted in part by a move away from understanding images as in some way mimetic of the world (see vision and visuaLity; mimesis). Instead, it is argued that images are active participants in the construction of geographical knowledges; and it follows that to explore that participation requires some consideration of method. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There are a range of possible methods for interpreting visual materials (Banks, 2001; Rose, 2007 [2001]). The most common approach to understanding the production of visual geographical knowledges depends on making connections between a specific image already in circulation, and the wider context of which it is a part. Such approaches have included iconography explicating the mean ing of the discrete symbolic elements of an image and semiology treating an image or scene as a constellation of interrelated signs. Currently, however, the most common method focuses on a range of aspects of the content of an image in order to make claims about its effect in the cultural field. This has been described as a kind of discourse analysis (Rose, 2006), and is the implicit method adopted by much of the new cuLturaL geography. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Fewer geographers have chosen to work with images produced as part of the research process. Some, however, have used images often photographs taken by the geographer to supplement written argument. Here, the implication is that although photographs, like any other visual image, become meaningful in relation to the wider culture of which they are a part, they also have some ability to exceed cultural meaning. They have thus been deployed by geographers with an interest in non representationaL theory or materiaL cuLture to suggest the agency of the more than human (see, e.g., Edensor, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The second way in which geographers have created images as part of the research process is by making images that exemplify or develop their analyses. Allen and Pryke (1994), for example, created montages that brought together what they saw as the different spaces of financial corporations? headquarters that, although constitutively interrelated, were kept separate in everyday encounters. Others have systematically photographed urban environ ments in order to understand better the detail and texture of gentrification. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The third way in which images may be used more centrally in geographical research has been called ?photo elicitation? by visual soci ologists. In this approach, photographs are taken by people who the geographer has been researching for some time. The photographs are then used in further interview work, as powerful stimuli that allow the exploration of issues that might otherwise not be broached in more conventional interview situations (see, e.g., Latham, 2004). gcr (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Rose (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
visualization
A means of transforming data into visual representations that, for those who work within geographic information sci ence, takes place at the intersection of com puting graphics and mathematics. Other human geographers, particularly within cuL turaL geography, locate vision and visuaL ity within a wider techno cultural frame, but Kwan (2002) nonetheless claims that the intersection between computing graphics and mathematics allows more intuitive analysis and can incorporate many different agendas. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Visualization in this specific sense has its roots in early three dimensional modeLs in sci ence (Watson, 1969) and in the use of com puter graphics to display calculation results. But there is a much longer tradition of visual display in pre digital geography, from explana tory diagrams through the elaborate visual ren derings of the idealized landscapes of spatial science to the three dimensional displays of Torsten Hagerstrand?s time geography. That spatial graphical tradition has been re energized through the development of Visualization in Scientific Computing (ViSC), and now increas ingly incorporates relationships between concep tual and physical entities as well as three dimensions (Turk, 1994). Visualization is now widely accepted as a means of interpreting and ?making sense? of spatial patterns as part of a revivified cartographic imagination within these avowedly scientific streams of geographical enquiry (cf. MacEachren, 1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH) geographic iNfORMATiON systems can be understood as an ontology of that which can be visualized. Visualization of spatial phe nomena is a delicate play between deductive and inductive techniques, a subtle shift in science that GIS promotes. Visualization pro vides a greater understanding, leads to effect ive causal variable identification and improved hypothesis formulation, and results in more reliable predictive relationships between vari ables (Anselin, 1988). Visualization supports a wider range of collaboration and exploration with less concern for mathematical rigour, hypotheses testing and generality (Wright, Goodchild and Proctor, 1997). Visualization is a way of making quantitative approaches less mathematical as it allows researchers to work with a large number of variables. As the number of variables increases, measures of certainty are difficult to obtain and the analysis becomes less mathematical. ns (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Slocum, McMaster, Kessler and Howard (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
von Thunen model
A model for analysing agricultural location patterns, based on the pioneering work of a Prussian landowner. Johann von Thunen (1783 1850) envisaged a single MARkET for farm products and sug gested that distance from that point would be a prime determinant of both what was produced where and the rent (net profit) gen erated there. Based on this variable alone, the model suggested a zonal land use model (see figure), on the assumption that farmers produced the commodity on each tract of land that would maximize their net returns. Because of variations in the costs of transport ing different agricultural products, bulkier and/or more perishable items are produced closest to the market, where land rents are consequently highest, leading to a distance decay gradient. This ideaL type arrangement also suggested for urban areas (cf. alonso model) provides a model against which real ity can be compared, and can be modified to take account of variations in, for example, land productivity The von Thunen model was a central elem ent in the promotion of human geography as a spatiaL science, in the context of rationaL choice theory and decision making. It was applied to land use studies at a variety of scales (e.g. Blaikie, 1971; Peet, 1969; Block and DuPuis, 2001); Barnbrock (1974: see also Maki, 2004) pointed out that many have been very partial in their use of von Thiinen?s ideas and fail to take account of his full project, which saw his model as an ideal type of a spatial arrangement that would emerge under a benign form of capitalism. Its means of simplifying the world in order to understand it has declined in relevance as transport costs have been reduced both relatively and absolutely, but it remains a valuable analytical framework. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Chisholm (1979); von Thunen (1966 [1842]). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
war
The mobilization of military or para military vioLence between political comm unities. Although the state is often defined in terms of its claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, war is not confined to hostilities between states: civil wars are intra state wars, wars of liberation are fought by resistance movements against (for example) colonialism or military occupation (see occupation, military), and the global ?war on terror? is waged by states against regional and international terrorist organiza tions. Nor is war confined to formal hostilities between the main parties (?hot wars?): the cold war between the USA and the Soviet Union took many forms, including economic warfare and numerous proxy wars. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The history of geography (see geography, history of) has frequently intersected with the history of war: war has marked the practice of geographical enquiry and geographical knowledge has shaped the prosecution of war. Classical geography knew its strategic value Strabo?s chorography was addressed to military commanders and civil adminis trators in the Roman Empire while the insti tutionalization of geography as a university discipline owed much to the part played by miLitary geography in the unexpected victory of Prussia over France in 1870 1. Geography was instrumental in the develop ment of a ?New Army? in Britain in the early twentieth century (Stoddart, 1992) and had a pivotal role in the formulation of mod ern geopolitics. Since then, geographical knowledge has been important to war in four main ways: (NEW PARAGRAPH) The resort to war through the production of geo strategic imperatives (see geopolitics). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The conduct of war through the production of regional intelligence (Lacoste, 1973; Heffernan, 1996; Barnes, 2006b: see also area studies; regional geography). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The representation of war through the pro duction of imaginative geographies of ?the enemy? and the conduct of hostilities (O Tuathail, 1996a, 2005; Farish, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The memorialization of war through the pro duction of symbolic landscapes (Falah, 1996; Johnson, 2003b: see also memory). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The importance of geography is not surpris ing, since war is fought over (and often about) territory, but new forms of war have intro duced more complex concepts of space. ?War,? Hirst (2005, p. 151) insisted, ?can never be de spatialized.? (NEW PARAGRAPH) Yves Lacoste (1976) claimed that La geo graphie, fa sert, d?abord, a faire la guerre (?Geography?s primary purpose is to make war?), and in an interview with Lacoste?s journal, philosopher Michel Foucault was prompted to trace his own spatial preoccupa tions to a series of martial concepts (Foucault, 1976b/1980). In a course of lectures given that same year, Foucault explored the relations between sovereign power, discipLinary power and war, tracing how the post medieval state came to assume the monopoly of legitim ate violence, expelling war to its outer limits (frontiers) while ?secretly? allowing war ?to rage in all the mechanisms of power? beneath the surface of its own juridical order. Politics was thus the continuation of war by other means. Although Carl von Clausewitz (1780 1831) would eventually propose a strategic reversal in his treatise On war (1832) ?War is not merely a political act but also a real political instrument, a continuation ofpolitical commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means? Foucault saw this as a deceptive mapping of modernity. Far from war being an interruption to the project of modernity, the last resort, the exception to be rationalized and regulated, war continues to saturate the social field; its strategies and modes of calcu lation are deployed to defend society (the imperative title of his lectures) against the dangers ?that are born in and of its own body? (Elden, 2002; Foucault, 2003: cf. govern mentaLity). Late modern warfare is wired to political economy to neo liberalism and its rounds of renewed accumuLation by dis possession (Roberts, Secor and Sparke, 2003; RETORT, 2005: cf. resource wars) but on Foucault?s reading it is also intimately invested in a racialized biopoLitics. Both of these dimensions have been revealed with unusual clarity in the US led ?war on terror? in the early twenty first century (Dauphinee and Masters, 2007; Dillon and Reid, 2009: see also terrorism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Some scholars have proposed the concept of a mode of warfare to characterize the ?complex of social relations through which wars are prepared, military power organized and wars fought? (Shaw, 2005, p. 42; Kaldor, 2006). Modes of warfare differ over space and time, but several writers have identified the con temporary emergence of new, global modes of warfare that are closely connected to globalization (cf. Bauman, 2001b) (see table). (NEW PARAGRAPH) On one side, and closely associated with the USA, is a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and its successor projects, which promise that future wars can be fought with fewer ground troops through the intensive use of high techn ology by ever more professionalized and specialized armies. New systems of sensing and surveiLLance from air and space platforms, advanced systems of information management (?command, control and communications? or C3), and weapons systems revolving around pilotless aircraft and robotic vehicles, precision guided weapons and ?smart bombs?, substan tially rework the spatial templates of geopoLit ics. Crucially, the significance of physical distance is diminished though not erased: the distance over which air strikes can be launched is increased, but the global deployment of ground forces and equipment still poses logis tical problems (Ek, 2000; Graham, 2008b; Singer, 2009). These developments have produced a convergence between military oper ations and the advanced sectors of the global economy, particularly the armaments, telecom munications and software industries, and the connections within the Military Industrial Media Entertainment complex have been (NEW PARAGRAPH) unreason tradition criminaLity (NEW PARAGRAPH) Low technology: (NEW PARAGRAPH) warlords and militias (NEW PARAGRAPH) local, ground based knowledge (NEW PARAGRAPH) short distance, often improvised weapons (NEW PARAGRAPH) Shadow globalization: (NEW PARAGRAPH) illegal and small arms trade (NEW PARAGRAPH) diasporic recruitment (NEW PARAGRAPH) traffic in conflict commodities (NEW PARAGRAPH) Strikes target civilians: (NEW PARAGRAPH) war made flesh (NEW PARAGRAPH) The dis enchantment of war: (NEW PARAGRAPH) violation of international law (NEW PARAGRAPH) wars of economic predation (NEW PARAGRAPH) reinforced through the enhanced time space compression made possible by NEtwoRk centric warfare. This transforms the battle space from the conventional, linear form with its geometry of fronts and battles, advances and retreats; instead, military forces ?swarm? in complex, fluid formations through multiple theatres of war that ?will be as virtual as they will be geographic, coursing through the capil laries and conduits that comprise networK society itself? (Dillon, 2002, p. 74). The com bined effect of these innovations is to institute a hypermodern form of warfare that creates what Coker (2004) calls a ?re enchantment? of war: offensive, ?surgical? strikes target com batants and supposedly minimize ?collateral damage?, death virtually disappears from the battle space, and military interventions are increasingly staged as just wars. (NEW PARAGRAPH) On the other side are so called new wars fought by non state and para state actors including militias and guerrilla forces who, when they engage professional armies, resort to asymmetric warfare. For the most part these armed groups rely on local, ground based knowledge and the use of cheap, light and even improvised weapons (Kaldor, 2006). Although their violence is close range and even face to face, these conflicts often spill across borders. Combatants take advantage of border zones, such as the tribal territories straddling the Afghanistan Pakistan border, but their activities are also enmeshed in what Nordstrom (2004) identifies as an even wider ?shadow globalization?: many of the armed groups are supported and funded (at least in part) by emigre communities; they draw their recruits from diasporic populations, from refugee camps and from city dwellers who have been forcefully excluded from the global economy; and they are involved in trans local networks that are non state, non formal and extra legal, and which in many cases traffic not only in weapons but in conflict commod ities such as drugs and diamonds. Miinkler (2005, pp. 2, 36) represents these develop ments as in some measure a throwback to the Thirty Years War (1618 48) and, in contrast to hypermodern forms of warfare, they create a rhetorical ?disenchantment? of war: they are extraordinarily savage and intensely corporeal, they deliberately target non combatants, and they sustain an economy of lawless predation (see Gregory, 2009b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) These two modalities of war converged with extraordinary intensity in the early twenty first century in the military operations undertaken by the USA and its allies in Afghanistan and Iraq and by Israel in southern Lebanon and occupied Palestine, where the advanced weapons systems of state militaries were met by crude missiles, improvised explosive devices, suicide bombs and guerrilla raids (Gregory, 2004b, 2006). Indeed, the two modalities have increasingly bled into each other: the US invasion of Afghanistan involved a high tech war from the air in support of a ground war fought by US troops in close con cert with the local militias of the Northern Alliance, for example, while the US occupation of Iraq prompted the US military to perform a ?cultural turn? that accorded local knowledge a central place within a counter insurgency campaign that could not be waged through firepower alone (Gregory, 2008, 2009a). Critics have often claimed that American mili tary power has been deployed in the service of a new American empire, and Miinkler (2005) argues that these ?new wars? characteristically develop ?in the margins and breaches of former empires?. But the two modalities of war also increasingly converge in cities. According to Davis (2004b, p. 15), ?the poor peripheries of developing cities will be the permanent battle fields of the twenty first century?, and urban warfare is an increasing preoccupation of mili tary strategists (Graham, 2009a). (NEW PARAGRAPH) These two modalities of contemporary war have several mutually reinforcing effects: (NEW PARAGRAPH) They blur the distinctions between war and peace: many of these conflicts are chronic with no clearly defined beginning or end, characterized by ?peace processes? rather than peace agreements. (NEW PARAGRAPH) They blur the distinctions between war and commerce: the US military is not only closely connected to the global armaments industry, but it also relies on private service companies and contractors, and militia leaders and warlords often have a keen interest in the profits of war. (NEW PARAGRAPH) They blur the distinctions between civilian and combatant: they make it difficult to distin guish civilian and military spaces; conflicts increasingly spill across and in some places even constitute the spaces of everyday life; and in many, perhaps most cases the majority of casualties are civilians (Giles and Hyndman, 2004b). Militias are often criti cised for their indifference to civilian casu alties, but Shaw (2005, pp. 71 97) insists that the RMA also involves the systematic transfer of risk to civilians whose deaths are explained away through either their own alleged complicity or accidental, ?collateral damage? (see also Gregory, 2006a). (NEW PARAGRAPH) They blur the distinctions between the real and the virtual: late modern targeting and imaging systems radically transform the visual field of war, and professional armies are acutely sensitive to the effect of media images; militias are also keenly aware of the power of video coverage, and the ?war on terror? has involved the conscious deploy ment of spectacle and the mobilization of affect on both sides (O Tuathail, 2003; RETORT, 2005; Gregory, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Even as the two modalities become entangled in one another, the distinctions between them have been rhetorically reaffirmed to produce an imaginative geography that is also a moral geography: thus ?our? wars are construed as humane wars because they are fought within the space of the modern the space of Reason, Science and Law whereas ?their? wars are inhumane because they are located outside that space. Dexter (2007, 2008) argues that this de politicizes late modern war ?Western inter vention is elevated to a position above politics? and de legitimizes all forms of warfare except those of the global north, which then has both the obligation and the right to police the frontier between the two in the name of security. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Flint (2005); Gregory (2009b); Miinkler (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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