The Dictionary of Human Geography (71 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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fiscal migration
A process by which individ uals, househoLds and firms relocate to secure fiscal benefits. The concept is derived from the tiebout modeL, which argues that land users will move to a local government admin istration that optimizes their tax and services preferences, trading off the costs of paying for public services through taxation against sacrifices in their ability to consume private services. The model has been used to explore the geographical consequences of distributed and competitive local government administra tive structures (e.g. Davies, 1982). The process also operates at an international level, and underlies the creation of offshore financial centres, tax havens and export processing zones, all of which attract international capital investment partly through fiscal incentives that include tax holidays and other inducements. aL (NEW PARAGRAPH) flaneur/flanerie The flaneur is associated with aimless urban wandering and observing, especially in nineteenth century Paris, where it took its first steps. Yet the figure has also walked further afield, as it has been taken up more widely in social, cultural and urban studies as ?an emblematic representative of modernity and the personification of con temporary urbanity? (Ferguson, 1994, p. 22). Despite becoming a common motif, the flaneur and activities of flanerie remain elusive and resist easy definition, although they usually involve a solitary and anonymous male, with the emphasis falling variously on strolling, idling, watching, writing, artistic cre ativity and detection. Many commentators suggest that it is most productively seen as a mythological figure, a strategy of representa tion, and thus a sociaL construction within discourse more than a sociological reality. (NEW PARAGRAPH) First referenced in 1806, the flaneur received its most famous articulation in the writings of Charles Baudelaire, for whom it was a ?modern hero? and passionate spectator who derived poetic meaning from an immer sion in the city, in the fleeting movement and electrical charge of its crowd. Baudelaire?s account played an important role in Walter Benjamin?s investigations of Paris as ?capital of the nineteenth century?, and in his attempts to decipher the phantasmagorias of urban modernity. In these texts, the increasing com modification and rationalization of the city along with the decline of the arcades meant that the flaneur was already becoming a dis placed and bygone figure. Benjamin?s writings have remained a key source for subsequent interest in the flaneur, with some critics view ing Benjamin?s own approach as being akin to flanerie in its mode of reading metropolitan spaces through attending to urban fragments and signs. There have also been multiple reinventions of flanerie in the arts, cultural practice and urban studies through recent interest in other forms of urban walking (see urban expLoration). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Feminist critics have emphasized the exclu sivity of flanerie, arguing that a female equiva lent the flaneuse was rendered impossible by the ideologies and sexual divisions of nine teenth and early twentieth century cities that constrained anonymous and unaccompanied movement by women. The practice of flanerie itself, so it is argued, was structured around a male gaze. However, critical elaborations have since questioned the extent of the exclusion of women from the public realm, revealing the intersections between public and private, and have also argued that the flaneur was a more insecure and marginal figure than is often sup posed (Wilson, 1991). Writers have further traced out the possibilities for female flanerie through the development of department stores, through writing and literary texts and through early cinema, which enabled a mobile urban gaze from within the safety and respect ability of a fiLm audience. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Such studies have led to re evaluations of the (in)visibility of the flaneuse (D?Souza and McDonough, 2006). Dissenting voices never theless remain, with Janet Wolff arguing that the problem with the flaneur lies less in its exclusivity than in the centrality it has been accorded in urban and cultural studies of modernity, and in the consequent occlusion of female experiences. She therefore calls for the flaneur?s ?retirement? from centre stage and for attention to turn instead to the ?micro practices of urban living, and the very specific ways in which women negotiate the modern city?. In the process, she claims, questions of female flanerie lose importance and ?women become entirely visible in their own particular practices and experiences? (Wolff, 2006, p. 28). dp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) D?Souza and McDonough (2006); Tester (1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
flexible accumulation
A regime of accu muLation emphasizing diversity and differen tiation rather than the standardization associated with Fordist modes (see fordism) of accumuLation. Flexible accumulation requires workers, machinery and manufactur ing techniques that can quickly and regularly innovate and adapt to changes in consumer tastes, thus generating profit through econ omies of scope rather than the economies of scale. As Harvey (1999 [1982]) points out, the (re )emergence of flexibility as a dom inant regime of accumulation in the late 1970s and 1980s was associated with instability in the economies of developed countries and competition from third worLd industrializing nations that could mass produce standardized goods cheaply. For McDowell (1991), it was also a change in the basic societal conditions such as the increasing disappearance of the nuclear family as the standard domestic unit and the increasing entrance of women into the labour force that challenged the many of the ideals underlying the Fordist regime of accumulation and led to the growth in impor tance of flexible accumulation. However, Gertler (1988) cautions against assuming that this means that flexible accumulation replaced Fordist modes of accumulation; rather, flex ible accumulation re emerged in this period as the dominant regime in developed countries (see also Norcliffe, 1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH) For geographers, flexible accumulation is associated with what Storper (1997b) refers to as the ?resurgence of the region? in indus triaL geography. Because of the need for continuous innovation and rapid adaptation to changes in consumer demands, trusting relationships with numerous suppliers who can provide components just in time and expertise that facilitates iNnovation is import ant. At the same time, flexible accumulation requires producers to have access to a pool of skilled labour, something that can often be found in specialized regions or cLusters, where complementary industries exist. Examples include Motorsport Valley in Oxfordshire, UK (Henry and Pinch, 2001), Silicon Valley in California, USA (Saxenian, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , and Santa Croche in Italy (specializing in leather production: see Amin, 1989). jf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cooke (1988). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
flows
A name for movements between relatively fixed nodes in networks, flows can be of commodities, money, people, energy or even ideas. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of developments in both theory and global rela tions made reference to ?flows? increasingly common in a wide range of academic fields. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In theoretical arguments, long standing Marxist concerns with explaining economic processes in terms of the circuit of capitaL came to be critically supplemented with Foucauldian and other post structuraList arguments about the need to understand identity and power in terms of the flow of power through social relations. Though it is often forgotten, the jargon of deterritorialization developed by the French Italian philosophical duo Deleuze and Guattari (1983) was just such an epistemo LogicaL intervention: not an empirical claim about the geography of postmodernity, but a postmodern psychoanalytical argument about the need to follow diverse flows of desire and thereby critique containerized concepts of the human psyche in modern ego psychoanalysis (cf. psychoanalytic theory). More generally, the critical import of treating power in terms of micro flows did have implications for theories of space (see production of space). Just as marxist geography had challenged absolutist and fixed assumptions about space in econom ics by exploring capital as value in motion in global and urban landscapes (Harvey, 1999 (NEW PARAGRAPH) ), so in turn did the ideas of Foucault help inspire new approaches to politics that challenged spatial yet geographically dead con cepts of pLaces and individuals simply holding power over powerless multitudes (Sharp, Routledge, Philo and Paddison, 2000). Power had to be rethought relationally in terms of the flows of ideas and interactions that created people (in different ways in different spaces) as both agents and subjects, a notable implication being that sites of subjectivity formation could thereby be reconceptualized as historical geog raphies oftruth andpower (e.g. Clayton, 2000). Applied to human environment relations too and supplemented further by the work of feminist scholars (Haraway, 1991) and sci ence studies (Latour, 1988), even the most concrete and stilled natural Landscapes such as the dammed waterscapes of formerly flowing rivers could be rethought this way as flows of knowledge, power, capital and energy coming together in hybrid formations in differ ent ways in different contexts (White, 1995; Swyngedouw, 1999, 2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In addition to these epistemological interests in the overdetermined landscapes of flow, worldwide events associated with recent rounds of capitalist gLobaLization have also brought attention to the increasing flows of commod ities, capital, information and people across borders. For example, the growth of cross border flows of international trade (especially their increasing size as a proportion of world GDP) provides a key index of increasing global economic interdependency, an index that is only eclipsed in its significance by the even more rapid acceleration of cross border investment flows (foreign direct investment) as a sign of the growing importance and independence of tEansnationaL corporations vis a vis nation states (Dicken, 2003). Other increasing and accelerating flows trans national flows of information on the internet, flows of news images and popular culture through cable and satellite TV, flows of migrants and tourists over barriers big and small, flows of illegal drugs and weapons, for instance all comprise complex component parts of the ?space of flows? that has been famously associated with the rise of a global ized so called network society (Castells, 1996b). But whereas Manuel Castells was careful to underline that ?the space of flows is not placeless? (Castells, 1996b, p. 416), other scholars have been prone to joining their empirical observations of globalized flows with extreme epistemological emphases on deterri torialization that tend to suggest an end to geography altogether. For example, in his otherwise astute arguments about the trans national networks of modernity (and especially of contemporary migration), anthropologistArjun Appadurai (1996) ignores the ways in which global flows reterritorialize and create new landscapes in the same moment as they eclipse older ones (see Sparke, 2005). By contrast, geographer John Agnew approaches the problem with a keen sensitivity to the ways in which flows create geographical integration and differentiation at the very same time. ?The main novelty today,? he says in a comprehensive rebuttal to end of geography arguments, ?is the increasing role in economic prosperity and underdevelopment of fast paced cross border flows in relation to national states and to networks linking cities with one another and their hinterlands and the increased differentiation between localities and regions as a result of the spatial biases built into flow networks? (Agnew, 2006, p. 128). ms (NEW PARAGRAPH)
focus group
A qualitative method used to obtain opinions and experiences from bet ween six and twelve people who participate in a group discussion organized around a series of topics or questions posed by the researcher/facilitator. Focus groups typically supplement other methodologies, and can be useful at different points in the research process: to get oriented to a new research field; to generate hypotheses that can then be tested more systematically; to gather quali tative data about experiences and opinions; and as a means of presenting preliminary interpretations to a community for validation. Focus groups are used instead of interviews or questionnaire surveys if the researcher believes that the group conversation will spark ideas among participants so as to elicit a richer understanding of the issue at hand. They provide an opportunity to observe how ideas develop in context, in relation to other and sometimes contradictory opinions. Although the researcher carefully facilitates the event, it can be a less hierarchical, more negotiated research event. Focus groups can also provide an important opportunity for participants to exchange information and support each other. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Focus groups must be carefully managed and are not always appropriate. power hier archies within the group will persist and can potentially silence non dominant members. When this happens, less dominant individuals are effectively excluded from the research process. For this reason separate focus groups are often conducted for men and women, or are divided in terms of other social categories, such as race, especially if this is relevant to the topic under discussion. It should also be recognized that focus groups are public events in which individuals give public per formances and may be reluctant to disclose private details. The focus group risks being exploitative if the artificiality of the situation and the legitimacy of the research context lulls individuals into revealing private details. This is especially problematic if the individuals in the group know each other or are likely to encounter each other after the event. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A focus group is not equivalent to interviews with between six and twelve individuals. A focus group is a singular conversational event. For this reason, at least five or six focus groups should be done in order to assess the thematic consistency across them. Similar to interviews, they are taped and transcribed. But they invite a different approach to analysis. Rather than focusing simply on the declarations of individuals, they provide an opportunity to study the generation of meaning, as opinions are debated, qualified and potentially modi fied. There also is a situational geography to focus groups that is under explored. The rules of discourse, what and how one is told, vary with the context (Pratt, 2002). Geographers thus have the potential not simply to use this methodology, but to develop it in fascinating new directions. gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Conradson (2005a); Pratt (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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