The Dictionary of Human Geography (73 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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foundationalism
The assumption that knowledge claims must be grounded in a source of certainty that cannot be called into question, and from which the truth value of other propositions can be inferred. Rationalist foundationalism identifies this ground of cer tainty in intellectual intuition of some sort; in other words, most of what we know we know by reasoning. Empiricist foundationalism identifies the grounds of certainty in sensory observation; in other words, most of what we know we know by experience (see empiri cism). The key point about discussions of foundationalism is that they are concerned with epistemic justification with establishing the grounds for justifying when a belief counts as knowledge (see epistemoLogy). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The most famous example of a foundation alist epistemology is Descartes? cogito ergo sum (?I think, therefore I am?), in which the act of thinking is identified as the foundational ground of certainty that can guarantee non foundational beliefs. It is from the confidence of this ?I think? (specifically, in response to the question ?How do I know??) that the possibil ity of justified knowledge claims is derived. Descartes established the criterion of certainty as the basis for epistemic justification. This leads to a radical scepticism about external reality. All foundationalist epistemologies share a monological, internalist view of the (human) subject of knowledge, confronting the external world wracked with doubt. Criticisms of foundationalism therefore have a content, in that they are about more than simply the best way of justifying belief; they are fundamentally about disputed pictures of what it is to be human. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Rorty?s (1979) repudiation of the idea that philosophy can ever possibly find the objective, transcendent grounds of certainty from which to justify belief informs a line of anti foundationalist argument in human geog raphy. For him, what confers epistemic justi fication on beliefs is whether they work, whether they are useful or whether they are held valid by a community of practice. This implies that the philosophical study of know ledge as an abstract conceptual matter of justification should at least be augmented by looking at how knowledge claims work in practical contexts (see phiLosophy; prag MatisM). This type of empirical programme can certainly help us to understand the condi tions that determine when claims will be believed as knowledge; but it closes down the question of when they ought to be so believed. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In geography, anti foundationalist argu ments are sometimes invoked to question the validity of explanatory social science, but it is far from clear that modern social science is (NEW PARAGRAPH) vulnerable to the charge of foundationalism as this term is used in philosophical debates (cf. essentiaLisM). Geographers have also engaged in wider debates about the political significance of anti foundationalist perspec tives. These centre on the degree to which it is possible to square the academic disruption of knowledge claims, by showing them to be contingent and contextual, with the assumed requirement for political movements to be based on secure grounds of identity and experience. Various formulations finesse this problem, such as Judith Butler?s contingent foundations and Gayatri Spivak?s strategic essentialism. White (2000) develops the idea of weak ontology to negotiate the fact that any argument requires making presuppositions and fundamental ontological commitments, arguing that it is nonetheless possible to adopt a degree of rhetorical reflexivity to show their contingency (see ontoLogy). But all of these formulas tend to rest on the ?the implicit assumption that one could think like a sceptic but act like a foundationalist? (Zerilli, 1998, p. 438), and therefore tend to misconstrue what is at stake in issues of foundationalism. The widespread assumption that anti founda tionalism involves a generalized affirmation of contingency betrays a scholastic perspective that is unable to grasp the conditions of its own critical doubt, and remains caught within the problematic of epistemic certainty. A less deceitful response to the problems of founda tionalism might be derived from Wittgenstein?s considerations of scepticism. He held that absolute doubt of the sort enter tained by Descartes does not provide plausible grounds for understanding the way in which knowledge works in practice: ?the questions we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn? (1969, p. 341). The point here is two fold: the world of human affairs is not only held together by relationships of knowledge, either of certainty or contingency; and the expression of doubt is always undertaken in context, in relation to a particular set of con cerns, and against a background of beliefs and commitments that stand fast. cb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Appiah (2003); Taylor (1995a, ch. 1). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Fourth World
The poorest and most vulnerable groups of people within the devel oping world (cf. third worLd; see also south). Fourth World people are sometimes (NEW PARAGRAPH) defined as those in extreme income poverty and/or living in the so called famine belt of sub Saharan Africa. Many suffer from human rights abuses (see the website for the non governmental organization ATD Fourth World: http://www.atd fourthworld.org). Other Fourth World peoples suffer from pervasive social exclusion on grounds of ethnicity, gender or religion. Many Fourth World peoples reject efforts to mark them down as ?inferior?. For example, adivasis (?tribals?) and dalits (the ?oppressed?, or ex untouchables) in India have proclaimed their First Nation status (see caste). sco (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) See http://www.atd.quartmonde.org (NEW PARAGRAPH)
fractal
Fractals are irregular objects that cannot be defined by traditional geometry but which, in some cases (such as Koch snow flakes) have the property of self similarity: their pattern appears the same regardless of the scale at which they are viewed. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The easiest way to explain fractals is by appeal to intuition. In cartography we are used to zero , one and two dimensional objects representing point, line and area fea tures on a map. Simply by looking, it is obvious that each higher dimensional object fills more of the space than a lesser one: a rectangular object fills more of the map than a line placed along one side of the rectangle or a point posi tioned at one of its corners. There is a connec tion between dimensionality and space filling. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Now think of a number line. Although we often count using whole numbers (1, 2, 3, (NEW PARAGRAPH) ...), we also accept that the line is continuous and so provides us with fractions (1, 1.2, 1.31, 1.411 etc.). Can the same principle be applied to dimensions? (NEW PARAGRAPH) Various nineteenth and twentieth century mathematicians have shown that it can. Of particular interest to geographers is Benoit Mandelbrot?s (1967) question, ?How long is the coast of Britain?? As he showed, there is no one answer: it depends on the precision of the measuring device the calliper used to trace around the islands (see measurement). As the precision increases, more of the detail of the shoreline is included and the apparent length increases. (NEW PARAGRAPH) To imagine the problem another way, sup pose that we could encode the coastline in perfect detail in a digital mapping package such as a geographic information system. Each time we ?zoomed in? to a fixed location on the coast more of its detail would be revealed. This would happen every time, with out limit, because fractals possess infinite detail. Of course, we cannot really encode this infinite detail and so the total measured length of the coastline becomes dependent on the scale of analysis by how the coast is generalized. Knowing this, we can take the measurement at multiple scales, to plot the (natural log) of the coastline length against the (natural log) of the calliper used to meas ure it. The gradient of the line of best fit to these values is an estimate of the coastline?s fractal dimension. (NEW PARAGRAPH) This may sound abstract, but fractals are evident in nature: leaves, trees, river networks and so forth. Their relevance is not just to the physical landscape. Within the social sciences, fractals can be used to model the processes of urban morphology (Batty and Longley, 1994). Reciprocally, the fractal dimension, as a measure of space filling, can be used to model the sprawl or compactness of cities. Fractals can be linked to chaos theory: the idea that physical or social systems that appear to be chaotic can actually be modelled by clearly defined ?laws? or theories (e.g. using economic theories to model urban develop ment and growth: see Batty, 2005). Finally, fractals are used in remote sensing to com press (reduce the file size) of images. rh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Batty (2005); Mandelbrot (1967). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
free port
An enclave within a country typically a seaport, though increasingly other areas where import and export (customs) duties are either not imposed or are reduced. This enables both warehousing and manu facturing functions to be located there produ cing a local comparative advantage and generating employment and wealth, at a cost advantage over other locations (cf. export processing zone). Free ports (such as Copenhagen, Danzig and Hamburg) existed in Europe until the mid twentieth century, and free port status was a foundation of the economic success of Hong Kong and Singapore. The concept has been adapted for some airports as at Shannon in the Irish Republic and was reworked into that of the urban enterprise zone by the geographer Sir Peter Hall in the late 1980s to promote redevelopment in run down industrial areas through tax advantages. Special Economic Zones (SEZs) with very similar characteristics are now widespread in the global south: India initiated a programme in 2000 and by (NEW PARAGRAPH) had 237 SEZs approved, with a further 306 applications pending (see http://sezindia. nic.in/). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
free trade area (FTA)
A group of nation states that agrees to practice free trade (no tariffs or other restrictions) amongst them selves, while retaining trade barriers with non members. Unlike a customs union, trade relations with non members may differ for each state. Many link contiguous nations into a supranational regional bloc, but there are also non contiguous FTAs. More than half of the some 200 FTAs began after 1990. Rules of origin, defining what counts as production within a member nation state, determine which commodities are subject to free trade. For proponents, FTAs catalyse global free trade; opponents see such ?Preferential? Trade Areas as detrimental. The two largest are within the global north, NAFTA and the EU, and enhance North South trade barriers, but many south South and North South FTAs exist (the latter usually initiated from the North). es (NEW PARAGRAPH)
frictionof distance
The frictional orinhibit ing effect of distance on the volume of inter action between places (including migration, tourist flows, the movement of goods and the spread of ideas and diseases: cf. diffusion): empirical regularities in interaction patterns consistent with the effect are characterized by distance decay. The effect is generated by the combined impact of the time and cost involved in overcoming distance, which varies according to the available transport and com munications infrastructure. The frictions of distance are reduced with technological improvements in that infrastructure though not necessarily to the same extent everywhere (cf. time space compression; time space convergence; time space expansion). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Taylor (1971). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
friends-and-neighbours effect
A form of contextual effect identified in electoral geography whereby voters favour local candi dates (even if this means abandoning their traditional party preferences) because either they know the candidate personally or/and they believe that her/his election will promote local interests. The concept was developed in Key?s (1949) analyses of intra party voting in the US South and generalized by Cox (1969) and others. Candidates who are successful (NEW PARAGRAPH) through this strategy may reward their con stituents by winning public expenditure for the area (cf. neighbourhood effect; pork barrel). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
frontier
A frontier marks a limit. It has been used in two main ways. In the first case, it refers to the limits of a state. The frontier of a state is its border with another state. In modern times, this frontier is thought of as a line, since the sovereignty of a state is asserted as continuous up to its edges. In medieval europe, however, feudal monarchs understood that their authority waned towards the periphery of their lands: these regions were termed ?marches? and the marcher lords had significant autonomy (see feudalism). The emergence of the modern atlas showing countries in different colours with distinct bor ders represents (and in part produces) a world very different from the early modern period and conformable with the presumptions of modern nation states (Black, 1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Modern state frontiers are often contentious too, and a whole branch of geography devel oped on the pretension that borders could be settled scientifically (Curzon, 1888; Holdich, 1916). These scholars paid attention to the distribution of ethnic groups, and to the exist ence of regions that were difficult to settle or cross. An efficient border would clearly separate different sorts of people by a line that was in an isolated region, presenting a significant challenge to transgressors. In fact, these borders reflected the geopolitical inter ests of global superpowers (see geopolitics), and the first major international attempts at comprehensive border setting served the colonial interests of European powers in Africa (at the Berlin Conference in 1884 5) and of the major global powers with regard to Eastern and Central Europe (at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919). The peoples of Africa and of Eastern and Central europe were not consulted. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The second sense of frontier is as a line between settled and unsettled lands, cultivated and uncultivated. This is equally contentious. It almost always, in fact, separates one society from another and yet is presented as the sep aration of society from emptiness (cf. terra nullius). The most famous of these frontiers is that about which Frederick Jackson Turner developed his frontier thesis. The settle ment of North America by Europeans expelled native peoples from their lands. The Europeans persuaded themselves that only sedentary cultivation was true civilization (NEW PARAGRAPH) and that lands not used for that purpose were at best wasted, even empty. Viewed, rather, as an act of coLoniaLism or imperiaLism (Meinig, 1986), frontiers mark an important topic for comparative study. gk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Fawcett (1918); Lamar and Thompson (1981). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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