The Dictionary of Human Geography (76 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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genocide
The deliberate systematic mass killing and physical liquidation (?extermin ation?) of a group of human beings who are identified by their murderers as sharing na tional origin, ethnicity, race, genDer or other social distinction. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The term was proposed by the Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin in his Axis rule in occupied Europe (1944), from the Latin genus (birth, class, order, tribe) and cida (a person who kills). Lemkin defined genocide as ?the de struction of a nation or of an ethnic group? and, as the title of his book suggests, he was concerned with the mass murders carried out by the Third Reich in occupied Europe, and specifically with what came to be known as the holocaust (see also fascism). Lemkin pro posed that the industrialized murders of mil lions of Jews, Romanies, Slavs, gays and others should be deemed crimes against humanity, which he suggested involved either ?barbar ism? acts directed at the physical elimination of a group or ?vandalism? acts directed at the destruction of the group?s cuLture. But these distinctions have turned out to be prob lematic: partly because the first almost always involves a series of cultural constructions that sustain a narrative of purification and contam ination to animate and legitimate the atroci ties, so that it is difficult to hold the two apart, and partly because ?barbarism? and ?vandal ism? are themselves historically sedimented, racialized terms that are impregnated with a eurocentrism that identifies europe with a privileged sense of civiLization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In fact, genocide has a troubling relation ship to Europe?s history and to the modern world more generally. Some commentators have seen the Holocaust as at once starkly modern and a hideous deformation of the pro ject of modernity, but others have insisted on its intimate connections with European mod ernity (Bauman, 2000b). Taking into account other genocidal regimes, Rummel (1994) esti mated that during the twentieth century six times more people 169 million were killed by their own governments in what he called democide or ?murder by government? than were killed in war, and Levene (2000) has explored the logics of state and intra state vioLence in other directions to try to account for the twen tieth century as ?the century of genocide?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Although the term ?genocide? is modern, however, and a host of other ? cides? politi cide, ?terracide? or ?the erasure of space? (Tyner, 2008) and urbicide among them have been proposed to identify other sup posedly modern horrors, like its hideous kin ethnic cLeansing, the practice of genocide has a much longer history. Many scholars have extended the term backwards in time (see, most comprehensively, Kiernan, 2007) and drawn attention to the role of genocide in the biopolitics of colonialism and imperial ism. Thus Wolfe (2006) describes a ?logic of elimination? that includes ?the summary liquid ation of indigenous people? and the calculated destruction of their ways of life by settler colo nialisms, and Davis (2001) identifies a global series of ?Late Victorian Holocausts?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The attribution of the term, past or present, is always highly charged because it combines juridical, political and analytical inflections (see Jones, 2006, pp. 15 22). Its origins lie in international Law: following Lemkin?s cam paign, the United Nations adopted the Con vention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, but it was almost fifty years before prosecutions for genocide were brought before International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (for crimes since 1991) and Ruanda (for crimes in 1994). The long interval can be explained partly by the protracted process of ratification, but partly by the implications of the term itself: ?It aims to sound the alarm and oblige action? (Stein, 2005, p. 190). In fact, Stein argues that the initial reluctance to des ignate clusters of mass killings as genocide has since yielded to the application of the term to so called ?new wars? (see war) and other con temporary conflicts ?in which large scale cleansings, killings and brutalities occur . . . Whereas previously the problem was one of apparent singularity, currently it is that of near universality.? This is something of an overstatement, as the controversy over the cri sis in Darfur revealed (Straus, 2005; de Waal, 2005; Totten and Markusen, 2006), but it is clear that the attempt to ring fence the Holocaust as both paradigmatic and singu lar, what Wolfe (2006, p. 402) calls ?the non paradigmatic paradigm that, being the in dispensable example, can never merely exem plify? has given way to a determination to analyse the logics and practices of extermin ation and atrocity, and to understand how ?or dinary people? could have taken part in state and para state programmes of mass murder. human rights organizations are vocal in their investigations (see, for example, http://www. genocidewatch.org) and there is now an inter national network of genocide scholars (see http://www.inogs.com). Geographical analysis has included the use of satellite photography and remote sensing techniques to identify mass graves (cf. Parks, 2001); studies of the destruction of pLace and Landscape to eradi cate any trace or even memory of the targeted group?s presence; and comparative studies of contemporary genocides (Wood, 2001). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Jones (2006); Wood (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) genre de vie A French expression meaning ?mode of life?, used by Paul Vidal de la Blache, doyen of French regionaL geography at the turn of the twentieth century, to describe the range of possible livelihoods developed by geographically bounded, socially distinctive, mainly rural communities. It was used along side the related concepts of milieu (the geographical environment that provides a community with its resources) and circulation (the communications linking different com munities) to make sense of traditional peasant societies that seemed destined to be replaced by modern, deracinated urban industrial soci eties in both the developed and the developing worlds. mjh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Buttimer (1971); Vidal de la Blache (1911). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
gentrification
Middle class settlement in renovated or redeveloped properties in older, inner city districts formerly occupied by a lower income population. The process was first named by Ruth Glass, as she observed the arrival of the ?gentry? and the accompany ing social transition of several districts in cen tral London in the early 1960s. A decade later, broader recognition of gentrification followed in large cities such as London, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Toronto and Sydney undergoing occupational transition from an industrial to a post industrial economy. But more recently gentrification has been identi fied more widely, in smaller urban centres, in Southern and Eastern Europe and also in some major centres in Asia and Latin America (Atkinson and Bridge, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Explanation of gentrification has moved in several directions. One account focused upon housing market dynamics, in particular the power of capital to shape landscape change (Smith, N., 1996b). Another emphasized the rapid growth of a ?new class? of private and public sector professionals and managers in post industrial societies, who were drawn to urbane inner city locations (Ley, 1996). Re lated to this occupational change was the movement of women into the new class work force, and the growth of smaller adult oriented households well suited to central neighbourhoods. By the mid 1980s, the suc cessful re colonization in the older inner city by the middle class was well established, and more recent developments have been the ex tension and intensification of gentrification in new forms, including loft conversions, the massive development of obsolete industrial land, frequently on waterfront sites, such as the London Docklands, and also the deepen ing of wealth in formerly gentrified areas, a process named ?super gentrification? by Lees (NEW PARAGRAPH) from studies in New York and London. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The sustained interest in gentrification re search for more than a generation has resulted in part from its engagement with a number of important conceptual categories including class, gender, and, most recently, race, pat terns and styles of consumption, housing and other service needs, social polarization and the governance practices of neo liberalism in the global city. In addition, it has been a forum where competing epistemological and theor etical positions have met (Hamnett, 2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gentrification has been seen ambivalently. Positive impacts include new investment in areas often requiring significant land use and service improvement, the enhancement of the urban tax base, and the creation of new (though typically low income) service jobs in such fields as the restaurant and arts sectors, (NEW PARAGRAPH) home renovation, cleaning and security. But against this has been the massive loss of af fordable inner city housing for lower income groups, an integral element of the polarization of life chances in the global city. Gentrifica tion has become a conscious policy strategy in many cities seeking to reconfigure their urban economies and landscapes in the wake of massive deindustriaLization. Regeneration policies, from Amsterdam to Vancouver, fre quently seek a putative ?social mix' that includes middle class housing in former working class neighbourhoods. Not surpris ingly, gentrification has frequently become a politicized and contested process of residential transformation. dL (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Atkinson (2003); Atkinson and Bridge (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
geo-body
The spatial expression of the modern nation. It is the socially constructed ?territorial definition which creates effects by classifying, communicating, and enforce ment on people, things, and relationships' (see territory). This definition is derived from the work of cultural historian Thongchai Winichakul, who coined the term in his study of the cultural construction of the Siamese/Thai nation, in which he argued that the nation's spatial extent is not unproblem atic but, rather, is a naturalized and mythic construction, a component of the ?life of the nation' that is at once ?a source of pride, loy alty, love, passion, bias, hatred, reason, [and] unreason? (Winichakul, 1994, p. 17). It is im portant to distinguish between state mapping and the construction of the ?geo body?. State mapping, the cartography of the modern state, entails detailed medium and large scale topographical mapping which, along with thematic statistical mapping, allows the state apparatus oversight over its territory and population (see governmentaLity). The cartographic imaginary ofthe modern nation, by contrast, entails the deployment of simple and simplistic small scale maps within emotional and nationally emotive discourses, especially those carried on through news media and pri mary school texts (cf. emotionaL geograph ies). It is this second cartographic practice that finds resonance in subsequent studies of the cartographic construction of national iden tity, whether post colonial (e.g. Ramaswamy, (NEW PARAGRAPH) or European (e.g. Herb, 1997). Indeed, Winichakul?s work prompted Anderson (1991a (NEW PARAGRAPH) ) to extend his crucial conception ofnat ions as ?imagined communities' to encompass (NEW PARAGRAPH) the self conscious formation of national iden tities through maps, and in particular through ?logo maps? that sketch in outline a simple and homogenous space imbued with nationalistic sentiments: more generally, Helgerson (1992) convincingly argued that a modern nation re quires a spatial self conception and that such self conceptions are constructed cartographic ally. From these studies, it seems appropriate to limit the use of ?geo body? to the spatial em bodiment of the nation and its self imaginings, leaving each state to construct and define its territorial and political limits through markedly different cartographic practices, technologies and Discourses. mhe (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Winichakul (1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
geocoding
Geocoding is the act of convert ing paper maps into computer readable form by scanning or Digitizing (Clarke, 2002, p. 313) or, alternatively, the act of assigning a location to information (Longley, Goodchild, Maguire and Rhind, 2005, p. 110). Despite revealing that there is no standardized nomen clature for geographic information systems (gis), these two meanings cover common ground. To convert or to encode geographical information digitally in a GIS requires that both the characteristics and the locations of the features of interest be stored in a database, usually in vector or raster format. Recording what is found and where gives GIS its map ping and spatial analytical capabilities. rh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Longley, Goodchild, Maguire and Rhind (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
geocomputation
The technique of geo computation applies the processing power of computers to enable advanced geographical analysis and modelling. However, this broad definition conceals a diversity of methods and philosophies, leading Couclelis (1998, p. 18) to ask ?whether geocomputation is to be understood as a new perspective or para digm in geography . . . or as a grab bag of useful computer based tools?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) To some, the spirit ofgeocomputation is con veyed by Openshaw, Charlton, Wymer and Craft?s (1987) geographical analysis mA chine (gam), designed to look for spatial clus ters within child leukaemia data for northern England. As a method of spatial analysis and local pattern detection, it is characterized by iterative repeat testing, subdividing the study region into overlapping regions, within each of which a significance test ofthe rate ofincidence (ofleukaemia) is undertaken. Such a technique is often portrayed as inductive (cf. inDuction): drawing out ideas, inferences and working hypotheses from what is found in the data, and suggesting that the process ofgeographical knowledge construction is data driven or ?avowedly empiricist? (Longley, Brooks, McDonnell and Macmillan, 1998). However, that portrayal is not entirely satisfactory given any a priori postulate or theorization that radi ation causes leukaemia and therefore an exp ectation that a cluster of cases be found in proximity to a nuclear power station. Finding the cluster does not prove the theory, but it may add circumstantial evidence. In this manner, geocomputational practices are abductive (cf. abDuction): interesting cases (or spatial ?hot spots?) are used to support a plausible although not logically necessary conclusion, not a purely (inductive) empirical generalization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Others pursue a more deductive tradition of scientific practice (cf. DeDuction), with the foundations of geocomputation established firmly in the analytical traditions of spatiaL science and geography?s quantitative revoLution (see, for example, the history of geocomputation outlined at www.geocompu tation.org). Here, the focus is on modelling, analysing and theorizing dynamic socio economic or physical systems (cf. moDeL); on modelling spatial distributions, fLows, Networks, hierarchies and Diffusions. In particular, there is an interest in methods of simuLation from a human geography perspective, of simulating the spatial pattern ing, causes and consequences of population change, urban morphoLogy, economic cycles, transport congestion and so forth. These methods build on the idea of Monte Carlo simulation outlined by Haggett (1965). It means that the rules of the system (assumed from, say, economic theory) are played out in virtual spaces, where what came before affects what follows, but the geographical outcomes are not entirely fixed or predetermined. Instead, there is randomness in the system the ability to generate particular chance events albeit that the consequences of those events are often constrained by the context in which they are generated; for example, their locations and the ?state? of the system around them. Such methods include the use of cel LuLar automata and agent baseD moDeLLing (Flake, 2001) to model complex systems such as cities (Batty, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) If this vision of geocomputation is nomo thetic and law seeking, does it then risk the criticisms of positivism, which have been used as the stick to beat other areas of quantitative, computational and spatial scientific human geography? Not necessarily. For example, if we accept the proposition that visuaLization of pattern suggests insight into the processes that generate that pattern (e.g. Batty and Longley, 1994), and if the researcher goes beyond what is empirically observable to ask questions and form concepts about the more fundamental structures and mechanisms for the events or phenomena under study, then the tenets of reaLism or critical realist philoso phies are approached (Danermark, Ekstrom, Jakobsen and Karlsson, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Is, then, Couclelis (1998, p. 22) still right to say that geocomputation has ?no [single] philosophy (and proud of it!)?? Perhaps so. Perhaps, desirably so. For, as computers and computation develop and evolve, new oppor tunities are presented for innovative geograph ical problem solving, alternative expressions of geographical enquiry and fresh geographical theorization, expLanation and understanding. A few years ago the character of geocomputa tion could be conveyed by specifying what it was not: it was not simply geographic infor mation systems but, rather, a reaction to the (then) limited geometric data manipulations and mapping capabilities offered by GIS. What was sought was the flexibility for more sophisticated and creative spatial statistical an alysis, data visualization, process modelling and dynamic simulation that broke out of the GIS straightjacket. These various domains of geocomputation spatiaL anaLysis, geovisua lization, geosimulation and the application of artificiaL inteLLigence for geographical problem solving and knowledge discovery still characterize geocomputation. But the ?definition? by counterfactuaL has begun to age, as interoperabiLity and the ability to customise GIS have led to more sophisticated geocomputational methods to be implemen ted within a GIS environment (Maguire, Batty and Goodchild, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Nevertheless, new technologies could also yield a clearer identity for geocomputation. Computational ?grid? technologies an allusion to electricity power grids offer the opportunity for researchers to ?plug in? to high performance computer networks under the rubric of ?e ? (electronic) social science. Martin (2005) identifies four essential research issues for e sociaL science: automated data mining; visualization of spatial data uncertainty; in corporation of an explicitly spatial dimension into simulation modelling; and neighbour (NEW PARAGRAPH) hood cLassification (see geodemographics) from multi source distributed data sets. These, he argues, could each be considered as important elements of a grid enabled, geo computational toolkit. It is this potential to contribute to the new e science research environments that may crystallize geocom putation as a distinct research field spanning geography and related disciplines. rh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ehlen, Caldwell and Harding (2002); Gahegan (1999); Macmillan (1998); Martin (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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