The Dictionary of Human Geography (88 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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greenhouse effect
See global warming (NEW PARAGRAPH)
gross domestic product (GDP)
A monet ary estimate of the value (at current market prices) of final goods and services produced within an economy (usually national) during a given period. Capital expenditure, indirect taxes and subsidies are excluded, as is the value of intermediate products (such as raw materials) which is included in the value of final goods. GDP is often favoured over gross nationaL product (gnp) as a measure of economic activity because it excludes net income from abroad. International compar isons of GDP, either in aggregate or per capita, are difficult because of fluctuations in currency values through floating exchange rates, and some attempt to standardize for this using (NEW PARAGRAPH) purchasing power parities, derived from data on the costs of a ?standard basket' of goods and services. In addition, as a recent OECD (2006) report indicated, comparison of GDP levels internationally is difficult because: it takes no account of leisure time and the qual ity of the environment; it is not standardized for income inequality (an extra $1,000 per annum means much more to a poor than to a rich person); it does not factor in negative contributors to the quauty of Ufe (such as ponution); and it takes no account of the depreciation of capital stock. Unfortunately, though measures have been devised to capture these, they are not readily available for many countries. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
gross national product (GNP)
A measure of economic activity in a given period of time, usually applied to national economies. It com prises gross domestic product (gdp) plus the net return from profits, dividends and in come earned abroad. GNP estimates are used to compare the volume of economic activity over time and space either in aggregate or per capita but to avoid complications intro duced by inflation and exchange rate fluctu ations they have to be converted to a common base. This involves the use of purchasing power parities (the costs of a ?standard basket' of goods and services at a given period) as in the calculated rate of inflation within a coun try, which is taken into account when calcu lating a ?real terms? rate of GNP growth. GNP is not necessarily a valid measure of ?economic health? since harmful consequences (e.g. on the environment) are not taken into account, whereas the later costs of their amelioration are: increased expenditure on poncing could stimulate GNP growth, for example, even if it was merely a response to an increased crime rate. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
growth coalitions
Alliances of urban elites, with shared interests in local economic growth, partnered in pursuit of business friendly and market oriented forms of city governance and resource allocation (Logan and Molotch, 1987). Typically centring on the rentier cLass (including developers, financiers and realtors), the business interests of whom are ?place based', growth coalitions also com prise a range of auxiliary players such as uni versities, media and utility owners, representatives of business and civic organiza tions, cultural leaders and labour unions. What are sometimes called ?growth machines' or ?urban regimes' have assumed increased significance in the context of the entrepreneur ial turn in urban politics since the 1970s. jpe (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Jonas and Wilson (1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
growth pole
A dynamic and highly inte grated set of industries, often induced by the state, organized around a propulsive leading sector or industry. Growth poles are intended to generate rapid growth, and to disseminate this through spillover and multiplier effects in the rest of the economy. The concept was devised by French economist Francois Perroux (1903 87), who, in 1955, located the pole de croissance in abstract economic space. It was translated into more concrete geographical terms by J.R. Boudeville (1966). On the bases of external economies and economies of agglomeration and hence of uneven deveLopment Boudeville argued that the set of industries forming the growth pole might be clustered spatially and linked to an existing urban area. He also pointed to the regionally differentiated growth that such a spatial strategy might generate. The precise meaning of the term ?growth pole? is difficult to pin down, however, because it is frequently used in a far looser fashion to denote any (planned) spatial clustering of economic activity. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The apparent simplicity of the notion, its suggestion of dynamism and its ability to con nect problems of sectoral growth and planning with those of intra and inter regional growth and planning, led to its ready acceptance and widespread use in the 1970s and 1980s. Although some commentators have seen Per roux?s ideas resurfacing in the new economic geography (Meardon, 2001), there were sev eral persistent difficulties associated with growth poles in both theory and practice that led to its fall from grace. These included the following: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Technical problems, notably: (a) the inter dependent decisions to be made on the location, size and sectoral composition of a growth pole this was not a serious problem for Perroux, who defined growth poles around a single propulsive industry, but more recent research on the related ideas of clusters and industrial dis tricts identifies networks of industries as central to urban and regional develop ment; (b) the distinction between spon taneous and planned poles, with the latter requiring integrated social and physical planning; (c) the nature of the intersec toral and interregional transmission of growth; (d) the relationship between the public provision of iNfRASTRUCTURE and the success of the growth pole; (e) the relationship between the growth pole and existing city distributions; and (f) the need for monitoring and management to avoid dis economies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Political and policy horizons: the appropri ate time span over which to judge suc cess or failure of a growth pole say, 15 25 years is often too long in political terms, as elected governments prefer re sults of their policies to be evident over the length of the electoral cycle (which is usually less than four years). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Space time path dependence: the success of (NEW PARAGRAPH) a growth pole depends upon the extent to which it is linked to, and energizes and dynamizes an existing space economy or economic landscape. Without such con formities, the spillover effects are severely inhibited. Porter?s (1998a, 2000) advo cacy of clusters as a means of enhancing the competitive advantage of localities has prompted critics such as Martin and Sunley (2003) to object that such policy interventions are merely one effective geography of production that may lock out other possibilities. rl (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Buttler (1975). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
growth theory
In the wake of the Second World War, and after the experience of the Marshall Plan in assisting the recovery of war torn EUROPE, several economists with dir ect experience in multilateral institutions and the Marshall Plan turned their attention to the question of economic development in the third world. Among these pioneers of development thinking were Finnish economist Ragnar Nurkse (1953), Austrian economist Paul Rodenstein Rodan (1976), German born and American naturalized economist Albert Hirschmann (1958), West Indian Nobel Laureate Sir Arthur Lewis (1984), and American economic historian Walt Rostow (1960). Their ideas were far from identical, but they formed a loose school of thought growth theorists emphasizing a historically informed and practical approach to economic development, and stood at an angle to the neo classical models of Solow and others. Rostow was something of an odd man out insofar as his simple stage theory of (NEW PARAGRAPH) European industrial replication was both less analytical and less historically sophisticated than the others (cf. rostow model). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The growth theorists were framed by three historical dynamics: the legacy of the Keynesian revolution and the experience of international Keynesianism through the European recovery programme; the political agenda of the USA in the wake of 1945 and increasingly during the cold war, which turned on the use of Bretton Woods institutions to foster development and fair dealing, as President Truman put it in 1949; and the nationalist developmentalism (cf. nationalism) associated with the last wave of decolonization, which also emerged during and after the Second World War. Growth the ory in its emphasis on aggregate phenomena and on industrialization bred a predilection for authoritative intervention in which the state was a necessary actor which involved plan ning systems, the application of economic growth models and aid mechanisms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) All of the growth theorists shared some sort of affinity for Keynes. They emphasized aggregate economic processes such as rates of saving and rates of investment (cf. neo classical economics). Poor economic per formance and lack of aggregate demand were related. They also revealed a preference for industrialization as a driving force indeed, they were advocates of what in the 1930s had become import substituting industrialization and for short term state interventions. mar kETS were means not ends, and like Alexander Gerschenkron (1968 one of their contem poraries), they realized that late developers required a dirigiste state. However, as growth theorists they presumed that an economy would achieve its best results within a com petitive market structure. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Each of the growth theorists is a major in tellectual figure in the history of economics, but there were important commonalities and points of confluence (if not necessarily agree ment), which animated their policy and theory during the 1950s. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There was the concept of hidden development potential in the less developed nations. As Gerschenkron had argued, there were ?advan tages to backwardness?, and in these advantages lay hidden comparative advantages: (NEW PARAGRAPH) A recognition of market failures and the role of positive externalities in creating virtu ous circle effects. Rodenstein Rodan?s (1976) emphasis on social overhead capital and the role of government was a case in point. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The differences and merits of balanced and unbalanced growth, and how each was related to the necessity for a ?big push? to trigger economic growth. Nurkse (1953), like Rodenstein Rodan, emphasized the need for coordinated increase in the amount of capital utilized in a wide range of industries if industrialization was to be achieved. Hirschmann (1958), while agreeing with Nurske and others, also ar gued that unbalanced growth could, through linkage effects, generate innov ations created by market responses to shortage and surpluses. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The potential, as Lewis (1984) indicated, for surplus labour as a stimulant to growth in so called duaL economies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The significance of saving at particular historical moments in order to enter what Rostow (Rostow) called the ?take off stage? of industrialization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Growth theory, from the vantage point of the (NEW PARAGRAPH) neo LiberaL revolution of the 1980s, appears (NEW PARAGRAPH) as an instance of Keynesian internationalism in which market failures, planning, social cap ital and some aspects of poLiticaL economy are put to the service of ?developing? the poorer nations of the world. All of these growth theorists identified key developmental issues equilibrium, social overhead capital, planning which have continued to be ob jects of debate, and each (perhaps with the exception of Rostow) contributed to both the building of postwar multilateral development institutions and to the idea, which in a way was crushed by the weight of the Cold War, of a sort of liberal developmental international ism (see LiberaLism). In the 1980s, a ?new growth theory? emerged in which endogenous growth can occur especially through human capital and new technologies (rather than being assumed, as in neo classical appro aches, by an exogenous savings rate or rate of progress of technical change). mw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cypher and Dietz (1997); Preston (1996)
habitus
A term coined by French anthro pologist/sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to convey the routinized, yet indeterminate, nature of social practice. It mediates between objectivist accounts, such as from structuralism, and individualistic accounts, such as from phe nomenology. The former would see individ ual practice as determined by social factors, while the latter would emphasize the individ ual?s intentions. In essence, then, it speaks to the oxymoronic nature of always improvised yet repetitively predictable practices of every day life. Bourdieu himself defined habitus as the system of: (NEW PARAGRAPH) durable, transposable dispositions, struc tured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presup posing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. Objectively ?regular? and ?regulated? without being in any way the product of obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the organizing action of a con ductor. (Bourdieu, 1990b, p. 53) (NEW PARAGRAPH) This definition, then, emphasizes that prac tices are not (generally) subject to the anarchy of individual intentions. He plays down the role of intention, rejecting conscious planning as a principle, in favour of routinization. He also stresses that there are collective patterns without implying there is a conscious plan or conformity. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Rather, there is adaptation to a constricted set of opportunities presented to each actor in a ?social field?. These have been variously inter preted, but usually represent a social domain in which there are shared rules of operation. These can be defined by institutions but can be more open, and are defined by the circula tion of specific forms and practices. Bourdieu himself worked with the ?artistic field?, or what he more broadly defined as the field of cultural production, the field of consumption and the ?educational field?. Clearly, a critique is that the edges of these can be vague and that applied mechanically they merely render a institutional sociology. However, the virtue of his approach is that these fields are relatively autonomous from each other thus advantage in one field does not automatically mean advantage in an other. Most famously, he thus developed a no tion of the accumulation of cultural capital as separate from economic capital. The plur ality of fields provides for multiple dimensions of power and status in society. Each field has its own tacit rules and continual adaptation pro duces ingrained dispositions. For example, in Bourdieu?s study of amateur photography a voluntary activity, in which few people have any training he found people?s pictures remarkably similar, so ?there are few activities which are so stereotyped and less aband oned to the anarchy of individual intentions? (Bourdieu, 1990a, p. 19). Bourdieu has been criticized for being reductive and emphasizing the structural side of practices, and his work has an unfashionable belief in the ability to objectify the conditions of the emergence of practices. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Within geography, his work was first taken up as a way of mediating in debates between structuralism?s focus on determinations of ac tion and accounts focusing on human agency (e.g. Thrift, 1983). Along with structuration theory, it offered a middle way in debates of the 1980s. In the 1990s, his work on cultural capital was heavily invoked in studies of con sumption, connecting habitus to the lifestyles of different class fractions (e.g. Bridge, 2001). Finally, from the 1990s interest in his notion of habitus has focused around how tacit know ledge might connect with work on the body and routinized habit, and embodied memory (e.g. Alsmark, 1996). mc (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Alsmark (1996); Bourdieu (1995); Bridge (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Thrift (1983). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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