The Dictionary of Human Geography (90 page)

Read The Dictionary of Human Geography Online

Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
11.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
hegemony
The capacity to exercise control by means other than coercive force; namely, through constructing a willing mass acquies cence towards, and participation in, social projects that are beneficial only to an elite. Hegemony is the dissemination of the values and cultural practices of the elite in such a way that they become unquestioned. Thus, in everyday life the beliefs and values of the elite are reinforced, and a hierarchical social order is reinforced by the everyday actions (see everyday Life) of those who benefit less, if at all, from its existence. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contemporary usage of the term is derived from the writings of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (Gramsci, 1971 [1929 35]) who, while imprisoned by the Italian fascist regime between 1928 and 1935, reflected upon how the majority of citizens gave support to a re pressive social order. The Frankfurt School of Marxism described how the post 1945 con sumer cuLture was a form of hegemony, en trapping the working class in the pursuit of material possessions rather than social change. Cultural geographers have used these Marxist foundations to explore the role of LaNdscape and pLace in perpetuating particular hege monic ideals (Martin, 2000a: see cuLturaL geography). Such works have extended the Marxists? original concentration upon cLass relations to questions of race and patriarchy. Particular attention has been paid to the prac tice of hegemony in colonial settings, especially how the LaNdscape was used to inculcate ideals of racial hierarchy (McKinnon, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The term ?hegemony? has been utilized in a complementary fashion in the analysis of inter state politics in poLiticaL geography, though with the same roots and general meaning. A hegemonic power is the single most powerful state in the inter state system. Though origin ally conceived in terms of material power (pro ductive capacity and military might), scholars increasingly looked to the integrative power of the hegemonic state, or its ability to set a global agenda that, on the whole, other states followed. Post 1945, the USA was identified as the contemporary hegemonic state. Its material power is complemented by its dissemination of a ?prime ModerNity? (Taylor, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , or the definition of the ultimate modern way of life. Connecting back to the Frankfurt School, the US ?prime modernity? is the con sumer culture epitomized in its suburbaN life style. Hegemony is maintained by other states? desire to emulate this lifestyle and perceiving the adoption of particular economic and polit ical practices as the means. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hegemony, in both senses, is a process. Hence, discussion has arisen of the way he gemony is resisted. In the first meaning of the term, working class and subaLterN groups have adopted cultural practices that run coun ter to hegemonic demands. In the second meaning, discussion of the decline of US power, the challenge of other states and terrorist groups, and the meaning of ?eM pire? question whether hegemonic rule is being replaced by more coercive practices. A counter argument is found in the notion of ?imperial overstretch? in which hegemonic states are eventually bankrupted by their over seas commitments and lose their primacy (Kennedy, 1988). cf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Agnew (2005a); Lears (1985). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
heritage
Although ?heritage? includes and derives from a highly individualized notion of personal inheritance or bequest (e.g. through family wills and legacies), huMaN geography is concerned with collective notions of heritage that link a group to a shared inheritance. In this context, heritage usually denotes two related sets of meanings. On the one hand, it refers to iconic cuLturaL LaNdscapes or, usually and more specifically, to tourisM sites with an historical theme that have often been protected or preserved in some way for the nation state and become part of the ?heri tage industry?; for example, a museum or an archaeological site (Urry, 2002 [1990]). On the other hand, heritage refers to a suite of shared cultural vaLues and MeMories inher ited over time and expressed through a variety of cultural perforMaNces for example, song or parade (Peckham, 2003). The basis of this group identification varies across time and space and can hinge on allegiance derived from, for instance, a communal religious trad ition, a class formation, geographical propin quity, and a national or imperial ideNtity (Moore and Whelan, 2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Traditionally, historians and geographers have viewed heritage sites as spaces for inscrib ing nationalist narratives of the past on to the popular imagination (see nationaLism). The historical perspectives transmitted through these sites were seen to be selective, partial and distorting. They offered a ?bogus? history that ignored or sanitized what are now taken to be the less savoury dimensions of the past. They therefore were contrasted with the work of professional historians, represented in textbooks and monographs, where ?testable truth is [the] chief hallmark [and] ... histor ians? credibility depends on their sources being open to scrutiny? (Lowenthal, 1997, p. 120). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This distinction between ?true history? and ?false heritage? has been challenged from a variety of directions. Samuel (1984) made an important case for treating heritage sites as important loci for retrieving the history of the marginal, the dispossessed and the subaltern. Samuel suggests that they can act as important spaces for representing those voices often omitted in textbooks. So, for instance, indus trial heritage sites can represent the lives and practices of working class people in ways that are provocative and interesting to a popular audience and not always found in textbook accounts. post structuraLism suggests that all historical narration is perspectival, and thus queries the distinction between repre sentation and reality, between fake heritage and genuine history, while Urry (1990, p. 82) claims that postmodernism involves ?dissolv ing of boundaries, not only between high and low cultures, but also between different cultural forms, such as tourism, art, music, sport, shopping and architecture? (1990, p. 82) (see also culture). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Recently, geographers have begun to tackle the performative elements of heritage produc tion and consumption (Duncan, 2003; Hoelscher, 2003: see performativity). In this work, not only are the narrative structure and visual elements of a heritage attraction analysed, but also the impact of the other senses, and the emotional response of the audience and the ?actors? to the site become crucial parts of the analysis. This broadens the discussion beyond the purely visual element of heritage, to focus attention on the whole em bodied experience involved in making and participating in a heritage site. While this work is still in its infancy, it is pointing to important new themes that human geograph ers can address in their analysis of the ever increasing number of heritage places. nj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hoelscher (2003); Peckham (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
hermeneutics
The study of interpretation and meaning. Hermeneutics derives from the Greek word meaning to announce, to clarify or to reveal. In this sense, hermeneutics has always been an integral part of the use of Lan guage. The first stirrings of hermeneutics as a formal discipline began with the elucidation of biblical texts: both clarifying God?s word, and adjudicating among competing interpret ations. By the end of the eighteenth century, with the work of F. Schleiermacher (1768 1834), hermeneutics broadened to include the interpretation of historical texts more gen erally. In claiming that to understand a text required scrutiny of the intentions of its author, Schleiermacher?s hermeneutics impli citly challenged the relevance of the emerging scientific method for the human sciences. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Wilhelm Dilthey?s (1833 1911) writings both generalized hermeneutics and made its critique of natural science explicit. He argued that the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) required a special methodology, hermeneutics, in order to understand the meanings of its objects of study. Those certainly included texts, but under Dilthey?s view they could include any entity in which human meaning was invested. In con trast, the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) were not concerned with human meaning, and consequently applied an abstract universal vocabulary: the laws of physics, chemical formulae and geometrical relations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) For Dilthey, meaning is recovered through practicing the hermeneutic circle. By tacking back and forth both between our presupposi tions and the text itself, as well as between individual parts of the text and its whole, meaning and understanding are attained. This same procedure can be used to clarify meaning in the non textual, such as works of art, the artefacts of materiaL cuLture or cuL turaL Landscapes. More generally, the her meneutic method is intrinsically circular, indeterminate and perspectival. It is circular because it involves a constant movement from us, the interpreter(s), to the interpreted and back again, thereby implying that every inter pretation is itself reinterpreted. It is indeter minate because that loop of interpretation has no end. And it is perspectival because interpreters are embedded in their situations, making their knowledge partial and incom plete (cf. situated knowledge). None of this means that interpretation is merely personal whim and fancy. Interpretations are always made against a set of socially agreed upon canons and texts (albeit interpreted ones) that are publicly accessible. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the twentieth century, the German phil osopher Martin Heidegger (1889 1976) took Dilthey?s epistemological rendering of her meneutics and transformed it into an onto logical one, making its focus ?being? rather than ?knowledge? (cf. epistemoLogy; ontol ogy). The details are complex, but the gist is that problems of understanding unfold from our ?being in the world?. Just as the hermen eutic circle for Dilthey involved tacking be tween parts of a text and its whole, for Heidegger it involves a movement between an anticipatory pre understanding, which comes from our ?being ness??, and our role as knowing subjects. Hans Georg Gadamer (1900 2002) subsequently took Heidegger?s notion of pre understanding and showed its relation to notions of prejudice, authority and tradition. Since the eNlighteNmeNt, Gadamer argued, there has been prejudice against preju dice. For him, however, ?pre judgement?, or pre judice, is what makes understanding pos sible. In particular, the prejudices of historical ?traditions? are vital; without immersion in tra ditions, there is no understanding. It is not that traditions are frozen and immutable: Gadamer?s point is that we can never escape traditions and the historical perspective that they bring. Historical understanding proceeds by a movement from our prejudices (tradi tions) to the historical totality and back, mak ing understanding ?an open and continuously renewed ??fusion?? of ??historical horizons?? ? (Thompson, 1996, p. 381). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gadamer?s work, in turn, provoked two other formulations. First, the German critical theorist JÂÂ81rgen Habermas (b. 1929) thought that Gadamer made humans too much the dupes of historical tradition. Consequently, he developed a criticaL theory of society by setting hermeneutics against quasi transcendental forms of ?communicative rea son? that in conjunction produce the possibil ity of emancipation and liberation. Second, American philosophers Richard Rorty (1931 (NEW PARAGRAPH) and Richard Bernstein, writing under the sign of neo pragmatism, were sceptical of Gadamer?s claim that hermeneutics was the method of the human sciences, but acknow ledged its importance for the critique of grand theory and other forms of fouNdatioNaLism (thus connecting hermeneutics to post structuraLism). Both Rorty and Bernstein upheld the pragmatist ideal of ?conversation?, which they believed was another version of the hermeneutic circle, in this case, juxtaposing new evidence and ideas with existing and pos sibly incommensurate ones. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hermeneutics was introduced to huMaN geography to contest the eMpiricisM and positivisM found in spatiaL scieNce. Butti mer?s (1974) ?dialogical approach?, which in volved bringing together inside and outside views, was an important early contribution, as were Tuan?s (1971) reflexive approach to topophiLia (?to know the world is to know oneself?) and Harrison and Livingstone?s (NEW PARAGRAPH) ?presuppositional approach?. These early forays were codified under huMaNistic geography, which made human meaning and intentionality the very core of its concern. Since then, the explicit working out of the hermeneutical approach has become less im portant, although there have been some ex ceptions, such as Barnes? (2001) invocation in his work on the cuLturaL turN within eco NoMic geography and Livingstone?s (2002c) writings on a distinctly ?tropical hermeneutics? (see tropicality). In addition, hermeneutics has been implicitly present in the burgeoning discussions about oNtoLogy, especially those drawing upon Heidegger, and which in turn have seeped into debates around spatiaLity. More generally, the spirit of hermeneutical enquiry that is, the recognition of the im portance of interpretation, open mindedness and a judicious, reflexive sensibility is as great as it has ever been, and is certainly evident in criticaL huMaN geography, including those versions informed by post structuraLisM. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bernstein (1983). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
heteronormativity
A social regulatory framework that produces binary sex division, normalizes desire between men and women, and marginalizes other sexuaLities as different and deviant. Much like whiteNess, heteronor mativity is naturalized so as to be invisible to the heterosexual population, but is a compul sory norm that itself produces Nature; namely, bodies sexed as male or female. Reversing the assumed relations between sex and geNder, Butler (1990) has argued that heteronormativity is the foundation on which sexual difference is built. Predicated on the paternal law of kinship, heteronormativity ?requires conformity to its own notions of ??nature?? and gains its legitimacy through the binary and asymmetrical naturalization of bodies? (Butler, 1990, p. 106: see perfor Mativity). Bodies outside this binary are un intelligible or monstrous. Berlant has argued that in the USA in the past 20 years, the (NEW PARAGRAPH) political has collapsed into the intimate sphere of the heterosexual family, such that ?the fam ily sphere [is] considered the moral, ethical, and the political horizon of national and pol itical interest? (1997, p. 262); this has led to the intensified regulation of heteronormativ ity. Honig (1998) cites the role of immigra tion in reinforcing heteronormativity. Geographers have drawn attention to the many ways in which space is bound up with the processes through which sexual identities are constructed, naturalized and contested, and to the need to study the particularity of heterosexualities in specific contexts (Hubbard, 2000). ?Homonormativity? has (NEW PARAGRAPH) been identified as a new strand of heteronor mativity. It is a politics that emerged in the 1990s, associated with state sanctioned same sex marriages and other rights for gays and lesbians, and it has been criticized for upholding, rather than contesting, dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions. The globalization of this trend has led to criticisms of Western cultural imperialism; Oswin (2007) questions the geographical as sumption that lies behind this critique that of the DlffUSlON of ideas from Western to other societies and argues for the need to assess the specificity of homonormativity in context. gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hubbard (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

Other books

Command Performance by Annabel Joseph
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
Got You Back by Jane Fallon
The Price of Malice by Archer Mayor
Virgin Soul by Judy Juanita