The Dictionary of Human Geography (97 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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humanistic geography
An approach that seeks to put humans at the centre of geog raphy. Accounts of disciplinary history have created for humanistic geography a sense of (NEW PARAGRAPH) singularity of vision that overlooks the mul tiple, and sometimes conflicting, approaches that humanistic geographers have adopted. They have drawn upon a wide range of hu manist philosophies, which has led to a generic humanistic geography in addition to versions based around essentialism, idealism, (NEW PARAGRAPH) phenomenology and pragmatism (see also humanism). Despite this, there are key simi larities in terms of the reasoning behind the emergence in the 1970s of humanistic geog raphy; it was a response to what were seen as the dehumanizing effects of both positivism and structural marxism, in addition to pro moting a positive model of a humanistic geog raphy. Buttimer has argued that: (NEW PARAGRAPH) From whatever ideological stance it has emerged, the case for humanism has usually been made with the conviction that there must be more to human geography than the danse macabre of materialistically motiv ated robots which, in the opinion of many, was staged by the post World War II ?scien tific? reformation. (Buttimer, 1993, p. 47) (NEW PARAGRAPH) For many humanistic geographers, the world is primarily the sum of human experi ences through their encounters with ?external reality?, which cannot be accessed other than through the human mind (Cloke, Philo and Sadler, 1991). However, others were less re ductionist, and recognized that the ?external? world was mediated through subjective layers of meaning in complex ways. Talking of ?body subject? to transcend the separation of material life from thought, Seamon (1979) sought to capture the meaning of place that was orchestrated through the ?pre reflective intentionality? of ?body ballets? the move ment, often unthinking and unroutinized, of people through their environments, weaving the rich texture of place (a view echoed by recent returns to ethnomethodological tech niques and feminist theorizations of the body). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This is not simply an ontological move in terms of focusing on individuals and their vari ous activities, but also a philosophical one which puts human experience and under standing of the world at the centre of geog raphy. It further insists that all human experience is articulated through geographical concepts such as space, time and landscape. Drawing on Husserl?s phenomenology, Buttimer (1976) talked of the concept of the lifeworld to provide a sense of this in timacy between place and people (see also Seamon, 1979). Thus, appropriate quALlTA tive methods are required, as ?[n]o decimal notation of time, no geometric command ment, no camera or tape recorder could easily articulate the experience of this lifeworld? (Mels, 2004, p. 3). Phenomenological strands of humanistic geography were concerned with essences for example, of space or experience (Tuan, 1976b) or with the nature of exist ence, elucidating previously taken for granted ways of being in the world. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In their attempts to articulate the human experience of place and landscape, some hu manistic geographers turned to the human ities, particularly art and literature, as forms of expression that were seen to provide in sights that were unavailable to the more scien tific gaze of the geographer (Meinig, 1983). However, the enthusiasm of some (e.g. Pocock, 1981) for the transcendental ability of the artist or author to capture the essence of human experience has been criticized for its ignorance of the common origins of European Renaissance artistic representation with geo metric knowledges of possession and control (Cosgrove, 1984), and the nature of genres in literature (Sharp, 2000b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In addition to drawing the human as the subject of geography, humanists also turned to examine the humanity of the geographer. The emphasis on interpretation and intersub jectivity that humanistic geography pro pounded meant that the researcher could not be seen as ?an individual whose humanity stands outside the research process: as an in dividual who is nothing but a vessel for taking in information, processing it and then arriving at conclusions? (Cloke, Philo and Sadler, 1991, p. 71). Instead, the researcher had to acknowledge her or his role in the process of interpretation and the production of know ledge, and thus Buttimer (1974) stressed the importance of values in geography. This ne cessitated the adoption of ethnographic and participatory research methodologies (e.g. Ley, 1983; Western, 1992) and experiments with writing styles to move away from sterile scientific language (e.g. Olsson, 1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Because humanistic geography emphasized experience and human suBjECTlviTY, it tended towards idealism and voluntarism, and as a result has been criticized, particularly by Marxist, realist and structurationist the orists for overplaying the freedom that individ uals have to act and for tending to focus on the micro scale at the expense of important struc tural connections (although, in both cases, note E.P. Thompson?s socialist humanism). Despite superficial similarities, the cultural turn in human geography has offered a critical challenge to humanism, and most ?new cultural geography? is characterized by post humANisms of various sorts. Theorists of post structuralism would further suggest that the perception of hUMAN AgENcy so promoted in humanistic geography is a product of dominant discourse. Feminist geographers have shown how these dominant discourses create an image of normal subjecthood that is white, male, bourgeois, heterosexual and able bodied, an image that can only be maintained as coher ent through the exclusion of all that is ?Other? (see femiNist geographies). Thus, a whole range of others are denied full subjectivity and agency (Alcoff, 1988). The exposure of the fic tion of coherent subjectivity has also led some to turn to psychoANALytic theory to seek to understand unconscious motivations for ac tions, something overlooked by many humanis tic geographers who regarded human agency as the result of conscious decisions (but again, there were exceptions, such as Seamon?s ?body ballets?). Recent developments of post humanism, or what Whatmore (2004) has called ?more than human? geographies, have sought to populate the world with agents other than humans (see actor network theory). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Although these critiques have meant that the influence of humanistic geography per se has waned since the 1980s, many of its argu ments are still key to current debates in human geography. Recent critique of the cultural turn insists that geographers? enthusiasm for dis course and representation have drawn them away from ?the more ??thingy??, bump into able, stubbornly there in the world kinds of ??matter?? (the material)? (Philo, 2000a, p. 33). New cultural geographers? presentations of landscapes as already structured through dis course draw attention from the variety of cor poreal practices as instances of how ?senses of landscape and self are mutually configured? (Wylie, 2005, p. 239). Wylie (2005) talks in terms of a ?post phenomenology? in which human agency is reconnected with networks of non human agents, through which place and experience emerge. jsh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Adams, Hoelscher and Till (2001); Buttimer (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Cloke, Philo and Sadler (1991); Mels (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Seamon (1979). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
humanities
Emerging in Europe during the Renaissance from medieval scholastic study of the seven liberal arts (i.e. the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, and the trivium of rhetoric, logic and gram mar), the humanities today denotes both an approach to knowledge and a specific set of disciplines (see also hUMANism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) As an approach to knowledge, the humanities are (still) characterized by broadly hermeN eutic or interpretive methods and work through cycles of criticism rather than the establishment of theory and scientific law (see Law, scieNtific), although concepts, the rule of evidence and logical argument are vital to their practice. Expressions of this include privileging the monograph or essay rather than the research paper as the preferred style of scholarly communication, individual author ship, and the use of the footnote or endnote rather than the ?Harvard? referencing system, suggesting ?conversation? rather than progres sive and cumulative advance of knowledge (Smith, J., 1992a). The humanities thus fore ground the active role of the author in the con struction of knowledge and understanding (Cosgrove and Domosh, 1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The humanities disciplines concern the study of distinctively human actions and works; for example history, philology (language, Litera ture, linguistics), phiLosophy, theology and studies of Antiquity. The principal goals of the humanities are both active and contemplative: they were long regarded as fundamental to the educational preparation ofrulers, but their suc cess was gauged in part by the degree of self knowledge and self reflection they produced in the student (Grafton and Jardine, 1986). geog raphy, sometimes characterized as the ?eye? of history, as history in turn was proclaimed ?queen? of the humanities, has a long record as a humanities discipline, initially because it based its knowledge of the world upon the au thority of ancient texts and subsequently, as expLoratioN, autopsy and empiricism dis placed such authority, because it entailed the comparative study of places and peoples. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The evolution of modern geography as a university discipline has been strongly affected by both natural science and social science epistemoLogies and methods, although his toricaL geography?s natural allegiance with history has continuously if contentiously sus tained geography?s connection with a key hu manities discipline. The rhetoric of ?science? within geography has long tended to subordin ate a broader humanities tradition, although recent studies of science as a social, irredeem ably human practice have not only drawn in some measure from the humanities but also interrupted the authority of science understood as objectivism. The values and value of humanities scholarship have also been margin alized by geography?s postwar focus on research, policy relevance and critique as op posed to pedagogy. A self styled ?humanistic? geography in the 1970s and 1980s (Ley and Samuels, 1978) owed less to conventional hu manities study than to then fashionable psy chological theories and twentieth century pheNoMeNoLogy, but it opened huMaN geog raphy to questions of perception and interpret ation that had long been associated with the humanities (see huMaNistic geography). Probably the most productive and widely read contemporary practitioner of geography as a humanity is Yi Fu Tuan, whose autobiography is explicit about his practice of geography as a vehicle for self understanding through reflec tion on the true, the good and the beautiful in a world of places and landscapes (Tuan, 1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Many human geographers are profoundly sceptical of the universalistic claims of ?hu manity? and the humanities? focus on individ ual agency (both in subject matter and authorship), and indeed many contemporary scholars in the humanities have also sharply questioned such traditional orthodoxies (see post structuraLisM). But recent critical and cultural study within human geography signals the discipline?s engagement in the conver gence of social sciences and humanities that has emerged with the rejection of positivisM and the embrace of interpretive methods on the part of the former, and acceptance of the value of sociAL theory on the part of the latter (see also Gregory, 1994). The ?cuLturaL turN? has thus seen human geographers work ing with both materials and methods conven tionally associated with the humanities for example, the interpretation of texts and iMAges although the ?new? cultural geography represents an uneasy alliance between those pursuing a traditionally social science agenda and those who cleave to the more convention ally individualistic, reflective and pedagogical concerns of the humanities. Still, that the As sociation of American Geographers could con vene a major interdisciplinary conference on ?Geography and the Humanities? in June 2007 says much about the salience of contemporary conversations between the two, appropriately enough, and hence about the continuing im portance of the humanities in geography and geography to the humanities. dco (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Tuan (1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
hunger
The right to food and relatedly the right to not starve represents one of the foun dations of international and national human and political rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1964) and the UN Millennium Declaration (2000) all refer to freedom from hunger as a basic and inalienable huMaN right. The reality is, of course, very different. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there are 854 million people undernourished worldwide (FAO, 2006): 820 million in the developing world, 25 million in the transition (former socialist) coun tries and 9 million in the industrialized states. Virtually no progress has been made towards the Rome World Food Summit (1996) target of halving the number of undernourished people by 2015. There has been little change in developing world hunger since 1990 2. It is true that the proportion of undernourished people has fallen by three percentage points, but the FAO projects that it is unlikely that the UN Millennium Goal for hunger will be met. The Near East, South asia and especially sub Saharan africa have seen sharp increases in the number of hungry people; currently, 33 per cent of sub Saharan Africa is undernourished. (NEW PARAGRAPH) poverty and hunger are very much part of the landscape of the twenty first century. In the period since 1980, economic growth in 15coun tries has brought rapidly rising incomes to 1.5 billion people, yet one person in three still lives in poverty and basic social services are unavailable to more than 1 billion people. Nowhere is this privation more vivid and pronounced than along gender lines. Ofthe 1.3billionpeopleinpoverty, 70 per cent are women. Between 1965 and 1988, the number of rural women living below the poverty line increased by 47 per cent; the corre sponding figure for men was less than 30 per cent (UNDP, 1996). A key measure ofpovertyis the extent to which individuals are able to secure sufficient food to conduct a healthy and active life. By the conventional measure of hunger, namely the FAO?s definition of household food security (HFS) [?physical and economic access to adequate food for all household members, without undue risk of losing such access? (FAO, 1996, p. 50)], millions of people are not household food secure. The FAO provides a number of measures pertaining to food, hunger and undernutrition. Currently, over 800 million consumed so little food relative to requirements that they suffered caloric undernourishment (which often leads to anthropometric deficiency and the risk of damaged human development). Malnutrition (or undernutrition) refers to phys ical conditions that result from the interaction of inadequate diet, poor food consumption, nutrient imbalance and illness/disease. All of these conditions typically measured through key indicators such as infant growth, weight for height, body mass, birth weights, dietary energy supply and so on can be the result of differing sorts of food security. Some of the rural poor may be hungry for short or long periods, but they are relatively secure that things will not deterior ate (starvation); others may have adequate nutrition or food intake but are food insecure however, their conditions may change very rap idly and throw them into abject hunger. These differing forms of security and vulnerability are intimately wrapped up with the sorts of entitle ments and protections afforded to different classes, genders, ages and social groups. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Currently, global food consumption pro vided 2720 dietary calories per person, which would have been sufficient if distributed in pro portion to requirements. In global terms, then, food consumption is so unequal that caloric undernourishment is serious. It is true that the proportion of malnourished people has fallen greatly (more in the past 50 years than in the previous 3000) but hunger and under nourishment remains endemic in some regions (notably sub Saharan Africa and South Asia). Paradoxically, there is much evidence to suggest growing hunger in some of the North Atlantic economies and within a number of post socialist societies. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (see Von Braun, Serova, tho Seeth and Mely 1996), agricultural production fell by 30 per cent in Russia between 1989 and 1994 and hunger was widespread during the 1990s. In California (a place where the more affluent are seemingly obsessed by eating less and losing weight), the reform of ?welfare as we know it?, has produced 8.4 million who were ?food insecure? by 2000. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A conventional way to think about hunger is in terms of output or gross availability. Food security decreases accordingly as food availabil ity declines. famine, an extreme case of food insecurity, is a function of a massive collapse of food availability, a sort of Malthusian event. In contrast to the Malthusian and demographic approach, in which food insecurity arises as food output is incapable of keeping up with population growth (see malthusian model), Amartya Sen (1981) approaches hunger, and most especially how hunger and food insecurity can degenerate into famine, from a micro eco nomic vantage point and entitlements. Sen is able to show how gross food insecurity may occur without a decline in food availability, and how entitlements attached to individuals through a generalization of the exchange economy through markets may shift in complex ways among differing classes, occupa tional groups and sections of the population. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Sen begins with the individual endowment, which is mapped into a bundle of entitle ments, the latter understood as ?the set of alternative commodity bundles that a person can command? (1981, p. 46) through the use of various legal channels of acquirement open to someone of his or her position. Such en titlement bundles confer particular capabilities that ultimately underline well being. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Central to Sen?s account of why hunger ex ists is the process of transforming endowments into entitlements, so called E mapping. The sorts of entitlements that Sen details are re wards to labour, production, inheritance or asset transfer, and state provisioning (trans fers), typically through social security and food relief policies (i.e. anti famine policies, of which the Indian Famine Codes are customar ily seen as a model: Dreze and Sen, 1989). Insofar as an individual?s entitlement set is the consequence of E mapping on the endowment set, entitlements can only change through transformations in the endowment or E mapping. Hunger and shortage occurs through a collapse or adverse change in endow ment or E mapping, or both (Sen, 1981). Entitlement, in contrast to other theories, ?draws our attention to such variables as own ership patterns, unemployment, relative prices, wage price rations, and so on? (1993, p. 30). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Sen situates hunger, then, on a landscape, irreducibly social, of the capabilities that individ uals, and potentially classes, may mobilize. By examining mapping as an active and transforma tive process how the capacity to labour, or access to land, can generate an entitlement it dislodges a concern with output per se and fo cuses on access to and control over food. It offers a proximate sort of causal analysis predicated on what immediate or conjunctural forces might shift such forms of access and control, and per mits a social mapping of such shifts to under stand who dies or starves (say, artisanal craftsmen versus peasants) and why. Entitle ments the central mechanism in his intellectual architecture are individually assigned in virtue of a largely unexamined endowment, and are legally derived from state law (ownership, prop erty rights, contract). Entitlements necessitate making legitimate claims; that is to say, rights resting on the foundations of power (opportun ity or actual command) and law (legitimacy and protection). A concern with entitlement failure in market circumstances leads Sen to emphasize public action through entitlement protection (state funded famine protection through food for work or public food distribution) and promo tion (a public social security net). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Sen?s concern with entitlements, andrelatedly the capabilities of individuals, can be extended to better grasp the conditions under which people become food secure. To begin with en titlements themselves, geographer Charles Gore has noted that ?command over food depends upon something more than legal rights? (1993, p. 433). Extended entitlements, for example, [, for example,] might include socially determined entitlements (a moral economy, indigenous secur ity institutions), non legal entitlements (food riots, demonstrations, theft) and non entitlement trans fers (charity). This highlights a rather different way of thinking about E mapping. First, entitle ments are socially constructed (not just individu ally conferred): they are forms of social process and a type of represeNtatioN. Second, like all forms of representation, entitlements are com plex congeries of cultural, institutional and pol itical practice that are unstable: that is to say, they are both constituted and reproduced through coNfLict, negotiation and struggle. En titlements are, then, political and social achieve ments that are customarily fought over in the course of moderNizatioN (in this sense, one can think about the means by which entitlements enter the political arena in the course of the differing routes to moderNity). And, third, so cial entitlements confirm Sen?s unelaborated ob servation that the relations between people and food must be grasped as a ?Network of entitle ment relations? (1981, p. 159; emphasis added). Hunger or famine proneness are the products of historically specific networks of social entitlements. (NEW PARAGRAPH) One of the great strengths of Sen?s approach to food and hunger is that entitlements are part of a larger architecture of thinking about deveL opmeNt as a state of well being and choice or freedom. In his language, the capability of a person reflects the ?alternative combinations of functioning the person achieves and from which he or she can choose one collection? (1993, p. 3). Functionings represent parts of the state of a person, and especially those things that a person can do or be in leading a life. In seeing poverty or hunger as a failure of capabil ities rather than insufficient income, or inad equate primary goods as in the Rawlsian sense of justice Sen shows how the freedom to lead different types of life is a reflected in the person?s capabilities (see Sen, 1999). mw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bread for the World (http://www.bread.org/ learn/hunger basics/hunger facts international. (NEW PARAGRAPH) html) and Hunger Notes (http://www.world hunger.org/). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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