The Dictionary of Human Geography (101 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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imperialism
An unequal human and terri torial relationship, usually in the form of an empire, based on ideas of superiority and practices of dominance, and involving the extension of authority and control of one state or people over another. Derived from the Latin word imperium (?sovereign author ity?), imperialism is closely affiliated with coLoniaLism. Both are intrinsically geogra phical and traumatic processes of expro priation, in which people, wealth, resources and decision making power are relocated from distant lands and peoples to a metropol itan centre and elite (through a mixture of exploration, conquest, trade, resource extrac tion, settlement, rule and representation), although the latter differs from the former in terms of the intensity and materiality of its focus on dispossession. ?Imperial? is used to denote attitudes and practices of dominance befitting an empire. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The term was originally used in the second half of the nineteenth century to describe a state centred ethos of territorial expansion epitomized by the imperial partition of Africa between 1885 and 1914 that involved both aggressive national competition for prestige and a more general rationalization of imperi alism as a ?civilizing mission?. This era of ?classical imperialism? drew old and new im perial powers (Britain, France, Portugal and (NEW PARAGRAPH) Belgium; Germany, Italy, Japan and the USA) into an expanding and volatile capitalist world system, and two world wars that precipitated the swift disintegration of the sprawling colonial empires that had been built over the previous four centuries (Baumgart, 1982; cf. decoLonization). Geography as both a dis cipline and wider discourse forged an intim ate relationship with imperialism during this period (cf. geography, history of). Projects of exploration and mapping, geopolitical models and climatic arguments for European superiority and racial difference played espe cially important imperial roles (Bell, Butlin and Heffernan, 1995; cf. climate; heartland). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Yet the idea and practice of imperialism has a longer history, and attempts have been made to explain it in more systematic terms. It has been traced back to Antiquity and into what David Harvey (2003b) has called ?the new imperialism? (or ?neo imperialism?) currently being expedited through American military and economic overlordship (especially in the Middle East), and justified as a ?war on terror?. The Romans left some important imperial precedents, such as the imperative to legitim ize colonization by recourse to divine or secular law. However, a series of advances initially in navigation and military technology, and then in commerce, administration and methods of knowledge production helped European powers to create overseas empires on a scaLe never imagined or deemed feasible before; and recent work on imperialism em phasizes how the imperial prerogative of the West (and especially the USA: see american empire) now resides in the power to circum vent international institutions and law (see, e.g., exception, space of) and thus in some measure leave behind the moral and political legacy of Rome. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Critical approaches to imperialism empha size its innately exploitative and dehumanizing nature (evidenced, for instance, by sLavery), and at the risk of oversimplification have come in three main forms and phases. First, and beginning with the early twentieth century work of J.A. Hobson, V.I. Lenin and Joseph Schumpeter, imperialism has been analysed in economic and political terms as central to the evolution of capitaLism and the nation state. A large historical and geo graphical literature seeks to account for the specificity of imperial power, and examines how different phases of capitalist accumula tion (mercantile, industrial, monopoly) have been connected to different forms of imperial ism (maritime and land based, formal and informal) and cycles of global dominance (Blaut, 1993; Taylor, 1996; Abernethy, 2000: cf. worLd systems tHeory). Monocausal, teleological and diffusionist explanations (including Marxist ones) of the West?s rise to global dominance encompassing 85 per cent of the Earth?s surface at its 1920s peak have been discredited in historical terms but remain culturally and politically resilient, not least in ?end of history? scenarios that see liberal capitalism as the high point and terminus of human progress (cf. neo LiBeraLism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Second, since the 1980s, imperialism has been studied as a discourse or grammar of domination fuelled by images, narratives and representations, and shaped by categories of gender, sexuaLity, race, nation and reli gion, as well as capital and cLass. Critical energies are focused on the potency of binary and essentialist thinking us/them and self/ other stereotypes, such as the opposition be tween civilization and savagery and the ways in which Western knowledge effects and se cures empire and dispossession by denigrating indigenous knowledges and representing the Earth as the imperialist?s rightful inheritance. Edward Said?s work on orientaLism, and how imperialism works as a multi faceted ?struggle over geography?, has been particularly influen tial in spurring interdisciplinary interest in the culturally and spatially constructed nature of Western knowledge about the ?Other? (Said, 1993, p. 7). While geographers have paid close attention to how a range of geographical ideas, practices and texts might be conceived as imperial discourses, they have warned against reducing imperialism to discourse, and insist on the need to materially ground understanding of imperialism?s operations (Lester, 2000; cf. post coLoniaLism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A third approach and one currently mak ing great headway in history and geography is concerned with the locational basis of im perialism. It mobilizes web and network con cepts to redress the residual Eurocentrism and metro centrism (and textualism and abstrac tion) of much writing on imperial/colonial discourses, and guards against portraying im perialism as either rigidly hierarchical, or all seeing and knowing. Stemming from older historical debates about the ways and extent to which actions and policies emanating from the imperial core were shaped by peripheral/ colonial events and pressures, this ?imperial networks? approach treats metropole and colony as mutually constitutive (rather than separate and isolated) entities, and breaks down the strict equation of imperialism with (NEW PARAGRAPH) the centre/core and colonialism with the periphery/margin. This literature examines the variegated, shifting and unstable make up of different imperial and colonial projects, and how multiple forms of affinity, difference, asymmetry and inequality became mapped across nation and empire. Imperialism can thus be seen as both unitary and highly differ entiated (Lester, 2001). However, questions can be raised about how adequately this litera ture addresses questions of power. dcl (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Lambert and Lester (2006); Said (1993); Taylor and Flint (2000); Wolfe (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
indigenous knowledge
This term repre sents the understandings thought to be embed ded within indigenous communities (see also aBoriginaLity), and usually posed against universalized, Western, scientific knowledge. While indigenous knowledge was regarded as a traditionalist or backward looking barrier to effective deveLopment in the period immediately following the ?development dec ade?, more recently the idea of indigenous knowledge as an alternative to increasingly discredited scientific social management and developmentalism has gained significant credibility as a way out of the ?development impasse?. The valorization of indigenous knowledge represents a shift away from privil eging the knowledge of ?development experts? towards the voices and experiences of the in habitants of the global South, at whom devel opment is usually projected, ?listening seriously to what the rural poor have to say, learning from them and respecting their realities and priorities? (Briggs, 2005, p. 100). Interest in indigenous knowledge is most often traced back to Chambers? (1983) challenge to put the last first, but there are also clear affinities with the post coLoniaL focus on power/ knowledge. post deveLopment writers see in digenous alternatives as offering the only real possibilities for progressive change for the majority world. For instance, Escobar (1995, p. 98) suggests that the ?remaking of develop ment must start by examining local construc tions, to the extent that they are the life and history of the people, that is, the conditions for and of change?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Until recently, the literature on indigenous knowledge has tended to suggest a binary between scientific and indigenous knowledge, seeing science as a groundless set of ideas, and ignoring the HyBrid forms combining various scientific and local knowledges that emerge in the actual practice of everyday life (Agrawal, 1995). For others, the idea of indi genous knowledge as a singular concept ig nores the multiplicity and power relations inherent in any community, and is particularly problematic in terms of genDer relations. This has led some to talk in terms of LocaL know ledges (Briggs, 2005). Furthermore, a focus on knowledge can turn attention away from the material matters of development and ex ploitation, or the fact that while some might have knowledge, it is not always possible for them to act on it (Jewitt, 2002). Finally, some commentators have suggested caution, be cause the recent adoption of indigenous know ledge by development agencies such as the World Bank, while on the surface a positive move, is most often uncritical and tokenistic. In such cases, indigenous knowledge (often reduced to the singular label ?IK?) is expected to be added to already existing knowledges and practices, rather than being allowed to offer a more fundamental challenge to the epistemologies of conventional development approaches (see Briggs and Sharp, 2004). jsh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Agrawal (1995); Briggs (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
indistinction, zone of
A space in which nominally opposing categories not only be come blurred (?indistinct?) but also actively bleed into one another (cf. third space). This topological figure animates key claims in the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, which have attracted considerable attention in cuLturaL, sociaL and poLiticaL geography. Agamben?s formulation of the space of excep tion (see exception, space of) identifies a space in which exclusion and inclusion, out side and inside, violence and law ?enter into a zone of irreducible indistinction? where each passes over into the other (1998, pp. 9, 32). The basis for this, he argues, is the process through which bare life is both excluded from and captured within the political order and, in its most radical form, the process through which sovereign power uses the law to sus pend the legal (or juridical) order (1998, pp. 18 19). Agamben argues that the excep tion has now become generalized to the point at which it threatens to become the norm: ?The ??juridically empty?? space of the state of exception ... [transgresses] its spatiotemporal boundaries and now, overflowing outside them, is starting to coincide with the normal order in which everything again becomes pos sible? (p. 38). Whatever one makes of such a general claim, there is compelling evidence for the multiplication of particular zones of indis tinction: thus, for example, Gregory (2004b, pp. 122 36) traces the ways in which the Israeli occupation of Palestine has involved the calculated proliferation of zones of indis tinction, while Gandy (2006b) suggests that zones of indistinction have become character istic of a late modern ?anti biotic urbanism? that is producing new modes of exclusion. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
induction
A form of reasoning that moves from the specific to the general, usually deploying information/knowledge from a small number of (possible non representative: cf. sampling) cases to develop general laws. Inductive reasoning is usually contrasted with deductive logics. (See also abduction; deduction.) rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Harvey (1969). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
industrial district
A term developed to cap ture the local geography, institutional density and interlinked connectivity of productive (agro industrial, manufacturing financial and services) activities. The common reference point is the foundational work of Alfred Marshall in his Principles of economics (1919), in which he referred to industrial districts as ?the concentration of specialized industries in particular localities? (see LocaLity). In its con temporary usage, the most telling property of industrial districts turn on the dynamics of close internal (intra district) linkages based on horizontal and vertical dis integration and the operations of particular customary norms and taken for granted rules and rou tines that collectively bind together firms and simultaneously provide the productive infra structure of the district. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Marshall coined the term in an account of the Sheffield cutlery and specialized steel in dustry and the south east Lancashire cotton textiles sector. He noted distinctive character istics of the localities, what he called the ?industrial atmosphere?, which collectively provided a sort of industrial hothouse with a highly competitive economic momentum. Some of the key characteristics noted by Marshall, and subsequently elaborated by others (Scott, 1988c; Amin and Thrift, 1992) included: a business structure dominated by small, locally owned firms; limited scale eco nomies; intra district trade among buyers and suppliers; long term contracts and commit ments between local buyers and suppliers; (NEW PARAGRAPH) a highly flexible labour market, internal to the district; a unique local cultural identity; specialized sources of finance, technical exper tise and business services available within the district outside of firms; limited co operation or linkage with firms external to the district; investment decisions made locally; labour in migration, with lower levels of out migration; and worker commitment to districts rather than to firms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A contemporary example of an industrial district is ?motor sport valley? in the UK, a cluster of firms in mid Oxfordshire in and through which has developed the world?s major agglomeration of Formula 1 and Indy car engineering (see Henry and Pinch, 1997). This region is a community of knowledge sus tained by and expanding through the rapid production, application and dissemination of knowledge (through observation, gossip, ru mour and direct and indirect contact) among and between a network of highly secretive small and medium size enterprises. High rates of new firm formation and knowledge transmission through a mobile workforce with a small area (a 160 km long narrow cres cent, 60 km north and west of London) rests on a knowledge pool and has created a ?con stant learning trajectory? (Henry and Pinch, 1997, p. 7). Integral to the district is a socially and industrially created matrix of firms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Motor sport valley is an illustration of new industrial spaces (Scott, 1988), such as the Third Italy and Orange Country, California, through which the transmission of impulses around integrated and interdependent firms is both effective and flexible (hence the Marshallian argument that locality exercises a powerful influence upon productive dyna mism: see Storper and Scott, 1989). In these sorts of districts, other characteristics not an ticipated by Marshall are specially important, including a high incidence of exchanges of personnel between customers and suppliers; intense co operation among competitor firms to share risk, and to stabilize market share and market instability; a collaborative system of local innovation; a disproportionate share of workers engaged in design and innovation; robust trade associations providing manage ment training, marketing, technical or finan cial help; and, last but not least, a strong local government role in regulating and promoting core industries. This argument is compelling in its spatiality. Geography is central, in other words, to the ?untraded interdependen cies? and conventions that provide the ether in which industrial districts flourish (Storper and (NEW PARAGRAPH) Salais, 1997). Amin and Thrift (1992) argue relatedly that while place constitutes social and economic practice in the City of London and Santa Croce in Tuscany, the way in which this constitution takes place is itself shaped by geographical requirements of social practice. The localization of economic geographies is not an autonomous or independent influence on productive spaces, but is also shaped by the geographical demands of increasingly global economic geographies. One of the conditions of existence of such geographies is the pres ence of a place or centre to act as a site of representation (a centre of authority), inter action (a centre of sociability) and as a means of making sense of data and information (a centre of discourse). In short, industrial districts are doubly geographical: both re quired for and constitutive of social practice. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The industrial district is not restricted to manufacturing and financial services, but has also been productively deployed as a way of describing the GLObALlZATlON of agriculture and the changing geography associated with what has been called ?high value agriculture?. commodity chain analysis has provided a powerful optic through which one can explore the emergence of key agro industrial nodes, in which many of the properties described in the Third Italy or the Silicon Valley can be seen in the agro export region of the Sao Francisco valley of Brazil or the wine producing terroires of France (see Goodman and Watts, 1997). Here, the intersection of local specialized knowledge (often with a deep, if modernized, history), commercial and customary conven tions pertaining to inter firm interdependence (between growers, buyers, shipper and proces sors), and various forms of linkages to banking and the local state provide for similar forms of industrial dynamism, often draped in the cul tural language of attachment to the land. The rise of the organic industry provides simply one way in which these agricultural districts are made and remade by shifts in, and as responses to, industrial agriculture (Guthman, 2004). (See also agricultural geography.) rl/mw (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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