The Dictionary of Human Geography (132 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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multipliers
A measure of the total economic impact of an investment decision, policy change or external ?shock'. This includes not just the initial, immediate impact, but also the indirect or ?knock on' consequences. Thus a new manufacturing plant creates initial employ ment; this creates a demand for services in the locality, so triggering other new jobs. The manu facturing expansion also generates demand for additional inputs of energy and steel, so having ripple effects on supplying sectors. Such multi plier effects can be traced using input output models. There is also a need to track the geog raphy of these multiplier effects, to see what ?leaks? from the local economy into other regions, and estimating spatial multipliers undertaken in spatial econometrics. lwh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Anselin (2003); Smith (1981). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
music
Although GEOGRAPHy has often been dominated by visual means of representa tion, the study of music, and indeed sound more generally, has a long if discontinuous history within the discipline. The earliest work is probably that by the Finnish geog rapher J.G. Grant), whose studies of sonic landscapes in Finland date back to 1929 (see Grano, 1997 [1929]). However, evidence of a concerted interest in either music or sound does not exist until the early 1970s. Studies influenced by the BERkELEY school of cul tural geography examined musical per formances, music association memberships, musical listening and musicians? birthplaces alongside a variety of other cultural artefacts. The purpose was to identify cultural hearths and trace DlffUSlONS across space and through hierarchies, mapping out culture areas, regions and landscapes. This traditional ap proach to the geography of music is exemp lified in Carney (2003). Early studies focused substantially on rural folk cultures and re gional styles in the USA. More recently, the focus has switched to consider how popular musical genres such as those based in Nashville, Seattle or Liverpool evolve within a given place (Carney, 2003, pp. 1 2). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographical studies of music have prolifer ated since the mid 1990s. Developing themes and methods from the cultural turn, studies have examined issues concerned with sense Of place, belonging, gender, style and iden tity, the politics of landscape representation, and national and transnational identities (Leyshon, Matless and Revill, 1998; Brunn and Waterman, 2006). One theoretical start ing point was the concept of ?soundscapes? adopted by S.J. Smith (1994b) to bring out the inherently spatial aspects of auditory en vironments. However, many of these studies drew substantially from theoretical develop ments in related disciplines. From sociology, for instance, these include the functioning of institutions and organizations in the produc tion and consumption of music and the role of sound in the fabric of everyday LlfE; from cultural studies/anthropology, the place of music in politics of cultural hybridity, subal tern groups and alternate lifestyles; and from critical musicology, the social production of musical experience and critiques of conven tional conceptions of popular and elite, worthy and worthless musics. The rise to prominence of cuLture industries as a vehicle for econo mic regeneration has provided further impe tus, resulting in studies centred on the merits of cultural policy, cultural quarters, cultural tourism, creative capital and festivals, as well as local and regional place marketing. The con text of new digital and networked communi cations media has produced studies grounded in new economic geography primarily con cerned with media synergies and with global, regional and local networks of production and marketing (Connell and Gibson, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Recent work often critiques the new cultural geography?s apparent preoccupation with tExt and REpREsENtatioN. Although music can be considered a material artwork like painting or LitERatURE, the ephemeral qualities of sound make music a distinctively pErforMAtivE cul tural medium. As geographers have engaged with art forms beyond their conventional con cern for the visual, so the performative aspects of music and dance have become an increasing focus of study. Investigations of affEct and EMotioNAL gEograpHY have resulted in stud ies centred on listening practices, performing and making music, rhythm, embodiment and the dancing body. Much of this work explores both the subjective experience of music and its physical presence as it is embodied in objects such as instruments, recordings and sheet music; their associated organizations and infrastructures, venues, recording companies and radio stations; and the practices of performing and listening. Concerns for the co construction of nature and the materiality of cultural life now produce studies that explore the multi sensory richness of environ mental experience whilst remaining sensitive to both the PHENOMENOLOgY and cultural poLitics of sound (Anderson, Morton and Revill, 2005). Such studies connect ENviRoN mental rnstoRy and EcoLogy with a critical interrogation of regional and local cultures, in ways that acknowledge the pioneering work of Grano?s early sonic geographies. (NEW PARAGRAPH)
narco-capitalism
It is almost impossible to assess the gross value of the global illegal drug trade a worldwide black market in the produc tion, processing, distribution and retailing of illegal psychoactive substances. According to the United Nations World Drug Report in 2006, the retail value of illegal drugs (including drugs seized) was $322 billion. Other sources estimate the total figure to be well in excess of $400 billion. The trans border trade typically links consistent with a much longer history of the drugging of the First World by the Third impoverished producer states (Afghanistan, Colombia) with transatlantic economy con sumers. The consumption of illegal drugs is, however, a global phenomenon (200 million people between 15 and 64 years have consumed some type of illegal drug in the past 12 months, according to the UN Drug Report in 2006). Illicit drugs are as central to the slum world of Rio and Jakarta as they are in the white collar Wall Street and American gheTTos. The massive scale of the drug business and the direct (and complex) actors in the cocaine or heroin global commodity chain the peasant producers, the local processors, the middlemen, the whole salers, the mules, the drug cartels, corrupt military and state security apparatuses and so on can only be grasped as a particular sort of market albeit exceptionally violent, well pol iced, often quite competitive, and of course illegal. Narco capitalism refers to the structure and organization of the production, distribution and sale of illegal drugs, understood as a system for the production ofprofit; that is to say, a global system of accumulation not unlike other drugs (sugar, coffee). (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is commonplace to assume that the key illegal drugs especially in trans border activity are cocaine, heroin and cannabis, but narco capitalism also includes the illegal sale of legal drugs (tobacco, for example, is often smug gled across borders, taking advantage of differ ential tax and tariff systems, while some prescription drugs may be available through illegal networks, thereby eliminating the need to manufacture and process the drugs). Some forms of narco capitalism the industrial manufacture of LSD or methadone may be largely national or local in organization. The proliferation of small scale marijuana produc tion systems under hydroponic conditions may lend itself in particular to local urban markets in the same way that some centres of cannabis production (northern California; Vancouver, BC) may supply regional rather than internati onal demand. Narco capitalism for hard drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy, meth and heroin has a number of structural features that are especially important in understanding the dynamics of the industry. First, a number of key cartels Cali and Medellin in Colombia, Juarez and Sonora in Mexico and Puerto Rico are often linked through a syndicate like organizational structure (e.g. the Mexican cartels typically traffic drugs provided by the larger Colombian cartels). Second, the cartels cannot operate without the complicity and active co operation of corrupt governments and militaries that facilitate the transit operations by ?mules? (carriers). (NEW PARAGRAPH) To the extent that cocaine is representative of narco capitalism in general (80 per cent of all cocaine is consumed in the USA), there have been no large US cartels discovered, and much of the drug profit is not returned to Latin america but stays in the USA, where it is laundered for other business operations. A number of corrupt and often military third worLd states have become key actors in the global narco capitalism system (e.g. Nigeria and Panama). What are called ?failed? or ?rogue? states are often the pillars for the world drug business. As a particular form of capitaLism, the narco economy has two organizational forms: the spoke and hub (NEW PARAGRAPH) model, in which a combination of violence and relations of trust draw together a central cartel and dispersed gangs and mafia like organizations; and a vertically integrated ?corporate? form of narco capitalism, in which the cartel controls and orchestrates the entire commodity chain through a system of force and consent, for which the Mafia may be an organizational model (and to which the drug business is in any case organically linked). mw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Clawsonn (2006); Mares (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
nation
A product of nationaLism, the nation is nevertheless treated by nationalists (NEW PARAGRAPH) as the naturalized geo historical foundation for national community. Such fouNdatioNAl thinking often uses geography, and in particular IMAgINAtIVE geographies of place and land scape, to create and consolidate conceptions of primordial nationhood. Sometimes such imaginative geographies of the nation space can also be violently exclusionary, based on RACist, ethNicist and/or MASCULiNist phobias about keeping the nation pure by hardening borders (Gilroy, 1987; Theweleit, 1987; Parker, Russo, Sommer and Yaeger, 1992; Radcliffe, 1998; Gallaher, 2003; Flint and Fallah, 2004; Mayer, 2004). At other times, formal spatial depictions of the nation operate more subtly to encode and normalize the political geography of the NAtioN stAtE as it relates to international and subnational governmental practices (Schulten, 2001; Ander son, 2006a; Flint and Taylor, 2007 [1985]). And in yet other anti colonial cases of nations without stAtes, or with states that have been repeatedly undermined by colonialism and neo colonialism, imaginative geographies of the nation serve to keep alive hopes of a future national state free from occupation and exter nal control (Gregory, 1994; Guibernau, 1999). In all these cases, innumerable geographical representations from official maps to landscape depictions to monumental architecture can be drawn upon to affirm and/or question notions of national iDENTity. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In theoretical work that is less attuned to geography, the division of the world map into a series of parcels defined by a standardized nation form tends to be ascribed to more generalized social dynamics. Conservative the orists have tended to fall back on essentializing ideas about ethno linguistic hoMELANDs (e.g. Huntington, 2004; see also Kedourie, 1960). By contrast, liberal theorists have tended to explain the abstract nation form in terms of either the global march of MoDERNity (Gellner, 1983) or the formation of the mod ern nation state as a monopolist of adminis trative information and, in Weberian terms, the so called legitimate use of violence (Giddens, 1985). Subsequently, post colonial reflections on global struggles against illegit imate imperial violence have displaced the eurocentrism of the liberal accounts, all the while arguing as in one famous case that the assumption of a coherent nation form in the former colonies remains a ?derivative discourse? shaped as much by the performance of European nationalist norms as by the cul tural complexities of the colonies themselves (Chatterjee, 1986; see also Amin, 1987). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Chatterjee advances his arguments by noting the hyBRiDity of the historical record, but by focusing on the past, his derivative dis course thesis fails to explain how the nation form may be challenged and hybridized by extra national fLows in present and future historical moments. By contrast, Marxist accounts, with their attention to the changing scale of capitalism?s organization (e.g. Harvey, 1999 [1984]), and Foucauldian ac counts, with their interest in the epistemic enframing of the nation as a container for ?the EcoNoMy? amidst twentieth century foRDisM (e.g. Mitchell, 1998), seem better placed to theorize the historical contingency of the na tion form alongside its discursive PERfoRM ance. This does not mean explaining the nation in economic terms alone. As Marxist philosopher Etienne Balibar emphasizes: ?It is quite impossible to ?deduce? the nation form from capitalist relations of production? (1991, p. 89). But it does mean coming to terms with the overdetermination of the nation as part of modern twentieth century nation states that were once territorialized but which now seem increasingly re territorialized amidst the political geographical tensions of global capitalism (Sparke, 2005). To ignore such changes and to continue to examine global politics with a methodological national ism that treats the nation as a universal norm is to fall into what Agnew calls the ?territorial trap? (Agnew, 2003a) a trap that exists in the first place because of ignorance of the geo graphical processes and representations through which nations are constructed. Ms (NEW PARAGRAPH)
national parks
The first national park was created at Yellowstone in Wyoming, USA, in 1872, although the Yosemite Valley in California (made a national park in 1890), had been a state park since 1864, and the idea of a national park was first expressed in the USA by George Catlin in 1832. The first US national parks were proposed as a way to protect the sublime and monumental land scapes of the American West, and as a reaction to the threat of the closing ?fRoNTiER? and the pioneering spirit as a formative element in the American character (Nash, 1982 [1967]). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The US model of national parks was built on a conception of nature as wilderness, pristine, separate and separable from human transformed lands (Cronon, 1995). Yet in national parks, wilderness was created by the deliberate actions of the state, often in volving military action: the US Army managed Yellowstone until 1918. The presence of indigenous people in these areas was system atically ignored. The same process of physical clearance and conceptual deletion of previous human presence accompanied the extension of the Yellowstone model outside the USA. It was soon copied in the British Dominions (Canada 1887, Australia 1891 and New Zealand 1894) and in colonial possessions in africa (the Belgian Congo in 1925, South Africa in 1926). Following the Second World War, the model was adopted in East Africa, asia and eventually globally as the inter national conservation movement grew (Adams, 2004). The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) established a Provisional Committee on National Parks in 1958, now the World Commission on Protected Areas (www.iucn.org/themes/wcpa). The United Nations adopted a ?World List of National Parks and Equivalent Reserves? in 1962, and IUCN defined a series of protected area cat egories, of which US style National Parks are widely regarded as the most important (www. unep wcmc.org/protected areas/categories/). The global protected area network expanded rapidly. By 2005, there were over 100,000 protected areas covering over 2 million square kilometres, more than 12 per cent of the Earth's land surface. (NEW PARAGRAPH) National parks created internationally on the Yellowstone model are imagined as places free from human settlement. Their creation has therefore often caused displacement of indigenous or other peoples, either through restrictions on access to land and resources (including cultural sites) or direct forced resettlement. Globally, there has been a per sistent failure to recognize historic human oc cupation of and rights to land placed within national parks, or to recognize the extent of human modification of ?wilderness' (Neumann, 2004b). Partly because of opposi tion to such imposed parks, there has been significant emphasis in international conserva tion policy on ?community based conserva tion? and ?park outreach projects? that seek to create local political and economic support for parks (Hulme and Murphree, 2001). There are also alternatives to the exclusive national park model; for example, British National Parks and French Parcs Regionaux, which are essentially planning designations to pre serve the quality of privately owned land.wma (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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