The Dictionary of Human Geography (137 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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nomadology
Although they do not provide an explicit definition of the term, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987) present the discipline of nomadology as the opposite of history, which they associate with a seden tary, state centric point of view. For Deleuze and Guattari, the point of nomadology is not a historical study of nomadic peoples but, ra ther, a study of different spatial practices. Unlike the state, the nomadic (or rhizomatic, see rhizome) ?war machine? is understood to occupy space without ordering, counting or surveying it. Nomadology is thus the study of what these philosophers call ?smooth space?, a space of creativity, emergent properties and intensive becomings. ajs (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cresswell (1997); Deleuze and Guattari (1987). (NEW PARAGRAPH) nomos The matrix of laws, norms and conventions that orders conduct within a so ciety. The nomos is: (a) socially constructed, and so varies over space and time; and (b) generally accepted, and so serves as a template for political moral ordering. The term emerged with the rise of democracy in fifth century Athens, where the political structure of the classical city state implied that the nomos is also (c) spatially articulated (in the sense of a distribution or assignment of powers). The term entered geopoLitics through the German jurist Carl Schmitt (1888 1985), who invoked the concept to argue that in eur ope in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the theological moral model of the just war yielded to the secular juridical model (i.e. the nomos) of a regulated war between sovereign states that claimed a monopoly of the legit imate means of vioLence. Unrestrained violence was then projected ?beyond the line? into the non European world: ?Europe sub limate[d] its animality by establishing the (NEW PARAGRAPH) americas as an extralegal zone in which bes tial deeds [could] be ??acted out?? far away? (Rasch, 2003). Schmitt identified this zone with ?the state of nature in which everything is possible? and with the space of exception (see exception, space of). He argued that by the early twentieth century the line had dissolved, and the wild zones of colonial violence had appeared within the ruins of the European order (Schmitt, 2003 [1950]). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Schmitt?s writings have attracted renewed crit ical attention today, through the bearing of his political theology on the Bush administration?s war on terror (see terrorism), and through the radicalization of his work in the political phiLosophy of Giorgio Agamben (see Minca, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . In both cases, considerable interest has attached to Schmitt as ?above, all, a spatial thinker?, where the concept of nomos is central (Dean, 2006, p. 7). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
nomothetic
Concerned with the universal and the general. The term derived from the German philosopher Wilhelm Windelband who, in 1894, used it to identify one of two possible goals of concept formation: (NEW PARAGRAPH) The theoretical interests associated with nomothetic concept formation highlight those common qualities of objects of experi ence that lead to the formulation of general laws of nature. The process is one of con tinual abstraction in which the special qual ities of an object are filtered out and the object is seen as a general type that exists with certain relations to other, general types. (Entrikin, 1991) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Windelband contrasted this with idiographic concept formation, which is concerned to achieve a complete understanding of the indi vidual case (see kantianism; cf. ideal type). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Windelband?s views were considerably more nuanced than the caricatured oppositions be tween idiographic and nomothetic that were propelled into geography after the middle of the twentieth century. These versions ignored Windelband?s insistence that both approaches were directed towards the formation of analytical concepts. Instead, in the wake of the Hartshorne Schaefer exchange over exceptionaLism, the proponents of spatiaL science ridiculed regionaL geography in particular for its focus on the unique its supposedly inherent inability to provide con ceptual rigour or intellectual substance and claimed that geography should focus on generalization and work towards the formula tion of scientific theories and laws of spatial organization. But these caricatures have largely disappeared, not least through the cri tique of classical spatial science, the emer gence of post positivist geographies and the reformulation of regional geography. As Phillips (2004, p. 40) concluded, ?the debates over idiographic/regional interpretive geog raphy versus nomothetic/quantitative/scientific geography have come and (mostly) gone; con temporary critiques emphasizing contextuaL ity and contingency are with us now'. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
non-place
A term coined by French anthro pologist Marc Auge to describe certain qual ities of airports, highways, theme parks, motels, department stores and shopping centres, tourist sites and so on. These sites have in common gatherings of individuals and groups of people who temporarily come together at the same site, but who have no particular bond to each other. Rather than a social bond determining the nature of these collective gatherings, it is typically signs and texts that guide people's movements within these spaces or that direct them to other spaces. In that latter capacity, the non place is a conduit, a potential that struc tures the gaze to some other site. Some inter preters take non place to be a negation of place (cf. placelessness) but in Auge?s terms ?place' works dialectically with ?non place': ?the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten? (Auge, 1995, pp. 78 9). But for some critics, Auge has not been clear about the diaLectics of place and non place, and one gets the impression that a timeless passenger/commuter subject is the sole inhab itant of the non place. Against this view is one that recognizes that those who, for example, work in these spaces have a much richer and more complicated relation to them and to one another, so that it becomes necessary to think of multiple ?placings' (of diverse people, plans, histories, blueprints) as the sub stantive content of ?non places' (Merriman, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . ghe (NEW PARAGRAPH)
non-representational theory
A style of en gagement with the world that aims to attend to and intervene in the taking place of practices. Non representational theory a term first coined in human geography by Thrift (1996) emerged from a caution and a concern about the overvaluation of the ?representational referential' dimensions of life following the discipline's cuLturaL turn. It responds to two questions: (NEW PARAGRAPH) How to disclose and attend to life as a differential, expressive process of becom ing, where much happens before and after conscious reflexive thought? (NEW PARAGRAPH) How to foster types of description or presentation that attempt to co produce new events by engaging with and inter vening in the practices that compose life? (NEW PARAGRAPH) Non representational theory is not a new paradigm that would eliminate or supersede others, nor does it offer a set of rules and conventions that could form one of a number of holistic conceptions of the world; rather, it names a differentiated set of ways of learning to address these two questions. Non represen tational theory is consequently composed of a multiplicity of perspectives and takes its inspiration from a range of sources, including Heideggerian theories of practice, post phenomenoLogy, various micro sociologies, actor network theory, Deleuze and Guattari's heterodox version of post structuraLism and corporeal feminism (see figure). The plural ?non representational theor ies' perhaps conveys a better sense of the com plicated genealogy of these theories and the constantly shifting, contestable foundations of non representational theory in human geography [compare Thrift (2008) with Thrift (1996)]. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Whilst non representational theory is, irre deemably plural, it is held together by two broad starting points one an imperative, the other a promise and both of which have been subject to criticisms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) First, non representational theory affirms an imperative to expand the foci of (?new') cuLturaL geography beyond either a focus on a sphere of representation or a human subject who relates to the world by represent ing aspects of the world through an act of interpretation (by, for example, undertaking active ?readings? of dominant or residual mea nings). Each mirrors the other in that they both assume that the primary relation between an (individual or collective) subject and the world is at the level of signification. In con trast, non representational theories are theor ies of practice in that their focus is on what humans and/or non humans do, and how the reproduction and revision of practices under pin the genesis and maintenance of interpret ation and thus meaning. Whilst this move resonates with the attention to practical logics of the body in some humanistic non-representational theory The life time lines of non representational theory (from Thrift, 1999) and borrows from various forms of micro soci ology, a critical difference is that practices tend to be conceptualized as processually emergent compositions of human and non human materialities (Whatmore, 2002a). From within this context, practices are understood as always embodied and composed of a set of modalities including affect and emotion (see emotionaL geography) that do not have to cross over a threshold of signification to achieve political effects (see Harrison, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . One forceful response to this has been to claim that non representational theory cleaves the non representational from the rep resentational and installs a dualism between the two by attending to the former and ignor ing the varied effects of the latter. But Dews bury, Harrison, Rose and Wylie (2002) take care to stress that non representational theor ies are not anti representation (cf. Jones, 2008) but, rather, conceptualize representa tions as ?presentations?. That is, representa tions are not understood as masks or veils that express some a priori system of transcend ent categorizations, but are instead encoun tered as constitutive elements within practices (although this has raised questions about how to develop conceptual vocabularies for describing the a signifying effects of differ ent forms of ?presentations? that do not repro duce a naive psychologism or a cause/effect model). Non representational theory, then, enacts a break with the version of cuLture as structuralizing/signifying that defined the ?new? cultural geography. Such a move is seen as a necessary response to a contempor ary political moment in which various non representational modalities including affect are caught up in the emergence of new forms of sovereign power and biopowEr (Thrift, 2008; but see Barnett, 2008). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Second, non representational theory ex presses the promise of encountering a now expanded social as a practical achievement an ordering rather than an order emergent from multiple spatially and temporally distan ciated relations. The result has been an atten tion to how more or less durable, differentially extensive, orderings are composed from rela tions between human and non human actors or perhaps more properly actants (see actor network theory). society then becomes a set of partially connected networks or assem bLages in which embodied, expressive prac tices act as the ongoing basis for coherence and change (Rose, 2002b). Recent work has moved to address early criticisms that such a focus on the non representational reproduces or even celebrates a figure of the undifferenti ated human (Nash, 2000) by exploring how social differences such as race or sexuaLity are enacted through and disrupted by the workings of a range of non representational modalities (e.g. Lim, 2007). However, heavily influenced by Deleuze and Guattari (McCormack, 2005) and work on performativity (Dewsbury, 2000), the prefix ?non ? in ?non representational theory? names an attunement to moments of indeterminacy and undecidability, in which new events emerge to exceed and potentially disrupt given orderings (although see Anderson (NEW PARAGRAPH) and Harrison (2007a) on boredom and suffering for criticisms internal to non representational theory around how an atten tion to newness can downplay relations which are, respectively, suspended and broken). (NEW PARAGRAPH) To work through the imperative and prom ise of non representational theories, there has been a nascent experimentation with research methods, as well as diagrammatic and narra tive forms of presentation, that take as their task to learn to witness the ongoing taking place of life as a composite of embodied prac tices. theory is called here to act as a ?modest supplement? to life that would enable new forms of description a move that has occa sionally sat uncomfortably with the intense theoretical experimentation that has also been a mark of non representational theory. Substantive work has begun, however, to draw this set of theories into often disruptive encounters with a range of sub disciplines see, for example, Wylie (2005) on Landscape or Horton and Kraftl (2006) on chiLdren?s geographies. Taking the two commonalities together, non representational theory can be understood as a style of engagement with the world that, encountering a range of non representational theories that exceed human geography, begins from the non representational dimensions of practice and performance. ba (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dewsbury, Harrison, Rose and Wylie (2002); Lorimer (2005); Thrift (2008); Whatmore (2002a). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
normative theory
A theory or theoretical claim that is prescriptive, saying what ought to be. The theory of neo cLassicaL econom ics says that markets should be competitive; the theory of marxism says that expropriators should be expropriated. Whenever the word ?should? appears, a normative theoretical claim is lodged. The contrast is positive theory, which is a claim about what is. Competitive markets exist in China. Donald Trump is an expropriator. Positive claims (such as these) might be wrong but, if so, they can be scien tifically falsified by facts. Normative theory is never falsifiable, and for that reason often engenders sharp disagreement. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The use of the distinction is most associated with economics. The early Cambridge econo mist John Neville Keynes (1852 1949) in his The scope and method of political economy (1930 [1891], pp. 34 5) distinguished between posi tive economics, which is ?a body of system atized knowledge concerning what is?, and normative economics, ?relating to criteria of what ought to be and concerned therefore with the ideal as distinguished from the ac tual?. Keynes made the distinction so that economists could be scrupulously clear about their role and status: when speaking of what is (positive economics), they were scientists, and when speaking of what ought to be (normative economics), they were policy advisors. The two should never be confused. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In human geography the distinction be tween the positive and the normative was found most often in economic geography (NEW PARAGRAPH) not surprisingly, given its origins and connected with the period of the quantita tive revoLution, when economic geograph ers most demanded criteria delineating scientific work (positive theory). Ironically, however, much of the Location theory seized upon and elaborated during that period was normative rather than positive, and so did not constitute science in Keynes? terms. Location theory was underpinned by a set of ?ideal? assumptions such as an isotropic plain, transportation costs proportional to distance, equal population density and per fect rationality. August Losch, one of the principal architects of location theory, was perfectly clear about its normative character: ?the real duty of the economist is not to ex plain our sorry reality, but to improve it. The question of the best location is far more dig nified than determination of the actual one? (Losch, 1954, p. 4[1940]). But this motiv ation was rarely registered by economic geog raphers at the time. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In any case, the discussion became moot as the very distinction between positive and normative theory began to unravel from the early 1970s. Olsson (1980), a former acolyte of positive theory, argued that a mainstay of economic geography?s scientific approach, the family of spatiaL interaction models, was irredeemably compromised by value judge ments ?is? disguised as ?ought?. Similarly, (NEW PARAGRAPH) Harvey (1973, 1974a) found hidden normative claims lurking in every corner of positive theory: in economic theories of the city, in theories of population and resources, in quantitative techniques. All theory is normative theory. Our values go all the way down, and we can no more escape them than avoid the smell of the air we breathe (see also ethics). tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Olsson (1978). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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