The Dictionary of Human Geography (140 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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opportunity costs
An important concept in neo cLassicaL economics, with the costs of an action expressed as opportunities foregone usually in monetary terms. If rural land is set aside as a nature reserve, there will be costs to both the landowner and society in terms of the net value of the agricultural products not produced: similarly, a commuter may see the cost of travel time as earnings foregone. The concept can therefore be used in explaining the allocation of productive resources between competing activities, especially where they are in short supply. It plays an important role in theories of rent, comparative advantage and Linear programming. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
optimization models
Mathematical models that are used to search for the optimal solution to a problem. These modeLs have a quantity to be either maximised or minimized, known as the ?objective function?, such as the mini mization of total transport costs or the maxi mization of a firm?s profits, together with a set of constraints that limit the range of possible solutions, such as limits on supply and demand, or the capacity of transport routes. Linear programming is the most widely used form of optimization, but the models may take a great variety of mathe matical forms and many spatial applications (such as optimal location decisions) involve non linear forms. Lwh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Killen (1983). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Orientalism
The term ?Orientalism? has three main meanings. The first two involve (i) the scholarly study of the Orient, and (ii) a more general (and especially aesthetic or cultural) interest in the Orient. But neither of them pays much attention to the possibility that the object of their interest ?the Orient? is itself a predominantly European and American construction produced within a specific grid of power and knowledge (cf. occidentaLism). This is the focus of the third definition proposed by the Palestinian/ American literary critic Edward Said (1935 (NEW PARAGRAPH) : Orientalism as (iii) both a discourse and a ?corporate institution? for the produc tion and domination of ?the Orient? (Said, 1978, p. 3). It is this definition that has attracted most attention in human geog raphy, but it is important to notice Said?s double emphasis on production and domin ation: representations of ?the Orient? often have the most acutely practical, material con sequences (cf. performativity). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Said acknowledged that Orientalism in this third sense has a long and tangled his tory, but he focused on the specifically mod ern apparatus of power knowledge that emerged towards the end of the eighteenth century. His proxy for this was the Napo leonic occupation of Egypt (1798 1801) and, in particular, the Description de I?Egypte produced by the scholars who accompanied the expeditionary army. Said?s emphasis on the materiality of power knowledge is also significant. While he was keenly interested in the production of imaginative geograph ies of ?the Orient?, Said insisted that Orien talism was not ?an airy European fantasy about the Orient, but created a body of the ory and practice in which, for many gener ations, there has been considerable material investment? (1978, p. 6; emphases added). What gave Orientalism its peculiar power was that it was produced from the outside and marginalized or silenced the voices of those who were its collective subjects: ?What gave the Oriental?s world its intelligi bility and identity was not the result of his own efforts but rather the whole complex series of knowledgeable manipulations by which the Orient was identified by the West? (p. 40). It was this, above all else, that implicated Orientalism in the operations of colonizing power, because it made ?the Orient? appear as ?an essentialized realm ori ginally outside and untouched by the West, lacking the meaning and order that only co lonialism can bring? (Mitchell, 1992, p. 313). For Said, then, Orientalism oper ated both in advance and in conjunction with coLoniaLism, underwriting colonial power through two crucial operations: (NEW PARAGRAPH) First, ?the Orient? was constructed as an exotic and bizarre space, and at the limit a pathological and even a monstrous space: ?a living tableau of queerness? (Said, 1978, p. 103). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Second, ?the Orient? was constructed as a space that had to be domesticated, discip lined and normalized through a forceful projection of the order it was presumed to lack: ?framed by the classroom, the crim inal court, the prison, the illustrated man ual? (Said, 1978, p. 41). (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is not difficult to hear the echoes of Michel Foucault?s archaeologies and geneaLogies in these arguments, though Said was perplexed (and vexed) by the French philosopher?s met ropolitan obsession and his disinterest in the operations of colonial power (Gregory, 1995b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Said?s critique of Orientalism was closely connected to his political commitment to the Palestinian cause, and his work has met with vigorous criticism from Right and Left. The oretically, critics have been exercised by the complicity of Said?s humanism with the very tradition that he criticizes (Sardar, 1999, p. 73); by his conjunction of humanism with Foucault?s anti humanism (Clifford, 1988); by his complicated relationship with histor icAL materialism (Ahmad, 1992); and by his seeming inability to break out from the binary oppositions of Orientalism itself (Young, 1990b). Substantively, others have criticized Said?s readings and substituted more affirma tive interpretations of some contributions to the Orientalist canon (Livingstone, 2004; Irwin, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Much of this discussion comprises vari ations on the theme of essentiaLism. Said is charged with reducing the complexity of Euro pean and American engagements with other cultures to a single, totalizing essence that projects its will to power upon them. Other scholars, including Said himself, have sought to meet this objection by developing a more nuanced analysis of Orientalism. Their key propositions include the following: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Orientalism is not a synonym for colonial discourse. There are overlaps with other colonial discourses, but different im aginative geographies were fashioned for different places and periods: see primi tivism and tropicaLity. Indeed, Said (1993) subsequently extended his en quiries to the wider relations between cuLture and imperiaLism in the nine teenth and early twentieth centuries. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Orientalism is not cut from a single cloth: there are different Orientalisms and different ?Orients?. The substantive focus of Said?s original enquiry was not ?the Orient? at large but the middLe east in general and Egypt and Palestine in particular. It is important to recognize other versions of Orientalism developed in relation to (for example) India, China and Japan. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There are significant differences between the collective authors of Orientalism. Said fo cused on British and French Oriental isms because they had such a close connection with colonialism, but other scholars have drawn careful distinctions between (for example) American, Brit ish, French and German Orientalisms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Orientalism is not a simple projection of the will to power. Power, including the power of representation, did not lie entirely with the outsider and the colonizer, and a more nuanced view of the contact zone is required that can recognize transcuL turation and the achievements of anti colonial struggles. Said accepted this criticism, but Sardar (1999, pp. 74 5) noted that his commitment to a secular humanism allowed little space for Islam as a counter discourse. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Orientalism is a gendered and sexualized discourse. Said was more interested in Orientalism?s feminizing metaphors (?the Orient as woman?), but feminist scholars have examined how gender and sexuaLity entered into the experi ences and practices of travellers, artists and writers operating under its sign (Melman, 1992; Yegenoglu, 1998). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Orientalism produced other ?natures? as well as other ?cultures?. Like Oriental cuLture, Oriental nature was often constructed as an ?unnatural nature?, capricious and ex treme, to be domesticated, disciplined and normalized through Euro American cartographic, scientific and engineering projects (Gregory, 2001b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Orientalism is not confined to texts. Said?s field was comparative literature, so it is scarcely surprising that he focused on the written traces of high culture, but other scholars have focused on other modes of representation (including art and pho tography) and its involvement in mun dane practices such as travel and tourism (Gregory, 1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Most of these critical elaborations have been historical, but the spectre of Orientalism still haunts the present. Its imaginative geograph ies have been activated in two new rounds of demonization of the ?Oriental Other?. First, a techno Orientalism has been directed against the economic rise of Japan and, more recently, China, which have both been represented as threats to the global economic power of EUR ope and the USA (Morley and Robbins, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Second, a neo Orientalism has been mo bilized in the ?war on terror? against political actors, groups and organizations in the Middle East, and against Arab and Muslim commu nities in Europe, North America and Australia (Tuastad, 2003; Gregory, 2004b: cf. terror ism). These new activations have an insistently practical dimension too, which is by no means confined to grand strategies and political or military campaigns. Haldrup, Koefoed and Simonsen (2006) identified the rise of a prac tical Orientalism grounded in the corporeal encounters and routines of everyday life, in which Orientalist versions of the friend/enemy distinction are reproduced through the count less ?small acts? and stories that make up the intimacies of everyday life. Seen thus, the critique of Orientalism is far more than a theoretical or textual affair: it is also a pro foundly political and practical project. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Haldrup, Koefoed and Simonsen (2006); Said (2003 [1978]); Sardar (1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Other/Otherness
The Other is that which is excluded from the Self and through this exclu sion comes to constitute the boundaries of the Self. In Phenomenology of spirit (1807), G.W.F. Hegel introduced the master/slave dialectic, which founded an idea of the ?Other? that has since been absorbed from continental PhlL osoPhY into the social sciences and geog RAPhY. Simone de Beauvoir built upon the Hegelian master/slave dialectic, in which a hierarchical dualism defines a superior pos ition in relation to an inferior one, to show how woman has been constituted as the Other to man. As long as women remain locked in this relationship, de Beauvoir ar gued, they cannot become subjects in their own right (see suBjECTlviTY). For both Hegel and de Beauvoir, true freedom requires a struggle in which the Other comes to risk her life. The masculinism of the Self/Other binary has been taken up in feminist GEOGRAPhlES to show how some kinds of geographical know ledge have been privileged over others. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The idea that the Self is defined in relation to Others is also a key component of PSYChO analytic ThEORY. According to Jacques Lacan (2002), the ?mirror stage? of infancy occurs when the child first realizes that what he had until then experienced as fragmented is in fact his ?self?. Following this recognition comes a desire to delimit these boundaries and thereby to maintain the Self through the exclusion of the Other. Drawing upon the work of Sigmund Freud, the relationship be tween one?s self and the objects of the world has come to be referred to as ?object relations theory?. Geographers have drawn upon these ideas to show how the Self is a cultural pro duction that relies on socio spatial practices of inclusion and exclusion. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The Self/Other duality has come to inform post colonialism, feminism and their inter section. In his critique of orientalism, Edward Said (2003 [1978]) showed how European and American representations of ?the Orient? have worked to constitute the self identity of the west as superior to the East. Bringing Said?s critique together with feminist theory, others have shown how the interlocking hier archies of race, class and gender have been constitutive of both imperial relations and domestic social structures. In other words, hierarchical dualities of Self and Other (West and East, man and woman, human and less than human) have been shown to be the build ing blocks of Western modernity. ?[I]t is only insofar as ??Woman/Women?? and ??the East?? are defined as Others, or as peripheral, that (Western) Man/Humanism can represent him/itself as the center. It is not the center that determines the periphery, but the periph ery that, in its boundedness, determines the center? (Mohanty, 1991, pp. 73 4). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographers have shown how the Self/ Other duality has worked to produce and de limit geographical knowledge. For example, Derek Gregory (2004b) has built upon Said?s work to show how everyday cultural practices work to produce spaces of ?the same? and spaces of ?the other? at the global scale. Greg ory shows how some peoples are represented as occupying a space ?beyond the pale of the modern?, and therefore to have forfeited the rights and dignity associated with Western MODERNITY and hUMANISM (p. 28). AjS (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) McClintock (1995); Sibley (1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
outsourcing
A mode of business organiza tion that has become increasingly common since the 1980s, in which businesses contract with third party subcontractors to provide product components and business services such as accounting and customer relations. Whether or not it is explicitly discussed in terms of post fordism, the recent explosion in subcontracting and business to business (?B2B?) networking is widely associated with the pressures to abandon fordist models of vertical integration and develop more flexible, market mediated business practices in the context of gLobaLization. For the same rea son, outsourcing is often used synonymously with ?off shoring? in political discourse. In his 2004 campaign for the US presidency, for ex ample, Senator John Kerry assailed outsour cing by talking about ?Benedict Arnold corporations?. The implication in this analogy with the eighteenth century American traitor (who had planned to surrender the American fort at West Point to the British) is that out sourcing by US companies is a betrayal of American independence. But outsourcing need not necessarily involve sourcing from foreign suppliers, and in fact is often based on localized regional supply networks. Indeed, economic geographers who study these networks are interested in the ways in which they both depend upon and foster forms of spatial aggLomeration, because the eco nomic ties of outsourcing supply chains neces sitate diverse social and cultural ties ?untraded interdependencies?, as one leading researcher calls them (Storper, 1997b) in order to function effectively. That said, even some of these clustering effects have been transnational in scope; for example, between Western European clothing retailers and Eastern European suppliers (see Smith, A., 2003a). More generally, the increasing turn to sourcing from foreign companies (from Infosys in India, for example) has captured the public imagination in North America and Western Europe since the 1990s (e.g. Engardio, 2006). Consequently, for critics, outsourcing has become widely associated with the downward pressures on wages and benefits that make the corporate search for sourcing efficiency synonymous with a global race to the bottom. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since 9/11, outsourcing has been used in arguments against ?extraordinary rendition? the clandestine US policy of sending suspected terrorists abroad to be violently interrogated by third parties in countries such as Egypt and Syria (Smith, N., 2006a). There are obvi ous differences between this externalization of interrogation and torture by government and the externalization of business activities by transnational corporations, but neo liberM commonalities underlie them, including the use of private logistical services (such as rented business jets) as well as the unaccountability in the use of foreign third parties (Sparke, 2006). By decrying extraordinary rendition as the ?outsourcing of torture?, critics have suggested in turn that it combines a sort of penal race to the bottom with a twenty first century betrayal of American liberty (Mayer, 2005). ms (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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