The Dictionary of Human Geography (141 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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overpopulation
The idea that the size, density or organization of an area?s population is too great to be sustained. Neo Malthusian work argues that increased population reduces an areas? resource base until the carrying capacity is breached (see Limits to growth; maLthusian modeL). However, neo Marxist scholars have countered that overpopulation makes a structural contribution to the con tinuation of certain modes of production, as an increased supply of potential workers reduces wage rates (Harvey, 1974a). The associated terms over urbanization and over ruralization have sparked considerable debate, with recent work on China supporting a transition from an under urbanized to an over urbanized society (Shen, 2002). ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cohen (1999).
Pacific Rim
A geographical region stretching across the Pacific Ocean and incorporating the westernmost cities of North America in add ition to Japan, Australia, and the coastal cities and city states of East Asia. The term became prominent in the 1980s as a result of Asia?s increased economic power and the intensifica tion of cross Pacific trade and financial link ages (Appelbaum and Henderson, 1992). Academic and popular writings on the region became so saturated with hyperbole that many critics began to argue that the region was itself a literary creation one that served the economic agendas and geopolitical visions of a pro laissez faire Euro American audience (see, e.g., Dirlik, 1993). km (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Appelbaum and Henderson (1992); Dirlik (1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
pandemic
A term (derived from the Greek pan , all + demos, people), used in the health sciences to describe the occurrence of a speci fied illness, health behaviour or other health related event that is unusually prevalent (epidemic) over an extensive geographical area. The term is often applied to periods associated with the international spread of major human infectious diseases such as chol era, influenza, plague and smallpox (e.g. ?pan demic influenza?; see Patterson, 1986), with the expression ?global pandemic? reserved for periods of rapid worldwide transmission of a disease agent. Global pandemic events of the past 100 years include ?Spanish? influenza (1918 19), El Tor cholera (1961 ) and the (NEW PARAGRAPH) Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (1981 ); see Kohn (1998). (See also biosecurity.) msr (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cliff, Haggett and Smallman Raynor (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Panopticon
Philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham?s design for a building, most com monly a prison, in which centralized power is all seeing pan opticon is described in his book of that title (1791; see Bentham, 1995). Bentham?s design was for a circular building, with rooms arranged around the circumfer ence, open at both ends, of one or more storeys. The individual rooms, or cells, would thus be illuminated from behind, and visible at the front to a central tower. The occupant of the tower would thus be able to look into each and every cell from a fixed position. However, it would be possible to construct a system of blinds that prevented the occupants of the cells from seeing into the control tower, and so they would be unaware if they were being observed at that point or not, or even if there was an occupant in the tower. Not only would they therefore be subject to external power, they would turn that power on to themselves, being self disciplining. Bentham's design was suitable for any building in which it was neces sary or useful to be able to continually observe individuals who would have no contact with the other occupants, such as a school, a fac tory, a hospital, barracks, a poor house or, most commonly, a prison. Bentham's design was offered to the British government as a model for the prisons being constructed as transportation to the colonies became less viable in the late eighteenth and early nine teenth centuries, but was only taken up in part in model prisons such as Pentonville and the Millbank Penitentiary. Panopticons were also built outside Britain, including in Spain, the Netherlands, the USA and Cuba. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bentham's model assumed a wider contem porary significance as a result of Foucault?s 1976a [1975] analysis of the Panopticon as an exemplar of disciplinary power (see Patton, 1979). Foucault saw the Panopticon as the architectural conjunction of two models of dealing with social problems, which he ana lysed as the problem of lepers and the problem of the plague. With leprosy, victims were excluded from society; with the plague, they were rigidly controlled from within. While ?the leper gave rise to rituals of exclusion . . . the plague gave rise to disciplinary diagrams'. In a plague town there was a strict spatial partition ing, with careful surveiLLance, detailed inspection and mechanisms of ordering. These illustrate two models: a pure commu nity as opposed to a disciplined society. Both are symbols of wider models of power, as is the Panopticon in Foucault's analysis. It is the architectural fusion of these models, where the organization of the plague town is brought (NEW PARAGRAPH) to bear on the spaces of exclusion. Foucault suggested that the society that emerged in this period can be better understood as one of gen eralized panopticism, where the ideal of surveil lance and ordered behaviour is spread through cities as a whole. Foucault?s analysis has not been without its critics, but his account, together with his re edition of the French text with an introductory interview (1980d), helped to bring Bentham?s work back into discussion. In human geography, Foucault?s arguments have influenced historico geographical studies of poverty, welfare and workhouses (Driver, (NEW PARAGRAPH) and contemporary critiques of security, surveillance and incarceration (Hannah, 1997; Dobson and Fisher, 2007). se (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bentham (1995); Foucault (1978); Wood (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
paradigm
An old English word meaning pattern, exemplar or model, but rescued from obscurity by the American philosopher and historian of science Thomas Kuhn (1922 96) in his short monograph The structure of scientific revolutions (1970 [1962]), reportedly the most cited book of the twentieth century. The pre cise definition of ?paradigm? is contentious, with one critic counting 21 different meanings in the first edition of Kuhn?s book (although the second edition offered clarification: Masterman, 1970). Roughly, a paradigm is the constellation of values, assumptions, methods and exemplars shared by a given scientific community, making it what it is. A paradigm shapes what scientists think about something before they think it. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Kuhn?s use of ?paradigm? was part of his larger project to provide an alternative to the traditional history of science that stressed science?s progressive and heroic character. For Kuhn, most science was puzzle solving, with practitioners working within a common frame of reference, shared assumptions, tech niques and standards; that is, a paradigm. Consequently, the activities of scientists were run of the mill, not heroic. Within this frame work of normal science, however, anomalies occurred that could not be explained within the prevailing paradigm. Given enough of them, a crisis eventuated, precipitating extra ordinary research (not mere puzzle solving). If successful, in the sense that the new research accommodated the anomalies, revolutionary change occurred in the form of a paradigm shift, setting the blueprint for the next period of normal science. Paradigms, however, by their very constitution, were incommensurable. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Scientific knowledge, therefore, moved not as linear progress, but as incomparable, discontinuous transformations (?scientific revolutions?). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Kuhn?s work garnered an enormous amount of critical attention. There were the defin itional ambiguities already mentioned. Kuhn?s response was to clarify ?paradigm? by separating out the global characteristics of a scientific community, labelled the ?disciplinary matrix? (Kuhn, 1970 [1962], p. 182), from ?concrete problem solutions? (Kuhn, 1970 [1962], p. 186) such as the use of a particular book or mathematical technique, termed ?exemplars? (Kuhn, 1970 [1962], pp. 186 7). Other criticisms went to his substantive claims. Toulmin (1970) argued historically that paradigm change was not revolutionary, but occurred all the time. The rarity was nor mal science. For this reason, Popper (1970, p. 53) thought that ?one ought to be sorry for? Kuhn?s ?normal scientist?. Likewise, Kuhn?s thesis of incommensurability drew fire with its implication that science does not progress. Lakatos (1978), while accepting incommen surability between ?hard cores? of rival theor ies, claimed that one could still meaningfully speak of progress using empirical prediction and corroboration to construct research programmes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) These are important points, but they do not help us to understand why Kuhn?s book was such a runaway success. There are many reasons, but the most important was its anti rationalism, and its resonance with a similar sentiment washing over a number of human ities and social sciences from the 1960s (where the book was read much more than in science), and culminating in postmodernism and post structuralism. Whether he meant to or not (and the evidence is that he did not), Kuhn represented scientific knowledge not as an unsullied, abstract form of rationality (the progressive, heroic view), but relativistically as mired in context specific cultural beliefs and ordinary practices, in paradigms. Not that this was the interpretation of paradigm by geog raphers who first made use of Kuhn during their own ?scientific revolution?, the self styled quantitative revolution that was to usher in spatial science through ?extraordinary research?. Perversely Kuhn?s ?paradigm? was interpreted as a justification for that move ment?s rationalist scientific approach (Haggett and Chorley, 1967) and paradigms were treated as scientific models (cf. Billinge, Gregory and Martin, 1984a; Mair, 1986). Some later exponents, however, tried to (NEW PARAGRAPH) recoup some of the radical anti rationalist possibilities of Kuhn?s work through inter pretations of the discipline?s history (Barnes, 2004b). But while Kuhn?s book might have been on the Times Literary Supplements list of top 100 most influential books since the Second World War, it was never on geogra phy?s top 100 list. Even so, ?paradigm? is no longer an obscure term, and is now widely used to mean ?exemplar? or, in a much looser sense than Kuhn intended, to describe a more or less systematic way of thinking about or doing something. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Kuhn 1970 [1962]; Mair (1986). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Pareto optimality
A situation in which it is impossible to make some people better off without making others worse off. This criter ion of ?economic efficiency? was devised by the economist and sociologist V.F.D. Pareto (1848 1923), and is an important element in neo cLassicaL economics. The Pareto criter ion may be applied to efficiency of resource allocation, optimality being achieved when it is impossible to reallocate resources to produce an outcome that would increase the satisfac tion of some people without reducing the sat isfaction of others. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The attainment of Pareto optimality is illus trated in the figure. Resources are available to generate a certain amount of income distrib uted among A and B these could be individ uals, groups of people or even the inhabitants of two different territories. The line AB indi cates the possible distributions of the max imum total income available, ranging from all going to A and none to B (at point A) to all going to B (at B). Point X is a position of Pareto optimality, where any redistribution in the direction of either A or B (along the line) will make the other party worse off. In fact, any starting position on the line is Pareto optimal. It would be impossible to increase A?s share from X to Z (thus leaving B in the same position) because this conflicts with the resource constraint. However, point Y inside the triangle ABO is sub optimal by the Pareto criterion because available resources are not fully utilized and it is possible to increase A's income to X, for example, without taking anything away from B. Such a move would be a ?Pareto improvement'. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The Pareto criterion figures prominently in traditional welfare economics, where it is argued that acceptance of Pareto optimality as a rule for allocative efficiency or distributive (NEW PARAGRAPH) ?s income Pareto optimality (NEW PARAGRAPH) equity involves minimal ethical content. However, adoption of the Pareto criterion car ries some important implications that tend to strengthen the status quo. Once society has reached the limit of production possibilities that is, there is no more growth then the poor cannot be made better off without conflicting with the Pareto criterion, for any such move would be at the expense of others (the rich). Thus however badly off the poor may be, they can be made better off only if more income (or whatever) is produced. In practice, the appli cation of the Pareto criterion in a no growth economy would prevent redistribution in the direction of the poor, no matter how unequal the existing distribution (cf. welfare geography). dms (NEW PARAGRAPH)
participant observation
A research method in which the researcher aims to par ticipate in the process under study so as to gain intimate knowledge of subjects and their habits, which insiders to a realm of practice might not otherwise reveal or be able to reveal in contrived situations such as inter views. Participant observation was a valued technique for the ethnographies of the Chicago School of urban sociology, as well as for the social anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowsky and E. Evans Pritchard, and the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. As Malinowsky famously put it, participant observation provides a means ?to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world? (1961, p. 25), which would then have to be analysed in broader institutional terms through intellec tual resources that the anthropologist consid ered to be ?far surpassing the natives'. This gendered and colonial defence of expertise has come under strong critique, not least within anthropology. However, attentiveness to the quality of relationships necessary to access contextual knowledge, the central concern of participant observation, remains central to a post positivist or hermeneutic social science. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Michael Burawoy (see Burawoy, Burton, Ferguson and Fox, 1991) frames participant observation against both positivism and cul tural relativism, as a method defined along two axes: a scientific or theory data axis, which arrays objects from self evident to sub jects of theoretical scrutiny, and a hermeneutic axis, which arrays ?observer? and ?observed? across a range from estrangement to immer sion. Burawoy stresses the importance of choice in locating oneself across both axes in the process of ethnographic research (see eth nography). Self consciousness about location in both these senses is crucial in analysis of what Donna Haraway (1991c) calls situated knowledges: products of perpetually tenuous relationships that cannot be resolved by claims to objectivity through familiarity or the crypto religiosity of omniscient science. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Burawoy's analytic can be pushed farther by asking how objectification on the scientific axis presumes the translation of only some aspects of local knowledge into ?universal' science, through specifically raced and sexed practices of intimate affiliation. As Hugh Raffles (2002) eloquently argues, most local knowledge remains in the not universal, not scientific, ethnographic context: a realm of intimate knowledge that is embodied, spatialized, affective (see affect) and relational. Raffles' challenge is to represent this broader affective geography through attention to multiple forms of participant theorization, on differentiated terms set by unequal access to broader intel lectual, social and spatial resources. A key challenge of participant observation today is to find ways of representing the political eco nomic, cultural, textual and affective resources through which knowledge is actually negoti ated in context. This method can then defend the way in which specific products of partici pant observation become scientific evidence, not through Malinowsky?s suppression of sub jugated knowledges, but through norms of accountability that contend with the unequal conditions of production of scientific know ledge. Such an approach also allows for ongoing claims to responsibility and redress for human subjects and their geographies, through evidence that explicitly shows reliance on the nature of ?participation'. sc (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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