The Dictionary of Human Geography (144 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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periodic market systems
The regular pro vision of retail and other service functions at fixed points on predetermined days in the week. All of the functions may be available on certain days only: in others as with ?market days? in British towns additional functions to those available every day are provided on set days each week. There are analogies in their distribution with central place theory, as in a classic series of papers by Skinner (1964 5) on Chinese market systems. In situations with relatively low ranges and high thresholds, traders moving around markets on set days overcome problems of insufficient demand to justify permanent provision. Empirical anal yses have identified a considerable range of ways in which such systems operate, however, often reflecting local cultural norms. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bromley (1980). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
petro-capitalism
It has been said that mod ern life is a form of ?hydrocarbon civilization? (Yergin, 1991). Energy, said one critic, is ?the precursor of economies? (Shelley, 2005, p. 1). oil and gas account for over two thirds of the world?s energy supply and are indispensable to modern forms of mobility and power supply. Since the early part of the twentieth century, petroleum and industrial capitalism (and indeed industrial socialism) has been predi cated on the availability of cheap petroleum. Petro capitalism refers to two distinct but related ideas. The first is that petroleum is the fuel of modern industrial capitalism. In the context of contemporary debates over global climate change (see global warming), addiction to (or dependency on) oil as a geo politically risky strategy for oil importing states and the continuing debate over whether global peak oil output has been reached, there may be the beginning of a turn to other sources of energy (biofuels, nuclear and solar). (NEW PARAGRAPH) But in the short and medium term, petroleum (and gas) will continue to drive the global capitalist economy. The second meaning is that oil producing states that depend heavily on oil revenues (as a proportion of exports or as a proportion of GDP) what are called ?oil dependent economies' in some circles (Le Billon, 2005) are specific sorts of capitalist economy insofar as they are not simply reliant upon oil as a source of energy but are forms of rentier economy in which oil rents (royalties, taxes, sales) are the driving the entire political economy. Petro capitalism is a particular type of extractive economy in which oil revenues, typically under state control, undergird an ambitious programme of state led develop ment and modernization (an exemplary case would be the Shah's Iran in the 1970s). Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Equatorial Guinea and Azerbaijan would be other cases of petro capitalism though, it needs to be said, they are customarily quite undisciplined and corrupt forms of capitalism that ?under per form' in relation to comparable non oil states. Petro capitalism in this second sense is associ ated with the ?resource curse? (Ross, 2001) (see also confLict commodities). mw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Kaldor and Karl (2007); Shaxon (2006); Watts (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
phallocentrism
Placing man at the centre; a masculine way of representing and approach ing the world that some theorists root in male genitalia and a masculine libidinal economy; conceiving knowledge as neutral and univer sal, whilst refusing alternative knowledges; knowledge that represent the interests and perspectives of men. It is intertwined with logocentrism, the fixing of meaning in hierarch ized binary oppositions (hence the term phal logocentrism). Phallocentrism acknowledges women, but locates their identities only in relation to men, contained within a series of binarized concepts and terms: ?It is because sexual difference hides itself in other concepts and terms, other oppositional forms in the distinctions between form and matter, between space and time, between mind and body, self and other, nature and culture, and so on, that it remains the latent condition of all knowledges and all social practices' (Grosz, 2005, p. 177). Critiques of phallocentrism have led French feminists such as Helene Cixous and Luce Irigarary, and male philo sophers such as Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, to explore feminine (i.e. more open and multiple) ways of writing and reading, of defining and investigating problems, including a diversity of intellectual standards for know ledge production, and diverse ways of conceiv ing the relations between theory and practice. Jardine (1985) terms such explorations gynesis. She regards the works of the male philo sophers in particular with some suspicion, framing them as instances of male paranoia: such men began to desire to be woman as a way to avoid becoming the object of female desire. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Phallocentrism is an important concept within geography. Jardine (1985) attributes the critiques of phallocentrism (e.g. a disbelief in origins, master narratives, humanism and progress) that developed throughout the twen tieth century to the end of European imperiaL ism, as well as to the growing influence of feminism. Critiques of phallocentrism have been important to the process of rethinking the concept of nature, because they are tied to attempts to displace ?man? from the controlling centre and to refigure nature in active, less exploitative, terms. To the extent that human ism and phallocentrism are intertwined, the critiques of that latter extend to humanistic geography. Framed through the analogous concept of mascuuNism, Rose (1993) claims that phallocentrism pervades geographical knowledge. (See also gender; homophobia anD heterosexism; sexuauty.) gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Grosz (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
phenomenology
While the term ?phenom enology' was used in phiLosophy by J.H. Lambert (1728 77), Immanuel Kant (1724 1804) and Ernst Mach (1838 1916), and is a vital part of G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of spirit (1807), in the twentieth century phenomenology began with Edmund Husserl (1859 1938) and the elaborations of his work by Martin Heidegger, Roman Ingarden, Maurice Merleau Ponty, Jean Paul Sartre, Max Scheler, Alfred SchÂÂ81tz, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, among others (see Kockelmans, 1967, pp. 24 5). For Husserl, the definition of phenomenology was straight forward: it was himself and Martin Heidegger (1889 1976). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Phenomenology entered human geog raphy in the early 1970s as a reaction to and critique of the reductive and objectivist approaches of spatiaL science, and of the structuralism and functionalism of some versions of marxism then also entering the field. humanistic geography in particular turned to phenomenology to redress abstract notions of people and places. This ?geograph ical phenomenology' focused variously on everyday practices, human agency, move ment, place, and social and environmental ethics (Relph, 1970; Tuan, 1971; Buttimer, 1976; Entrikin, 1976). Phenomenology was seen as a philosophical and methodological approach that was attuned to human subject ivity, and its proponents read in its claim for a return to ?the things themselves' an argu ment at once opposed to scientific abstrac tion and in favour of a more direct social geography of everyday lives and lifeworlds (Casey, 1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In a major critical intervention, Pickles (1985) forcefully questioned these subjectivist readings of phenomenology. Pickles argued that ?geographical phenomenology' had over looked Husserl's and Heidegger's critique of both objectivism and subjectivism in science as remaining in what Husserl called ?the natural attitude'. The real crisis of the European sci ences was not that they treated the everyday world in overly abstract ways, but that they failed to recognize that their claims to object ivity in the natural attitude had always to be clarified and situated in terms of their consti tutive regional ontologies (see ontoLogy). Werlen (1993 [1988]) subsequently elabor ated such a regional ontology of everyday life and social action through a close, creative reading of the constitutive phenomenology of Alfred Schutz (1899 1959). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Seen thus, phenomenology is not an alter native to the abstractive tendencies of science but a necessary correlate to it, seeking as it does to ground the relationship between scientific and the pre scientific, the theoretical and the everyday, in a carefully prepared and reflective ontological analysis. Phenomenology ?does not subscribe to a ??standpoint'' or represent any special ??direction''; for phenomenology is nothing of either sort, nor can it become so as long as it understands itself. The expression ??phenomenology'' signifies primarily a meth odological conception. The expression does not characterize the what of the objects of philo sophical research as a subject matter, but rather the how of that research. The more genuinely a methodological concept is worked out and the more comprehensively it deter mines the principles on which a science is to be conducted, all the more primordially is it rooted in the way we come to terms with the things themselves, and the farther is it removed from what we call ??technical devices'' though there are many such devices even in the theoretical disciplines (Heidegger, 1927, p. 27: see methodology). (NEW PARAGRAPH) It was precisely the fact that the sciences had forgotten their own histories of concepts and approaches (cf. geneaLogy) that led to the need for phenomenology to clarify the regional ontologies of the sciences, knowledge pro duction and the lifeworld. In Pickles' view, phenomenology is concerned not first and foremost with individualized, subjective geog raphies, but with the ways in which phenomena are constituted as intentional objects through complex historical and social processes of dis tanciation, thematization, abstraction and for malization (and sometimes mathematization) that constitute meaning making in its many forms. Phenomenologists are, therefore, always interested in the constitution of the specific objects, with their relational nature as objects of consciousness, intention or meaning, and with the lifeworld context that always escapes all thematization but is the precondition for any such thematization. The task of phenomen ology in this sense is not to assert the priority of the everyday world over the world of science, or of place over abstract spaces, but to under stand through ontological investigation how each is constituted in various historical projects of abstraction and thematization (see also Gregory, 1978b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the 1990s and 2000s, new directions in geographical thought led to even more expanded readings of phenomenology in post positivist geography. Phenomenology was renewed by a growing interest in post modernism and post structuralism, par ticularly in ways in which anti essentialist writings questioned what Jacques Derrida called phenomenology's residual onto theology: its specific commitments to (NEW PARAGRAPH) particular interpretations of foundationalism, rationalism, and subject. More recently, growing interest amongst human geographers in the writings ofGiorgio Agamben, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Luc Nancy, Gayatri Spivak and others has led to an appreciation ofthe ways in which these thinkers have adapted phenomeno logical thought to new ends, and the advance of non representationaL theory in human geography has also been achieved in part through a reading of various forms of (post ) phenomenology. jpi (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pickles (1985). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
philosophy
The relationship between phil osophy and geography has been a long and interesting one. To provide examples from a broadly Western tradition: Strabo argued for a close and necessary relationship between moral philosophy and geographical know ledge; Sir Isaac Newton published his own editions of Varenius? Geographia generalis in 1672 and 1681; Immanuel Kant lectured on physical geography throughout his teaching career (1755 96); and in a 1976 interview Michel Foucault declared that geography ?must necessarily lie at the heart of my con cerns?. Each of these authors had a different view of philosophy, of course, but also of geog raphy and geographical knowledge. For Strabo, chorography was to provide empir ical particulars for reflection on truth, nobility and virtue (and also to underwrite Roman imperialism); Newton was interested in a mixed mathematical spatial conception of geography; Kant?s lectures were descriptive, comprising a series of observations about oceans, landforms and the weather, an outline of the plant, animal and mineral ?kingdoms?, and a survey of the ?four parts of the world? (asia, africa, europe and america); and Foucault?s remark arose from his forensic enquiries into the relationships between power, knowledge and space. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Historians of geography had been keenly aware of this historical itinerary at least as far as Kant and major studies in the history of geography (see geography, history of) paid close attention to philosophical reflections on the tangled relationships between ?culture? and nature, notably Glacken?s landmark (1967) survey. But modern geography was slow to treat philosophy as a guide to contemporary enquiries, and interest in it was, at first, largely informal. Hartshorne?s (1939) exegesis of The nature of geography repeatedly turned to Kant to underwrite a view of concept formation in geography as idiographic, concerned with the unique and the particular, but this was not the product of any rigorous engagement with Kant?s lectures on physical geography or their place within his work as a whole, still less with Kantianism writ large. Even the repudiation of Hartshorne?s views in the 1960s was less informed by philosophy than it was driven by the desire to reconstruct geography as a spatial science: its foundations in the philosophy of science (and in particular positivism) were not codified until Harvey?s Explanation in geography (1969). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In contrast, the critique of spatial science and the formation of a series of successor projects undoubtedly depended on and in several cases were directed by explorations of different, avowedly post positivist philoso phies. Many of these approaches sought, like positivism or logical positivism, to identify a sort of central generating mechanism (see essentialism) and to ground their knowledge claims in a bedrock of certainty (see founda tionalism). Thus the first explorations of post positivist philosophies in human geog raphy typically found their anchors in the human subject, language or the mind (Gale and Olsson, 1979: see also humanistic geog raphy; phenomenology; structuralism). But these are deep waters, and at the time many geographers navigated them by treating philosophy as a ready made ?machine for explanation? through which geographical cases were to be fed (Barnes, 2008a); there was little sense of a conversation between philosophy and geography. Johnston?s (1983) mapping of ?philosophy? on to the terrain of ?human geog raphy? was typical in the privilege it accorded to philosophy, and it proved to be a template for other general surveys. Even Sayer?s (1984) influential work, one of the most philosophic ally astute investigations of the period, limited place and space to context and circumstance; the architectonics of explanation were derived directly from the principles of critical realism. Pickles? (1985) careful reading of phenomen ology (principally Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger) was almost alone in its recognition of spatiality as a crucial concern of both philosophy and human geography. Olsson?s (1980, 1991, 2007) imperturbable odyssey through philosophy (and beyond) not only had much to say to human geograph ers but also focused directly on some of the root concepts in the field, especially since its reworking through spatial science: but it was conducted in such an exquisitely abstract register that many readers were probably lost en route. Part way through Olsson?s quest, the rise of postmodernism in human geography (and across the spectrum of the humanities and social sciences) did much to distract attention from the sort of modern ism that informed projects like Olsson?s. Postmodernism, in concert (and often in ten sion) with the other ?posts?, post colonialism and post structuralism, brought new writers to the attention of human geography at large. Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault were perhaps the most prominent, later followed by Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze and others. But whether any of these figures could properly be limited to the field of ?philosophy' is an open question, and none of them would be comfortable with the legislative function that the other humanities and social sciences so often accorded to philosophy. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In fact, appeals to philosophy as judge and arbiter were subjected to two main criticisms. The first accepted the importance of philo sophical reflection, but warned against its ideological deployment: (NEW PARAGRAPH) At its best, the ?philosophy of geography? is that system of general ideas concerned with the direction and content of geographical work which practitioners elaborate during praxis . . . At its worst, the ?philosophy of geography' is where those who have read philosophy in general and disciples of ?more advanced ideas in other disciplines' exercise ideological power over those who remain with practical concerns. (Peet, 1998, pp. 8 9) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Closely connected to this complaint is Marx's injunction, repeatedly invoked by those com mitted to criticaL human geography and radicaL geography: ?Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.' That said, the development of various forms of marxist geography was accompanied by an increas ingly rigorous reading of philosophy: Louis Althusser's ?symptomatic' reading of Marx's texts had a limited audience in human geog raphy, but Harvey's reworking of classical Marxism and Smith's (1984) dissection of the ligatures between capitaLism and uneven deveLopment prompted a close engagement with a series of materialist philosophies to clar ify not only questions of method but also ques tions of substance see, for example, diaLectics, process and production of space and even a ?symptomatic? reading of Harvey himself (Castree, 2006a; Castree and Gregory, 2006b; Harvey, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The second objection was, in some ways, even more radical. American philosopher Richard Rorty called for the wholesale demo lition of ?Philosophy with a capital P' and its replacement by a post philosophical culture. He was suspicious of those who thought phil osophy could provide a single, canonical lan guage into which all questions could be translated and through whose terms all dis putes could be resolved. Rorty's pragmatism acknowledged the creative capacities of dis course, and treated post philosophical culture as a sort of ?cultural criticism? that claimed ?no extra historical, Archimedean point' from which to offer its readings (cf. situated knowledge: see Barnes, 2008a). Rorty?s pro spectus did not provide a detailed model for post foundational geographies, and nor was it intended to, but the discipline's more recent reactivation of philosophical reflection can be read as inviting a more open and dialogical relationship between philosophy and geog raphy. There is clearly a considerable distance between the essays on philosophy in geog raphy collected from geographers by Gale and Olsson (1979) and the essays from both fields published in Philosophy and Geography (2001 4). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Still more significantly, however, and closely paralleling Rorty's concerns, the renewed interest in philosophy extends far beyond phil osophies of science to address political and moral philosophies. Indeed, a crucial focus of enquiry has been the entanglement of political and moral philosophies with the conduct of science: hence human geographers have (NEW PARAGRAPH) effectively reactivated some of Glacken's (NEW PARAGRAPH) most vital concerns through debates about the contemporary constitution of ?Nature' and life itself in ways that, at the limit, invite a re mapping of the horizons of the social and the biological (Thrift, 2008: see also bare Life; biopoLitics; non representationaL theory). Less epically, there have been investigations of cosmopolit anism and ethics, dwelling and place, involv ing critical reworkings of Heidegger, Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (e.g. Barnett, 2005; Harrison, 2007b); investigations of excep tion, law and violence, involving critical reworkings of Agamben and Foucault (e.g. Gregory, 2006; Minca, 2007a); and investiga tions of subjectivities and spatialities, involv ing critical re readings of Butler and Foucault (Pratt, 2004). This list is indicative, not exhaustive, but it points to some of the ways in which philosophy is increasingly being trea ted as resource rather than writ, used to inform rather than police geographical enquiry. This does not dispense with the need for close, careful and contextual reading, and collections such as Crampton and Elden's (2007) multi faceted readings of Foucault and geography show that the freedom to experiment with philosophical texts is not a license to ransack them. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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