The Dictionary of Human Geography (152 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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possibilism
A claim that human societies may respond in a variety of ways to the influ ences of the physical environment. Possibilism (NEW PARAGRAPH) is primarily associated with the French School of human geography that had its roots in the writings of Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845 1918), but also found favour in Britain in the early twentieth century work of Patrick Geddes and H.J. Fleure, and in the USA in Carl Ortin Sauer's insistence on the trans formative power of human cuLture (see also BerKeLey schooL). It thus stands in contrast to environmentaL determinism and was clas sically expressed in Lucien Febvre's dictum ?There are no necessities, but everywhere pos sibilities; and man, as master of the possibil ities, is the judge of their use' (Febvre, 1932, p. 27). Different philosophical roots of the doctrine have been identified, including neo Kantian philosophy (see Kantianism: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Berdoulay, 1976), probability theory associ ated with Poincare (Lukermann, 1965), and Lamarckian biology (see LamarcK(ian)ism: Archer, 1993). Differences between possibi lism, environmental determinism and prob abilism are more easily identified when taken as ideaL types rather than as operational per spectives in geographical research. dnL (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Lukermann (1965). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Postan thesis
A major interpretation of the dynamic of the medieval economy, proposed by historian Michael Postan (1898 1981). The thesis was first developed for England, but subsequently extended to cover much of Western europe. Postan's ideas derived from classical poLiticaL economy, particularly Ricardo and Malthus, which he saw as a framework for understanding the links between population, landed resources and living standards over the long term (Postan, 1966, 1972; Hatcher and Bailey, 2001; see maLthusian modeL). In so doing, he reacted negatively to linear interpretations of the medieval economy that were underwritten by a belief in the progressive growth of the mar Ket and monetization as frameworks for understanding change. Indeed, the thesis was eventually utilized as a means of understand ing both European medieval and early modern pre industrial economies (Le Roy Ladurie, 1966; Abel, 1980). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Postan accepted classical political economic assumptions about the fixity of land supply as a factor of production, minimal technological innovation in farming and diminishing returns to increased labour inputs. As a result, he viewed population growth to be unsustainable in the long term, as it led to an oversupply of labour on the land and fragmentation of land holdings. Consequently, he argued that as a result of population growth over the thir teenth century, associated with real wage falls and shrinkage of holding sizes, an increasingly harvest sensitive population emerged that was vulnerable to periodic crises (Postan and Titow, 1958 9). These were observable in a consistent tendency for death rates to rise with grain prices and responsible for cataclys mic phases such as the Great European famine of 1315 22. Furthermore, he was inclined to see susceptibility to high death rates associated with epidemic disease such as the Black Death as a manifestation of society's vulnerability resulting from an imbalance between population and resource available per capita. Postan added other elements to this interpretation, such as a belief in the decline of soil fertility that arose as populations cropped land too frequently and nitrogen levels plummeted, driving communi ties to cultivate soil types that were inherently unsuitable for arable farming and grain production. He believed that population decline in the fourteenth century was a punishment for ?overfishing' in the previous century, and that the damage done to soil fertility was not repaired until at least the sixteenth century when population totals began again to recover. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since Postan's death, historians and histor ical geographers have contested the idea that technology was unchanging and argued that the thirteenth and early fourteenth century economy was showing signs of developing spe cialization and genuine comparative advan tages in a manner more consistent with Smithian growth theory (Britnell, 1993; Britnell and Campbell, 1995). It has also been argued, in conformity with the Boserup thesis, that in densely populated areas of England grain yields were increased by an increase in labour inputs as land was cropped, weeded and fertilised more frequently (Campbell, 1983, 2000). Others have sought alternative explanations for weakness in the economy associated with seigneurial exploit ation through the removal of surpluses legit imated by serfdom as a relation of production (see Brenner thesis). More recently, it has been claimed that the difficulties associated with harvest failure were in many instances caused by extreme natural events that would have impacted adversely on any pre industrial economy (Bailey, 1992). It has also been argued that exogenously generated epidemic disease that brought down population (NEW PARAGRAPH) levels after 1347 had little to do with the living standards of the population since rich and poor were equally susceptible (Bailey, 1996). Nonetheless, the model remains a powerful statement to which many interpret ers still adhere on account of its conceptual elegance. RMS (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Campbell (2000); Hatcher and Bailey (2001); Postan (1972). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
post-colonialism
An intellectual movement originating in literary and cultural studies con cerned with the diverse, uneven and contested impact of colonialism on the cultures of col onizing and colonized peoples, in terms of the way in which relations, practices and represen tations are reproduced or transformed between past and present, as well as between the ?heart? and the ?margins? of empire and its aftermath. While the proliferation of uses and implied meanings of the term ?post colonial? (and its conflation with other terms such as ?neo colonial?, ?ex colonial?, ?anti colonial?, ?post independence? and ?post imperial?) has resulted in a tangled skein of intellectual threads, post colonialism as a form of ?critical analysis of colonialism and its successor pro jects? takes as axiomatic the following: (1) a ?close and critical reading of colonial dis course?; (2) an understanding of ?the compli cated and fractured histories through which colonialism passes from the past into the pre sent?; (3) a mapping of ?the ways in which metropolitan and colonial societies are drawn together in webs of affinity, influence and dependence?; and (4) a sensitivity to the ?pol itical implications? of the way history is con structed (Gregory, 2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Post colonialism may refer to something tangible, with ?real political and historical ref erents in space and time, locating cultural as well as economic and political connections between metropole and colony? (King, 1993, p. 90). This take on post colonialism can be distinguished in work focusing on forms of post colonial expressions and identity such as the social, demographic, political, cultural and spatial forms, styles and identities in once colonial societies of the periphery (Simon, 1998, p. 230). Post colonial nation states are often ?overwhelmed with the onslaught of representational spaces? in attempts to pro duce the ?ideal of the post colonial citizen? (Srivastava, 1996, p. 406). Urban forms and architecture, in particular, have been treated as ?a social and political means of representation in which a post colonial nation forms a dialogue with its colonial past? (Kusno, 1998, p. 551). Post colonial strivings for a new identity do not completely banish the colonial past, but involve the selective retrieval and appropriation of indigenous (see indigenous knowledge) and colonial cul tures to produce appropriate forms to repre sent the post colonial present. Often ?ironic?, ?contradictory? and anxious about ?inauthenti city?, post colonial identity is constituted by both a ?relatively unproblematic identification with the colonizer?s culture, and a rejection of the colonizer?s culture? (Kusno, 1998, p. 550). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Using the term ?post colonialism? to refer to a specific period after colonialism is, however, problematic, as the historical reality in the second half of the twentieth century in the once colonized world was shaped by ?a mod ernity that is scored by the claws of colonial ism, left full of contradictions, of half finished processes, of confusions, of hybridity, and liminalities? (Lee and Lam, 1998, p. 968). Post colonialism must be understood in a plural sense, for there are ?quite radical differ ences in the ??colonial?? relationship between the imperial centre and the colonized in the various parts of the former empires? (Mishra and Hodge, 1991, p. 412). The term is hence less usefully tied to a specific historical moment, a political status or a concrete object. Instead, more critically, the ?post colonial? is used to signify ?an attitude of critical engage ment with colonialism?s after effects and its constructions of knowledge? (Radcliffe, 1997, p. 1331). It provides a conceptual frame that works to destabilize dominant discourses in the metropolitan West, to challenge inherent assumptions, and to critique the material and discursive legacies of colonialism (Crush, 1994; Jackson and Jacobs, 1996; Jacobs, 1996, Blunt and McEwan, 2002; McEwan, 2003). Post colonial critique engages with ?the monumental binary constructions of East/West, traditional/ modern, natural/cultural, structural/ornamen tal? in order to locate ?productive tensions aris ing from incommensurate differences rather than deceptive reconciliations? (Nalbantoglu and Wong, 1997, p. 8). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The emancipatory radicalism and recupera tive stance ascribed to the ?post colonial? have been questioned in a number of ways. Critics argue that just as the application of the cat egory ?pre colonial? to societies prior to their incorporation into European political and eco nomic systems tend to fix the ?colonial? as the main point of reference, adding the prefix ?post ? may also impose ?the continuity of foreign histories' and ?subordinate indigenous histories? (Perera, 1998, p. 6). It begs the question whether the condition of the world today has been so reconfigured as to be ?incon trovertibly post colonial' (Hall, 1996, p. 256), or whether it is more likely that ?colonialism left the everyday life of many quite untouched; or that the changes it did bring often passed unrecognized as changes? (During, 1992, p. 346). Privileging ?the moment of the ??post colonial'' . . . [may] simply revive or re stage exactly what the post colonial so tri umphantly declares to be ??over'' ' (Hall, 1996b, p. 248; cf. Gregory, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Others have cautioned against the navel gazing tendencies of certain forms of post colonial studies which seem reluctant to go much further beyond theorizing ?the meaning of the hyphen' (Mishra and Hodge, 1991, p. 399) and have emphasized instead the need for post colonial studies to engage with ?material practices, actual spaces and real pol itics? (Sylvester, 1999, p. 712: see also Driver, 1996; Jackson and Jacobs, 1996; Barnett, 1997, p. 137; Lester, 1998; Driver and Gilbert, 1999b). If the main limits of post colonial theories lie in their mistaken ?attempt to transcend in rhetoric what has not been transcended in substance' (Ryan, 1994, p. 82), then an important starting place in overcoming some of these limitations would be to dissect post colonialism as threaded through real spaces, built forms and the material substance of everyday biospheres. (NEW PARAGRAPH) At the same time, the ?prospects of getting past the post? (Yeoh, 2001) must be tied to the larger enterprise of constructing and elaborat ing alternative post colonial geographical tra ditions that will steer a path through what Ram (1998, p. 628) calls ?on the one hand, a sphere of the modern which is so hopelessly contaminated by its colonial origins that it seems exhausted as a source of critique and action, and on the other, a non elite discourse which is completely unconnected with the modern and is unable to represent anything other than utter otherness'. The first steps are the most difficult, as Chatterjee (1994, p. 216) points out: ??europe and the americas, the only true subjects of history, have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colo nial enlightenment and exploitation, but also our anti colonial resistance and post colonial misery.' Sidaway (2000, p. 593) also notes that ?any postcolonial geography must realize within itself its own impossibility, given that geography is inescapably marked (both philo sophically and institutionally) by its location (NEW PARAGRAPH) and development as a western colonial sci ence'. For a post colonial geography to aspire to significant breaks with the prescribed script, one step forward would be to view post colonialism as a highly mobile, contestatory and still developing arena, where opportun ities for insight may be gained at multiple sites. While its redemptive features as a means of resisting colonialisms of all forms and its manipulative aspects as a vehicle for colonial ism to reproduce itself cannot be totally disen tangled, its critical edges may be sharpened not only to ?dismantle colonialism?s signifying system', but also to articulate the silences of the native by ?liberating the suppressed in dis course', and to speak back to the centre (Alatas, 1995, p. 131: see also Rattansi, 1997; Nagar and Ali, 2003). In this vein, Robinson (2003a, citing Chakrabarty) calls for a ?provincialising' of Western scholarship, followed by a more sustained engagement with cosmopolitan practices in the production of post colonial knowledge. by (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Blunt and McEwan (2002); Robinson (2003); Sidaway (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
post-development
A tradition of thinking and political action that refuses to accept that deveLopment is somehow natural or innocent. Its proponents also dispute the suggestion that ?developing countries' can or should follow in the footsteps of the west/north. Some post developmentalists go further and argue that the discourse of development has done immense damage in the global South. Arturo Escobar (1995) has famously maintained that development produced only famine, debt and increased poverty for the majority world. Post 1950 development had failed, he said, and other modes ofbeing had to be discovered and worked through. In this vein, post development refers to that set of ecological, economic and cultural experiments that will produce new and presumably better ways of being human. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Post development thought is really a spec trum of oppositional thinking that mixes old and new insights in roughly equal measure. At one end of the spectrum is a tradition of anti deveLopment thought that is frankly dis missive of development. Anti development activists reach back to Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy when they contend that develop ment is violent and dehumanizing. There is more than a hint of this thinking is Escobar's book, Encountering development: development has failed and it must be overcome. But Escobar also draws on work produced by dependency theorists in the 1960s, includ ing Andre Gunder Frank. Like many others, he maintains that the dominant model of eco nomic modernization in the North cannot be exported to the global south. The core coun tries use their power to prevent balanced development. It would also be unwise, and probably impossible, for the majority world to copy the ecologically exploitative model of development pursued in the North (see also core periphery modeL). (NEW PARAGRAPH) What made Escobar?s work so challenging, however, was the fact that he drew on work by Michel Foucault and the subaltern studies collective to think about the production of development as a form of governmentaLity. Escobar argued that the third worLd had been invented by American aid programmes as the residual in a coLd war struggle between the First and Second Worlds. There is nothing natural about this sociaL construction nothing, save for an uncommon history of colonialism that produced this diverse mix of countries as a singular space that henceforth would be defined by its ?mass poverty? and pathological lack of development. Escobar, in other words, argued that an imagined geog raphy of underdevelopment was constructed by a discourse of development that infantilized the majority world in relation to a mythical view of a perfect and benevolent West. Under the sign of development, Western experts (aid workers, technicians, military personnel) were then set free in the Third World ostensibly to secure its own dissolution. The fact that the United Nations designated the 1960s as the Development Decade speaks to the hubris that Escobar is so keen to skewer. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Escobar?s work has been important in for cing a re evaluation of the (un)productive work performed by developmentalism. By linking the study of development to geopoL itics, Escobar was able to raise important questions about the meanings of colonialism. Was development not simply the continuation of colonialism by another name? Did it not turn Third World men and women into a set of experimental subjects, to be dissected later in a museum or university? (See Ashis Nandy?s comments on the back cover of Encountering development.) At the same time, there are weaknesses in Escobar?s account. His sugges tion that development began in 1949 ignores a history of thinking about progress and dis order (about development) that has been explored in some detail by Arndt (1981) and (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cowen and Shenton (1996). Corbridge (1998) and Kiely (1999) have further argued that Escobar?s insistence on a singular dis course of development blinds him to the dif ferent governmental interventions that emerge from, for instance, the basic needs agenda, a gender and development framework or neo LiberaLism. At times, Escobar comes close to the anti development position of wanting to escape from all forms of governmentality. But it is not clear how this escape will be effected; nor is it clear that Escobar has spelled out the opportunity costs of his development alterna tives. In part, this is because he damns devel opment in its entirety, failing to note that life expectancies in many parts of the world increased at a historically unprecedented rate after 1950. (NEW PARAGRAPH) If Escobar uses Foucault to moralize about developmentalism, other versions of post development thinking are less obviously normative. Partha Chatterjee (2004), for example, has begun to develop a post coLoniaL response to what he calls the ?unscrupulously charitable? gestures of neo liberalism, and of the new public administration (NPA) that so often goes with it. He has repeatedly drawn attention to the different chronologies of the creation of the modern state in the West and in the countries of asia and africa. In his view, technologies of gov ernmentality and the creation of named popu lations pre date the formation of the nation state and civiL society in most of the world. NPA demands for good governance and par ticipatory development by individuals are often wildly at odds with local realities, where people need the support of skilled brokers in political society. In an exploration of develop ment and bureaucratization in Lesotho, James Ferguson (1990) has charged that, while indi vidual development projects fail on a regular basis, they combine to produce an anti politics machine that substitutes the technical jargon of development for concerted public discus sion of gender relations, land rights, the nature of the state and so on. Ferguson?s argument, in other words, is not that development has failed (pace Escobar). Rather, it is that a rea sonably diverse range of development inter ventions has failed to end rural poverty in Lesotho, but has succeeded, sometimes unwittingly, in extending bureaucratic state power in the countryside. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ferguson?s work on the anti politics machine suggests one fruitful avenue for a post developmentalism that maintains links to radical development thinking. Similar (NEW PARAGRAPH) accounts of the depoliticization of develop ment have been essayed by Peter Uvin (1998) on aid agencies in Rwanda, John Harriss (2001) on the banalities of Robert Putnam?s work on sociaL capitaL theories and David Mosse (2005) on the power effects of a major UK aid project in India. It is here perhaps, and in explorations of the ways in which development thinking continues to express Western anxieties or fantasies about ?itself? (Gilman, 2003), that post development thought has most to offer. sco (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cooper and Packard (1998); Escobar (1995); Ferguson (1990); Watts (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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