The Dictionary of Human Geography (158 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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private and public spheres
Discursively constructed, contested categories that define boundaries between households, market econ omies, the state and political participation. The concepts are central to two distinctive, yet intertwined, discussions of: the public sphere, and ideologies and practices of separ ate spheres. (NEW PARAGRAPH) JÂÂ81rgen Habermas? account of the bourgeois public sphere has been particularly influential (see capitalism; critical theory). He argued that early capitalist societies were organized into four institutional spheres: family (NEW PARAGRAPH) consumer (private), market economy (pri vate), the state (public) and citizen political participation (public) the last he identifies as the bourgeois public sphere. As both a his torical phenomena and normative ideal, the bourgeois public sphere functioned as a coun terweight to the state; it was where ?the public? was organized and represented, and served to mediate the relations between the state and society. This liberal model of the public sphere (see liberalism) was never fully achieved, he argued, but became less attain able in welfare state capitalist societies, in which the separation between the state and economy, public and private, was dissolved, and family consumer and citizen roles were transformed. The role of citizen assumed new forms (see citizenship): of passive recipi ent of publicity and social welfare client. Habermas? account is suggestive to geograph ers: he analyses landscape changes that concretize and reinforce both the rise and decline in active public debate (e.g. coffee houses and nineteenth century urban culture, and the suburb, respectively: Habermas, 1989 [1962]). His account of the ideal of the bourgeois public sphere is nonetheless widely criticized for universalizing a model that arose within exclusionary (male, bourgeois, white) spaces in historically specific European societies (Howell, 1993; Mitchell, 2003a). Feminists have argued that gender exclusions are constitutive (and not simply incidental to) Habermas?s idealization of the bourgeois pub lic sphere (Fraser, 1997), and that he unwit tingly reproduces a separate spheres ideology that has been the focus of so much feminist criticism and organizing (see feminism; femi nist geographies). This is an ideoLogy that renders domestic space as the repository of the emotions and private interest, and women ?by nature, guardians of the ??household of emo tions?? ... a kind of sphere within [the private] sphere? (Marston, 1990, p. 456). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A notion of public sphere is nonetheless central to democratic theory and practice (see radicaL democracy), and there have been numerous, including important feminist, attempts to rethink it in contemporary con texts. Fraser (1997) does this by questioning four of Habermas? assumptions, including the liberal assumptions that private interests are antagonistic to the public sphere, and that one cohesive public sphere is the ideal. She argues for a theory of multiple, contending, sometimes mutually exclusive public spheres. This questioning and retheorization reflects a feminist understanding that what counts as private and public is itself the result of political struggle, and a scepticism about the ways in which concepts of ?privacy? and ?the private? often protect dominant (male) interests by de politicizing a range of issues (such as spousal assault and child care) and legitimating the oppression of women. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Feminist retheorizing of multiple public spheres tends to emphasize the many ways in which a separate spheres ideology continues to haunt dominant public spheres, and the persistent traffic between constructions of public and private. Fraser (1989) has described how the US state has installed a separate spheres ideology within systems of social welfare provision, so that women are often positioned as dependents and men as deserving bearers of rights. In her analysis of a powerful coalition of women?s organiza tions advocating the rights of women to public safety in northern Mexico, Wright (2005) notes that activists in these organizations ?face the paradox that by exercising their demo cratic voices through public protest, they are dismissed, by their detractors, as ??unfit?? cit izens, based on their contamination as ??public women?? ? (p. 279). And though they can chal lenge this ?twisted logic?, ?they cannot fully escape its implications? (p. 279). Berlant argues that in the USA over the past 25 years, the public sphere has collapsed into the intim ate, such that ?the family sphere [is] consid ered the moral, ethical, and political horizon of national and political interest? (1997, p. 262). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographers have sought to theorize the relations between the public sphere(s) and pubLic space. There is a reticence simply to layer the terms on to each other, in part because much political organizing, especially for non dominant groups, takes place in so called private spaces, and thus there is a need to expand our thinking about the spaces of politics (or the public sphere) (Staeheli, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Nevertheless, public spheres and pub lic spaces are linked. The regulation of public space is instrumental in regulating public debate and excluding some groups from public life, and ?public spaces are decisive, for it is here that the desires and needs of individuals and groups can be seen, and therefore recognized, resisted, or . . . wiped out? (Mitchell, 2003, p. 33). The distinction between spheres and spaces preserves the understanding that the concept of public sphere is in large part a democratic ideal that we strive towards, in and through the con struction and use of public space. It is an ideal that can be redeployed by those who are excluded from actual political spaces to demand inclusion within them. For this rea son, some theorists have been drawn to the metaphor of ?empty space? to articulate the inevitably unfulfilled promise of a democratic public sphere (Pratt, 2004). gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Fraser (1997); Mitchell (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
private interest developments (pids)
Communal housing projects in the USA (also known as community interest developments and common interest communities), in which the property is held in common and its use gov erned by a homeowners? association. Those associations many of which have consider able power over what can be done within the development operate as ?private govern ments? separate from the state apparatus, although their decisions can be challenged legally. Originally associated with condomini ums, the pid form of governance has spread to other housing types, covering more than 10 per cent of all US housing and a much (NEW PARAGRAPH) higher proportion of all new housing. Most pid residents are relatively affluent, using a terri toriaLity strategy to distance themselves from perceived Negative externalities. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barton and Silverman (1994); McKenzie (1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
privatization
An increase in private owner ship, control and action relative to public own ership, control and action. This may occur in three main ways. Assets and activities can be transferred from the public sector to the pri vate sector (e.g. when a state owned company is sold to private shareholders or the cleaning of a public building is contracted out to a private company); private interests can increase their influence in the public sphere (e.g. when private retailers are given greater control over the uses of pubLic space outside their shops); or private provision may grow faster than public provision (e.g. if more pri vate than public housing is built in an area, the local housing stock becomes relatively more privatized). Privatization is often understood as one element of the rise of neo liberal poL iticaL ecoNomy (see Neo LiberaLism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Privatization has been prominent in many countries since the 1980s. Three major drivers of privatization can be identified. The rise of New Right politics during the 1980s in several Western countries (notably the USA under the Reagan administration and the UK under the government of Margaret Thatcher) was asso ciated with economic policies that emphasized market solutions and the rolling back of the state. This led to major sales of public assets (from utility companies to housing) and an expansion of private provision of services through contracting out and competitive ten dering. A second phase of privatization was associated with the structuraL adjustmeNt programmes require by the iNterNatioNaL moNetary fuNd as a condition of much of its lending to low income countries. The third driver has been the collapse of state sociaLism and the reintroduction of capitalist relations of production in former state socialist countries (cf. post sociaLism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographers? interests in privatization focus on the unevenness of the process and its out comes within and between countries, on the effect of privatization in generating wider pro cesses of socio spatial restructuriNg, on its implications for understandings of state spati aLities and on the privatization of space itself, through the growth of such things as semi private shopping malls and urban gated commuNities, and the sale of public land to private developers. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A binary view of privatization as a straight switch from public to private may be over simplified. It risks neglecting the role of the ?third sector? of voluntary organizations, Ngos, civic associations and the social economy, which are neither wholly public nor narrowly private. In addition, marketization the intro duction of internal trading and quasi markets in the public sector, reductions in state subsid ies to the private sector and the growth of user charges for public services blurs the bound ary between the public and the private, as does the widespread use of public private partner ships in the goverNANce of social and eco nomic development. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Privatization has been an important source of capital accumuLatioN and corporate prof itability since the 1980s, but it has also been the target of major political protests. The pri vatization of water distribution in low income countries has been of particular concern to protestors, because of the negative effect of charges on poor households? access to clean water. jpa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Han and Pannell (1999); Mansfield (2004); Painter (1991); Shiva (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
probabilism
A thesis about the relationship between cuLture and Nature, which proposes that while the physical environment does not determine how human societies will react to its influence, it renders some responses more likely or probable than others. Probabilism thus aims to occupy a philosophical position somewhere between ENViroNmeNtAL deter miNism and possibiLism. While debates over this issue were most characteristic of late nineteenth and early twentieth century geog raphy, recent reassertions about the power of the environment to channel human history in certain directions such as those of Jared Diamond (1987) have reopened aspects of the debate in some quarters (for a critique, see Judkins, Smith and Keys, 2008: cf. cuLturaL ecoLogy; poLiticaL ecoLogy). Despite its abstract clarity, in historical terms probabilism was perfectly compatible with the possibilist geographies associated with the French School of humaN geography led by Paul Vidal de la Blache (see Lukermann, 1965). dL (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Spate (1968). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
probability map
A probability map displays the estimated likelihood that a pre defined event will occur at a specific point or defined area within a geographical space, during a par ticular period of time. For example, probabil ity maps are used in meteorology to show the likelihoods of above normal rainfall occurring around the globe (see, for example, the UK Met Office's seasonal forecasts at www.metof fice.com/research/). To interpret probability maps, it is important to know how the prob abilities were calculated and interpolated across the map space, and the period for which the event is predicted (a 33 per cent chance of annual flooding being worse than a 33 per cent chance of decennial flooding). rh (NEW PARAGRAPH)
process
A flow of events or actions that pro duces, reproduces or transforms a system or structure. (NEW PARAGRAPH) It was not until the 1960s that modern geog raphy was alerted to the complexity of the concept of a process. Blaut (1961) insisted that the standard distinction between spatiaL structure and temporal process derived from a kantianism that had been discredited by what he called ?the relativistic revolution'. It was now clear, so he claimed, that ?nothing in the physical world is purely spatial or tem poral; everything is process'. In Blaut's view, therefore, ?structures of the real world' that seemed to have a fixity and permanence were simply ?slow processes of long duration'. In principle, most formalizations of spatiaL sci ence appeared to accept this claim Golledge and Amedeo (1968) and Harvey (1969, pp. 419 32) gave ?process laws? a central place in their modeLs of expLanation in geography (see positivism) but in practice many studies simply used distance as a surrogate for process (hence ?spatial processes') and thus confirmed the geometric cast of LocationaL anaLysis and spatiaL anaLysis as these were conceived at the time (see distance decay). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Many of these locational spatial models depended on formal language systems; that is, language systems whose elements have unassigned meanings. The xs and ys in their equations or the points and lines in their dia grams could refer to anything they were empty of concrete content and so analysis was governed by the relations between these abstract elements in the language system itself: by (say) the theorems of geometry, the calcu lus of probability theory or the mathematical theory of stochastic processes, rather than by what Olsson (1974) called ?the things we are talking about'. These locational spatial models of spatial process were reviewed in Cliff and Ord (1981). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Subsequently, however, there was a turn towards human geographies based on ordinary language systems whose elements have assigned meanings. This allowed more substantive con ceptions of process to be utilized in human geography: cultural processes, ecological pro cesses, economic processes, political processes, social processes and so on. Early examples included a focus on cognitive and decision making processes in behaviouraL geography, on the dynamics of the Labour process and cycles of capital accumuLation in economic geography, and on practices ofsocial and sym bolic interaction in cuLturaL geography and social geography. This in turn, and of neces sity, opened up a sustained dialogue with the other humanities and social sciences. For, as Harvey (1973) recognized, ?an understanding of space in all its complexity depends upon an appreciation of social processes [and] an under standing of the social process in all its complex ity depends upon an appreciation of spatial form'. One of his most pressing concerns was thus to ?heal the breach' between the socio logical and geographicaL imagination. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The distinction between ?formal? and ?sub stantive' definitions of process was cross cut by a second distinction drawn by Hay and Johnston (1983), between ?sequences? and ?mechanisms': (NEW PARAGRAPH) Process as sequence in time and/or space. This view of process is character istic of the verticaL themes of trad itional historicaL geography and of mathematical statistical space time forecasting models. In both cases, the account is morphological and descrip tive: compare Darby?s (1951) identifica tion of the processes that changed the English landscape (?clearing the wood', ?draining the marsh' etc.) with Bennett's simple (1979) typology of barrier, hier archy, network and contiguity processes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Process as mechanism. This view ofprocess is characteristic of both systems analysis in geography and of geographies con ducted under the sign of reaLism (which require the identification of the relations between the ?causal powers? of structures and the conditions under which they are realized). In both cases the account is interactive and explanatory: it seeks to show how by what means, through which networks particular outcomes materialize. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hay and Johnston (1983) insisted that it was possible (and necessary) to reconcile these two approaches. Since their objective was also to use quantitative methods to analyse spatio temporal sequences and networks of connec tion and consequence, they were also seeking to employ formal language systems to substan tive effect. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Through the 1980s and 1990s, most human geographers resisted such ecumenical attempts to integrate these different conceptions of pro cess, however, and the dominant approaches focussed on describing processes through ordinary language systems and conceptualizing them as mechanisms. ?Mechanism? was soon replaced by more fluid metaphors, a sharper sense of agency, and a greater historical sensibility (see, e.g., structuration theory). The most common focus was on power and practice and on the capacity of various forms of socio spatial theory to elucidate their operation and outcome (see, e.g., Pred, 1984). More recently still, there has been a return to the sort of (non Kantian) philosophical reflection recommended by Blaut forty years earlier, as a way of reworking these understandings of place, power and, crucially, practice. Much of this effort has been directed towards the elab oration of a relational philosophy in which ?pro cess? takes centre stage, but in startlingly different guises. Thus Harvey (1966) turned to G.W. Leibniz (1646 1716) andA.N. White head (1861 1947) to guide his theorizations of a dialectical space time (Sheppard, 2006) and co productions of space and nature (Braun, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Thrift (1999) and his collaborators turned to a dazzling array of European philo sophers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 1951), Martin Heidegger (1889 1976), Maurice Merleau Ponty (1908 61), and Gilles Deleuze (1925 95) and Felix Guat tari (1930 92), to address similar themes, but in ways that animate an altogether different politics. Thrift?s non representationaL the ory involves an attempt to rethink our most basic ontoLogy as a means of coping with an always becoming world of contingency, change and emergence (through what Thrift (2006, p. 140) calls a ?processual sensualism?); to invoke radically different conceptions of time as well as space as a means of sensing the mul tiple elements that flicker into being in net works of places; and to incorporate performance and performativity as a means of grasping the precarious, conditional and always consequential achievements of ?world making? and ?geo graphing? (Thrift, 1999). There are substantial disagreements between (NEW PARAGRAPH) these materiaLisms, but they share a view of human geography as incomplete project and unmastered process. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pred (1984); Harvey (1996); Thrift (1999a). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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