The Dictionary of Human Geography (159 page)

Read The Dictionary of Human Geography Online

Authors: Michael Watts

BOOK: The Dictionary of Human Geography
10.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
producer services
Services provided as inputs into the production process. This is in contrast to those services consumer services that are supplied to individuals or ?end? con sumers, such as other firms or governments. Producer services are often characterized as intermediate inputs, before the product is completed. They include a diverse set of eco nomic activities, such as accountancy, adver tising, finance, marketing and research and development. It was in the late 1970s that geographers first became aware of the growing contribution that this type of economic activ ity was beginning to play towards economic growth (Dicken, 2006). Work on producer services became important in economic geography in the 1980s and early 1990s in its own right (Daniels, 1993), as well as being the basis for research into the emergence and classification of gLobaL cities. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The research in the geographically uneven devELopment of producer services has revealed how and why they have important economic consequences (Bryson, Daniels and Warf, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . First, the supply and the demand for these services need not take place in the same place. Adverts can be produced or supplied in one place, and then e mailed elsewhere, to the end consumer, from where there is demand. Second, and stemming from this spatial disjunc ture between supply and demand, producer ser vices are only partially dependent on the level of economic activity in their cities and regions. cLusters of interconnected activity around, for example, advertising in London (Grabher, 2001) raise the city?s profile but are not reliant on selling the product, in this case the advert, in London. Rather, the producer service is sold all over the world. The economic development to be wrung out of expanding producer services has been noted by policy makers and politi cians, and the sectors have found themselves important elements in the formation of urban and regionaL poLicy. kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bryson, Daniels and Warf (2004); Dicken (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
product life cycle
A concept used to connect the evolution of a product to changes in the location of its production (cf. profit cycLe). The idea is usually attributed to Vernon (1966), although its antecedents are consider ably older. Vernon intended his model as an alternative to the Heckscher Ohlin model of international trade, and he insisted that inter national iNvestmeNt decisions taken by manufacturers were driven by more complex considerations than differences in factor and traNsport costs. He proposed instead that products evolve through three distinct stages, and that manufacturers choose different loca tions in each of them: (NEW PARAGRAPH) The new product tends to be unstable, since its design and production are still being modified and perfected. This usu ally involves considerable interaction between producers and suppliers and between producers and consumers as modifications are introduced, test marketed and appraised. Producers thus require swift and effective access to a deep and diverse pool of suppliers and to consumers. These requirements are most likely to be met in major metropol itan industrialized economies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The maturing product undergoes a pro cess of increasing standardization and, as market demand grows, the scale of production increases. Uncertainties about design and marketability diminish, so the need for flexibility is reduced. The major concern for most manufacturers becomes minimizing production costs, and they seek locations outside the most heavily industrialized economies, where labour costs are lower. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The standardized product prompts manu facturers to turn still further afield, to less developed countries, particularly where their products are labour intensive, have a high price elasticity of demand, and are only weakly dependent on exterNaL ecoNomies for their production. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Although these ideas were directed at inter national trade, they enjoyed their most inten sive application at the sub national scaLe. Thompson (1968) recast Vernon?s hypothesis as a ?filtering down? theory of urban economic change. New products were supposed to ori ginate at the top of the urban hierarchy because of the concentration of highly edu cated scientific and technical workers, univer sities and other research institutions. The earliest production of such innovations would occur in the same regioNs for the reasons outlined by Vernon. With increasing standardization of the product and production process, the tie to such highly skilled labour would weaken, and cost considerations would drive manufacturers to seek out locations in intermediate urban centres where semi and unskilled workers would be available in large numbers at lower wage rates. As products reached advanced maturity, their production would shift to the lowest tiers of the urban hierarchy or out into rural locations. Thompson?s assessment of the long term pro spects for such regions was unequivocal: ?their industrial catches come to them only to die? (p. 56). When Vernon and Thompson began to work on the product life cycle concept, the long term dominance of established industrial regions such as the Manufacturing Belt of the USA was unchallenged. For Thompson, the decline of such regions was unthinkable, because of their proven ability over the long run to continue to generate new products. The loss of manufacturing to more peripheral regions through the filter down process was thus little cause for concern. A scant decade later, however, these assumptions were called into question by a major shift in economic activity between the regions of the USA. For Rees (1979) and Thomas (1980), the decline of the Manufacturing Belt could be explained by the accelerated rate of deceNtraLizatioN of production activities, as intensified competi tion from newly industrializing countries heightened the importance of cost reduction for US based manufacturers. And in contrast to Thompson?s views, Rees and Stafford (1986) argued that previously peripheral areas such as the US Southeast could eventually achieve a critical mass once a sufficient volume of capital had been invested in production facilities in the region. At this point, they sug gested, the ?incubator? functions generating new products and firms traditionally associated exclusively with the largest metropolitan regions in the Northeast and Midwest could take root in these new locations. This thesis found empirical support in studies showing that many of the largest manufacturing firms had already shifted some of their highest order (especially research and development) functions away from their original headquarters locations to places further down the urban hierarchy (Pred, 1977: see also suNbELt/sNoWBELt). (NEW PARAGRAPH) More recently, the product life cycle con cept has been criticized for its excessive deter minism and esseNtiaLism, especially its implicit claim that all products follow a similar trajectory over time (Storper, 1985; Taylor, (NEW PARAGRAPH) 1986). Critics have pointed out that even standardized and mature products can be reju venated through innovation in the later stages of a product's life cycle. A case in point is the automobile which, while hardly a new product, has been continuously modified and improved over time. It has also been argued that many commodities never achieve the status of cheap, standardized, mass produced goods especially those that, under a regime of post fordism, exhibit a high degree of variability, customiza tion and qualitative differentiation. msg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Malecki (1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
production complex
A spatial cluster of spe cialized, interrelated economic activities bound together by the creation and exploitation of externaL economies (Scott, 1988b). Such cLusters offer producers the ability to estab lish, and easily realign, transactional Linkages with other local buyers and suppliers, thereby encouraging the development and mainten ance of a social division of labour (see just in time production; transaction costs; trans actional analysis). They also provide a local Labour market specialized to match the needs of local producers. They are further sustained by the existence of public and quasi public institutions developed to support specialized local economic activity and to foster non mar ket forms ofinteraction and interdependencies between local economic actors. (See aggLom eration; commodity chaiN/FILIERe; indus trial district.) msg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
production of nature
This rather strikingly counter intuitive phrase comes from Neil Smith, originally in his book Uneven develop ment (1984). Despite its critics, perhaps noth ing attests to the power of the idea more than the fact that the phrase becomes less counter intuitive with time. (NEW PARAGRAPH) At the simplest level, and clearly influenced by Lefebvre's understanding of the produc tion oF space, Smith conveys by this phrase that nature is socially produced and, more specifically, that nature is increasingly an arte fact of capitaLism in the contemporary world. At one level, this is not so counter intuitive at all. Increasingly, at scaLes from the atmos pheric to the genetic, the material natures of everyday LiFe are increasingly transformed either by intentional manipulation for the pur poses of commodity production (e.g. genetic ally modified crops), or by the myriad ecological impacts of industrial, capitalist activities and related processes (e.g. the depos ition of persistent organic pollutants in Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems). Since Smith's book, empirical processes that confirm the material production of nature to suit economic purposes have proliferated, including the onset of commercial aquaculture and the con tinued gLobaLization of plantation Forestry. Moreover, empirical research has elaborated Smith's thesis, indicating that the capitalist production of nature, often in shifting and complex institutional configurations, has been ongoing for some time (Prudham, 2003). While agriculture would be the most obvious example to draw on here, under which the intentional transformation of crops and ani mals is probably in excess of 10,000 years old, Smith is at pains to differentiate the cap italist production of nature from all that has come before it. This is not, as he argues, because widespread anthropogenic change is unique to capitalism (quite the opposite). Rather, it is because the particular ways that nature is transformed under capitalism are unique. This includes, for instance, the appro priation and transformation of biophysical processes as a constitutive facet of uneven deveLopment under capitalism. An elabor ation of this, with some qualification, can be found in Robbins and Fraser (2003), who note ?... if the state can put non commercial Scots pine woodland in the place of industrial for ests, it is only, after all, because increased extraction is occurring in the Baltic states, Indonesia, and Ghana ...? (p. 113). Here, produced nature is worked through as a com plex set of spatial and scalar logics that link far flung places, not least through market relations and exchange, as well as in the realm of production per se. (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, Smith's thesis is not only about the material transformation of nature under capitalism. Rather, he also posits that a unique feature of what might be called ?capitalist nature' is the ways in which ideas about nature are also produced in and through capitalist production, commodity circulation, and cap italist social relations and institutions. This is a complex and controversial thesis. Yet, at one level, Smith's observation is no different than those who have long recognized the rise of instrumental, utilitarian thinking alongside industrial capitalism. Smith's argument is that such an instrumentalist disposition specifically towards nature is reinforced by capitalist social relations and processes of valuation, and that these ideas become increasingly influential in the construction of meaning around nature in a capitalist society. Examples would include instrumental, utilitarian arguments for bio diversity conservation, which tend to both render species in terms of net present value of future benefits, while also individuating such species in relation to their ecological (and social!) context. A key facet of Smith?s thesis in this respect is his anticipation of sociaL const ruction debates within critical environmental geography, but his mobilization of specifically capitalist ideoLogies as decisive influences on how nature comes to be known (constructed). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The production of nature thesis, despite being influential and widely cited in critical environmental geography, has arguably not been sufficiently developed or elaborated since its first publication. An exception is Castree (NEW PARAGRAPH) , who argues (sympathetically) that the thesis may reinforce Promethean discourses by downplaying the productive capacity of biophysical processes. Here, there is room for some sort of rapprochement with the hybridur literature (e.g. Whatmore, 2002a), which emphasizes the epistemoLogicaL and onto LogicaL co production of nature by human and non human alike. Another avenue not well travelled would explore the links between Smith?s thesis and James O?Connor?s second contradiction of capitalism (O?Connor, 1998). While O?Connor would quibble little with the notion of capitalism producing nature in this respect (it also comprises part of his theory), he places greater emphasis on this as a source of contradiction and crisis inherent to capital ism because of the under production of nature as a condition of sociaL reproduction. sp (NEW PARAGRAPH)
production of space
A term made famous by French Marxist Henri Lefebvre (1901 91) in his 1974 book The production of space (trans. 1991). Lefebvre seeks to bring a Marxist analysis of production to bear on the way space is created, coded and used through social, political and everyday proces ses (cf. production of nature). Social space is, for Lefebvre, a social product. Lefebvre came to the analysis of space through three main routes: his reworking of the phiLosophy of marxism and in particular the notion of the diaLectic; work supplementing Marxist poLiticaL economy, with an experiential emphasis on everyday Life; and work on rural and urban sociology. Lefebvre was in his early seventies when The production of space was published, and had been publishing for almost 50 years: this mature work is one of the culminations of these varied interests and concerns (for overviews, see Kofman and (NEW PARAGRAPH) Lebas, 1996; Shields, 1999; Elden, 2004; Merrifield, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the opening chapter of The production of space, Lefebvre suggests that we should under stand space in three ways as perceived, con ceived and lived. The first of these, what he calls spatial practices, are spaces that are con crete, material, physical. The second is what he calls representations of space, the space of abstract plans and mental processes. Both of these ways of thinking about space are rela tively common within human geography, but it is with the third that Lefebvre makes his key contribution. Lefebvre claims that both these spaces need to be thought together, in dialect ical relation. But this is not a linear sense of the dialectic, in which the two terms react and form a new term that then itself comes into relation with its opposite. Rather, this is a dialectic where the third term continues to exist in relation with the other two (cf. tria Lectics). Lefebvre?s third term here is what he calls spaces of representation confusingly ren dered as ?representational spaces? in the English translation spaces that are lived, experienced and recoded through the actions of those that occupy and use them. Lefebvre therefore challenges both a crudely materialist analysis and a politically detached idealist one. For Edward Soja, whose reading of Lefebvre has been influential in Anglophone human geography, in contrast to the ?real? or ?imagined? spaces of the other two models, these are ?real and imagined? spaces, which he has deployed himself in readings of Los Angeles and in his construction of third space (Soja, 1989, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the remainder of The production of space, which is a complex work that defies straight forward summary, Lefebvre returns to this three part model and illustrates, complicates and historicizes it. His is an analysis in the tradition of historicaL materiaLism, and the spaces of a particular epoch are related, though not slavishly dependent on, the mode of production (see figure 1) (for a summary, see Gregory, 1994, who also emphasizes Lefebvre?s suggestive reading of the changing historical modalities of the body, visuaLity and space). Thus capitaLism produces a par ticular political economy of space, centrally defined through the ?colonization of everyday life? through the production of abstract space (see figure 2), which Lefebvre sought to develop into a politics of space. As he declared in a 1970 essay, ?there is a politics of space because space is political?. Lefebvre was indebted to a range of thinkers who he used de-corporealization of space (NEW PARAGRAPH) urbanization of society production of space 1: The production of space (Gregory, 1993; after Lefebvre) spaces of representation production of space 2: The colonization of concrete space (Gregory, 1993) to supplement Marx notably G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche and, more critically, Martin Heidegger. Each of these thinkers was useful, Lefebvre contended, in adding things that Marx?s analyses alone could not provide. Marx was the indispensable starting point for Lefebvre at each stage of his career, but Heidegger was particularly useful in thinking about the question of space. Heidegger?s analysis of how modern thought?s mathemat ical, geometrical sense of space is reductive and we need to recall how to dwell or live is crucial to Lefebvre?s thinking through of the alienating properties of capitalist space, par ticularly in the city (cf. aLienation). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Lefebvre?s work has come under sustained criticism from more orthodox Marxists, for whom his emphasis on space trembles on the edges of or, more directly, simply is a form of spatial fetishism. In fact, these criticisms, and other engagements with his writings, by scholars such as Manuel Castells, David Harvey and Neil Smith, were available in English before Lefebvre?s work was translated, and it was left to later commentators to explore quite other dimensions of his work. The util ization of thinkers such as Heidegger and Nietzsche brought Lefebvre into a tense prox imity with the post structuralism of thinkers such as Michel Foucault, but Lefebvre was strongly critical of their anti humanism and their use of spatial metaphors in the absence of more concrete analyses (cf. Gregory, 1997b). It has largely been left to Anglophone geog raphers such as Soja (1989, 1996), Gregory (NEW PARAGRAPH) and Dear (1997) to develop the com monalities and complementarities of their approaches (see also Gunewardena, Kipfer, Milgrom and Schmid, 2008). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Although The production of space remains his most influential work in human geography, Lefebvre?s writings on cities (e.g. 1996), everyday life and Marxist theory are also avail able in English translation and provide much useful material. Lefebvre is commonly looked at as a theorist of space, yet he would have equally stressed his work on time and tempor ality (Lefebvre, 2004 [1992]: see rhYthmaNA Lysis), suggesting that space and time need to be rethought, and thought together, in any genuinely radical political action. se (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Elden (2004, ch. 5); Gregory (1994, ch. 6); Lefebvre (1991a [1974]); Merrifield (2006); Soja (1996b, ch. 1). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

Other books

Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman
The Widower's Wife by Prudence, Bice
The Bear's Tears by Craig Thomas
Swarm (Dead Ends) by G.D. Lang
The Bone People by Keri Hulme
The Speed Queen by Stewart O'Nan
The OK Team 2 by Nick Place
Flight by Alyssa Rose Ivy