The Dictionary of Human Geography (161 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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psychogeography
The ?study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographic environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals?, according to GuyDebord (1981 [1955], p. 5). Psychogeography is typically traced back to this definition, and to the activities of Debord and members of the Letterist International in 1950s Paris, for whom it was a means of exploring urban spaces and everyday Life, and who established it as a key concern of the early situationists. Yet the definition?s academic tone belies its politicized and playful engagement with cities, as a way of challenging dominant representations and practices, and seeking to change urban spaces and life as part of a revolutionary project. Psychogeography combined a conscious and political analysis of urban ambiences with experiments in ludic behaviour, principally through derives or drifts on foot, and included the construction of ?psychogeographic maps? that challenged the values of dominant cartographies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The term was independently employed by geographers engaged in politically motivated versions of environmental psychology in the late 1960s, especially at Clark University in Massachusetts, including David Stea and Denis Wood (Wood, 1987). While influential on subsequent work in environmental psych ology (see also mentaL maps), that usage has been relatively sidelined in the recent resur gence of interest in psychogeography since the 1990s that has taken more inspiration from the terminology, if not always the polit ics, of the situationists. Much interest has been literary, involving the tracing of a longer trad ition of imaginative and wayward urban expLoration, especially in London and Paris, though writers such as William Blake, Thomas de Quincey and Charles Baudelaire, and the surrealists around Andre Breton (see also fL^eur/fL^nerie). Contemporary heirs of this visionary tradition include Iain Sinclair, whose peripatetic investigations of London, especially its East End, have done much to popularize the term ?psychogeography? (Coverley, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contemporary artists and urban explorers have also embraced the term in their engage ments with emotional and psychic spaces, through urban interventions as well as new media (Pinder, 2005a). Recent years have fur ther seen a proliferation of psychogeographical associations or organizations in Europe and North America, whose investigations of pLaces have typically been drawn by the marginal, hidden and forgotten, and whose networking has been facilitated by the internet (and docu mented in journals such as Transgressions, 1995 (NEW PARAGRAPH) . As psychogeography has moved increas ingly into the mainstream, much of its early radical political edge has been lost. Yet its political ambitions as well as humour and idio syncracies are also finding new and at times challenging modes of expression. dp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Debord (1981 [1955]). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
public administration
Studies of the spatial organization and management of the state apparatus (Bennett, 1990). The public administration sector comprises the different government agencies that administer, oversee and manage public programmes and that have executive, legislative or judicial authority over other institutions such as quangos within a given spatial unit, such as a nation state or a region. Studies of the spatiality of public administration have explored the relationships between, on the one hand, the types of ser vices being delivered, and, on the other, the scaLe of their delivery (Barlow, 1991). kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bennett (1990). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
public choice theory
Using the techniques of neo cLassicaL economics, public choice theory examines issues of political decision making and of the behaviour of government. It derives from the pioneering work of Duncan Black (1958) and James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock (1962), and was conceived to study politics on the basis of economic principles. Its original proponents argue that it should be understood as a research pro gramme rather than as a discipline, or even a sub discipline, of economics. It contends that elected politicians and government bureau crats make decisions on the basis of self interest. So, the behaviour and decisions of all individuals within the political sphere is purely instrumental. Politicians enact policies in terms of ensuring re election, the voters remain deliberately ignorant because individu ally they do not understand it to be in their interest to learn more, and bureaucrats those who put decisions into practice do whatever is necessary to keep their jobs and get pro moted. All involved strive to maximize their own welfare. At each decision, politicians, voters and bureaucrats make a rationaL choice. Public choice theory covers a series of issues; namely, government constitutions, state bureaucracies and voting behaviour. While the staple diet of political scientists, these concerns, and in particular their spatial patterns and trends, have been analysed in eLectoraL and poLiticaL geography. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Within public choice theory, there are five core theoretical tensions. First, there are diffi culties in aggregating individual choices and decisions to produce a collective outcome. (NEW PARAGRAPH) How is it possible to produce policies on the basis of the preferences of individuals? Second, there is the range of issues that stem from the introduction of pubLic goods and market failure. There is a tendency, stemming from their monopoly power, for governments to extend public ownership beyond that deemed efficient by the market. Third, there is the issue of political party competition. According to public choice theory, the out come of two vote maximizing parties is almost identical parties. Only with three political par ties vying for the votes of the electorate is policy variability introduced (cf. hoteLLiNg modEL). Fourth, there is the difficulty of form ing and organizing interest groups due to the free rider problem (see game theory). Fifth, there are a number of conceptual difficulties in assuming and treating pubLic fiNaNce as a rational exchange amongst citizens. These issues have been the subjects of much empirical and theoretical work over the past four and a half decades. As a branch of Neo cLassicaL ecoNomics, public choice theory is subject to all the standard critiques of that school and, in particular, the supposition ofratioNaL choice. Within geography, a small number of key texts have explored the issues of public goods and market failure (Cox and Johnston, 1982) and public finance and government decentraliza tion (Bennett, 1990). kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bennett (1990); Cox and Johnston (1982). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
public finance
Human geographers have studied the spatial distribution of public sector income and expenditure. In addition to producing and analysing spatial patterns, work has examined the mismatch between the geographies of public sector revenue gen eration and expenditure (Bennett, 1990) put another way (Bennett, 1980, p. ix): who gets what, where, and at what cost? The twin focus on spatial patterns and their consequences allows the exploration of differences between individuals and between the local govern ments that collect and spend the revenues (cf. collective consumption). As the needs, costs and preferences for pubLic goods vary geographically, so a failure to attend to the spatial consequences of public finance matters to issues of social justice. Once the ?who? and the ?where? are known, it is then possible to attend to the third element to the question, ?At what cost?? So, for example, how might the state led geographical redistribution of resources alleviate spatial iNequaLity? While (NEW PARAGRAPH) concern with how the state apparatus pro duces and can then address spatial inequality through its finance functions remains an area of interest of geographers, Bennett (1985) has argued that equity in the distribution of public goods is a utopia. As such, the state should reduce its provision of public goods and ser vices and the role of the private and of the third sector should be increased, perhaps through public private partnerships (Pinch, 1997). kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bennett (1990); Pinch (1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
public geographies
Contributions to geo graphical knowledge that address audiences beyond the academy and seek to intervene in public debate and public policy. The formal discipline of geography has a long tradition of ?applied' or ?policy relevant' work (see applied geography; relevance), but the recent inter est in public geographies has been nurtured by a renewed interest in the normative in the political and ethical dimensions of geograph ical enquiry and by two further, more par ticular, considerations. First, there has been a recognition that geographical knowledge is produced at multiple sites inside and outside the academy, and the interest in ?public geog raphies' is thus, in part, an attempt to acknow ledge the importance of those other productions and sites. This means more than an interest in ?popular geographies?. While many geographical knowledges remain undeveloped, and are often tacit and taken for granted, other non academic contribu tions are highly developed and explicit about their intellectual and substantive basis: see, for example, the regional reports produced by the International Crisis Group, at http://www. crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm. Second, there has been a recognition of the importance of developing and engaging audiences outside the academy, and the interest in ?public geog raphies' is thus also, in part, an attempt to speak in less technical vocabularies and to take advantage of non academic publishing and the development of new media (particularly the internet) to intervene in current debates in a timely and accessible fashion. These twin rationales speak to an interest in both the changing geography of the public sphere (see private and public spheres) and the critical participation of geographical knowledges in its affairs (Gregory, 2005b), and they intersect with a renewed interest in ?public intellectuals' (Castree, 2006b; Ward, 2007). Oslender (NEW PARAGRAPH) adds a crucial rider: a focus less on public intellectuals as ?super stars' illuminat ing the public sphere and more on the collab orative contributions of what he calls ?the collective intellectual' is likely to produce a genuinely public geography that is both more effective and more democratic. There have been parallel developments in other fields public anthropology, public history and public sociology, for example but some of the most impressive have been interdisciplinary: see, for example, the international forums on ?public issues' published by the US based Social Science Research Council at http:// publications.ssrc.org/essays/. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Public geographies have their own geog raphies: Ward (2006) insists on the continuing importance of the academy as one public among many and hence on the importance of education and pedagogy and it is as well to remember (as the example of the SSRC shows) that the academy and those other pub lics are increasingly transnational in their com position and concerns. In this sense, perhaps, public geographies can contribute to the deconstruction of the myth of the ?ivory tower? universities are enmeshed in wider webs of political, social and economic practices and also capitalize on the partialities of situated knowledge to articulate new collaborations, develop new conversations and forge new alli ances (cf. the People?s Geography Project at http://www.peoplesgeographyproject.org/). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Oslender (2008); Ward (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
public goods
Goods and services that are either freely available to all or provided equally to citizens of a delimited territory. Public goods are normally always provided by the state and fall within three main categories (Bennett, 1980, 1985). First, pure public goods are those that are non excludable and non rival in consumption. One person's consump tion does not restrict another person's. These goods are freely available to all people through a state's territory. An example is national defence. However, we can also think of global public goods. The eradication of smallpox, for example, would benefit all of humanity, now and in the future. While all public goods should fall within this category, they do not. It is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to ensure the equal provision of public goods. A second type is impure public goods, which are provided at fixed locations or along fixed routes. A park is a public good, and so is a (NEW PARAGRAPH) public transport service. However, due to dis tance decay, the further a person lives from these immobile public goods, the less is the usage of them, and their (potential) benefit. The confLict over the production of these types of impure public goods, in the form of turf poLitics, is an important aspect of ter ritoriaL justice. The third and final type are public goods impurely distributed, due to decisions by the state to vary geographical provision (Bennett, 1990). At each stage of the distribution of public goods, political decision maKing will determine how much of a good is provided, when and to whom. So, while one local government might decide not to provide one type of public good, a neighbouring authority might, producing a series of geographies of uneven provision. Moreover, there might be differences within a local or national government territory on the basis of the privileging of one geographical area?s need over another (cf. pork barreL) (Pinch, 1997). Kwa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bennett (1990); Pinch (1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
public policy
Geographers have paid close attention to the creation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies. Work in this area has increased in recent years in capitalist countries because of: (a) the grow ing importance of the state in economic and social affairs, offering enhanced opportunities for such work; (b) increased governmental recognition of environmental and spatial prob lems awaiting resolution; (c) the desire among individual geographers to contribute to attacks on such problems; and (d) the perceived need for geographers to demonstrate the reLevance of their field and so promote their discipline?s claim for resources within higher education institutions in increasingly materialist situations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Most geographical analyses have been con cerned with evaluating policies addressed at identified ?spatial problems of environment, economy and society? (House, 1983) and with assessment of their ?geographical impact and degree of effectiveness?: in the volume of essays that he edited on United States public policy, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . . . Critique stops short of prescription but there is some attempt to look ahead and also, in some cases, to set the problems within a theoretical, as well as an oper ational, framework. (pp. v vi) (NEW PARAGRAPH) He saw the benefits of such work as twofold: (NEW PARAGRAPH) ... [T]o non geographical academic or lay audiences ... [it reflects] a particular set of perspectives on some urgent problems which face policy makers in our very critical times. To geographers in training, the rele vance of applications of the discipline should be a major concern, whether to add practical purpose to their studies, or to point in the direction of possible professional car eers outside the education field. (NEW PARAGRAPH) House identified the discipline?s technocratic skills and its practitioners? ability to synthesize the many component parts of a complex prob lem as the geographical perspectives most valuable to public policy study (see his survey of early British contributions in House, 1973); later promotions of geographers? utility have stressed their technical skills, such as those associated with geographic information systems (see National Research Council, 1997). Others, such as C.J. Smith (1988), suggest that because many social problems are exacerbated, if not created, by environ mental, time, place and circumstance contexts (cf. contextuaL effect), then changing those contexts, through the geography of service provision and delivery, can be as influential as moves to solve the problems. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The nature of geographers? applied contri butions has been largely pragmatic, reflecting the available opportunities and the ability of geographers to capitalise on them with their technocratic skills, hence the current promo tion of remote sensing and GIS (Openshaw, 1989). Whereas some geographers claim that such involvement is necessary for the discip line?s survival (Berry, 1970; Abler, 1993a), others have queried this by pointing to the role of much public policy as sustaining, if not enhancing, the inequalities and exploitation that are inherent to capitaLism: hence Harvey?s (1974b) question ?What kind of geography for what kind of public policy?? (cf. appLied geography). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Abler (1993a); Berry (1970); Harvey (1974b); House (1973, 1983); Openshaw (1989); Smith, C.J. (1988). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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