The Dictionary of Human Geography (166 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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racial districting
An aspect of redistricting within the USA intended to ensure that racial minorities notably African Americans and Hispanics do not suffer from discrimination, (NEW PARAGRAPH) through such strategies as gerrymandering. Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, states with records of such discrimination are required to get redistricting plans pre cleared by the Dep artment of Justice. This usually involves ensur ing that there are sufficient ?minority majority districts? so that, for example, if 30 per cent of a state?s population is African American, then 30 per cent of its Congressional Districts should contain an African American majority. Such schemes remain open to challenge through the courts on other grounds. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Kousser (1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
racialization
A historically contingent and contested process through which racial mean ings are extended in attempts to define or redefine relationship, social practice, object, indi viduals or group. The term has become widely used as a means of stressing that ?race? is a social, economic, political and psychological process that must be explained, rather than a biological one that is determined by inherent characteristics (Omi and Winant, 1996). Although its origins date back to the late nine teenth century, its current use can be traced to Frantz Fanon?s exploration of the relational aspects of racial formation and physical and social dimensions of European domin ation and colonialism (Fanon, 1967 [1961]). More recently, many scholars have developed reservations about the term because its over usage and vagueness has led to less rigorous attention to the specific practices and dynam ics of racial formation (Goldberg, 2002). jk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barot and Bird (2001); Essed and Goldberg (2002); Miles (1993); Murji and Solomos (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
racism
Any act that links tendencies, affin ities, behaviours or characteristics to an indi vidual or community based on innate, indelible or physiological attributes, intended or not, is an act of racism. Racism is also the prejudice, hierarchical differentiation, discrimination and so on that results from these essentialized understandings of race as an innate factor that determines human traits and abilities. Racism may be manifest individually, through explicit thoughts, feelings or acts, or socially, through institutions and practices that repro duce and essentialize difference and inequities (see essentialism; cf. apartheid). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Racism is now so extensively used in polit ical discourse that it often gives the impression of being a timeless universal concept. In fact, the word did not exist in the English language until the 1930s, and only slightly before in German and French. Its rise coincides with the specific context of 1930 40s Germany. Specifically, ?racism? at the time was employed as a political critique of the German biologized understanding of race (see holocaust). Alth ough the roots of the term have a much longer and divergent history, racism as a phenomenon was present in multiple forms before the use of the term. Among these forms were the relational differentiation of the Self and the Other in colo nial practices, in which the securing of one?s own positive identity was formed against the stigmatization of the inferior characteristics (often fixed through physical or biological char acteristics) of an ?Other? (see colonialism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, some critics have become wary of understanding racism as simply biological or physical, asserting that culture or ethnicity can be reified and naturalized to the point at which they become ?functionally? equivalent to biological understandings of race (Fredrickson, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . The idea of cultural racism was first presented in 1952 by Frantz Fanon, who saw the emphasis on cultural differences as a mod ern replacement of biologically based ideas of different races (see Fanon, 1967 [1952]). Still later, Martin Barker pointed to what he called the ?new racism? that arose through the con servative political milieu in England in the late 1970s and 1980s, in which conservatives and liberals alike would criticize biological ideas of race only to naturalize ideas of community and culture (Barker, 1981). Etienne Balibar argues that this new racism in europe is actu ally ?racism without race?, in which ideas of immutable human difference are used to rigid ify racial categories or assert the impossibility of coexistence (Balibar, 1991b, p. 23; see also Gilroy, 2000a). This concept of the ?new racism? was taken up by other writers, most notably a group at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the UK, who came to understand racism, or more accurately racisms, as highly variable historical formations with shifting meanings that are temporally and spatially uneven and fiercely contested. They, and later others, emphasized the political importance of denying a universal and essentialist understanding of race or racism outside of the historically specific and intimate contexts of their formations and prac tices (Hall, 1980, p. 336; Gilroy, 1987, 2000: see also Goldberg, 1993; Stoler, 1995). These (NEW PARAGRAPH) understandings of racisms as spatially and temporally variable, lacking any thematic unity, or that challenge intrinsic characteriza tions of race, have been particularly import ant in contemporary understandings of new forms of biological racism such as new genetic determinism as well as historical and cultu ral racism, such as post 9/11 racism towards Muslims, and neo nationalist projects such as the rise of nationalism in Europe. jk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barker (1992); Fanon (1967 [1952]); Fredrickson (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Gilroy (2000a); Miles (1993); Miles and Brown (2003); Stoler (1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
radical democracy
A postmodernist or post structuralist rethinking of modern democratic theory and practice. It takes a broad ranging and flexible perspective on citizenship, emphasizing capacities to ?be political? in a democracy rather than neces sarily on rights claims or formal membership in a polity. It challenges two popular concep tualizations of the citizen. Rather than locating citizenship as one identity or performance alongside, but mutually exclusive to, others (such as kin, worker, consumer etc.), as is common in liberalism, or heroically elevating it as the principal and optimal identity of the individual, as is common in communitarian ism, radical democracy rethinks citizenship as a potential moment or dimension of any iden tity when it becomes politicized or contested (Mouffe, 1993). Radical democracy is ?radical? because it refuses closure on the questions of democracy everywhere, in all their forms. In other words, it seeks to democratize all aspects of politics, especially at sites of doxa, shared assumptions, or where things are deemed apolitical or pre political (NEW PARAGRAPH) Radical democracy has important conse quences for political geography. It has been part of a turn towards a more encompassing and theoretically informed way of under standing politics and the political. It has helped geographers broaden their focus on the state and sites of politics towards loca tions in civil society, public space and the home, as well as hybrid spaces such as the shadow state (Brown, 1997a). Barnett (2004b) has cautioned, however, that the spa tial rhetoric in radical democratic theory desensitizes us to different temporal scales so often at work in politics. He insists that we must pay close attention to their complexity, or else universalism will unintentionally creep back into our thinking. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Radical democracy also has implications for sociaL and cuLturaL geography, given its attention to multiple axes of power that work through multiple subject identities (see identity, subjectivity). How identities are enabled and constrained as the subject moves through space, for example, has been a point of interest for radical democratic geographers (e.g. Massey, 1995). Rejecting essentiausm, radical democracy implores a sensitivity to the openness and fluidity of the subject. It challenges the will for politics to fixate or prioritize a single identity to the exclusion or devaluation of others (e.g. where orthodox marxism might privilege cLass struggle over gender oppression). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This has been challenged by radicaL geo graphy, which questions how one can have a politics without at least some ethical or polit ical commitments that must be treated as essentialisms. A second criticism takes form around the question of the constitutive outside of the political. Simply put, even the most post structural of scholars has questioned whether or not we can ever have a democratic politics without some form of a constitutive outside. Whenever there is a ?we? (or a ?here?), there is by definition, a ?they' (or a ?there') who are ?outside' of deliberation or perhaps even recogNition. Yet logically such a border itself might be quite anti democratic. If the promise is to always attack and render such exclusionary political geographies, the political issue at hand becomes deflected, and in evitably lost in an infinite regress of attending to exclusions. Conversely, foreclosures and boundaries around what is worthy of the appellation ?politics' or ?political' are inher ently anti democratic since they leave no space for those harmed by such foreclosures. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Addressing these paradoxes, political theor ists advocate open, iterative and refLexive standpoints in order to address these tensions, but they admit these are by no means ?solu tions' to the dilemma. mb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Mouffe (1993); Rasmussen and Brown (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
radical geography
Approaches to geog raphy committed to overturning relations of power and oppression, and to constructing more socially just, egalitarian and liberating geographies and ways of living. The term came to refer in particular to critiques of spatiaL science and positivism in geography during the late 1960s and early 1970s, and to attempts to chart alternatives that were socially relevant and sought fundamental change. Many geographers were radicalized by counter culture movements and by waves of political protest at the time; in particular, struggles involving civil rights and against the Vietnam War, imperialism, poverty and inequality. They reacted against technocratic approaches in geography that were unable to speak to current pressing problems and that served to support the status quo, and they sought to study social issues from contrasting viewpoints, especially those based on socialist, feminist and anti imperialist perspectives. The establishment of Antipode: a Radical Journal of Geography in 1969 by students and faculty at Clark University, Massachusetts, provided an important forum for Anglophone geographers, with the opening issue declaring that it was both necessary and possible to change univer sity structures and ways of doing geography, and to revolutionize the social and physical environment (NEW PARAGRAPH) Early issues of Antipode were urgent, ques tioning, optimistic, combative in style and diverse in content. Articles addressed issues such as poverty, housing, services, planning, research methodologies, imperialism, women and war. The rediscovery of earlier radical traditions of social concern in geography in particular, the anarchist geography of Kropotkin and Reclus inspired many. Others conducted advocacy research and experimen ted with taking geography into the streets, including through Bunge's ?geographical expeditions' that worked with low income and disenfranchised communities. Organizations such as the Union of Socialist Geographers, founded in 1974, advanced a radical presence in the discipline. According to Peet, however, early radical geography was ?more relevant to social issues but still tied to a phiLosophy of science, a set of theories, and a methodoLogy developed within the existing framework of power relationships? (Peet, 1977b, p. 12). Calls for overhauling the discipline's theoretical basis to address the deep causes rather than the surface manifestations of problems led to a ?breakthrough to marxism' in the early to mid 1970s, as the work of Harvey and others paved the way for the analysis of capitAusm and class struggle (Harvey, 1973, 1999 [1982]). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Marxism became central to much radical geography, which moved from an oppositional and relatively marginalized position to become a major force. Radical ideas and practices developed within feminist geographies, similarly committed to social change but crit ical of the gender blindness of other radical studies, became increasingly important. Vigorous geographical debates were also stimulated by post colonialism and concern with sexual liberation (see sexuality and queer theory), as issues of cultural politics came to the fore, with each of these approaches being connected with political struggles inside as well as outside the academy (Blunt and Wills, 2000). In an editorial marking the twenty fifth anniversary of Antipode, Walker and McDowell (1993, pp. 2 3) signalled this diversity, argu ing: ?No single oppression or axis of social life can be treated as merely secondary or an afterthought of radical research or politics. While socialism and Marxism remain central to the vocabulary of the Left, we hold to no one orthodox view of radical analysis.? (NEW PARAGRAPH) Radical approaches have become increas ingly accepted and influential in the discipline, yet much of the earlier optimism about the prospects for fundamental social change has receded. The idea of a ?common vision? or project in geography has also been challenged. Some have welcomed the pluralization of the Left, but others have worried about its frag mentation and depoliticization, asserting that while it is necessary to recognize the diversity of current struggles, it is also important to find points of commonality and unity between them in order to enable political change. Many now employ the term critical human geography as a related and looser label for ideas and practices committed to an emanci patory politics, and considerable discussion has recently centred on the effects of institu tionalization and professionalization within the academy as well as on political commit ment, on activism and on different ways of contributing to progressive social change (including through debates in Antipode about ?what?s left??; see also Castree, 2000). Initiatives such as the conferences of the International Critical Geography Group and the develop ment of internet forums are providing new means for developing and debating radical perspectives, and for connecting different forms of radical geography, which have their own geographies and histories. Radical per spectives in geography are further being gal vanized by current political struggles against capitalism, imperialism, war and other forms of oppression that underline the continuing need for approaches that provide ?[d]issentient thoughts and norm challenging information?, and that are prepared ?to bring the undis cussed into discussion; to stray beyond estab lished perimeters of opinion; to render the familiar not only strange but, often times, unacceptable; and to explore the depths of the meaning of ??radical?? itself as a conceptual rubric? (Castree and Wright, 2005, p. 2). dp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Blunt and Wills (2000); Peet (1977, 2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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