The Dictionary of Human Geography (168 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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recognition
The recognition of rights and needs tied to identity became a focus of much social movement activity in the 1980s and 1990s. This is known as identity politics, and is associated with a proliferation and frag mentation of social movements around iden tities of gender, race, disability, ethnicity, sexuality (amongst others), taken up by some states as state sponsored multiculturalism. Criticisms of politics of recognition have come from across the political spectrum. Marxists have expressed concern about the dissolution of the unifying class struggle. Within femi nism, Fraser and Honneth (2003) have drawn a dichotomy between politics of recognition and redistribution, arguing that the former neglects political economic issues and geopol itical developments, as well as simplifying and reifying group identities. (But see Butler (NEW PARAGRAPH) for the argument that this binary misrepresents the complexity of calls for rec ognition insofar as they are typically inter twined with demands for redistribution.) In a different register, feminists such as Grosz (2005) advocate a politics of imperceptibility a politics that unleashes unexpected events and encoun ters without being identified with a person, group or organization. Some European intellec tuals criticize the politics of identity and differ ence within their national context as another instance of American cultural imperialism. Mitchell (2004b) considers how this last critique converges with a growing conservative backlash against ?differentialism?. gp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Fraser (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
reconstruction
Meaning ?building again?, reconstruction is generally used in the devel opment community to refer to a cluster of actions to restore or re equip economies that previously were developed or in transition to sustainable economic growth. These are dis tinguished from actions aimed at stimulating growth and good governance in the poorest countries, those once described as underdevel oped. This distinction goes back at least as far as the founding of the World Bank in 1944. The modern World Bank contains two institu tions: the International Bank for Recons truction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The IBRD made the first World Bank loan: $250 million to France in May 1947 for the reconstruction of its war torn economy. The IBRD continues to be active in middle income and transitional economies, providing loans for disaster relief purposes, in post conflict situations and to post socialist economies. Since 1991, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has joined the IBRD in central Europe and central Asia. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Reconstruction efforts sponsored by the IBRD and the EBRD have not been without their critics. Both institutions are committed to what they describe as democratization and market led economic growth, and the agendas of good governance or the new pub lic administration feature strongly in their self descriptions. However, good governance was not at the top of the reconstruction agenda in Russia under President Yeltsin: the shock therapy recommended by Yeltsin?s advisers including the Americans Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton led not only to price decontrol and currency convertibility, but also to the wholesale transfer of state assets to private monopolists. Sachs prefers to speak of?radical reforms? rather than shock therapy (2005, p. 135) but the shocking result of these measures (shocking, at any rate, to some mainstream economists) was a ruthless and often violent struggle for power, assets and territory. Far from providing an equitable restructuring of the economy of the former Soviet Union, reconstruction efforts have too often led to what David Harvey (2003b) calls ?accumulation by dispossession? (see also primitive accumulation). Hugely widen ing inequalities in income levels and health care provision have been just two results of reconstruction in Russia. Elsewhere, as in the Czech Republic and Poland, less dramatic reconstruction efforts have come closer to meet ing the targets set by their governments and their international counterparts. sco (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hoogvelt (2001); Ledeneva (1998). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
recreation
Pursuits or activities (even inactivity) undertaken voluntarily outside paid employment for the primary purpose of pleas ure, enjoyment and satisfaction. Recreational activities tend to be distinguished, in academic studies, from sports as not involving formal rules of competition. Such a division is also problematic, as sports may be undertaken non competitively (e.g. one might play golf without competing), and other activities may involve more or less competitive elem ents with greater or lesser formalization (e.g. multi player computer games contain highly formalized rules for competition, but would rarely be considered a sport). Recreational activities could be part of tourism, if occur ring away from the place of domicile, or leisure, if occurring while at home, and the definitions of all the categories are very porous. A number of distinctions are often made regarding recreation?s orientation and organization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Formal and informal recreations are often differentiated. Formal recreation involves activities that are structured and organized by an external body in prescribed times or places. This would thus include clubs, hobby societies and other organizations. Informal rec reation refers to self organized activities occurring at times and/or places of the indi vidual?s own choosing. Trends to formalize more recreational activities have been linked to their commodification and the increasing sale of recreational goods the production of which has become a major industry in the developed world. A further division often made is between passive and active recreation playing in a band is active, while listening to one is passive. This distinction imports judgements freighted with normative values. A variety of policy initiatives around health have sought to encourage ?active? forms of recreation to increase fitness. Likewise, moral panics have often linked passive recreation to fears of youngster?s becoming ?couch potatoes? or otherwise harmed by the passive enjoyment of especially digital media. The assumption of passive consumption is contestable, since consumers may actively contribute to events and participate in numerous ways transform ing events or goods through their interpret ations and reactions. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographies of recreation have tended to focus upon the effects on the environment and our relationship with it, and then the way in which spaces structure the availability and nature of recreational opportunities. For instance, the development of climbing fashions both discourses and tactile or haptic ways of knowing and valuing the environment (Lorimer and Lund, 2003; Taylor, 2006b). Alternatively, looking at environmental effects (such as footpath erosion; see Liddle, 1997) or social impacts (such as contested claims and control) of recreation upon spaces might be a focus. Recreation can forge norms of appropriate con duct within spaces and lead to conflict, for instance, in parks or green spaces if different groups (in terms of age, ethnicity or sexuaL ity) have clashing recreational practices. A major strand of work has been disaggregating the social and physical factors affecting access to recreation in terms of income or disabiLity or more hidden social factors. For instance, peri urban woodland may be more or less physically accessible, but this may be compounded by fear of crime differentiating access by gender (Burgess, 1996). Work has looked to trends such as the commodification of recreation or the increasing spatial restrictions of chiLdren's access to spaces ofinformal recreation in light of fears over their safety (Smith and Barker, 2001; Valentine, 2004; Department of Communities and Local Government, 2006). Recreation thus has to be seen as linked to the wider produc tion of space, production of nature and changing practices of consumption, where recent work has looked at recreational practices of dance, moving from studies of subcultures to discuss performance and body cultures, espe cially via non representationaL theory. mc (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hall and Page (1999); Lorimer and Lund (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Prosser (2000); Valentine (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
recycling
A process that reuses the materials and energy components of an item to create another product. In most waste hierarchies, recycling sits below reducing consumption, reusing an existing item and reprocessing, and above disposal. Although recycling uses energy, it can reduce waste for disposal and the need for raw materials in production processes. Recycling was used during the two world wars, but not for environmental reasons. Although contemporary recycling may be undertaken solely for economic reasons (if recycled materials cost less than raw ones), it is usually represented as an environmental con cern. Human geographers have investigated people's motivations for engaging in recycling activities (Barr, Ford and Gilg, 2003). pm (NEW PARAGRAPH)
red-light districts
While sex work has never been a solely urban phenomenon, it is in specific areas of towns and cities that it has been most visible. In most cases, these areas are particularly associated with female street prostitution, though in some instances, they (NEW PARAGRAPH) are also characterized by an agglomeration of off street work in the form of ?adult oriented' businesses, sex clubs, theatres and peep shows. In some cities, these areas may coin cide with spaces of male prostitution and gay venues, although the visibility of these in the Landscape has typically been less pronounced. The concentration of ?vice? and prostitution in specific areas has long fascinated urban geog raphers and sociologists, with the pioneering work of the chicago schooL of sociology including several detailed ethnographies of the lifestyles of those occupying these areas of ?immorality? and deviance. More recent work has suggested that these areas cannot be understood merely as the outcome of sup ply and demand economics, but as the out come of a complex interaction of moral codes, legal strictures and poLicing practices that encourage the containment of vice in inner city areas away from whiter, wealthier subur ban populations (who, ironically, appear to be the principal clients of sex workers: Ashworth, White and Winchester, 1988; Hubbard, 1999). However, recent efforts to clean up vice areas, and the tendency for cli ents to contact sex workers via the internet and mobile phone, means that red light dis tricts are becoming less numerous in Western cities (Sanchez, 2004). ph (NEW PARAGRAPH)
redistribution
A transfer of resources between groups or pLaces. Redistribution may be progressive (reducing inequaLity) or regressive (increasing inequality). Urban geo graphers emphasize the role of redistribution in the early formation of urban settlements. Harvey (1973), following the work of Karl Polanyi, argued that redistribution is one form of economic integration along with reciprocity and market exchange. Early urbanization is often assumed to have depended on the accu mulation of an economic surplus, involving a shift away from reciprocity and towards redis tribution (with resources being transferred from rural to urban areas). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Redistribution has been a core concern of weLfare geography with its focus on the unequal socio spatial distribution of re sources. The goal of reducing socio spatiaL inequaLity was central to the development of the weLfare state which seeks to mitigate the social inequality fostered by capitalist accumuLation by providing free or subsidized services such as health care and education, and cash transfers such as unemployment benefits and old age pensions. According to Keynesian economic theory, such transfers (NEW PARAGRAPH) had an economic as well as a moral rationale. It was thought that by helping to maintain the level of demand in the economy during periods of slow growth or recession, redistri bution would reduce the risk of a major crisis of accumulation such as that associated with the stock market crash of 1929 (cf. fiscal crisis). In practice, the extent of the redistri bution provided by specific welfare states varied depending on their scope, the levels of benefits provided and the balance bet ween universal provision and means testing (Esping Andersen, 1990). The rise of the New Right in the 1980s saw sustained political attacks in many high income countries on the idea of progressive redistribution in line with the doctrines of neo liberal economic policy. Neo liberalism has been associated with a shift from the welfare to the workfare state, with the continuation of redistribution conditional on labour market reform (Peck, 2001b). Work on redistribution within political geography has focused on the implications of the territor ial restructuring of the state. For example, in devolved and federal systems, redistribution may involve ?fiscal federalism?, in which the central (federal) level of the state arranges the transfer of resources between territorial units at lower levels. However, under neo liberalism, a shift from managerial to entre preneurial forms of urban governance has seen local agencies increasingly having to compete for a share of these redistributed surpluses (Harvey, 1989a). The forms of redistribution mentioned here mostly take place within the framework of the nation state, despite the fact that the greatest inequalities in income and wealth are between those living in high income and low income countries. In development geography, a con cern with redistribution at the international scale is reflected in research on the politics of aid. jpa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Harvey (1989a); Painter (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
redistricting
The redrawing of the boundar ies of electoral districts (termed redistribution in the UK: see Rossiter, Johnston and Pattie, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Redistricting can be manipulated to promote one party?s cause over another?s, as in malapportionment and gerrymandering. In the USA, the former was ruled unconstitu tional in the 1960s, and redistricting is required after each decennial census (cf. racial districting). In most states, this is done by political parties, who deploy (NEW PARAGRAPH) gerrymandering wherever possible to promote their cause. In the UK and some other coun tries, however, redistricting is undertaken by independent, non partisan commissions, operating under legally defined rules. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Handley (n.d.). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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