The Dictionary of Human Geography (179 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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satisficing behaviour
Behaviour that meets an actor?s minimum criteria for success. The concept was developed by Herbert Simon (1916 2001: see Simon, 1956) as an alterna tive to the presumed optimization of rational choice theory, in which actors always seek to make the best possible choice for example, to maximize profits. Satisficing behaviour may be appropriate either when it is impossible to calculate the maximal outcome or when actors are unprepared to make the investment necessary to identify and/or pursue that outcome (as argued by Pred, 1967, 1969). Actors will then set their own criteria that will represent a satisfactory return on their invest ment. (See also behavioural geography.) rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gigerenzer and Selten (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
scale
?Scale? has no single definition, and in recent years has been the object of much theorizing (Howitt, 2003). The traditional definition in cartography refers to map reso lution. All maps represent the world by redu cing the size and diversity of its component spaces for visual display, digitally or on paper. Cartographic scale expresses the mathematical relationship between the map and the Earth, usually denoted as a representative fraction. For example, the small fraction, 1:500,000, indicates that one unit of distance on the map represents 500,000 units of Earth space. Such a map would show large expanses of terrain much more than say, the larger frac tion of 1:24,000. Hence the common confu sion between large scale (or large fraction) maps that show less space but typically more detail, and small scale maps that show more space, but with less detail. Each type of social and environmental diversity has its own ?best resolution? in terms of cartographic represen tation; thus, the choice of cartographic scale depends on the problem at hand. To visualize US state variation in the enforcement of envir onmental policies, we need the familiar small scale map of the country with state borders, while determining whether point source pollution released into a river caused down stream lymphomas requires a large scale map. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The second major definition is operational or methodological. This is the scale or reso lution of data collection, with the familiar cas cade from micro (body) to macro (globe). Tied to this type of scale are various analytical complexities, including the claims that: (a) social patterns and processes can be sorted according to their scale of operation and, as (NEW PARAGRAPH) Globe Continent Nation-state Province/state Metropolitan area/region City/district Neighbourhood/ward Household/dwelling Human body (NEW PARAGRAPH) scale A cascade of hierarchical levels (NEW PARAGRAPH) a result, it is important to ensure an appropri ate match between research questions and the scale of analysis when developing a research design (see ecological fallacy); (b) some processes may operate at multiple scales at once, and as a result, attention should be paid to their operational distinctiveness at particular scales and to the mechanisms that define their modifications from one resolution to the next; and (c) any scaled process can intersect with other processes operating at any other scale, often in complex ways that attenuate, amplify or destabilize their operation. These sorts of causal complications, in which processes are conceived not only in their own terms but also in terms of their scales of operation, form one of the more powerful arguments for the necessity of incorporating space into social science. It is also here that one finds common ground between human geography and physical geography, for both deal with scalar shifts in processes. In the study of coupled social and natural systems, the complications of (a) to (c) above may be operative. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A third aspect of scale is to recognize what has been variously called its social production or social construction (Smith, N., 1992b; Delaney and Leitner, 1997; Marston, 2000). In this view, spatial scales do not, as implied above, rest as fixed platforms for social activity and processes that connect up or down to other hierarchical levels, but are instead out comes of those activities and processes, to which they in turn contribute through a spatially uneven and temporally unfolding dynamic (Swyngedouw, 1997). This recursive relationship between social processes produ cing scales and scales affecting the operation of social processes is one aspect of the socio spatial dialectic: the idea that social pro cesses and space and hence scales mutually intersect, constitute, and rebound upon one another in an inseparable chain of determin ations (see production of space). Over the past two decades, this view of scale has gener ated some of the most productive and novel research in human geography (Cox, 1997; Herod and Wright, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Given the importance of the dialectic to historical materialism (and the larger cor pus of marxism) in general, and to Marxist geography in particular, it was capitalism that was early on identified as the driver behind the production of scale. From the for mation of working class neighbourhoods whose residents defend ?turf? through mis placed parochialisms, to the elite spaces of cosmopolitan jet setters who shirk their ethical responsibilities while working to expand the world economy, the inherently uneven devel opment of capitalism has been viewed as the fulcrum of the production of scale. This emphasis led Marston (2000) to critique this body of research for its privileging of produc tion and its relative neglect of social repro duction. There nevertheless remain several key advances in this literature, including: (NEW PARAGRAPH) an acknowledgement of the inherently pol itical nature of scale production (Smith, 1996a); (b) the need to pay attention to state formations and various resistance move ments that both deploy and construct scales (Miller, 2000; Brenner, 2004); and (c) the need to re theorize in more complex ways the relationship between social processes and spa tial outcomes as power comes to be under stood as dispersed rather than centred. It is in part through this last point that several scale theorists over the past several years have begun to turn away from purely hierarchical or, we might say, vertical understandings of scale to incorporate formulations that resem ble the horizontal relations of networks (Amin, 2002b; Brenner, 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The latest debate revolves around the claim that scale itself, while no doubt an organizing moment in epistemology, has merely a tran scendent status within the domain of ontol ogy (Marston, Jones and Woodward, 2005). In the view of Marston and her colleagues, scale is an epistemology that, though poten tially helpful in a methodological sense, is tied (NEW PARAGRAPH) to a global to local continuum that under writes the problematic view that social pro cesses can be detached from the grounded sites where people and objects concretely reside and social practices take place (e.g. in streets, bedrooms, boardrooms). They offer in its place a flat ontology that resists concep tualizing processes as operating at scales that hover above these sites (e.g. metropolitan regions, nation states). This view continues to generate much debate (e.g. Leitner and Miller, 2007; Jones, Woodward and Marston, 2007). sam/kw/jpj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Jones, Woodward and Marston (2007); Leitner and Miller (2007); Marston (2000); Marston, Jones and Woodward (2005); Sheppard and McMaster (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
science/science studies
Science is an ?essentially contested concept? (Gallie, 1964) in the sense that it defies specification in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. Numerous candidates have been offered by philosophy to discriminate science from non science knowledge based on first hand observation, claims and procedures warranted by predictive success, the inductive gathering of empirical data, information satisfying the principles of verification or falsification, and so on. The efforts of Copernicus and Galileo to base knowledge on causal explan ations rather than Aristotelian syllogism, Bacon?s plea for inaugurating the method of induction, Newton?s rejection of speculative hypotheses in favour of his own method of deduction (see hypothesis), the Logical Positivists? emphasis on the logical structure of theories (see logical positivism), and Lakatos? defence of what he called ?the meth odology of scientific research programmes? constitute just a few of the proposals that have been made to place science on secure founda tions (Oldroyd, 1986). But none of these have been adequate to catch the presumed essential features of enterprises that stretch temporally from Aristotle to Einstein, cognitively from astronomy to zoology, and spatially from medi eval Arabic geodesy to Enlightenment Scottish chemistry. This recognition has led to what Larry Laudan (1988) has aptly termed ?the demise of the demarcation problem?. Uncon tested mapping of the border between science and other forms of human cultural activity (see culture) has simply remained elusive. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Nevertheless, the label ?science? does refer to a suite of enterprises sharing some family (NEW PARAGRAPH) resemblance with the kinds of observational and experimental practices that came to char acterize natural philosophy during the period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see scientific revolution(s)). And it was in that era that the term itself began to acquire a definition that linked it to a body of demon strated truths and observed facts brought into coherence by their adherence to general natural laws. As Watts put it in 1725 (2, ii, ä9), the word ?science? was ?usually applied to a whole body of regular or methodical obser vations or propositions?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) geography?s engagements with the scientific tradition have been multi faceted. Termino logically, the label ?scientist? has close associ ations with geography via Mary Somerville, whose Physical geography of 1848 firmly staked geography?s claims to scientific status. In fact, it was in a review of one of her earlier books that the word ?scientist? was first coined by William Whewell (that irrepressible neologist), although it did not circulate into common currency until the 1870s. Historiographically, insights from the philosophy and history ofscience have been used by a range of geographers to interpret the evolution of their own tradition of enquiry (see geography, history of). In particular, the perspective of Thomas Kuhn on the structure of scientific revolutions has been the subject of discussion within the discipline as to the extent to which it throws light on Geography?s lineage (see also paradigm). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In two other substantive ways, Geography and science are tightly interwoven. First, geo graphical practice has routinely though cer tainly not universally adopted scientific techniques and vocabulary, and not just in physical geography with its evident roots in both field and laboratory science. Thus dur ing the period of the Scientific Revolution, for example, mathematical advances were used to solve problems of map projection, and the subject was routinely taught in association with astronomy. In the same period, Varenius? Geographia generalis of 1650 advanced his own version of the mechanical philosophy to contest Aristotelianism, and William Petty began to apply the methods of the new natural philosophy to social phenomena with his development of ?political arithmetick?. Navigational expertise, requiring computa tional skills and knowledge of observational astronomy, was also often taught in geography courses (Livingstone, 2003b). Such projects firmly linked geography as an enterprise to practical mathematics and the scientific tradition, and this impulse has continued to animate various strands of modern geography. During the 1960s, some geographers with scientific aspirations turned to the language of logical positivism to underwrite (after the event, as a matter of fact) their project to create a spatial science grounded in natural laws of spatial relations and expressed in numerical language (see locational analy sis; quantitative revolution). Critics of this trajectory accused its practitioners of indiffer ence to questions of social inequity, a lack of political engagement, and an inclination to use mathematical vernacular as a shield to deflect establishment suspicion of social sci ence during the McCarthy era (Harvey, 1984) though some of its advocates, such as William Bunge, mobilized spatial statistics for radical purposes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) More recently, geographers have begun to bring science within the discipline?s scope both by deploying the insights and methodolo gies of science studies and by enquiring into the spatiality of science as itself a cultural prac tice (Livingstone, 2003a). As an enterprise, science studies largely developed in the wake of Kuhn?s rejection of purely logical models of scientific development and his insistence that scientific change was inherently discontinu ous. By allowing a variety of social communal factors into the understanding of the evolution of science, by emphasizing the under determination of theory by empirical data and by highlighting the role of tacit knowledge in scientific practice, Kuhn opened the door to empirical studies of scientific procedure. While he himself expressed concern about more extreme versions of relativism, his work did open the door to the social history of sci ence. This project has taken various forms, notably the so called Edinburgh ?strong programme? associated with writers such as Steven Shapin and David Bloor, which sought to locate the cognitive claims of science in its wider social setting; the actor network the ory and ethnographic perspectives of figures such as Bruno Latour, Michael Callon and Steve Woolgar; and the interventions via femi nism of figures such as Donna Haraway and Sandra Harding (Hess, 1997; Golinski, 1998). These, and numerous other strands of thought from figures such as Simon Schaffer, Michel Foucault and Joseph Rouse, have resulted in a tradition of research working with the notion of science as fundamentally local knowledge (see local knowledge). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographers have engaged with these devel opments in several ways. Thus some have turned to the proposals and methods of science studies to interrogate geographical knowledge itself. Barnes? scrutiny of eco nomic geography and the quantitative revo lution (Barnes, 1996, 2004b), Demeritt?s (NEW PARAGRAPH) reflections on social theory, science and geography, Thrift?s (1996) interest in the social formations of knowledge, Whatmore?s (2002a) elucidation of ?hybrid natures? and Amin and Cohendet?s (2004) examination of the ?architectures of knowledge? in firms and economies are just a few investigations that are deeply informed, in one way or another, by these perspectives. At the same time, geog raphers have been in dialogue with practi tioners of science studies in their enquiries into the part played by space, place and location in the production, consumption and circulation of scientific knowledge itself (Livingstone, 2003c). These latter currents in the spatiality of science stem from an interest in the role of venues such as the laboratory, the museum and the field in knowledge pro duction; the significance of location in the reception of scientific knowledge; and the ways in which the universality of science has been accomplished through the management of various circulatory mechanisms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Several critical statements by historians of science, such as Schaffer (2005), Ophir and Shapin (1991: see also Shapin, 1998), Kohler (2002) and Agar and Smith (1998), have firmly placed space on the science studies agenda, and this has been reinforced by the work of geographers on the geographies of scientific knowledge and on science as an inherently hermeneutic undertaking (Livingstone, 2002b: see also hermeneutics). The interface that has been developing is proving to be fertile. Geographers and others have thus been vari ously engaged in elucidating the ?geographies of science? in a range of ways and at a range of scales (see also geography, history of). An indicative sampling of this work would include examinations of the geographies of enlightenment and scientific revolution(s); the significance of museums, lecture halls and botanical gardens in the production and display of scientific knowledge (Naylor, 2002; Johnson, 2006); the practices of making science in the field (Withers, 2004; Lorimer and Spedding, 2005: see fieldwork); the geography of geographical knowledge itself in the constitution of national identity (Withers, 2001); the different ways in which the glacier theory was construed in different cognitive spaces (Finnegan, 2004); the role of spatial practices in fisheries science (Evenden, 2004); the social topography of correspondence networks (Ogborn, 2002); the significance of field trials in the production of agricultural knowledge (Henke, 2000); the reciprocal connections between buildings and the building of scientific knowledge (Gieryn, 2002); and the geography of the commodifi cation of bio information (Parry 2004). The list could be extended ad libitum. Special issues of contributions by geographers to the British Journal for the History of Science (2005) under the guest editorship of Simon Naylor, and of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (2006) on ?putting science in its place?, bear witness to the interdisciplinary richness of these developments. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the light of all this, there are good grounds for suggesting that science studies can coherently be thought of as a branch of historical geography. In keeping with this sentiment, Simon Schaffer (2005) has recently urged that it was the cartographic impulse itself that helped construct what we think of as modern science (see cartographic reason; cartography). Courtesy of several ?big pic ture? accounts of science history (such as those of Whewell, Bernal and Needham) that sought to graphically chart scientific development, it was as Schaffer (2005) pointedly observes ?maps which invented what science was?. At a more popular level, Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian (Friday, 20 January 2006), delivers confirmatory judgment, no less pro vocatively quipping that ?All scientists are geographers. That is why maps are the most sacred tools of science.? dnl (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Golinski (1998); Livingstone (2003c). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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