The Dictionary of Human Geography (183 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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settlement continuity
The continuity of sites of settlement and systems of territorial organization across periods of social trans formation, particularly associated with the arrival of new peoples and power structures into an area (cf. sequent occupance). In his torical geography, the term is most closely associated with a debate over the situation in Britain after the collapse of the Roman occupation and the establishment of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms. At one extreme is the view that the sparse representation of British place names reflects an equally sparse Romano British population that was rapidly overwhelmed by Anglo Saxon immigrants who created their own distinctive landscapes. At the other is the view that the Anglo Saxons were a small minority who rapidly acquired political control without diluting the ethnic identity of the British people. The latter is less well supported than the former, although evidence remains ambiguous for both sides of the debate. There are many instances of pre English names adopted by the Anglo Saxons and toponymic evidence suggests some kind of peaceful coexistence or cohabitation of British and Old English speakers (Cameron, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . The nature of the links to the Romano British past clearly varied from region to region, but even in the Anglo Saxon kingdom of Kent (a Roman name), founded by the middle of the fifth century, there is evidence of continuity in urban settlement and the estate structure in the countryside through a distinctive system of lathes (county subdivi sions) centred on royal vills (townships) (Everitt, 1986). Similar systems are found over wide areas of northern England, suggest ing that it was very old indeed. In much of the kingdom of Northumbria, the main units of authority extended over areas of c.100 square miles, centring on a royal vill to which all the inhabitants owed dues. Indeed, a system of this kind can be documented from later sources to have extended over a continuous belt from Wales across northern England into Scotland. It is possible that such forms of ter ritorial organization reflect the impress of a Romano British past that is also detectable in Kent (Jones, 1976). However, such views also have to confront the relative dearth of arch aeological evidence for the Britons from the period after ad 400 in the southern and east ern areas of England. Nonetheless, there are few Anglian graves in the most northerly English regions, which certainly remained largely British. Furthermore, several Anglo Saxon dynasties may have been partly British in origin (Wessex), suggesting that early Anglo Saxon kingdoms were often older organizations that had come under invaders? control, while the great majority of the (NEW PARAGRAPH) population stayed on to work the land (Campbell, 1982). rms (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Campbell (1982). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
settler society
A euphemism for brutal processes of racialized dispossession, along with the decimation or subjugation of local populations. Occupation through conquest has typically been justified in terms of doc trines of terra nullius (empty lands), and assertions of progress and redemption. Indeed, the society that is salient in the term ?settler society? is precisely that which excludes racialized others. While this definition obvi ously encompasses huge swathes of the world, the term is most often associated with British colonial settlement (see colonialism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Celebratory versions of liberal historiog raphy have long been dominant in the produc tion of knowledge about settler societies. Challenging this stance, one influential strand of scholarship argues that such societies are best understood in terms of their incorpor ation within the capitalist mode of produc tion (see capitalism). Denoon, for example, recognizes ?powerful strands of commonality? (1983, p. 122) among the societies encom passed by his study New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, as well as Argentina and Chile, from 1890 to 1914 based on their integration into the international market and relations of dependency with imperial powers (see imperialism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A subsequent body of critical scholarship insists on attention to articulations of gender, race, ethnicity and class in the constitution and transformation of settler societies. Stasiulis and Yuval Davis (1995), for example, bring together studies that incorporate feminist and post colonial perspectives (see feminist geog raphies and post colonialism) in order to ?unsettle settler societies?. Yet the range of ?set tler societies? encompassed by the book including the USA, Mexico, Peru, Algeria and Israel Palestine, in addition to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Zimbabwe raises the question of what is not (or has not been) a settler society. Indeed, the editors concede that their extremely broad con ception of settler society underscores the diffi culty of drawing a clear line of demarcation. (NEW PARAGRAPH) More recent work draws explicitly on crit ical conceptions of spatiality. Where Stasiulis and Yuval Davis seek to unsettle, Sherene Razack?s (2002) edited collection aims at ?unmapping white settler society? in this case, Canada. Focusing on the production of different racialized spaces, the volume is ani mated by ?the fervent belief that white settler societies can transcend their bloody begin nings and contemporary inequalities by remembering and confronting the racial hier archies that structure our lives? (Razack, 2002, p. 5: see also whiteness). What is missing, however, is attention to the practices of coun ter mapping through which native people in Canada have engaged in struggles for repossession. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Struggles for redress in situations of racia lized dispossession are extremely widespread, and accelerating in some parts of the world, including Zimbabwe, South Africa and Aorteroa New Zealand. They also under score a crucial question regarding ?settler soci eties? namely, whether and how the initial processes of settlement remain politically sali ent in the present. A key to grappling with this question is understanding historical geograph ies of racialized dispossession not as an event (or set of events) that can be consigned to some precapitalist or early colonial past, but as ongoing processes that remain actively constitutive of what Derek Gregory (2004b) calls the ?colonial present?. mw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Moore (2005); Sparke (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
sex
The term has been used historically to describe both sex differences male/female which are assumed to flow from anatomy, and a physical drive. Since the late 1970s both these meanings of sex, which characterize it as a biological given, have been problematized, and it has been re theorized in increasingly complex ways. feminism (Women and Geography Study Group, 1997) first intro duced, and then troubled, the distinction between sex (biology) and gender (social meanings ascribed to biological differences). Foucault (1978 [1976]) identified sex and the related concept of sexuality as discursive con structions that are temporally and spatially specific. gv (NEW PARAGRAPH)
sexuality
In human geography, there has been considerable interest in the mutual con stitution of sexualities and space, so that most studies have focused on the spatiality of the construction of sexual identities and the sexu ality of space. The earliest work on sexuality and geography focused on heterosexual pros titution. In the 1990s a significant body of research developed, initially on the geographies of lesbian and gay men, and latterly, on queer geographies (Bell and Valentine, 1995). This was facilitated by the development of post modern thought within human geography that promoted a sensitivity to difference. As a result of the impact of this research, the study of sexuality and geography is often assumed to be synonymous with the study of lesbians, gay men and bisexual and transgen dered people, yet there is a growing interest in geographies of heterosexualities, and sexuality is also important in geographical writing using psychoanalytic theory. The complex theor etical links between sexuality and gender, most notably in feminist theory, mean that the two are commonly discussed in tandem. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Work on geographies of sexualities has been most prolific within the sub disciplinary areas of urban, social and cultural geography, but it is also gradually spilling out into other parts of the discipline, including economic geography, political geography and med ical geography, in the form of research on the pink economy, sexual citizenship and HIV/ AIDS, respectively (e.g. Bell and Binnie, 2000). The main strands of writing on sexual ity and geography can be summarized as follows: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographies of lesbian, gay and bisexual lives. Lesbians and gay men lead distinct lifestyles defined to a lesser or greater extent by their sexuality and others? re actions to it which have a variety of spatial expressions, creating distinct so cial and cultural landscapes in some contemporary cities. A number of studies have mapped gay commercial and resi dent districts. Knopp?s (1992) work on gentrification by gay men particularly contributed to analysing the role of sexuality within the spatial dynamics of capitalism. Studies of lesbian space have suggested that women also create spatially concentrated communities but that these have a quasi underground character, although having a high level of visibility among lesbians themselves (Podmore, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) ?Gay space? including gay commer cial and residential districts (such as the Castro District in San Francisco) as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) parades, have been identified as important sites of political claims mak ing (Johnston, 2001). Yet the very suc cess of these LGBT claims has led to the (NEW PARAGRAPH) incorporation of these previously mar (NEW PARAGRAPH) ginalized groups through the imaging, branding and commodification of gay space as a cosmopolitan spectacle for a heterosexual market (Bell and Binnie, (NEW PARAGRAPH) 2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH) While much of the work on geograph ies of lesbian and gay lives is located in the urban, there is an upsurge of interest in the structural limitations experienced by those living in rural areas, and the attempts of sexual dissidents to establish utopian rural communities. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The heterosexuality of everyday space. Studies have highlighted the fact that everyday spaces are commonly taken for granted as heterosexual, and have ex plored the processes through which spaces are produced in this way; and the disciplinary practices that regulate ?public? performance of sexualities (e.g. Valentine, 1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographies of HIV/AIDS. Mapping the transmission of the HIV virus has been at the heart of medical geographers? at tempts to trace its origins and establish global typologies. This work has been criticized by sexual dissidents as irrele vant and politically dangerous. Brown (1995) has played a key role in re focusing geographical research on HIV/ AIDS on to understanding sexual rela tions and issues of health and health care promotion. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Queer geographies. These represent a reaction against the early work about the geographies of lesbians and gay men, which adopted an uncritical, all embracing conceptualization of lesbian and gay identity. Drawing heavily on social theory from outside the discip line, queer geographies have attempted to scrutinize the desirability of identity politics and to challenge notions of fixed identities, in particular by employing the concept of performativity. Attempts have also been made to utilize the insights of queer theory to think about the pro duction of space (Bell, Binnie, Cream and Valentine, 1994) and to explore the importance of mobility in queer quests for identity (Knopp, 2004). There is now an emerging body of work addr essing queer identities from a post colonial perspective for example, focusing on queer diasporic community formation and in the context of glob alization and tourism (e.g. Hawley, 2001; Binnie, 2004). Here, geographers have contributed to interdisciplinary debates about the ?queer tourism? indus try and the differential positionings of racial, sexual, gendered and national subjects (Puar, 2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographies of heterosexualities. These are most evident in historical and contempor ary work on prostitution that has looked at the role of moral representations, social discourses and practices in regulating sex work (Hubbard, 1999). Geographical writing based on psychoanalytic theory has drawn on accounts of psychosexual development, sexual differences and de sire, while also challenging the heterosex ism evident in the writing of authors such as Lacan (see homophobia and hetero sexism). There is growing interest in heterosexuality as an institution through which links between the body, the home and the public sphere are produced and negotiated (Little and Leyshon, 2003; Robinson, Hockey and Meah, 2004; see also heteronormativity). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Critiques of the discipline. Geographers (NEW PARAGRAPH) working on sexuality share many of the concerns of feminist geographers about the masculinist, heteronormative and disembodied heritage of the discipline, and about the operation of power within the academy. gv (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bell and Valentine (1995); Binnie (2004); Brown (2000). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
shadow state
A para state apparatus com prising voluntary, non profit organizations pro viding a host of goods and services. Although the form of the shadow state varies over time and between countries, it is commonly regu lated and subsidized by public funds, simultan eously creating the ability to provide services while controlling political activism. Neo liberal policies (see neo liberalism) and decentraliza tion of the state have increased the role of the shadow state in social service delivery and community development; provoking questions about the implication of unequal access to the shadow state for citizenship (Lake and Newman, 2002), governance and social just ice (DeVerteuil, Lee, and Wolch, 2002). cf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Wolch (1990). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
sharecropping
A form of land tenure in which the landowners? returns take the form (NEW PARAGRAPH) of a share of the farmers? produce rather than a cash or farm rent. Sharecropping is also known by the French as metayage (Wells, 1984). Sharecropping arrangements involve short term contracts for the annual cycle of production of a specific crop in which crop raising is contracted out to labouring house holds, individuals or work gangs, who thereby take on the large part of economic risks of production. These arrangements have been widely assumed to belong to the agricultural past and interpreted as feudal or pre capital ist in nature (e.g. Marx, 1964), but they remain significant in contemporary agricul ture, even in modern agriculture in, for example, the USA. Sharecropping takes many forms in different contexts, but all tend to be associated with highly concentrated patterns of landownership and exploitive labour rela tions; for example, in the cotton growing South of the USA between white landowners and black farmers (Mann, 1984b), or between landowners and Mexican migrant workers in California?s strawberry industry (Wells, 1996). mw (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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