The Dictionary of Human Geography (193 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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spatial interaction
A term popularized by Edward Ullman (1980) to indicate the inter dependence between geographical regions, which he saw as complementary to the more traditional emphasis on relationships (people and their social context, people and environ ment) within each individual region. FLows of information, money, people and commod ities thus lay at the heart of Ullman?s vision, and he hoped it would provide a unifying frame for geography. This has not hap pened, and few geographers now refer to Ullman?s book or his specific ideas. However, much work in human geography in the past 30 years has taken up this theme and many would see ?spatial interaction? as central to geographers? concerns and contributions, without being aware of Ullman?s work. This is true of both quanti tative work on modelling spatial movements and spatial spillovers and qualitative work on local global linkages and contexts. lwh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ullman (1980). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
spatial mismatch
The notion that con straints on residential choice prevent members of certain groups from adequate access to employment (also referred to as the spatial mismatch hypothesis). Urban economist John Kain first used the term in the 1960s to describe the impacts of residential segrega TION and housing market discrimination on the employment opportunities and earnings of black residents of Chicago and Detroit (Kain, 1968). In a retrospective published after his death (Kain, 2004), Kain noted that he later extended the concept to include other negative impacts, such as those on home ownership and quality of education, and of discrimination in the housing market. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Following Kain?s early lead, most research on spatial mismatch has sought to understand the extent to which the black white disparity in earnings can be explained by blacks? inferior spatial accessibility to employment. As employment, and particularly manufacturing employment, increasingly suburbanized after the Second World War, access to such employ ment depended on a suburban residential location; but a variety of discriminatory prac tices in the housing market prevented blacks from moving to the suburbs. As a result, blacks were confined to inner city neighbour hoods, which were increasingly bereft of manufacturing jobs. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Until recently, research on spatial mismatch concentrated on comparing the residential and employment patterns and commuting times of black and white men; McLafferty and Preston (1997) and others have shown the importance of expanding such studies to other racialized groups such as Latinos/Latinas, and to women. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Evidence supporting the spatial mismatch hypothesis was one factor that led the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to initiate an experimental programme, ?Moving to Opportunity?, to help low income people from high poverty neigh bourhoods to move to racially integrated, low poverty suburban locations. Subsequent studies have evaluated the extent to which such residential mobility and the resulting change in neighbourhood context and accessi bility do indeed lead to improved employment and educational opportunities (Clark, 2005c). One interesting and unanticipated outcome of this experiment has been that substantial numbers of households have subsequently moved back to their old neighbourhoods, places with which they are familiar and are where their families and friends remain (Clark, 2005). SHa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Holzer (1991); Preston and McLafferty (1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
spatial monopoly
Monopolistic control over a market by virtue of location. The usual meaning of monopoly is that one firm or individual sells the entire output of some commodity or service. This is normally the final outcome of a competitive process taking place under capitalist market conditions, in which one supplier is able to produce and sell the commodity at a price favourable enough to consumers to force other suppliers out of business. Spatial monopoly is a special case, in which distance from competitors or ways of bounding space give a producer mon opolistic control over a section of the market. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Spatial monopoly can arise when a producer is distributing a commodity from its point of origin, and also when consumers travel to the point of origin. In the first case, the operation of an f.o.b. pricing policy, whereby the cost of transportation is passed on to the consumer (see pricing policies), will increase delivered price with distance from the production point, so that consumers close to the production point can purchase the commodity relatively cheaply; that is, more cheaply than from alter native suppliers. The greater the elasticity of demand, or the sensitivity of the consumer to price, the greater the likelihood of local mon opoly. The area within which monopoly con trol exists (assuming that consumers buy from the cheapest source) is bounded by a locus of points where delivered price from the supplier in question is equal to the price charged by a competitor. In the second case, consumers will tend to travel to the production point which is closest in time, effort or cost. In this case, too, the area of monopoly control will be bounded by a locus of points of consumer indifference as to whether to purchase from one point to another. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Spatial monopoly can also arise from collu sion between otherwise competing firms, who may agree to a ?carve up? of the market among themselves. As in other situations of spatial monopoly, this will enable suppliers to raise prices and exact above normal profits in the area over which they exert exclusive control. Distance provides no absolute protection of a market, however, for some consumers may choose to purchase from high cost sources or to travel to more distant outlets, out of pre ference, ignorance or other behavioural considerations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There may be other strategies for protecting space over which monopoly control is exerted. These include the imposition of tariffs and restriction on the use of means of transportation: suppliers may use coercion to prevent competitors from entering a particular city to sell their goods, for example, as has happened in the former Soviet Union since the collapse of socialism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In some instances, spatial monopoly may be a case of so called natural monopoly, where the market in question is best served by a single firm because of the nature of the production process. Some public utilities are of this kind; for example, local water supply. Such public spatial monopoly may be turned into private monopoly by priva tization. dms (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Smith (1981). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
spatial science
The theoretical approach associated with the quantitative revolu tion in Anglo American geography in the 1960s that privileged spatial analysis. During this period many human geographers turned from the integrated, descriptive and idio graphic analysis of specific places (i.e. the traditional forms of regional geography) to the specialized, theoretically inflected and nomothetic analysis of spatial structures; that is, spatial science. epistemologically, this stream of work, the so called ?New Geography' of the 1960s, is usually associated with the philosophies of logical empiricism and logical positivism, the prevailing norms in the natural sciences and the emergent best practice in other social sciences after 1945. By aligning itself with ?normal science', and in another sense with ?extraordinary research' and ?scientific revolutions? (see paradigm), geography successfully sought to enhance its academic status (Ad Hoc Committee on Geography, 1965; see also Billinge, Gregory and Martin, 1984b). While rarely describing itself explicitly as positivist, it was presumed that reliable explanations could be achieved by constructing universal deductive causal explanations whose accuracy could be assessed by reference to independently gath ered observations (Harvey, 1969). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In hUMAn geography, this approach was used to develop theories of the location of human activities, the spatiaL iNTeractions between places and the spatial diFFusion of phenomena from one place to another. Typically, research proceeded by constructing mathematical statistical modeLs and then comparing them to observations using spatial analysis (spatial statistics and Monte Carlo siMULation). While some spatial science suffers from spatiaL Fetishism and spatiaL separat isM, these are by no means inherent shortcom ings. Both the socÂÂal construction of space and the theory laden nature of observations were recognized within spatial science. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Given this history, it is ironic that the term ?spatial science? first appeared in English in Hartshorne?s programmatic statement of The nature of geography (1939). This text was the bete noire of spatiaL science: Hartshorne dis cussed Location theory en passant but ruled it out of geographical enquiry, and he located geography alongside what he called other ?spatial sciences?, such as astronomy (cf. cosmography), only to insist that the intrinsic exceptionaLisM of geography necessarily relocated it with the idiographic sensibilities of history rather than the theoretical and stat istical modalities of the other, normal sciences. When the term ?spatial science? reappeared, it was not part of the rival prospectus of the quantitative revolutionaries at all but, rather, named their research as the object of critique: thus the second chapter of Gregory?s Ideology, science and human geography (1978a) was entitled ?In place of spatial science?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since then, spatial science has become a catch all characterization of forms of spatial analysis and theorization associated with the Quantitative Revolution and its derivatives. At its most general, it describes a divide within human geography and also between human and physicaL geography that separates those who see themselves as following the prescrip tions of natural science from those who do not. Since the 1990s, as GIS has reinvigorated spatial analysis and as cognate social sciences such as economics, with stronger allegiances to the epistemologies of natural science, have rediscovered geography (see new econoMic geography), spatial science has gained new adherents. Yet the divide is based on the supp osition that natural science entails different norms than the human sciences a claim that has been increasingly questioned in contem porary geography, phiLosophy and the (NEW PARAGRAPH) philosophy of science and science studies (cf. Harrison and Dunham, 1998; Massey, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . es (NEW PARAGRAPH)
spatial separatism
Any geographical theory asserting that physical space is an independent cause of human behaviour. Separatism has two meanings here: separating space from social processes, and separating human geography from other social sciences. The term was coined by Sack (1973, 1974b) to criticize claims made specifically by Bunge (1966, (NEW PARAGRAPH) in his prospectus for theoretical geog raphy that geographical theories explain using geometric laws, thereby giving geography an exceptional status relative to the laws of other social sciences. Sack, like critics of spatiaL fetishism, argued that space is relational an emergent outcome of social processes and that this made such separatism untenable. es (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Sack (1974b). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
spatial structure
The organization of social and biophysical phenomena in space. The term was coined within spatiaL science to refer to the spatial coherence, geometric order or sys tematic spatial pattern (particularly spatial equilibria) generated by human activities. It implied an order in geometrical mathemat ical statistical domains characterized by degrees of symmetry, regularity and predict ability. The term was subsequently used in a less restrictive, less formalist sense in human geography and in sociaL theory to refer to the interdependence of human agency and spa tial structures, whereby agency responds to but also reproduces and transforms its spatial tem plates (cf. Gregory and Urry, 1985). The term is now used more eclectically still, to refer to any more or less ordered spatial arrangement, assembLage or system: the orderings through which space is implicated in the operation and outcome of social and biophysical processes. The emphasis on ?ordering? rather than ?order? directs attention to the ?folding? of time and space into the operation of processes in contin gent, fluid and sensuous ways. This recognizes that practices and performances evade and exceed the symmetrical and/or logical orders proposed by classical social theory (hence its ?problem of order?) and by neo classical spatial science, and requires ?order? or ?structure? to be treated as a process rather than a thing. es/bg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
spatiality
The mode(s) in which space is implicated in the constitution and conduct of (NEW PARAGRAPH) life on Earth. There are four main senses in (2) which ?spatiality? has been used in human geography and allied fields, but these increas ingly interrupt and braid into one another: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Drawing upon existentialism and phenomenology, and in particular the writings of European philosophers Mar tin Heidegger (1889 1976) and Ed mund Husserl (1859 1938), Pickles (1985) proposed human spatiality as the fundamental basis on which ?geograph ical inquiry as a human science of the world can be explicitly founded?. Pickles? primary concern was ontoLogy: with understanding ?the universal structures characteristic of [human] spatiality as the precondition for any understanding of places and spaces as such.? Pickles objected to those views that regard the physical spaces of the physical sciences as ?the sole genuine space?. This sort of thinking was typical of spatiaL science but, in Pickles? view, was wholly inappro priate for a genuinely human geography. (NEW PARAGRAPH) He urged in its place a recovery of our ?original experiences prior to their the (3) matization by any scientific activity?; that is, a rigorous exposure of the taken for granted worLd assumed but left unexplained by spatial science. (NEW PARAGRAPH) One of its essential characteristics is what Pickles called ?the structural unity of the ??in order to?? ?. Our most immedi ate experiences are not cognitive abstractions of separate objects, Pickles argued, but rather ?constellations of rela tions and meaning? that we encounter in our everyday activities what Heidegger called ?equipment? and which are ?ready to hand?. Such a perspective re veals the human significance of con textuaLity. For human spatiality is related ?to several concurrent and non concurrent equipmental contexts? and ?cannot be understood independently of the beings that organise it.? Spatiality thus has the character of a ?situating? enterprise in which we ?make room? for and ?give space? to congeries of equip ment. Put in this way, there are distant echoes of time geography, but Pickles is evoking an intellectual tradition anti thetical to the physicalism of Torsten Hagerstrand?s early writings and which fastens not on ?objective space? but on a fully human, social space (see also Schatzki, 1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Drawing upon structural MArxism of the 1960s and 1970s, a number of Franco phone sociologists and economists sug gested that concepts of spatiality be constructed to identify the connections and correspondences between social structures (modes oF production) and spatiaL structures. French philosopher Louis Althusser (1918 90) had argued that different concepts of time or tempor alities could be assigned to different levels of modes of production ?economic time?, ?political time?, ?ideological time? and that these had to be constructed out of the concepts of the different social practices within these domains. In much the same way, it was argued that different concepts of space or spatialities could be assigned to different levels of modes of production. Castells (1977) presented the most detailed analysis of capitaLism in these terms, but insisted that it made more sense to theorize temporality and spatiality together and to speak of dis tinctive space times (see Gregory 1994, pp. 94 5). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Drawing upon the broadly humanist Marxism of Henri Lefebvre (1901 91) and his account of the production oF space, Soja (1985) used the term spati ality ?to refer specifically to socially pro duced space, the created forms and relations of a broadly defined human geography?. ?All space is not socially pro duced,? Soja continued, ?but all spatiality is?. In the course of his work as a whole, Lefebvre provided critiques of existen tialism and phenomenology and of structuralism and structural Marxism, and so Soja insists that his ?materialist interpretation of spatiality? cannot be as similated to either of the two traditions summarized above. For to speak of ?the production of space? in the spirit of Lefebvre is to accentuate spatiality as ?both the medium and the outcome? of situated human agency and systems of social practices in a way that, so Soja argued, was broadly consonant with structuration theory. Transcending his earlier claims for a ?socio spatial dialectic? (Soja, 1980), Soja (1985) now concluded that ?spatiality is society, not as its definitional or logical equivalent, but as its concretisation, its formative constitution.? And it is precisely this real ization, so he subsequently argued, that was characteristic of postmodernism and its reassertion of space of spatiality in critical social thought (Soja, 1989: see also third space; trialectics). Other human geographers working under the sign of a critical Marxism equally cognizant of Lefebvre have also conceptualized spatiality as socially produced space, and while they rarely endorse Soja's celebration of postmod ernism they do accept that space is not a mere reflection of but is rather constitu tive of capitalism as a dialectical totality (see, e.g., Sheppard, 2004; Harvey, 2006a). More than this, many of them now recognize that this implication of a produced space must incorporate non human agency too: ?the manifold bio physical processes and technologies that shape the spatiality of the world' (Leitner, Sheppard and Sziarto, 2008, p. 158). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Drawing upon post structuralism in particular, the work of Michel Foucault (1926 84) and of Gilles Deleuze (1925 95) and Felix Guattari (1930 92), to gether with the post phenomenology of Alphonso Lingis (1933 ) and others a number of writers use spatiality to indi cate the ways in which mobile constella tions of power knowledge and subject positions are constituted through the production and performance of space as an ?ordering' rather than a fixed and closed order (cf. Thrift, 2007, p. 55). Ac cordingly, they attempt to grasp space as an ?immanent spatiality', through which the world is registered as a ?multi linear complex' whose contingent intersections and folds constantly open and present which is to say make present the emer gence of?the new? (Dewsbury and Thrift, 2005). These developing conceptions of spatiality, like those in the preceding paragraphs, have important implications for a geographical imagination that is also a profoundly material imagination (Anderson and Wylie, 2008) (see also non representational theory). (NEW PARAGRAPH) These four traditions cannot be assimilated to any grand synthesis, but many writers share a subterranean dialogue with figures such as Marx, Heidegger and Foucault, and there is increasing traffic between their con ceptions of spatiality: for example, Sheppard's (2008) exploration of dialectical totalities and assemblages. For all the differences between them, all four traditions reject the (NEW PARAGRAPH) conventional separations between ?society' and ?space' (which can be traced to a persist ent Kantianism) and in this sense can be read as four moments in the movement towards an exploration of what Smith (1990) called ?deep space': that is to say, ?quintessentially social space . . . physical extent fused through with social intent?. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dewsbury and Thrift (2005); Pickles (1985); Soja (1989). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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