The Dictionary of Human Geography (195 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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staples theory
The theory that national and regional economic and social development is based upon the export of unprocessed or semi processed primary resources (?staples?). Although the theory has historical antece dents, and different (frequently truncated) versions of it have been presented (e.g. eco nomic base theory), staples theory is most closely associated with the work of the Canadian economic historian Harold A. Innis (1894 1952). In Innis? account, and the basis for the school of Canadian poLiticaL econ omy, staples production creates economic instability and hinterland dependency for staples producing regions. At least three causes are at work: (NEW PARAGRAPH) markets for staple commodities approxi mate more closely perfect competition than do those for manufactured goods. Staples regions are price takers in markets where unpredictability is the norm, producing cycles of boom and bust. (NEW PARAGRAPH) For a variety of reasons (technological innovations that reduce resource inputs for production, the growth of synthetic substitutes, and low long run income elasticities of demand), the terms of trade for primary commodities are in creasingly less favourable to staples producing areas. (NEW PARAGRAPH) resource extraction or production tends to be undertaken by large, often foreign owned, transnationaL coroporations. Spry (1981) argues that this is a direct consequence of the large capital expend itures and production indivisibilities asso ciated with staples. The presence of such firms in staples regions creates a number of potential problems for the region in cluding: the appropriation of economic rents because of the undervaluing of re sources by the LocaL state in order to induce investment; the failure to process the staple prior to export (and where value added occurs) because resource ex traction is only one stage within a verti cally integrated corporation that for reasons of internal control locates manu facture elsewhere; the low levels of tech nological innovation and development; the lack of local control; and finally, a weakened ability to control trade thro ugh explicit policy because of the high degree of intra corporate transfers. (NEW PARAGRAPH) For Innis, there is thus a direct relationship between the type of trade in which a staples region engages and its level of social and economic development. This contradicts the orthodox neo classical theory of trade (see neo cLassicaL economics), which would maintain that a staples nation such as Canada benefits from specializing in and exchanging those commodities in which it pos sesses a comparative advantage, namely primary resources. But in drawing upon this theory, as Innis (1956 [1929], p. 3) wrote in the late 1920s, economists ?attempt to fit their analysis of new economic facts into ... the eco nomic theory of old countries . . . The handi caps of this process are obvious, and there is evidence to show that [this is] ... a new form of exploitation with dangerous consequences.?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) To circumscribe such exploitation, Innis developed his theory in such a way that it was peculiarly suited to the economic facts of staples regions. He brought together three types of concerns: geographical/ecological, institutional and technological (Barnes, 1996, ch. 8). Innis argued that when the right technology came together with the right geog raphy and the right institutional structure, the result was accumuLation of ?cyclonic? frenzy. In this way, virgin resource regions were transformed and enveloped within the pro duced spaces of the capitaList periphery. Such intense accumulation, however, never lasts, and because of the very instabilities of staples production, sooner rather than later investment shifts to yet other staples regions, leaving in its wake abandoned resource sites and communities. As countries such as China and India rapidly industrialize, draw ing in immense flows of staples commodities, transforming regions and creating shudders across the world?s resources sites, Innis? the ory has never been more relevant (Hayter, Barnes and Bradshaw, 2003). tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Barnes (1996, ch. 8); Drache (1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
state
A centralized set of institutions facili tating coercive power and governing capabil ities over a defined territory. No one definition of the state is adequate given the way that states have varied in their form and function over time and space. However, Michael Mann (1984a) has identified the def initional need to incorporate both institutional and functional concerns, or what the state looks like and what it does. His subsequent definition can be summarized as follows: (NEW PARAGRAPH) a set of institutions and their related per sonnel; (NEW PARAGRAPH) a degree of centrality, with political de cisions emanating from this centre point; (NEW PARAGRAPH) a defined boundary that demarcates the territorial limits of the state; and (NEW PARAGRAPH) a monopoly of coercive power and Law making ability (Jones, Jones and Woods, 2004, p. 20). (NEW PARAGRAPH) These four points must be complemented by understanding that the state is defined in rela tion to two other spheres of modern life, the market (or economic activity) and civil soci ety. The functions of the state reflect the need to facilitate economic growth that generates the tax base to support a state apparatus (Tilly, 1990a), the provision of infrastruc ture and other goods to maintain a population that can serve as a workforce, the maintenance of internal order, and the capacity to defend the population from outside aggression (Mann, 1984a). The need and ability to carry out these functions constantly varies; hence the geographical variety of states and the elu siveness of a precise definition. (NEW PARAGRAPH) One approach has been to show how states have changed over time, which often falls into the developmentalist trap of assuming that states that came into existence as a result of twentieth century decolonization can and should take on the same form and function as the established European states that imposed their colonial subjugation. Alternatively, a structural approach defines a geographical variation in the form of the state, and differ ential ability to undertake the standard func tions, as a product of the state's position within the hierarchy of the capitalist world economy (Flint and Taylor, 2007 [1985]). States in the wealthy core of the world economy have the ability to provide for most of their population and so to maintain their cohesion and strength. States in the impover ished periphery face internal challenges to their legitimacy. In the former, the state can maintain its authority through creating polit ical consensus regarding its legitimacy. In the latter, coercive power and unstable internal politics are more common. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The geographical variation in the form of the state can be conceptualized as differences in the manner by which the state interacts with the market and civil society. feminist geog raphers discourage an understanding of the three spheres as separate. Instead, ?the market and civil society involve actors and processes that help constitute the state; the procedures and actors of the state similarly influence the market and civil society' (Fincher, 2004, p. 50). The important conclusions are that the state is multi faceted and contested. The state is manifest in the actions of the police, in the prosaic sense of imposing guidelines and laws over the way people can act (e.g. seat belt laws and smoking regulations: Painter, 2004), taxation and the military. The relative power and efficacy of these and other manifestations is a product of a politics between social groups who seek to control or influence the institu tions of the state for their own interests. In terms of coercive power, the control of the military and police may be contested between class fractions or ethnic groups (see ethni city). The size and direction of redistributive programmes is the product of conflicts between the owners of capital who seek to limit the state's taxation of their wealth and disadvantaged groups seeking security from the vagaries of capitalist economies. Of course, this is not a simple equation, as capital requires enough state involvement to allow for social reproduction (via schools, hos pitals and housing subsidies) as well as trans port infrastructure and some regulation of economic activity. Feminist geographers high light that such politics entwine the ?private' spaces of the household, the traditional site of unpaid women's work, with the male dominated ?public' sphere in such a way that they cannot be considered a dualism (see pri vate and public spheres). (NEW PARAGRAPH) ideology is a central component of main taining states. The state is a normative ideo logical construction in both a general and particular sense. First, the belief that states are legitimate universal institutions with a ?right' to wield power over individuals is, generally, unchallenged. Second, the history of particular states is constructed to give them a ?naturalness' and historical permanency that is a political fiction (Krishna, 1994). The Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci also points out that the politics within states results in a ruling class that is able to dominate through constructing an ideological consensus around its ?right' to rule and a perceived value for the whole population of decisions that greatly benefit a small elite, thus minimizing the need for coercive power (see hegemony). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The state comprises institutions at various scales linking central and local government. The precise form varies across space and time, but the central government can use local states, with their sense of connectivity to a local population, as means to legitimate itself. On the other hand, local states may challenge the authority of the central state if it is believed that the latter fails to serve local needs (see regionalism: Kirby, 1993). globalization and neo liberalism have put greater respon sibility on local governments to carry out state functions and generate their own revenue. New forms of local state governance are being identified that attempt to attract global investment by creating entrepreneurial local (NEW PARAGRAPH) states in which many functions traditionally performed by the state are now the purview of private companies or non state institutions (Ward, 2005b; see privatization). The result is a reduction in central state power, as states are not so much losing power as a result of globalization but redefining their form and function in a new climate of capital accumula tion (Sassen, 1996). cf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Brenner, Jessop, Jones and MacLeod (2003); Clark and Dear (1984); Painter (1995); Van Creveld (1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
state apparatus
The interacting suite of institutions and organizations through which state power is exercised. The state apparatus serves three broad functions: manufacturing social consensus; securing the conditions of production by facilitating investment and the reproduction of the labour force; and creating social integration by promoting the welfare of all social groups. The suite consists ofmanifold institutions and organizations including the police, the heaLth service, education, fiscal regulation and elections. Neo liberal policies (see neo LiberaLism) have required changes in the relative power of different institutions to promote economic growth at the expense of welfare, with consequent geographies of uneven life opportunities (Peck, 1996). cf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Clark and Dear (1984). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
state of nature
This phrase featured prominently in the writings of early liberal political philosophers, including most fam ously Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Baruch (Benedictus) Spinoza and Jean Jacques Rousseau (see LiberaLism). All were con cerned with establishing in their own fashion the moral basis of governance and a civil order based in part on their assumptions about what life in the state of nature was like. The phrase points to a kind of reference point or natural (universal) order from which to theorize about the social (Barry, 1999), but it also marks a boundary (imagined and real, historical and geographical) between a condition of being in or of nature to one of being outside of or apart from nature. Emergence from this state of nature, so these discourses suggest, establishes the need for a ?social contract?, while the par ticular character of the state of nature (benign, violent etc.) also shapes the character of the required social contract. When taken less (NEW PARAGRAPH) literally as a specific time or place, the state of nature serves as a kind of imagined historical geography corresponding to an anarchic soci ety, absent the rule of Law and without a mod ern state (Smith, M., 2002b). However, the phrase is also quite telling. It points on the one hand to an emergent, modern (european) soci ety concerned with distinguishing and elevat ing itself in relation to prior and/or culturally ?Othered? non European peoples of the time (mid seventeenth to early eighteenth centur ies), with disquieting implications vis a vis imperiaLism. At the same time, the phrase points to a preoccupation with defining ?mod ern? society by separating people from nature, presumably (and in Locke, for instance, quite explicitly) legitimating the domination of nature. In addition to the telos of temporal progress, there are definite spatiaLities of movement invoked here, not least from the modern, colonizing core to the savage, pre modern periphery, as well as from the country to the city (Whatmore, 2002a, esp. pp. 64 5; Anderson, 2003: see also modernity; primi tivism). Contemporary attempts to rethink nature/cuLture binaries may be informed by considerations of how and why this very binary was considered by early liberals to be founda tional to modern societies, and how the same binary is constitutive of the emergence of a distinct body of ?social? theory (minus the [human] body, of course!). sp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Locke and Peardon (1952 [1690]). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
stochastic process
A mathematical statistical modeL in which a sequence or pattern of outcomes is described and modelled in prob abilistic terms (Bartlett, 1955). A stochastic process is one in which the outcomes are not simply independent or random draws, but a process through time or across space in which the outcome at one time period or location is in some way dependent on the out comes at previous time periods or, for a spatial stochastic process, in neighbouring locations. A marKov process is an elementary example of such a process. Stochastic process models have been used in spatial time series analysis, in disease modelling and epidemioLogy and in spatiaL econometrics. Lwh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bennett (1979); Hepple (1974). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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