The Dictionary of Human Geography (219 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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World Trade Organization (WTO)
Although the idea of an international trade organization was formulated in 1944 at Bretton Woods, today?s World Trade Organization was only founded in 1994 at the close of the Uruguay Round (1986 94) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) talks in Marrakesh. Its purpose is to liberalize inter national trade by enforcing free trade rules, arbitrating international trade disputes, and working to forge new global agreements on the removal of tariff and so called non tariff barriers to trade (the latter including all sorts of national rules on health and environ mental protections). Unlike the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank which were set up at Bretton Woods to run on a ?one dollar, one vote? principle the WTO operates on an ostensibly more inclusive model, in which the voices of individual mem ber states are all meant to count. However, because the ground rules for inclusion are fixed as free trade rules, because the basic goal of the organization is to remove frictions on the movement of commodities, and because the organization?s disputes resolution mechan ism works on the assumption that it is intrin sically good to reduce both tariff and non tariff barriers to trade, the WTO serves institution ally to expand and entrench neo liberalism on a global scale (Peet, 2003; see also terms of trade). Everywhere its rules apply, the WTO enables the privatization of formerly public goods and common property resources, whether they be medicines, gov ernment provided heaLth services, shared forests or clean water. As well as thereby facilitating accumuLation by dispossession (Harvey, 2005: see primitive accumuLation), WTO rules also simultaneously undercut democratic governance insofar as they provide a powerful lever through which businesses can reduce or eliminate democratic law making (including, for example, legislation banning carcinogenic chemicals and pesticides) by coding the resulting public interest laws as non tariff barriers to trade (Wallach and Woodall, 2004). Another neo liberal aspect of the WTO is that there is no possibility under its free trade rules to permit development strat egies that are not neo liberal, such as state assistance to new industries, that try to estab lish themselves in the face of competition from developed producers elsewhere. As a result, the WTO has been criticized for ?kicking away the ladder? (Chang, 2002) for the world?s poorer countries, preventing them from following a path once taken by countries such as the USA and Japan that used industrial protectionism in their early approach to deveLOPment. It has been this basic injustice, combined with the WTO?s democracy eroding complicity in (NEW PARAGRAPH) processes ofdispossession, that has led so many critics to take to the streets from Seattle in 1999 through to Hong Kong in 2006. Ironically, however, it has been yet another injustice noted by the protestors that has ultimately proved most damaging to the WTO?s own attempts to expand free trade since the ?Battle in Seattle?. This injustice is the disproportionate power still wielded by the US government in negotiations because of the importance of the US market in global trade. The irony is that because the USA has been unwilling to fully implement free trade itself, and, most notably, because (like the EU) it has been unwilling to give up the huge subsidies given each year to domestic farmers, US officials have been mov ing increasingly away from the muLtiLateraL ism of WTO negotiations, where they face growing demands from developing countries to eliminate such practices. As a result, American trade negotiators have preferred more recently to develop bilateral trade deals with particular countries such as Singapore, and, meanwhile, the WTO?s failing attempts to expand free trade remain an important reminder that gLobaLization is not so inevit able after all. ms (NEW PARAGRAPH)
world-systems analysis
A materialist and historical approach to the study of social change developed by Immanuel Wallerstein (1979, 1984, 1991a). The approach builds upon three research schools dependency theory, the aNNales school and marxism (see historical materiaLism) to create a unidisciplinary and holistic historical social science. The approach was integral to the reinvigoration of poLiticaL geography in the 1980s and its usage in geography is still largely restricted to this sub discipline (Flint and Shelley, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) World systems analysis runs counter to main stream social science in its definition of society. Wallerstein begins by identifying three basic modes of production, or ways of organizing production and social reproduction. The recipro cal lineage mode describes a society in which production is organized around age and gender differences and exchanges are reciprocated within the group. The redistributive tributary mode occurs in cLass based societies in which a large class of agricultural workers gives the surplus of their production to elites. The capit alist mode ofproduction is also class based, but is defined by ceaseless capital accumuLation motivated by the market which sets prices through the logic of supply and demand. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Wallerstein defines society by the spatial extent of these modes of production, and not necessarily by political borders. Hence, three types of society are identified: mini systems are small tribal entities following the reciprocal lineage mode; world empires, such as the Roman empire or feudaL Europe, practice the redistributive tributary mode; and world economies are capitalist. In the broad historical purview of world systems, the contemporary capitalist world economy emerged in europe in the fifteenth century and has since diffused to encompass the whole globe and eliminate all other forms of society. Thus, the modern world system is a single society, the global capitalist world economy. Scholars have used world systems analysis to study all types of society, but geographers have concentrated upon the modern world system (Flint and Shelley, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The geographical expression of political borders and the spatial extent of society were matched in mini systems and world empires. However, in the capitalist world economy the mode of production is defined by a global market, while the system is divided into separ ate states. It is here that Wallerstein?s chal lenge to mainstream social science lies. He claims that social scientists equate states with society, and therefore have only a limited view of social change if they restrict analysis of cause and effect to one country. The result is the error of developmentalism (Taylor, 1989), practiced within both liberal and Marxist social science, arguing that countries move through particular stages of development; for example, individual countries were identified as ?progressing? through stages of population dynamics following the demographic transi tion model. Alternatively, social change occurs at the scale of the system, and changes within states occur within the broader context. Such thinking led to critique ofworld systems analysis as denying the agency of states and other groups. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Geographers have attempted to address this critique through an application of geograph ical scale (Taylor, 1981). Taylor identified three key political scales; the LocaLity, the nation state and the global. Ultimately, pro cesses of social change can be traced to the global scale, but individual agency occurs at the local scale within the political and social limits set by states, themselves restricted by the imperatives of the global scale. Such an approach has been critiqued as structurally deterministic, but others have shown how pol itical agency is limited within the constraints of the modern world system (Flint, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Initially, geographers complemented their application of geographical scale with a focus upon a key feature of the modern world system, the core periphery hierarchy. The capitalist world economy is necessarily unequal, comprised of peripheral processes (low income and low profit production) and core processes (high income and high profit). These pro cesses cluster geographically, so that core processes may dominate (but not exclusively) in some states, and vice versa. In the UK, for example, core processes predominate, but some expression of peripheral processes is also evident in inner city sweatshops. In addi tion, some states and regions are identified as semi peripheral with a relatively even balance of core and periphery processes. Core and peripheral processes were used to map broad global geographies of equality (Flint and Shelley, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Recent analysis by political geographers has focused upon two concepts; hegemony and woeld cities. A hegemonic power is the one dominant state in the modern world system. Its power rests upon economic strength, but is also expressed in the dissemination of cuLture (Taylor, 1999). The ?war on terror? has been identified as the geopoLiticaL response of the USA, the current hegemonic power, in the face of violent challenge (Flint and Falah, 2004: see terrorism; war). World cities have been iden tified as the key nodes on a new geographical expression of power in the modern world sys tem, a network of economic and cultural rela tions that facilitates capital accumuLation (Knox and Taylor, 1995). Mapping the goods and services produced within particular cities and their interconnectivity results in a hier archy of cities, and informs geographies of sov ereignty and gLobaLization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) World systems analysis challenged liberal and Marxist approaches to social science, and has been critiqued by both by one for being too structural and Marxist and by the other by not being these things enough! Wallerstein (1991b) has also challenged the way in which social science is organized into separate disciplines. Instead, world systems analysis is a unidisciplinary approach, encom passing economic, political, social, and cul tural processes to show how culture and politics are inseparable from economics. Although world systems analysis was at the forefront of the revitalized political geography, it is no longer dominant, however, and instead is now one of many theories informing the sub discipline. cf (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hall (2000c); Taylor and Flint (1999); Wallerstein (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
zonal model
A model of intra urban spatial organization created by E.W. Burgess (1886 1966: see Burgess, 1924), a leading member of the 1920s chicago school of sociologists. To assist in understanding why certain types of social problem were concentrated in particular areas, he split an idealized city (based on Chicago) into five zones (see figure), whose dominant feature is the increase in an area?s socio economic status with distance from the CBD (?The Loop? in Chicago). Growth was propelled outwards from that point by invasion and succession processes involving new immigrants to the city, who established homes in the ?zone in transition? and pressed longer established groups to move towards the suburbs and beyond. Burgess? model was complemented by Hoyt?s sectoral model and combined with it to form a multiple nuclei model in work on urban residential patterns, (cf. factorial ecology; social area analysis). rjSuggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Johnston (1971). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
zone of dependence
An area characterized by the spatial clustering of residential and other facilities used by those dependent on the state and other bodies (such as charities) for housing and other support. The import ance of such facilities has been increased with the general trend involving the closure of many psychiatric and other facilities and replacing them with ?community care?, with many of its facilities located in the iNNer city, where large properties are available for conver sion and there is less likelihood of resistance from established residents (cf. nimby). That spatial concentration encourages their users to find accommodation nearby, thereby creating an area where such dependent people, many suffering in various ways from social exclu sioN, dominate. As more people congregate in such zones, more facilities are placed there to serve them, and eventually a situation akin to the creation of a ghetto emerges. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dear and Wolch (1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
zoning
A term used to describe the practice of dividing a city or region into tracts of land, or zones, for the purposes of land use plan ning. Each zone is assigned a set of permitted uses (e.g. residential, commercial, industrial or some subdivision of these, such as single family residential), often overlain by regula tions on density, height and design. Regulations are codified in a comprehensive plan and, consequently, shape future urban development (Smith, 1983). The character of zoning regulations varies greatly among coun tries, with some framing them at the national level and others particularly the USA hav ing a localized and fragmented system. This local ability to use state power to advance the general good over individual interests is based on US Supreme Court decisions such as the famous Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co. of 1926 which established the right of cities to limit the uses to which private property owners could put their land. (NEW PARAGRAPH) While zoning is, in one sense, a mundane bureaucratic practice, its history and present operation are also tied up with wider social questions. For example, ethnic discrimination forms the basis for early zoning regulations in North American cities. Worries among white elites about the encroachment of ?undesirable? ethnic groups such as Chinese populations led to ordinances that only permitted their businesses, such as laundries, in specific areas. Today, exclusionary zoning continues to be used, often by wealthy municipalities, to exclude low income people. Strategies of exclusion include requirements that houses be built on large (i.e. expensive) lots and prohibitions on apartment buildings. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Proponents of contemporary zoning argue that it provides a transparent framework for decision making, since principles of develop ment have been codified before decisions on particular proposals are made; that it provides predictability for landowners, investors and developers; and that it offers safeguards for residents and the environment by controlling the spread of unwanted or noxious land uses. Critics point to zoning?s unequal effects and its potential for discriminatory social exclusion; criticize its restrictions on landowners; point to its tendency to produce large, environmen tally damaging land use monocultures, such as single family suburban subdivisions; and worry about the potential for zoning decisions particularly those regarding requests to change existing zoning or to seek an exception (a vari ance) to be unfairly influenced by interest groups. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Contemporary urban policy concerns, including the mitigation of urban sprawl and the encouragement of compact and mixed use developments, relate to zoning. Growth man agement and smart growth strategies, such as growth boundaries (beyond which, the types of permissible urban land uses are strictly regulated) are used to maintain compact cit ies (Knaap and Nelson, 1992). Within cities, long standing criticisms of single use zoning and developers? interest in mixed use develop ments have led to the increased use of zoning categories that accommodate a variety of land uses in one location (Knox, 1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Finally, it is worth noting that zoning is frequently the object and stake of urban polit ics. Developers and landowners often lobby for changes in zoning to increase the value of their holdings (a tract may be more valuable if its zoning is changed from industrial to residential, for instance). Environmentalists or neighbourhood activists often oppose such changes when they seem to create negative externalities (McCann, 2002). em (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Knaap and Nelson (1992); Smith (1983). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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