The Dictionary of Human Geography (27 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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cohort
A group of people with a common demographic vintage. Cohorts are most often defined on the basis of being born in the same year or years (i.e. birth cohorts, such as the US ?baby boom? born in the US between 1946 and 1964), although marriage, divorce, migra tion and graduation events also define groups whose life experiences and biographies can be analysed over time. Adopting a cohort approach has deepened understanding of very low levels of fertiLty (Lestheage and Willems, 1999) and spatial variations in migration (Plane, 1992), and supplements period approaches that analyse changes occurring between two points in time. ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Weeks (1999, Chs 5 and 8). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
Cold War
The period of international diplo matic, political and military rivalry between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), conventionally understood as lasting from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As with other periods of international transformation, the Cold War is subject to a variety of different inter pretations, each highlighting different causes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The conventional historiography of the Cold War understands the period as one of realist geopoLitics, in which the balance of power and spheres of influence were historical necessities (Halle, 1991). Although allies dur ing the defeat of Nazi Germany, the USA and the USSR approached the postwar order with different visions, the USA backing a market oriented liberal order (see capitaLism; democracy), while the USSR sought friendly regimes on its borders and the spread of communism internationally. At the 1945 Yalta summit, President Roosevelt, General Secretary Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill outlined plans for zones of miLitary occupation in defeated Germany, with the liberated territories to be democratic. But with Soviet forces occupying the east and the allies dominant in the west, europe was divided by what Churchill called an ?Iron Curtain'. This produced two competing military alliances the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, est. 1949) organized by the USA in the west, and the Warsaw Pact (est. 1955), dominated by the Soviets in the east, with the former seeking to contain or roll back the latter. (NEW PARAGRAPH) These ?ideological blocs' (see ideoLogy) became the basis for the organization of inter national politics for more than 40 years, with their enmity symbolized by the nuclear arms race and materialized in a number of global events, including the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, amongst many others. Although many flashpoints were in Europe, the Cold War was a global geopolitical formation that produced the ?third worLd' as a non aligned group of states that declined to side with either the ?First World? (the USA and its allies) or the ?Second World' (the USSR and its allies). Although the Cold War did not erupt into direct ?hot' war between the two superpowers, there were numerous proxy conflicts between their allies, largely in africa and asia, often piggybacking on indigenous struggles, in which millions perished. The enmity between the blocs was eased by diplomacy, especially the period of ?detente? in the 1970s, and ended by the early 1990s when a variety of forces intersected to remove the Soviet hold over eastern Europe and the eventual demise of the USSR as a superpower. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Revisionist accounts of the Cold War have detailed the economic forces driving American expansionism, with the conflictual imagina tive geographies of capitalism and commun ism having existed prior to the geopolitics of the post Second World War era. Perspectives from criticaL geopoLitics (e.g. Campbell, 1998; Glassman, 2005) argue that the Cold War was a discursive formation as much as a geopolitical condition. This ?architecture of enmity' (Shapiro, 1997) materialized political identities that have survived the demise of the Soviet Union and helped constitute new enemies. dca (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gaddis (2006); Gregory (2004b). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
collective consumption
Basic public ser vices such as schools, health services and util ities, usually provided by the state, which facilitate or enable the reproduction of labour power (Castells, 1977) (see sociaL reproduc tion). The notion of collective consumption developed within Marxist urban theory, with the spheres of production (of goods and ser vices) and labour reproduction as defining elements (Pinch, 1989). It is an effort, there fore, to theorize social relations in capitalist space; specifically, the means by which labour is reproduced ?on a daily and intergenerational basis? (Pinch, 1989, p. 47). Castells (1977) identified collective consumption as the basis for a framework for the analysis of labour reproduction in a specific sphere of social and spatial life, that of the urban (Saunders, 1986, p. 172). According to Castells? (1977) framework, since housing, recreational and health facilities, for example, are provided to people in specific locations on the basis of their collective use, investigation of collective consumption constitutes a fixed territorial set ting for empirical analysis (Saunders, 1986). Thus, Castells (1977) argued that he had identified a specifically urban space with the specification of the labour reproductive and collective consumption processes. However, these processes do not occur exclusively in urban pLaces, and the challenges of reproduc tion and collective consumption are also evident in rural areas or small towns (Saunders, 1986). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Castells refined his approach to collective consumption in his influential The city and the grassroots (1983). In it, he argued that the increasing role of the state in collective con sumption, as part of efforts to resolve the con tradictions of capitalism, did not solve those contradictions but, instead, led to an increas ingly contentious and political consumptive sphere (Castells, 1983; Saunders, 1986). The result is collective activism: urban social movements organized against or as a chal lenge to the state over its management of and provisions for collective consumption. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pinch (1989) argued that, with the state posited as the provider of goods and services for collective consumption, the concept is too narrow, since many collective goods can be privately provided. Indeed, with increasingly neo liberal states, collective consumption seems an outdated concept. The problem and question of the reproduction of labour such as how to provide for childcare or health ser vices however, remains salient (Pinch, 1989). Contemporary scholars concerned with these issues focus less on the state and more on its role as one element in public private partner ships, and the responses in and effects on vari ous communities (see community). dgm (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Castells (1983); Herbert (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
collinearity
A statistical problem associated with the general linear model, especially multiple regression analysis. If two or more of the independent variables are substantially correlated, the resulting regression coefficients will provide unreliable statements of the true relationships and be difficult to interpret. Statistical tests can identify the extent and impact of collinearity in an analysis. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
colonialism
An enduring relationship of domination and mode of dispossession, usu ally (or at least initially) between an indigen ous (or enslaved) majority and a minority of interlopers (colonizers), who are convinced of their own superiority, pursue their own inter ests, and exercise power through a mixture of coercion, persuasion, conflict and collabor ation (cf. Osterhammel, 1997, pp. 14 20). The term both denotes this relationship and serves as an interpretation of it customarily one in which the experiences of colonizers and the colonized are at odds. Derived from the Latin word ?colonia' (estate, distant settlement), and typically promulgated within the framework of an empire, ?colonialism? was first used as a term of disapprobation in eighteenth century debates about the morality of slavery, and has since been conceptualized as a distinctly Western modality of power that has been closely connected to the evolution of capitalism, modernity and eurocentrism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Concept and imagery. Colonialism is com monly viewed as the chief variant and conse quence of imperialism: the tangible means by which disparate parts of the world became subordinated to the drives and dictates of a separate and distant imperial centre (metro pole or mother country), and struggles over territory, resources, markets and national prestige became displaced overseas (cf. world systems theory). The term ?colon ization' denotes the array of expansionist pro jects exploration, war, geopolitical rivalry, military conquest and occupation, com merce, migration, settlement, state formation and cultural representation from which par ticular colonialisms arise. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A common and not inaccurate image of colonialism is of a state centred system of power characterized by brute exploitation, as tonishing cultural arrogance and racism, which reached its heyday in the early twentieth century, when European colonial empires spanned the globe (the British Empire cover ing 20 per cent of the world's land surface), and colonial rule (then justified as a ?civilizing mission') seemed secure to its protagonists, in spite of widespread anti colonial resistance. Colonialism has also been viewed as symp tomatic of an epistemological malaise at the heart of Western modernity a propensity to monopolize and dictate understanding of what counts as right, normal and true, and deni grate and quash other ways of knowing and living. Yet it is more than just a will to exercise dominant control, or a proprietary project that constructs the world as the west?s bequest although it is surely both of these things. Nor has it simply been a hierarchical and diffusion ist process, solidified in a core periphery relationship, which spawned what Frantz Fanon (1963 [1961], pp. 37 8) described as ?a world cut in two' and a colonial world ?div ided into compartments' with the colonized enjoined to emulate the West. Colonialism has also been characterized by subversion and, some argue, by inherent flux and contradic tion, ambivalence and hybridity. Not feeling at home in empire was a visceral experience for the colonizer the world over. (NEW PARAGRAPH) It has become commonplace to observe that colonialism involves a mutual interdependence of forms, at root because colonial identities are constructed in relation to both a metropolitan core and indigenous/colonized lands and peoples. Identities are formed and stretched across both metropolitan/colonial and colon izer/colonized divides, creating what Edward Said (1993, pp. 3 61) a key thinker and influence on geographers dubs ?overlapping territories? and ?intertwined histories?. The interdisciplinary critical project of post coLoniaLism, which is inspired, in part, by a ?desire to speak to the Western paradigm of knowledge in the voice of otherness?, has sought to show that Western/metropolitan subjectivity has not been constituted in a self contained box, but through this long, stretched and often violent process of colonial exchange, and tries to expose and destabilize the way in which Western and non Western, and colonial and post colonial, identities have been shaped by potent binaries of ?civilization? and ?sav agery?, ?modernity? and ?tradition? and so on (Goldberg and Quayson, 2002, p. xiii). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This critical reconfiguration of Western his tory and cuLture is intrinsically linked to what many see as the cornerstone of colonialism?s spatiauty: the importance of displacement for both colonizer and colonized (and for both their knowledge systems and ways of life), and the subsequent difficulty of ever going back to some pristine or authentic connection between pLace and identity that is uncon taminated by the experience of colonization. ?Just as none of us is outside or beyond geog raphy,? Said (1993, p. 7) writes in an influen tial passage, ?none of is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about forms, about images and imaginings?. Colonialism can be distinguished from imperiaLism in terms of the local intensity and materiality of this geographical struggle, centrally over home and territory. Said spurred interest in how colonialism works as a cultural discourse of domination animated by images, narratives and representations and mediated by class, race, gender, sexuality, nation and reLigion as well as a material project and feat of power. Over the past twenty years, colonialism has been studied as a ?cul tural technology of rule? imperilled by various ?investigative modalities? (Cohn, 1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Said (1978, pp. 49 73, 327) deploys the term imaginative geography to capture the connective imperative between geography and discourse within the unequal framework of empire: the ?dramatisation? of difference between ?us? and ?them?, and ?here? and ?there?, with texts ?creat[ing] not only know ledge but also the very reality they appear to describe?. In famously showing how the Orient was produced, its meaning regulated and Western dominance over it shaped, by Western knowledge, institutions and scholar ship (by a discourse of Orientalism), Said does not collapse the distinction between represen tation and reality. Rather, he underscores how orientaLism and other colonial discourses exert authority by creating asymmetrical rela tionships between Western and ?other? know ledge systems. It is through this process of ?knowledgeable manipulation? that distorted images and stereotypes of foreign lands and peoples become taken for granted, traits of difference become ascribed to particular spaces, places, environments and natures, and ?other? peoples are deemed unable to rep resent or govern themselves. This is what Said (1978, p. 63) means when he describes ?the Orient? as ?an enclosed space? and ?a stage affixed to Europe?, and David Arnold (2005, p. 225) when he describes how British obser vers ?affixed? India to alien European ideas of landscape and nature as part of the Tropics (see tropicaLity). While Said has been criticized for obscuring how non Western peoples responded to this epistemo logical onslaught, he revealed how colonialism revolves around grammars of difference, othering and exclusion that are acutely spatial that function as ?trait geographies? (Gregory, 2001b). (NEW PARAGRAPH) History and interpretation. As much of the above implies, there is more than one modeL of colonialism. Indeed, it is important to rec ognize how different meanings and models of colonialism have evolved and operate a posteriori. Important distinctions have been drawn between different types of colonies: ex ploitation colonies (e.g. British India, French Indochina; slave colonies, ?protectorates? and ?dependencies?), which were established pri marily for the purpose of capitalist economic extraction, where tiny expatriate colonial elites often governed large subject populations, and ideologies of race and paternalism played a pivotal role in colonial rule; settler colonies (e.g. North America and austraLasia), whose political economies were premised on the availability of extensive tracts of cultivable and resource rich land, and where indigenous peoples were systematically displaced by colonists and native populations plummeted due to disease; and maritime enclaves (e.g. Aden, Hong Kong, Jakarta and Malacca), which served as commercial and military nodes in encompassing imperial networks. While these are ideal types for instance, French Algeria and Spanish Peru were both extraction and settler colonies a large litera ture identifies the distinct power relations per taining to these different colonial formations. The close association of colonialism with European/white minority rule has meant that the term has been deemed inapplicable to some situations until recently, the colonial period of US history, where colonists along the Atlantic seaboard soon outnumbered native people. And the ?salt water? association between colonialism and distant overseas pos session explains why expressions such as ?in ternal colonialism' have been used to describe situations in which colonialist relationships exist within the borders of, or contiguous to, an imperial state or kingdom (e.g. between England and its ?Celtic fringe', especially Ireland). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The history of colonialism has also been divided into distinct periods: Spain and Por tugal's initial sixteenth century conquest of the New World; the seventeenth century cre ation of an ?Atlantic world? revolving around the circulation of people and commodities, and centred on sLavery and the racialized pLantation economies of the Caribbean; the eighteenth century extension of European (es pecially British and Dutch) trade and domin ion in Asia; the nineteenth century building of European land empires in Africa and Asia and the emergence of the USA as a significant empire builder; the maturation of colonial ex port economies between 1900 and 1945; and a postwar welfare minded colonialism that be came entangled with independence struggles and decoLonization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since the 1980s work on colonialism much of which is either aligned with, or sees itself as a response to, post coLoniaLism stems from the recognition that the postwar break up of Europe's colonial empires did not quickly or necessarily put once colonized regions on a par with the West at any level. In 1965, Kwame Nkrumah coined the term neo coLoniaLism to describe how the West (and especially the USA) was perpetuating colonialism while upholding ideals of inde pendence and liberty, the contradiction being as apparent in deveLopment models, which were the vehicles of a new cultural imperialism, as it was blatant in new international investment and trade relations (Young, 2001, pp. 44 56; cf. deveLopment geography; third worLd; transnationaL corporation). Some remarkable theoretical treatments of colonialism from this era for example, the work of Fanon and Aime Cesaire alight on the enduring and nefarious psychological influence of colonial categories of thought and social pathologies on post independence politics and nationaLism. And if, as this sug gests, the colonial past was not over, then Derek Gregory (2004b, pp. 6, 117), adds what now seems an obvious rider: that the colonial past ?is not even past?. empire is being revived through the creation of new ?colonizing geog raphies' of division, partition and enmity (the war torn middLe east currently bearing the brunt of them) that displays many affinities with past colonial ideas and practices. The United Nations has declared the period 2001 10 the ?Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism'. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Indeed, there is now arguably a greater range of opinion about colonialism than there has been for 50 years, including burly affirmations of its supposed benefits that feed on imperial nostalgia. On the other hand, there has been a radical re reading of the West's conception of its cultural evolution, and much academic soul searching, not least within European and North American geography, which has strong ties with empire, blasting apart disciplinary allegories of oBjectivity, progress and self contained development (cf. geography, his tory of). Many discourses and practices that have been deemed central to geography's make up and heritage expLoration, map (NEW PARAGRAPH) ping, surveying, environmentaL determin ism, geopolitical model building and latterly GIS have been pressed into (and are still designed for) imperial service. (NEW PARAGRAPH) cartography has been a colonizing tool par excellence. Maps brought ?undiscovered? lands into spatial existence, emptying them of prior (indigenous) meanings and refilling them with Western pLace names and borders, priming ?virgin? (putatively empty land, ?wilderness?) for colonization (thus sexualizing colonial landscapes as domains of male penetration), reconfiguring alien space as absolute, quanti fiable and separable (as property), drawing mapped space into the unifying framework of Western knowledge and reason, and, along with the clock and calendar, effecting a funda mental reorganization (standardization) of the relations between time and space (Edney, 1997; cf. time space distanciation). Little wonder, then, that concepts and metaphors of mapping and location have a seminal place in post colonial theory. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Critical problematics. While recent work on colonialism eludes simple characterization, it can usefully be located within a series of inter related spatial poles of interpretation, which grapple with whether colonialism, in extremis, can and should be treated as uniform or diverse, coherent or fragmentary, centred or decentred, and whether it put in train a cultural history of affinity or difference, con nection or separation, inclusion or exclusion. These analytics can be traced through two pairs of watchwords that infuse work in the field of colonial studies and the wider project of post colonialism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) With regard to diversity and specificity, recognition of the historical geographical di versity of colonialism is often registered as a warning about the perils of generalizing about ?it? from particular locations (Algeria, India and the Caribbean being the crucibles of much theorizing). Colonialism is conceived as less amenable to abstraction than imperial ism, as more localized and differentiated than models suggest, and in need of more compara tive research. This critical impulse to extend what Fanon (1963 [1961], p. 239) called ?the will to particularity? to expose the duplicity of Western universals and absolutes has been manifested in calls to bring metropole and colony into ?a unitary analytical field? (Cooper and Stoler, 1997a, p. 1), to conceptu alize colonialism as a ?forged concept? involving both similitude and difference (Lloyd, 1999, p. 7), and to re examine those processes (both violent and intimate) that colonizers and

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