The Dictionary of Human Geography (43 page)

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devolution
The transfer of power or author ity from one person or body to another, and specifically the transfer of governmental powers from the central or federal government to lower tiers. Devolution may involve the trans fer of functions to unelected regional or local administrative bodies, but the term is more commonly used to refer to the transfer of some legislative powers to provincial elected assem blies, which are often established for the purpose. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Devolution thus involves a division of powers (administrative, judicial or legislative) between the central government and sub national insti tutions. Devolution is sometimes distinguished from federalism in which the division of powers is determined by the constitution, whereas under devolution the powers are con ferred by the centre, which retains the capacity to revoke them. However, the practical oper ations of federal and devolved systems are often similar. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The extent of devolution varies between countries, but sub national institutions typically have responsibility for policy fields such as plan ning, economic development, health care and environmental protection, while defence and foreign affairs remain the responsibility of the central state. Devolved institutions may also have revenue raising powers. Devolution may also be ?asymmetrical? with some territories having more autonomy and greater power than others within the same nation state. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Devolution has been an important state strategy for the management of territorial poli tical and cultural differences and the political claims associated with them (Keating, 1998: cf. territory; territoriality). It has also been an important demand of territorial (espe cially regionalist) political movements, whether as an end in its own right or as a step towards either independence or political separation (see regionalism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Regional devolution has been a notable fea ture of the political geography of the European Union since the 1970s. For example, of the six largest EU countries, different forms of regional autonomy were introduced in Spain in 1978, in France after 1982, in Italy during the 1990s and in Poland after 1999. In the UK in 1999, a devolved parliament with some tax raising powers was established in Scotland, along with elected assemblies of more limited scope in Wales and Northern Ireland (Germany had adopted a federal constitution in 1949: see EU Committee of the Regions, 2003). jpa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Jones, Goodwin and Jones (2005); Swenden (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
dialectic(s)
The perpetual resolution of bin ary oppositions, a metaphysics most closely associated in European philosophy and social thought with G.W.F. Hegel (1770 1813) and Karl Marx (1818 83). In human geography, a simple example would be the following, essentially Hegelian reading of August Losch?s location theory. There: (NEW PARAGRAPH) a perfectly homogeneous landscape with identical customers, working inside the framework of perfect competition, would necessarily develop, from its inner rules of change, into a heterogeneous landscape, with both rich, active sectors and poor, de pressed regions. The homogeneous regional system negates itself and generates dialect ically its contradiction as regional inequal ities appear. (Marchand, 1978) (NEW PARAGRAPH) This is a helpful first approximation, but the dialectic is usually deployed outside the framework of neo classical economics that contains traditional location theory. In fact, it is a characteristic of the Loschian system that once the heterogeneous landscape has emerged, it is maintained in equilibrium rather than convulsed through transformation. As such, it is really an example of a categorical paradigm one in which change is simply the kaleidoscopic recombination of the same, ever present and fixed elements rather than a fully dialectical paradigm. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The most developed dialectical paradigms in human geography have been derived from Marx?s historical materialism. A formal statement of principles has been provided by Harvey (1996, pp. 48 57; cf. 1973, pp. 286 302). Its key propositions include the following: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dialectical thinking emphasizes processes, flows and relations. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The formation and duration of systems and structures is not the point of departure (these ?things? are not treated as givens) but, rather, the problem for analysis: pro cesses, flows and relations constitute form, shape, give rise to systems and structures. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The operation of these processes, flows (NEW PARAGRAPH) and relations is contradictory, and it is the temporary resolution of these contradic tions that feeds into the perpetual trans formation of systems and structures. All systems and structures thus contain possi bilities for change. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Spaces and times (or, rather, ?space (NEW PARAGRAPH) times?) are not external coordinates but (NEW PARAGRAPH) are contained within or ?implicated in? different processes that effectively produce their own forms of space and time. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Particular importance is attached to the identification of contradictions. Formally, a contradiction is a principle that both (i) enters into the constitution of a system or structure, and also (ii) negates or opposes (?contradicts?) the stability or integrity of that system or structure. (NEW PARAGRAPH) These principles seem abstract when set out in this form, but they have been used to con siderable analytical effect by Harvey in his explorations of the contradictory constitution and restless transformation of capitalism as a system of commodity production: hence his insistence on the crucial, dialectical concept of ?creative destruction?. Harvey wires this to the dialectical production of space itself (see Barnes 2006a; Sheppard, 2006a). Indeed, space has occupied centre stage in many dialectical geographies, but several of these owe as much to Lefebvre?s reading of Marx as they do Harvey?s: hence Soja (1980, 1989) proposed a ?socio spatial dialectic? (see also trialectics) and Shields (1999) described Lefebvre?s work as a ?spatial dialectics?. Other writers, indebted in different ways to different historical materi alisms, have shown how other geographical concepts may also be approached dialectically: thus Pred (1984) emphasized the dialectics of place and practice; Mitchell (2002a) traced a series of ways in which landscape may be interrogated as a dialectical formation; and Castree (2003b) examined the prospects (and problems) of treating what he called ?nature in the making? dialectically. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In Harvey?s own writings, as elsewhere, dia lectics functions as both a mode of explanation and a mode of representation (Castree, 1996). representation is not confined to writing, of course, and there has been considerable inter est in combining the textual and the visual in the tense constellations of what Marxist cultural critic Walter Benjamin called the dia lectical image. Historical materialism is rich with close readings of Marx?s canon attend ing not only to what he said but how he said it and it was famously claimed that Marx?s words are ?like bats: one can see in them both birds and mice?. In human geography, how ever, this attentiveness to the slippery subtle ties of language and to the powers released by words has occasioned a series of reflections that have taken many critics a considerable distance from Harvey?s own base in historical materialism. Thus Olsson (1974) argued that the categorical paradigm fails to recognize the interpenetrations of form and process, subject and object, so that its propositions reveal more about the language we are talking in, whereas ?statements in dialectics will say more about the worlds we are talking about?. Olsson?s sub sequent work has taken him far from Marx and into a sustained interrogation of Western philosophical thought (Olsson, 1980, 1991, 2007). To be sure, ?words? and ?worlds? are connected, as Olsson (and for that matter Harvey) constantly accentuate, and in order to explore the ways in which they are folded into one another, a number of human geog raphers have made two further moves. One has been to follow the linguistic turn in the humanities and social sciences, and so chal lenge the metaphysics of binary oppositions on which classical dialectics depends (Doel, 1992, 2006: see also deconstruction). Another has been to take seriously Harvey?s emphases on materiality, practice and trans formation, but to develop these through (NEW PARAGRAPH) an avowedly non representational theory. Here too, the accent is on practices, and on the provisional and the incomplete, but Whatmore (1999b, p. 25; see also 2002a) insists that dialectical reasoning is ?insufficiently radical? to convey the sensuous openness of ?world making?: there is thus a studied refusal to render processes through binary opposi tions or to convene them within a plenary totality. But some perceptive critics have won dered whether, in practice, this agenda (its ?relational ontology?) really is so different from the approach practiced by Harvey and others (Demeritt, 2005). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Demeritt (2005); Harvey (1996, pp. 48 57); Sheppard (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
dialectical image
A leitmotif in the work of Walter Benjamin, the dialectical image is best described as an aesthetics of historical mont age, or as a method for disrupting a linear or progressivist logic of history and historical understanding. Opposed to all forms of TELE ology and totality, the dialectical image rests on a spatio temporal paradox. On the one hand, all images must be torn from their imme diate contexts and their chronological move ment ?frozen? in order to become legible. On the other, dialectics, in both the ancient sense of continuous disputation and the Marxian theoretic of contradiction, works to ensure constant mobility and mutation. So understood, the dialectical image reconfigures the relationship of the past to the present. Refusing all temporal continuity in which the present illuminates the past or the past casts its light on the present, the dialectical image constitutes the scene in which time and space are out of joint; in which the ?then? and now?, like the ?here? and ?there?, combine in an explosive flash or ?constellation?. From this emerges a cognitive shock, without which rigorous conceptual thinking cannot occur. jd (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Benjamin (1973, 1999); Buck Morss (1989); Dubow (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
diaspora
A scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and places. The term was first used to describe the forced dispersal of the Jews from Palestine in the sixth century bce, and often continues to refer to forced migration and exile. More recently, and particularly since the 1990s, diaspora studies have come to encompass wider notions of transnational migration, resettlement, connection and attachment, often closely associated with post colonial and ?new ethnicities? research (see transna tionalism). For Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk (2005), there is a broad distinction between the use of diaspora as a descriptive tool and mode of categorization (including lists of vari ous criteria that characterize diasporas) and more critical understandings of diaspora as a contested process. Whilst some accounts iden tify different types of diaspora, including vic tim, labour, trade, imperial and cultural diasporas on a global scale (Cohen, 1997), other studies theorize diaspora and its implica tions for understanding space, identity, cul ture and the politics of hybridity (including Hall, 1990; Kalra, Kaur and Hutnyk, 2005). Rather than analyse diaspora solely in terms of ?race? and ethnicity, geographers and others working across the humanities and social sciences have explored the gender, class and sexual spaces of diaspora. Geographers have also stressed the importance of studying the grounded politics of diaspora (including Mitchell, 1997b). Both the conceptual study of diaspora and the substantive study of differ ent diasporas develop critical perspectives on globalization, neo liberalism, multi culturalism and cosmopolitanism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Both ideas about diaspora and studies of particular diasporas are inherently geo graphical, revolving around space and place, mobility and locatedness, the nation and transnationality. The diasporic lives of trans national migrants, for example, are often inter preted in terms of ?roots? and ?routes? (Clifford, 1997). Whilst ?roots? might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, a focus on ?routes? complicates such ideas by tracing more mobile, transcultural and deterritorialized geographies of migration and resettlement. As Paul Gilroy explains, the spatialities of diaspora represent ?a historical and experiential rift between the locations of residence and the locations of belonging? (2000b, p. 124). A wide range of research explores diasporic attachments to homelands that might be remembered, imagined, lost or are yet to be achieved, and the political, economic and cultural materialization of such attachments through political activism, the transfer of remittances and diverse cultural practices. Other research unsettles the idea that people living in diaspora are bound to a homeland or nation of origin and identifica tion. Avtar Brah, for example, proposes the (NEW PARAGRAPH) notion of ?diaspora space? to encompass the ?intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dis/ location as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural andpsychicprocesses? (1996, p. 181). As Brah explains, ?diaspora space as a conceptual category is ??inhabited?? not only by those who have migrated and their descendants but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous. In other words, the concept of diaspora space (as opposed to that of diaspora) includes the entanglement of geneal ogies of dispersion with those of??staying put?? ? (p. 181). ab (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Brah (1996); Clifford (1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
difference
The concept of ?difference? has become an increasingly prominent concern in geography over the past two decades. Geographers have looked at how socio spatial boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are pro duced on the basis of categories such as race, class, gender, sexuality or disability. Most agree that these and other such categories are socially constructed. This is not to say that differences do not exist or are illusory but, rather, to point out that the ways in which we categorize ourselves and others are the result of social practices. Further, these socially con structed differences have very real political effects. As Audrey Kobayashi (1997, p. 3) writes, ?The concept of difference allows the social creation of categories of people subor dinate to a dominant norm, and allows the continuation of cultural practices that rein scribe difference as differential values placed upon human life.? (NEW PARAGRAPH) In that difference arises from social practice, it is also spatial. David Harvey (1996) argues that space and time work to individuate and identify people through the production of dif ferences along multiple axes. In other words, geographically inscribed inequalities position people and groups differently in relation to pol itical, cultural, ecological and economic resources. Spatial practices such as segrega tion and the policing of borders work to enforce and consolidate difference. As David Delaney (1998) shows in his work on race, land scape and law, the complex legal geographies of property and /files/02/38/02/f023802/public/private distinctions are inseparable from the relations of power and domination that are associated with difference. This means that some people have more access to rights in certain spaces than others. (NEW PARAGRAPH) While ideas about difference often work to delimit hierarchies and inequalities, difference is also a powerful element of identity polit ics. Race, class, gender, sexuality and other differences can provide the basis for solidar ities and resistance. Arguments that point out the constructed nature of such categories and that highlight the divisions within groups (such as racial differences within feminist movements, or class differences within racial politics) can seem to threaten the basis of political struggles forged around identities such as ?Black? or ?Woman?. In response, some feminists have adopted ?strategic essential ism?, choosing to emphasize the commonal ities across women?s experiences in order to unite women for political purposes. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Difference poses political problems for those who wish both to value diversity and to dismantle the structures of discrimination and oppression that scaffold ideas about dif ference. The question of how to recognize and make space for the very real effects of differ ence, or positionality, and at the same time to dismantle hierarchies based on difference is of ongoing concern to political theorists and geographers. Iris Marion Young (1990a), for example, has advocated for the celebration of diversity within an overarching political unity. Such a project is not, however, without its difficulties in the context of ever shifting axes of difference and alliance. ajs (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Fincher and Jacobs (1998); Women and Geog raphy Study Group (1997). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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