The Dictionary of Human Geography (51 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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ecosystem
The concept of the ecosystem was proposed by the British ecologist A.G. Tansley in 1935, to describe the interaction of living things and their non living surround ings, with which they interact. Tansley?s paper attacked the notion that the plant community was an ?organic unity?, and vegetation succes sion a process of development to a ?climax? state (Sheail, 1987). Tansley suggested that cLimate, soils, plants and animaLs interacted together as parts of a system, nested within a host of other physical systems (Sheail, 1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The ecosystem concept allowed a reduc tionist approach to the analysis of forests, fields, wetLands and other environments in terms of flows of energy and matter. It allowed metaphors from engineering, cybernetics and control theory to be applied to such environ ments, such as system, feedback, equilibrium, balance and control. Ecosystems are not dimensionally defined: they can be defined at any scaLe from pond, to ocean or biosphere. Classic studies, such as those of Odum on the energetics of Silver Springs in Florida (in 1956), involved small naturally bounded systems. Much of the claim of ecoLogy as an experimental science can be traced back to the power of the ecosystem approach. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The ecosystem, and the wider science of ecology, provided a framework for the analysis and management of human impacts on non human Nature. In the mid twentieth century, ecological ?managerialism? underpinned the expansion global policy ideas about issues such as overgrazing, desertification, defor estation and the problem of ?fragile environ ments?. Ecologists sought to apply the ?lessons? of their interdisciplinary science to deveLopment; for example, in Ecological prin ciples for economic development (Dasmann, Milton and Freeman, 1973). The ecosystem as a frame for understanding human impacts on the biosphere was fundamental to the environmentaL movement of the 1970s and 1980s (at that time, often called the ?ecology movement?) and to the expansion of conservation. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The ecosystem concept has had a significant impact on geography, first in describing vege tation patterns on global (biome) or local scales, and second as a framework for analys ing the interaction of society and nature. Organism and ecosystem were discussed by David Stoddart (1967) in Chorley and Haggett?s Models in geography, both for their utility in explaining how the world worked and also as indicators of the value of the systems approach and generaL systems theory as a ?unifying methodology? for geography. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Despite the explosion of interest by human geographers in all aspects of the social con struction of nature, the ecosystem continues to be central to natural scientific explanations of processes and patterns in the living envir onment, and human interactions with them. Moreover, recent ecological work on ecosys tem disturbance and resilience has maintained interest in the ecosystem as a holistic frame for understanding human impacts on non human nature. wma (NEW PARAGRAPH)
ecumene
A term used to mean ?inhabited world? or ?dwelling place?. It generally refers to the historical process and cultural forms of human settlement, and to those parts of the Earth where people have made their perman ent home, and to the economic activities that support that permanent occupation and use of land. It derives from the Greek oecumene, which referred specifically to the civilized world as it was known to the ancient Greeks (and, later, Romans) and centred on the Mediterranean (see civilization). In some historiographies of geography, ?ecumene? is presented as the unifying concept and distinct ive concern of the discipline (James, 1972; see also geography, history of). In practice, it was in most active use by cultural geographers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centur ies, along with the allied scholars in anthropol ogy and archaeology, who were then concerned with the imperatives and distribu tion of human settlement (see cuLturaL geography). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ecumene was adopted as the title of a new journal launched in 1991 that sought to show case the work of the ?new cultural geography? and the fields of study with which it was in conversation. That this journal was re launched in 2005 under the more straightforward title Cultural Geography is perhaps indicative of a declining intellectual purchase and resonance of ?ecumene? at the start of the twenty first century. sw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ecumene; James (1972). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
edge city
An urban form in the USA, iden tified by Garreau (1991) and addressed by others (e.g. Beauregard, 1995). An edge city contains the industry, commerce and resi dences of traditional cities, but in less compact form (see exopoLis; sprawL). Edge cities are new (largely emerging post 1970) and contain high levels of office and retail space. They have also become generally perceived as places in themselves, or ?new downtowns?, on the edge of urban areas (e.g. Tyson?s Corner, Virginia). According to Garreau, these are not only ?edge cities? because of their peripheral location, but also because they are major centres of innovation. em (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Garreau, 1991. (NEW PARAGRAPH)
education
Studies of the geography of education focus on spatial variations in the provision, take up, quality of and outputs from educational resources. Many of those resources are provided in facilities at fixed locations, so the provision of, for example, play centres for pre school chiLdren may involve differential accessibiLity, with impli cations for sociaL justice. The majority of facilities are pubLic goods in most countries, so their spatial allocation is a political process, as is public expenditure on education (cf. positive discrimination). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Spatial variations in educational outputs are related not only to the quality of the facilities and institutions? learning systems, but also their social milieux. Students? aspirations and performance reflect not only their innate abil ities and home situations and the quality of the school they attend, but also the character istics of their school and neighbourhood peers. Strong neighbourhood effects oper ate (Wollmann, 2001: see also contextual effect; multi level modelling). Their existence was the basis for challenges to the ?separate but equal? schooling systems once operated in many US states, whereby African Americans and whites were allocated to separate schools: after the classic Brown v Board of Education of Topeka Supreme Court decision in 1954, many school districts were required to integrate their schools to remove the unequal treatment suffered by the former group (Johnston, 1984). A commonly deployed strategy to achieve this was ?bussing?, whereby students were transported from segregated neighbourhoods to mixed schools: this was increasingly countered by whites who either sent their children to private schools or moved to suburban school districts where housing was too expensive for most African Americans (?white flight?). Similar patterns have been observed regarding school choice in English cities (Johnston, Burgess, Wilson and Harris, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) With the adoption of neo liberalism in many countries, although education remains a public good, parental and student choice is promoted as against the territorially struc tured school catchment areas that character ized earlier eras, when the composition of a school, and thus the contextual effects oper ating therein, reflected the neighbourhoods that it served. To facilitate this choice, infor mation on schools such as the performance of their students in public examinations and their truancy rates are published, leading to the creation of school ?league tables?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Studies of geographical education focus on the provision and nature of instruction in the discipline in schools and universities. Special interest groups including geographical societies such as the Geographical Association in the UK lobby relevant authorities to ensure, for example, that geography is in the school curriculum and that departments offer degrees in the discipline at universities, with varying success across countries. Leading geographical societies such as the Association of American Geographers and the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers include specialty groups whose purpose is to promote pedagogy, as do journals such as the Journal of Geography in Higher Education. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Within universities, there is a growing trend of regularly assessing their performance (NEW PARAGRAPH) notably at research (as with the UK?s (NEW PARAGRAPH) Research Assessment Exercise, which grades every university department every five years on average: Johnston, 1994, 2006) and then allocating funds according to the results, which has the consequence of concentrating research in selected institutions only. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bednarz, Downs and Vender (2003); Kong (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Walford (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
egalitarianism
The view that all people are of equal fundamental moral or social worth, and should be treated as such. Egalitarianism can take a number of forms related to different types of equality: equality of opportunity, equality of outcome, equality of wealth or power, equality of respect, equality before the law or equality before God. Egalitarianism implicitly informs much research on the geog raphies of inequality, including those associ ated with differences of gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, age, corporeality and nationality (cf. nationalism). The mitigation of spatial inequality has been an important normative concern for geographical scholar ship since the early 1970s (Harvey, 1973). jpa (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Lee and Smith (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
electoral geography
The study of geograph ical aspects of the organization, conduct and results of elections. Pioneering studies were conducted early in the twentieth century, but most of the literature produced by a small number of specialists dates from the 1960s on. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Because voting in national and local elec tions is almost invariably place bound (i.e. people have to cast their vote in a specified area, usually that containing their home) and the results are published for those places, a great deal of data that can be subject to geo graphical (i.e. spatial) analysis is created. Merely mapping election outcomes suggests that geography is ?epiphenomenal?, however: that there is nothing inherently geographical about the processes producing the outcome, which just happens to be produced and dis playable in spatial form. For geographers such as Agnew (1987a) and Cox (1969), however, the decision making processes underpinning those mapped patterns are inherently geo graphical. The socialization of voters is a con textual process (cf. contextual effect) and much of the social interaction that precedes a voting decision is locally based, in the household and neighbourhood hence the considerable emphasis in electoral geography on the neighbourhood effect. In addition, the mobilization of voters is also at least partly a spatially specific activity, with political par ties focusing their electioneering on those places where they expect to get the best returns. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Much analysis in electoral geography uses ecological data often combining electoral returns for places with census data on the char acteristics of their inhabitants and thus faces problems associated with ecoLogicaL infer ence (cf. ecoLogicaL faLLacy; modifiabLe areaL unit probLem). Geographers have also added spatial information to survey data, facilitating analyses that at least partially cir cumvent those problems, although in the USA studies of patterns of voting by state and Congressional District have produced sub stantial insights into the political economy of elections there (Archer and Taylor, 1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In many electoral systems especially those based on single member constituencies (the so called first past the post system, deployed in both the UK and the USA) the translation of votes into seats in the relevant legislature is an inherently geographical process, with the membership of such bodies determined by who wins most votes in each of a set of territor ial constituencies. Constituency delimitation (cf. redistricting) can thus be highly politi cized in some countries, with district bound aries defined to promote the interests of one party over those of another, although similar outcomes may result without any such activity when redistricting is undertaken by independ ent, non partisan, bodies (Gudgin and Taylor, 1979: cf. districting aLgorithm; gerryman dering; maLapportionment). (NEW PARAGRAPH) As part of their continued mobilization of support in places, parties and/or candidates may influence the allocation of pubLic goods towards favoured areas, both to reward those who have supported them at past contests and to solicit support from others there (cf. pork barreL). The geography of election results is thus a potential foundation for a geography of political power. (See also democracy.) rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Johnston (2005a); Johnston and Pattie (2006); Johnston, Pattie, Dorling and Rossiter (2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
emigration
A particular form of migration: the term is usually reserved for migration that occurs between countries. To emigrate is to leave a place, the opposite of immigration, to enter a new place. Emigration was defined (NEW PARAGRAPH) as a basic human right in Article 12 of the 1966 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which came into force in 1976): ?Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his [or her] own? (United Nations, n.d.). Note that the right to emigrate is not matched by the right to immigrate, or to enter the country of one?s choice. The value of this right is therefore debatable. Furthermore, countries vary widely in their observance of this right. During the coLd war period, states within the Warsaw Pact typically prohibited their citizens from leaving, especially after walls were built to separate the capitaList and state sociaList countries of Europe. The number of countries that currently prohibit emigration is limited, but all nation states regulate exit to a degree through the granting, or withholding, of passports (Torpey, 2000). Countries also differ in their practices of mon itoring emigration: some track their citizens abroad through registration systems, and collect detailed statistics on all entries and departures, while others are only interested in citizens who are actually resident in the nation state (see also citizenship). dh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Castles and Miller (2003). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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