The Dictionary of Human Geography (84 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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geostrategic realms
The largest scale division of the gLobe in Cohen?s (2003) geo politics of the world system. Large enough to be of global significance, geostrategic realms serve the interests of the powers that dominate them. Held together by trading, cultural and military connections, they change as economic and military forces evolve. Reflecting long standing concerns with land and sea power in geopoLiticaL thinking, three geostrategic realms have been identified: the Atlantic and Pacific trade dependent Maritime realm; the Eurasian Continental Russian Heartland realm; and the mixed Continental Maritime East Asia realm. The intellectual or practical significance of Cohen?s typology is far from straightforward, but the US military has devel oped its own geostrategic division of the world, the practical significance of which is only too clear (see Morrissey, 2008b). Different ?unified combatant commands? are assigned to different world regions: (NEW PARAGRAPH) US Africa Command (all of Africa except Egypt); (NEW PARAGRAPH) US Central Command (miDDLe east and Central Asia); (NEW PARAGRAPH) US European Command (centred on Europe, including Russia); (NEW PARAGRAPH) US Pacific Command (including Australia, and South and South East Asia) (NEW PARAGRAPH) US Northern Command (North Africa) (NEW PARAGRAPH) US Southern Command (Central and South America and the Caribbean). sd (NEW PARAGRAPH)
gerrymandering
The deliberate drawing of electoral district boundaries to produce an electoral advantage for an interested party. The term was coined by enemies of Massachusetts Republican Governor Elbridge Gerry, who created a district in 1812 that his party would win: it was shaped like a salamander hence the neologism and the widespread (if false) belief that gerrymandering necessarily involves odd shaped district boundaries. Although gerrymandering has long been practiced in the USA, it has only recently and in specific conditions been interpreted by the courts there as a constitutional violation (cf. dis tricting aLgorithm; eLectoraL geography; redistricting). rj (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Monmonier (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
ghetto
An extreme form of residential con centration: a cultural, religious or ethnic group is ghettoized when (a) a high proportion of the group lives in a single area, and (b) when the group accounts for most of the population in that area. Although the practice of ghettoiza tion forcing a group to live separately within a city originated in the urban quarters of pre classical cities, the first use of the term occurred in late medieval Venice, where city authorities required Jews to live on a separate island (called gheto), which was sealed behind walls and gates each night (Calimani, 1987). sociaL excLusion was imposed by the domin ant cuLture and, as such, reflected and re inforced the marginalization of the Jewish minority. However, while the ghetto was over crowded and prone to fire and disease, Jews also gained some benefit from their enforced isolation, especially the right to practice their reLigion and legal system and, perhaps, a degree of protection from more drastic forms of persecution (Wirth, 1928). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Instances of complete ghettoization have been rare (two modern exceptions are the Warsaw Ghetto, established as a way station to the Nazi hoLocaust and designated areas for Black residential settlement in South Afri can cities during the apartheid regime). Early in the twentieth century, the term came to be used indiscriminately for almost any residen tial area identified with a particular group, even when it did not form a majority, and even when segregation was not the result of discrimination. This ambiguity was especially prevalent in the influential work of the Chicago sociologists (see chicago schooL), who even referred to a wealthy neighbour hood in the city as the ?gilded ghetto?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Researchers began in the 1970s to call for more analytical precision. Philpott (1991 (NEW PARAGRAPH) ), for example, distinguished between ?sLums?, areas of poverty where residents (fre quently immigrants) leave as they acquire the means to do so, and ghettos, areas where resi dents are trapped in permanent poverty (also see Ward, 1989). Also, ghettos should not be confused with ethnic encLaves, areas domin ated by a single cultural group. Ghettos em erge when political and/or other institutions, such as the housing market, operate to re strict the residential choices of certain groups, channelling them to the most undesirable nei ghbourhoods (Thabit, 2003). They are the product of raciaLization (see also ethnicity; race), where particular minority groups are judged by the majority to be genetically and socially inferior (Wacquant, 2001). There is al ways a degree of involuntary behaviour in the formation of ghettos, whereas ethnic enclaves arise when members of a group choose to live in close proximity (Boal, 1976; Peach, 1996ab). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The situation of African Americans in the USA is typically seen as the defining example of contemporary ghettoization (see Darden, 1995; Wacquant, 2001). In the 1960s, some American social scientists began to assert that ghetto environments are so debilitating that a ?culture of poverty?, associated with high crime rates, substance abuse, broken families and a reliance on social services, is transmitted from parents to children (cf. cycLe of pov erty). These alarming views were instrumen tal in the ?war on poverty? declared by the US government, and were important ingredients in the inauguration of urban redevelopment programmes, increased social spending, edu cational reform, and heightened policing and surveillance of the inner city (cf. urban renewaL). These initiatives were largely withdrawn in the conservative 1980s, but the argument that ghettos should be the focus of pubLic poLicy was revived later in the decade, as part of the underclass debate. Again, proponents of this thesis believe that ghettos are not just places of grinding poverty, but also places where poverty is institutionalized (Wilson, 1987). Racialization and stigmatiza tion combine to sharply circumscribe the opportunities available to residents of ghettos, so chiLdren are locked into the same circum stances as their parents, if not worse. Similar arguments have surfaced in the UK (e.g. Rex, 1988; but see Peach, 1996ab, for an alternate view). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Current attempts by various authorities in Italy to create separate, gated ?camps? for Roma (Gypsy) people constitute one of the clearest examples of ghettoization today. Gov ernments justify this policy of segregation on two grounds: that Roma people are nomadic and ill adapted to ?regular? urban environ ments, and that they need to be protected from racist incidents in the wider society (there have been a number of violent attacks on housing occupied by Roma people). In evitably, though, by separating Roma from other groups, this policy further racializes the population and severely limits their opportun ities for integration (Sigona, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) As in the original Venetian case, though, ghettos, once formed, may provide a context for the maintenance and development of mi nority cultures: ironically, these cultural forms are sometimes embraced by the dominant cul ture (e.g. the many types of music pioneered by African Americans). Dh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Peach (1996ab); Sigona (2005); Thabit (2003); Wacquant (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
GIS
See geographic information systems. (NEW PARAGRAPH)
global cities/world cities
Major nodes in the organization of the global economy: hubs of economic control, production and trade, of information circulation and cultural transmis sion, and of political power. They are often represented in a hierarchically ordered net work formation that spans the globe (for sev eral representations, see Taylor, 2004). Peter Hall has credited Scottish urbanist Patrick Geddes (1854 1932; see Geddes, 1915) with introducing the term although German liter ary giant Johann Wolfgang Goethe employed it as far back as the early nineteenth century, in reference to Paris. In Hall?s groundbreaking book The world cities ([1984] 1966), six urban regions were analysed under this title. In this first systematic examination, Hall treats the world cities predominantly as internationally oriented national metropolitan centres of the industrial age. It was only during the 1980s that world cities began to be seen in a different light. Based on historical work from the annaLes schooL, theoretical insights derived from worLD systems anaLysis and explor ations of the new internationaL Division of Labour (nidl) (Frobel, Heinrichs and Kreye, 1980), a new generation of urban theorists began to think of global cities as articulators of international and global economies. Accordingly, Michael Timberlake (1985, p. 3) explained that ?processes such as urban ization can be more fully understood by begin ning to examine the many ways in which they articulate with the broader currents of the world economy that penetrate spatial barriers, transcend limited time boundaries and influ ence social relations at many different levels?. Work on historical tendencies of global urbaN ization had laid the groundwork for under standing city systems as global and subject to long term and macro geographical shifts in the capitalist accumulation process. Writing in this tradition, Christopher Chase Dunn examined the relationships between the expanding boundaries of the world system and the system of cities since aD 800 (Chase Dunn, 1985). In a related fashion, some global city researchers have pointed to the complex colonial and post colonial histories as well as the long trajectories of world city formation. Economic specialization has long been known to be the basis of world market oriented ur banization, which propelled financial nodes such as Amsterdam, London or New York or industrial centres such as Leiden, Manchester, and Houston into the rank of leading world cities in subsequent historical periods (Nestor and Rodriguez, 1986). Defying any tendency to see global cities as a product of recent shifts in the world economy, Janet Abu Lughod, for example, has argued that New York City has been a global city from its very inception as Dutch, and later English colonial outpost, and certainly as an industrial and financial powerhouse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Abu Lughod, 1999). Similarly, Anthony King (1990) has presented the global city formation of London as a complex process of the city?s history as a colonial centre. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Still, the case can be, and has been, made to see global cities in their current form as a prod uct of today?s period of gLobaLization. Bren ner and Keil have suggested that one could see the emergence of a New International Division of Labour and the crisis of Atlantic forDism in the 1970s and 1980s as the starting points for this round of world city formation (Brenner and Keil, 2006, pp. 8 10). At the outset of this line of reasoning was the publication of John Friedmann and Goetz Wolff?s seminal article in 1982 under the title ?World City For mation: An Agenda for Research and Action?. In this influential piece, which arguably laid the foundation for an entire industry of global cities research, Friedmann and Wolff pointed to a network of global cities that spanned the globe as the skeleton of the global econ omy. They suggested that ?[t]he world city ??approach'' is, in the first instance, a method ology, a point of departure, an initial hypoth esis. It is a way of asking questions and of bringing footloose facts into relation' (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982, p. 320). Observ ing the emerging globalized world economy with its central actors, the transnationaL cor porations, Friedmann and Wolff put forth the hypothesis that there would be a hierarchical system of urban regions, in which this world economic system would find its most typical socio spatial expression. They assumed that ?a small number of massive urban regions that we shall call world cities' would be at the apex of this hierarchy (Friedmann and Wolff, 1982). They present the world cities as a flexible and ever changing group of command centres of the world economy. The extent and nature of their integration into that economy can only be determined through empirical research in each city. The rapid changes that these urban regions are going through can specifically be studied in the areas of economic, social and physical restructuring. Political conflict at various scaLes of the formation of the world city can be expected and is itself productive of the world city. In particular, the gulf between the globalized ?citadel' of the elite and the ?ghetto? of the popular classes will continue to widen and create tension in the political landscape of the global city. In 1986, John Friedmann added a more precise taxonomy of global city development, as he presented seven interrelated theses that added up the ?world city hypothesis': (NEW PARAGRAPH) The form and extent of a city's integra tion with the world economy, and the functions assigned to the city in the new spatial division of labour, will be de cisive for any structural changes occur ring within it. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Key cities throughout the world are used by gLobaL capital as ?basing points' in the spatial organization and articula tion of production and markets. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The global control functions of world cit ies are reflected in the structure and dy namics of their production sectors and employment. (NEW PARAGRAPH) World cities are major sites for the con centration and accumuLation of inter national capital. (NEW PARAGRAPH) World cities are points of destination for large numbers of both domestic and/or international migrants (see migration). (NEW PARAGRAPH) World city formation brings into focus the major contradictions of industrial capit aLism among them spatial and cLass polarization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) World city growth generates social costs at rates that tend to exceed the fiscal capacity of the state. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Friedmann also impacted the way in which from now on world cities would be viewed by proposing a powerful image of networked interconnectedness showing the articulation of primary and secondary world cities in the core and the semi periphery. The tremendous impact of the ?world city hypothesis' was sub ject to an international conference in 1993, from which the first multidisciplinary collec tion of global city essays was drawn (Knox and Taylor, 1995). In a review of the empirical and theoretical work done since his methodo logical intervention from 1982, Friedmann detected a lively paradigm that had grown from the original propositions (1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the meantime, Saskia Sassen had published The global city: New York, London, Tokyo (2001 [1991]), which made her instantly the most prominent scholar in the rapidly expanding field. In this and subsequent publi cations, Sassen drew attention to the global city as a production site of the kind of internation ally oriented business services that pushed for dominance in the global economy. These pro ducer services (finances, law, marketing, ad vertising etc.) relied on regional production complexes, which remained tangible and led to more metropolitanization and urbanization despite the increased availability of networked electronic means of communication, which suggested the growing independence from fixed spatial arrangements. While The global city fo cused on the cities at the top of the global hie rarchy New York, London, Tokyo Sassen expanded her argument in a short but incisive book Cities in a world economy (2006 [2000]), which identified and isolated specific strategic places where the globalized economy is taking shape: export processing zones, offshore banking centres, high tech districts and global cities. Sassen insists on the interdependence of these disparate spaces as much as on the regional economy being the basis of the global city. Scott (2001, p. 4) similarly suggests that global city regions serve ?as territorial platforms for much of the post fordist econ omy that constitutes the dominant leading edge of contemporary capitalist deveLopment, and as important staging posts for the oper ations of multinational corporations?. Sassen?s work on the global city has also strongly emphasized the social and political aspects of global city formation as she has consistently asked ?whose city? the global city is: Will the constant pressure for commodified and gentri fied (see gentrification) elite space or new citizenship claims by the ?Othered? majorities of the immigrant labour forces of the typical city prevail (Sassen, 1996)? (NEW PARAGRAPH) Proponents of the world city thesis have often been criticized for not providing conclu sive data on the existence of a distinct set of global cities. The GaWC (Globalization and World Cities) research group at Loughbor ough University was set up in the late 1990s to rectify this deficit and to produce systematic empirical research on global city interconnect edness. On the basis of this research, Peter Taylor has recently provided the synthetic World city network (2004), in which he pains takingly prepares a massive pool of quantita tive data to produce the first comprehensively researched and thoroughly theorized study of the network of global cities from a large variety of methodological angles. As Taylor (2004b, p. 21) argues, ?The world city literature as a cumulative and collective enterprise begins only when the economic restructuring of the world economy makes the idea of a mosaic of separate urban systems appear anachronistic and frankly irrelevant.? (NEW PARAGRAPH) The world city literature is not without its detractors. On the one hand, a group of sea soned urban theorists have criticized the exclusiveness of the global city hypothesis, which ostensibly seems to pay too little atten tion to the ?ordinary cities? (Amin and Thrift, (NEW PARAGRAPH) that continue to be the majority of urban places. Michael Peter Smith (2001a) has denounced the structuralist bias of the world city debate and has instead proposed the notion of ?transnational urbanism?, which explicitly includes reference to the grassroots processes that constitute the global city. Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen have criti cized the apodictic assumptions of global city research, which allegedly expects similarly polarizing socio spatial effects everywhere, and have instead proposed a multidimensional and more diversified view of ?globalizing cities? of all sorts (2000, 2003). A younger group of post structuralist geographers have meanwhile critiqued the global cities literature from the point of view of globalized cuLture (Flusty, (NEW PARAGRAPH) and agency (R.G. Smith, 2003d). Writ ing from a standpoint of urbanization in the (NEW PARAGRAPH) global south, Jennifer Robinson (2002) has pointed out that the literature on world cities has a clear bias towards Western standards: ?The world city approach assumes that cities occupy similar placings with similar capacity to progress up or fall down the ranks. . . . A view of the world of cities thus emerges where millions of people and hundreds of cit ies are dropped off the map of much research in urban studies, to service one particular and very restricted view of significance or (ir)relevance to certain sections of the global economy? (Robinson, 2002). Despite these critiques, global city research is alive and well, and continues to produce a rich output of empirical work and theoretical insights. The breadth of the work produced under this banner has recently been published in a reader (Brenner and Keil, 2006). rk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Brenner and Keil (2006); Friedmann (2002); Sassen (1999, 2002). The GaWC (Globalization and World Cities) website (http:www.lboro.ac. uk/gawc/) presents a wide variety of bibliograph ies, research bulletins, project descriptions, data sets and web links related to research on global and world cities. (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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