The Dictionary of Human Geography (89 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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hazard
An event or phenomenon that does harm to human lives. Today, most researchers view hazards as the joint product of risk (the potentiality or probability of harmful events) and vulnerability (the degree to which risk affected populations are likely to suffer from the event occurring) (Mitchell, 2003b, p. 17). The field of hazard research opened up in (NEW PARAGRAPH) response to so called ?natural disasters? the suffering visited upon human populations by such extreme geophysical phenomena as floods, earthquakes and hurricanes (see also enviroNmeNtaL hazard). These events re main core concerns. The prominence of physical forces as causes or triggers of human suffering points to the need for input from both the human and natural sciences, which would seem to present special opportunities for the discipline of geography, with its constitutive concern with both social and physical processes. However, the various twists and turns in the development of hazard research thus far should caution against any sense that the field offers a straightforward or self evident bridge between the study of the social and the natural, within geography or more gen erally. This is all the more so considering that the study of hazards increasingly con cerns itself with more obviously human induced harms, such as technological acci dents, war, terrorism and social vioLeNce. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Within huMAn geography, the crystallizing of a concern with hazards is usually traced to the mid twentieth century work on floods in the USA by Gilbert White. In what became known as the human ecology tradition, White and his collaborators sought to provide an alternative to the eNviroNMeNtal deter MiNisM of the late nineteenth and early twen tieth centuries, by exploring the range of ways in which individuals or coMMuNities could construe and respond to hazards in their en vironment. However, later critics found the human ecology approach overly managerialist or technocratic too concerned with adjust ment or adaptatioN of human populations to hazards, and not concerned enough with the social processes that rendered people vulnerable to hazards (Pelling, 2001; Mustafa, (NEW PARAGRAPH) 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The late 1970s and 1980s saw the rise of a perspective on hazards that viewed vulnerabil ity as having at least as much to do with the conditions of everyday social life as with the specific physical events on which the human ecologists focused. This turn was signalled by the work of Amartya Sen (1981) and Kenneth Hewitt (1983), and further developed by input from the tradition of political ecoNoMy. Ad dressing issues at both local and global scaLes, the political economic perspective draws at tention to the ways in which socio economic marginalization and powerlessness leaves some people living and working in conditions of vulnerability to hazard that the more privil eged sectors of society are able to avoid. As Emel and Peet sum up: ?the geography of social relations thus determines the occur rence and extent of natural disasters? (1989, p. 68). Researchers and activists have also sought to reveal how dominant discourses serve to frame hazard as a physical problem amenable to technocratic or managerial solu tions, rather than one that calls for changes in the social structure. (NEW PARAGRAPH) By reconstituting hazard as a facet of every day existence rather than as the exception to normality, the political economic perspective has helped resituate hazard research in the broader stream of critical social theory (see Blaikie, Cannon, Davis and Wisner, 1994; Emel and Peet, 1989). Its ?denaturalizing? of natural disasters has facilitated the extension of interest in hazard beyond events with a geophysical or biological trigger, to encompass technological accidents and other human induced threats. Among other things, this paves the way for a convergence of hazard research with environmentalist discourses and theories of risk society. The growing integration of the study of natural disasters with the study of environmental problems manifests itself in a shared concern with sus taiNabiLity, including the processes by which different social groups struggle for sustainable livelihoods and places of habitation (see eNviroNMeNtaLisM; sociaL justice). Pursuing these leads, researchers of the political economic camp tend to encourage a participa tory approach to hazard mitigation, based on the recognition that successfully diminishing vulnerability and increasing resilience in the face of a volatile world requires input from the bottom up (Mustafa, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) However, care must be taken so that em phasis on the sociaL coNstructioN of hazard does not overshadow the significance of those aspects of the physical world or ?cosmos? that cannot be reduced to the measure of the human. As James Mitchell reminds us, ?nat ural hazards . . . represent an ??other?? that can be modified by humans but is not ultimately reducible to a human construction in either the material sense or the mental one? (1999, p. 2). Moreover, the downplaying of the ex ceptionality of the hazard, whatever its trigger may be, can also detract attention from the very things that are most disturbing and pro vocative about those events that impact ?disas trously? on human life. As the philosopher Maurice Blanchot pointed out, the literal meaning of the term ?disaster? is the loss of one?s star (1995, p. 2). The disaster causes us to lose our bearings, it disturbs and destabilizes, he argued, precisely because it exceeds our experience or comprehension of the world. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Viewed in this way, accounting for the dis astrous dimensions of hazards calls for some thing more than simply the extension of our rational understanding of causes and conse quences. It invites us to contemplate the limits of our knowledge and how we might respond intellectually, politically and ethically, to such limits. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 prompted Judith Butler to reconsider the precariousness of human life, and to muse on ?the emergence and vanishing of the human at the limits of what we can know? (2004, p. 151). For her, such a disaster impels us to reassess the way we address others who have suffered, and to think deeply about the role of loss and mourning in modern life (see ethics). This is not to make light of the achievements of apprehending hazard as socially constructed, but it is a reminder to think also about the capacity of hazards to shape and define our human condition, and to raise questions about the limits of knowing, writing about and ordering the volatile worlds that we inhabit. nhc (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Blaikie, Cannon, Davis and Wisner (1994); Emel and Peet (1989); Mustafa (2005); Pelling (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
health and health care
?The concept of ??health?? is open to differing interpretations? (Curtis, 2004, p. 2). It can mean ?the presence or absence of diagnosed diseases?, but also many different dimensions potentially contrib uting to the corporeal, emotional and social well being of people in their everyday lives. Gesler and Kearns (2002, pp. 30 2) discuss ?cultures of health?, identifying the explana tory models deployed by different people (e.g. experts contra lay people) and drawing inspiration from ?ethnomedicine? as the study of how such models (and their deeper cultural, religious, cosmological moorings) vary from place to place. Additionally, assumptions about health clearly vary within places according to cLass, ethnicity, gender and other markers of social difference (Lewis, Dyck and McLafferty, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Acknowledging such variability in health beliefs suggests an approach to a geography of health that squares with recent shifts in the sub discipline of medicaL geography. In deed, some argue that medical geography should be widened to include not just health defined through the lenses of Western bio medicine, casting health in the negative sense of not being physically or mentally ?ill?, but rather in the broader sense indicated above, of health as well being. This orientation de mands a holistic focus on the great variability of the human condition, commonly at the scaLe of populations within territories, but in principle also at that of individual people interacting with quite specific sites. One up shot is then the enlarging of what is meant by risk, with geographers addressing the many risks to health that people face from infectious illnesses but also from the likes of eNviron mentaL hazards, interpersonal vioLence and occupational stress, all of which constitute multiple ?spaces of risk? figuring in domains of human decision making from the state to the household (Curtis, 2004, pp. 5 9). (NEW PARAGRAPH) A link exists here to a long standing geo graphical concern for human well being, sometimes configured as quality of life, in which a political commitment to uncovering spatial injustice is never far below the surface. This concern awakened in the 1970s with the contribution of weLfare geography, and has continued into more recent work on the socio spatial constitution of ?health inequalities?. A key development has been Gesler?s (1992) notion of ?therapeutic Landscapes?, highlight ing how places in all of their complexity can foster people?s senses of healthful well being, and Curtis (2004, ch. 2) mobilizes this notion when fashioning new perspectives on the meeting grounds of ?health and inequality?. Another link exists to the various currents now coalescing under the heading of emo tionaL geographies, wherein varying human mind body assembLages (see also Butler and Parr, 1999) are examined for how they are constituted, enacted, experienced, re presented and perhaps politicized in relation to diverse spaces, pLaces, environments and landscapes. Work in this vein asks about what might com prise places conducive to, or alternatively destructive of, ?emotional health?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) These new trajectories complicate what is meant by health care, since such care can no longer be envisaged solely as providing medical facilities of varying kinds (hospitals, clinics, GP surgeries or even conventional medical outreach and educational services). Geographers have long studied these medical facilities (see medicaL geography), but they have now begun to consider less overtly med icalized versions of care (Parr, 2003) elder, hospice and terminal care (Brown, 2003); complementary and alternative medicines (Doel and Segrott, 2004); psychotherapy and counselling (Bondi with Fewell, 2003) alongside diverse retreats and centres offering massage, yoga, nature therapies and many other healing techniques. Attention is prompted to the intimacy of embodied en counters performed through these sites of non mainstream health care (Conradson, 2003b, 2005b), but another option is to regard the latter as servicing the new ?health con sumer? who can pick and mix from whatever kinds of health care, medical or otherwise, are available to them locally (or perhaps further afield for the ?health tourist?). Gesler and Kearns (2002, ch. 8) discuss this issue of?con sumption, place and health?, and a further direction might follow Michel Foucault?s claims about ?technologies of the self? (Martin, Gutman and Hutton, 1988) alighting on issues of personal, especially sexual, health when considering myriad instances of people past and present working on their own health. The French Revolution?s dream of complete ?dehospitalization? (Philo, 2000b) and everyone becoming ?their own physician? has arguably now come to pass partly fuelled by govern ments cajoling populations into a ?care of the self?, partly by capitalism?s courting of health consumers and the emerging geographies of health care, exploding beyond the hospital gates, signal a challenging new frontier for crit ical research. (See also biopolitics.) cpp (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Curtis (2004); Gesler (1992); Gesler and Kearns (NEW PARAGRAPH) (2002). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
heartland
Many core regions are referred to as heartlands. For example, the Midwest of the USA is often termed ?the Heartland?, with the implication that it is not only central in a geographical sense but also foundational in a normative sense, the place where the core American values that come from the fRONTlER process are to be found (cf. homeland). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The most important use of the term, how ever, was by British geographer Halford Mack inder (1861 1947). Mackinder argued against the late nineteenth century belief that sea power was the basis for global supremacy. Mackinder (1904) suggested that the re sources of a secure land power could now be moved around more easily with the develop ment of transcontinental railways. Further, he proposed that the largest basket of resources of what he termed the ?World Island? (europe, asia, AfRlCA) lay in Eastern Europe and west ern Russia. The core of this region was inaccessible by ocean going navies. Gunboat diplomacy was ineffective against it. Were Russia, Germany or an alliance of the two to prevail in this region, they could mobilize re sources that would make them invincible rulers of the World Island and almost certainly ultimate rulers of a World empire. Thus, Mackinder?s advice to the leaders drawing up a political map of Europe after the First World War was: ?Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland: Who rules the Heartland com mands the World Island: Who commands the World Island commands the World? (1919, p. 194). From this followed two main strategic priorities: first, to separate the Soviet Union and Germany with a viable network of buffer states and, second, to prevent the Soviet Union acquiring the string of warm water ports that would enable it to extend its land power on to the ocean ways of the world. The first of these was close to the state building that was attempted from the ruins of the em pires of Eastern Europe after the First World War. The second of these was close to the policies of Soviet containment that animated the cold war after the Second World War. (NEW PARAGRAPH) There have been many evaluations of Mack inder?s ideas. A favourable review that empha sizes Mackinder?s prescience is provided by Parker (1982), while more critical reviews of the central concepts of race, space and history used in Mackinder?s geopolitics are provided by Agnew (2003a) and Kearns (2006a; see also Kearns, 2009). Advocates of the heartland thesis believe that it expresses more or less time less relations between resources, space and mili tary strategy. Critics argue: that in modern war, land and sea power have ceased to be distinct modalities; that far from being impregnable, the heartland has actually been occupied by hostile forces more than once in recent history (by the French under Napoleon, and the Germans under Hitler); that forceful relations between states do not exhaust the forms of interna tional relations and that ignoring peaceful co operation and multilateral institutions in fact makes the resort to force more likely by presenting it as inevitable; and, finally, that as technology changes, new resources will be val ued and the geography of the competition for resources will shift. Despite these criticisms, our present hydrocarbon economy seems destined to focus attention for some time to come on parts of Mackinder?s heartland, with the Caspian Basin still vital in the resource wars between the world?s Great Powers. (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is clear, then, that Mackinder?s heartland thesis has been very heavily cited and must (NEW PARAGRAPH) rank as one of the most significant geograph ical theories of the twentieth century. It has been claimed as central by various nationalists and imperialists, from Nazi Germany to mod ern Russia and the United States. gk (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Kearns (1993); Mackinder (1919). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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