The Dictionary of Human Geography (92 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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wider ?historicization? of human geography that has partially comprom ised historical geography?s status as a distinct ive sub discipline (Driver, 1988). This has generated some unease about sub disciplinary identity, notably in the debate about the legit imacy of the terms ?historical geography? and ?geographical history? (Baker, 2007). But for all its thematic diversity, twenty first century historical geography has become increasingly focused on the (relatively) recent past, a trend partly determined by the need for reliable, spatially extensive data, but also influenced by the iNstruMeNtaList assumption that his torical research should have immediate rele vance to contemporary issues (Jones, 2004b). That said, its continued vigour is demon strated in the pages of the Journal of Historical Geography and in the steady stream of innova tive work in historical geography that also ap pears in the pages of mainstream journals inside and, crucially, outside geography. Mh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Baker (2003); Butlin (1993); Harris (1991); Morrissey, Whelan and Yeoh (2008). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
historical materialism
The materialist con ception of history, formulated by Karl Marx (1818 83) with Friedrich Engels (1820 95), and the ?guiding thread? of their joint work (see also MarxisM). Historical materialism is a theory of history incorporating a series of bold theses about the dynamics of historical change, most succinctly summarized in the 1859 ?Preface? to ?A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Social development is driven by progress in meeting social needs through the development of productive forces (means of production and labour power). In the process of production, men and women necessarily enter into certain social relations ofproduction. These include both work relations (technical relations and forms of co operation) and forms of ownership and control of the means of production, which are at the root of class formation. The totality of the relations of production constitutes the eco nomic structure of society, ??the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstruc ture and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness?. The economic base and superstructure together constitute the mode of production of a society. (See also base aNd superstructure.) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Each Mode of productioN is subject to internal tensions and contradictions (see diaLectic). Thus, at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the dominant relations of production, which reflect en trenched forms of property ownership and cLass relations. The relations of production increasingly become fetters on the further de velopment of the productive forces. ?Then be gins an era of social revolution?, transforming the economic structure, and with it the whole immense superstructure, its institutions and forms of consciousness. In illustrating this the ory of contradiction and change, Marx refers variously to the ancient, Asiatic, feudal and capitalist modes of production. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The theory outlined in the 1859 Preface appears disarmingly simple, and has tended to be downplayed by Marxists who find it too close to a form of economic, or even techno logical, determinism. Nevertheless, Cohen (1978) has shown how it can be given a rigor ous and sophisticated modern defence if one is prepared to accept the validity of functionalist forms of explanation (see fUNCTlONALlSM). Wright, Levine and Sober (1992) have also shown how the basic argument for economic primacy can be disaggregated into at least six linked sub theses, not all of which are asserted with equal force in Marx?s many writings, and some of which are more defensible than others. It is thus possible to extract both ?strong? and ?weak? versions of historical materialism from Marx?s writings, with the latter placing more emphasis on the role of class conflict in social change, the role of the superstructure in shaping and reacting back on the economic base, and the role of contin gent factors in opening up different historical trajectories. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Adding a spatial dimension to historical ma terialism brings further complexities. Giddens, for example, attempted to purge historical materialism of any evolutionary, functionalist, or reductionist tendencies, and his structura tion theory incorporated spatial concepts such as ?time space edges? and time space distanciation into what he described as a weaker ?anti evolutionary, episodic model of social change? (Giddens, 1981). However, the work of geographer David Harvey repre sents the most sustained and systematic attempt to incorporate space into a more gen eral ?historical geographical materialism? (see, centrally, Harvey, 1999 [1982]; also Castree and Gregory, 2006), and his study of nine teenth century Paris demonstrates what can be achieved if such a framework is used subtly and flexibly as a guiding thread for research (Harvey, 2003a). kb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bassett (2005); Shaw (1978). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
historicism
Historicism has two meanings: (NEW PARAGRAPH) intellectual traditions that assume human history to have an inner logic, overall design or direction (a ?telos?); and (ii) critical traditions that insist on the importance of specific historical contexts to the interpretation of cultural texts and practices. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Historicism in the first sense invokes trans historical forces to structure its explanations of human ?progress? (most visibly in the move ment of the world spirit, or Geist, in G.W.F. Hegel?s philosophical history). The appeal of teleology of ?unfolding? models of social change is now much diminished, and few scholars would see human history as predict able and susceptible to the formulation of universal scientific laws. When Karl Popper famously railed against the ?poverty of histori cism? in this sense, he had a reading of Marxism as economic determinism in his sights, but subsequent versions of historical materialism have offered a much more open ended view of human history and the spaces for political action (Popper, 1960 [1945]). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The second sense of historicism is much more important to contemporary social en quiry. Historical context and historical specifi city are articles of faith in historical geography, and while they were undermined by spatial science in the 1960s and 1970s, the emergence of a cultural historical geography with a critical edge brought a closer, if largely tacit, engagement with a so called ?New Histori cism? an approach to literary and cultural stud ies that originated in the USA in the 1980s (Gallagher and Greenblatt, 2001). Among the sources on which it draws, three are particularly important for human geography: (NEW PARAGRAPH) the thick description of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, which underwrites the importance of a close reading of minor events in such a way that they reveal the larger situations of which they are a part and to which they can be made to speak; (NEW PARAGRAPH) the genealogy of philosopher historian Michel Foucault, which resists ?power?s descriptions of itself? by looking to the margins and the peripheries of situations; and (NEW PARAGRAPH) the cultural materialism of cultural critic Raymond William, which empha sizes the materiality of cultural formations and their contradictory constitution. (NEW PARAGRAPH) New Historicism has influenced studies of co lonial discourse in post colonialism and has much in common with work in cultural geography and the ?contextual approach? to the history of geography (see geography, history Of). It should be noted that when Soja (1989, 1996b) objects to ?historicism?, he has in mind an over valuation of historical explanation and a marginalization of a ?spatial imagination?; but there are many practitioners of New Historicism who have no problem in attending to both the historicity and the spatiaLity of their objects of enquiry. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hamilton (1996). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
history of geography
See geography, history of (NEW PARAGRAPH)
holocaust
Most generally, the systematic deaths of large numbers of people, but most specifically the campaign of genocide pursued by Hitler?s Third Reich during the Second World War (1939 45) and identified by its ini tial capital: the Holocaust. Both usages depend on political and cultural processes of distinction and exclusion (see racism) and a studied indif ference to the suffering of those construed as radically ?Other? (see bare Life). Thus Thornton (1990) and Stannard (1992) connect European coLoniaLism to the mass destruction of indigenous societies in the americas, Davis (NEW PARAGRAPH) identifies a series of late nineteenth century famines across the global South as a ?cultural genocide? brought about by the logics of imperial power and free trade, and all histor ians of the Nazi genocide acknowledge its roots in a racial fantasy of ?Aryan? supremacy and a profound anti Semitism (see also fascism). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The Nazis did not confine their predations to Jews. They also systematically murdered millions of non Jewish Soviet and Polish cit izens, hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), mentally and physically dis abled people, gay men, religious dissidents and political opponents, including trades unionists, communists and socialists; the first concentration camp that the Nazis established at Dachau in 1933 was for political prisoners. But the (capitalized) Holocaust is increasingly and usually reserved for their concerted mur der of approximately 6 million European Jews who died through malnutrition, medical ex perimentation and slave labour in concentra tion camps, who were shot or gassed by mobile killing units, or who were killed in gas cham bers. This particular usage is problematic, however: in its original Greek form, ?holo caust? denoted sacrifice by fire, and while these spiritual connotations may resonate with the role Christianity played in legitimiz ing the deaths visited on indigenous peoples by European colonialism, their inappropriate ness to describe the mass murder of European Jews has prompted many scholars to prefer the (NEW PARAGRAPH) Hebrew Shoah (?catastrophe?) (though this in turn may evoke the biblical sense of retribu tion found in the book of Isaiah). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Whichever term is preferred, Cole and Smith (1995, p. 30) identified the Nazi Holocaust as ?the most remarkable blank spot in geographical research?. It is strange that it should have attracted so little analytical attention, even by Israeli historical geogra phers, not merely because the Holocaust ?had? a geography it was distributed over space and varied from place to place (Gilbert, 2009) but more fundamentally because geography as both discipline and knowledge was central to the project (Charlesworth, 1992): (NEW PARAGRAPH) Particular conceptions of space and spacing were indispensable to the concep tion of the Nazi Holocaust. Clark, Doel andMcDonough (1996) identify two cru cial spatial templates. The first was devel oped through a racist version of GEopolitiK that asserted the right to an expanded LEbENSRauM for the master race, but such a project for ?mastery of concrete, de populated, physical space? was inseparable from a second spacing, Entfernung: ?an effective removal of the Jews from the life world of the German race? (Bauman, 1991, p. 120). To these three writers, Bauman?s cardinal contri bution was ?his recognition of the ruptur ing of the imaginary social space of the Reich by the diasporic space of the Jews?. The non national space of the diaspora was ?a wholly Other conception of social space?, they argue, a fundamental contra diction to the project of National Socialism and its territorial inscription of the ?Aryan? Same: in short, ?a void? (Clarke, Doel and McDonough, 1996, pp. 474 5; see also Doel and Clarke, 1998). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The realization of Lebensraum and Entfernung entailed at once a de territorialization of physical space and its re territorialization as social space. This involved the conjoint production of a series of physical and social spaces (a) from which Jews were excluded, (b) within which they were gathered and sequestered, and (c) through which they were subsequently transported to the camps. These spatial strategies which might be thought of as ?a series of concen tric circles that, like waves, incessantly wash up against a central non place? (Agamben, 1999, pp. 51 2) produced vast genocidal archipelago (figure 1, page 339) and can in some measure be mapped on to Hilberg?s (2003 [1961]) four stage model of the Holocaust: deprivation; ex pulsion; segregation; annihilation. Fried lander (1997, 2007) reworked these stages as follows (the examples given are illustra tive, not exhaustive): (NEW PARAGRAPH) Persecution (1933 9): the rights of Ger man Jews were increasingly restricted, and in 1935 they were stripped of their citizenship; they were also subject to physical attacks and, from March 1938, many were imprisoned in con centration camps at Dachau, Sachsen hausen and Buchenwald. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Terror (autumn 1939 to summer 1941): Polish Jews were confined to ghet toes and subjected to extraordinary deprivation, and as the Reich expanded, the number of concentra tion camps multiplied and the use of forced labour intensified. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Mass murder (summer 1941 to summer 1942): from October 1941, German Jews were deported to the occupied eastern territories; 33,700 Kiev Jews were shot in the Babi Yar ravine outside the city, and around 27,000 Jews were taken from the Riga ghetto and shot. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Shoah (summer 1942 to spring 1945): in 1942, six concentration camps in occupied Poland Auschwitz/Birke nau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka were desig nated as extermination camps, dedi cated to the so called ?Final Solution? of the ?Jewish Question?, and gas chambers were used for mass killing: Jews throughout occupied Europe were arrested, deported to transit camps, and then sent to the extermin ation camps. (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is crucial to understand that these phases, and their correlative spaces, cannot be contained by a narrative of German policies and actions: as Fried lander (2007, p. xv) insists, ?at each step in occupied Europe the execution of German measures depended on the sub missiveness of political authorities, the assistance of local police forces or other auxiliaries, and the passivity or support of the population and mainly of the political and spiritual elites?. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The planning and execution of the Holo caust thus relied on extensive geograph ical knowledge. The Reich Foundation for Geographical Studies was instrumen tal in the ethnic profiling and mapping of occupied territories, particularly in east ern Europe, while Walter Christaller, the architect of ceNtraL pLace theory, was closely involved in developing the Generalplan Ost for the east of Poland. This vast region was under direct SS ad ministration and was to be a laboratory for a new territorial order (figure 2, page 340): Germans were to ?resettle? the area, Poles reduced to slave labour, and Jews deported to the ghetto in Lodz and ultimately to the death camps (Rossler, 1989, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) As the previous citations indicate, in recent years several geographers have concerned themselves with philosophical and historio graphical issues surrounding the Nazi Holocaust, but there have also been substan tive studies of the enforced production of Jew ish ghettoes (Cole and Smith, 1995; Cole, (NEW PARAGRAPH) and of the role of LaNdscape in the work of MeMory and memorialization (Char lesworth, 1994, 2004). All of these enquiries raise profound questions about represeNta tioN and the capacity of language to render the experience of such extreme trauma (Fried lander, 1992; Agamben, 1999; LaCapra, 2000; Waxman, 2006). These have engaged the attention of geographers too, but the an alysis of the Holocaust is necessarily both an interdisciplinary and a comparative project, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum publishes a journal dedicated to these issues: Holocaust and Genocide Studies. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The Nazi genocide continues to cast long shadows over the present. It has prompted polit ico intellectual campaigns against both those who deny it and those who exploit it: to fight ?for the integrity of the historical record?, as Fin kelstein (2000, p. 8) puts it. The Holocaust ma terially affects political debates, policies and practices in Germany, Israel and the MiddLe east. And it still troubles continental European philosophy and social theory, not least in their understandings of ModerNity and the very possibility of critical enquiry. Indeed, Agam ben (1998, 1999) sees the Nazi concentration camp as paradigmatic of political modernity: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Auschwitz is precisely the place in which the state of exception coincides perfectly with the rule and the extreme situation becomes the very paradigm of daily life . . . As long as the state of exception and the normal situation are kept separate in space and time, as is usually the case, both remain opaque, though they secretly institute each other. But as soon as they show their complicity, as happens more and more often today, they illuminate each other ... (Agamben, 1999, pp. 49 50) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Given the spatial foundations of this state of exception, the Nazi Holocaust should surely trouble geography too. dg (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Clare, Doel and McDonough (1996); Friedlan der (2007). See also the Israeli Holocaust Museum at http://www.yadvashem.org.il and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum at http://www.ushmm.org. (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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