The Dictionary of Human Geography (95 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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human ecology
This term is in some ways as suggestive as it is substantive, at least from the standpoint of contemporary sensibilities in the geographical tradition of studying human environment relations. Specifically, the term carries an almost seductive appeal in promis ing transcendence of the pervasive nature society dualisms that are widely noted and of considerable contemporary preoccupation in explorations of the geographies of socio natures, techno natures and the like (see, e.g., Haraway, 1997; Swyngedouw, 1999). And in deed, to the extent that the term is actually invoked by contemporary geographers, it is typically in the context of research on the human origins and implications of environ mental change, and on the complex interrela tions between societies and the biophysical resources and systems on which these societies rely. For example, in their discussion of factors shaping social vulnerability to global climate change, Bohle, Downing and Watts (1994) in voke ?human ecology? to refer to highly specific relations between society and nature, but with emphasis on the ways in which ?... social or ganizations and [social] reproduction (encom passing, for example, population growth) have direct implications for sustainability and how the environment is experienced in terms of risk and threats ...? (p. 40). Notably, they reject the mere application of ecological con cepts and methods to the study ofhuman popu lations. Similarly, Bassett (1988) refers to human ecology [specifically human ecologists] in much the same way; that is, a concern with the articulations between human populations and key biophysical resources (somewhat con sistent with the term ?political ecology?) . (NEW PARAGRAPH) References to ?human ecology? should, how ever, be accompanied by knowledge of its polyvalence, not least as a product of the term?s history of usage by geographers and non geographers. This history can be traced at least to the early twentieth century, when human ecology was used to describe the object of geographical enquiry as well as in reference to the adaptation of concepts from the science of ecoLogy for sociological analysis. Thus, in his 1922 presidential address to the Associ ation of American Geographers, Harlan H. Barrows defined geography simply as ?the sci ence of human ecology?, a scieNce concerned with ? . . . the relationships existing between natural environments and the distribution and activities of man [sic]? (Barrows, 1923, p. 3). And yet at virtually the same time, the chicago schooL of Sociology was placing its influential stamp on human ecology, defined by Robert E. Park (1936, p. 1) as ?... an attempt to apply to the interrelations of human beings a type of analysis previously applied to the interrelations of plants and aNi mals?. The Chicago School, of course, fea tured not only Park?s work on the influence of racial difference in shaping the experience of newcomers and immigrants to the city of Chicago, but also Ernest Burgess and his de velopment of a zoNaL ModeL (Park, Burgess and McKenzie, 1925). (NEW PARAGRAPH) What is perhaps critical to note here (par ticularly in light of the profound influence of that the Chicago School would have on the emergence of urbaN geography) is that ?en vironment? for the likes of Park and Burgess primarily meant the built physical as well as the more general social and cultural environ ment of the city, including spatial configur ations. This is somewhat at odds with contemporary connotations of human ecol ogy, which tend to emphasize relations be tween human and non human nature (cf. cuLturaL ecoLogy; poLiticaL ecoLogy). And while the Chicago School?s influence on urban geography is recognized (Harvey, 1973), Park understood at the time that his version of human ecology overlapped with geography. Yet, he attempted to relegate geog raphy to a particularistic, descriptive enter prise, leaving to sociologists the development of a more NoMothetic human ecology com plete with generalizations and formal theory (Entrikin, 1980). (NEW PARAGRAPH) All of this seemingly arcane intellectual his tory matters, because contemporary use of the term ?human ecology? can carry a fuzzy impre cision. Moreover, the term has ?baggage?, as sociated as it is with mechanistic, positivistic conceptions of social and cultural relation ships to the environment (however conceived) based on organicist Metaphors of social forma tions borrowed from ecology. These are cri tiques (warranted or otherwise) long directed at the Chicago School(s) (for an early example of this critique, see, e.g., Gettys, 1940). The term is still somewhat widely invoked (particularly in environmental sociology) as a synthetic, holistic approach to understanding the interrelationships of different sociaL for MatioNs and their biophysical environments, including the specific and often highly com plex and interactive relations governing the mobilization of key material and eNergy resources on the one hand, and cultural (material and symbolic), institutional and technological trajectories of social develop ment on the other. Considerable contempor ary impetus is given to this line of work by attempts to understand the origins and impli cations of modern anthropogenic environmen tal problems by looking at how past societies (or non industrial, non Western ones) have precipitated, managed, responded to and been affected by environmental changes (Dia mond, 1999; Harper, 2004). Yet fears of mechanistic, if not deterministic, renderings of the role of physical geographies in shaping social outcomes dog this line of scholarship, particularly when it comes time to formulate causal inferences and historical generalizations (Mazlish, 1999). (NEW PARAGRAPH) It also bears noting that human ecology is recognized as something of a contemporary field of holistic scholarly enquiry (complete with eponymous journal and a handful of aca demic departments). In this context, it is de fined by Lawrence (2003, p. 31) as no less than ?... the study of the dynamic interrelation ships between human populations and the phys ical, biotic, cultural, and social characteristics of their environment and the biosphere? (emphasis added). All this points to the need for geograph ers and others to consider carefully the polyva lence of this term, and to invoke it reflexively, and with some degree of caution. sp (NEW PARAGRAPH)
human genome
The complete set of genes that make up the DNA of a human being. It is one of a number of species genomes that consti tute a form of bio information in which bio logical material is translated from corporeal formats, such as an organic bank, to informa tional formats, such as a database. Creating genomes relies on the DNA sequencing tech nologies developed in the life sciences since the 1970s that make it possible to extract DNA from whole organisms and to elucidate and an notate its structure in the form of coded infor mation. This is a laborious process, involving various methods for separating out nucleotides (the building blocks for the polymer molecules (NEW PARAGRAPH) DNA and RNA, which act as the repositories of genetic information in the cell), usually by ren dering them visible as a pattern of bands in an acrylamide gel that can then be ?read? manually (with the naked eye) or scanned photographic ally, to translate the banding sequence into a digital code made up of four genetic digits A, C, G, T which can be stored in large computer databases such as the Human Genome Project Database. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The sequencing of the human genome was achieved almost simultaneously by a team at the University of Cambridge led by Peter Sanger, in competition with a team led by Craig Ventner in the USA in 2001. Not only did the methods of these two teams differ but so, crucially, did their research ethos. Whereas the Sanger team advocated that genomic data bases should be a public resource, the Vent ner team advocated the commercialization of such databases through the ascription of intellectual property rights. (See also genetic geographies.) sw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Parry (2004); M?charek (2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
human geography
A major field of geog raphy that is centrally concerned with the ways in which place, space and environment are both the condition and in part the conse quence of human activities. The history of geography (see geography, history of) as a systematic and ordered body of knowledge was long dominated by the physical and nat ural sciences. This did not preclude studies focusing on the variation of human activities on the surface of the Earth (on the contrary: see areal differentiation), but the modern sense of geography as a disciplined mode of intellectual enquiry emerged through those scientific formations and their constitutive interest in ?making sense of nature? (Stoddart, 1986, p. ix). The templates of the physical and natural sciences shaped the human sciences and the social sciences as a whole, but geography?s concern with the rela tions between peoples and their physical en vironments ensured that they marked human geography more than most. Those formations were not purely ?scientific?: they were also philosophical, theological and irredeemably political and social. All of them were caught up in (and constituted through) relations of power. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A separate and distinctive human geography emerged alongside physical geography soon after the admission of geography to the mod ern academy towards the end of the nine teenth century, and it gained considerable momentum in the 1920s from the reaction against enviroNmeNtaL determiNism. This ?new? human geography took two main sys tematic forms on both sides of the Atlantic: a commercial geography that laid many of the foundations for modern ecoNomic geog raphy (epitomized by the handbooks pro duced by G.G. Chisholm from 1889 through to 1928) and a political geography (domin ated by F. Ratzel, H.J. Mackinder and later I. Bowman) that was primarily concerned with the state, territory and geopolitics. Like many other disciplines of the period, both under laboured for capitaLism and empire: for the extension of European and American power abroad through Networks of commod ity circulation and military (especially naval) might (see Smith, N., 2005a). In doing so, the two sub disciplines also underwrote what eventually came to be recognized as cuLturaL geography, which at that time was charged with inculcating a sense of national ideNtity and NatioNaLism at home, while exhibiting the non white world in a series of overseas tableaux. (NEW PARAGRAPH) These systematic geographies intersected in several ways, most visibly in studies of re gioNaL geography, and the political, eco nomic and cultural interests that animated them were articulated with a special force in a distinctive ?tropical geography? (cf. tropi camr). Regional geographies all treated the physical environment as a foundation for human activity, but none of the systematic geographies was divorced from the study of Nature either. Much of commercial geog raphy focused on resource inventories; secur ing access to those same resources was a strategic concern of political geography; and cultural geography emphasized the varying re lations between peoples and environments in different parts of the world. Ratzel?s aNthro pogeography had made this a touchstone of human geography, and subsequently Paul Vidal de la Blache (in France) and Carl Ortwin Sauer (in the USA) made equally cogent cases for the incorporation of the phys ical environment. For Vidal, this was a matter of disciplinary identity, even survival. He was no narrow disciplinarian, and geography was always closely allied to history in his vision of la g?ographie humaine. But he was taken aback by Emile Durkheim?s new science of soci ology, which was laying claim to much of human geography as ?social morphoLogy?, and Vidal insisted that this would leave society ?suspended in the air?. In his contrary view, drawing on advances in the physical sciences, it was essential to conceive of ?Nature? as pro viding a portfolio of opportunities within which societies and cultures made variable selections (see possibiLisM: Andrews, 1984). Sauer worked on the marchlands between geography and history too, and the studies produced by the first berkeLey schooL are often described as ?cultural historical geog raphy?. He was also keenly interested in an thropology, however, and this led him to formulate an approach in which a collective (and quasi Durkheimian) cuLture worked on the raw materials of the so called ?natural landscape? to produce a climactic cuLturaL LaNdscape that not only evolved over time but also differed from place to place. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Human geography?s interest in Nature has continued to provide important axes of de bate. The rise of spatiAL science after the Second World War briefly threatened to erase the physicality of human life from human geography, with many of its ModeLs relying on the physical sciences for stimuli (either through physical analogies about the frictioN of distaNce or through Neo cLassicaL eco NoMics, which was rooted in statistical mech anics). Many practitioners of spatial science in human geography soon returned to a consid eration of environmental issues, however, through a behaviouraL geography that urged the importance of eNviroNMeNtaL per ceptioN and through a systems approach that dissected, or at any rate diagrammed, the intersections of nominally ?human? and ?phys ical? systeMs. At that time, urbaN geography was markedly less interested in these ques tions, and it took much longer for urban geog raphers to recognize that modern cities were not triumphant memorials to a human victory over ?Nature? and that the physico ecological vertebrae of cities were crucial objects of en quiry. But it is now widely acknowledged that studies of poLLutioN, waste and water in cit ies address more than questions of public heaLth and policy located at the crossroads of MedicaL geography and urbaN pLaNNiNg: they also intersect with concerns about eNvir oNMeNtaL justice, goverNMeNtaLity and so ciaL excLusioN that have become central to human geography more generally (see, e.g., Gandy, 2006a,c). This new agenda was ad vanced in part through a critique of spatial science that emphasized the material bases of capitaLisM as a Mode of productioN the productioN of space was thus intimately related to the productioN of Nature, most viscerally in studies of poLiticaL ecoLogy (Watts, 1983a; Peet and Watts, 2003 [1996]; Robbins, 2004) and in part through an en gagement with other forms of sociaL theory that brought the biopolitical foundations of modern life into view (see biopoLitics). The convergences between these streams of work have suggested a series of intrinsically ?hybrid geographies? (Whatmore, 2002a). (NEW PARAGRAPH) These developments reactivated and refor mulated long standing questions about the relations between human geography and physicaL geography, but it is only recently that the relations between the sub disciplines of human geography have provoked equal dis cussion. The relative importance of the sub disciplines has changed over time. Many of the core models of spatial science were the main springs for an ecoNoMic geography domin ated by LocatioN theory and driven by the search for systematic structures within a mod ern space ecoNoMy. The subsequent critique of spatial science had many sources (Gregory, 1978a), but much of its vitality derived from a poLiticaL ecoNoMy based on a close reading of Marx?s analysis of capitaLisM. This not only reshaped economic geography, where it set the space economy in motion and allowed for more incisive analyses of (for example) the crisis ridden dynamics of capital accuMuLa tioN, spatial divisioNs of Labour, industrial restructuriNg, coMModity chaiNs and the circulation of capitaL in multiple forms. It also opened the doors to a revitalized poLiticaL geography that more closely and critically engaged with the powers and practices of the state, and a sociaL geography that became centrally concerned with spatial formations of cLass and ethNicity. These two sub disciplines drew on contributions to sociaL theory that spiralled far from Marx?s original writings though a diffuse Western MarxisM remained a significant source of inspiration to both of them and these interactions issued in the rise of criticaL geopoLitics and the emer gence of vigorous feMiNist geographies that widened their horizons still further. These interdisciplinary exchanges also projected a central question for the huMaNities and the social sciences into the centre of human geog raphy. Just as there were (for example) ?two anthropologies? and ?two sociologies?, one em phasizing huMaN ageNcy and the other em phasizing systems and structures, so there were two human geographies: one an avow edly huMaNistic geography (in which ideaL isM vied with MateriaLisM) and the other much more invested in structural logics and constraints (but not reducible to a structur ausm). structuration theory proposed to replace this persistent dualism with a duality, but this promised to do much more than inte grate ?agency? and ?structure? in explications of the conduct of social life: it also made pLace and space the pivots around which agency and structure turned. This further troubled the boundaries between contemporary and his toricaL geography, already assailed by his toricaL materiaLism, because time as well as space was seen as focal to the production and reproduction of social life. In a sense, this vindicated older claims that ?all geography is historical geography? and socialized the for malism of classical diffusion models, though in terms that their original protagonists would scarcely have recognized. These developments were reinforced by the ?cuLturaL turn?, which inaugurated a ?new? cuLturaL geog raphy whose development was marked by a series of theoretical ?posts? postmodernism, post structuraLism and post coLoniaLism though here too Marxisms in various forms continued to provide baselines for many geog raphers (Soja, 1989; Gregory, 1994). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This simple sequence is necessarily a carica ture human geography is not a single project and its history cannot be reduced to a linear narrative but it does capture some of the major shifts in intellectual fashion in human geography in much of the English speaking world since the Second World War. To describe them as fashion is not misleading; the links between cuLturaL capitaL, the commodifica tion ofknowledge and academic prestige ought not to be discounted. Yet they were also more than fads. While it would be misleading to plot these changes in an ascending arc of ?progress? in human geography, they have derived from intellectual debates inside and outside the dis cipline, and they were responses to issues of substance that required public address. This is clear from the theoretical sensibility that dis tinguished postwar human geography from its predecessors. Although few would welcome a return of the grand theory that preoccupied many areas of human geography as recently as the late twentieth century, critique as a rigorous interrogation of the ways in which concepts are freighted with relations of power is now firmly established as a central moment in geograph ical enquiry (cf. GENEaLOGy). It is also clear from the success of both criticaL human geography and radicaL geography in estab lishing the crucial importance of politics along side the narrower and usually more instrumental focus on policy in appLied geog raphy, although Martin (2001b) complained that what he saw as ?faddishness? (in philoso phy and theory) has limited the practical pur chase of much of this contemporary work. (NEW PARAGRAPH) These developments have contributed to a considered blurring of the boundaries between the sub disciplines of human geography; eco nomic geography and political geography were brought into conversation through political economy, for example, and both have been markedly affected by a cultural turn (see also cuLturaL economy) that requires recog nition of the commodification of cultural forms and practices and their enrolment in economic and political figurations (cf. Harvey, 1989b). This ?blurring? has several sources. ?Theory? has itself become interdisciplinary, even post disciplinary, and the same authors and texts, motifs and themes recur across the spectrum of the humanities and social sciences, while any criticaL theory worthy of the name cannot draw back when it encounters disciplinary boundaries. More than this, however, composi tional approaches that separate ?economy?, ?polity?, ?society? and ?culture? all of them at once as real and as constructed as the discip lines that have come to be identified with them: they are all fabricated rather than found objects are confounded by geography?s constitutive interest in the contextual: in the coexistence of objects, institutions and practices in time and space (cf. Hagerstrand, 1984, pp. 374 5: see also contextuaLity). (NEW PARAGRAPH) It is thus not surprising that the interactions between human geography and the other hu manities and social sciences should have been a two way street. It is perfectly true that many of the early encounters were largely derivative. Methods and theories were borrowed from other fields and put to work on the research frontier in order to stake a series of supposedly distinctive geographical claims (and, not coin cidentally, to identify the adventurousness of the intellectual avant garde). Gradually, how ever, a return flow was established and cross disciplinary exchange increased: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Human geographers have made substan tial methodoLogicaL contributions. Among the most significant have been those to mathematical and statistical an alysis, particularly through advances in the study of spatiaL autocorreLation that address the problem of applying techniques associated with the generaL Linear modeL to spatially referenced data, and the development of geograph ical information systems that have (NEW PARAGRAPH) made it possible to display and interro gate vast, spatially distributed data ar rays; and to modes of visual analysis through critical readings of the spatial ities of art, cartography, film and photography (see visual methods). Yet these methods have been unevenly devel oped and deployed: quANTlTATlVE (NEW PARAGRAPH) methods have always been most import ant in economic geography, where they are presently undergoing a considerable resurgence; studies in electoral geog raphy have been the principal locus of quantitative work in political geography, which has otherwise preferred qualitative methods, especially in critical geopol itics; and cultural geography has been almost entirely produced through quALl tative methods. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Human geographers have also made sig nificant theoretical contributions. An ex plicit interest in theorization was a lasting achievement of spatial science: the so called quANTlTATlVE revolution was often hailed as a local ?scientific revolu

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