The Dictionary of Human Geography (98 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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hybridity
A condition describing those things and processes that transgress or dis concert binary terms that draw distinctions between like and unlike categories of object such as self/other, culture/nature, animal/ma chine or mind/body. Hybridity has entered popular parlance through the commercial mo bilization of techno scientific innovations (e.g. the cultivation of hybrid seeds and plants or the proliferation of hybrid vehicles), or cul tural iNNovatioNs such as cyber culture or fusion music (see cyborg). As these examples suggest, the mixing of properties ascribed to opposing oNtoLogicaL categories established through academic and everyday use inspires both social anxiety and excitement. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In geography and the wider social sciences and hUMANities, hybridity has come to be used rather too loosely to mean any number of dif ferent kinds of mixing, such as the notion of ?hybrid methods? which means little more than combining quaLitative and quaNtitative methods in the conduct of research, or what used to be called multi method approaches. Such usages tend to treat hybridity as an in trinsically desirable quality or strategy. More theoretically or philosophically rigorous ex plorations of hybridity are associated primarily with two bodies of work: (i) cultural studies (see cultural turn) and idENtity politics, particularly in the field of post colonial studies (e.g. Bhabha, 1994; see post colonialism) and (ii) scieNce and technology studies and posthUMANist politics (e.g. Latour, 1993). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In the case ofpost colonial studies, hybridity is associated with the interrogation of those contact spaces in which cultural differences are contingently and conflictually negotiated (see Pratt, 1992; cf. transculturation). In the case of science and technology studies, it is enrolled as a device to negotiate the temptations of the ?one plus one? logic or ?mixture of two pure forms? that pervade binary and diALect ical modes of analysis of nature culture re lations (see Whatmore, 2002a). The problem here, as Bruno Latour suggests, is that: (NEW PARAGRAPH) critical explanation always began from the poles and headed toward the middle, which was first the separation point and then the conjunction point for opposing resources ... In this way the middle was simultan eously maintained and abolished, recognised and denied, specified and silenced ... How? By conceiving of every hybrid as a mixture of two pure forms. (1993, pp. 77 8) (NEW PARAGRAPH) As many, particularly feMiNist, scholars working in philosophy and science and tech nology studies make clear, the importance of hybridity in these terms is that it insists that questions of sociaL justice cannot be under stood in terms of human relations or reasoning alone, and invites ethicaL and political pro jects that re frame these questions in terms of the more than human company of bodies, technologies and forces implicated in, and con sequential for, the conduct of social life. sw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bhabha (1994); Castree and Nash (2004); Har away (1991); Latour (1993); Pratt (1992); Whatmore (2002a). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
hyperspace
Hyperspace has four or more dimensions. Geographical tradition privileges location and three (Euclidean) dimensions: (x, y, z) or (Easting, Northing and height)(see eucLideaN space). Yet, it is rarely just where something happens that is important but also when, giving a fourth dimension: time. Space time is therefore a hyperspace that becomes more complex (e.g. to visualize) if variables recording what happened (or what is found) are treated as further dimensions of the space. The literary critic Frederic Jameson (1991, pp. 38 44) famously described multi dimensional ?hyperspace? as the characteristic spatiaLity of postModerNity that disrupts and exceeds conventional modes of represeNtatioN. rh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Mlodinow (2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
hypothesis
A provisional idea requiring fur ther assessment to test its merit. The etymo logical origin is from the Greek meaning ?to put under, suppose?. Within geography, the formalization of hypotheses was closely asso ciated with the quaNtitative revoLutioN, in which the ?supposed? was a scientific state ment capable of empirical testing using formal statistical techniques (see also deductioN). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In its early use, however, ?hypothesis? meant an imagined idea, with only a distant connec tion to the real. In 1616, Cardinal Bellarmine (1542 1621) warned Galileo Galilei (1564 1642) not ?to hold or defend? the idea of a heliocentric solar system, but to treat is as a ?hypothesis?, not reality. And a similar sense was given to the term when Sir Isaac Newton (1643 1727) said about his theory of gravity: ?I feign no hypotheses? that is, his work was based on observation and experiment, not speculation. By the nineteenth century, in contrast, the use of hypotheses was increas ingly seen as an integral part of the very prac tice of scieNce not at odds with it, as Newton implied. Hypotheses were where sci ence began; with interesting but as yet unproven ideas that stemmed from scientific theory or ModeLs. Whether hypotheses were accepted depended upon the criteria applied. Criteria have included: simplicity (the capacity to min imize new explanatory entities); scope (the power to maximize the domain of application); fruitfulness (the capability to generate future hypotheses); fit (the compatibility with other hypotheses); and, perhaps most important, em pirical fidelity (the ability to match the facts). (NEW PARAGRAPH) This last criterion was taken up and formal ized within the discipline of statistics from the late nineteenth century. In the late 1920s, the statisticians Jerzy Neyman (1894 1981) and Egon Pearson (1895 1980) set out what was to become the standard framework for statis tical hypothesis testing that proved so influen tial in geography. They provided step by step procedures stipulating how to frame a hypoth esis and how to assess its empirical merit rig orously and precisely. Formulating the null hypothesis was step one. Accepting the conser vative supposition that it is better to assume that one is wrong rather than right, the null hypothesis stated the opposite of what one believed to be correct. The remaining steps then defined what was necessary in order ei ther to reject or accept the hypothesis for the specified level of statistical significance. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The first widespread use of the Neyman Pearson procedures for statistical hypothesis testing in geography occurred in the mid 1950s, at the start of the Quantitative Revolu tion. This transformation of the geographical agenda into spatiaL scieNce was also associated with the introduction of formal theory, which generated a plethora of hypotheses to be tested. Newman (1973, p. 22) reports that in 1971, at the height of the Quantitative Revolution, 26 per cent of all papers published in the top three American geographical journals were con cerned with hypothesis testing. That seems im pressive, but Newman doubted whether many of the authors understood what they were doing, and whether they were doing it correctly. The point became moot, however, as human geographers increasingly abandoned formal hy pothesis testing, and the very vocabulary of a hypothesis. But they have never lost sight of the importance of ?imagined ideas?. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Harvey (1969, 100 6). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
iconography
The description and interpret ation of visual images in order to disclose and interpret their hermetic or symbolic meanings; a hermeneutic practice, closely paralleled by semiotics in linguistic studies. Initially applied to religious icons and painted images, and theorized as a methodology within Renaissance art history by the cultural histor ian Erwin Panofsky, iconography was initially introduced into human geography by Jean Gottmann (1952) alongside ?movement? as one of two counterposing forces structuring the political geography of nations: the lat ter acting to integrate territories, and the former to separate them through local allegi ances. While this formulation acknowledged a political efficacy on the part of cultural sym bols, its impact on geographical study was limited, and only decades later was the sym bolic significance of national icons such as landscapes, paintings, buildings and monu ments subjected to more systematic icono graphic analysis by geographers and others (Daniels, 1993; Schama, 1995). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In contemporary human geography, icon ography is principally used as a method of landscape and map interpretation (Daniels and Cosgrove, 1988; Harley, 2001b). Land scapes, both on the ground and in their repre sentation through various media such as maps, painting and photography, can be regarded as visible deposits of cultural meanings (see also cartography, history of; visual methods). The iconographic method seeks to address these meanings through describing the form, composition and content of such representa tions, disclosing their symbolic conventions and language, and interpreting the signifi cances and implications of their symbolism by re immersing landscapes in their social and historical contexts. Successful icono graphic interpretation requires close formal reading, broad contextual knowledge, inter pretative sensitivity and persuasive writing skills: it reveals human landscapes as both shaped by and themselves active in shaping broader social and cultural processes, and thus possessed of powerful human signifi cance. Geographical iconography today ac cepts that landscape meanings are unstable over time and between different groups, (NEW PARAGRAPH) always negotiated and contested, and thus political in the broadest sense. Through this recognition, a connection may be made in terms of politics between current geographical uses of iconography and Gottmann?s original formulation. This is exemplified by the signifi cant body of work on landscapes, monu ments, spatial images and the expression and performance of identity that has been pro duced by geographers since the early 1990s (see, e.g., Whelan, 2003). dco (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Atkinson and Cosgrove (1998). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
ideal type
An operational construct origin ally proposed by the sociologist Max Weber (1864 1920) as a way of exposing the essen tials of a situation to analysis for particular purposes: ?An ideal type is formed by the one sided accentuation of one or more points of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more or less present and oc casionally absent concrete individual phenom ena, which are arranged according to those one sidedly emphasized viewpoints into a uni fied analytical construct.? The ideal type is ?ideal? in the sense of ?idealized?: it is always a partial characterization of a phenomenon that, by emphasizing particular features and ignor ing others (marginalizing them, holding them constant), draws out what the analyst regards as particularly important. It is thus purposive, an abstraction, and ideal means ?pure? or ?abstract?, with other elements stripped away (cf. model). dg (NEW PARAGRAPH)
idealism
A humanist philosophy based around the belief that the world is constructed through the human mind (see humanism). Idealism?s assertion that ?all reality is in some way a mental construction so that the world does not exist outside its observation and rep resentation by the individual has long been posed against the positivistic epistemology and its emphasis on objective evidence? (Johnston, 1986, p. 55). Idealism was set in opposition to materialism, which privileged matter, rendering the import of mind or spirit secondary, dependent or invisible. In geog raphy, this is most closely associated with (NEW PARAGRAPH) the work of Leonard Guelke, who drew on historian R.G. Collingwood?s ?historical ideal ism?, which insisted that ?all history is the his tory of human thought?. Idealism in geography regarded its aim as being one of ?rethinking the thoughts behind the actions (the ??insides?? be neath the ??outsides??) of ??human events?? with tangible environmental landscape im pacts? (Cloke, Philo and Sadler, 1991, p. 70; emphasis in original). In a challenge to what he considered to be over theorization of contem porary human geography, Guelke?s idealism required a move from concern with the theories that geographers held about the world and its workings to a primary focus upon the theories used by human beings acting in the world. For Guelke, a geographer?s role is to understand the theories lying behind action that essentially make up human agency. As he put it, the ?intention behind an action can be regarded as the source of its power and theory in it can be considered to be the guidance system? (Guelke, 1974, p. 197). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Any insistence of the theory neutrality of academic research is problematic. Moreover, Guelke?s vision of geography suggests a world in which humans act ?rationally? on the basis of how they conceptualize their worlds. Thus, in many respects Guelke?s idealism is an extension of behaviouraL geography, rather than having a close association with the philo sophically charged recovery of agency in (most) humanistic geography (which focused upon notions of feeling, emotion and meaning). Guelke viewed human agency as being based upon intentional decisions, ignoring both the constraining and enabling effects of economic structures and cultural discourse. Geograph ies influenced by psychoanaLytic theory have challenged the possibility of individual agents knowing their motivations and have turned to the effects of the unconscious. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The concern of new cultural geographers with discourse and representation, al though very different conceptually from Guelke?s idealism, have nevertheless gener ated new debate around idealism, with both marxist and sociaL geography expressing concern about the lack of attention given to issues of the material (see Mitchell, 1995; Duncan and Duncan, 1996; Philo, 2000a). Theorizations of the body as an inscriptive surface where the material and discursive ar ticulate have sought to transcend the idealism materialism debate (Nast and Pile, 1998). jsh (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Cloke, Philo and Sadler (1991); Guelke (1974). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
identity
The origins of a term that is increasingly used throughout the social sciences are somewhat obscure, but its shifts reflect changing conceptions of the human subject in the discourses of modern and late modern thought. With its inheritance of Renaissance humanism, which posited Man (sic) as the ?measure of all things?, and the dramatic changes inaugurated by the Protestant Reformation, the enlightenment is usually identified as the context within which the identity of the modern subject definitively emerges. Based on a conception of a self sustaining entity, possessed of the capacity of conscious reason and whose internal ?centre? was seen as essentially fixed continuous or ?identical? with itself across time the Enlightenment aligns identity to a decisive form of individualism. Prioritized in the seven teenth century by Rene Descartes (?I think, therefore I am?), John Locke (who equated individual identity with the ?sameness of a rational being?; see Locke, 1967 [1690]) and attenuated through the nineteenth and twen tieth centuries, the individual is positioned as the author of historical development, his identity seen as the sovereign source from which all social laws and categories of know ledge are derived. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The changing formations of modern soci ety, and the development of sociology that sought to understand them, provided the first critique of this model. Locating individual identity within group processes and submit ting it to the dynamics of collective and con tractual norms, sociologists such as G.H. Mead (see symboLic interactioNism) argued the ways in which identities are positioned within wider social relations and, conversely, function to sustain wider social structures. While such theories of socialization clearly break with the autonomy of the humanist self, they nonetheless continue to uphold the principle of a stable identity; the relation be tween the individual and society being an interaction between two reciprocal, but none theless distinct, entities. (NEW PARAGRAPH) A key revision that resolutely displaced the Cartesian and sociological subject was the re construction of Marxist social theory in the late 1960s. For the Marxist structuralist Louis Althusser (1970), the privileging of so cial formations did not just invert the relations between the individual and society, but jetti soned subjective agency from the processes of history, the concerns of ethics and the terms of phiLosophy itself (see marxism; structur ausm). From this perspective, identity is not only conditional, lodged in contingency, but divested of any transcendental authority it be comes little more than the effect or ?bearer? of a social structure. ?Self hood? thus does not derive from any faculty held in the mind, but via the mechanism of ?interpellation?; that is, by those ideological processes that on the one hand ?speak to us? or ?hail us into place? as the social subjects of particular discourses and, on the other, produce us as subjects that can ?speak? and can be ?spoken?. To this novel understanding of identity must be added the impact of Freud on twentieth century Western thought. Indeed, if Freud?s original ?discovery? of the unconscious put paid to the humanist project of the self knowing individual, later psychoanalytic theorists, such as Jacques Lacan, insist on identity as unresolved and irresolvable: not something that evolves organ ically or intentionally from inside the core of cognitive being, but via a struggle that charts the infant's difficult entry into various systems of symbolic orders, including language, cul ture and sexual difference. For Lacan, the agony of this ?entry? not only leaves the subject always divided in itself (the perception of wholeness being, for Lacan, as for Althusser, only an ?imaginary? or fantasized pleasure), but maintains this improper fit as an initial and continuing experience. Psychoanalytic ally, then, we should speak not of identity as something achieved or achievable, but of iden tification as an always imaginary search for the image of a resolved self (see psychoanalytic theory). (NEW PARAGRAPH) With the de centred subject located as the unstable core of modern and late modern thought, identity is not only exposed as a so cial and psychic process, but is posed as a political problem (Pile and Thrift, 1995). With the growth of cultural studies in the 1970s, it is deployed not only a critical tool useful in the analysis of cultural forms, but as an active site of conflict and resistance within social relations fractured by divisions of gen der, cLass and race. Energized by the ferment of ideas produced by the late 1960s the counter culture, civil rights, feminist, anti colonial and anti war movements (see feminism) the ?politics of identity' emerged to mobilize new, and hitherto untheorized, individual and collective possibilities. While very different kinds of identity were examined (from working class to sexual and gendered identities; from racial to generational iden tities), such analyses were determinedly com mitted, with a distinctively autobiographical, reflexive and strategic charge. The dialogue between identity and the ?politics of location' was to become key, especially within debates of how affective investments in the idea of a home(land) relate to the resources of history, language and culture in the production of sub jective and collective allegiance. Thus various theorists (Gellner, 1983; Renan, 1990 [1882]; Balibar, 1991b; Hall, 1992a) explored the ways in which identities relate to the (relatively modern) invention of the nation, which they invite us to read less as a political or territorial site than as the particular expression of cultural tradition; as an articulation of communal belonging sustained as much by myths of origin and homogeneity as it is by the supposed con tinuities of character, value and custom. From this perspective, national identity is decisively not a primordial gift of birth, nor even a coin cidence of geographical location, but the willed incorporation into an ?imagined community' (Anderson, 1991 [1983]), a fiction continually formed and transformed by the narratives, and counter narratives, of its telling. (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the late 1980s, this account was given fresh prominence with the explosion of post colonial theory (see post coLoniaLism), which sought, amongst other things, to decon struct the unity of the sovereign self written into European knowledge, theory and history. If at one end of the spectrum modern Western nations have produced stories of familial mem bership in order to negotiate internal contra dictions (Matless, 1988; Cresswell, 1996) or exercise forms of territorial expansion (Daniels, 1993; Driver, 2001a), at the other end conscious assertions of identity have been mobilized as a strategy of resistance for those dispossessed by the legacy of empire (Blunt and McEwan, 2002). Yet as in fantasies of the ?whole' self of which Lacanian psycho analysis speaks this often releases a regressive desire to reclaim the (lost) integrity of a ?local' or national particularity as a way ofnegotiating the competing pressures of existent and emer gent multiplicities. In this context, identity means not only the aspiration to Selfhood, but the assumption of a fictive Otherness. Having no positive meaning, but positioned within a field of differences, identity thus en tails discursive work: the binding and marking of symbolic boundaries, the defining of iden tity by what it produces as its negative excess or ?constitutive outside'. The crucial point, however, is not simply that identity derives its distinction from what it is not. More precar iously, the ?Other? returns to breach the fore closure that we prematurely call ?identity' (Butler, 1990). (NEW PARAGRAPH) At present, processes of migration, trans nationalism and diaspora place identity (or the project of identification) firmly on the the oretical agenda. In the midst of such mobilities as much a geographical and his torical reality as a theoretical benefit new spatial metaphors of the ?out of place? and ?in between? render identity as a performance of ambivalences, doublings and dissimula tions. Various theories of the post colonial (Said, 2003 [1978]; Spivak, 1988; Bhabha, 1990a) have all sought a more complex, non binary mode of identity, replacing neat na tional and ethnic divisions with the more fluid terms of ?translation?, hybridity and transgression, and using these as critical strat egies for destabilizing the power, and polar ities, of Western thought. As a counter current, however, the resurgence of neo nationalisms (Eastern Europe post 1989), the rise of religious absolutisms (from India, to the Middle East to the USA) and a renewed rhet oric of civilizational differences (the image of a ?clash of civilizations?) speak directly of an anxiety at the core of our contemporary selves. Indeed, if a hardening of identities is one symptom of the contradictions of the local and the global in postmodernity, from an other perspective the national frame in which people have conventionally positioned them selves has been eroded by a new social order in which the homogenizing effects of global mar kets has reconfigured identity as a ready to buy, consumer option. (NEW PARAGRAPH) All of this charges identity with questions of our present and future political and ethical practice. While recognizing its fictive nature, the disruption of conventional paradigms of social experience and analysis (the nation, ideology, gender, race, class) heralds different possibilities of identification, placing new em phasis on subjective agency in its relational negotiations and improvisations. At this point, as Stuart Hall puts it, the question is not about ?who we are? or ?where we have come from? so much as ?what we might be come, how we have been represented and how that bears on how we might represent our selves? (Hall and du Gay, 1996). jd (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Duncan and Rattansi (1992). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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