International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Twelve-Volume Set: Volume 10

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY EDITORS-IN-CHIEF ROB KITCHIN National Institute of Regional and Spatial ...

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INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

ROB KITCHIN National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) John Hume Building, National University of Ireland Maynooth, County Kildare Ireland

NIGEL THRIFT University House, University of Warwick Coventry UK

AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

ROB KITCHIN National Institute of Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA) John Hume Building, National University of Ireland Maynooth, County Kildare Ireland

NIGEL THRIFT University House, University of Warwick Coventry UK

AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO

Elsevier Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, The Netherlands Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK First edition 2009 Copyright & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone (+44) (0) 1865 843830; fax (+44) (0) 1865 853333; email: [email protected]. Alternatively, you can submit your request online by visiting the Elsevier web site at http://elsevier.com/locate/permissions, and selecting Obtaining permission to use Elsevier material Notice No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein. Because of rapid advances in the medical sciences, in particular, independent verification of diagnoses and drug dosages should be made British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2007927349 ISBN: 978-0-08-044921-0 For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at elsevierdirect.com

Printed and bound in Italy 09 10 11 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

SENIOR EDITORS Noel Castree Geography Discipline Arthur Lewis Building School of Environment and Development The University of Manchester Manchester UK Mike Crang Department of Geography Durham University Science Laboratories Durham UK Mona Domosh Department of Geography Dartmouth College Hanover, NH USA

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SECTION EDITORS Kay Anderson Centre for Cultural Research University of Western Sydney Penrith South DC, NSW, Sydney Australia Paul Cloke Department of Geography University of Exeter Exeter UK Jeremy Crampton Department of Geosciences Georgia State University Atlanta, GA USA Brian Graham University of Ulster Coleraine, N. Ireland UK Costis Hadjimichalis Department of Geography Harokopio University Athens Greece

Loretta Lees Cities Research Group Department of Geography King’s College London London UK Sara McLafferty Department of Geography University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign Urbana, IL USA Anssi Paasi Department of Geography University of Oulu Linnanmaa Oulu Finland Chris Philo Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences University of Glasgow Glasgow UK

Phil Hubbard Department of Geography University of Loughborough Loughborough UK

James Sidaway School of Geography University of Plymouth Plymouth UK

Robin Kearns School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Sciences The University of Auckland Auckland New Zealand

Katie Willis Department of Geography Royal Holloway, University of London Egham UK

Mei-Po Kwan Department of Geography The Ohio State University Columbus, OH USA

Henry Yeung Department of Geography National University of Singapore Singapore

vii

GUIDE TO USE OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA

Structure of the Encyclopedia The material in the Encyclopedia is arranged as a series of articles in alphabetical order. There are four features to help you easily find the topic you’re interested in: an alphabetical contents list, a subject classification index, cross references and a full subject index.

1. Alphabetical Contents List The alphabetical contents list, which appears at the front of the first volume, lists the entries in the order that they appear in the Encyclopedia. It includes both the volume number and the page number of each entry.

2. Subject Classification Index This index appears at the start of Volume 1 and groups entries under subject headings that reflect the broad themes of Human Geography. This index is useful for making quick connections between entries and locating the relevant entry for a topic that is covered in more than one article.

3. Cross-references All of the entries in the Encyclopedia have been exten sively cross referenced. The cross references which ap pear at the end of an entry, serve three different functions: i.

To indicate if a topic is discussed in greater detail elsewhere

ii. To draw the readers attention to parallel discussions in other entries iii. To indicate material that broadens the discussion Example The following list of cross references appears at the end of the entry IMPERIALISM, CULTURAL See also: Colonialism I; Colonialism II; Dependency; First World; Globalization, Cultural; Hegemony; Imperialistic Geographies; Neocolonialism; Orientalism; Postcolonia lism/Postcolonial Geographies; Poststructuralism/Post structuralist Geographies; Third World. Here you will find examples of all three functions of the cross reference list: a topic discussed in greater detail elsewhere (e.g., Orientalism), parallel discussion in other entries (Imperialistic Geographies) and reference to en tries that broaden the discussion (e.g. Postcolonialism/ Postcolonial Geographies).

4. Index The index includes page numbers for quick reference to the information you’re looking for. The index entries differentiate between references to a whole entry, a part of an entry, and a table or figure.

5. Contributors At the start of each volume there is list of the authors who contributed to that volume.

ix

CONTRIBUTORS

VOLUME 1 M B Aalbers Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

J Crush University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa

G J Andrews McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

C D’Ignazio The Institute for Infinitely Small Things, Waltham, MA, USA

H Asche University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany J O Bærenholdt Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark J Battersby-Lennard University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa J Beall London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

R J Das York University, Toronto, ON, Canada J Davidson Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada C Delano-Smith University of London, London, UK V Desai Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

K B Beesley Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada

J D Dewsbury Bristol University, Bristol, UK

K Besio University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hilo, HI, USA

J Dittmer University college London, London, UK

M Brayshay University of Plymouth, Devon, UK

H Fassmann Universita¨t Wien, Vienna, Austria

M M Breitbart Hampshire College, Amherst, MA, USA

C Gibson University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

S Brentjes Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain

J R Gold Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

John R Bryson The University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

O Groza Universitatea Al.I Cuza, Iasi, Romania

H Buller University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

S W Hardwick University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

K A Butler University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA

M Harrower University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA

K W Butzer University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA

H Hazen Macalester College, St Paul, MN, USA

S Chaturvedi Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

C Hughes Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

xi

xii

Contributors

G T Jo´hannesson University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

M Pacione University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

L Johnston University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

C Potter Imperial College London, London, UK

R J P Kain University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

R B Potter University of Reading, Reading, UK

R B Kent California State University, Northridge, Northridge, CA, USA

G Prevelakis University of Pantheon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Paris, France

M Kurtz Open University, Ottawa, ON, Canada M Kurtz Open University, Milton Keynes, UK R W Lake Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA R Le Heron The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand A A Lehtinen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland Y Leung The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

M Purcell University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA D Ramsey Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada S Reimer University of Southampton, Southampton, UK J Renes Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands, and Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands V Rey Ecole Normale Supe´rieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon, France M-C Robic CNRS, Paris, France

S Lloyd-Evans University of Reading, Reading, UK

U Rossi University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

J Lossau Humboldt-Universita¨t zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

P Routledge University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

A Malmberg Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

J Siemer University of Regina, Regina, SK, Canada

T Marsden Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

M W Skinner Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada

F Martinelli Universita` ‘Mediterranea’ di Reggio Calabria, Reggio di Calabria, Italy

T Slater University of Edinburgh, Bristol, UK

L Maxey Swansea University, Wales, UK D P McCormack Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

L M Takahashi University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA A Taylor University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia

P Merlin

M E Thomas The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

G A Myers University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

T M Vowles University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO, USA

R P Neumann Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

A M Warnes University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

T Oakes University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

D Wastl-Walter University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

U Oslender University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

A Watson University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

Contributors C Wilbert Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK

S D Withers University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

M Williams Oxford University, Oxford, UK

N M Yantzi Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Canada

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VOLUME 2 H Aay Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, USA

V Chouinard McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

S C Aitken San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA and National Technical Norwegian University, Trondheim, Norway

H Couclelis University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

L Albrechts Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium G J Andrews McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada N Ansell Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK D Atkinson University of Hull, Hull, UK M Batty University College London, London, UK J Baxter University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada M Be´dard Universite´ du Que´bec a` Montreál, Montreál, QC, Canada D Bell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK D Bennett Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

A Currah Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK R J Das York University, Toronto, ON, Canada S Davoudi Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK E Delaney US Deparment of the Interior, National Park Service, Washington, DC, USA J Dempsey University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada S J Elliott McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada V Filippakopoulou National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece W Friesen The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand C Gibson University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

U Best Technische Universita¨t Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany

A L Griffin University of New South Wales – ADFA, Canberra, ACT, Australia

J Binnie Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

J W Harrington, Jr. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

C R Bryant Universite´ de Montreál, Montreál, QC, Canada

M Hassler Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany

R Capello Milan Polytechnic, Milan, Italy

G Helms University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

R Carvalho Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

J J Holloway Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

G Chapman Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

A Hughes Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

L Cheshire The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

M Jay University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

S Chilvers York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

N Kliot University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

xiv

Contributors

H Koskela University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

C Philo University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

J Krygier Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH, USA

A C Pratt London School of Economics, London, UK

M S Kumar Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

S Punch University of Stirling, Stirling, UK

B Lambregts University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

B Ramı´rez Universidad Autońoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Mexico

D Leslie University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada A Lester University of Sussex, Brighton, UK N Lewis The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand K D Lilley Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK T W Luke Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA L J C Ma University of Akron, Akron, OH, USA J Malczewski University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada D Martin University of Southampton, Southampton, UK E J McCann Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada C McIlwaine Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK K J Mee University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia S Millington Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK C J A Mitchell University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada D R Montello University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA M Morad London South Bank University, London, UK B Nakos National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

G A Rice University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland K Robinson McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada R Rundstrom University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA S Rycroft University of Sussex, Brighton, UK N Schuurman Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada J P Sharp University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK D Sibley University of Leeds, Leeds, UK T Skelton National University of Singapore, Singapore F Smith Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK J Sundberg University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada J C Sweeney National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland W S Tang Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China T Tasan-Kok Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan, The Netherlands J-C Thill University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

D O’Sullivan The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

J Tima´r Center for Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Be´ke´scsaba, Hungary

J R Oppong University of North Texas, Denton, TX, USA

P M Torrens Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

M Phillips University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

G Waitt University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia

Contributors J L Waters University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

F Wray Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

D Wood Raleigh, NC, USA

H van der Wusten Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

M Woods Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

C Young Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

VOLUME 3 T J Barnes University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

S Dall’erba University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

C Barnett The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

J Davidson Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

J Barnett University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

A Davies Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

C J Barrow Swansea University, Swansea, UK

C Dixon London Metropolitan University, London, UK

G de Bastion Deutsche Gesellschaft fu¨r Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Eschborn, Germany

R Dowling Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

J V Beaverstock University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK S Bell University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada L D Berg University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada L Bondi University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK A Bonnett Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

S Eden University of Hull, Hull, UK S J Elliott McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada G A Elmes West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA H Ernste Radboud University, Nijmegan, The Netherlands J Evans McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

L A Brown Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

J R Faulconbridge Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

R A Butlin University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

D A Fennell Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada

A Cameron University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

S Gopal Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

C Cocklin James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia

S Hall University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

M P Conzen University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

E Hartwick Framingham State College, Framingham, MA, USA

K E Corey Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

S Healy Worcester State College, Worcester, MA, USA

T Cresswell Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

M Hess University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

C D’Alessandro-Scarpari Universite´ Lumie`re Lyon 2, Lyon, France

J Holloway Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

xv

xvi

Contributors

T Jazeel University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK R Johnston University of Bristol, Bristol, UK O Jones CCRI, Cheltenham, UK A Kalogeressis University of Macedonia, Greece A Kavanagh National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland M C Keane St Mary’s University College, Belfast, UK M Keating European University Institute, Florence, Italy J Kneale University College London, London, UK A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada T Koch University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada B Korf University of Zu¨rich – Irchel, Zu¨rich, Switzerland M S Kumar Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK M Kuus University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada L Labrianidis University of Macedonia, Greece A Latham University College London, London, UK E Laurier University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK A A Lehtinen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

M Low London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK K McCracken Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia K McKittrick Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada P McManus The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia P Meth University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK J J Metz Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY, USA B E Montz Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, USA D P Nally University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK P M O’Neill University of Western Sydney, Parramatta, NSW, Australia C Pattie University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK N A Phelps University College London, London, UK D R Phillips Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong C Philo University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK A Pike Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK G H Pirie University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa P Plummer University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

J I Leib Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

M Power University of Durham, Durham, UK

N Lewis University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

P Rees University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

W Li Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

S A Royle Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

D Linehan University College Cork, Cork, Republic of Ireland

A Schærstro¨m Kometva¨gen, Ta¨by, Sweden

L Lo York University, Toronto, ON Canada

R Scheyvens Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

R Longhurst University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

J W Scott University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

Contributors D Seamon Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

M Tykkylaïnen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

E Sheppard University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

T Unwin University of London, Egham, UK

David Simon University of London, Egham, UK

E Warwick King’s College London, London, UK

V F S Sit University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

H D Watts University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

E Skop The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Colorado Springs, CO, USA L Smith Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

D Weiner West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

C Sneddon Dartmouth College, Hanover NH, USA

J Wiles University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

H Southall University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK

K D Willis Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

J Sowers Missouri State University, Springfield, MO, USA

M I Wilson Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

E Stam Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

R Wilton McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

D Storey University of Worcester, Worcester, UK

H Winlow Bath Spa University, Bath, UK

D Sui Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA J Sundberg University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

K E Till Virginia Tech University, Alexandria, VA, USA G A Tobin University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA S W Trimble University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA S Turner McGill University, Montreál, QC, Canada

M Webber University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia G R Webster University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, USA

M Smith Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

E Swyngedouw Manchester University, Manchester, UK

M Watts UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

C W J Withers University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK F Wu Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK N Xiao The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA I Yamada University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA B S A Yeoh National University of Singapore, Singapore O Yiftachel Ben Gurion University, Beer-sheva, Israel E K Z Zygmunt University of Silesia, Sosnowiec, Poland

VOLUME 4 D Abbott University of Derby, Derby, UK

P Adey Keele University, Keele, UK

xvii

xviii

Contributors

P J Atkins Durham University, Durham, UK R Atkinson University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia G Benko Universite´ Pantheón-Sorbonne, Paris, France P Bennett University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK L D Berg University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada M Birkin University of Leeds, Leeds, UK S Blandy University of Leeds, Leeds, UK F J Bosco San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA S Bowlby University of Reading, Reading, UK H Bradley Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Republic of Ireland P Breathnach National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland J Briggs University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK J E Castro Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK J Chapman University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK O Z Chaudhry University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK G L Clark Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK G P Clarke University of Leeds, Leeds, UK K C Clarke University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA P Claval

´ Crowley U National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Co Kildare, Republic of Ireland C Desbiens Universite´ Laval, Que´bec City, QC, Canada P Dicken University of Manchester, Manchester, UK G Dijkink University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands I Docherty University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK M Duckham University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia M Duffy University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia S Elwood University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA M F Goodchild University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA D Goodman University of California – Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA M K Goodman King’s College London, London, UK M Goodwin University of Exeter, Exeter, UK L van Grunsven Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands J Ha¨kli University of Tampere, Finland E Hall University of Dundee, Dundee, UK D J Hammel University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA B Hendrikx Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands M Hess University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

Universite´ de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France

J Hessler Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA

N M Coe University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

R Hudson Durham University, Durham, UK

M Cope University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

M Huxley University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

David Crouch University of Derby, Derby, UK

L C Johnson Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia

Contributors R Kaiser University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA

S M Otterstrom Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA

A Kealy University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

A Paéz McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

M J Kraak International Institute of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, Enschede, The Netherlands

M Pavlovskaya Hunter College – CUNY, New York, NY, USA

A Lagendijk Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands N S Lam Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA A Latham UCL, London, UK J Lee The University of Seoul, Seoul, South Korea Y Leung The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong A Leyshon University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK J Little University of Exeter, Exeter, UK J Lovering Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK C Lukinbeal Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA W A Mackaness University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK A Maddrell University of the West of England, Bristol, UK J C Marshallw University of Oxford, Oxford, UK D R Meyer Brown University, Providence, RI, USA V Miller University of Kent, Canterbury, UK C M Moreno San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA K M Morin Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA R Morrill University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA L Muscara` Universita` del Molise, Isernia, Campobasso, Italy T Nyerges University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA w

Deceased, 22 August 2007.

xix

Linda Peake York University, Toronto, ON, Canada M Phillips University of Leicester, Leicester, UK J Pollard Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK L Price Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK B Pritchard University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia M Purvis University of Leeds, Leeds, UK M Raco King’s College London, London, UK K N Rankin University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada J Raper City University, London, UK L T Raynolds Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA P Reuber University of Mu¨nster, Mu¨nster, Germany P Richardson University of Oxford, Oxford, UK S M Roberts University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA U Rossi University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy G Rushton The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA R B Sarma Cotton College, Guwahati, India A J Secor University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA J Shaw University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK T Slater University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK K Strauss Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

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Contributors

M Taylor Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Republic of Ireland

S J Whatmore University of Oxford, Oxford, UK D C Wheeler Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA

M Taylor University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

J Wiles University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

D Thien California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

G Williams University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

J Tivers Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK


Y Underhill-Sem University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand J Wallace University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

D Wo´jcik Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

F Wang Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

X Yao University of Georgia, Atlanta, GA, USA

B Warf University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

H W-c Yeung National University of Singapore, Singapore

VOLUME 5 A G Aguilar Universidad Nacional Autońoma de Me´xico, Mexico City, Mexico J Agyeman Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA K Falconer Al-Hindi University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA N AlSayyad University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA G J Ashworth University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands S Asthana University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK P Barnett University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand R Barnett University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand D Bell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK J D Bohland Hollins University, Roanoke, VA, USA T Brown Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK I H Burnley University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia E Cameron Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

E P Campuzano Instituto Politećnico Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico F Celata University of Rome ‘‘La Sapienza’’, Rome, Italy M Chapin Center for the Support of Native Lands, Arlington, VA, USA K Chapman University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK S Chaturvedi Panjab University, Chandigarh, India E Clark Lund University, Lund, Sweden N Collins-Kreiner University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel J Corbett University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada G DeVerteuil University of Southampton, Southampton, UK M Dodge University of Manchester, Manchester, UK D Dorling University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK P J Duffy National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

Contributors

xxi

J Dunn St Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada

R Hudson University of Durham, Durham, UK

R Fish University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

J S Humphreys Monash University, Bendigo, VIC, Australia

R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

R D Jacobson University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

R Foley NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

J P Jones III University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

N Gallent University College London, London, UK

R Jones Curtin University of Technology, Perth, WA, Australia


C Kelly University of Greenwich, London, UK

L Gibson Land and People Information Sharing Society (LAPIS), Parksville, BC, Canada

A D King State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY, USA

J Glassman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

S Kirsch University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

A R Goetz University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

A Golan University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

N Koch Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

W T S Gould University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Z Kovaćs University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary

M Greenwood University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada

M-J Kraak ITC – International Institute of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation, Enschede, The Netherlands

A L Griffin University of New South Wales – ADFA, Canberra, ACT, Australia

S de Leeuw University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada

L Guelke University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

R Lewis University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

E Hague DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA

R Longhurst University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

R Haines-Young University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

D Mackinnon University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

R Harris McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

S P Mains University of the West Indies-Mona, Kingston, Jamaica

F Harvey University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

J May Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

G J D Hewings University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

P Milbourne Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

R Honey The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

C Minca Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

R Howitt Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

J Mistry University of London, Egham, UK

M Hoyler Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

R Mitchell University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

xxii

Contributors

G Moon University of Southampton, Highfield, UK

M Shaw Bristol University, Bristol, UK

S Muller Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

D Simandan Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada

S Neal Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

J M Smith Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA

M E O’Kelly Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

K B Smith Monash University, Bendigo, VIC, Australia

K R Olwig Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden

M Sonis University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA, and Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

S Orford Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

M Sothern University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

M Pacione University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

R Sternberg University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany

M Parnwell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

S Suchet-Pearson Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

B Parthasarathy International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore, India

I Tu¨reli Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

J Patchell Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China R Peet Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA T Peil Tallinn University, Tallinn, Estonia N A Phelps University College London, London, UK J M Powell Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia P Raento University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland G Rambaldi Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU, Wageningen, The Netherlands C Richmond The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada E J Roe Southampton University, Southampton, UK U Rossi University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy J Rutherford LATTS (Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Socie´te´s), Marne-la-Valleé, France G Setten Department of Geography, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

J Tima´r Center for Regional Studies, Be´ke´scsaba, Hungary D P Tolia-Kelly Durham University, Durham, UK H Tunstall University of York, York, UK D Vaiou National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece S M Walcott University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, USA J L Waters University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK G W White Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD, USA K Wilson University of Toronto, Mississauga, ON, Canada G M Winder The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand G M Winder Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita¨t, Munich, Germany K Woodward University of Exeter, Exeter, UK R Wright Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA Y Zhou Vassar College, New York, NY, USA M Zook University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

Contributors

VOLUME 6 B T Asheim Lund University, Lund, Sweden

R Edsall University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

A Aylett University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

F Eva Universita’ Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, Treviso Campus, Italy

A Bain York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

M Farish University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

T J Barnes University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

R Fincher University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

C Benner University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA M Brosseau University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada K Browne University of Brighton, Brighton, UK R A Butlin University of Leeds, Leeds, UK C A Calder The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA P Carmody Trinity College, Dublin, Republic of Ireland W Cartwright RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia P Collier University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK S Conti Universita` e Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy P Cooke Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK K R Cox The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA N Cressie The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA A Cumbers University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK D Delaney Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA

S M Freundschuh National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA, USA G Garofoli Insubria University, Varese, Italy J Gaspar CEG, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal P Giaccaria Universita` e Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy E Gilbert University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada J R Gold Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK A E Green University of Warwick, Coventry, UK M Haldrup Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark F Harvey University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA A Herod University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA M Hesse University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg S Hoelscher The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA E Holland University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

M Dodge University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

B Hooper Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

J Dubow University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

P Hopkins Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK

C Dwyer University College London, London, UK

M W Horner The Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

xxiii

xxiv

Contributors

B van Hoven University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

J O’Loughlin University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

R Howitt Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

F Owusu Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA

B Hunt Santa Barbara, CA, USA

R B Parry The University of Reading, Reading, UK

J Ja¨ger University of Applied Sciences BFI, Vienna, Austria

M W Pearce Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

P Jackson University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK A E G Jonas University of Hull, Hull, UK

C Perkins University of Manchester, Manchester, UK S Pinch University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

A Jones University of London, London, UK

´ Riain SO National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

R Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

G A Rice University of Helsinki, Finland

Cristo´bal Kay Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands

J-P Rodrigue Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY, USA

G Kearns Virginia Polytechnic and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA

T D Rutherford Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA A Saito National University of Singapore, Singapore

G Kearns Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

James D Sidaway School of Geography, University of Plymouth, UK

A Kerr National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

T Skelton National University of Singapore, Singapore

J Krygier Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, OH, USA W Li University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA E Mac Gillavry Webmapper, Utrecht, The Netherlands J Mansvelt Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand F Mizuoka Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan

A Tay University of Bristol, Bristol, UK D P Tolia-Kelly Durham University, Durham, UK B L Turner II Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA H Winlow Bath Spa University, Bath, UK S D Withers University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA D Wood Raleigh, NC, USA

K M Morin Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, USA

P Wood University College London, London, UK

A T Murray Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

C Zhang University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

C J Nash University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

M Zook University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

Contributors

xxv

VOLUME 7 S C Aitken San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA, and National Technical University of Norway, Trondheim, Norway D H Alderman East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA N Argent University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia S Bell University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada M E Bonine University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA W M Bowen Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA P Boyle University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK G Bridge University of Manchester, Manchester, UK K M Brown Macaulay Land Use Research Institute, Craigiebuckler, Aberdeen, UK

K M Dunn School of Social Sciences, Penrith, NSW, Australia O J Dwyer Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN, USA R Earickson University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA T Edensor Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK C Cindy Fan University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA M Farish University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada J Flint Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK S Fullagar Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, Australia J R Gold Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK G Grabher University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

G Burgel University of Paris 10, Nanterre, France

R N Gwynne University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

M A Busteed University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

D Hill University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

L Cadman University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK I Casas University at Buffalo – SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA D B Clarke Swansea University, Swansea, UK N Clarke University of Southampton, Southampton, UK P Claval Universite´ de Paris-Sorbonne, Paris, France J Clayton University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK P Cooke Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK N Curry Countryside and Community Research Institute CCRI, Cheltenham, UK

H Hoernig Universite´ de Que´bec a` Montreál, Montreál, QC, Canada P Holland University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand P Hubbard Leicestershire University, Leicestershire, UK R D Jacobson University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada W Jenkins York University, Toronto, ON, Canada O Jones Countryside and Community Research Institute CCRI, Cheltenham, UK R Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

xxvi

Contributors

K Kafkoula Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece D H Kaplan Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA J Kenny University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI, USA

J Penrose University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK C G Pooley Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK C Radel Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA Saraswati Raju Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

M J Kuby Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

S Ratick Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

W Larner University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

T D Roberts University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

R Le Heron The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

G Schwarz Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogota, DC, Colombia

Sang-Il Lee Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea K D Lilley Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK D Linehan University College Cork, Cork, Republic of Ireland J Lorimer King’s College London, London, UK G MacLeod University of Durham, Durham, UK

G Setten Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway K Simonsen Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark M Sioh DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA C J Smith University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, NY, USA

E J McCann Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

M Tanskanen University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland

L McDowell University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

S Tierney University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA

S McDowell University of Ulster, Coleraine, UK

C D Upchurch University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

A McGregor University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

M Walton-Roberts Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada

J H McKendrick Glasgow Caledonian University, Glasgow, UK

M Watts UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

P Merriman Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

A Wearing University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

W E Murray Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

D W Wong George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

G Olsson Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

R Woodward Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

K R Olwig Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden

Y-M Yeung The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

Contributors

xxvii

VOLUME 8 O Ahlqvist The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

M Dunford University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

S C Aitken San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway

S Elden Durham University, Durham, UK

G Backhaus Loyola College in Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA

R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

A J Bailey University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

B Forest McGill University, Montreál, QC, Canada

D Bennett Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

A Franklin University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

V Berdoulay CNRS and Universite´ de Pau, Pau, France

N R Fyfe University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

L Bondi University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

M Gren Ho´lar University College, Sauja´rkro´kur, Iceland

M Boyle National University of Ireland Maynooth, Co Kildare, Republic of Ireland E Chacko The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA X Chen Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA A O Chimhowu University of Manchester, Manchester, UK P Collier University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK D Collins University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada D Collins University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand K R Cox The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA T Cresswell Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, Fife, UK

M Haldrup Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark P Hall University College London, London, UK S Harrison University of Exeter, Penryn, UK S Hickey University of Manchester, Manchester, UK M Huxley University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK J P Jones III University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA R Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK M Kesby University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK F C Kessler Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD, USA S Kindon Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

E Delmelle University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, USA

A D King State University of New York Binghamton, Binghamton, NY, USA

J Dittmer University College London, London, UK

P T Kingsbury Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

D P Dixon The University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK

A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

xxviii

Contributors

L Koefoed Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

C Perkins University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

U Kothari University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

M Perry Massey University (Wellington), Wellington, New Zealand

D M Lawrence Virginia State University and Virginia Union University, Richmond, VA, USA

J Nederveen Pieterse University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

R Le Heron University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand J Lea Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK J Lorimer King’s College London, London, UK D P McCormack Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

J D van der Ploeg Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands Saraswati Raju Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India R Sanders Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA V R Savage National University of Singapore, Singapore B-M Shantz University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

C McEwan Durham University, Durham, UK

S J Smith University of Durham, Durham, UK

C Minca Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

L A Staeheli University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

D Mitchell Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

J-F Staszak Universite´ de Gene`ve Geneva, Switzerland

F Morton Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow, UK

P E Steinberg Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

W E Murray Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand C J Nash Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada

D Storey University of Worcester, Worcester, UK L Sy´kora Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic A R Tickamyer Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

R P Neumann Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

K Walsh University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

A Nightingale University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

B Warf University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA


S Warren Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA, USA

P M O’Neill University of Western Sydney, NSW, Australia

G A Wilson University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

A Paasi University of Oulu, Linnanmaa, Finland


R Pain University of Durham, Durham, UK

K Woodward University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

E Pawson University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

G Yeung National University of Singapore, Singapore

Contributors

xxix

VOLUME 9 M B Aalbers Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

D W Edgington University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

M Abreu University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

C Fox Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

O Ahlqvist The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

M F Goodchild University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

J O Bærenholdt Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

K H Halfacree Swansea University, Swansea, UK

T J Barnes University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

L M B Harrington Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

R Billen University of Liege, Liege, Belgium R Black University of Sussex, Brighton, UK J S Boggs Brock University, St Catharines, ON, Canada G Bridge University of Bristol, Bristol, UK K Browne University of Brighton, Brighton, UK T Butler King’s College London, London, UK D Carr University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA M Charlton National University of Ireland Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

R Hayter Simon Fraser University, Byrnaby, BC, Canada A Holden University of Durham, Durham, UK J R L Howells University of Manchester, Manchester, UK R Johnston University of Bristol, Bristol, UK J-K Jung University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND M Kiese Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada V Kolossov Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia L Kong National University of Singapore, Singapore

J P Clark Loyola University, New Orleans, LA, USA

A Lord University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

M Cope University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

D MacKinnon University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

A Cumbers University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

G MacLeod University of Durham, Durham, UK

J Cupples University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

K A MacTavish Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

J Revilla Diez Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover, Germany

J Mennis Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

I Docherty University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

F Mizuoka Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan

M Doevenspeck University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

A Nayak University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK

M Dunford University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

H Neo National University of Singapore, Singapore

xxx

Contributors

P Nijkamp Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I G Simmons University of Durham, Durham, UK

E S Norman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

T R Slater University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

H G Overman London School of Economics, London, UK A Paasi University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

E W Soja University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA, and London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

B Page University College London, London, UK

M Sokol Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

J Pearce University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

M Tewdwr-Jones University College London, London, UK

R Peet Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA

F To¨dtling Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Vienna, Austria

I M M Pires Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal V Preston York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

J Tomaney Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

N M Rantisi Concordia University, Montreál, QC, Canada

M Torrado Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

J M Read Maxwell School of Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

A Treivish Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia N Van de Weghe Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

P Robbins University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

B Werlen Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany

S Salamon University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, TX, USA

J Winders Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

H V Scott Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK


J Shaw University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

N Wrigley University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

N K Shortt University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

VOLUME 10 A Albet Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain

A Bebbington University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

T A Arentze Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

L Bian University at Buffalo – SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA

R Atkinson University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

E Casetti Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

M Azaryahu University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

G P Chapman Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo, Norway

M Azaryahu University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

M Coleman The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

Contributors T J Cooke University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

M Jones Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

T W Crawford East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

C Kim University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

M A de Souza Universidade de Saõ Paulo, Campinas, Brazil

R Kitchin NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

A V Di Vittorio University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA M Duffy University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia N Duncan University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK S Elden Durham University, Durham, UK S Engel-Di Mauro SUNY New Paltz, NY, USA R Flowerdew University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

xxxi

A Kobayashi Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada E W LaFary The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand N S Lam Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA A Latham University College London, London, UK J Lee Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA L Lo York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

K E Foote University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA

Y Lu Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, TX, USA

J D Gatrell Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, USA

S M Manson University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA


D McCormack Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK

B Greenhough Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

J McGarrigle Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

D A Griffith University of Texas – Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA

J Mohan University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

M Haldrup Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

K Newman Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

A L Hansen Lund University, Lund, Sweden

M E O’Kelly The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

R Harris Hamilton, ON, Canada

J Oldfield University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

K E Haynes George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

R Panelli University College London, London, UK

P Howell University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

D Pinder Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

R W Jackson West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

M F Poulsen Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

A James Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

M Ramutsindela University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa

B Jessop Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

G M Robinson Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK

Ron Johnston University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

S M Ruddick University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

xxxii

Contributors

G Rushton The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

C Tiwari The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA

A Saldanha University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

D Turnbull ACSIS, Melbourne University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

N F Sayre University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

L Twigg University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK D J Unwin Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

N Schuurman Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

A C Vias University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

T Schwanen Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

M Williams Oxford University, Oxford, UK

D M Scott McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada


D Sibley University of Leeds, Leeds, UK A Smith Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

A C Winstanley National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland

Q Stevens University College London, London, UK

D W Wong George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

P Sunley University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

M Yuan The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

Eric C Thompson National University of Singapore, Singapore

P Zusman University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

VOLUME 11 C G Alvstam Go¨teborg University, Gothenburg, Sweden

D Delaney Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA

D Banister University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

M Denil Washington, DC, USA

C Berndt Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitaet Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

M Dijst Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

K Button George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA M Cawley National University of Ireland, Galway, Republic of Ireland G P Chapman Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK J Connell University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia M Cope University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA

B Doman´ski Jagiellonian Univeristy, Krakow, Poland T Edensor Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK J A Elliott University of Brighton, Brighton, UK W M Gesler University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA V Gidwani University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

T Cresswell Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

J Glassman University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

V J Del Casino, Jr. California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

R Grant University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA

Contributors M Gren Ho´lar University College, Sauja´rkro´kur, Iceland

L Mu University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

J Gutie´rrez Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

D Mustafa King’s College London, London, UK

T Hall University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

A Nightingale University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

M Henry Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

G Norcliffe York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

J Hine University of Ulster, Newtownabbey, UK

K O’Connor University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

J-Y Hsu National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan


S Huang National University of Singapore, Singapore

K Olds University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, WI, USA

P J Hugill Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA P F Kelly York University, Toronto, ON, Canada A Kent University of Manchester, Manchester, UK R D Knowles University of Salford, Greater Manchester, UK M Kurtz Open University, Ottawa, ON, Canada D Ley University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada R Lippuner Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany S Lloyd-Evans University of Reading, Reading, UK B P Y Loo University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China A Mace University of Westminster, London, UK T Marsden Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK C McEwan Durham University, Durham, UK Nick Megoran University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

xxxiii

D T Ory Federal Transit Administration, Washington, DC, USA U F Paleo University of Extremadura, Caceres, Spain R Phillips University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK D Pinder Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK J P H Poon University at Buffalo – SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA R B Potter University of Reading, Reading, UK J M Powell Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia M Power University of Durham, Durham, UK J Preston University of Southampton, Southampton, UK G M Robinson Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK J Round University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK T Schwanen Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands J P Sharp University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

G Mohan The Open University – Milton Keynes, UK

S-L Shaw The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

P L Mokhtarian University of California – Davis, Davis, CA, USA

M Sheller Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, USA

xxxiv

Contributors

F M Smith University of Dundee, Dundee, UK J M Smith Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA R G Smith Swansea University, Swansea, UK

C von Schilling University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada B Warf Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA B Werlen Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Jena, Germany

D Straussfogel Pennsylvania State University, DuBois, PA, USA U Strohmayer National University of Ireland, Galway, Republic of Ireland

P White University of Westminster, London, UK M Whitehead Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

A Sturt University of Westminster, London, UK D Thien California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA

D Wilson University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

D J Unwin University College London, London, UK

J Zhang University of Minnesota, Tacoma, WA, USA

VOLUME 12 Fiona Allon Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia S Batterbury University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia M Batty University College London, London, UK D Bell University of Leeds, Leeds, UK G Bridge University of Bristol, Bristol, UK G Brown University of Leicester, Leicester, UK A Buttimer University College Dublin, Dublin, Republic of Ireland

M Davidson University of Western Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia B Derudder Ghent University, Gent, Belgium J Dodson Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia B Gleeson Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia M F Goodchild University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA K H Halfacree Swansea University, Swansea, UK M G Hatvany Universite´ Laval, Quebec City, QC, Canada

J Byrne Griffith University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

C Haylett University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

B Christophers The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

L Holt University of Reading, Reading, UK

G P Clarke University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

J Horton University of Northampton, Northampton, UK

A Cochrane The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

R Hudson Durham University, UK

D Conradson University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

M Jayne University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

G Crow University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

N C Johnson Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland

Contributors D Kay Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK

C Milligan Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

I M Keighren University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

M Pavlovskaya Hunter College – CUNY, New York, NY, USA

P Knox Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA

L Peake York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

P Kraftl University of Leicester, Leicester, UK D Kunze Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA M Lauria Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA R Lee Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK K D Lilley Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK F MacDonald University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia S C MacKian Open University, Milton Keynes, UK V Mamadouh University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

xxxv

C Philo University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK G M Robinson Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK S Rodgers The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK T R Slater University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK E Street King’s College London, London, UK K Terlouw Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands C R Warren University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK M Watson University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK R K Whelan University of Texas, Arlington, TX, USA

C Mason University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

B Wisner Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre, London, UK

G Mercier Laval University, Quebec City, QC, Canada

J Wolch University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

CONTENTS

Senior Editors

v

Section Editors

vii

Guide to use of the Encyclopedia

ix

Contributors

xi

Contents

xxxvii

Subject Classification

lxiii

Foreword by Mary Robinson

lxxv

Foreword by Rob Kitchin

lxxvii

VOLUME 1 A Activism

L M Takahashi

Activist Geographies

1

P Routledge

Actor-Network Theory/Network Geographies

7 G T Jo´hannesson and J O Bærenholdt

15

Affect

J D Dewsbury

20

Africa

G A Myers

25

Ageing and Health

G J Andrews

31

A M Warnes

36

Ageing and Mobility Ageism and Age Agglomeration Agoraphobia

L Maxey

42

A Malmberg

48

J Davidson

Agrarian Transformations

54 J Renes

Agricultural Land Preservation Agriculture, Sustainable

K B Beesley and D Ramsey

T Marsden

Agri-Environmentalism and Rural Change Aid

58

70 C Potter

79

V Desai

84

Ameńagement du Territoire: Territorial Development Americas

P Merlin

R B Kent and K A Butler

Anarchism/Anarchist Geography

C Wilbert

Animal Welfare, Agricultural

H Buller

91 99

M M Breitbart

Anglo-American/Anglophone Hegemony Animal Geographies

65

M B Aalbers and U Rossi

108 116 122 127

xxxvii

xxxviii

Contents

Antarctica

S Chaturvedi

133

Anthropogeography (After Ratzel)

J Lossau

Anthropology and Human Geography Anti-Geopolitics

U Oslender

Anti-Urbanism

Applied Geography

159 J Battersby-Lennard

M Pacione

179

M Kurtz and A Watson

Art and Cartography

184

C D’Ignazio

Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Asia

190 Y Leung

T Oakes

Atlases

225

M Purcell

Autoethnography

234

K Besio

Auto-Photography

240

M E Thomas

Avant-Garde/Avant-Garde Geographies Aviation

220

C Gibson

Autobiography

207 214

J Siemer and H Asche

Australasia

167 174

M Kurtz

Arctic

148 152

T Slater

Apartheid/Post-Apartheid

Archives

K W Butzer

140

244 J D Dewsbury

252

T M Vowles

257

V Rey and O Groza

265

B Balkans Barnes, T.

S Reimer

Beaujeu-Garnier, J. Becoming

273

M-C Robic

D P McCormack

Behavioral Geography Belonging

A Taylor

Berkeley School Berry, B.

J R Gold

277 282 294

M Williams

R W Lake

Biodiversity

275

300 305

R P Neumann

Biodiversity Mapping

H Hazen

308 314

Biopolitics

A A Lehtinen

320

Bobek, H.

H Fassmann

324

Body, The

L Johnston

326

Borderlands

D Wastl-Walter

332

Bowman, I.

J Dittmer

340

Brain Drain

J Crush and C Hughes

342

Brandt Commission Brown Agenda Buffer Zone

R B Potter and S Lloyd-Evans

348

J Beall

355

G Prevelakis

362

Business Services

John R Bryson

368

Contents

xxxix

C Capital and Space Capitalism

R J Das

375

R Le Heron

382

Capitalism and Division of Labor Care/Caregiving

M Brayshay

390

N M Yantzi and M W Skinner

Cartographic Animation

M Harrower

Cartography in Islamic Societies Cartography, History of

408

S Brentjes

414

C Delano-Smith and R J P Kain

Case Study Approach

402

428

S W Hardwick

441

Cassa per il Mezzogiorno

F Martinelli

446

Categorical Data Analysis

S D Withers

456

VOLUME 2 C Cellular Automata

P M Torrens

1

W Friesen

5

Census Geography Census Mapping

D Martin

Central Business District

G A Rice

Central Place Theory

18

J Malczewski

26

G Chapman

31

Chaos and Complexity Chicago School

12

D Sibley

Child Labor

40

S Punch

Children and Mapping

45 V Filippakopoulou and B Nakos

50

Children/Childhood

F Smith and N Ansell

58

Chinese Urbanism

L J C Ma

65

Chinese-Language Geography Choice Modeling

W S Tang

J-C Thill

Christaller, W.

78

R Capello

Christian Geography Chronic Disease Citation Geography Citizenship

84

H Aay

86

K Robinson and S J Elliott

92

M Batty and R Carvalho

97

V Chouinard

Citizenship and Governmentality, Rural City Marketing

72

E J McCann

107 L Cheshire and M Woods

113 119

City-Region

S Davoudi

125

Civil Society

C McIlwaine

136

Claval, P.

M Be´dard

Climate Change

J C Sweeney

142 147

xl

Contents

Cloke, P.

M Phillips

156

Cognitive Geography

D R Montello

160

Cohen, S.

N Kliot

167

Cold War

T W Luke

170

Colonialism I

A Lester

175

Colonialism II

D Atkinson

182

Colonialism, Internal Color, Mapping

R J Das and S Chilvers

189

A L Griffin

Commodity Chains

195

M Hassler

202

Communicable Diseases, Globalization of

J R Oppong

209

J Tima´r

214

Communist and Post-Communist Geographies Community

S C Aitken

Competitiveness

221

N Lewis

226

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

G J Andrews

Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems Computational Human Geography Concentrated Deconcentration Conservation and Ecology Consumption

234 D O’Sullivan

H Couclelis

Corbridge, S.

251

M Jay and M Morad

259 268

J Baxter

275

M S Kumar

281

B Ramı´rez

Core-Periphery Models Corporate Responsibilities

286

A Hughes and F Wray

Corridor and Axis Development Cosgrove, D.

245

B Lambregts

D Leslie

Content Analysis

239

L Albrechts and T Tasan-Kok

K D Lilley

292 298 305

Cosmopolitanism

J Binnie, J J Holloway, S Millington, and C Young

307

Counter-Mapping

R Rundstrom

314

Counterurbanization Cox, K. Creativity

C J A Mitchell and C R Bryant

H van der Wusten

319 325

A Currah

327

Crime/Fear of Crime

H Koskela

334

Critical Cartography

D Wood and J Krygier

340

Critical Geography

U Best

345

Critical Geopolitics

J P Sharp

358

Critical GIS

N Schuurman

Critical Rationalism (After Popper)

363 D Bennett

Critical Realism/Critical Realist Geographies Critical Theory (After Habermas) Cross-Cultural Research Cultural Capital Cultural Economy

M Phillips

T Skelton

J L Waters A C Pratt

Andy C Pratt

369 379 385 398 404 407

Contents

xli

Cultural Geography

C Gibson and G Waitt

411

Cultural Materialism

G Helms

425

Cultural Politics

S Rycroft

431

Cultural Studies and Human Geography Cultural Turn Culture

D Bell

437

C Philo

442

K J Mee

Culture/Natures

451 J Sundberg and J Dempsey

Cumulative Causation

458

E Delaney and J W Harrington, Jr.

Cyberspace/Cyberculture

D Bell

464 468

VOLUME 3 D Darby, H. C.

R A Butlin

1

Darwinism (and Social Darwinism) Dear, M. J. Debt

H Winlow

4

A Latham

12

David Simon

Deconstruction

16

C Barnett

Defensible Space

23

E Warwick

Deforestation

31

J J Metz

De-Industrialization De-Localization Democracy

39

A Pike

51

A Kalogeressis and L Labrianidis

60

C Barnett and M Low

70

Demography

P Rees

75

Dependency

E Hartwick

91

Desertification

C J Barrow

96

Determinism/Environmental Determinism

H Ernste and C Philo

102

Development I

K D Willis and M S Kumar

111

Development II

B Korf

117

Developmentalism Devolution

M Watts

123

M Keating

131

Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism Dialogism (After Bakhtin)

J Holloway and J Kneale

Diaries (Video, Audio or Written) Diaspora Dicken, P.

P Meth

K McKittrick

143 150

162 T Jazeel

L A Brown

Digital Data, Historical Geography and Digital Divide

137

156

J V Beaverstock

Difference/Politics of Difference Diffusion

E Swyngedouw

164 170

H Southall

T Unwin and G de Bastion

185 191

xlii

Contents

Digital Earth

G A Elmes, D Weiner, and C D’Alessandro-Scarpari

Disability and Chronic Illness Discourse

R Wilton and J Evans

T Cresswell

Discourse Analysis

198 205 211

L D Berg

215

Disease Diffusion

A Schærstro¨m

222

Disease Mapping

T Koch

234

Distance

G H Pirie

Dudley Stamp, L.

242

D Linehan

Dutch Human Geography Dwelling

252

H Ernste and L Smith

O Jones

255 266

E East Asian Miracle East/West

C Dixon

273

A Bonnett

280

e-Business and e-Commerce Ecological Fallacy Ecology

K E Corey and M I Wilson

D Sui

291

P McManus

Economic Crises

294

M Webber

Economic Development, Rural Economic Geography

285

304 D Storey

T J Barnes

310 315

Economic Geography, Quantitative

E Sheppard and P Plummer

328

Economics and Human Geography

J R Faulconbridge and S Hall

332

Economies, Alternative

S Healy

338

Economies, Borderland

M Tykkylaïnen

345

H D Watts

354

Economies, Branch Plant Economies, Imagined

A Cameron

Economy, Informal

S Turner

361 367

Ecotourism

D A Fennell

372

Edge Cities

N A Phelps

377

Edge Effects

I Yamada

381

Education

N Lewis

Electoral Cartography Electoral Districts

A Kavanagh J I Leib and G R Webster

Electoral Geography Embeddedness

C Pattie and R Johnston M Hess

Embodied Knowing Emigration

B S A Yeoh

Emotional Knowing

399 405

429 434

J Davidson and M Smith L Bondi

M Power

Empowerment

396

423

R Longhurst

Emotional Geographies

Empire

389

R Scheyvens

440 446 453 464

Contents Enlightenment Geography Enterprise Discourse Entrepreneurship

C W J Withers

471

P M O’Neill

487

E Stam

492

Entropy-Maximising Models Environment

xliii

R Johnston and C Pattie

S Eden

499 505

Environment, Historical Geography of Environmental Hazards

S W Trimble, M P Conzen, and E K Z Zygmut

G A Tobin and B E Montz

517 521

Environmental Health

S J Elliott

528

Environmental Justice

A A Lehtinen

535

Environmental Policy

C Cocklin

Environmental Regulation

540

P McManus

Environmental Security

546

J Barnett

553

Environmental Studies and Human Geography Environmentalism

A Davies

Epidemiological Transition Equity

C Sneddon

565

K McCracken and D R Phillips

J Wiles and A Kobayashi

Error (Propagation and Modeling) Ethical Issues in Research Ethnic Conflict

580 S Gopal

586

R Dowling

595 601

L Lo

608

W Li and E Skop

615

Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of Ethnography

Evans, E. E.

632 638

M Kuus

644 J W Scott

649

M C Keane

Evolutionary Algorithms

658

N Xiao

Existentialism/Existential Geography Experimental Design Exploration

E Laurier

J Sundberg

Europe of Regions

620 626

Ethnomethodology/Ethnomethodological Geography

Europe

D P Nally

K E Till

Eurocentrism

571

O Yiftachel

Ethnic Economies Ethnicity

558

660 D Seamon and J Sowers

S Bell

672

S A Royle

676

Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis Export Processing Zones Extended Metropolitan Region

666

S Dall’erba

683

F Wu

691

V F S Sit

697

VOLUME 4 F Factor Analysis and Principal-Components Analysis Fair Trade

L T Raynolds

F Wang

1 8

xliv

Contents

Famine

P J Atkins

14

Fatherland/Homeland

R Kaiser

Feminism and Work

21

J Pollard

Feminism, Maps and GIS

29

M Pavlovskaya

Feminism/Feminist Geography

37

L C Johnson

44

Feminist Geography, Prehistory of

S Bowlby and J Tivers

59

Feminist Groups within Geography

K M Morin

64

Feminist Methodologies

D Thien

Feminist Political Economy Fertility

R B Sarma

79

Y Underhill-Sem

Festival and Spectacle

87

M Duffy

Feudalism and Feudal Society Field Geographies

Fieldwork

91

H Bradley and M Taylor

D Abbott J Chapman

112

F J Bosco and C M Moreno

119

C Lukinbeal

125

Finance, Historical Geographies of Finance, Offshore

M Purvis

130

S M Roberts

Financial Centers, International Financial Exclusion

139 D R Meyer

146

A Leyshon

153 w

Financial Knowledge

G L Clark, J C Marshall , and K Strauss

Financial Risks and Management Firms

P Bennett

159 167

M Taylor

173

First Law of Geography First World

98 106

Field Systems and Enclosure

Film

71

M F Goodchild

179

K D Willis

183

Flaˆneur, The

A Latham

189

Fluidity–Fixity

P Adey

194

Focus Groups

A J Secor

200

Food Networks

P Richardson and S J Whatmore

Food Networks, Alternative Food Regimes Fordism

202

D Goodman and M K Goodman

B Pritchard

208 221

R Hudson

226

Fordism, Post-Fordism and Flexible Specialization Foreign Direct Investment

J Lovering

A Lagendijk and B Hendrikx

232 243

Foucauldianism

M Huxley

255

Fractal Analysis

N S Lam

263

Francophone Geography

G Benko and C Desbiens

Functionalism (Including Structural Functionalism) Fuzzy Set and Fuzzy Logic

w

Deceased, 22 August 2007.

Y Leung

J E Castro

271 277 283

Contents

xlv

G Gardens and Gardening Garrison, W.

David Crouch

R Morrill

294

Gated Communities/Privatopias Gay Geographies

R Atkinson and S Blandy

V Miller

Gender and Health

Gender in the City

302 309

J Little

315

Linda Peake

Gender, Historical Geographies of Genealogy and Family History

Generalization

L Price

328

S M Otterstrom

334 341

W A Mackaness and O Z Chaudhry E Hall

Gentrification

345 355

D J Hammel

Gentrification, Rural

360

M Phillips

Geocomputation

368

M Birkin

Geodemographics Geodesy

320

´ Crowley U

Genealogy Method

297

J Wiles

Gender and Rurality

Genetics

289

376

M Birkin and G P Clarke

382

J Hessler

390

Geographical Journals

L D Berg

394

Geographical Masking

G Rushton

402

Geographically Weighted Regression Geography, History of

A Paéz and D C Wheeler

A Maddrell

407 415

Geohistory

P Claval

429

Geomatics

M Duckham, A Kealy, and J Wallace

435

Geopolitics

P Reuber

441

Geopolitics and Religion

G Dijkink

453

X Yao

458

K C Clarke

466

Georeferencing, Geocoding Geospatial Intelligence Geovisualization

M J Kraak

468

German-Language Geography Gerrymandering Ghettos

M Hess

481

R Morrill

486

T Slater

492

GIS and Cartography GIS and Society

M F Goodchild

500

T Nyerges

506

GIS, Mobile and Locational Based Services

J Raper

513

GIS, Public Participation

S Elwood

520

GIScience and Systems

M F Goodchild

526

Global Commodity Chains Global Positioning/GPS Global Production Networks

L van Grunsven

539

J Lee

548

N M Coe

Globalization and Transnational Corporations

556 P Dicken

563

xlvi

Contents

Globalization, Cultural

K N Rankin

Globalization, Economic

570

H W-c Yeung

581

Golledge, R.

G Rushton

587

Gottmann, J.

L Muscara`

590

Governance

M Goodwin

593

D Wo´jcik

Governance, Corporate Governance, Good

G Williams

Governance, Transport

606

I Docherty and J Shaw

Governance, Urban

M Raco

Green Revolution

628

J Briggs

Greenfield Development

634

P Breathnach

639

B Warf

Grounded Theory

615 622

J Ha¨kli

Governmentality

Gregory, D.

600

644

M Cope

Growth Poles, Growth Centers

647 U Rossi

651

VOLUME 5 H Habitus

G Setten

Hagerstrand, T. Haggett, P.

1

R Flowerdew

4

R Flowerdew

9

Haptic or Touch-Based Knowledge Harley, J. B.

N Collins-Kreiner

Hartshorne, R. Harvey, D.

R D Jacobson

19

F Harvey

21

K Woodward and J P Jones III

Health and Development

13

S Asthana

24 28

Health Geography

G Moon

35

Health Inequalities

D Dorling and R Mitchell and S Orford and M Shaw, and H Tunstall

46

Health Services Restructuring

T Brown

Health Systems and Health Services Healthcare Accessibility Hegemony Heritage

J S Humphreys and K B Smith

J Glassman

R Jones G J Ashworth

Heritage and Identity

J D Bohland and E Hague D Bell

M Hoyler

High-Tech Industry

71

91

Heritage and Economy

Heteronormativity

58

80

C Kelly

Heritage and Culture

Hettner, A.

R Barnett and P Barnett

51

Y Zhou

98 104 109 115 120 122

Contents J Tima´r and Z Kovaćs

Hinterland Development

xlvii 128

Historical Geographies, Rural

P J Duffy

136

Historical Geographies, Urban

A Golan

146

Historical Geography

G M Winder

152

Historical Geography, Evolution of

J M Powell

158

Historical-Geographical Materialism

S Kirsch

163

HIV/AIDS in Developed Countries

M Sothern

169

HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries

W T S Gould

173

Home

T Peil

180

Homelessness

J May

Homelessness, Rural Housing

185 P Milbourne

191

M Pacione

196

Housing, Neighbourhoods and Health Housing, Rural

N Gallent

Hub Network Location

Human Rights

213

C Gibson

218

R Honey

232

Humanism/Humanistic Geography Human-Nonhuman

J M Smith

E J Roe

239 251

D P Tolia-Kelly

Hypothesis Testing

201 207

M E O’Kelly

Human Geography

Hybridity

J Dunn

258

R Haines-Young and R Fish

264

I Idealism/Idealist Human Geography Identity and Otherness, Rural Identity Politics Ideology

L Guelke

J Agyeman and S Neal

A Kobayashi

271 277 282

K R Olwig

287

Immigration I

J L Waters

297

Immigration II

I H Burnley

308

Imperial Cities

A D King

317

Imperialism, Cultural

S P Mains

Imperialistic Geographies Indian Ocean Indigeneity

322

G M Winder

S Chaturvedi

344

E Cameron and S de Leeuw, and M Greenwood

Indigenous Geographies

R Howitt and S Muller, and S Suchet-Pearson

Indigenous Health and Medicine Indigenous Knowledges Indigenous Mapping Industrial City

330

K Wilson and C Richmond

J Mistry J Corbett and M Chapin and L Gibson, and G Rambaldi

R Harris

352 358 365 371 377 383

Industrial Districts

F Celata and U Rossi

389

Industrial Location

K Chapman

396

xlviii

Contents

Industrial Organization Industrial Parks

J Patchell

S M Walcott

Industrial Restructuring Industrialization

408

R Hudson

419 R Lewis

433

A G Aguilar and E P Campuzano

Informalization

D Vaiou

Information Graphics

Informational City

459

B Parthasarathy

469

J Rutherford

475

R Sternberg

Input–Output Analysis

481

G J D Hewings and M Sonis

Institutionalism/Institutional Geographies Integrated Spatial Data Infrastructure Intensive/Extensive Research Interdisciplinarity

D Mackinnon R Foley

Intermodality

K Falconer Al-Hindi

529 R Peet

Internationalization of Education Internet, Economic Geography

536

J L Waters

548

M Zook

555

M-J Kraak

Internet-Based Measurement

562

M Dodge and M Zook

Interviews: In-Depth, Semi-Structured Investment Promotion

R Longhurst

N A Phelps

598

E Clark

Italian Language Geography

580

590

N AlSayyad and I Tu¨reli

Island Development

569

585

G W White

Islamic Urbanism

512

523

A R Goetz

Internet/Web Mapping

499

517

M Parnwell

International Organizations

491

507

P Raento

Intermediate Technology

446 454

A L Griffin

Information Technology

Irredentism

426

G DeVerteuil

Informal Sector

Innovation

413

D Simandan

Industry, Historical Geographies of Inequality

402

607 C Minca

Ivy League and Geography in the US

611 R Wright and N Koch

616

VOLUME 6 J Jackson, P.

C Dwyer

Japanese Geography Johnston, R. J.

1 A Saito and F Mizuoka

James D Sidaway

4 11

Contents

xlix

K Knowledge and Education, Historical Geographies of Knowledge Communities

S Pinch

Knowledge Intensive Business Services

P Wood

J O’Loughlin and E Holland

Kriging and Variogram Models Kropo´tkin, P.

15 25

´ Riain A Kerr and S O

Knowledge Economy

Kolossov, V.

R A Butlin

31 37 45

C A Calder and N Cressie

G Kearns

49 56

L Labor Control Regime Labor Flexibility

A E G Jonas

C Benner

Labor Geography

66

T D Rutherford

Labor Market

72

P Carmody

Labor Markets, Regional Labor Unionism

79

A E Green

85

A Herod

Lacoste, Y.

91

F Eva

Lamarck(ian)ism

97

H Winlow

Land Change Science

Land Rights

99

B L Turner II

107

J Ja¨ger

Land Rent Theory

112

R Howitt

Landscape

118

J Dubow

124

Landscape Iconography

S Hoelscher

Landscape Perception Language

132

K M Morin

140

R Jones

146

Language and Research

A Aylett and T J Barnes

153

Cristo´bal Kay

159

Latin American Structuralist School Law and Law Enforcement Learning Regions Leisure

D Delaney

165

B T Asheim

172

J Mansvelt

179

Lesbian Geographies Ley, D.

59

K Browne and C J Nash

P Jackson

Liberalism

193

E Gilbert

195

Life Course Approaches Literature Livelihoods

R Fincher

207

M Brosseau

212

F Owusu

219

Local Development

G Garofoli

Local Economic Development

225 S Conti and P Giaccaria

Local Economic Development, Politics of Local–Global

187

M Haldrup

K R Cox

233 239 245

l

Contents

Locality Debates

P Cooke

Location Analysis

M W Horner

Location Theory Logistics

256 263

A T Murray

270

M Hesse and J-P Rodrigue

277

Longitudinal Methods (Cohort Analysis, Life Tables) Los Angeles School of Post-Modern Urbanism Lowenthal, D.

S D Withers B Hooper

J R Gold

Lusophone Geography

285 293 298

J Gaspar

300

M Mackinder, H. J.

G Kearns

Malls/Retail Parks Map Hacking

309

G A Rice

312

E Mac Gillavry

318

R Edsall

323

Map Interactivity

Map Libraries and Archives

R B Parry

Map Perception and Cognition Map Types

S M Freundschuh

D Wood and J B Krygier

Mapping Agencies

329 334 339

C Perkins

344

Mapping, Commercial

B Hunt

351

Mapping, Cyberspace

M Zook and M Dodge

356

Mapping, Distributed

W Cartwright

Mapping, Non-Western

M W Pearce

Mapping, Philosophy

C Perkins

Mapping, Race and Ethnicity Mapping, Topographic Maps

H Winlow

P Collier

D Wood and J Krygier

Maps and Governance Maps and Protest

D Wood and J Krygier M Farish

Markov Chain Analysis

372 385 398 409 421

F Harvey

Maps and the State

368

431 436 442

W Li and C Zhang

455

Marxism/Marxist Geography I

A Cumbers

461

Marxism/Marxist Geography II

A Jones

474

Masculinism

A Bain

486

Masculinities

B van Hoven and P Hopkins

492

Massey, D. Material Culture

T Skelton D P Tolia-Kelly

497 500

Material, The

A Tay

505

McDowell, L.

A Jones

511

Contents

li

VOLUME 7 M Media

D B Clarke

1

Medical Geography

R Earickson

9

Medieval Geography

K D Lilley

21

Medieval Historical Geographies Mega-Cities

R Jones

Y-M Yeung

Meinig, D.

40

K M Dunn

48

Memorials and Monuments Memory

D H Alderman and O J Dwyer

S McDowell

Mental Health

64

S Bell

70

Me´tropole d’e´quilibre

G Burgel

Middle East and North Africa Migrant Workers Migration

76

M E Bonine

C Cindy Fan

P Boyle

96

Military and Geography Military Geographies

W Jenkins

116

R Woodward

122

J H McKendrick

P Merriman C G Pooley

J R Gold

157 R N Gwynne

Modifiable Areal Unit Problem Monte Carlo Simulation Moral Economies

169

S Ratick and G Schwarz

175

Multiculturalism

185

G Setten and K M Brown

Movies and Films, Analysis of Multicultural City

S C Aitken

H Hoernig and M Walton-Roberts J Clayton

Multidimensional Scaling

164

D W Wong

L McDowell

Moral Landscapes

144 150

D Linehan

Modernization Theory

128 134

Mobility, History of Everyday

Modernity

108

M Farish

Mixed and Multiple Methods

Modern City

82 89

Migration, Historical Geographies of

Mobility

51 59

C J Smith

Mental Maps

32

191 196 201 211

W M Bowen

216

N Nation

J Penrose

National Parks

223

N Curry

National Schools of Geography National Spatialities

T Edensor

229 P Claval

236 242

lii

Contents

Nationalism

D H Kaplan

248

Nationalism, Historical Geography of

M A Busteed

255

Natural Resources

G Bridge

261

Naturalistic Testing

R D Jacobson

269

Nature

K R Olwig

275

Nature, Historical Geographies of Nature, History of

P Holland and A Wearing

286

M Tanskanen

293

S Fullagar

298

Nature, Performing Nature, Social

N Argent

303

Nature-Culture

O Jones

309

Natures, Charismatic

J Lorimer

Natures, Gendered

C Radel

Natures, Postcolonial

331

M Sioh

Neighborhood Change

337

J Kenny

Neighborhood Effects

343

Sang-Il Lee

Neighborhoods and Community Neocolonialism

324

349

J Flint

354

M Watts

360

Neoliberal Economic Strategies Neoliberalism

R Le Heron

365

W Larner

374

Neoliberalism and Development Neoliberalism, Urban

W E Murray

379

W Larner

385

Network Analysis

M J Kuby and T D Roberts and C D Upchurch, and S Tierney

391

Network Regions

P Cooke

399

Networks

G Grabher

405

Networks, Urban

N Clarke

414

Neural Networks

I Casas

419

New Regionalism New Towns

G MacLeod K Kafkoula

New Urbanism NIMBY

423 428

E J McCann

438

P Hubbard

444

Nongovernmental Organizations

Saraswati Raju

Non-Representational Theory/Non-Representational Geographies Nordic Geography

K Simonsen

Nordplan and Nordregio North–South

450 L Cadman

456 464

G Olsson

469

A McGregor and D Hill

473

VOLUME 8 O Oceania

W E Murray

Oceanographic Mapping

1 D M Lawrence

14

Contents Oceans

liii

P E Steinberg

21

M Gren

27

Olsson, G. Oral History

M Boyle

30

Oral History, Ecological Orientalism

A Nightingale

34

M Haldrup and L Koefoed

37

Other/Otherness

J-F Staszak

43

Overlay (in GIS)

O Ahlqvist

48

Oxbridge Geographies

E Pawson

56

P Paasi, A.

R Jones

Pacific Rim

63

X Chen

66

Parenting/Motherhood/Fatherhood Participant Observation Participation

S C Aitken

K Walsh

77

S Hickey and U Kothari

Participatory Action Research Participatory Video Patriarchy

82

S Kindon and R Pain and M Kesby

S Kindon

Peet, R.

102 J D van der Ploeg

108

A Kobayashi

People’s Geography

114

D Mitchell

Performance, Research as

116

F Morton

Performative and Embodied Mapping Performativity

120 C Perkins

D P McCormack

Philosophy and Human Geography

G Backhaus

S Elden

Photogrammetry/Aerial Photography

137 145

P Collier

R Sanders

151 157

Physical Geography and Human Geography T Cresswell

Place Names

126 133

Phenomenology/Phenomenological Geography

Photographs

90 96

C J Nash

Peasant Agriculture

Place

72

S Harrison

163 169

V R Savage

178

Place, Politics of

L A Staeheli and D Mitchell

185

Planning, Urban

M Huxley

193

Plant Geographies

A Franklin

Point Pattern Analysis Policing

199

E Delmelle

N R Fyfe

Political Boundaries Political Ecology

204 212

A Paasi

217

R P Neumann

228

Political Economy, Geographical Political Geography Political Representation

D Storey B Forest

R Le Heron

234 243 254

liv

Contents

Polycentricity

P Hall

Polyvocality

260

Saraswati Raju

Popular Culture

J Dittmer

Population Geography

269

A J Bailey

Port-Industrial Complexes

274

M Dunford and G Yeung

Positivism/Positivist Geography Possibilism

265

285

D Bennett

295

V Berdoulay

Postcolonial Cities

312

A D King

321

Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies Postconflict Geographies Postdevelopment

C McEwan

J O’Loughlin

334

J Nederveen Pieterse

339

Posthumanism/Posthumanistic Geographies Postmodern City

J Lorimer

344

S Warren

Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography

355 C Minca

363

Post-Phenomenology/Post-Phenomenological Geographies Post-Productivist and Multifunctional Agriculture

J Lea

G A Wilson

L Sy´kora

Post-Socialist Cities

K Woodward and D P Dixon, and J P Jones, III

A O Chimhowu

Poverty, Rural

379

396 408

A R Tickamyer

Pragmatism/Pragmatist Geographies Pred, A.

373

387

Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies Poverty

327

416 S J Smith

421

B Warf

426

Pregnancy and Childbirth Private/Public Divide

E Chacko

429

D Collins

437

Privatization

P M O’Neill

442

Probabilism

R Flowerdew

448

Probability Models Projections Protest, Rural Psychoanalysis

R Flowerdew

451

F C Kessler

455

M Woods

474

P T Kingsbury

480

Psychoanalytic Theory/Psychoanalytic Geographies Psychotherapy/Psychotherapeutic Geographies

P T Kingsbury L Bondi

487 495

Public Good

K R Cox

501

Public Policy

M Perry

506

Public Space

D Mitchell and L A Staeheli

511

Public Spaces, Urban

D Collins and B-M Shantz

517

Contents

lv

VOLUME 9 Q Q Method/Analysis

P Robbins

1

Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Qualitative Spatial Reasoning Quantitative Data

M Cope and J-K Jung

R Billen and N Van de Weghe

M Charlton

Quantitative Methodologies

27

T J Barnes

Queer Theory/Queer Geographies Questionnaire Survey

12 19

M F Goodchild

Quantitative Revolution

7

33 K Browne

39

V Preston

46

R Race

J Winders

53

Racism and Antiracism

A Nayak

Radical Environmentalism Radical Geography

I G Simmons

65

R Peet

Radical Political Economy Railways

59

73

F Mizuoka

83

J Shaw and I Docherty

91

Rational Choice Theory (and Rational Choice Marxism) Reclus, E.

J P Clark T R Slater

M B Aalbers R Black

Regeneration to Renaissance

125

T Butler

130

J Tomaney

Regional Actors

136

M Tewdwr-Jones and A Lord

Regional Competition, Regional Dumping Regional Connectivity

111 117

Refugees and Displacement

Region

100 107

Redbrick University Geography in Britain Redlining

G Bridge

151

I M M Pires

M Sokol

156 165

Regional Development and Noneconomic Factors Regional Development and Technology

J O Bærenholdt

J R L Howells

181 187

Regional Development Models

M Dunford

192

Regional Development Theory

P Nijkamp and M Abreu

202

Regional Development, Endogenous

F To¨dtling

208

Regional Geography I

A Paasi

214

Regional Geography II

D MacKinnon

228

Regional Inequalities

M Dunford

Regional Innovation Systems Regional Integration

236

J Revilla Diez and M Kiese

A Cumbers

Regional Planning and Development Theories Regional Production Networks

D W Edgington

246 252

E W Soja

259 271

lvi

Contents

Regional Science

H G Overman

Regionalisations, Everyday Regionalism

279

B Werlen

286

J Tomaney

294

Regionalization/Zoning Systems

N K Shortt

298

J Pearce

302

Regression, Linear and Nonlinear Regulation

G MacLeod and A Holden

Relational Economic Geography Reliability and Validity

N M Rantisi and J S Boggs

320

L Kong

324

B Page

Remote Sensing

329

J M Read and M Torrado

Representation and Re-presentation Representation, Politics of Representation-Mapping

A Kobayashi

J Mennis

357

R Johnston

364

J Cupples

Resource Industries

370

Resource Management, Rural

Rio Summit

H Neo

R Hayter

Retail Geographies

347 351

Resource and Environmental Economics

Ritter, C.

335

H V Scott

Research Funding Bodies Resistance

314

O Ahlqvist

Religion/Spirituality/Faith Remittances

309

376 381

L M B Harrington

390

N Wrigley

398

E S Norman and D Carr

406

M Doevenspeck

River Basin Development Rural Communities

412 C Fox

414

S Salamon and K A MacTavish

423

Rural Geography

M Woods

429

Rural Populations

K H Halfacree

442

Rurality and Post-Rurality

K H Halfacree

Russian-Language Geography

449

V Kolossov and A Treivish

457

VOLUME 10 S Sampling

L Lo

Santos, M. Sauer, C. Scale

1

M A de Souza M Williams

15

N F Sayre and A V Di Vittorio

Scale Analytical

Scientific Method

19

T W Crawford

Science and Scientism, Cartography

Scott, A.

11

R Flowerdew

C Gibson

29 D Turnbull

37 43 46

Contents Second Homes

M Haldrup

Second World Segregation

lvii 50

J Oldfield

56

M F Poulsen

63

Segregation Indices

D W Wong

70

Segregation, Urban

R Atkinson and J McGarrigle

76

Selection Bias

T J Cooke

81

Self-Other

D Sibley

85

Semiotics

K E Foote and M Azaryahu

89

Sense of Place

K E Foote and M Azaryahu

Sensorium

D McCormack

Services, Professional Services, Rural Sexuality

101

A James

106

A C Vias

112

P Howell

Shift-Share Analysis Simulation

119 R W Jackson and K E Haynes

S M Manson A Kobayashi

138

D Pinder

144

Situationism/Situationist Geography

Slums

Q Stevens

151

R Harris

Smith, N.

157

A L Hansen

Social Capital

163

A Bebbington

165

Social Capital, Place and Health Social Class

L Twigg and J Mohan

N Duncan

Social Geography

Social Movements

185

K Newman

195

M Ramutsindela

199

Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge

S M Ruddick

217

A Latham

Soundscapes South Asia Southeast Asia

204 212

Sound and Music

Sovereignty

B Greenhough

S Engel-Di Mauro

Society–Space Soja, E.

171 179

R Panelli

Social Justice, Urban

Socialism

125 132

Situated Knowledge, Reflexivity

Situationist City

96

227

M Duffy

230

A Saldanha

236

G P Chapman

241

Eric C Thompson M Coleman

248 255

Space I

S Elden

262

Space II

R Kitchin

268

Space-Time

J D Gatrell and E W LaFary

Space-Time Modeling

M Yuan

Spanish Language Geography Spatial Analysis, Critical

276 286

A Albet and P Zusman

T Schwanen

296 302

lviii

Contents

Spatial Autocorrelation

D A Griffith

308

Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of

Y Lu

Spatial Data Mining, Cluster and Pattern Recognition Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization Spatial Data Models

T A Arentze

C Kim

337

A C Winstanley

Spatial Division of Labor

345

A Smith

Spatial Expansion Method

348

E Casetti

355

Spatial Filtering/Kernel Density Estimation Spatial Interaction Models Spatial Interpolation

G Rushton and C Tiwari

M E O’Kelly

369

N Schuurman

Spatial Science

377

Ron Johnston

384

Spatially Autoregressive Models Squatter Settlements

D A Griffith

396

K D Willis

403

M Jones

State Theory

359 365

N S Lam

Spatial Ontologies

325 332

L Bian

Spatial Databases

State

317

409

B Jessop

Statistics, Descriptive

416

J Lee

422

Statistics, Inferential

D M Scott

429

Statistics, Overview

G M Robinson

436

Statistics, Spatial Storper, M.

D J Unwin

452

P Sunley

458

Street Names and Iconography

M Azaryahu

460

VOLUME 11 S Structural Adjustment

G Mohan

Structural Equations Models Structural Marxism

1

P L Mokhtarian and D T Ory

A Kent

18

Structuralism/Structuralist Geography Structuration Theory

R G Smith

R Lippuner and B Werlen

Structurationist Geography Subaltern

10

B Werlen

C McEwan

30 39 50 59

Subalternity

V Gidwani

65

Subjectivity

J P Sharp

72

Suburbanization Superpower

A Mace J O’Loughlin

Surrealism/Surrealist Geographies Surveillance

77

M Henry

82 D Pinder

87 95

Contents Surveying

U F Paleo

Sustainability

100

T Marsden

Sustainability, Urban

103

M Whitehead

Sustainable Development

109

J A Elliott

Symbolic Interactionism

117

V J Del Casino, Jr. and D Thien

Symbolism, Iconography Systems

132

M Denil

138

G P Chapman

Systems Theory

lix

146

D Straussfogel and C von Schilling

151

T Taylor, G.

J M Powell

159

Taylor, P.

J Glassman

162

Technological Change

G Norcliffe

165

Technology and Regional Development Technology Industries

Territory and Territoriality

183 B Doman´ski

D Delaney

Theocracy

J M Smith

215

D Wilson

220

Nick Megoran

Therapeutic Landscapes Thiessen Polygon Third World

223 W M Gesler

229

L Mu

231

J Connell

Third World Cities

237

S Lloyd-Evans and R B Potter

247

U Strohmayer

256

Time and Historical Geography Time Geographic Analysis Time Geography

M Kurtz

259

M Dijst

266

M Gren

Time Series Analysis

279

G M Robinson

Time-Space Diaries

285

T Schwanen

294

T Edensor

Tourism, Rural

301

M Cawley

Tourism, Urban

313

T Hall

318

J P H Poon

324

Trade, International

R Grant

329

Trade, Transport and Communications, Historical Geographies of Transatlantic

196 209

Text, Textual Analysis

Trade Blocs

190

D Mustafa

Text and Textuality

Tourism

177

B Warf

Territorial Production Complexes

Thrift, N.

171

C G Alvstam

Telecommunications

Terrorism

J Zhang

M Sheller

338 345

Transcripts (Coding and Analysis) Transitional Economies

P J Hugill

J Round

M Cope

350 355

lx

Contents

Translation

F M Smith

361

Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries Transnational Elites

C Berndt

K Olds

376

Transnational Ethnic Networks Transnationalism

Jinn-Yuh Hsu

383

D Ley

388

Transnationalism and Labor Geography

P F Kelly

Transnationalism and Technology Transfer Transnationality

368

J-Y Hsu

S Huang

394 400 404

Transport and Accessibility

J Gutie´rrez

410

Transport and Deregulation

P White and A Sturt

418

Transport and Globalization

K O’Connor

424

Transport and Social Exclusion Transport and Sustainability Transport Geography

J Hine

429

K Button

435

R D Knowles

441

Transport, Public

J Preston

452

Transport, Rural

D Banister

460

B P Y Loo

465

Transport, Urban

Transportation and Land Use Travel and Travel-Writing

476

D J Unwin

484

A Nightingale

Tropical Geography Tuan, Y-F

470

R Phillips

Trend Surface Models Triangulation

S-L Shaw

489

M Power

493

T Cresswell

499

VOLUME 12 U Uncertainty

M F Goodchild

1

Underclass

C Haylett

6

Uneven Development

B Christophers

Uneven Regional Development Urban Architecture Urban Design

R Hudson

P Kraftl

Urban Habitats/Nature Urban Modeling

32 S Rodgers

40

J Byrne and J Wolch

M Batty

Urban Morphologies, Historical Urban Morphology

18 24

E Street

Urban Growth Machine

Urban Order

12

46 51

T R Slater

K D Lilley

66

M Jayne and D Bell

Urban Planning and Human Geography

59

70 J Dodson and B Gleeson

77

Contents Urban Policy

A Cochrane

Urban Regimes

84

M Lauria and R K Whelan

Urban Representation/Imagination Urban Village

P Kraftl and J Horton

G Crow

Urbanism

94

106

P Knox

112

Urban–Rural Continuum Utopian Cities

89

101

G Bridge

Urbanization

lxi

K H Halfacree

G Brown

119 125

V Venture Capital

C Mason

131

Vichianism (After Vico)

D Kunze

138

Vidal de la Blache, P.

G Mercier

147

Visuality

F MacDonald

Visualization, Feminist Voluntary Sector

M Pavlovskaya C Milligan

von Humboldt, A. Vulnerability

151 157 165

A Buttimer

171

B Wisner

176

W War

V Mamadouh

183

War, Historical Geography and Waste Management Water

N C Johnson

M Watson

Fiona Allon

Water Management

D Kay M Davidson

D Conradson

S C MacKian

Wetlands and Reclamation

215 222

R Lee and C Philo

Welfare Reform Wellbeing

207

S Batterbury

Welfare Geography

195 201

Waterfront Development Watts, M. J.

189

224 230 235

M G Hatvany

241

Whiteness

L Peake

247

Wilderness

C R Warren

254

Wilson, A.

G P Clarke

World/Global Cities World-System

B Derudder K Terlouw

Wreford Watson, J. Wright, J. K.

G M Robinson

I M Keighren

260 262 269 279 281

Y Youth/Youth Cultures Index

L Holt

283 289

SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION

CARTOGRAPHY AND GIS Art and Cartography Atlases Biodiversity Mapping Cartographic Animation Cartography, History of Cartography in Islamic Societies Census Geography Census Mapping Children and Mapping Color, Mapping Computational Human Geography Counter Mapping Critical Cartography Critical GIS Digital Data, Historical Geography and Digital Earth Disease Mapping Electoral Cartography Feminism, Maps and GIS Generalization Geodemographics Geodesy Geographical Masking Geomatics Georeferencing, Geocoding Geospatial Intelligence Geovisualization GIS and Cartography GIS and Society GIS, Mobile and Locational Based Services GIS, Public Participation GIScience and Systems Global Positioning/GPS Indigenous Mapping Information Graphics Integrated Spatial Data Infrastructure Internet/Web Mapping Map Hacking Map Interactivity Map Libraries and Archives Map Perception and Cognition

Map Types Mapping Agencies Mapping, Commercial Mapping, Cyberspace Mapping, Distributed Mapping, Non Western Mapping, Philosophy Mapping, Race and Ethnicity Mapping, Topographic Maps Maps and Governance Maps and Protest Maps and the State Oceanographic Mapping Performative and Embodied Mapping Photogrammetry/Aerial Photography Projections Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Qualitative Spatial Reasoning Quantitative Revolution Representation Mapping Science and Scientism, Cartography Space Time Modeling Spatial Databases Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization Spatial Ontologies Surveying Symbolism, Iconography DEVELOPMENT GEOGRAPHY Aid Brain Drain Brandt Commission Brown Agenda Child Labor Civil Society Colonialism I Colonialism II Colonialism, Internal Commodity Chains Debt Deforestation

lxiii

lxiv


Dependency Desertification Developmentalism Development I Development II Digital Divide East Asian Miracle Empire Empowerment Eurocentrism Export Processing Zones Extended Metropolitan Region Fair Trade Famine First World Global Commodity Chains Governance, Good Green Revolution Health and Development HIV/AIDS in Developing Countries Imperialism, Cultural Indigenous Geographies Indigenous Knowledges Informal Sector Intermediate Technology Latin American Structuralist School Livelihoods Locality Debates Migrant Workers Modernization Theory Neocolonialism Neoliberalism and Development Nongovernmental Organizations Orientalism Participation Postcolonial Cities Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies Postdevelopment Poverty Remittances Resistance Rio Summit* Second World Social Capital Squatter Settlements Structural Adjustment Sustainable Development Theocracy Third World Third World Cities Trade, International Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries Tropical Geography Vulnerability

DISCIPLINARY MATTERS Anglo American/Anglophone Hegemony Anthropology and Human Geography Chinese Language Geography Citation Geography Communist and Post Communist Geographies Critical Geography Cultural Studies and Human Geography Dutch Human Geography Economics and Human Geography Enlightenment Geography Environmental Studies and Human Geography Feminist Groups within Geography Francophone Geography Geographical Journals German Language Geography Historical Geography Human Geography Interdisciplinarity Italian Language Geography Ivy League and Geography in the US Japanese Geography Lusophone Geography Medieval Geography Military and Geography National Schools of Geography Nordic Geography Oxbridge Geographies Philosophy and Human Geography Physical Geography and Human Geography Redbrick University Geography in Britain Research Funding Bodies Russian Language Geography Spanish Language Geography Urban Planning and Human Geography ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY Agglomeration Business Services Capital and Space Capitalism Capitalism and Division of Labor Commodity Chains Competitiveness Consumption Core Periphery Models Corporate Responsibilities Corridor and Axis Development Creativity Cultural Economy Debt De Industrialization e Business and e Commerce Economic Crises


Economic Development, Rural Economic Geography Economic Geography, Quantitative Economics and Human Geography Economies, Alternative Economies, Borderland Economies, Branch Plant Economies, Imagined Economy, Informal Embeddedness Enterprise Discourse Entrepreneurship Environmental Regulation Ethnic Economies Export Processing Zones Fair Trade Feminism and Work Feminist Political Economy Finance, Historical Geographies of Finance, Offshore Financial Centers, International Financial Exclusion Financial Knowledge Financial Risks and Management Firms Food Networks Food Regimes Fordism Fordism, Post Fordism and Flexible Specialization Foreign Direct Investment Global Commodity Chains Global Production Networks Globalization and Transnational Corporations Globalization, Economic Governance, Corporate Growth Poles, Growth Centers Heritage and Economy High Tech Industry Industrial Districts Industrialization Industrial Location Industrial Organization Industrial Parks Industrial Restructuring Industry, Historical Geographies of Informal Sector Information Technology Innovation Internationalization of Education International Organizations Internet, Economic Geography Investment Promotion Knowledge and Education, Historical Geographies of Knowledge Communities Knowledge Economy

lxv

Knowledge Intensive Business Services Labor Control Regime Labor Flexibility Labor Geography Labor Market Labor Unionism Learning Regions Local Development Local Economic Development Local Economic Development, Politics of Locality Debates Location Theory Migrant Workers Modernization Theory Natural Resources Neoliberal Economic Strategies Networks Political Economy, Geographical Privatization Public Policy Radical Political Economy Regional Integration Regional Production Networks Relational Economic Geography Remittances Resource and Environmental Economics Resource Industries Retail Geographies Services, Professional Services, Rural Spatial Division of Labor State Theory Technological Change Technology and Regional Development Technology Industries Telecommunications Trade Blocs Trade, International Trade, Transport and Communications, Historical Geographies of Transitional Economies Transnational Corporations in Developing Countries Transnational Elites Transnational Ethnic Networks Transnationalism and Labor Geography Transnationalism and Technology Transfer Uneven Development Urban Growth Machine Venture Capital HEALTH AND MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY Ageing and Health Care/Caregiving Chronic Disease Communicable Diseases, Globalization of

lxvi


Complementary and Alternative Medicine Disability and Chronic Illness Disease Diffusion Environmental Health Epidemiological Transition Gender and Health Health and Development Healthcare Accessibility Health Geography Health Inequalities Health Services Restructuring Health Systems and Health Services HIV/AIDS in Developed Countries Housing, Neighbourhoods and Health Indigenous Health and Medicine Medical Geography Mental Health Pregnancy and Childbirth Social Capital, Place and Health Therapeutic Landscapes Voluntary Sector Welfare Reform Wellbeing HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY Agrarian Transformations Capitalism and Division of Labor Digital Data, Historical Geography and Environment, Historical Geography of Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of Exploration Feminist Geography, Prehistory of Feudalism and Feudal Society Field Systems and Enclosure Finance, Historical Geographies of Gender, Historical Geographies of Genealogy and Family History Geohistory Heritage and Culture Heritage and Economy Heritage and Identity Historical Geographies, Rural Historical Geographies, Urban Historical Geography Historical Geography, Evolution of Imperial Cities Imperialistic Geographies Industry, Historical Geographies of Knowledge and Education, Historical Geographies of Medieval Historical Geographies Memory Migration, Historical Geographies of Nationalism, Historical Geography of Nature, Historical Geographies of Nature, History of

Oral History Oral History, Ecological Street Names and Iconography Time and Historical Geography Trade, Transport and Communications, Historical Geographies of Urban Morphologies, Historical War, Historical Geography and METACONCEPTS Africa Americas Antarctica Arctic Asia Australasia Balkans Community Diffusion Distance East/West Environment Europe Indian Ocean Landscape Local–Global Memory Middle East and North Africa Mobility Nature Nature Culture North–South Oceania Oceans Pacific Rim Place Scale Self Other Society–Space South Asia Southeast Asia Space I Space II Space Time Territory and Territoriality Transatlantic METHODS Archives Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Autobiography Autoethnography Auto Photography Case Study Approach Categorical Data Analysis


Cellular Automata Census Mapping Chaos and Complexity Choice Modeling Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems Content Analysis Cross Cultural Research Diaries (Video, Audio or Written) Discourse Analysis Ecological Fallacy Edge Effects Embodied Knowing Emotional Knowing Entropy Maximising Models Error (Propagation and Modeling) Ethical Issues in Research Ethnography Evolutionary Algorithms Experimental Design Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis Factor Analysis and Principal Components Analysis Feminist Methodologies Fieldwork First Law of Geography Focus Groups Fractal Analysis Fuzzy Set and Fuzzy Logic Genealogy Method Geocomputation Geographical Masking Geographically Weighted Regression Georeferencing, Geocoding Grounded Theory Haptic or Touch Based Knowledge Hub Network Location Hypothesis Testing Input–Output Analysis Intensive/Extensive Research Internet Based Measurement Interviews: In Depth, Semi Structured Kriging and Variogram Models Landscape Iconography Landscape Perception Language and Research Life Course Approaches Location Analysis Longitudinal Methods (Cohort Analysis, Life Tables) Markov Chain Analysis Masculinism Mental Maps Mixed and Multiple Methods Modifiable Areal Unit Problem Monte Carlo Simulation Movies and Films, Analysis of

lxvii

Multidimensional Scaling Naturalistic Testing Neighborhood Effects Network Analysis Neural Networks Oral History Oral History, Ecological Overlay (in GIS) Participant Observation Participatory Action Research Participatory Video Performance, Research as Photographs Point Pattern Analysis Polyvocality Psychoanalysis Q Method/Analysis Qualitative Geographic Information Systems Quantitative Data Quantitative Methodologies Questionnaire Survey Regionalization/Zoning Systems Regression, Linear and Nonlinear Reliability and Validity Remote Sensing Representation and Re presentation Sampling Scale Analytical Scientific Method Segregation Indices Selection Bias Semiotics Shift Share Analysis Simulation Situated Knowledge, Reflexivity Sound and Music Space Time Modeling Spatial Analysis, Critical Spatial Autocorrelation Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of Spatial Data Mining, Cluster and Pattern Recognition Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization Spatial Data Models Spatial Expansion Method Spatial Filtering/Kernel Density Estimation Spatial Interaction Models Spatial Interpolation Spatially Autoregressive Models Statistics, Descriptive Statistics, Inferential Statistics, Overview Statistics, Spatial Structural Equations Models Subalternity Subjectivity

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Text, Textual Analysis Thiessen Polygon Time Geographic Analysis Time Series Analysis Time Space Diaries Transcripts (Coding and Analysis) Translation Trend Surface Models Triangulation Uncertainty Visualization, Feminist NATURE/ENVIRONMENT Agrarian Transformations Agri Environmentalism and Rural Change Animal Geographies Biodiversity Biodiversity Mapping Climate Change Conservation and Ecology Culture/Natures Deforestation Desertification Ecotourism Environment Environmental Hazards Environmental Health Environmentalism Environmental Justice Environmental Policy Environmental Regulation Environmental Security Environmental Studies and Human Geography Environment, Historical Geography of Gardens and Gardening Green Revolution Land Change Science National Parks Natural Resources Nature Nature, Historical Geographies of Nature, History of Nature, Performing Nature, Social Natures, Charismatic Natures, Gendered Natures, Postcolonial Plant Geographies Political Ecology Radical Environmentalism Resource and Environmental Economics Resource Management, Rural Sustainability Sustainable Development Urban Habitats/Nature

Waste Management Water Management Wetlands and Reclamation Wilderness PEOPLE Barnes, T. Beaujeu Garnier, J. Berry, B. Bobek, H. Bowman, I. Christaller, W. Claval, P. Cloke, P. Cohen, S. Corbridge, S. Cosgrove, D. Cox, K. Darby, H. C. Dear, M. J. Dicken, P. Dudley Stamp, L. Evans, E. E. Garrison, W. Golledge, R. Gottmann, J. Gregory, D. Hagerstrand, T. Haggett, P. Harley, J. B. Hartshorne, R. Harvey, D. Hettner, A. Jackson, P. Johnston, R. J. Kolossov, V. Kropo´tkin, P. Lacoste, Y. Ley, D. Lowenthal, D. Mackinder, H. J. Massey, D. McDowell, L. Meinig, D. Olsson, G. Paasi, A. Peet, R. Pred, A. Reclus, E. Ritter, C. Santos, M. Sauer, C. Scott, A. Smith, N. Soja, E.


Storper, M. Taylor, G. Taylor, P. Thrift, N. Tuan, Y. F. Vidal de la Blache, P. von Humboldt, A. Watts, M. J. Wilson, A. Wreford Watson, J. Wright, J. K. PHILOSOPHY AND GEOGRAPHY Activist Geographies Actor Network Theory/Network Geographies Anarchism/Anarchist Geography Anthropogeography (After Ratzel) Applied Geography Avant Garde/Avant Garde Geographies Behavioral Geography Berkeley School Chicago School Christian Geography Cognitive Geography Computational Human Geography Critical Geography Critical Rationalism (After Popper) Critical Realism/Critical Realist Geographies Critical Theory (After Habermas) Cultural Materialism Cultural Turn Darwinism (and Social Darwinism) Deconstruction Determinism/Environmental Determinism Developmentalism Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism Dialogism (After Bakhtin) Ecology Ethnomethodology/Ethnomethodological Geography Existentialism/Existential Geography Feminism/Feminist Geography Feminist Geography, Prehistory of Feminist Political Economy Field Geographies Fluidity–Fixity Foucauldianism Functionalism (Including Structural Functionalism) Geography, History of GIS and Society Historical Geographical Materialism Humanism/Humanistic Geography Human Nonhuman Idealism/Idealist Human Geography Indigenous Geographies Institutionalism/Institutional Geographies

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Lamarck(ian)ism Local–Global Los Angeles School of Post Modern Urbanism Marxism/Marxist Geography I Marxism/Marxist Geography II Military Geographies Nature Culture Non Representational Theory/Non Representational Geographies People’s Geography Phenomenology/Phenomenological Geography Philosophy and Human Geography Physical Geography and Human Geography Political Ecology Political Economy, Geographical Positivism/Positivist Geography Possibilism Posthumanism/Posthumanistic Geographies Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography Post Phenomenology/Post Phenomenological Geographies Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies Pragmatism/Pragmatist Geographies Probabilism Probability Models Psychoanalytic Theory/Psychoanalytic Geographies Psychotherapy/Psychotherapeutic Geographies Quantitative Revolution Radical Environmentalism Radical Geography Radical Political Economy Rational Choice Theory (and Rational Choice Marxism) Regional Geography I Regional Geography II Regionalisations, Everyday Regional Science Science and Scientism, Cartography Self Other Semiotics Situationism/Situationist Geography Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge Society–Space Space Time Spatial Science Structural Marxism Structuralism/Structuralist Geography Structurationist Geography Structuration Theory Surrealism/Surrealist Geographies Symbolic Interactionism Systems Systems Theory Time Geography Vichianism (After Vico) Welfare Geography

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POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY Activism Activist Geographies Ageing and Health Anti Geopolitics Apartheid/Post Apartheid Biopolitics Borderlands Buffer Zone Citizenship Citizenship and Governmentality, Rural Cold War Colonialism I Colonialism II Communist and Post Communist Geographies Critical Geopolitics Cultural Politics Democracy Devolution Electoral Cartography Electoral Districts Electoral Geography Empire Environmental Justice Environmental Security Ethnic Conflict Eurocentrism Fatherland/Homeland Feudalism and Feudal Society Geopolitics Geopolitics and Religion Gerrymandering Globalization, Economic Governance Governance, Corporate Governance, Good Governance, Transport Governance, Urban Governmentality Hegemony Human Rights Ideology Imperialistic Geographies Irredentism Liberalism Maps and Governance Military and Geography Nation National Spatialities Nationalism Nationalism, Historical Geography of Neoliberalism Neoliberalism, Urban Nongovernmental Organizations

Place, Politics of Political Boundaries Political Geography Political Representation Postcolonialism/Postcolonial Geographies Postconflict Geographies Protest, Rural Public Good Public Policy Regionalism Regulation Representation, Politics of Socialism Social Movements Sovereignty State State Theory Superpower Territory and Territoriality Terrorism War War, Historical Geography and World System POPULATION GEOGRAPHY Ageing and Mobility Census Geography Demography Diaspora Emigration Fertility Genetics Immigration II Migration Migration, Historical Geographies of Population Geography Refugees and Displacement Rural Populations Segregation Transnationalism REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Ameńagement du Territoire: Territorial Development Cassa per il Mezzogiorno City Region Concentrated Deconcentration Core Periphery Models Corridor and Axis Development Cumulative Causation De Industrialization De Localization Edge Cities Europe of Regions Greenfield Development Growth Poles, Growth Centers


Hinterland Development Industrial Districts Industrial Parks Informalization Island Development Labor Markets, Regional Learning Regions Local Development Me´tropole d’e´quilibre Network Regions New Regionalism New Towns Nordplan and Nordregio Polycentricity Port Industrial Complexes Region Regional Actors Regional Competition, Regional Dumping Regional Connectivity Regional Development and Noneconomic Factors Regional Development and Technology Regional Development, Endogenous Regional Development Models Regional Development Theory Regional Geography I Regional Geography II Regional Inequalities Regional Innovation Systems Regional Integration Regionalisations, Everyday Regionalism Regional Planning and Development Theories Regional Production Networks River Basin Development Territorial Production Complexes Uneven Regional Development RURAL GEOGRAPHY Agricultural Land Preservation Agriculture, Sustainable Agri Environmentalism and Rural Change Animal Welfare, Agricultural Citizenship and Governmentality, Rural Counterurbanization Economic Development, Rural Food Networks Food Networks, Alternative Food Regimes Gender and Rurality Gentrification, Rural Historical Geographies, Rural Homelessness, Rural Housing, Rural Identity and Otherness, Rural Peasant Agriculture

Post Productivist and Multifunctional Agriculture Poverty, Rural Protest, Rural Resource Management, Rural Rural Communities Rural Geography Rurality and Post Rurality Second Homes Services, Rural Tourism, Rural Transport, Rural SOCIAL & CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY Activism Affect Ageing and Mobility Ageism and Age Agoraphobia Anthropology and Human Geography Apartheid/Post Apartheid Becoming Belonging Berkeley School Body, The Care/Caregiving Child Labor Children/Childhood Citizenship Civil Society Community Consumption Cosmopolitanism Crime/Fear of Crime Cultural Capital Cultural Economy Cultural Geography Cultural Materialism Cultural Politics Cultural Studies and Human Geography Cultural Turn Culture Culture/Natures Cyberspace/Cyberculture Diaspora Difference/Politics of Difference Digital Divide Discourse Dwelling Education Embodied Knowing Emotional Geographies Emotional Knowing Empowerment Equity Ethnic Conflict

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Ethnic Economies Ethnicity Ethnicity and Resistance, Historical Geographies of Festival and Spectacle Film Gay Geographies Gender and Rurality Gender, Historical Geographies of Globalization, Cultural Habitus Heritage Heteronormativity Home Homelessness Homelessness, Rural Hybridity Identity and Otherness, Rural Identity Politics Immigration I Imperialism, Cultural Indigeneity Indigenous Knowledges Indigenous Mapping Inequality Land Rights Landscape Landscape Iconography Language Law and Law Enforcement Leisure Lesbian Geographies Literature Masculinism Masculinities Material Culture Material, The Media Memorials and Monuments Modernity Moral Economies Moral Landscapes Multiculturalism Nature, Social Orientalism Other/Otherness Parenting/Motherhood/Fatherhood Patriarchy Performativity Place Names Policing Popular Culture Poverty Poverty, Rural Private/Public Divide

Public Space Public Spaces, Urban Queer Theory/Queer Geographies Race Racism and Antiracism Religion/Spirituality/Faith Representation, Politics of Segregation, Urban Sense of Place Sensorium Sexuality Social Capital Social Capital, Place and Health Social Class Social Geography Social Justice, Urban Soundscapes Street Names and Iconography Subaltern Surveillance Symbolism, Iconography Text and Textuality Tourism Transnationality Travel and Travel Writing Underclass Visuality Voluntary Sector Water Welfare Geography Welfare Reform Wellbeing Whiteness Youth/Youth Cultures TRANSPORT GEOGRAPHY Aviation Ecotourism Governance, Transport Intermodality Logistics Mobility, History of Everyday Railways Regional Connectivity Tourism Tourism, Rural Tourism, Urban Transport and Accessibility Transport and Deregulation Transport and Globalization Transport and Social Exclusion Transport and Sustainability Transportation and Land Use Transport Geography Transport, Public


Transport, Rural Transport, Urban URBAN GEOGRAPHY Anti Urbanism Cellular Automata Central Business District Central Place Theory Chinese Urbanism City Marketing City Region Counterurbanization Defensible Space Edge Cities Financial Centers, International Flaˆneur, The Gated Communities/Privatopias Gender in the City Gentrification Ghettos Governance, Urban Historical Geographies, Urban Housing Imperial Cities Industrial City Informational City Islamic Urbanism Land Rent Theory Malls/Retail Parks Mega Cities Modern City Multicultural City Neighborhood Change Neighborhoods and Community Neoliberalism, Urban Networks, Urban New Towns New Urbanism NIMBY

Planning, Urban Polycentricity Postcolonial Cities Postmodern City Post Socialist Cities Public Spaces, Urban Redlining Regeneration to Renaissance Segregation Indices Segregation, Urban Situationism/Situationist Geography Situationist City Slums Social Justice, Urban Street Names and Iconography Suburbanization Sustainability, Urban Third World Cities Tourism, Urban Transport, Urban Underclass Urban Architecture Urban Design Urban Growth Machine Urban Habitats/Nature Urbanism Urbanization Urban Modeling Urban Morphologies, Historical Urban Morphology Urban Order Urban Policy Urban Regimes Urban Representation/Imagination Urban Village Urban–Rural Continuum Utopian Cities Waterfront Development World/Global Cities

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FOREWORD

We should reflect more on the increasingly inter connected and interdependent world we live in. Places that a century ago would have taken months to reach by boat can be reached in hours on a plane and at a price affordable to many more people. Changes in financial markets on one side of the globe instantly ricochet around the planet. Decisions taken in one country or at a supra national scale affect jobs and well being in another. This is the world we have inherited sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reminds us of the work still needed to implement those shared values. For while the Earth seems to be getting smaller in space and time, the relative differences between places are often growing apace. The situation in many de veloping countries is currently regressing with falling life expectancy, rising national debts, and weakening econ omies. In the developed North there continue to be large differences in the standards of living between rich and poor, core and periphery, rural and urban areas. Con sequently, the mobility of people is increasing around the globe with millions of labour migrants and refugees on the move, seeking better lives elsewhere. In addition, humanity is beginning to recognise and address the sig nificant global challenge of climate change which is in part created by the processes of development and glob alisation, but will require to be addressed with principles of climate justice. The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography documents and explains all of these issues, and many more besides. Focused through the spatial lens of a modern geography sensitive to how social, economic, political, cultural or environmental processes work within and between places, the entries cover the full spectrum of issues facing humanity today across the

planet. Together the essays provide a fascinating over view of the diverse, complex and sometimes paradoxical relationships between people, places and environments, written in a style accessible to students and interested parties. As well, the vast array of methodologies and theories employed by geographers and others is docu mented, to make sense of the developments now occur ring. Indeed, in the very fact that it contains 914 essays, written by 844 contributors from over 40 countries, it is itself a product of the way in which the geography of communication and cooperation has rapidly evolved in recent years! The challenges facing all of us, whether they concern the present global economic downturn, survival in a country at war, managing environmental change, and a host of other pressing issues, require a broad and deep knowledge of the fundamental processes shaping our future. The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography provides a comprehensive overview of that knowledge and points to the tools needed to build planetary citi zenship and to think through a more ethical version of globalisation. I hope that it will be used extensively by present and future generations so that, as the planet seemingly shrinks in size, so the problems we face and the differences between us shrink too.

Mary Robinson President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalisation Initiative Honorary President of Oxfam International United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1997–2002 President of Ireland, 1990–1997

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FOREWORD

Over the past 100 hundred years or so, human geography has grown into one of the most vibrant university discip lines around the world. Expanding from its origins in the colonial pursuit of geographic knowledge, modern human geography has developed into a diverse collection of so phisticated, spatially inflected knowledges underpinned by a refined set of theoretical concepts and methodological tools. As a result, defining contemporary human geography is not an easy task, not least because what passes for geo graphic theory and praxis varies across time and space. For us, what marks the discipline from other social and natural sciences is its focus on the relationship between people and the world they inhabit, its core metaconcepts (such as space, place, landscape, nature, mobility, environment, and scale), and its use of geographically sensitive methods of data generation and analysis. Human geography, as the contents list of this encyclopedia amply demonstrates, fo cuses on key issues of the day, and opens up new and vital perspectives on questions that affect our everyday lives. It engages with and problematizes apparently unequivocal statements such as: planet is large; • the the teems with life; and • the planet planet is under threat. • Through the lens of human geography, these statements are revealed as equivocal and often paradoxical. What do we mean by ‘large’ in a period in which a scientific shift based on the discovery of fractals has expanded our perception of the length and complexity of lines at exactly the same time that transport and communications technologies shrink the world to such an extent that we can interact in real time with people on the far side of the planet and maps of the planet can be called up online by ordinary citizens and analyzed in diverse ways? What do we mean by ‘life’ in a

period in which we keep discovering more of it in more and more unlikely places, while scientific and cultural changes are continually expanding our definition of what ‘life’ consists of? What do we mean by ‘threat’ when we are unable to agree on the nature of a threat, let alone a so lution, when technologies that offer the promise of salvation all too often create new problems and when increasing populations offer new resources as well as consume them? Human geography seeks to answer such questions not only in order to understand the world but also to make practical interventions. Unlike many disciplines, it is built on unsure foundations without much in the way of a canon. Some might say that that is its attraction; that it has perennially been driven by the changing world around it. The discipline is willing to go where other disciplines fear to tread because its history is loosely connected, more like a conglomerate than a series of well defined strata – it has not been wed to a single or limited theoretical approach but rather it has explored and drawn together all manner of approaches in order to address issues geographically. Equally though, it is born out of a longing for a planetary citizenship, with that longing sitting alongside a radical appreciation of how all the differences that make up the discipline both com promise and strengthen that goal. Whatever might be the case, at the heart of this endeavor has been the notion that geography matters – the spatial configuration of events is not a mere add on to other somehow deeper, more abstract aspatial processes, but rather is central to how the processes unfold. These tensions between a discipline organized around understanding the world and a discipline consisting of and defined by its own approaches, are manifest in how geog raphy tells its own history (and how one might organize an encyclopedia). One way would be to trace the changing approaches, epistemologies, and concerns of the discipline.

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Thus one could track the multiple interpretations of the writing of Alexander von Humboldt, often cited as one of the key disciplinary ancestors. Alternately, one could chart the intellectual genealogies of ‘key’ texts, concepts, and places to provide counterpoints to more traditional chronological histories of various theoretical schools. Or, one could create accounts that organize the discipline via key processes and events in the world. To take other examples, there are presently attempts to write about differences in more satisfying and nuanced ways, ways that can bring about new means of living and experiencing the world through reinventing familiar categories like gender, race, and sexu ality, categories that have their own complex geographies which are a very part of the process of reinvention. There are efforts to reconceive cities taking account of the affective, the mundane, the ongoing incompleteness, fuzziness, and unpredictability that make up urban life, and there are at tempts to reimagine the economic as thoroughly infused with the cultural. Sometimes clumsy and awkward, some times plain inspired, these kinds of developments are surely worth following in a world too often characterized by div ision and despair. And follow them, this encyclopedia does.

The Encyclopedia The International Encyclopedia of Human Geography is a multinational attempt to capture and trace the state of human geography as a discipline and as a description of the world as it exists today and as it changes its shape in the future. Its ambition, in other words, is to provide a major and continually updated resource that provides an always temporary but hopefully authoritative means of answering questions of the sort posed above, and many others like them. This it does by taking on the venerable format of an encyclopedia which we can understand both in its original meaning as a course of education – in this case with the description ‘human geography’ – or in its more modern meaning as treating a particular branch of knowledge comprehensively through the medium of articles arranged alphabetically, by subject. Of course, producing an encyclopedia provides real opportunities, most especially the ability to stretch out explanations in a way not available in the more common dictionary form. Thus, our aim has not been to produce a portable, condensed summary or bite sized definitions of concepts, but rather clear, authoritative statements that set out the evolution and implications of geographic thought. Such an endeavor also produces some inevitable challenges. We want to use these challenges to explore how this encyclopedia has been put together, under standing that such challenges do not have to be under stood just as undesirable or unpleasant choices between alternatives. They can equally well be understood as producing the means to fuel productive encounters.

The first challenge is an obvious one. There is an in evitable degree of arbitrariness about what is included and what is not. We have made an honest attempt to cover the whole range of what can possibly be treated as human geography in terms of issues on the ground and traditions within the discipline. This has been achieved through an intensive, iterative process involving all the editors, worked through at face to face meetings, conference phone calls, and e mail. Inevitably, there will be topics, methods, and thinkers considered important by some that we felt did not justify a stand alone entry. Moreover, we fully expect that as some issues grow or decline in im portance – to the world and/or the discipline – we shall have occasion in the future to expand or contract the coverage in different fields. This dilemma of selecting what to cover brings with it other issues too. Foremost among these has been how to shape the coverage of each entry and title each entry in an informative yet pithy way. There are many bodies of conceptual and substantive knowledge that cannot easily be encompassed by a single term or phrase. The result is that some of the entries have somewhat contrived titles. Better that, though, than titles that are vague or oblique, especially in these days of vo luminous information accessible across the Internet. The second challenge is an authorial one. It was a guiding principle of this encyclopedia that we would attempt to extend authorship beyond the ‘charmed circle’ of Anglophone/Western geographers, both as a response to postcolonial critiques and as a response to the critiques of scholars from outside the Euro American zone who felt disenfranchised by what is possible to perceive as an Anglophone/Western ascendancy. We have then been attentive to the geographies of the discipline of geog raphy, not least since scholars in diverse locales see the world differently in terms of what processes seem most important and what traditions of interpretation they use. We have not always been successful in achieving our goal of wide international authorship, partly because the geographical establishment is simply larger in some countries than others and partly because human geog raphy still bears some of the marks of its own history, not least as a colonial enterprise. Inevitably perhaps, the historical geography of geography kept coming home to roost. Moreover, scholars from different locales had varying abilities to contribute due to issues of time, ac cess to resources, and language. As a result, we have not been able to include some topics and perspectives. That said, entries have been solicited from 844 scholars located in over 40 countries around the world working within different traditions and we have managed to describe the different ideas and practices of geography in many countries/language groups. Again, this is a project that will be added to, over the coming years. The third challenge was to draw on the expertise of the human geographical community in ways that ensured

Foreword

some degree of diversity. In particular, we are proud that we have been able to balance the voices of established scholars with those of younger writers. This has had salutary effects. For example, we have been able to trace the history of philosophical ideas in geography both from the point of view of those that have been deeply involved in the explosion of different conceptual possibilities that took place in the discipline from the late 1960s onward, as well as the point of view of younger scholars who have set out quite different agendas. The fourth challenge was to ensure a relatively con sistent standard of scholarship for each entry and to provide a balanced content with respect to ideas and geographical coverage. To that end, each entry was ini tially refereed by a section editor who had overall re sponsibility for a selection of related entries (e.g., political, urban, regional development, quantitative methods, people) and a senior editor. Each senior editor oversaw three sections in order to ensure sections were approximately commensurate in style, content, and length. To provide breadth as well as depth, authors were asked to draw on examples and traditions from around the world and not simply rely on charting an issue with respect to their own local circumstance. The fifth challenge was to use the Internet in pro ductive ways. One of the motivations for this encyclo pedia was the production of a platform upon which we might then build a future memory for human geography. It is an attempt to begin to produce a living, breathing archive which will gradually evolve, by using the powers of the Internet. Though in this first edition, both print and Internet editions exist side by side, in later editions the Internet edition will exist singly, opening the way to a vision of geography which is in keeping with the age in which we now live. Since the articles are on the web, it will be possible to update them on a regular, rolling basis without having to wait for the revision of every other article. Equally, they will have all kinds of extra resources associated with them – illustrations of all types, including more and more videos as well as maps and diagrams, ‘active’ reference links that will take the reader straight to the listed journal article, and so on. Then, more articles will be added at regular intervals, both filling in gaps and supplementing existing articles. All articles will be left in situ – old articles will not be deleted – so that, in time, we will be able to produce a ‘timeline’ for many subjects, making it possible to see how thinking has evolved, thereby producing a real sense of historical accretion. Over time, we hope that the encyclopedia will become an institutionalized memory of human geography. The sixth challenge was to produce an encyclopedia of human geography that was relevant to issues that must concern us all. We sought an encyclopedia that espoused responsibility to the planet and its people certainly. But we also became, however awkwardly and unsuccessfully,

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involved in thinking what that responsibility might mean. A difficult but ultimately productive instance of what this might entail – and how difficult it can be to think through – was provided by the proposed boycott of the encyclo pedia by some authors concerned at Reed International’s (a sister company to Elsevier) involvement in the arms trade, an affair settled when Reed withdrew from these activities. Here, we saw the same concerns being aired by many participants but radically different solutions being put on offer. We hope that the encyclopedia mirrors this diversity of response. Bringing these six, and especially the last three, points together we hope and trust that this encyclopedia will be counted as a contribution to the global commons of knowledge. The production of a discipline depends on the goodwill of many who labor over ideas, who dis seminate, review, and rework them. We are painfully aware that in the current global climate of academia, when what counts as valued academic practices is nar rowing, writing authoritative and scholarly articles for publications such as this venture provides few rewards and attracts little institutional support. However, it is a vital component in the reproduction and development of a discipline. Rather than simply being understood as the creation of canonical knowledge by authorial com munities we would like to thank all those who have written and reviewed material here for an activity that may be deemed a professional service but is one that, sadly, is seen as subverting the institutional priorities of a number of universities.

By Way of Conclusion This encyclopedia is an attempt to summarize knowledge of the discipline using the encyclopedia format. In time, we hope that this encyclopedia will build into a com prehensive resource which constitutes both an archive of the discipline and, of course, of what it knows about the world. That knowledge, what facts are arraigned to support it, and what theories and methodologies are used as a means of making it credible, is, of course, a movable feast. Think of the notion of the ‘world’, which it is easy to demonstrate has changed its form many times over the course of history, as the development of the map shows all too well as Denis Cosgrove noted: There is no single map of the world, but a vast range of images that present different facets of the globe and its contents. y A map of the world is a global cultural artefact, an extraordinary human accomplishment, pro duced by contributions from many cultures. It is a highly sophisticated scientific achievement, and each advance in the various technologies that coalesce within it renders it more detailed, flexible, and widely available. Google Earth is certainly not the last stage in its evolution.

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Foreword

Yet even [a] cursory survey of world mapping y re veals that science and technology are only a part of the story. Of equal importance are such affective aspects as imagination, faith, fear, and desire. We spot them im mediately in the world maps of nonmodern cultures, and even in early examples of the modern world map. For us humans, the earth is always more than its physical form and nature; it is, indeed, a world. y Today that world seems wholly visible, even transparent. y Yet today’s world maps are as hued by the contingencies of our own times as any previous ones, and we are ‘mapped’ into them as surely as Xiuhtechitli was mapped into the fif teenth century Mesoamerican world. Because every ‘world’ is social and imaginative as much as it is material, our own world maps will in due course come to seem as quaint as Jain mandalas or medieval mappae mundi seem to us today. (Denis Cosgrove, 2007: 112 113)

Or, indeed, consider the idea of the encyclopedia it self. Encyclopedias are often thought to be an invention of the West. Specifically, the general purpose, widely distributed, printed encyclopedia is usually considered to have been conceived in eighteenth century Europe with Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1728), and the Encyclope´die of Diderot and D’Alembert (1751 onward). These volumes are often considered to be the first to take on a recognizably

modern form, with a comprehensive list of topics, dis cussed in depth and organized in what we would consider a systematic way. But, once we take a broader view in which places and times are not necessarily weighted by particular prejudices, a very different account hoves into view in which all manner of authors in different parts of the world revealed an encyclopedic instinct, and from much earlier on. For example, a tradition of encyclo pedia like volumes can be found in China from the eleventh century onward, and these were often massive undertakings involving as many as a thousand volumes. The point that these two examples make is that all we can be certain of is that the contours of knowledge will constantly change. There can be no absolute certainty about what will be included in and what will be excluded from human geography in times to come. But with this encyclopedia, we believe we now have a tool that will be able to trace this evolution as it happens. Rob Kitchin and Nigel Thrift

Further Reading Cosgrove, D. (2007). Mapping the world. In Akerman, J. & Karrow, R. (eds.) Maps. Finding Our Place in the World, pp 65 158. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

S Sampling L. Lo, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bias It refers to how far the average statistic lies from the parameter it is estimating. It is the error due to chance which arises when estimating a quantity. Errors from bias will not cancel out each other. Precision It is a measure of how close an estimator is expected to be to the true value of a parameter. It is usually expressed in terms of imprecision and related to the standard error of the estimator. Less precision is reflected by a larger SE. Random Number Table It is a table of numbers in which there is no discernable pattern of occurrences. Sampling Fraction It is the ratio between sample size and population size. It represents the proportion of the population that is sampled. Sampling Interval It is determined by dividing the population size by a desired sample size. It is the standard distance between sampling units selected from the sampling frame in a systematic sampling framework. Unit of Analysis It is the major entity that is being analyzed in the study. It is the ‘what’ or ‘whom’ that is being studied. In human geography research, it can be individuals, groups, organizations, artifacts, or geographical units. This should not be confused with unit of observation, the unit on which data are collected.

Introduction Sampling, normally associated with surveys, is a means of providing statistical data on a wide range of subjects for both research and administrative bases. Central gov ernments make considerable use of surveys to inform them of conditions of their people in terms of employ ment and unemployment; income and expenditure; housing, education, nutrition and health conditions; migration, immigration, and newcomer integration. They also conduct surveys of organizations such as banks, retail outlets, farms, schools, and hospitals to check on financial

and human health. Local and regional governments use travel and transportation surveys for local planning purposes. Market researchers carry out surveys to iden tify markets for products and services, to discover how they are used and perform, and to determine consumer reactions. Opinion polls keep track of the popularity of political leaders and their parties. Many university students and researchers in human geography as well as other disciplines use surveys (questionnaires and inter views to collect both quantitative and qualitative infor mation) to address their research questions of diverse nature, context, and geography. As an example, a scan of two recent issues in Environment and Planning A (vol. 39, issues 3 and 8) finds (1) primary survey data were used to examine Chinese immigrant grocery shopping behavior in Toronto, Canada; (2) secondary survey data were used to examine the relationship between ethnic segregation and educational performance in Bradford and Leicester, England, the utilization of external business advice by small and medium size firms in four English towns, and space and gender relationship in post Soviet patterns of penalty; and (3) interview data were used to trace the development of the information technology industry in Suzhou, China, and the rise of boutiques in London’s corporate finance industry. While the subject of interest varies, there are common questions about the gathering of data. What information should we collect? From whom do we get the infor mation? Where do we get the information? And how will the information be used? These are interrelated questions, answers to which determine the design of a survey. Before a survey can be conducted, the researcher has to decide on a method to select participants or respondents, and the size of the sample in addition to developing a list of possible respondents/participants for sampling. This article focuses on sample design as an integral part of the overall survey design. Two major principles underlie all sample design. The first is the desire to avoid as much bias as possible in the selection procedure; and the second is to achieve the maximum precision for a given outlay of resources.

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Sampling

The article begins with a brief outline of the history and logic of sampling. Then various sampling methods are explained, describing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the statistical aspects of sampling are explored.

sample may lead to better data quality and hence more accurate results than a complete enumeration.

Population History of Sampling Although the idea of (random) sampling is an old one, mentioned a few times in the Bible, sample survey has a relatively short history, occurring mostly since the 1930s. First, it is the theory of small sample statistics (t distribution) developed by William Sealy Gossett, a chemist and statistician in England, in the early 1900s that put the subject on a more rigorous basis. Then in the US, an influential general interest magazine, the Literary Digest, published from 1890 to 1938 and then merged with Time Magazine, put it prominently on our radar map, when it successfully predicted the US presidential elec tions in 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, but not in 1936. In 1936, George Gallup introduced quota sampling, and used this method to correctly predict the elections in 1936, 1944, but not in 1948. Considerable advances in survey meth odology have since taken place. It is safe to say that there have been two modern phases of development in sample survey. The first phase, started with the Literary Digest, dealt with the develop ment of basic probability sampling theory, and the acceptance of probability sampling as the method of choice for obtaining representative samples. Personal interviews and household surveys were widely applied to a broad range of topic areas. The second phase took place especially vigorously in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This phase, tied in to the quantitative revolution in social sciences, witnessed an even broader utilization of survey sampling methodology and updated many techniques and procedures in line with broader societal and technological changes.

The Logic of Sampling Sampling is the process by which a sample is chosen. A ‘sample’ is some part of a larger body specifically selected to represent the whole. Whereas information can theoretically be gathered about all members of a population, practicality (considerations of time, money and other resources, and member availability) determines that in the majority of cases, it is impossible to observe and sample all members. This leaves sampling a subset as the only alternative. Even when enumerating the whole population is possible, sampling has its own advantages. It costs less, it can be processed more speedily, and it allows more timely reporting. Moreover, concentrating resources on a

In statistics, the term ‘population’ differs from our gen eral understanding of the word which can mean all in habitants of the earth, all individuals living in a country, or all residents of a city. In statistical terms, population refers to the collection of all ‘elements’ or ‘units of an alysis’ under study; the element or unit of analysis can be an individual, a family, an ethnic group, a firm, a non governmental organization (NGO), a cultural organiza tion, a school, a building, a street festival, or any event that is of interest to us. It is important to define exactly what we mean by population since findings from a representative sample are often generalized to the population under study. The definition of population needs to be precisely and carefully specified according to the objectives of the survey. For example, if we are interested in New Yorkers’ expenditure patterns, the population will include all households in New York because expenditure on housing, transportation, education, healthcare, food, clothing, and other consumer goods and services are often household based; households can be single or multiple person. On the other hand, if the objective is to discover if there is support for the introduction of a new transit system in Los Angeles, we will have to consider if the survey should be confined to persons living within the municipal boundaries of Los Angeles and if those persons should be above or below 15 years of age. Alternatively, if we are interested in the commuting patterns of Los Angeles’ immigrant workers, we will have to decide whether we just focus on weekday work trips or include those in the weekends, and also whether it is just rush hours that matters. This says that in defining a population, it is im portant to consider both the spatial and temporal factors. The ideal population that is required to meet survey objectives is known as the ‘target population’. Sometimes, the target population has to be modified to exclude certain people for practical reasons. For instance, in national surveys, people living in remote communities are often excluded because they are too difficult or costly to enumerate. Exclusions can also include those living in prisons and mental health institutions as they are either inaccessible or mentally incapable of providing mean ingful answers. Target population with explicit exclusions due to these practical constraints is known as the ‘survey population’. Each member of a survey (or target) popu lation constitutes an element or a unit of analysis. In the remainder of this article, the terms ‘population’, ‘target population’, and ‘survey population’ may be used interchangeably.

Sampling

Sampling Frame A sampling frame is an actual list of elements or units corresponding to the target population. It can be a list of eligible voters, a list of bank locations, or a list of all households living in government subsidized housing units. It can also be a list of geographical areas such as neighborhoods, towns and cities, regions, or countries. A sampling frame provides the means of accessing the target population. A good sampling frame should be up to date, complete, accessible, and should contain sufficient information to identify and locate each unit. Sampling frames are not always readily available. To develop one and ensure it is not biased, it is necessary to make sure that it comes from a variety of sources that represents the diversity in the population. For example, to construct a sampling frame of senior citizens living in one’s community, the sources one can use to identify seniors include the phone book, the voters list, municipal departments that deal with seniors, membership lists of senior clubs and associations, senior housing devel opments, lists of seniors using home support services, and property assessment/tax rolls. One may include or exclude those who live in nursing homes, home for the aged, or extended care facilities, depending on one’s research objective. After constructing the overall list, one should check and eliminate duplicates, and then make sure that members in the list should be randomized so that there is no particular order in how they would appear. All members in the frame are elements considered for selection in the sampling stage. Each is considered a ‘sampling unit’. Information collected about these units provides the basis of analysis. If information is collected from each and every unit of the sampling frame, one has a ‘census’. If collection of information is based on part of the population, one has a ‘sample’. There is a set of rules and procedures that specifies how a sample is to be selected.

Sampling Methods Sampling methods are about choosing participants for the survey. They can be probability or nonprobability based. The choice between the two and the choice within each group depend on the objectives and scope of the survey, including the budget of the survey, the availability of time, the method of data collection, the kind of respondents needed, reliability of the data, and the desire for precision. Each has its own advantages and dis advantages. Probability sampling aims for objectivity, conforms to statistical theories, and allows statistical in ferences to be made to the population. It is however a costly approach. Nonprobability sampling generally lacks

3

theoretical support. The sample may not be represen tative; hence population estimation is often not possible. Unlike data from probability sampling, the quality of the data from nonprobability sampling cannot be measured. Convenience and economy are its main attractions. Probability Sampling In probability sampling, each unit in the population has a known, nonzero chance of being included in the sample. Inferences can be made about the population which the sample represents. Methods range from a simple random selection to more complex selection strategies. Table 1 outlines a general rule of thumb. Simple random sampling

Simple random sampling is a scheme in which each unit has the same chance of being selected, and a combination of units in the frame has the same chance of making up the sample. Samples with this quality are often known as equal probability of selection method (EPSEM). A ran dom sample can be selected by the lottery method (e.g., picking numbers out of a drum), by means of a table of random numbers available in many statistics and research design or method books, or using an appropriate function in any statistical software such as Microsoft Excel, SPSS, or SAS. Table 2 shows part of a random number table. Suppose we have a sampling frame of 200 members and we are to draw, for illustrative purpose, a random sample of five (which is too small by any standard) using a random number table, we can name the units 1 to 200. Since 200 is a three digit number, we use the first three digits of the numbers in the table. To start the selection process, we can randomly choose one number, say, by closing our eyes and pointing to a spot on the table. Suppose the number on row 1 and column 2 was selected. 187 then becomes the ‘random start’ or the first sampled element. The next number is 781, but since we do not have a member with that number, we work down the column until we find four more numbers with the first three digits lying between 001 and 200. The five numbers

Table 1

Choice of probability sampling methods

Population

Probability sampling method

One big group with relatively homogeneous units Many groups; each internally homogeneous in the survey variables Many groups; each internally heterogeneous in the survey variables

Random or systematic sampling Stratified sampling

Cluster sampling

4

Sampling

Table 2

Row Row Row Row Row Row Row

An example to generate a random sample

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Col. 1

Col. 2

Col. 3

Col. 4

Col. 5

3009 9865 1196 1067 5160 4560 7697

1879 7813 1251 3716 5563 0094 2151

0440 7468 2368 8897 6527 8284 4860

7916 8493 1262 1970 7861 7604 0739

6643 3293 5769 8799 3477 1667 4370

Adapted from Johnson, R. A. and Tsui, K. W. (1989). Statistical Reasoning Methods. Appendix B, Table 1, p. 553.

are highlighted in Table 2, and the corresponding num bers on the list/frame will become our sample. Simple random sampling is the easiest method of sampling and it is the most commonly used. Advantages of this technique are that it has a sound mathematical and theoretical basis. On the other hand, this technique does not make use of auxiliary information present on the frame (such as number of employees in each business) that could make the design of the sample more efficient. While easy to apply to small populations, simple random sam pling can be expensive and infeasible for large popu lations, especially if personal interviewers are required over geographically spread populations. It is also not recommended for heterogeneous population. Systematic sampling

Systematic sampling is a modification of random sam pling. In this method, every kth unit in the population is selected; k is the ‘sampling interval’ (N/n) best deter mined by dividing the population size (N) by a desired sample size (n). Using the example above where popu lation is 200 and sample size is 5, the sampling interval (k) ¼ 40. As with simple random sampling, a random start, for example, 7, is selected. The sampling interval (or standard distance between elements selected from the sampling frame) prescribes that every 40th member in the sampling frame will be selected. The sample then consists of 7, 47, 87, 127, and 167. This procedure pro duces an EPSEM sample. The method is simple to apply, and the sample spreads over the entire target population. This method is only problematic if characteristics of the prearranged list coincide with the sampling fraction/ interval. Stratified sampling

Simple random sampling and systematic sampling are good to use when the population is relatively homogeneous. However, in many sampling problems, the population can be composed of a set of groups with different characteristics. Stratified sampling is used when we require different estimates for different groups or when we are concerned with the precision of the overall population estimates. In this case, the population

is divided into relatively homogeneous groups or strata based on income, age, gender, race/ethnicity, geographical regions, home ownership, possession of an automobile, and so on. As regards to number of strata, as many as practically possible should be used, and each stratum could be made as homogeneous as possible. Once strata have been established, separate samples are selected from each stratum. Strata sample size can be proportionate or disproportionate to strata population size. Sampling units within each stratum can be select ed by the simple random or systematic method. The example in Figure 1 illustrates a proportional allocation scheme and a simple random selection method. The population of 117 items is divided into four strata (a, b, c, and d) with 21, 34, 35, and 27 elements, respectively. Suppose the budget for sampling is $1000, and the cost of collecting information from one element is $34. This allows a maximum of 29 ( ¼ $1000/$34) elements to be surveyed. This gives an overall ‘sampling fraction’ of 1/4 ( ¼ 29/117). Proportional allocation yields five elements or observations in stratum a, eight in stratum b, nine in stratum c, and seven in stratum d. The observations in each stratum are randomly selected. Stratified sampling increases sample efficiency or the precision of the overall population estimates. As well, estimates can be done at the stratum level. This method ensures sufficient sample with certain key groups, and allows the use of different sample designs for different portions of the population. It is also administratively convenient.

Cluster sampling and multistage sampling

Where a population consists of a set of groups and the groups are internally heterogeneous in the variables of interest, each group can be considered a cluster as opposed to a stratum consisting of relatively homo geneous elements. A random sample of the clusters can be selected to represent those not selected in the survey. If all units in the selected clusters are included in the sample, the method is known as cluster sampling or single stage sampling (see Figure 2). If a hierarchy of clusters exists, the process of selecting a final sample may involve two or more successive stages of cluster selection.

Sampling

5

(b)

(a)

(c)

(d)

Stratum

Unit

Sampled

Figure 1 Stratified sampling. Adapted from Statistics Canada. (2001). Surveys: Start To Finish. Workshop presented by Statistical Consulting Group. Toronto. November 27 29. p 40.

Cluster

Unit

Sampled

Figure 2 Cluster sampling. Adapted from Statistics Canada. (2001). Surveys: Start To Finish. Workshop presented by Statistical Consulting Group. Toronto. November 27 29. p. 42.

6

Sampling

Cluster

Unit

Sampled

Figure 3 Two-stage sampling. Adapted from Statistics Canada. (2001). Surveys: Start To Finish. Workshop presented by Statistical Consulting Group. Toronto. November 27 29. p. 44.

This gives rise to multistage sampling. For example, in a national study of student performance in the public school system, the clusters selected in various stages can be cities, neighborhoods, schools, grade levels, and selected classes. Figure 3 illustrates a two stage sampling. Cluster sampling is used when a satisfactory sampling frame does not exist. It is less precise than simple random sampling because neighboring units tend to be similar. It is however justified by the economy it creates for sampling and data collection.

Area sampling

Area sampling is a common form of cluster sampling in which areas serve as the primary sampling units. In this approach, the population or total area under investigation is divided into mutually exclusive and exhaustive subareas using maps, and a random sample of subareas is selected. If all the units (e.g., households and buildings) in the selected areas are used in the study, it is one stage area sampling. If the subareas themselves are further divided and subsampled, the procedure is multistage area sampling. Thus in area sampling, maps, rather than lists, serve as the sampling frame. This is the main method of sampling where population is geographically dispersed and where adequate population lists are rare. A case in point is developing countries. A grid, like the one in Figure 4, is drawn and superimposed on a map of the area of concern. Sampling points are selected on the basis of numbers drawn at random that equate to the numbered

30

29

28

27

26

25

24

23

22

21

31

20

32

19

33

18

34

17

35

16

36

15

37

14

38

13

39

12

40

11 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Sampled area

Figure 4 Area sampling. Adapted from Crawford, I. M. (1997). Marketing Research and Information Systems. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Figure 7.3. http:// www/fao.org/docrep/W3241E00.htm, accessed 7 May 2007.

columns and rows of the grid. Figure 4 shows a pattern of sampled areas that emerges from this process. If the areas are large, they can be further subdivided into subareas with another grid superimposed on them.

Sampling

Area sampling is more economical than simple random sampling. It incurs fewer travel expenses and administrative costs, and sampling frame is only needed for the chosen areas. On the negative side, sampling errors are larger and are difficult to measure. Nonprobability Sampling Unlike probability sampling when results can be gener alized to the whole population, nonprobability sampling is marked by subjectivity which precludes the develop ment of a theoretical framework and evaluation by assumption free statistical methods. In nonprobability sampling, the sample is not representative of the popu lation, so no population estimate is possible, and one cannot measure the quality of the data. Nonetheless, nonprobability sampling is widely prac ticed, mainly for reasons of cost, timeliness, and con venience. It is useful when our objective is exploratory, when it is impossible to obtain a large enough sample, when qualitative information is required, and when stat istical reliability is unimportant. Nonprobability methods are common in pretest, pilot studies, and focus groups. Convenience/haphazard/accidental sampling

As the name suggests, units in a convenience or acci dental sample are selected on the basis of convenience and expediency. Examples include conducting interviews on a street corner, surveying people who happen to be at a shopping mall or who frequent a seniors’ drop in centre, using volunteers in medical/clinical/psycho logical experiments, and pooling responses from people answering a television request for opinions or a ques tionnaire on a website. Convenience sampling is useful if the population is homogenous. Otherwise, large biases are likely introduced as the volunteer population is often very different from the general population. Purposeful/judgment sampling

A purposeful or judgment sample is chosen on the basis of knowledge of the research problem or expert judgment concerning the makeup of a population. Expertise allows the selection of typical units for inclusion in the sample. For instance, an educational researcher chooses a selec tion of schools in a city to give a cross section of school types, and a social planner recommends a group of social service providers for examining the utilization of settle ment service by immigrants. An advantage of this method is reduced cost and time. Yet sample selection can be severely biased. Quota sampling

Quota sampling consists of two or more stages. The early stages are often carried out by probability methods, in the same way as for a probability sample. These stages create

7

subgroups (similar to strata in stratified sampling) based on age, gender, employment status, and/or geographical area. On the basis of available data on the representativity of desired groups in the population, quotas are calculated and assigned to each subgroup. The quota controls can be independent (e.g., 100 men, 200 women, 150 people under 35 years of age, and 150 above 35 years of age), or connected (such as 300 men who are older than 65 and are still working, and 400 immigrants from China who moved to Canada within the last 5 years). The aim of assigning quotas is to avoid the selection biases that would occur in subsequent sampling. For each quota group, it is unlikely that a list exists. So in the final stage, an existing list such as a phone book is often used to select possible respondents. The interviewer goes through the list and picks those who fit into a preestablished group by means of screening. Quota sampling differs from stratified sampling at the final stage of selecting sampling units. This method is also known as modified probability sampling. It is useful for comparing subgroups, and is widely used in opinion and market research surveys. Quota sampling is less costly than random sampling, and can be administered easily. It is therefore good to obtain immediate public reaction to some event. Like other nonprobability methods, it faces the issue of precision. Snowball sampling and respondent-driven sampling

In snowball sampling, the first few potential respondents are often initiated by word of mouth. They are contacted and asked whether they know of anybody with the characteristics that we are looking for in our research. This is based on the premise that they may well have knowledge of others with similar characteristics or in similar situations (e.g., drug users and cancer survivors). This method of using existing subjects to recruit future subjects will result in a sample that appears to grow like a rolling snowball. Snowball sampling is a good method for populations that are hard to reach, and small relative to the general population. Examples of such not well delimited and often hidden populations include the homeless, sex workers, gangsters, and people with hidden disability. It may be extremely difficult or cost prohibitive to locate respondents with these characteristics. The snowball technique can dramatically lower search costs, Yet there is no exact idea if the sample represents a good cross section of the population. The argument is that people who have many friends are more likely to be recruited into the sample. The bias due to snowballing can be tremendous. The recent advent of respondent driven sampling is a step up. Respondent driven sampling combines snowball sam pling with a mathematical model that weighs the sample

8

Sampling

to compensate for the fact that the sample was not collected in a random way. In essence, respondents recruit their peers, as in network based samples, and researchers keep track of who recruit whom and their numbers of social contacts. A mathematical model of the recruitment process then weighs the sample. This method allows theoretical development and enables researchers to provide both unbiased population esti mates and measures of the precision of those estimates.

Other Aspects of Sampling Sample Size Sample size, margin of error, and level of confidence

A question often asked in sample design is how many observations, subjects, or members of the population one needs to pick for the study. As mentioned earlier, ideally we sample the whole population. At the least, we need a sample that is representative of the target population. In determining a sample size, it is important to con sider the survey objectives and possible implications of the results. If the objective is to generalize results for the target population, and use the results to make major decisions concerning the target population, one should strive for the highest level of accuracy. If the purpose is for general information about the target population, to identify issues facing them, or to explore their views, one needs a minimum level of accuracy and a smaller sample will do. The sample size must be reasonable in terms of the budget available, timeliness of the data; and any operational constraints imposed by the availability (or ease of construction) of a sampling frame or list, the availability and ease of recruiting interviewing, data coding and editing staff, and processing facilities. Usually a positive correlation exists between resource availability and sample size. These constraints also determine the sampling method and data collection method. As a rule of thumb, the larger the population, and the greater the variability in the population, the larger the sample needed when one is concerned with data reliability and expected accuracy of results. How well the sample represents the population is gauged by two statistics: margin of error and confidence interval. ‘Margin of error’ refers to the degree of fuzziness one can live with. A census (or surveying the whole population) gives the true response to a question. A sample survey provides an estimate of the true response. How precise is the estimate is expressed by the margin of error. Generally, the larger the margin, the less precise is the estimate. As sample size increases, margin of error decreases.

‘Confidence interval’ (a) or its counterpart, ‘level of confidence’ (1 a), indicates the reliability of the findings. A 5% confidence interval or a 95% level of confidence means that if the survey were conducted 100 times with different samples, in 95 times, the results obtained would be similar to the results obtained with another sample. Alternatively, it also means that if one could have talked to the whole population, there is a 5% chance that the findings would vary from the survey results. Putting them together, if a survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3% at a 95% level of confidence, it means that if the survey were to be repeated, 19 times out of 20 (or 95 times out of 100), the results obtained would be within three percentage points above or below the results provided by the survey sample. A 95% level of confidence also means that 5% of the surveys will be off the wall with numbers that do not make much sense. The relationship between sample size, margin of error, and confidence interval is unambiguous. Table 3 shows that at any confidence interval, margin of error decreases as sample size increases. However, beyond a certain point, diminishing returns click in. For example, a sample of 1000 has a margin of error of 3% at 95% level of con fidence. By doubling the sample to 2000, the margin of error only decreases from plus or minus 3% to plus or minus 2%. A 95% level of confidence is an industry standard although sometimes 99% or 90% is used. For the same sample size, a lower level of confidence yields a smaller margin of error. Similarly, a smaller sample can obtain the same margin of error at a lower level of confidence. Strategies for determining sample size

For reasons of reliability, no samples should be smaller than 25 although this is common and acceptable in practice, particularly with qualitative studies. In statistics, 30 observations or less constitutes a small sample. The following are common approaches to determining sample size: 1. Using a census for small populations: although cost considerations make census impossible for large Table 3

Sample size, margin of error, and level of confidence

Survey sample size

Margin of error (%)a Level of confidence 95% 90%

50 100 500 1000 1500 2000 a

Assume normal distribution.

713.8 79.8 74.3 73.0 72.4 72.1

711.6 78.2 73.6 72.5 72.0 71.7

Sampling

populations, a census is attractive for small popu lations. It provides data on all the individuals in the population and eliminates sampling error. 2. Using a sample size of a similar study: a review of the literature can provide guidance about ‘typical’ sample sizes which are used. Care however should be exer cised as to not repeat errors another study made in determining the sample size. 3. Using published tables: a third way is to rely on published tables such as one represented by Table 4. These tables provide the sample size for a given set of criteria regarding precision, confidence levels, and population variability. The sample sizes are the number of ‘obtained’ responses, and not necessarily the number of surveys mailed or interviews planned (as nonresponses are common). 4. Applying formulas: although tables can provide a useful guide for determining the sample size, one may need to calculate the necessary sample size for a dif ferent combination of levels of precision, confidence, and variability. One of several formulas available to determine sample size is n ¼ ðZa=2 s=EÞ 2

where Z is the critical value associated with the confidence interval a, s is the population standard deviation, and E is the desired margin of error. This formula applies if the variable of interest is a normally distributed continuous variable. It assumes that s is known. Otherwise, a small scale preliminary sampling is necessary to obtain an estimate of s to be used in the formula. Other formulas can be obtained easily from statistical textbooks. Error and Bias in Sampling Error and bias in sampling can be very costly. A classic example deals with the failure of Literary Digest (now part of Time Magazine) to predict a Republican win in the US presidential election of 1936. The Digest obtained a Table 4

Sample size table

Population

Sample size

50 100 500 1000 5000 10 000 100 000 1 000 000 10 000 000

4 80 222 286 370 385 398 400 400

Source: Statistics Canada. (2001). Surveys: Start To Finish. Workshop presented by Statistical Consulting Group. Toronto. November 27 29. p. 56.

9

sample size of 1 million through magazine subscription lists and telephone directories, and did not realize that these lists were heavily biased towards Republicans. The resulting sample, though very large, was deeply flawed. The bias in it cost the Republican Party and its candi dates a great deal in monetary, time, energy, and emo tional terms. So it is pertinent to look at the various sources of error and bias and exercise tight control in both sample design and sample surveying stages. Sampling error

A sample is expected to mirror the population from which it comes, however, there is no guarantee that any sample will be precisely representative of its population. Why does this happen? A common explanation is the presence of sampling error. Sampling error is the difference between the results of a sample and a census, due to the particular units that happen to have been selected. There are two basic causes of sampling error. One is chance, which is measurable (margin of error), and can be compensated by a larger sample size. The other is sampling bias which is usually the result of a poor sampling plan. A poorly designed sampling plan, such as administering a survey during holiday seasons, can lead to a high level of nonresponse. The bias is due to the fact that nonrespondents usually have characteristics different from the respondents. Nonsampling error

Like sampling error, nonsampling error may be an in nocent byproduct of the sampling procedure (random error) or produced by participants in the survey (bias). Nonsampling error results primarily from the manner in which sample elements are selected and measured. The effects of random errors approximately cancel out if fairly large samples are used. Biases tend to create errors in the same direction and cumulate over the entire sample. The sources of nonsampling bias can be classified into coverage, processing, and non response errors. Coverage error occurs if the sampling frame does not adequately cover the target population. A less than adequate coverage can be the result of omission (as in unlisted phones), duplication (such as using both a voter list and a ratepayer list), or wrongful inclusion of units (such as an obsolescent employee list dated several years ago) in the sampling frame. It is also caused by errors in field procedures that result in missed households or persons. Processing errors may occur when the data are requested, provided, received, recorded, edited, and im puted. No two interviewers are alike. Personal prejudices of either the designer of the study or the data collector may induce bias. The same person may provide different answers to different interviewers. Respondents may

10

Sampling

give incorrect answers to impress the interviewer, and knowing why a study is being conducted for who may create a different and possibly incorrect response, for example, to an income or even age question. Data can be wrongly coded or entered. Errors may not be identified at the edit phase, and compounded by poor imputation procedures. The presence of nonrespondents and incomplete/ imperfect information provided by the respondents produces nonresponse error. Nonrespondents are par ticularly problematic as they may possess characteristics different from those of the respondents. Nonresponse rate is negatively affected by a lack of publicity of the survey, a lack of enthusiasm from potential respondents, and a wrong timing when respondents are approached. These potential biases are present in both census and sample surveys. They are the principal causes for concern about the quality of data. They are often difficult, if not impossible, to measure. Control of errors

Sampling errors have to do with the sampling process. Apart from the need to develop an efficient sampling plan and make proper use of available information in developing the sample design, sampling errors can be effectively controlled by increasing the sample size since size of sampling error decreases with increase in sample size. Nonsampling errors are more various. Errors due to coverage issues can be reduced by obtaining the most up to date and accurate sampling frame. To reduce response and processing errors, pretesting the question naire, including in the questionnaire specific instructions to respondents, providing good training program for survey personnel, instituting quality control programs (such as getting a different coder to recode the sample or verifying data entry), and deploying good edit rules and decision tables are effective controls. To attain a good response rate, one starts with a good questionnaire design that ensures professionalism, elicits interests from potential respondents, and is manageable. One also needs to publicize the survey, and promote its usefulness with advance notices, reminder notices, and rewards if necessary. Apart from encouraging partici pation, one should avoid survey during holiday seasons or summers or repeat calling not at home potential respondents at different times of the day and different days of the week.

See also: Hypothesis Testing; Quantitative Methodologies; Questionnaire Survey; Selection Bias; Statistics, Inferential.

Further Reading Fowler, F. J. (2001). Survey Research Methods. Applied Social Research Methods Series 1. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Frankel, M. R. and Frankel, L. R. (1987). Fifty years of survey sampling in the United States. The Public Opinion Quarterly 51, S127 S138. Heckathorn, D. D. (1997). Respondent driven sampling: A new approach to the study of hidden populations. Social Problem 44, 174 199. Henry, G. T. (1990). Practical Sampling. Applied Social Research Methods Series 21. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Johnson, R. A. and Tsui, K. W. (1989). Statistical Reasoning Methods. New York: John Wiley. Kalton, G. (1983). Introduction to Survey Sampling. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Kish, L. (1995). Survey Sampling. New York: John Wiley. Lohr, S. L. (1999). Sampling: Design and Analysis. Pacific Grove, CA: Duxbury. Montello, D. R. and Sutton, P. (2006). An Introduction to Scientific Research Methods in Geography. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Nesbary, D. (2000). Survey Research and the World Wide Web. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Salganik, M. J. and Heckathorn, D. D. (2004). Sampling and estimation in hidden populations using respondent driven sampling. Sociological Methodology 34, 193 239. Satin, A. (1993). Survey Sampling: A Non Mathematical Guide. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada. (2001). Surveys: Start To Finish. Workshop presented by Statistical Consulting Group. Toronto. November 27 29. p 56.

Relevant Websites http://www.raosoft.com Sample size calculator. http://www.surveysystem.com Sample size calculator. http://www.statcan.ca Statistics Canada: data and learning resources. http://www.abs.gov.au The Australian Bureau of Statistics: data and learning resources. http://qb.soc.surrey.ac.uk The Question Bank is an information resource, in the field of social research, with a particular emphasis on quantitative survey methods. http://www.statistics.gov.uk UK’s Office for National Statistics: data and learning resources. http://www.census.gov US Census Bureau: data and learning resources. http://www.socialresearchmethods.net Web center for social research methods. Based in Cornell University, this website consists of a web based textbook and tutorial web projects that address all of the topics in a typical introductory undergraduate or graduate course in social research methods.

Santos, M. M. A. de Souza, Universidade de Saõ Paulo, Campinas, Brazil & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Devil’s Whole Poor people’s lack of access to disposable new global technologies. Psychosphere This is the result of beliefs, desires, passions, and habits which inspire philosophical and practical behavior and interpersonal relations of communication with the universe. Rugosity Psychoterritorial inheritance which appears as a form, constructed space, or landscape along with what is left from the past. Sociospatial Formation Defined as the territorial specificities of the projection of world history on national territories. This process leads to the formation of social dynamics and territorial configuration in space. Technosphere This is the result of the increasing artificialization of space, by which nature is replaced more and more by a technical sphere, whether in a rural or urban environment. Territorial Configuration Arrangement of natural and artificial elements present in a territory. Tropical Flexibility Copying merchandise process that increases the popular and informal market (electronics, CDs, shoes, etc.).

Santos, Milton (1926–2001) Milton Santos (Figure 1) founded a new school of Geography in Brazil based on his reinterpretation of traditional concepts of geography and the indissolubility of human and nonhuman, of objects and actions, and of time and space; he used these insights to develop a criticism of globalization which emphasized the situ ation of the poor. His reinterpretation of traditional

Figure 1 Photo of Santos, Milton.

geographical concepts led him to base his work on the foundational concepts of ‘socio material techniques’ (conceived of as a single, universal system of social and material methods used by man to conduct his life and relate to the physical and social world) and ‘geographical space’ (the indissolubility of ever more technical objects and actions projecting onto and producing space). These concepts led him to emphasize the world as a whole, intimately connected to the situation of a given place, which permeated much of his later theorizing. Milton Almeida dos Santos was born on 3 May 1926, in Brotas de Macau´bas, in the interior of the state of Bahia, in Brazil, and passed away in Saõ Paulo on 24 June 2001. His grandparents were slaves, but his parents were teachers, and he learned algebra, French, and good manners at home. He attended secondary school in Salvador (BA), where he fell in love with geography in the writings of Josue´ de Castro, although he later studied law because it was considered more prestigious. In 1948 he received a degree in law from the Federal University of Bahia, and from 1949 to1964 he worked as a journalist and political advisor for the government, both state and national, with 4 years spent in France completing his doctorate degree in geography. Upon his return, he founded the Applied Geomorphology Laboratory in the Institute of Geosciences of the Federal University of Bahia. After being imprisoned during the military dictator ship in 1964, he was eventually released and exiled. He first worked at various universities in France, but later worked in Canada, Venezuela, Tanzania, and the United States. After returning to Brazil in 1972, he spent a full year in Bahia without finding work; he then went to Saõ Paulo, where he initially worked as a consultant for the state government, later teaching urban geography at the University of Saõ Paulo and, up to 1982, at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro. In the last 20 years of his life, he returned to the University of Saõ Paulo, this time teaching in the Department of Geography. Overall, Santos wrote 50 books, was leadership and organized 14 edited collections, contributed some 76 chapters to edited books, and wrote and published 260 scientific articles. In addition, he contributed columns to many newspapers and magazines, and gave 62 interviews to scientific magazines and newspapers in the last 5 years of his life alone. Milton was ‘Doctor Honoris Causa’ of 12 universities worldwide. Santos was a free thinking intellectual, devoted to critical thought and especially concerned with the

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situation of the poor. His philosophy was based on the existence of socio material techniques and their role in the creation of geographical space. The consideration of the world as an indivisible whole led him to reflect on the way in which events around the world are reported electronically as they occur. The resulting planet makes global action, including economic transactions, possible (convergence of times), and led to his proposal of a sin gle, driving force, that of surplus capital (in Marxian terms). This convergence of space–time through elec tronic means, however, leads to the social exclusion of those without access to information technology. He felt, however, that these socially excluded ‘poor and slow’ people would some day be responsible for the future of the world. For Santos, geographical space was regarded as a dynamic whole in constant movement, with the objects involved being the product of the social elaboration resulting from labor and the actions consisting of intentional human behavior, changing things, but also suffering change. Santos’ highly politicized conception of geographical space as ‘territory in use’ – a common space of all humans and institutions – hence facilitated a scientific discussion of sociospatial inequality. For Santos, the highly ‘techni fied’ geographical space of today incorporates human labor, with the traditional relations between people and nature having been replaced by a new relationship between man and a second nature, the product of human labor. To deal with the socioeconomic specificities of capital and production of countries, he created the con cept of sociospatial formation, based on Marx’s economic and social formation. Places, regions, and landscapes therefore took on new interpretations in Santos0 s geography. Places are defined globally as spaces for social relations converging on common interests, whether or not the participants in volved are continguously located. Thus, the directors of a multinational company need not be physically present in the same space as their factories, but they can still dominate the relations and activities in these places. Regions are no longer a local construction, but rather a functional subdivision of the total space, whether national or local, and larger cities can be subdivided into regions or participate in various international regions. Landscapes, which involve finished work in space, are the material revelation of human labor, visible for as far as can be seen, simultaneously including past and present action and objects of action. These new formulations or concepts led to some uniquely derived concepts which help understand the global world, such as technosphere and psychosphere. The former is the result of the increasing artificialization of the geographic environment, with the growing intro duction of technology in both urban and rural areas. It is

accompanied by the psychosphere, consisting of all the human beliefs, desires, passions, and habits which influ ence interpersonal relations and communication with the world. These two spheres encompass interdependent processes essential for the functioning of the modern world. Santos felt that globalization could only be under stood if the horizontal and vertical organization of regional spaces were taken into consideration. He con sidered territory as the arena of opposition of the market (which individualizes) and the techniques of production, organization, and civil society (which are generalized to include all individuals). The territory of the market supports the verticalized networks of ‘egoistic’ and ‘utilitarian’ norms of interest to hegemonic agents, whereas local and regional norms involving the con tiguous construction of lives constitutes the horizontal aspect. Vertical and horizontal aspects are seen to inter fere with each other, with the global influencing the local the local, and vice versa. Santos accordingly borrowed concepts from eco nomics and philosophy in his construction of a new geography. His philosophical studies led him to propose the concept of the ‘devil0 s whole’, based on three main theses. The first of these involves ‘capital’ as the unifying agent, with a coherent strategic orientation and homo geneous behavior. The second concerns the decisive effects of technology on social functioning, even though these may be invisible, and the third involves the active role of geographic space in social dynamics. Santos reflects a strong Anglo Saxon tendency in his interpre tation of the world on the basis of Marxism and suggests that capitalist innovations in an underdeveloped country expose the country to external influences and accentuate its dependence on the dominant means of production. Such a formation involves a unitary whole; the structure prevailing when development is controlled from outside without the participation of those living inside is not that of the country itself, but rather the global structure of the capitalist system, with the forms introduced serving the needs of the formation of the country. Santos considered this international whole to be a perverse whole belonging to ‘the devil’. From economics, Santos developed a critical reflection of globalization, denominated ‘tropical flexibility’. In large cities, especially in the Third World, he suggested that the majority of the population exists under precar ious conditions, although they produce the fundamental necessities for the consumption of the more well to do classes. This division of labor, once installed, reproduces itself. Agents are mobile and exercise various roles, depending on circumstances. This metamorphosis of the work of the poor creates the flexibility found in tropical or southern countries. There are an infinite number of jobs, with an immense capacity for adaptation of social

Santos, M.

subjects, which are sustained by a hybrid of materiality and social relations in their local geographical medium. The divisions of labor are unstable, but plastic, and adapt to internal and external stimuli. Localized social relations are created in situ, while the solidarity imposed by hegemonic interests is dictated from outside. These provide the means of escape for the ‘poor and slow’, who can form relations outside the totalitarianism of ratio nality, a privilege otherwise reserved for the upper classes, and thus find a path to the future. Santos’ criticism of globalization was preceded by a profound criticism of urbanization in poor countries, with the division of urban space into two circuits: the superior and the inferior. In underdeveloped countries, cities do not function as a whole because the urban system itself is dependent on other higher level systems. The superior circuit consists mainly of banks and modern urban commerce and industries, while the inferior circuit consists basically of the noncapital intensive means of production such as small, traditional businesses and services. Santos’ view of the poor in relation to globalization is based on three considerations. The first is the idea that globalization is a fable consisting of oft repeated fantasies providing an apparently solid basis for inter pretation. These fantasies include the idea of the global village, the myth of reduced distances, and the idea that the whole world is within the reach of all. The ideology of globalization requires these fantasies. The second point is the perversity of globalization. For much of humanity, globalization is a factory of wrongs: chronic unemployment, increasing poverty, decreasing quality of life for the middle classes, hunger, homelessness, in creasing illnesses, the lack of a good quality education, and the deepening of moral crises such as corruption. These problems are all laid at the door of globalization. The third point is that there will be another globalization which will result from the tremendous miscegenation of races, cultures, and tastes around the world. This miscegenation includes the ideas of nonrational, non European philosophers, while the increase in the agglomeration of people in ever smaller areas leads to greater dynamicity of mixing. The result is socio diversity, historically even more important than biodiversity. In theory, it is thus possible to imagine a new discourse, a new metanarrative. For the first time in the history of humanity, there exists an empirical uni versality which is not the product of the mind of phil osophers, but rather of the ordinary experience of each individual. Shortly before his death in 2001, Santos presented a manifesto synthesizing his ideas and his theory of a ‘new’ geography. Presented at the XII National Meeting of the Association of Brazilian Geographers, it was an affirmation of what was necessary to inhibit the

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fragmentation of Geography as a distinct discipline. The ten methodological precepts presented outlined a path for geographers to follow so that they could act in favor of the majority of the population. These items included the idea that geography should participate in the trans formation of society; that geographical space should be considered as territory in use, the result of historical processes and the material and social basis for new human actions; and that geography should also consider the society as a whole in movement, since a view of only portions leads to isolation and fragmentation on a theoretical plane. For Santos, the consideration of geo graphic space, not as a whole, but rather as political, economic, anthropological, touristic, and urban spaces, also leads to the fragmentation of the discipline, making it impossible to explain the whole. Fragmentation and specialization, however, have been chosen by the market and politics, although they would lead to the establishment of an infinite number of independent geographies, which would be of limited value on an op erational level. His major premise is that geographical thought must emphasize the whole, despite pressures toward fragmentation and domination by the market. A holistic view can help reestablish the unity of the world as a whole. Rather than construct a simple, unified view of Geography and the world, Santos contended it would be preferable to develop a coherent set of integrated ideas leading to an integrated and dynamic view of the world. Geography must thus be based on a system of concepts that make it possible to comprehend the indissoluble system of objects and actions. The commitment of Milton Santos to the improve ment of the theory and methodology of geography was linked to his central concern with constructing a coherent system of ideas capable of assuming its role of providing explanations for the world as a whole, a task which remains essential for the understanding con temporary human geographies. See also: Globalization, Economic; Landscape; Place; Region.

Further Reading Levy, J. (2007). Milton Santos/Philosophe du mondial, citoyen du local. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Santos, M. (1971). Le me´tier du geógraphe em pays sous de´veloppe´. Paris: Ed. Ophrys. Santos, M. (1978). Por uma Geografia Nova. Sao Paulo: HUCITEC EDUSP. Santos, M. (1979). Economia Espacial: Crı´ticas e Alternativas. Sao Paulo: HUCITEC. Santos, M. (1979). Espaço e Sociedade. Petro´polis: Vozes. Santos, M. (1979). The Shared Space: The Two Circuits of the Urban Economy and Spatial Repercussions. London: Methuen.

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Santos, M. (1982). HUCITEC. Santos, M. (1987). Santos, M. (1988). HUCITEC. Santos, M. (1994).

Pensando o espaço do homem. Sao Paulo: O espaço do cidadaõ. Sao Paulo: Nobel. Metamorfoses do espaço habitado. Sao Paulo: Espaço, Tempo e Tećnica. Sao Paulo: HUCITEC.

Santos, M. (1996). A Natureza Do Espaço. Tećnica e Tempo Razaõ e Emoçaõ. Sao Paulo: HUCITEC. Santos, M. (2000). Por uma outra globalizaçaõ. Do pensamento uńico a conscieˆncia universal. Rio de Janeiro: Record. Souza, M. A. (1996). O mundo do cidadaõ, um cidadaõ do mundo. Sao Paulo: HUCITEC.

Sauer, C. M. Williams, Oxford University, Oxford, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sauer, Carl (1889–1975) Carl Sauer was a major figure in human geography and a number of cognate disciplines (Figure 1). The term ‘polymath’ has been applied to him because of his wide knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences, especially where these impinged on his research interests in Ibero America, plant domestication, and early human activity during the Pleistocene. He displayed an ability to link diverse evidence together and then take bold, intuitive leaps and speculative sweeps. It is a measure of his importance and appeal that there are nearly 400 works written by others about him and his work, and more keep on appearing. Because of the broad sweep of his work it is difficult to define his precise contribution to human geography. Nevertheless, one can say that he bequeathed a number of ideas to the subject that have had an enduring legacy. He had a firm belief in the importance of fieldwork in the

Figure 1 Carl Sauer.

empathetic understanding of the quality of life of ‘ordinary folk’ (especially rural dwellers). He also had a keen interest in regional study, of cultural history and historical and ecological methods in geographical analysis, and a concern about environmental and cultural degradation, paralleled by a belief in cultural, ecological, and methodological diversity. All of this was informed by a deep distrust of the theoretical and mechanistic solutions associated with the social scenes from the 1940s onward, as well as a dissatisfaction with the cultural homogeneity of Western (specifically American) imperi alism. It has been fashionable of late to consider him as a conservative, who created the new orthodoxy of cultural geography (which became known as the Berkeley School). But it would probably be more accurate to typify him as a maverick who was simply ‘out of step’ with his contemporaries, and a revolutionary. Sauer was born in Warrenton, in the district known as ‘the Missouri Rhineland’ west of St. Louis, on 24 December 1889. At the age of nine his German born father took the family to Germany so that Carl would get a thorough education, especially in languages and the classics, and he spent 3 years at the Gymnasium in Calw (about 35 miles west of Stuttgart). Consequently, he was well read in German culture and literature, which was reinforced by 6 years back at the Central Wesleyan College, Warrenton, Missouri, a bilingual institution (now defunct) granting first degrees. His father, William, was professor of music and French and was also a keen student of geology and botany. He was a scholarly, religious, and kindly man whom Carl admired and respected deeply. As the College’s star pupil Carl then moved to Northwestern in 1908, and completed his PhD in the first full fledged department of geography at Chicago University in 1915, under the varied and different influences of Ellen Churchill Semple, Harlan Barrows, and the geologist and charismatic head of department, Rollin Salisbury, all of who had a lasting influence on him. During these years he was commissioned by the State Geological department to do a survey of the geography of the Upper Illinois Valley, and also completed the fieldwork for his PhD on the Ozark uplands of Missouri and adjacent parts of Arkansas. Although Carl admired Ellen Semple’s charm and lecturing ability, he com pletely rejected what he saw as the sterile environmental determinist she espoused that emphasized humans as response mechanisms to physical factors, which had

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become the dominant paradigm in American human geography at the time. His study of the Ozarks gave an intimate insight into how the people of the uplands lived by knowing how that living was fashioned. It was his first eloquent evocation of the importance of people and place, and people in a place – and acclaimed as a model of regional cultural geography. It was the beginning of his distinctive form of a new, humane, cultural geography – informed by anthropological approaches – which seemed to offer a means of dealing with the diversity of humankind and its cultural landscapes through time. This was reinforced by his work on the Economic Land Survey of the problems of settling the denuded timber lands of northern Michigan (the Cutovers), which showed that humans radically transformed the Earth, often for the worse, and in the process created ‘cultural landscapes’. Sauer taught at the University of Michigan until 1923. Here he keenly felt the prejudice that arose with the anti German hysteria of World War I and which culminated in an attempt by some staff members to remove him. He never recovered fully from his disillusionment with those sections of American society which regarded some of its members as ‘less than one 100% American’, and subsequently his political sympathies during the 1920s and 1930s were very much for the ‘underdog’ in the form of non Anglo immigrant communities. He moved to Berkeley in 1923 where he taught for 34 years (32 years as Chair) and established one of the most distinctive graduate schools of American geography that would always be associated with ‘cultural geography’. On arriving in Berkeley, however, he made a few unsuccessful forays into the geomorphology of southern California, and soon found natural soul mates in the anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie. The concept of ‘culture’ subsequently pervaded all his teaching and writing. In Morphology of Landscape he dis tilled an almost wholly German geographical literature, established the primacy of human agency in the for mation of cultural landscapes ‘‘fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group’’ and the importance of a time based approach. In addition, he placed great importance on observation and contemplation in the field – Verstehen – an empathetic understanding (phe nomenology) and intuitive insight into behavior or object in order to achieve ‘‘a quality of reasoning at a higher plane’’ than the tangible facts alone. Sauer wrote Morphology of Landscape in order to ‘emancipate’ himself from environmental determinist thinking, and realized that he would have to ‘disagree pretty thoroughly with almost all the geographers in this country’. Once completed he put the epistemological game behind him and started substantive fieldwork on early settlement and society in Lower California, Arizona, and Mexico. During the 1930s he produced

many works (including some on early Mexican historical geography) which were published in a new monograph series Ibero Americana that he founded in the same year with Alfred Kroeber and the historian H. E. Bolton. These investigations drew him into the controversy about New World plant domestication and plant origins, and into collaboration with botanists, archeologists, and eth nologists, who (from the evidence of his correspondence) he found to be more congenial intellectual company than most geographers. With maturity Sauer’s horizons got wider, his ideas more speculative, and his ethical values more refined. He played a leading role in the establishment of the United States Soil Conservation Service, was consultant to the President’s Advisory Science Board, and a leading member of the Guggenheim Memorial Fund Committee for 25 years. In 1938 he wrote ‘Destructive exploitation in modern colonial expansion’, a brief, but seminal paper which was probably the most sustained and biting cri tique of the destructive social and environmental impact of European imperialism and colonialism since the writing of Karl Marx. He drew inspiration from the work of George Perkins Marsh on the human transformation of the Earth and Ernst Friedrich’s concept of Raub wirtschaft, or destructive exploitation. His fieldwork and knowledge of Latin and Central America and their his tory suggested that the Spanish conquest had led to a devastating and permanent impoverishment of the land and of its cultures and societies. In his opinion, disease, warfare, and enslavement had disrupted traditional value systems and caused catastrophic population decline, being one of the first people to publicize the idea of demographic collapse. Also, he pioneered the idea that humanly induced fire had made major alterations to many ecosystems. Hence, he suggested the diffusion of technologically superior societies could affect cultures and human life just as much as it destroyed physical resources. His world reputation was firmly established during the 1950s with works that speculated about and reviewed the place of humans on Earth. First came ‘Agricultural origins and dispersals’ in 1952, followed by a string of publications into the human uses of the organic world, and early humans in the Americas from the Ice Age onward. Unfortunately radiocarbon dating came too late to inform Sauer’s writing; although he may not have provided the answers, he brilliantly defined the questions. Second, in 1956, he masterminded the symposium on Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, the theme of which thereafter became his overriding interest. All his learning culminated in this volume, and particularly his chapter on ‘The agency of man on Earth’. The focus here was on the capacity of humans to alter the natural environment (‘deformation of the pristine’), the cult of progress, the waste that stemmed from mass production

Sauer, C.

(‘commodity fetishism’), and the alien intrusion of humans into world ecology. This was an early and influential statement about the degradation of the en vironment. It also had a global dimension as he returned to the theme of destructive exploitation. His suggestion was that Western ‘‘imperialism of production’’ was as bad as the old, colonial imperialism, and might ultimately be no better than Marxist totalitarianism; mass culture was eliminating not only biological diversity but also the cultural diversity of older and less robust societies. Mass production promoted the homogenization of society, not only in America but also globally as America became the superpower after the 1950s, with what he saw as a disdain for the ‘lesser breeds.’ Somehow, humans had to rise above this mindless, short term exploitative mode and try to conserve ‘a good Earth.’ Although he retired in 1955 he enjoyed 20 remarkably productive years (before his death in 1975) that saw the publication of four books and a score of influential papers, all distinguished by big and speculative ideas, which were the fruits of a lifetime’s reflection and unhurried reading. His reputation soared so that an ‘‘aura of sage, philosopher king, and even oracle surrounded him.’’ Sauer’s simply articulated ideas and pithy language had a resonance with many intellectuals, including Californian and the Black Mountain School of avant garde poets and literati, who extolled his work as an example of cultural and ecological sensitivity and respect, tinged with deep historical insight, and scholarship. It is clear that he also tapped a deep spring of feeling during the 1960s and 1970s at the time of Vietnam and student unrest with their concerns on the limits of the Earth and abuse of technological/political power. Yet, Sauer was a complex mix. He was congenitally nonconformist but deeply conservative, and although profoundly concerned with conservation was never formally an ‘environ mentalist’; indeed, he thought the movement was little more than an ‘ecological binge’. Although Sauer distained methodological and epi stemological discussion, his writing reveals that he was, as Entrikin (1984: 387) has said, ‘‘a philosopher in spite of himself.’’ Cultural history became his model of social science, and it was drawn from the natural sciences not the social sciences. He was basically a pragmatist who was influenced by the writings of the German cultural geographers Friedrich Ratzel and Eduard Hahn, and by the methods of geology and anthropology and their emphasis on the provisional character of working hy potheses which were no more than a means to an end. This was reinforced by his later association in Berkeley with people who worked on ‘tangible things’, like plant ecologists, agricultural scientists, botanists, and population geneticists. He argued for a theoretical and methodological pluralism that stemmed, in his view, naturally from the inherent diversity of nature and

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culture. The natural science idea of a dynamic balance and diversity that arose from organic evolution was deeply embedded in his thought and he felt that the modern world had disrupted these processes so that it was out of balance – hence his deep distrust of American capitalism and all bureaucratic systems which would destroy diversity and local community. He felt liberal social scientists, such as economists, educationalists, sociologists, and political scientists, who designed, plan ned, and directed community life were more likely to destroy than enhance it by imposing universalizing concepts of social organization, and by ignoring the in herent pluralism and diversity of nature and culture that stimulated the naive curiosity about the world, which was the essence of geography. Theoretical and normative social science grated with him in terms of its exaggerated confidence in the statistical and the inductive, and its ‘‘dialectic atmosphere.’’ Their focus on the present pre cluded a better insight into the origins and evolution of any topic, and gave ‘‘an exaggerated accent on contemporaneity.’’ Sauer’s social science was firmly based on history and geography – this was cultural history. Consequently the Sons of Daedalus (Daedalus was the cunning and arro gant craftsman of Greek mythology who thought he could invent anything) were the target of his criticism because their well funded procedures and programs emasculated the independence of the impressionable younger scholars. His ‘Folkways of the social sciences’ was an impassioned plea to social scientists to ‘‘give back the search for truth and beauty to the individual scholar to grow in grace as best he can’’ and to reinstate time and place into the study of America. Sauer was aware that he was ‘out of step’ with his colleagues and intellectuals, and spoke of himself as an ‘unofficial outsider’ and even as a ‘peasant’. That was partially an outcome of his upbringing and rural youth during a simpler age. But he anticipated society’s disenchantment and fears with progress, science, the elimination of diversity, and the degradation of the environment. Perhaps the ultimate relevance of Sauer’s work was in his groping toward a rapprochement be tween the social sciences, the humanities, and the bio logical life sciences. By being behind he was far ahead. See also: Berkeley School; Cultural Geography; Landscape; Place; Region.

Further Reading Callahan, R. (ed.) (1981). Selected Essays 1963 1975: Carl O. Sauer. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island Foundation. Entrikin, J. N. (1984). Carl O. Sauer, philosopher in spite of himself. Geographical Review 74, 387 408. Hooson, D. (1981). Carl O. Sauer. In Blouet, B. W. (ed.) The Origins of Academic Geography in the United States, pp 165 174. Hamden, CT: Archon Books.

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Kenzer, M. S. (ed.) (1987). Carl O. Sauer: A Tribute. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press. Kenzer, M. S. and Mathewson, K. (eds.) (2003). Culture, Land, and Legacy: Perspectives on Carl Sauer and Berkeley School Geography. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University. Leighly, J. (ed.) (1963). Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Leighly, J. (1978). Carl Ortwin Sauer, 1889 1975. In Freeman, T. W. (ed.) Geographers’ Biobibliographical Studies, vol. 2, pp 99 108. London: Mansell. Sauer, C. O. (1925). Morphology of landscape. Publications in Geography 2(9), 271 302. (Reprinted in Leighly, 1963: 315 350.) Sauer, C. O. (1938). Destructive exploitation in modern colonial expansion. Comptes Rendus du Congre´s International de

Geógraphie 2(Sect. 3c), 494 499. (Reprinted in Callahan, 1981: 330 363.) Sauer, C. O. (1952). Agricultural Origins and Dispersals. Bowman Memorial Lecture, Series 2. New York: American Geographical Society. Sauer, C. O. (ed.) (1952). Folkways of Social Science. In the Social Sciences at Mid century: Papers Delivered at the Dedication of Ford Hall. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (Reprinted in Leighly, 1963: 380 388.) Sauer, C. O. (1956). The agency of man on earth. In Thomas, W. L. (ed.) Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, pp 49 69. Chicago, IL: University Press of Chicago. Williams, M. (1983). The apple of my eye: Carl Sauer and historical geography. Journal of Historical Geography 9, 1 28.

Scale N. F. Sayre and A. V. Di Vittorio, University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Construction of Scale The process of creating observational scale. Extent The range of measurement of a scale. Observational Scale Epistemological moment of scale as defined by extent and resolution; the reference by which attributes and processes are measured. Operational Scale Ontological moment of scale; the spatiotemporal attributes of a particular process. Production of Scale The process of creating operational scale. Resolution (or Grain) The smallest measurable unit of a scale. Scale as Level A qualitative category defined by position on a quantitative scale. Scale as Relation A relative framework for comparing attributes or processes through observation and relational category definition. Scale as Size A quantitative measure of an attribute or process.

Introduction Nearly everyone acknowledges the importance of scale in human geography, but a common understanding of what it means and how to use it remains stubbornly elusive. Articles on the subject have proliferated in the past 15 years, reflecting an effective consensus that scale belongs among such fundamental geographical categories as space, place, environment, and location. Indeed, interest has burgeoned throughout geography as a whole and in many natural science disciplines as well. Ecolo gists, for example, have declared scale a fundamental concept for all sciences. Yet at the same time, a plethora of definitions, uses, and theories of scale has generated considerable confusion. Common definitions of scale do not exist within disciplines, authors use scale differently within articles, and debates rage over whether scale is an epistemological tool or a material attribute of the world. This article reviews the uses and meanings of scale in recent human geography to demonstrate the variability, complexity, and power of scale. The focus here is on noncartographic concepts of scale, yet the topic requires a brief introduction to cartographic scale for complete ness. Cartographic scale refers to the spatial relationship between a map and the space it represents: it is the

mathematical ratio of units on a map to units in the world. A map scale of 1: 62 500 depicts 1 mile in the world as 1 inch on the map. A small scale map shows more area than a large scale map, thus cartographers use the terms large and small scale in an opposite way to scholars in other fields. Cartographic scale is not prom inent in the following discussion, but it shares a common basis with all other types of scale: relationality. Scale has multiple meanings that are distinct yet in ternally related to one another. On the one hand, they are genuinely different meanings for the same term – one cannot declare one of them right and the others wrong – and in some ways they appear incompatible. On the other hand, they are conceptually linked, and the fact that they share a single term is not a coincidence. This conceptual and terminological complexity has led to frequent con flation and persistent confusion. Fortunately, scholars can alleviate confusion if they understand scale in terms of relations and processes. The significance of scale lies in the processes that continually reconstitute it as theoretically, materially, and politically important; rather than in a particular geographical scale, such as the local or the global. These processes range from academic analysis to political border definition to road building, and each process and its outcomes change with changes in scale. This is because a change in scale represents a shift from one set of relations among pro cesses to another. Then what is scale and how does it change? First of all, the structure of scale comprises three interrelated aspects – size, level, and relation. Size and level are relatively clear on their own, but they can obscure the fundamental aspect of scale as relation. Scale as Size, Level, and Relation: An Illustration To identify some salient features of scale without entangling current debates in human geography, it is useful to begin by considering another kind of scale altogether: the kind used to weigh things. Imagine that you wish to weigh the following six items: a gold earring, a newborn baby, yourself, a truck load of waste, a trainload of grain, and the carbon emitted into the atmosphere last year. For present purposes, we ignore the distinction between mass and weight. In each case you seek to know the same quality – namely, weight – and thus all six could be expressed in one unit of measurement, such as grams. In theory, a single scale is sufficient because the weights differ only in quantity; you are abstracting from all six items in the same way.

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Scale

This illustrates the first aspect of scale: as size. Whether one is measuring weight, distance, area, volume, velocity, duration, temperature, or some other quality, one uses a scale to do so. Scale as size is absolute insofar as it relies on the division of abstract weight into uniform segments for measuring particular weight. Scale in this sense is a tool, arbitrary in its units, that an observer employs to derive knowledge about the world; by abstracting from qualitatively different things in a standardized way, a scale renders them comparable in quantitative terms. But of course you would not actually use the same scale in all six cases. The apparatuses and methods for measurement would be quite different – for example, we measure a portion of carbon emissions and estimate the total with models – and the units would also be different: grams for the earring, for example, and gigatons for the carbon. Why not use a single scale? The simple answer is technical: no single apparatus has been devised that could weigh both an earring and a train; a scale strong enough to withstand a train could not detect the weight of a single earring. One cannot put atmospheric carbon on a scale at all. We weigh different things with different scales, understood as both apparatuses and units of measurement: gold with a jeweler’s scale, in grams (or ounces); humans with a bathroom scale, in kilograms (or pounds); grain with a railroad scale, in metric tons; and global carbon emissions with optical and chemical detectors and models, in gigatons. In purely quantitative terms, these different scales are separated only by orders of magnitude – all could be reduced, without distortion, to a single scale expressed in scientific notation – and each scale also represents a common order of things measurable with it. And in practice, each scale helps to constitute an order of things: gold and cocaine are very different substances, but they are weighed in the same kind of scale and expressed in the same units, and in this sense they are similar. This illustrates the second aspect of scale: as level. Things measured in grams and things measured in tons occupy different levels of weightiness, so to speak. Note that the terms scale and level are interchangeable in this sense of scale. A scale – such as a bathroom scale – implies the existence of a class of items that can be measured on that scale, and (generally) a unit of meas urement that goes with that class. Insofar as different classes can be arranged conceptually according to an other, second order scale, the first order scales (jeweler’s, bathroom, truck, railroad) become distinct levels in the second order scale. Each level represents one of a series of regions ordered along a conceptual measurement scale (Figure 1). Note further that these levels are distinguished qualitatively. When we observe that the weight of the earring is on a different scale from that of a train, we do not deny that quantitative reduction is possible, but rather recognize that the quantitative

difference is so great as to represent, in some significant sense, a difference in kind. Things measured in a jeweler’s scale will not register on a railroad scale, and things measured on a railroad scale will crush a jeweler’s scale to smithereens. Scale as level presupposes, but abstracts from, scale as size. Technical limitations are not the only reason for using different scales in different situations. Even if a railroad scale capable of weighing a gold earring could be engineered, there would be no reason to use it for that purpose. Similarly, there is no need to know the weight of a trainload of grain down to the nearest gram. You could easily weigh yourself in grams or ounces – the way you would a newborn – but why bother? For the new born, such precision is warranted because it can signify important differences in health and vitality, but by childhood this is no longer the case. In adults, such precision would merely generate noise, as your weight would rise and fall noticeably over the course of a day. Scales are internally related to the practical purposes for which they are devised. If gold were as cheap as grain, we would measure it in kilos or tons rather than grams. Conversely, the techniques of aggregation and measure ment – including the apparatuses known as scales – can have profound effects on the practices in which they are employed. Take, for example, nineteenth century Mid western US grain production: the dramatic increase in corn distribution and trade due to railroad and silo technologies rapidly transformed farming. Here we see the third aspect of scale: as relation. It concerns, for example, the relation of birth weight to infant health (why newborns are weighed in grams), or the relation of weight to value (why a gold earring is worth measuring in grams whereas a plastic one is not). When you drive a truckload of waste to the dump, it is weighed in units suited to the interaction of the truck, the dump, and the cost of disposing of the waste. If any one of these were to change significantly – if your waste were radioactive, say – the scale would change as well. Or change might occur the other way around: if dump space became extremely scarce, or if truck scales capable of much greater precision became sufficiently wide spread, then dump charges might soon be calculated per kilo or even per gram. This would in turn redound on your behavior in deciding how much waste to generate or haul to the dump. Scale as relation abstracts from scale as level to ask why processes have certain spatiotemporal dimensions, or – put another way – what difference those dimensions make in the outcomes of processes. If scale as size is quantitative, and scale as level is qualitative, scale as relation concerns where quantitative change becomes qualitative change. A relative scale defines and orders levels based on observed relationships between processes, or entities, rather than forcing observations into

Scale

21

109 108 10

Polar front

7

106 10

Glacial− interglacial cycles

Traveling low, highs

South oscillation

Monsoonal variations Vegetation formations

Regional drought

5

104

Area (km2)

10

Tectonically forced climatic variations

Forest regions

Tectonic units, physiographic provinces

3

102

Thunder storms

Forest types

101 1

Landform units

10−1 10−2 10−3

Forest stand

10−4 10−5 10−6 10−7

Tree Geomorphic process units

10−4 10−3 10−2 10−1

1

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 Time (years)

Figure 1 Delineation of conceptual levels on a quantitative scale. Solid lines denote climatic levels, dashed lines denote forest ecology levels, and dotted lines denote geomorphic levels. From Meyer, W. B., Gregory, D., Turner, B. L. II. and McDowell, P. F. (1992). The local-global continuum. In Abler, R. F., Marcus, M. G. & Olson, J. M. (eds.) Geography’s Inner Worlds, pp 255 279. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

predefined levels. The emphasis is on how entities are positioned in relation to each other. Geographers use hierarchy, network, and complex system theories to organize observations into relative scales for analysis (see below). Musical scales provide an analogy for demon strating how relative scales represent significant changes in quality with quantity. The relations among a whole ensemble of notes define a musical scale, and a quanti tative shift in scale represents a rearrangement of relations between the notes. The new scale will produce a qualitatively different set of sounds than the old. Simi larly, a different arrangement of geographical levels in a relative scale will represent a qualitatively different group of processes.

Current Scale Debates in Human Geography How does the preceding illustration help to understand scale in human geography? Table 1 summarizes the various meanings of scale discussed above. The uses of scale by human geographers in recent decades all fall into

one or more of the above meanings, but the distinctions among them have frequently gone unrecognized. Often, scholars have blurred two meanings together, either in formulating their own arguments or in juxtaposing their arguments to those of other scholars. Such conflation is understandable insofar as scale does, indeed, refer to: (1) measuring phenomena – scale as size; (2) organizing phenomena into classes according to such measurements – scale as level; and (3) exploring the interactions among (processes at different) levels – scale as relation. The result, however, has been persistent confusion and occa sional, unnecessary acrimony. The following overview of scale debates will highlight similarities among the various uses of scale. Scale’s Metaphysical Status First, there is debate over whether scale is an epi stemological or an ontological category. On the one hand, scholars argue that scale is simply a methodological issue. One’s choice of scale may have material effects, but it does not exist independently of human observation. Many commentators have discussed the metaphors used

22

Scale

Table 1

The multiple aspects of scale

Scale as

Also known as

Metaphysical status

Expressed

Consists of

Concerned to measure or understand

Size

Observational scale; absolute scale

Epistemological

Quantitatively

Grain and extent

Weight, size, area, distance, duration, speed, etc.

Level

Conceptual scale. May be observational or operational; ongoing effort to reduce disparity between the two

Either epistemological or ontological

Qualitatively

Multiple scales-assize arranged functionally and/ or hierarchically

Different orders within one such metric

Relation

Operational scale; relative scale

Ontological

Both: where change in quantity becomes change in quality

Processes interacting across scales-as-levels; relations between scales (e.g., how to ‘scale up’ or ‘scale down’)

Scaling effects; thresholds or nonlinearities produced by crossscale interactions; scale mismatches

to express or illustrate scale, such as pyramids, scaffolds, nested hierarchies, or Russian dolls, suggesting that scale is a figurative device or conceptual framework, not something whose reality is independent of human cognition. The focus therefore falls on the metaphors, measurement tools, and metrics employed to generate questions and knowledge about the world. For human geographers, such scales conventionally include the human body, household, neighborhood, city, metro politan area, province/state, nation state, continent, and globe. A research project might employ one or more of these scales; arrayed as a series, they represent quali tatively distinct levels for organizing and conducting research. For example, studies of globalization focus on economic and political processes across the local, national, and global levels; studies of childcare address personal, economic, and political processes across the individual, household, community, municipal, provincial, and national levels; and studies of the empowerment of American women examine how economic, political, and cultural practices at the household scale influence related processes across geographic levels of analysis. On the other hand, much of the recent interest in geographical scale stems from the insight that it is not only a methodological issue. After all, geographical scales such as the household, the urban, and the national are not only measurement tools – they also refer to material and social realities. Some geographers obscure the material and political effects of spatial scale by focusing on the methodological construction of scale. What is lost is the influence of scale categories on politics, practical activity, and the material production of space. Recognition of this influence reflects a broader shift in geography from absolute to relative conceptions of space. For example,

capitalism produces a historically unique material geog raphy that scholars can readily differentiate in terms of space, economic production, reproduction, labor and industrial relations, and politics. The resulting categories, however, are relative to capitalism and would not necessarily be applicable to noncapitalist societies. Clearly, there is truth in both positions; the two sides are implicitly referring to different aspects of scale and, consequently, arguing past each other. In terms of the introductory illustration, grams, kilograms, tons, and gigatons are human constructs that allow us to know and compare the weight of items in the world, but they are not themselves ontological categories. The observer uses a scale to measure things in the world, and this choice is principally a methodological consideration. Indeed, it is an unavoidable issue for any science: science seeks to identify and explain patterns, and this requires an epistemological reference – an observational scale. Human geographers rarely discuss observational scale, but biophysical geographers, landscape ecologists, and other natural scientists define observational scale by extent and resolution. Resolution, also known as grain, is the smallest unit of measurement employed in a given method; extent is the overall size, magnitude, or duration over which measurements are taken. The extent and resolution of observational scale determine the patterns an observer can resolve and also influence particular observations (Figures 2 and 3). Finer grain studies typically have smaller extents, whereas large extents typically require coarser grains. In terms of the intro ductory illustration, grain refers to the precision (or smallest unit) of a scale; extent to the heaviest amount that a scale can weigh. The two tend to covary: the jeweler’s scale, with a grain less than a gram, typically

Scale

Extent too small

23

Grain too large

Figure 2 Grain and extent of observational scale. If the extent is too small, then the observer cannot measure the entire object of study. If the grain is too large, then the observer will not obtain data appropriate to the object of study. In both cases the observed pattern does not accurately represent the object of study. From Goodwin, B. J. and Fahrig, L. (1998). Spatial scaling and animal population dynamics. In Peterson, D. L. & Parker, V. T. (eds.) Ecological Scale, pp 193 206. New York: Columbia University Press.

Maine East coast

USA

Maine South

Lincoln County

Colonial Pemaquid Lincoln County Damariscotta

Thomaston North

Polly’s beach West

Colonial Pemaquid Note: Polly’s beach is fictional

Figure 3 Choice of scale affects the observed orientation of the Maine coast. From Giampietro, M. (1994). Sustainability and technological development in agriculture: A critical appraisal of genetic engineering. BioScience 44(10), 677 698.

24

Scale

cannot weigh items of tens of kilograms or more; the truck scale can weigh something of many tons, but not with precision down to grams. Scholars on the other side of this debate are tacitly referring to operational scale – that is, scale as an attri bute or characteristic of the processes being studied, not merely as a lens or metric of observation. For pro cesses such as governance, economic production, or so cial reproduction, it is clear that spatial scale can and does have profound material effects. These processes operate within bounded (if not definite) realms and have determinate (but not static) spheres of influence. For example, changes in fishery governance altered owner ship, employment, and production practices in Alaska; need for childcare support created different financial responsibilities for the Canadian state, its provinces, and cities that resulted in different types of administration and support in different cities; and local economics and politics can affect global capital flows. Operational and observational scale are distinct but related analytics: if the patterns one sees depend on the observational scale one employs, this suggests that dif ferent processes operate at different spatial (and tem poral) scales. One cannot posit a priori the correct observational scale for a given process; rather, one must ascertain this empirically, bearing in mind that patterns may be artifacts of one’s observational scale. In principle, any discrepancy between observational and operational scale should diminish over time as our knowledge and understanding of the process improve. In summary, scale cannot be understood as either ontological or epi stemological: these are not mutually exclusive, nor can they be collapsed into one another. Rather, scale has both ontological and epistemological moments.

For example, Peter Taylor’s foundational definition of geographical scale incorporates both observational and operational scales. His framework is an observational scale that correlates with distinctly urban, national, and world processes. Many geographers have since challenged Taylor’s framework on the grounds that the scale and the processes are not fixed in relation to each other; the levels of observation and the operational extent of the processes are historically contingent. These cri tiques have implicitly addressed both the construction of observational scale and the production of operational scale while asserting priority of one over the other. Scale and Hierarchy A second point of debate concerns whether or in what sense scale is hierarchical. Taylor’s framework is in herently hierarchical. The urban, national, and world levels are vertically nested and complementary to hori zontal differentiation in space. Hierarchy theory does indeed provide a framework for constituting relative, second order scales. A hierarchy of levels expresses relationships between and within distinct orders of a particular quality. The spatial hierarchy in Figure 4 represents a four level conceptual scale arranged by size. Each level represents a set of processes with stronger intralevel than interlevel connections. Moving from a smaller to a larger level represents a decrease in the strength of intralevel connections, and the level arrangement restricts the influence of processes at one level on those of another. Some geographers, however, contend that relations between levels are not necessarily hierarchical (Figure 5). They argue that hierarchical paths do not capture the Largest

Global

Scale

Regional

Local

Individual Smallest

Figure 4 A scalar hierarchy. Levels higher in the hierarchy are at larger spatial scales. The thickness of the interconnecting lines indicates the degree of interaction within levels; thicker lines indicate a greater probability of interaction. From Goodwin, B. J. and Fahrig, L. (1998). Spatial scaling and animal population dynamics. In Peterson, D. L. & Parker, V. T. (eds.) Ecological Scale, pp 193 206. New York: Columbia University Press.

Scale Decision making

25

INTERNATIONAL

NGOs, Church

President Business & labor

NATIONAL Minister

Senator

Governor COIAB

STATE State deputy

Federal deputy

Limits of communitarian politics County leader LOCAL Sustainable development projects

Federal Amerindian reservations, ecological reserves & agrarian reform projects

Village leader & councilperson

Local people

Grassroots

Alternative/communitarian

Modern/traditional merged

Figure 5 Hierarchical vs. nonhierarchical politics. From Hoefle, S. W. (2006). Eliminating scale and killing the goose that laid the golden egg? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31, 238 243.

complexity and dynamics of actual interactions. Alter native models include scaled networks that span space to provide links between individual agents; and self organizing complex systems with emergent properties that operate at particular scales. One group of scholars insists that scale’s hierarchical baggage renders it in effective and proposes to eliminate scale from the geo graphical lexicon. In spite of the debate, scale is remarkably useful in all of its manifestations. Nested levels provide insights to post Fordist patterns of globalization. It is argued that globally oriented capital accumulation has surpassed nationally organized capital accumulation in magnitude and importance, while local economics and politics have gained prominence in a global rather than national market. National policies, however, still mediate inter actions between local and global processes, as demon strated by US fishery policies that boosted local production by encouraging foreign investment. Geog raphers often refer to a change in dominant level of a process, such as national to global capital accumu lation, as a jump in scale rather than a jump in level because such change alters the extent and outcomes of a process.

Scholars have also characterized globalization as a pattern of interdependent economic, political, and regulatory processes that continually (re)produce their own operational scales. Similarly, European transnational networks have shifted political power from the national to the municipal and regional levels. Furthermore, indi vidual purchasing and employment behaviors, which are often gendered and personal, emerge nonhierarchically in national and global business, marketing, and pro duction practices. The Social Construction of Scale The notion that scale is socially constructed is widely affirmed; indeed, it is one of the few points about scale on which human geographers are in agreement. Yet the implications of this are variously understood. Generally, scholars invoke social construction to emphasize the political significance and real world ramifications of scale – otherwise known as the politics of scale. The point is that geographical scale is not fixed: ongoing interactions among humans in their social and physical environment create local, regional, global, etc., realms of action. The fact that people can recognize these as levels in the world

26

Scale

indicates that socially constructed scales have material effects and ontological status. Often, however, scholars contrast the social construction of scale to conceptions of scale as ontologically preordained – in the sense that levels of analysis are given by an immutable set of pro cesses, independent of human cognition. This is clearly intended to compel critical scrutiny of the scales one employs in research – rather like pointing out that weighing a newborn on a railroad scale won’t produce knowledge – and therefore resides in scale’s epistemo logical moment. The confusion is further compounded by the fact that relations, unlike things, are not physical objects that one can directly observe. People constitute the national level through practice and analysis, but it can only be measured indirectly, by observing processes that operate at the national level. To avoid this confusion, it is useful to distinguish between the construction and the production of scale. Scales are constructed in the epistemological moment, as observational scales for measurement (such as grams and tons for weight, or local and national for space). These should not be taken as ontologically given because they are not ontological at all; nor should they be taken for granted (or otherwise used uncritically) because they have important epistemological and methodological consequences. It need hardly be added that such con struction is social. Scales are produced, on the other hand, in the ontological moment, as the operational scales of processes that occur independent of any act of observation. To say they are produced is to emphasize their historical specificity and contingency while allowing for both social and other determinations: insofar as they are ontologically real, these scales interact with material processes (e.g., biological, geological, and chemical) that may exceed or stand apart from the social realm. Much of the confusion attending these debates can be traced to a failure to theorize level. This middle aspect of scale occupies a curious, polyvalent position: a level may be observational or operational, epistemological or ontological. Ecologists are more explicit in their use of the term; their levels of individual, population, com munity, ecosystem, landscape, biome, and biosphere are not scales at all. Rather, ecologists delineate observed processes into levels along a spatiotemporal scale based upon size and duration. Thus, they use observational scales to measure operational scales of processes, and then categorize the processes into epistemological levels. These levels are usually defined relative to their position on a quantitative scale: a biome is larger than an eco system, which is larger than an individual. Geographers, however, recognize that each level, once postulated, can also define the extent and resolution of an observational scale. National level processes operate over particular areas and times that limit the observations of a national study. People construct the national level

through ideology, and produce it through practice. Thus, a level can simultaneously be epistemological through analysis and planning, and ontological through praxis. Geographers observe processes at particular levels along one observational scale, and then define an observational scale for each level based upon the operational limits of its processes. The result is that national becomes both a level and a scale: the former is a level on a scale comprising local, global, etc., levels; and the latter is a scale used to analyze relations among processes operating within national limits. Studies of globalization often utilize a three level scale – local, national, and global – to demonstrate a shift in capital accumulation from the national to the global along with a shift in political in fluence from the national to the local. But examination of national and local scale economic and political processes associated with Alaskan fisheries reveals the strength ening of national political power at the expense of national capital with the effect of increasing local pro duction through foreign investment. In short, a level can be postulated as a category for classifying and thinking about empirical phenomena, or it can be a characteristic or attribute of the phenomena themselves. Human geographers are correct to point out, moreover, that the two kinds of levels may interact and affect each other – how people think and talk about the world can affect how the world and its people are organized – into nation states, for example. Studies of fisheries provide good examples of the reciprocal relationship between the construction of observational scales and the production of operational scales. Geographers who study human–environment interactions increasingly characterize environmental problems as the result of mismatches between ecological and geographical scales. Processes operating at indi vidual, population, community, ecosystem, seascape, and global levels govern fish populations; and processes operating at individual, family, community, municipal, regional, national, and global levels govern human activity. These two observational scales have similar extent, but between them the operational scales of bio logical, physical, and social processes often do not match (Figure 6). Likewise, the ecological and geographical levels do not match because ecologists and geographers measure operational scales of different processes to determine respective levels of analysis. According to this model, economic and biological collapse of human and fish populations occurs when the observational scale of research and decision making contributes to human practices that operate at different scales than those of nonhuman processes. The mismatch between operational scales of fishing based upon economics, politics, and culture; and fish reproduction based upon biology, cli mate, and physical environment undermines the viability of both systems. It follows that the social construction of

Scale Turbulence Tide

10 000

Interdecadal oscillations

Water mass exchanges

1000 100

Currents Fronts

10

Stratification

1 (a)

Hr

Day Wk

Mo Season Yr Decade Century

10 000 Spatial scale (km)

Feeding

Stock abundance

1000 Vertical migration

100

Migration

Spawning 10

Bottom fidelity

1

Schooling

(b) 10 000 Price fluctuations and economic cycles

1000 100

Fishing trip 10

Human working lifespan

Fishing tow

1 (c)

Political 10 000

Business

Investment

1000 Employment 100 Management regulation

10

Human

1 (d)

Hr

Day Wk

Mo Season Yr Decade Century Temporal scale

Figure 6 Space/timescale diagram of characteristic processes from the natural sciences: (a) physical; (b) biological; and from the social sciences: (c) fishing; (d) fishing communities. From Perry, R. I. and Ommer, R. E. (2003). Scale issues in marine ecosystems and human interactions. Fisheries Oceanography 12(4/5), 513 522.

observational scale needs to integrate human and non human processes to match the operational scales at which coupled human natural systems operate.

Conclusion: Processes and Relations The many uses and meanings of scale can be reconciled if they are understood in terms of relations and processes.

27

Ultimately, even scale as size is relational: measurement relates one thing to another to produce information or knowledge about the thing being measured. However, the scientific importance of scale lies not in measure ments of size, but in exploring relations among phe nomena so measured. These relations are produced by processes – hence the theoretical priority of process over scale per se – and both the processes and their relations are ontologically real regardless of whether they are anthropogenic or not. Processes are simultaneously spa tial and temporal; there is no single correct scale for science, although any given process may have an appropriate or best scale for research. Scale has both an ontological moment, insofar as it is an immanent characteristic of material processes, and an epistemo logical moment, insofar as one’s scale of observation may determine the patterns (or lack thereof) that one observes. Understanding these as moments of a dialectic underscores the manifold relationality embed ded in scale: between subjects and objects, observers and observed, theory and practice, and knowledge and the world. See also: Capital and Space; Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems; Critical Geography; Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism; LocalGlobal; Nature, Social; Networks; Relational Economic Geography; Space-Time; State Theory.

Further Reading Brenner, N. (1998). Between fixity and motion: Accumulation, territorial organization and the historical geography of spatial scales. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16, 459 481. Brenner, N. (2004). New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. New York: Oxford University Press. Giampietro, M. (1994). Sustainability and technological development in agriculture: A critical appraisal of genetic engineering. BioScience 44(10), 677 698. Gibson, C. C., Ostrom, E. and Ahn, T. K. (2000). The concept of scale and the human dimensions of global change: A survey. Ecological Economics 32, 217 239. Goodwin, B. J. and Fahrig, L. (1998). Spatial scaling and animal population dynamics. In Peterson, D. L. & Parker, V. T. (eds.) Ecological Scale, pp 193 206. New York: Columbia University Press. Gunderson, L. H. and Holling, C. S. (2002). Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington, DC: Island Press. Hoefle, S. W. (2006). Eliminating scale and killing the goose that laid the golden egg? Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31, 238 243. Howitt, R. (1998). Scale as relation: Musical metaphors of geographical scale. Area 30, 49 58. Howitt, R. (2003). Scale. In Agnew, J., Mitchell, K. & O’Tuathail, G. (eds.) A Companion to Political Geography, pp 138 157. Oxford: Blackwell. Jessop, B. (2000). The crisis of the national spatio temporal fix and the tendential ecological dominance of globalizing capitalism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24, 323 360. Levin, S. A. (1992). The problem of pattern and scale in ecology. Ecology 73, 1943 1967.

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Scale

Marston, S. A. (2000). The social construction of scale. Progress in Human Geography 24, 219 242. Marston, S. A., Jones, J. P. III. and Woodward, K. (2005). Human geography without scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 416 432. Meyer, W. B., Gregory, D., Turner, B. L. II. and McDowell, P. F. (1992). The local global continuum. In Abler, R. F., Marcus, M. G. & Olson, J. M. (eds.) Geography’s Inner Worlds, pp 255 279. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Perry, R. I. and Ommer, R. E. (2003). Scale issues in marine ecosystems and human interactions. Fisheries Oceanography 12(4/ 5), 513 522. Peterson, D. L. and Parker, V. T. (eds.) (1998). Ecological Scale: Theory and Application, pp 499 522. New York: Columbia University Press.

Sayre, N. F. (2005). Ecological and geographical scale: Parallels and potential for integration. Progress in Human Geography 29, 276 290. Sheppard, E. and McMaster, R. B. (eds.) (2004). Scale and Geographic Inquiry: Nature, Society, and Method. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. Smith, N. (1984). Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space (2nd edn. 1990). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Swyngedouw, E. (1997). Neither global nor local: ‘Glocalization’ and the politics of scale. In Cox, K. R. (ed.) Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local, pp 137 166. New York: Guilford Press. Taylor, P. J. (1982). A materialist framework for political geography. Transactions Institute of British Geographers, New Series 7, 15 34.

Scale Analytical T. W. Crawford, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Centroid The geometric center point of a twodimensional object. Critical Geography Scholarship that emphasizes the social production of space and the roles of gender, race, ethnicity, materialism, and political economy. Degree The number of links connecting a given node in social, spatial, or sociospatial networks. Granularity Measurement scale of data observations that ranges along a continuum of coarse to fine resolution. Hierarchy Theory Ecological thought arguing that systems are best understood by examining at least three scale levels to include a focal scale of interest and scales one step above and below the focal scale. Modifiable Area Units Artificially imposed boundaries for two-dimensional areal objects that can be rezoned or resized leading to aggregation and scale effects in analytical results. Scale Dependence A condition where patterns and/or process relationships change according to scales of observation. Scale Invariance Geometric objects, pattern/process relationships, or statistical frequency distributions that appear identical or self-similar upon scale reduction or magnification. Semivariance The sum of squared differences between coupled observations at defined distance intervals divided by 2 times the number of observations per interval, used to identify scales where spatial dependence is operative. Spatial Analytic Tradition A paradigm that emphasizes locational analysis typically using quantitative methods.

Substantial efforts have been devoted to scale explicit analytical investigations. Among the social sciences, human geography is noted for its attention to spatiality, and its major modes of viewing the world include: (1) integration in place, (2) interdependencies between places, and (3) interdependencies among scales. Geog raphers often strive to link pattern, process, and scale – a perspective that privileges no single scale and instead recognizes that geographtic patterns and generative processes may vary across scales. Ongoing scale related developments within the spatial analytic tradition and debates among critical geographers demonstrate that human geography is deeply concerned with issues of scale.

Meanings of Scale Despite the avowed importance of scale, semantic confusion frequently abounds with detrimental effects for communication both within and outside the discipline. Geographers have developed a framework of selected scale concepts and terminology to ameliorate this unfortunate situation (Figure 1). 1. Cartographic scale (i.e., map scale) refers to the ratio between distance measurements on a map and actual measurements on the ground. It may be stated as a representative fraction (1:24 000), verbally (1 cen timeter ¼ 100 kilometers), or through the use of a graphic scale bar. Large scale maps cover smaller areas and convey more detailed information than small scale maps which cover larger areas with less detail.

Scale

Introduction Scale is a fundamental concept that permeates virtually all topics in human geography. Prior to the discipline’s quantitative revolution and subsequent engagements with post positivist paradigms, scale was mainly con ceptualized in terms of map scale (i.e., cartographic scale) and its impacts on cartographic representation. During the latter half of the twentieth century and continuing to the present, human geographers have developed multiple ways of thinking about, representing, and analyzing scale.

Spatial − Spatio-temporal − Temporal

Measurement

Operational

Observational

Cartographic

Figure 1 Meanings of scale (after Lam, N., Catts, D., Quattrochi, D., Brown, D. and McMaster, R. (2005). Scale. In McMaster, R. B. & Usery, E. L. (eds.) A research agenda for geographic information science, pp 93 128. Boca Raton, FL. CRC Press).

29

30

Scale Analytical

2. Observational scale refers to the spatial extent being investigated; or, the area of coverage. Large scale studies investigate larger regions compared to small scale studies that encompass smaller regions. With this usage, a study of national voting patterns across an entire nation is a large scale study compared to a study of voting patterns across a single state (or dis trict) within a nation state. 3. Measurement scale (i.e., resolution) refers to the smallest observable (or observed) parts of a spatial entity. A synonymous term is granularity (or grain) and the adjectives fine and coarse may be used to communicate differences in measurement scale (Figure 2). For example, observations may range from the individual person to households to local neigh borhoods to defined cities/town or to states located within a nation state. Analyses relying on individual observations are considered fine scale and those relying on individual observations aggregated to states are considered coarse grain. One may employ a large observational scale (i.e., entire nation state) in concert with a fine measurement scale (i.e., individual person). It is also possible to employ a smaller observation

scale (i.e., California) with a coarser measurement scale (i.e., census tracts within California). 4. Operational scale refers to the scale at which a geographical process occurs. For example, spatial mismatch theory posits that American inner city populations have lower access to jobs due to the process of employers moving from inner cities to suburbs. This process exemplifies a metropolitan operational scale. The loss of US manufacturing em ployment is due to international economic processes operating at a global scale. Alternatively, the process of gentrification is localized to smaller pockets within the inner city which reflects an intracity scale. An important caveat is that multiple observational scales may be relevant to various processes. For example, intracity gentrification may occur via local real estate processes in concert with global cultural and eco nomic processes impacting gentrifying household locational behavior. Geographers are often interested in the scale at which variance is maximized since maximal variation suggests a scale ‘where the action is’ which may in turn suggest an appropriate oper ational scale.

% Black 00−5.0 5.1−10.0 1000

10.1−20.0

km

20.1−40.0 40.1−65.0

200 km

Figure 2 Population maps demonstrating a larger observation scale (United States) with coarser measurement scale (states) relative to a smaller observation scale (state of North Carolina, US) with finer measurement scale (counties in North Carolina).

Scale Analytical

The four meanings of scale as presented above fall largely within the domain of spatial scale, and spatial scale has attracted much interest among geographers. Similar scale definitions and examples pertaining to both temporal and spatio temporal scales are also employed. Explicit integration of space and time and their associ ated scales has attracted attention from geographers particularly within the Geographic Information Science community. Another meaning of scale refers to levels of meas urement applied to the entities that we observe and represent. Whereas spatial and temporal scales deal with issues of ‘where’ and ‘when’, levels of measurement are scales that deal with the ‘what’ of entities located in space and time. Nominal level representation uses distinct, nonquantifiable categories such as place names (e.g., London, New York) or land uses (e.g., commercial, residential). Ordinal level representation is also cat egorical, but the categories have a ranked position implying quantifiable differentiation – for example, countries with high, medium, or low poverty rates. Interval and ratio representations are noncategorical, numeric levels of measurement. Interval scales are those lacking an inherent meaning for zero such as temperature (e.g., 0 1C and 0 1F). Ratio scales are numeric but have an inherent zero. For example, a region with zero people really does mean zero people. Additionally, 100 people is twice as many people as 50 people, whereas 100 1C is not twice as hot as 50 1C.

Metaphors of Scale In recent decades human geographers have questioned how scale is talked about and represented. A dominant discourse centers on a scale continuum ranging from the local to the global. The global scale is implicated in the idea of globalization which denotes the process of increasing interconnectedness of many parts of the world through common processes of economic, environmental, political, and cultural change. Diffusion of market economies, increasing rates of natural resource con sumption, the spread of democratic government, and adoption of Western style lifestyles are hallmarks of globalization that, in theory, may promote a homogen ized global human geography. However, globalization is manifested at distinctly local scales that can act to modify and adapt global diffusion processes to local geographical contexts. Witness a popular US comic book hero (Spiderman) that has been successfully exported and marketed to Indian (Asian) youth in a culturally modified form that bends to local naming conventions and religious understandings. Adaptation of the McDonalds restaurant chain to local consumer preferences is another more prominent example of interactions between global

31

and local scales. This highlights a process of glocaliza tion that can be described as a local consumption of a globalizing world. These examples suggest that neatly ordered meanings of scale (Figure 1) are complemented by more complex and nuanced understandings, or metaphors, of scale. One metaphor of scale is the hierarchical ladder (Figure 3a). Here the various scales are viewed as rungs on a ladder with a rigid progression between the various scale levels. The global is conceptualized as above the local and all other scales, and each scale is treated as distinct from every other scale. This metaphor promotes a vertical way of thinking about scale relationships and has affinities with hierarchy theory in ecological sciences. Hierarchy theory suggests that understanding of geo graphical systems requires understanding of the scale of interest (level 0) in addition to at least two other scales – a scale above (level þ 1) and a scale below (level 1). The higher level scale (level þ 1) acts to impose top down external constraints and opportunities and is gen erally greater in spatial extent than level 0 and slower moving (temporally). The lower level scale (level 1) is typically faster moving (temporally) and smaller in spa tial extent than level 0. Level 1 processes provide the mechanisms that explain level 0 behavior. The diffusion and cultural adoption (adaptation) of a US comic book hero within India (level 0) can be viewed as a scalar process involving the interplay of a higher scale process (level þ 1 – global US capitalist and cultural expansion) and lower scale processes (level 1 – burgeoning Indian youth population, increased youth literacy rates, local religio mythic contexts). Another popular metaphor conceptualizes scale and scalar relationships as a progression of increasing larger concentric circles (Figure 3b). Here a flat horizontal perspective is conveyed with distinct scale levels still recognized as separate entities; however, each scale is encompassed relationally within successively higher scales. This suggests analytical possibilities whereby human geographic entities might interact across all scale levels so that actors are not limited to vertical scale relations at the sub (local) or super (national) levels as implied by a vertical perspective. Instead, scalar rela tionships may shift and occur among scales. For example, regional political action groups concerned with public lands management policy may simultaneously employ strategies that shift scales (i.e., jumping scale) by appealing to local civic associations, lobbying through state or na tional political institutions, or garnering regional, national, or global support through media exposure campaigns. Individuals in such groups, while located geographically in bodily activity space, have the possibility of being located and interacting within and across multiple scales. A nested hierarchy scale approach is commonly applied in analyses using administrative spatial units

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Scale Analytical

Global Global

National Regional

National Local Regional

Local

(a)

(b) Minor Civil Division (MCD) or Census County Division (CCD)

County

Place 1

Twp.

Twp. Twp.

Green City

Jones Township

5.01

Smith County 6 Twp.

2

Green City

Twp.

4

1001 Census tract 5 02

1002 Oak Lane

3012

3011

3011

Block group 3 3014

3012

3014

3013

1004

3013

2002

Block 3014

3

5 02

2005

2004 2003 2007

Piney Hollow Road 2006

(c)

Block

Block group

Census tract

Figure 3 Metaphors of scale: (a) hierarchical ladder (b) concentric rings (a and b after Herod, A. (2003). Scale: The local and the global. In Holloway, S., Rice, S., and Valentine, G. (eds.) Key concepts in geography, pp 229 247. London: Sage Publications ), and (c) nested hierarchy (source: US Census, http://www.census.gov).

such as census enumeration districts. Taking US census geography as an example (Figure 3c), socioeconomic and housing data are aggregated from individual or household level observations and reported at suc cessively higher and nested spatial scales (e.g., blocks, townships, places, counties). Geographers commonly use data aggregated within nested scale hierarchies in statistical analyses (e.g., correlation analysis, multivariate regression) to describe, explain, and predict spatially differentiated human geographic patterns and processes. Critique centers on the fact that, unlike some environ mental phenomena such as watersheds which naturally occur within nested scales, politico administrative units

of aggregation are not naturally occurring and are im posed by political processes and concerns of expedient data collection and enumeration. A fourth metaphor is the linear network (Figure 4). This approach departs from those that conceive of space as being organized at various levels of bounded two dimensional space (i.e., areas). The networked conception of scale focuses on sites of human agency (i.e., individuals, households, firms, institutions) corres ponding to local, regional, national, and global scales that connect to and are intertwined with one or more other sites in a complex fashion forming a space of flows. Cross scale interactions afforded by modern information

Scale Analytical

Global

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correlation at the individual (person) level is erroneous. Ecological fallacy can be avoided by collecting data and making inferences at appropriate operational scales; however, this often entails primary data collection such as sampled surveys which implies a priori knowledge regarding which scale to observe and measure.

National

Regression and Scale Dependence Regional

Local

Figure 4 Scale as complex linear networks (after Herod, A. (2003). Scale: The local and the global. In Holloway, S., Rice, S. and Valentine, G. (eds.) Key concepts in geography, pp 229 247. London: Sage Publications).

technologies and command and control structures of multinational corporate and financial institutions and their effects on human geographic patterns and processes exemplify this linear based conception of scale and scalar relationships.

Modifiable Areal Unit Problem Inferential statistical analyses relying on hierarchically nested scales are subject to the modifiable area unit problem (MAUP). This problem is especially relevant for studies that use census or census like data that involve aggregation from lower to higher scale levels. It can be decomposed into two effects. The scale effect refers to the fact that, on average, the larger the unit of aggregation the larger the correlation between two vari ables. The aggregation effect refers to the very large number of ways that entities may be aggregated using different zoning schemes. For example, a city of 100 000 people might be comprised of 500 census enumeration districts of varying areal sizes and shapes. Upon rezoning these districts using different zonal boundaries, aggre gated observations will change in turn yielding different inferential results. Monte Carlo simulation of large numbers of zonal schemes and associated aggregated data observations has shown that it is possible to obtain correlation coefficients spanning the full range of 1.00 to þ 1.00. Related to MAUP is the problem of ecological fallacy which occurs when inferences based on a higher scale level are used to make interpretations at a lower level. For example, a high correlation at the state level between race and literacy level taken to imply a similar

The scale effect, while a component of the MAUP, has been used as a mechanism to investigate scale depend ence. Scale dependence is a condition where multivariate relationships and/or process mechanisms differ de pending on levels of aggregation. For example, human– environment studies of land use and cover change have employed multivariate regression models using different social (households, villages, districts) and landscape (varying raster pixel sizes) aggregation levels and found varying model fits and parameter estimates that suggest scale dependent patterns and processes. Such an ap proach may help reveal different scales of pattern– process relationships. Alternatively, it can be critiqued as a manifestation of the MAUP.

Multilevel Modeling Multilevel modeling is a statistical method that examines the nature of relationships at several spatial scales simultaneously as opposed to conventional regression analysis that assesses relationships at a single scale. It is particularly relevant to geography where national, re gional, and local social and/or environmental configur ations provide contextual effects posited to influence individuals. Modeling spatial behavior at the individual level misses the spatial context in which individual be havior occurs. Modeling behavior at the aggregate level is prone to the ecological fallacy. Multilevel modeling attempts to avoid these problems by combining dis aggregated, microlevel individual behavior with macro level, contextual measures that may explain or predict variations in behavior.

Spatial Dependence and Scale Spatial dependence refers to the degree of spatial auto correlation between independently measured values observed in geographical space. Global measures of spatial autocorrelation (e.g., Moran’s I, Getis G) provide a singular measure of spatial dependence. Local indi cators of spatial association (LISA) perform a similar function but yield multiple location specific measures of spatial dependence allowing researchers to assess nonstationarity; or, how spatial dependence varies

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Scale Analytical

throughout space. Spatial dependence prevails in many geographical datasets and exemplifies Tobler’s First Law of Geography – that is, things closer together are more similar than things further apart. For example, housing values tend not to be randomly distributed in space. Instead, higher or lower priced homes and neighbor hoods tend to be spatially clustered due to multiple sociospatial processes. Scale is related to spatial dependence due to the fact that spatial autocorrelation is frequently present within certain distance thresholds beyond which observations are statistically independent. Semivariance analysis is a method that assesses scales (distances) within which spatial dependence occurs. Semivariance is defined by: gðhÞ ¼

n 1 X ½zðxi Þ 2n i 1

zðxiþh Þ2

applications such as of kriging interpolation. Human geographers can apply semivariance analysis to sampled point locations or centroids of areal units like census enumeration districts, although caution is warranted due to varying sizes and shape of such areal units. Spatial autoregressive and geographically weighted regression are statistical modeling techniques that account for spa tial dependence so that parameter estimates are unbiased in the presence of spatial autocorrelation. Spatial weights matrices are calculated to incorporate spatial dependence in both modeling approaches and include a distance threshold as input that can be determined via semi variance analysis to represent scales at which spatial dependence is operative.

Fractals

Where z is an observed value at locations x, h is the lag distance between coupled observations at xi and xi þ h , and n is the total number of observations. The sum of squared difference is divided by 2n to account for the coupling of observations at each distance lag so that this magnitude is not double counted. A plot of semivariances versus lag distances is known as the semivariogram (Figure 5). In practice, semivariances are binned and averaged over defined lag increments for semivariogram plots. The lag distance where semivariance levels off is known as the range and indicates the scale at which observations are no longer spatially dependent (i.e., they become spatially independent). Semivariance analysis is often employed in physical geography and remote sensing analyses where obser vations are sampled using regular distance increments. It also serves as a fundamental method in geostatistical

A fractal is an irregular, self similar geometric object that can be subdivided into parts each of which is a reduced size copy of the whole. Fractals are therefore scale invariant since they appear identical following scale reduction or magnification. Fractal concepts were originally developed during the 1960s by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot. Canonical examples of pure mathematical fractals include the Koch snowflake, Sierpinksi triangle, and other fractal space filling curves. Fractal analysis is prevalent in physical geography where fractals exist widely in nature (e.g., coastlines, plants, stream morphology). Within human geography, a tradition of fractal research exists primarily in studies of urban morphology and transportation networks beginning in the 1980s. Geometrically, a straight line and flat plane have Euclidean dimensions of 1 and 2, respectively. Taking a straight line with Euclidean dimension 1 and reducing its

400

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300

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Figure 5 An example of semivariogram plot of lag distance versus semivariance; spatial dependence is operational up to a range of 3000 distance units.

Scale Analytical D=1

D=2

r=2 N=2

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space filling as cities progress from industrial to post industrial economies. In selected studies, links between historical politicoeconomic events and trajectories of fractal dimensions have been made. A critique of such approaches is their emphasis on geometric pattern de scription and relative neglect of dynamic sociospatial processes. More recent research deriving from complex systems paradigms (i.e., complexity theory) is attempting to include process mechanisms and explanations using dynamic systems modeling such as cellular automata and agent based modeling.

N=4

Power Laws r=3 N=3

N=9 N = rD

Figure 6 Haufsdorff dimension to characterize Euclidean and fractal dimensions.

linear measurement increment (i.e., the ‘yardstick’ used to measure) by 1/r, its length would increase to N ¼ rD times the original (Figure 6). Applying a log transfor mation we get log(N) ¼ Dlog(r) and, with simple algebra, D ¼ log(N)/log(r). Taking r ¼ 2, we get D ¼ log(2)/ log(2) ¼ 1. Taking a square with Euclidean dimension 2 and reducing its areal measurement increment by 1/r, its area would increase to N ¼ rD times the original. Again taking r ¼ 2, D ¼ log(4)/log(2) ¼ 2. This method for cal culating dimension yields what is known as the Hausdorff dimension. Objects with integer values of D have dimensions identical to their Euclidean dimensions and therefore are not fractals as with a straight line or square. Many complex real world geographical objects have noninteger (i.e., fractional) values of D which measures their fractal dimension. Intuitively, complex linear objects such as urban boundaries have a fractal dimension between 1 and 2. The same underlying concept can be extended to three dimensional objects. In practice, empirical studies have used a variety of methods, often involving geographical information science (GIS), to calculate fractal dimension including but not limited to: the caliper method, box counting method, pixel dilation method, and mass radius method. Through fractal characterization of urban boundaries for many different cities, geographers have identified fractal dimensions ranging from slightly larger than 1.0 to approximately 1.8. Studies that trace the temporal evo lution of urban fractal dimensions suggest that urban morphology becomes more complex (D increases) and

Power laws describe scalar relationships between two quantities that can be written as y ¼ axk, where a is a constant and k is the exponent of the power law. Relationships obeying power laws appear as straight lines on log–log plots since the prior equation becomes log(y) ¼ k log(x) þ log(a) upon logarithmic transforma tion which is in the same form as the equation for a line. Unlike fractals which deal with self similar geo metrical objects, power laws characterize scale invariance of multivariate relationships or frequency distribution for descriptive attributes of geographic phenomenon. The rank size rule of city size distributions is a well known empirical example of a power law defined as: Pk ¼ P1k-b, where Pk is the size of the kth largest city, P1 is the size of the largest city and negative b is the exponent describing the power law. Power law relationships and the rank size rule are identical in principle to Zipf ’s law – a rank size relationship for word frequency in texts – and the Pareto distribution, a power law distri bution of allocation of wealth. Stochastic growth models involving positive feedback (i.e., ‘the rich get richer’) and self organized criticality have been posited to explain power law distributions; however process mechanisms continue to be debated and investigated. With a power law distribution, there is no character istic scale (size) for the phenomena under investigation – it is ‘scale free’. This contrasts with the normal, bell shaped distribution for which the mean can be interpreted as the characteristic scale. A resurgence of interest in power laws has occurred during the past decade due to research that has identified scale free social and spatial networks. For example, studies of Web page links have found that some nodes act as highly connected hubs with many links, that most nodes have a small number of links, and that the distribution of numbers of links per Web page follows a power law. For spatial networks, power laws have implications for failure tolerance. If node failures occur randomly, then the network will not lose its connectedness due to the fact that the vast majority of nodes have low degree

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Scale Analytical

(i.e., connections) and the likelihood of failure for the highest degree nodes is almost negligible. Alternatively, a failure scenario affecting a few major nodes causes a power law networked system to fall apart and become disconnected. Issues related to scale free networks are relevant to several human geography topics including but not limited to: security studies, transportation and utilities analysis, geographies of the Internet, economic production chains, and social network analysis.

Critiques of Scale In the early 1980s, critical geographers working largely in economic and political geography began to question mainstream understandings of scale that emanated from geography’s spatial analytic tradition. Issues such as economic globalization, supranational institutions, local ized activist political movements, and scale bending media and information technologies did not fit into rigid, areally and hierarchical based conceptions of scale. Arguing that space is socially produced, geographers have critiqued the ontological status of scale. Scale is not given but is produced through processes of social, economic, and political struggle for given historically and technologically contingent contexts. Scaled units of aggregations can be viewed in this light as artificial epistemological constructs that enable methods of data observation, description, and analysis. More extreme critique proposes to eliminate scale altogether as a con cept in human geography. Critical approaches have worked to complicate notions of analytical scale, engaged more visibly with critical social theory, and employed combinations of discursive, qualitative, and quantitative methods. Nevertheless, analytical scale persists as a vibrant topic of human geography. The various meanings and metaphors of scale, methods of scale characterization and analysis, and critiques of scale developed during the past several decades demonstrate significant intellectual advancement in the treatment of scale and its linkages to human geographic patterns and processes. See also: Ecological Fallacy; Kriging and Variogram Models; Modifiable Areal Unit Problem; Network Analysis; Spatial Autocorrelation.

Further Reading Allen, T. F. H. and Starr, T. B. (1982). Hierarchy theory: Perspective for ecological complexity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Atkinson, P. M. and Tate, N. J. (2000). Spatial scale problems and geostatistical solutions: A review. Professional Geographer 52, 607 623. Batty, M. (2005). Cities and complexity. Cambridge: MIT Press. Herod, A. (2003). Scale: The local and the global. In Holloway, S., Rice, S. & Valentine, G. (eds.) Key concepts in geography, pp 229 247. London: Sage Publications. Hudson, J. (1992). Scale in space and time. In Abler, R. F., Marcus, M. G. & Olson, J. M. (eds.) Geography’s inner worlds: Pervasive themes in contemporary American geography, pp 280 297. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Jones, K. (1991). Multi level models for geographical research. Norwich: Environmental Publications. Lam, N., Catts, D., Quattrochi, D., Brown, D. and McMaster, R. (2005). Scale. In McMaster, R. B. & Usery, E. L. (eds.) A research agenda for geographic information science, pp 93 128. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Lam, N. and De Cola, L. (1993). Fractals in geography. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Marston, S. A., Jones, J. P., III. and Woodward, K. (2005). Human geography without scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 30, 416 432. Openshaw, S. (1984). The modifiable a real unit problem. Norwich: Geobooks. Peuquet, D. J. (2002). Representations of space and time. New York: The Guilford Press. Robinson, W. S. (1950). Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 15, 351 357. Sheppard, E. and McMaster, B. (eds.) (2004). Scale & geographic inquiry: Nature, society, and method. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Tate, N. J. and Atkinson, P. M. (eds.) (2001). Modelling scale in geographical information science. New York: Wiley. Taylor, P. (1982). A materialist framework for political geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 7, 15 34.

Relevant Websites http://classes.yale.edu/fractals/ a comprehensive page on mathematical fractals. http://www.csiss.org a premier site for spatial analysis in the social sciences. http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/Bjgotts/murray/murray.html an example of MAUP from the ncgia web site. http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/cartocom/ cartocom f.html geographer’s craft lecture notes on cartographic communication which covers map scale and levels of measurement. http://www.globalization101.org/ globalization. http://www.glocalforum.org/ glocal. http://www.census.gov U.S. Census Bureau.

Science and Scientism, Cartography D. Turnbull, ACSIS, Melbourne University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Commensurability/Incommensurability Having or not having an established common measure. Contrapuntal Cartography Incommensurable modes of mapping held in dialogical tension. Distributed Mapping Dispersed, internet-based, multi-user mapping. Emergent Mapping The unpredictable forms of creating links and boundaries that come out of distributed contrapuntal mapping. Knowledge Spaces The spaces within which particular modes of knowledge become possible as a result of linking people, practices, and places. Ontological/Spatiality/Temporality, Narratives An ontology is a worldview within which certain assumptions are made about what exists, what space and time are. Performativity The assumption that knowledge is not just representational or propositional, but is also tacit and based in practice. Along with the claims of coproduction and social construction; it is the claim that knowledge of the world is shaped by the structures of the society that produces it, and that society is conjointly shaped by the ways we have developed for knowing the world. Reflexivity The inherent self-referential character of knowing about forms of knowing. Representationalism The assumption that there is or can be a non-problematic, correspondence between a representation and a reality.

off the map: out of existence; into (or in) oblivion or an insignificant position; of no account; obsolete; [y] on the map: in an important or prominent position; of some account or importance; in existence; [y] OED

In 1815 William Smith published the first geological map of an entire country. This remarkable map meta morphosed geology into a science through the intro duction of history. Using fossils as markers of temporal ordering, it introduced chronological sequencing as the organizing taxonomic principle for what had previously been a chaotically diverse range of geological phenom ena. But what is equally notable is that this birthing of geological science through temporal ordering was effected through a map – a spatial display of underlying relationships. There was, in effect, a double moment of

scientism and cartography expressed in Smith’s map. ‘‘It changed the world’’ as Winchester puts it. A map laid the foundations for a science, but just as importantly maps and mapping became dominant tropes for knowledge and its creation. It was in the period that Smith carried out his laborious surveys of England (1780–1820) that cartog raphy itself became established as an empirical science and maps became the sine qua non for knowledge. The new national states were all busy conducting topographic surveys; while Diderot and d’Alembert described their Encyclope´die (1751–65) as ‘a kind of world map’ and Lin neus (1735) called his taxonomic system a mappa naturae. But, the term ‘scientist’ was first coined by William Whewell in 1840, and the first usage of ‘cartography’ was in 1859 and ‘scientism’ in 1877. It appears that the issue of scientism in cartography is closely connected to the territorial expansion of science in the Enlightenment project and the emerging professionalization of scientists and cartographers in the mid nineteenth century. On this account, scientism in cartography would seem a fairly simple matter. Scientism is a mildly pejorative rhetorical term used by those who would argue that there are or ought to be limits to scientific cartography and/or that the discipline of cartography has non scientific components such as esthetics. So debates about scientism in cartography reflect negotiations and controversies over the boundary conditions of professional cartography. The apparent simplicity of such a claim is just that. A moment’s careful reflection shows it is far from simple beneath the surface appearance. If you ask what kind of claim is ‘debates about scientism in cartography reflect negotiations and controversies over the boundary con ditions of professional cartography’, what is the evidence for it, and then ask what are boundary conditions, how are they established, what is cartography, and indeed what is science; it is immediately obvious that there are profound issues concerning the nature of disciplinary practice, epistemology, ontology, the nature of theory and explanation, along with questions about the wider social and historical context of both science and cartography, and the questions of how they are to be understood socially and historically. Indeed these are the very questions that also inspired much of the early work in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) which was con cerned to understand what was taken then as a given of modernity – the authority of science. The question of science and scientism in cartography is problematic; on the one hand because of its reflexive

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character, and on the other because of the complex relationship between thinking or analysis of any kind, and the kind of space that is assumed in the equation of maps with knowledge. As Doel puts it ‘‘One cannot think without spacing , nor can one space without thinking. ’’ The very assertion of there being boundaries is itself a matter of spatial relations and therefore a subject of cartography. If cartography is the science of spatial representation whose boundaries, like those of all disciplines, are in continual historical process driven by intersecting dy namics of a struggle for authority and technological development within the wider complex political and economic developments at the state and global levels, then there can be no simple answers, only controversial, contested, complex, and contrapuntal tensions between alternatives. The intensely reflexive character of the issue is inherent in the reality that the analytic endeavor to reveal such social dynamics is itself a spatial exercise in representing the production, assemblage, transmission, and legitimation of knowledge. The International Cartographic Association defines cartography as ‘the discipline dealing with the con ception, production, dissemination, and study of maps’. It goes on to say ‘A map is a symbolised image of geographic reality, representing selected features or characteristics resulting from the creative efforts of car tographers, and is designed for use when spatial rela tionships are of special relevance’. By contrast Harley and Woodward give a more cath olic definition; ‘maps are graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world’. For Cameron and Edge: Scientism is present where people draw on widely held images and notions about the scientific community and its beliefs and practices in order to add weight to argu ments they are advancing, or practices they are pro moting, or to values and policies they are advocatingy The concept of scientism implies an attitude to science : those who use scientistic language acknowledge and respect the authority of the scientific community, and wish to capitalise on that authority, in order to make their dis course more persuasive. In doing so they reinforce and consolidate that authority.

While Thomas Gieryn points out that the authority and credibility of science is a cartographic accomplish ment, it results from boundary work separating out the legitimate and authorative from the illegitimate and incredible. The ICA definition of maps as images of ‘geographic reality’ is arguably an instance of scientism in action, and equally there is boundary work going on. Harley and Woodward’s definition of maps is much more inclusive.

However, both definitions are also exclusive. They distinguish cartography from closely related practices such as surveying, geodesy, communication theory, GIS/ Global Positioning System (GPS), and information and communication technology (ICT). They distinguish cartography from the wide range of disciplines and sociotechnical infrastructures that make cartography possible. But it is also possible to define cartography to be maximally inclusive: as the study of the ways in which beings create, perform, and represent spatial under standings of the world including their presence in it. This would expand their representationalist definitions to include the performative; it would undo the divide between mapping and mapmaking. In addition to these divides over definition, location, and orientation, some of the most contested are over unity and plurality; is cartography, and for that matter is science, unified or disunified? Is cartography a science or an art? Where should the boundary be drawn between Western, scientific maps, and indigenous maps? While others are more concerned with the outer limits of cartography, is it to be immured against power and ideo logy? Do maps colonize? Is it just a technology or a tool? Is it a primary mode of knowledge assemblage and dis covery with ever expanding boundaries? All of these debates have their parallels in science; unsurprisingly, since science and cartography are intertwined, and the trickiest forms of boundary work are enacted at their intersections in the constant juggling of the benefits of identity and differentiation. This article canvasses map the variety of issues wrapped up in determining the boundary conditions of cartography. What are the spatial dimensions of spatial science? What are the most salient features in the landscape of cartographic scientism, how can they be ordered, classified, related, and mapped, according to what kind of science or analytic discipline? The major dimensions are epistemological, onto logical, historiographical, technological, and sociological, but they bear no essential relationship to one another nor do they have a natural hierarchy. How they relate and interact depends on the interplay of the divisions and boundaries they are used to articulate or oblate. Clearly these are not easy questions; they are reflexively inseparable, as is the conjoint reality that cartography is also inseparable from its history and its disciplinary self conception. Cartography can be purified, isolated, distilled into its essences and held to be nothing other than the technique of mathematical display of spatial relations. As does for example Cordell Yee, historian of Chinese cartography, who recently rose to the defense of scientism in cartog raphy. He argues that the inclusion of the symbolic, the linguistic, the cultural, and the political, in the history of cartography is unwarranted, resulting from a mistaken reaction against scientism, and that it represents a


rejection of the Enlightenment project. He insists there is ‘a universal method valid across cultures and for multiple points of view’ and that ‘universal knowledge is possible through mathematics and the object of this knowledge is the nature of the physical world’. His ideal type is the modern scientific map on which things are measurable because ‘the measurable or quantifiable is privileged’. [His] credo is ‘What held for Descartes still holds: the most certain things are those that can be measured. Modern cartography has expressed a Cartesian urge in focusing on the most certain’. Counter to Harley, Edney, Wood, Ingold, and others, there is no ‘cartographic illu sion’ or fallacy of ‘cartographic mimesis’: The goal for the physical sciences is a transparent rep resentation of the way things are. With maps part of the transparency rests on a one to one correspondence between represented and representation. Maps are spaces representing spaces. Locations on maps represent locations in space. Thus there is some ground for the authority granted to maps based on measurement.

For Yee the issues are clear, unproblematic, and ultimately a question of cartography’s authority. This resurgent intervention in defense of scientism is not, however, a quaint piece of nineteenth century anti quarianism, nor is it just a return to the simplistic history of fifty years ago when it was possible for Crone to claim ‘the history of cartography is largely that of the increase in the accuracy with which the elements of distance and direction are determined and in the comprehensiveness of map content’. Yee is explicitly responding to the History of Cartography project initiated by Brian Harley and David Woodward which has had a profound impact on cartography and its self understanding, which in adopting an inclusionary definition of maps mentioned earlier, has resulted in an entire volume being devoted to that which was previously excluded – indigenous cartography. That inclusion changed the ontological boundaries of cartography. Where once indigenous knowledge and cartography had been excluded, because their narratives of spatiality and temporality were place based and history free, now their inclusion implies there are forms of space and time other than those assumed by Western scientific rationality. This undoing of one of ‘the great divides’ as Latour called them, between Western science and indigenous knowledge is itself packed within the making and unmaking of another set of divides or boundaries between unity and plurality, science and cartography. This complex co presence of knowledge and mapping, science and cartography, is apparent in that ways in which the defining representational process of the mod ern age has often been said to be the conquest of the world as map. While the cartographic process of

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knowledge assemblage provides the dominant metaphor for science as a unified body of knowledge. As the post colonial critic Sumathi Ramaswamy puts it, it is ‘the staging of the world on a map before one’s eyes as an enframed whole that can be ordered, secured, rendered knowable, and ultimately masterable, [which] holds the keyy to the European domination of the globe that is such a diagnostic feature of the modern age’. But, for Ramaswamy, the hegemony of the map is not complete; cartographic resistance is possible through the mapping of difference. Whereas, for Walter Ong maps are markers of a difference between planned exploration, and hap hazard traveling, that irredeemably separates scientific from indigenous knowledge traditions. Only after print and the extensive experience with maps that print implemented would human beings, when they thought about the cosmos or universe or ‘world’, think primarily of something laid out before their eyes, as in a modern printed atlas, a vast surface or assemblage of surfacesy ready to be ‘explored’. The ancient oral world knew few ‘explorers’, though it did know many itiner ants, travellers, voyagers, adventurers and pilgrims.

The portrayal of the history of cartography as one of unified and unifying scientific progress is a central scien tistic trope whose articulation has been partly undone by the History of cartography project and by Edney’s analysis. The image of cartography as a continuously expanding, spatial database built on the assumption of scale in dependent, commensurable, geographical facts that can be geolocated to any required degree of accuracy has to be set against Edney’s revised history. His key point is that car tography is not just one single practice, it has multiple modes with differing histories and practices, consequently there are different types of cartographic information, in cluding thematic, systematic, chorographic, charting, and topographic. Each cartographic mode has different social, cultural, and technological relations, and differing spati alities. Each mode is socially constructed in the same manner as art, science, technologyy as such, the boundary between science, technology, art, cartography, etc., ‘‘is a matter for social negotiation and represents no underlying distinction’’. However, there is a parallel making and unmaking of the same divide between unity and disunity in science; between claims there is a growing body of coherent and consistent facts, and claims there are multiple disciplines and approaches each with their own styles, methods, and ontologies. A key process in these territorial dynamics, in both cartography and science and in their interactions, is the achievement of standardization and commensurability. In a world of difference, multiplicity, and messiness, how are stability, unity, and coherence accomplished, how

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is the world made one, and how is knowledge made assemblable? One way of understanding this process, promulgated by Yee, Crone, and others that has already been mentioned, is that it is achieved through increas ingly sophisticated mathematical techniques and ways of measuring, now including satellites and GPS. By contrast other historians have argued that considerable social and technical work has had to go into creating knowledge spaces by linking people, practices, and places, and that standardization and commensurability are products of social and historical as well as technical and scientific processes which have themselves been extremely varied both in time and place. Science, cartography, and the nation state were effectively co produced in the seventeenth and eight eenth centuries in Western Europe, through the myriad of interlinking processes required to build national ob servatories, determine the distance of the Sun and the shape of the Earth, establish national surveys and link them, agree on an international date line, and a common system of measurement. The apparent seamlessness of the socially constructed knowledge space that was co produced with science, cartography, and the modern state has now been revealed as even more fragmented and diverse, as historians of cartography have dug deeper and have also moved their focus to countries outside Western Europe. In Mexico for example, the state, despite strenuous efforts, has not succeeded in a fundamental cartographic task – ‘that of regulating property and controlling the space of the state’ through a comprehensive property register. The failure was due in part, on Craib’s account, to the complex historical transformations of ejidos – community owned lands, which has led to an inability to achieve a correspondence between the map and geo graphic reality. Similarly the work of Winichakul in Thailand, Yonemoto in Japan, and Smail in Marseilles show that space is not an abstract, neutral, featureless void within which actors move, nor does the modern state ineluctably impose its own forms of identity and spatiality upon the citizens. Rather, as Craib puts it ‘people make their own geography as well as their own history’, but ‘the ambi guities of (and struggles in) history are reconciled and suppressed through spatial order as the open ended yields to the inevitable. The complexity, contingency, messiness, and irony, that ‘is’ human historyy all are flattened and neutralized in the teleological quest for legitimacy, foundational coherence, and the natural isation of the social world’. However, the processes of naturalization are also discerned by Corrigan and Sayer for whom the where ‘ontological and epistemological premises of a particular and historical form of social order’ are the legitimated

result of ‘defining, mapping, [and] naming reality’, of being ‘on the map’. But they are never complete, the processes are always in a state of open ended dialogical tension. Mathew Sparke, for example, points out that maps like the National Atlas of Canada have counter hegemonic effects as well as hegemonic ones. In an in stance of ‘contrapuntal cartography’ the land claims of two indigenous tribal groups of Canada, the Gitxsan and the Wet’suwete’en, were successfully mediated by the state’s own maps against the state’s claims. This process of both rigidifying and destabilizing the boundaries between the abstractions of the cartographic discipline and the engaged, embodied, performances of mapping, and being mapped reveals scientism as being, in part, a legitimation strategy. It is a rhetorical move in the struggle for authority, which is deployed by all parties to the continuous restructuring of the field as it is reordered both by technology and developments in socio historical research and by the actors. Those who would favor a progressivist and techno mensurational account seek to display science as revealing and displaying a natural order of things while concealing or denying the agency of the actors. Those who would favor a constructivist account are similarly claiming to reveal the ‘real’ social ordering while concealing their own assumptions about the agency of technology, artifacts and infrastructure, and forms of spatiality. There can be no escaping this reflexive dilemma. The agency of the users and of the technology reveals a similar open ended dynamic within and without car tography, especially in the past twenty years or so with the advent of the new technologies of GIS, ICT, GPS, remote sensing and satellite imaging, and the Internet, which together have transformed the boundary con ditions of cartography, its location, and its orientation. The introduction of GIS in cartography and geography sparked a flurry of debates about its role. These debates had two principal foci; where is it to be located? Is it a tool or is it a science? What are the social implications of its use? Both of these foci raise the question of scientism; where are the boundaries of cartography to be located in the face of the introduction of a new technology? During the 1990s in cartography’s equivalent of the ‘science wars’, opposing sides either tried to resist what they saw as the expansion of technocratic positivism or tried to welcome the advent of the new technology which would give cartography a new scientific legitimacy. A com promise has now been reached in which the boundaries of cartography have been radically expanded to include critical cartography on the one hand and the establish ment of GIS as a science on the other. But what has produced an even more radical transformation is the new mobility of cartography. It has become unbounded. Protagonists on both sides of the earlier debates seem agreed that cartography is no longer in the hands of the


professionals but in the hands of the users. It is claimed that anyone with a home computer and an Internet connection can utilize ‘open source’ collaborative tools, mobile mapping applications, and geo tagging to make their own maps. Arguably this is a form of scientism in that the various geo coding technologies have been black boxed in standardized, unexamined, and largely unexaminable packages, and equally the techniques cannot be used without at least a minimum of expertise. While of course a new divide opens up between the computer haves and the have nots. However, the scientistic efflorescence of unbounded, mobilized, cartography into every and any area the users want to take it, has been accompanied by a less remarked but nonetheless substantial transformation in the nature of knowledge and the ways it is assembled. The ultimate panoptic dream of Enlightenments cartography was the assemblage of all knowledge in one place and time. A dream that was premised on the creation of equiva lences through the geo coding of all data. Knowledge was to be standardized by the deployment of common systems of commensuration; through abstraction from place, context, and practice; and through the attribution of unique locational identifiers. But, at the very moment when totalizing cartography has become a reality rather than a dream, the antithesis of unified universal know ledge is also being realized. The criticisms that were leveled against GIS and the scientization of cartography are now being incorporated in new forms of spatial representation. In earlier debates about scientism in cartography, there was a concern over the boundary between science and esthetics. That boundary has now been largely dissolved; not only does cartography acknowledge the necessity of esthetics in its own prac tices, as became apparent in the controversy over the Peters projection, but cartography has also become an important mode of artistic expression. The main thrust of the social critiques of GIS were leveled at its hom ogenizing effects on knowledge. The processes of com mensuration turned knowledge into information and information into data; the performative was displaced by the representational. The particularities of place and context were eliminated along with differences in prac tices and ontologies. Now the recognition that there are multiple and distributed knowledges based in com munities, practices, and places with differing narratives of spatiality and temporality, has moved from the confines sociology of scientific knowledge and cartographic theory into the wider arenas of business organization, knowledge management, cyberspace, and indigenous and local communities. In these arenas ‘distributed’ and ‘emergent mapping’ are now being vigorously pursued. The new unbounded technologically enhanced cartography is no longer insistent on commensuration, it can and does work ‘with’ incommensurability. Indigenous and local

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communities can now map their own territories and traditions. But, this does not stop the giddying gyre of cartography’s mapping of mapping in cyberspace, nor does it stop the marking of new boundaries and divides in the constant interplay between knowledge, space, science, and authority. What lies behind the emergence of distributed map ping is a switch in the models of knowledge and space that inform cartography, from physics and information sciences to ecology and the social sciences. The switch is really one to thinking of knowledge as relational, based in communities of practice, and in movement. Nonetheless it is an example of scientism, of the expansion of an area of science into a region where it previously held no sway. This suggests that scientism in cartography is not an inherently bad thing; it is only problematic where the contrapuntal dynamic is foreclosed, where differing narratives of spatiality and temporality are silenced and unperformed. One possible resolution to the reflexive dilemma of the spatiality of knowledge is to work with the fecundity of the tension between differing and incommensurable ontologies at every level from the lived reality of the actors to the analyst’s abstractions. See also: Art and Cartography; Counter-Mapping; Critical Cartography; Indigenous Mapping; Mapping, Non-Western; Performative and Embodied Mapping; Qualitative Spatial Reasoning; Spatial Ontologies.

Further Reading Cameron, I. and Edge, E. (1979). Scientific Images and Their Social Uses: An Introduction to the Concept of Scientism. London: Butterworth. Corrigan, P. and Sayer, D. (1985). The Great Arch: English State Formation as Cultural Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Craib, R. (2004). Cartographic Mexico: A History of State Fixations and Fugitive Landscapes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Crampton, J. W. and Krygier, J. (2006). An introduction to critical cartography. ACME: An International E Journal for Critical Geographies 4, 11 33. Crone, G. (1953). Maps and Their Makers. Folkstone: Dawson. Doel, M. (1996). A hundred thousand lines of flight: A machinic introduction to the nomad thought and scrumpled space of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, 421 439. Edney, M. H. (1993). Cartography without ‘progress’: Reinterpreting the nature and historical development of mapmaking. Cartographica 30, 54 68. Edney, M. (1994). Mathematical cosmography and the social ideology of British cartography 1780 1820. Imago Mundi 46, 101 116. Harley, J. B. and Woodward, D. (eds.) (1987). The History of Cartography: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, vol. 1. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Olson, D. (1994). The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pickles, J. (ed.) (1995). Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems. New York: Guilford Press.

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Ramaswamy, S. (1999). Catastrophic cartographies: Mapping the lost continent of Lemuria. Representations 67, 92 129. Smail, D. L. (1999). Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sparke, M. (2005). In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational Geographies of the Nation State. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press. Turnbull, D. (2003). Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge (2nd edn.). London: Routledge. Winichakul, T. (1994). Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo Body of a Nation. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Woodward, D. and Lewis, G. M. (eds.) (1998). The History of Cartography, Vol 2, Book 3: Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wright, D., Goodchild, M. and Proctor, J. (1997). GIS: Tool or science? Demystifying the persistent ambiguity of GIS as ‘tool’ versus

‘science’. The Annals of the American Association of Geographers 87, 346 363. Yee, C. D. K. (2001). A reaction to the reaction against scientism: On the power and limits of the textual analogy for maps. In Woodward, D., Delano Smith, C. & Yee, C. (eds.) Approaches and Challenges in a Worldwide History of Cartography, pp 203 222. Barcelona: Institut Cartografic de Catalunya. Yonemoto, M. (2003). Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place and Culture in the Tokugawa Period (1603 1868). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.nacis.org

Scientific Method R. Flowerdew, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Is Human Geography a Science? Human geography for some decades has been unsure as to whether it is an art or a science. Many human geographers would reject this dichotomy, claiming that it is a social science, but the question remains as to whether human geography should try to proceed in the manner of a science or not. During the quantitative revolution, human geographers (and physical geographers) tried to redefine themselves as scientists. Among other things, this involved the adoption of positivist ontology and epis temology – more accurately, Popper’s critical rationalism, with its emphasis on falsification. The way science was supposed to work was then, and still is today, described as ‘the scientific method’, despite recent studies in the sociology of science which show that scientists seldom, if ever, follow the scientific method in practice. The scientific method is a label given to a set of prescriptions for conducting research, associated with the positivist tradition. These prescriptions are also known as the hypothetico deductive approach. The starting point is a consistent set of statements about the world which constitute a theory. A theory is based on a set of axioms, statements which are assumed to be true, and primitive terms, which are taken as basic entities, in relation to which all other terms must be defined. Other terms may then be introduced by defining them, and further state ments may be made, which together constitute a theory. Statements may be logically deduced from the axioms and definitions – these may be called ‘theorems’. A theory needs to have no practical relevance to the real world. Many mathematical theories are developed by changing the axioms and seeing what happens. For ex ample, Riemannian geometry, in which the angles of a triangle can be more than 1801, was originally thought to have no practical relevance, but subsequently appli cations have been found in Einstein’s relativity theory. A theory is only regarded as scientific if it can be applied to the real world. This means that there must be entities in the real world which can be regarded as equivalent to primitives and defined terms in the theory. Then the scientist can investigate whether the axioms and theo rems are true in reality. This requires the existence of testable hypotheses – in other words, statements which can be evaluated using observational methods. The scientific method is in tolerant of entities which are not clearly defined and of relationships which cannot be observed, which are labeled as ‘metaphysics’ and rejected. Thus, most

religious dogma is rejected, as is the Marxist concept of social class. They are not regarded as acceptable within the scientific method because there is no way to disprove their existence. The scientific method thus is based on applying a theory which can generate testable hypotheses – in other words, it must be possible to make observations that would lead to rejecting the hypothesis. If observations do lead to a rejection of the hypothesis, the scientist should return to the theory and modify it. The modified theory must then be used to generate a new set of testable hypotheses – the results of testing either according with the theory, in which case the theory can be developed further, or conflicting with the theory, in which case it must be further modified. The scientific method does not however tell us how the theory should be modified or developed, and there is scope for individual scientists either to recognize the unsuccessfully tested hypothesis as an exception to a generally true theory, or to make more fundamental changes to the theory. Kuhn, in his 1962 study of scientific paradigms and how they may be overthrown, discusses the conditions under which each of these alternatives may occur. The result of testing a hypothesis empirically may be in line with theoretical predictions or it may not. If it is, it is tempting to regard the result as verification of the theory, but this may be a mistake. It may be that we can think of many possible theories that would predict the result obtained; the next step in that case is to find a testable hypothesis whose result will allow a decision among these alternative theories. This point is made by Popper who argued that falsification rather than verifi cation was the key process in scientific work. The most robust scientific theories are those which have survived the most powerful attempts to falsify them.

The Scientific Method in Human Geography The scientific method became important in human geography as a result of the 1960s quantitative revolution, and those writers most concerned to construct human geography as a science urged their readers to adopt the scientific method (notably textbooks by Abler, Adams and Gould, and by Morrill). The scientific method was described and discussed in some detail by Harvey, though he adopted a much broader definition of scientific method as ‘‘the setting up and observing of decent

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Scientific Method

intellectual standards for rational argument.’’ However, a few years later he had largely abandoned the scientific method in favor of Marxist dialectics. Nevertheless, others continued to advocate the use of the scientific method, notably Amedeo and Golledge. A short intro duction to the topic taking Popper’s view on falsification is provided by Marshall. One of the best known examples of theory in human geography is central place theory. This makes some simple assumptions about the world and derives an elaborate spatial pattern of settlements. Central place theory was first formulated by Christaller and Losch but was developed into a formal theory by Dacey. It is a good example of a theory which is internally consistent but does not fully accord with real world characteristics. In particular, the central places are assumed to be located on an isotropic plane, with transport equally easy in any direction. It is also assumed that central places can adjust themselves to the best set of locations, without any consideration of historical development or settlement growth. There is nowhere in the real world which fits the assumptions of central place theory. Settlement planners in a few places which were being developed for the first time in a flat area have tried to apply central place theory to real world conditions, for example, in reclaimed land in the Zuyder Zee (IJsselmeer) and in the southern Israeli desert. These experiments have not been very successful, partly because of better transport links and greater economies of scale. Changes in these factors cannot lead to adjustments in settlement spacing, and lower order settlements have not grown as the theory suggests that they should. This is not to say that central place theory is a total waste of time, just that it is unrealistic to expect real settlement patterns to fit its conclusions when they clearly do not reflect its assumptions. It can be argued that one has a better grasp of a complex system if one has constructed a complete model of part of the system, even though one knows that important aspects of the system are ignored, as opposed to a set of unconnected gener alizations whose relationships have not been fully thought through. Thus central place theory may give more insight into the size and spacing of settlements than a set of unconnected generalizations about the sites and situations enjoyed by individual settlements. Against this, Harvey in 1989 has argued that theories in human geography tend to cover only the everyday and trivial aspects of reality, and never predict really important new events. The real world is a complicated place, and theories as human productions cannot hope to cover more than a few aspects of reality. Theories will be based on sim plifying assumptions. Thus, it should not be expected that a theory will reflect the real world exactly; it is bound to be a simplified version. What matters is whether the simplifications lead to a better understanding of

the aspects of reality they are applied to, or whether the factors omitted are so important that the factors covered by the theory are trivial or inapplicable.

Critique It can be argued that the scientific method is often (per haps always) inapplicable in human geography because human geography is not a science, or at least not a physical or natural science, and hence scientific method is not appropriate. Graham discusses the difference between naturalism and antinaturalism in human geography, where antinaturalists argue that social sciences, unlike natural sciences, have to take account of human actions and activities, and hence use methods (e.g., like interviewing) that are not available to natural scientists. Naturalists, in contrast, admit that additional methods are available, but argue that the same process of theory development, hypo thesis generation, and empirical testing is just as relevant to the study of people as to the study of rocks or rivers, and can easily incorporate the particular concerns of social behavior and social science methods. Indeed, mainstream psychology and economics appear to use theories and methods that look little different from those used in the natural sciences. However, others would argue that this is a problem not an advantage for those disciplines. By the mid 1970s, positivism and the scientific method were under severe criticism from several angles. Structuralists rejected the idea that science should be confined to the observable. Realists argued that conjunction of processes was not sufficient to establish causality. Humanists argued that the scientific method could not give an insight into meanings and values, the things which are most important to people. In 1978, Derek Gregory published a devastating cri tique of the scientific method in human geography. He goes back to the ideas of Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism, showing how the scientific method is dependent on: 1. direct experience of reality; 2. the principle of replicability – the requirement that any scientist testing the same hypothesis under the same conditions should get the same result; 3. the formal construction of theories with testable hypotheses; 4. technical utilizability, concerned with ‘means’ not ‘ends’, hence nonideological in the sense that results are independent of ethical positions and value judg ments; and 5. a relative and unfinished account of scientific know ledge, which grows slowly as more hypotheses are tested successfully. All of these are open to criticism and have indeed been widely criticized. The principal points of dispute include:

Scientific Method

the claim that experience can be a sound basis for • scientific knowledge; that science should deal only with observable phe • nomena and not with abstract or hypothetical entities; that it is possible to between an a theoretical • observation languagedistinguish and a theoretical language; that theoretical concepts have a 1:1 correspondence • with ‘reality’ as it is observed; that scientific are based on constant conjunctions • between eventslawsin the world; and that ‘facts’ and ‘values’ can be separated. • Strictly speaking, these points are presented in relation to positivism, but they are applicable to the positivist concept of the scientific method. Hay in 1985 attempted to defend the applicability of the scientific method. Although aware of the problems inherent in the scientific approach, Hay believes that scientific methods will be retained in geography, in part because ‘knowledge of a scientific type is required by society for its purposes of managing social and natural systems’. More specifically, he sees a continuing need for the research hypothesis, the hypothesis test and predic tion as a testing device. However, the idea that one set of observations can conclusively validate or falsify a theory should not be retained. Instead, the accumulation of results will lead to the advance or decline of rival research programs. So far, ‘scientific method’ has been used in accordance with positivist and critical rationalist approaches. Ad herents of other epistemologies may wish to maintain the stance that the methods they use are just as scientific (if not more so) as the positivist hypothetico deductive ap proach. Thus, Sayer argues that realist methods ‘‘have every right to claim to be theoretical, explanatory and, if the word means anything, ‘scientific’. ’’ Even Marxist scholars claim their methods to be ‘scientific’. There can then be different scientific methods dependent on one’s philosophical position. However, the term ‘scientific method’ is usually reserved for the hypothetico deductive method outlined above. Most telling, perhaps, as a criticism of the scientific method are observations from social scientific studies of scientists at work. Here, social science research by Latour and others has established that few scientists actually use the scientific method in their work. Scientists’ empirical work seldom involves the development of testable hypotheses from theory, and is likely to be more explanatory, looking at informal hypotheses with the aim of investigating empirical phenomena rather than trying to test existing theories. It can also be observed that scientists may persist with theories even after testing has shown that a hypothesis is wrong, or may abandon a theory on the basis of a more attractive one becoming

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known, rather than on the basis of any tests that the theory has failed. In this context, Kaplan has developed a distinction between reconstructed logic and ‘logic in use’. The latter describes the reasoning actually used by scientists on a day to day basis which is far more intuitive than the scientific method, whereas the former, which does apply the scientific method, is used when reporting the work, often creatively adapting the chaotic process of much scientific research to fit in with the supposed norms of the research process, represented by scientific method. Overall, it is probably fair to say that the popularization of the scientific method in human geography in the 1960s and 1970s served a useful purpose in getting human geographers to think more systematically (and more sci entifically) about their work. More recently, however, its use has declined because it seems inappropriate for many aspects of human geography research, and because it is no longer seen as central by scientists themselves. Some human geographers, who might be referred to as positivists or critical rationalists, still attempt to construct and test hypotheses, but do so in a more informal way than dictated by the scientific method in its strictest sense. See also: Central Place Theory; Hypothesis Testing.

Further Reading Abler, R., Adams, J. S. and Gould, P. R. (1971). Spatial Organization: The Geographer’s View of the World. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Amedeo, D. and Golledge, R. G. (1975). An Introduction to Scientific Reasoning in Geography. New York: Wiley. Blaikie, N. (1993). Approaches to Social Enquiry. Cambridge: Polity Press. Graham, E. (1997). Philosophies underlying human geography research. In Flowerdew, R. & Martin, D. (eds.) Methods in Human Geography, pp 6 30. London: Longman. Gregory, D. (1978). Ideology, Science and Human Geography. London: Hutchinson. Harvey, D. (1969). Explanation in Geography. London: Arnold. Harvey, D. (1989). From models to Marx: Notes on the project to ‘remodel’ contemporary geography. In Macmillan, W. (ed.) Remodelling Geography, pp 211 216. Oxford: Blackwell. Hay, A. M. (1985). Scientific method in geography. In Johnston R. J. (ed.) The Future of Geography, pp 129 142. London: Methuen. Kaplan, A. (1964). The Conduct of Inquiry. San Francisco: Chandler. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. London: Sage. Marshall, J. U. (1985). Geography as a scientific enterprise. In Johnston, R. J. (ed.) The Future of Geography, pp 113 128. London: Methuen. Morrill, R. L. (1970). The Spatial Organization of Society. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Popper, K. R. (1959). The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books. Sayer, R. A. (1985). Realism and geography. In Johnston, R. J. (ed.) The Future of Geography, pp 159 173. London: Metheun.

Scott, A. C. Gibson, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Capitalist Mode of Production System of production and consumption underpinning capitalist society, in which the methods of production, distribution, and exchange for commodities and services are privately owned, and in which inputs and outputs are available through commercial markets. Cultural Economy Alternatively understood as the intertwining of human economic and cultural activities and trends; the application of cultural theory and epistemologies to economic subjects and topics; or a new form of capitalist production and consumption overtly commodifying culture (including popular culture, design, and the arts). Flexible Accumulation A particular configuration of capitalism thought to have risen to prominence since the 1980s, in which labor is increasingly ‘flexible’, capital more mobile, and production vertically disintegrated. Workers become multiskilled, are less unionized, and are often employed in small teams or firms, or in subcontracting relationships with other firms. Fordist production lines and social contracts between capital, the state, and labor unions are replaced by offshore subcontracting of manufacturing, and regional specializations of tasks such as design, finance, logistics, and assembly. Social Divisions of Labor Specialization of workers and tasks in the capitalist labor market through mechanisms of social control and power. Differentiated from technical divisions of labor, where workforce specialization is driven by technical necessity. Spatial Agglomeration Concentrations of human activities in geographical space. Often refers to the clustering of capitalist firms in cities and regions within close proximity to each other. Vertical Disintegration New production processes for commodities that break up old production line methods and replace them with separate, specialized tasks and use subcontracting relationships. Typically occurs in industries with high levels of risk, fashion cycles, and structural volatility, such as film and music.

Allen J Scott is a leading economic geographer whose ideas have circulated over four decades. Born in Britain in 1938 and educated in geography at both Oxford and Northwestern Universities, Scott became a pivotal thinker on industrial organization and location, and

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systematic economic change. Although he is most recently known for his work on creative industries and the cultural economy, he has contributed in substantial ways to at least two other definitive phases in economic geography, with advances in knowledge on regional economic development, industrialization, and the spatial and institutional organization of production. In 1999 he was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and in 2003 was awarded the prestigious Laureát Prix International de Geógraphie Vautrin Lud – geography’s Nobel Prize equivalent. In 2000 he was named Director of the new Center for Globalization and Policy Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. At the time of writing he is Distinguished Professor at the Department of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Throughout economic geography’s different phases – and notwithstanding their respective and divergent emphases – Scott has pursued research around a set of core questions: where is economic activity located, and why does it locate there? How does the location of eco nomic activity shape (and in turn how is it shaped by) tendencies in modern capitalism? How does economic activity change the relationships between places and actors, across geographical scales? In answering these questions, Scott has examined a raft of industries – from medical devices, electronics assembly, and aircraft

Scott, A.

parts to music, fashion, furniture, and film – and has maintained a strong interest in linking research to policy making. Scott’s work has impacted on thinking and practice well beyond geography; he is widely read and cited in microeconomics, planning, public policy, media, and cultural studies. As well as his work in English, which has often been translated into other languages, he has also written original research findings regularly in French. In this respect he works across linguistic boundaries that have otherwise unhelpfully segregated the pro duction of global geographical knowledges. After his PhD at Northwestern, Scott was appointed as Assistant Professor in Regional Science at the Uni versity of Pennsylvania (1965–66), and subsequently at University College, London (1969–73) and the Uni versity of Toronto (1973–81). Scott was an important contributor to the so called ‘quantitative revolution’ transforming geography at that time – in Scott’s own words a period of great intellectual and professional struggle in geography between traditionalists and reformers, with the latter seeking to push geography out of its perceived idiographic torpor and on the basis of quantitative methodologies and formal modelling into a more forthright engagement with theoretical ideas. (Scott, 2004: 481)

Scott published his early ideas about network analysis, central cities, and locational equilibrium at the height of the quantitative turn in economic geography. The emphasis in this early work was on experimental appli cation of mathematical models to understand and predict human spatial activities, seeking to improve on previous models toward universal explanations – especially of the internal organization of cities. The 1970s saw economic geography transformed as recognition of capitalism’s vulnerabilities amplified and as scholars sought different ways to theorize apparent economic crisis. Some geographers adopted a revo lutionary stance on prior quantitative approaches, throwing out old models and approaches in favor of a more politically charged perspective. Although Scott’s work would be influenced by this so called ‘radical’ shift, he would graft new thinking to his core questions, rather than discredit previous approaches. Scott continued to work on quantitative modeling but increasingly sought to engage with critical questions about the capitalist system. In the early 1980s, Scott moved to UCLA, and by then he had become convinced of the efficacy of under standing the spatial pattern of economic activities based on critical conceptions of ‘‘the workings of capitalist commodity production, the accumulation process, and the internal evolution of the capitalist firm’’ (1982: 111), being ‘‘firmly situated within an emerging urban

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problematic that seeks to root the city as a social phe nomenon within the structure of the capitalist mode of production at large’’ (1982: 112). The city became more fully the site and scale of analysis, while labor markets and the firm were brought into focus in this ‘‘rectified urban science’’ (1982: 112). It was in this period that Scott’s interest in spatial agglomeration really developed. It also signaled a subtle, but important shift in epis temology from his earlier modeling approaches – with observations and empirical inquiry brought to the foreground. With more confidence Scott began to dis tinguish between associative and causative trends: land use and land price might appear to be related in some universal manner (e.g., firms decentralizing to gain access to cheap land for single storey factories), but extending this observation in some predictive manner would be doomed to failure without requisite understanding of the ‘structure and evolution of the capitalist firm’ and its internal dynamics which lead it to make locational decisions. It was at UCLA that Scott’s central geographical in sights matured into a long run research argument – that capitalist economies tend to spatial agglomeration; and that regions are the motors of economic activities, rather than merely recipients of them. For Scott, ‘‘the structure and dynamics of modern production systems give rise to massive agglomerations of capital and labor forming the basic building blocks of the large metropolis’’ (2005: xi). The region is accordingly ‘‘a nexus of production rela tionships and associated social infrastructures’’ (2004: 486). Expanding on this thesis were empirical projects examining specific industries such as printed circuits, garments, and film animation, allowing extension into related questions of the interrelationships between regions, trade flows, competition, and globalization. Outputs of Scott’s long run examination of regional agglomeration have contributed to important debates across several decades, but particularly in the 1980s, when Scott was a key thinker in debates about flexible accu mulation, and the links between new industrial regions, forms of production, and social divisions of labor. In New Industrial Spaces Scott was one of the first to analyze the rise of the ‘Third Italy’ complex (so called because it was different from the conventional ‘north–south split’ in the Italian economy), where industrial growth was ac companied by high rates of new firm formation, decreases in average firm size, and nonmonopolistic, artisanal pro duction in labor intensive, vertically disintegrating in dustries such as pottery, furniture design, shoes, and clothing. That book also introduced Scott’s increasingly important work on high technology regions (in the Ile de France and Silicon Valley). It was in many respects a manifesto – albeit understated – for moving beyond both the arcane elements of neoclassical modeling (which up until that time had focused rather abstractly on individual,

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rational, maximizing behavior) and the binary tendencies of neo Marxist economic geography, with its focus on labor capital relations in mass production, and de rigueur case study locations in the de industralizing cities of Europe and North America. Instead, Scott for the first time systematically documented another trend in the world economy – known as the shift to flexible accumu lation or post Fordism – which was utterly transforming places at that time. New industrial regions grew on the back of nascent industries, and were characterized by clusters of workers in design and information based jobs, low rates of unionization, multiple levels of subcontracting (including indirect exploitation of low wage labor), and extensive use of marketing. Such regions were not merely bit players in a new global production regime: they had become powerhouses, driving new forms of development and shifting the world geography of economic power. Accordingly, in this period Scott was awarded both a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Honors Award of the Association of American Geographers for his work. Scott’s keen instinct to look beyond mass production industries and traditional centers of manufacturing production subsequently led him to be among the first economic geographers to take seriously new cultural industries such as music and film, and examine growing sunbelt cities such as Los Angeles. In Scott’s words, so much of the literature on urban geography generally was posited on the model of the northeastern US metropolisy [this] prompted us to attempt to formulate an alternative view based on the very different forms of industrialization and urbanization that were becoming increasingly apparent in Southern California and the rest of the sunbelt. I myself had the extraordinary experi encey of being informed by an anonymous referee of a research proposal on the manufacturing economy of Los Angeles that there was no economic activity of this type of any interest in Southern California, and that if you wanted to study urban manufacturing you had better focus on cities like Chicago, Detroit or Pittsburgh. (Scott, 1999: 34)

In concentrating on post Fordist style industries (such as film, furniture, electronics assembly, medical devices, clothing, and music) in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s, Scott’s work would prove cutting edge. It documented the shift to image and symbolic based production. Because of this, Scott was often considered part of the ‘LA School’ of geography, meaning a group of researchers based in Los Angeles who proposed that this city was the paradigmatic postmodern metropolis, although his commitment to systematic examination of the dynamics of capitalism located Scott firmly in a political–economic, rather than postmodern tradition. The extent to which Los Angeles and flexible accumulation

were paradigmatic concepts for explaining a new global economic geography became the subject of much debate at this time. As well as respond to these debates, Scott’s interests with cultural products industries such as music and film led to theorization on another ground breaking theme: the cultural economy. Scott emphasized the dual notions of the ‘culturalization of the economic’ (where economic activity is increasingly governed by cultural logics) and ‘economization of culture’ (where cultural life is in creasingly commodified). In the process – and perhaps more than any other single author – Scott firmly pos itioned geography as a key disciplinary site of knowledge production on the cultural and new media and com munications industries. He is owed much credit for the current popularity of themes such as globalization, clustering, interfirm power relations, and place sensitive empirical work in subsequent cultural and policy analysis. Notwithstanding this, Scott would remain cautious about the cultural turn in economic geography, critical of its ‘‘peculiar obsession with evacuating the economic con tent from economic geography’’ (2004: 480). But at the same time, Scott has recently acknowledged the manner in which social and cultural geography can provide analysis sensitive to the local conditions often under pinning inter regional variations in economic activity (2004). Scott was led to conclude that the discipline demands ‘‘methodological variety and openness’’ (2004: 494) including a respect for much maligned quantitative methods. Moreover a particular point of focusy is provided by the con tinuing commitment by significant numbers of economic geographers to critical analysis and to the search for progressive social change. The pursuit of some sort of social democratic agenda and the fight against global neoliberalism, it seems to me, must stand high in any set of priorities in this regard at the present time, and all the more so as our world remains an arena in which tremendous variations in living standards, economic opportunity, and possibilities for cultural self realization persist tenaciously from place to place and country to country. (Scott, 2004: 494)

With this in mind, and in addition to working on old staples (e.g., Scott’s 2006 book, On Hollywood, which won the AAG’s Meridian Book prize), Scott has increasingly linked his ideas about regions as motors of the economy to theories of development and underdevelopment, well beyond the West. Perhaps Scott’s most pervasive (if underacknowledged) influence has been to shape a certain approach to the writing of economic knowledges. His work is well the orized, but not a slave to theory; it builds on observation, but moves beyond mere description through elegant

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synthesis of ideas and interpretations. Scott’s writing emphasizes the situatedness of economic actors and activities in places, and draws on quantifiable evidence, and is also informed by ethnographic accounts of the internal workings of industries. Above all, Scott is keenly committed to the value of rigorous empirical work con ducted at the local–regional scale and in response to real problems and patterns of change. See also: Cultural Economy; Edge Cities; Industrial Location; Planning, Urban; Political Economy, Geographical.

Further Reading Amin, A. and Robins, K. (1990). The re emergence of regional economies? The mythical geography of flexible accumulation. Environment and Planning D 8, 7 34. Fan, C. C. and Scott, A. J. (2003). Industrial agglomeration and development: A survey of spatial economic issues in East Asia and a statistical analysis of Chinese regions. Economic Geography 79, 295 319. Gibson, C. and Kong, L. (2005). Cultural economy: A critical review. Progress in Human Geography 29, 541 561. Hudson, R. (1989). Labour market changes and new forms of work in old industrial regions: Maybe flexibility for some but not flexible accumulation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 7, 5 30. Power, D. and Scott, A. J. (eds.) (2005). Cultural industries and the production of culture. London: Routledge. Scott, A. J. (1971). Combinatorial programming, spatial analysis and planning. London: Methuen. Scott, A. J. (1976). Land use and commodity production. Regional Science and Urban Economics 6, 147 160. Scott, A. J. (1982). Locational patterns and dynamics of industrial activity in the modern metropolis. Urban Studies 19, 111 141. Scott, A. J. (1983). Industrial organization and the logic of intra metropolitan location 2: A case study of the printed circuits industry in the greater Los Angeles region. Economic Geography 59, 343 367. Scott, A. J. (1984). Territorial reproduction and transformation in a local labor market: The animated film workers of Los Angeles. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2, 277 307.

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Scott, A. J. (1984). Industrial organization and the logic of intra metropolitan location 3: A case study of the women’s dress industry in the greater Los Angeles region. Economic Geography 60, 3 27. Scott, A. J. (1986). Industrial organisation and location: Division of labor, the firm, and spatial process. Economic Geography 62, 215 231. Scott, A. J. (1988). Flexible production systems and regional development: The rise of new industrial spaces in North America and Western Europe. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 12, 171 186. Scott, A. J. (1988). Metropolis: From the division of labor to urban form. Berkelely: University of California Press. Scott, A. J. (1988). New industrial spaces. London: Pion. Scott, A. J. (1991). Theorizing post Fordism: Why contingency matters Rejoinder. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 15, 302 302. Scott, A. J. (1996). The craft, fashion, and cultural products industries of Los Angeles: Competitive dynamics and policy dilemmas in a multisectoral image producing complex. Annals, Association of American Geographers 86, 306 323. Scott, A. J. (1997). The cultural economy of cities. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 21, 323 339. Scott, A. J. (1999). The cultural economy: Geography and the creative field. Media, Culture and Society 21, 807 817. Scott, A. J. (2000). The cultural economy of cities. London: Sage. Scott, A. J. (2002). Regional push: Towards a geography of development and growth in low and middle income countries. Third World Quarterly 23, 137 161. Scott, A. J. (2004). A perspective of economic geography. Journal of Economic Geography 4, 479 499. Scott, A. J. (2006). The changing global geography of low technology, labor intensive industry: Clothing, footwear, and furniture. World Development 34, 1517 1536. Scott, A. J. (2006). On Hollywood: The place, the industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Scott, A. J. and Soja, E. W. (eds.) (1998). The city: Los Angeles and urban theory at the end of the twentieth century. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.geog.ucla.edu Allen J Scott, UCLA Department of Geography. http://www.spa.ucla.edu Allen J Scott, UCLA School of Public Affairs.

Second Homes M. Haldrup, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Authenticity It Relates to a person’s effort to be (or become) faithful to his/her own self and the immanent qualities of nature and culture. Most often contrasted with the alleged ‘inauthenticity’ of modernity. Tourism and leisure research has often emphasized that consumption practices within theses fields to wide extend reflects a quest for authentic experiences compensating for inauthentic social relations and practices of modern work and everyday life. Deindustrialisation A process in which especially manufacturing jobs are removed or reduced within particular regions and nations. From the 1970es onwards deindustrialisation has been experienced by many regions and nations in the ’First World’ especially as a consequence of outsourcing of industrial production to (former) Third World countries. Space–Time Compression Concept coined by geographer David Harvey capturing how innovations in communication, infrastructure and transport technologies ’compresses’ distance by reducing time. The process of space–time compression is analogue to what sociologist A. Giddens has reffered to as ‘time– space distanciation’.

Introduction: A Brief Overview Second homes, second home owners, and renters count for a significant proportion of tourist consumption in many parts of the world, yet the concept is often under theorized in academic geography. This relative absence from academic discourse partly has to do with the in tangibility of what second home tourism actually is. The term ‘second home’ covers a whole range of very dif ferent forms of ownership, from the literally privately owned ‘second’ home to holiday houses, cabins, and commercially driven rentals of houses and holiday homes. Furthermore, the term also covers caravans, tents, mobile homes, and so on. The concept of second home tourism is equally vague; it often seems to include very diverse practices that link up with ‘nontourist’ forms of leisure and mobility. Many second home owners and renters either commute to work or undertake distance work. This makes the role and use of second homes in contemporary society an interesting example of how patterns of mobility change social relations and practices;

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this is all closely related to technological, social, eco nomic, and cultural transformations. Finally, the apparent lack of a coherent definition of ownership forms and leisure practices means that second homes do not imply the ‘usual’ characteristics of tourist consumption. Thus, the notion of the ‘second home’ is an intangible and fuzzy label that needs to be contextually defined when applied.

The Historical Roots of Second Homes The geography of second homes has historically been subject to change relating to broader social transforma tions. Thus, the intangible and fuzzy features of the notion of the second home can be explained partly by the varied roles and functions of second homes in different historical contexts. Thus, contemporary second home cultures build on the historical trends of the leisure practices of earlier European elite cultures. For example, the patricians of the Roman Empire would often own several estates between which households could move during the year and similar practices were common among European feudal aristocrats. The ‘roots’ of contemporary second house tourism are however to be found in bour geois culture which developed in Europe during the nineteenth century. In particular, influences from romantic culture were important in forming a leisure culture based on the ‘discovery’ of Europe’s mountainous and coastal areas as leisure spaces. Until then, these areas had not been highly valued, because of their lack of significance for the upper classes of the then primarily rural based economy and society, but under the influence of the work of writers, poets, and painters depicting the grandeur of the forces of nature in coastal, mountainous, and woodland settings, these areas became popular leisure spaces. Often, the families of the new upper classes would go to such areas for their month long summer holidays in resorts which quickly developed within these new leisure spaces. Here, families with households could stay at beach and mountain hotels. Moreover, there was also a rapid increase in the purchase of ‘second homes’, especially in the rural hinterlands of the metropolitan areas as they became the favorite settings for the new urban upper classes. Thus, several European cities and towns developed densely built up areas along, for example, coast lines in rural areas located within convenient traveling distance from the urban centers. As part of a general in crease in living standards, the ownership or rental of a second home gradually became popular preconditions for holiday spending also for middle class and working class

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Figure 1 The development of second homes in the twentieth century was closely related to the rise of the nuclear family, relative affluence of the middle classes, and the family car. These allowed working- and middle-class families to relocate parts of their lives to the spectacular settings in the countryside as on this picture of ‘My second home Quebec, Canada 1965’. Photograph by Peter Ellis. Reproduced from ‘‘My Second Home, 1965’’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pcellis/4166763/, with permission.

families, and around the turn of the century we find middle class, second home cultures developing across North America, Europe, and the oversees territories such New Zealand. While there are of course major differences both at regional and national levels of these second home cultures, we find common elements in terms of the same combination of second home ownership (or rental), access to cars, and the ideals of the nuclear family and its leisure demands emerging throughout these cases (see Figure 1). Thus, the geography of second homes that we see today on the fringe of urban centers or in amenity rich land scapes in coastal or mountainous areas is closely related to the rise of the postwar Fordist economy in the Western part of the world.

The Changing Geography of Second Homes The emergence of the contemporary second home landscape in many countries has been brought about by a specific sociotechnological network made up of societal institutions, technological innovations, and everyday routines and practices. Therefore, the character of con temporary second home ownership and use has also gone through significant changes following social and technological transformations. Above all, changes in the infrastructure and transport technology have been significant in two ways. First, new means of trans portation have substantially changed the geography of

second homes over time, as the horse carriage was re placed by the train, the train by the family car, and so on. The rise of second home especially during the twentieth century was also closely linked to and indeed reinforced by the social policies of the Fordist welfare state. Regu lations concerning minimum incomes and working hours meant that workers should have at least one yearly holiday, meant that during the twentieth century, it also became possible for working class families to own and maintain second homes or at least save up to rent a ‘second home’ in the holiday season. In some countries, for example, pre 1989 East Central Europe, and also more broadly, second homes were often passed on by employers or trade union organizations. First, whereas the pattern of second home ownership and rental have been regionalized to a large extent, this has taken place in various ways within or across national borders, but still in driving distance from the larger metropolitan areas where owners and renters live. The development of new forms of transport, especially that of cheap air traffic, has enabled people to travel longer distances to their second homes. This has meant that a North–South flow (which is also known from other types of contemporary mass tourist travel) in second home ownership and rental has begun to emerge. Thus, since the late twentieth century, there has been an increase in the number of retirement resorts and purchases of second homes or apartments in the Mediterranean countries by northern Europeans. Countries such as Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Egypt

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have all experienced a significant rise in second homes owned by Northern Europeans. In the Americas, coun tries such as Mexico have experienced similar develop ments with regard to North American second home ownership and retiring migrants. This is a development that primarily has been driven by cheap property prices in these countries compared to, for example, Northern Europe and North America, as well as the increasing availability of cheap air travel. Thus, the geography of second home tourism has to some extent been re shaped, changing from being a largely domestic phenomenon to a regional one in general and a North– South in particular. Second, and related to this, changes in communication technologies and labor relations have also significantly altered the character of second home ownership and renting. Whereas the second home holiday of the nuclear family of the Fordist welfare state was a retreat from the spaces of work and settlement, new flexible forms of work and innovations in communication technologies, such as mobile technology, laptop, computers, and Internet access to work, have enabled distance work, so that the second home may also be a place of work. Thus, there are some indications that this could lead to a more flexible use of the second home as a home not only reserved for leisure purposes but also simply as a place to relocate work and everyday life routines when convenient. Both types of transformations suggest that the second home landscape is likely to change as technological changes in transport and communications enable and re inforce further space–time compression of social relations. An understanding of how changing patterns of mobility shape everyday practices and social institutions is therefore essential for explaining changes in the role of second homes in contemporary society. Issues of migra tion, transnationalism, and flexible uses of the second home are likely to become a central concern for geog raphic research into second homes in the future.

Tourism, Leisure, and Second Homes In human geography, the subject of second homes is not a particularly well researched field. The role of second homes has mainly been approached indirectly in relation to, for example, their influence on the environmental degradation of landscapes or regional planning. This has partly to do with the undertheorized status of ‘the second home’ which again is linked to the fuzzy character of second home tourism. One central reason for this is that it is very difficult to define precisely what a second home is. Second homes may be purposely built as weekend or vacation homes, such as a hunting lodge or a time share apartment in Southern Europe. In addition to this, it may be difficult

to distinguish clearly between primary and secondary homes. In many countries, the ownership of second homes is related to family tradition and place attachment. The ‘second home’ has often been in the possession of the family for generations and is handed down from one generation to the next without being sold. In some peri ods it may be used as a primary home, in other periods as a second home, it may be rented out more or less per manently, and it may eventually be sold as a house to become either a primary or a second home. Furthermore, second home tourism seems in signifi cant ways to deviate from the forms of leisure con sumption normally assumed to be linked to tourism. Second home owners and renters seem not to be pre occupied with ‘consuming’ difference. So, it has been ar gued that second home tourism in important ways departs from the model of the flaˆneur engaging in gazing at and visually decoding landscapes, places, and people different from his/her own. While the escape from city life and the discovery of spectacular landscapes and people certainly were an important feature in the early development of the geography of second homes; more recent qualitative research seems to indicate that second home tourism seems to deviate from what is normally assumed to be defining characteristics of tourist con sumption in significant ways. Theories of tourism have most often emphasized the drive for consuming the dif ference of other people, places, and cultures as the main characteristic of tourist consumption. Furthermore, it is assumed that tourists tend to seek ‘authenticity’ rich ex periences of, for example, spectacular landscapes, heri tage, or local cultures. Cultural studies of second home tourists, however, seem to suggest a much more introvert form of tourism. The authenticity preferred by many second home tourists is apparently not an objective au thenticity of other people, places, and cultures, but rather a social or existential authenticity of having the possibility of retreating to a ‘home away from home’. The second home is valued because it offers such a space of retreat, a space to dwell rather than a space of exciting experiences, a space where, for example, social relations within the family as well as own capabilities of craft skills and so on can be experienced in a setting where the constraints of normal everyday life are suspended. Thus, the second home affords a context for social experimentation how ever much leisure activity in relation to second homes is significantly preoccupied with introvert practices rather than consuming difference. It should however be noted that there are, of course, huge variations in this and that it is difficult to generalize the social and cultural character of second home because of the enormous variation cov ered by the very term. Thus, it is important contextually to examine the complex and flexible use of second homes in contemporary society, and especially the role that new patterns of mobility and migration plays for the

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Weekend homes Converted homes

Purpose-built homes

Ordinary rural landscape in urban hinterlands

Amenity-rich hinterlands, coast, and mountain landscapes

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Vacation homes Extensively used peripheral landscapes

Major vacation areas, coast, and mountain landscapes

Figure 2 ‘Second home’ is a term that comprises types of particular uses that may vary to a great extent. Thus, weekend homes in the urban hinterlands and purpose-built vacation homes in amenity-rich landscapes may in fact play very different roles. Therefore, it is clearly important to define the notion of ‘second home’ contextually. Source: Hall, C. M. and Muller, D. (eds.) (2004). Tourism Mobility and Second Homes. Between Elite Landscape and Common Ground. Clevedon: Channel View Publications.

geography of second homes. Vacation homes in the wil derness and weekend homes close to the urban centers have historically, and also today, played very different roles with regard to their actual use (see Figure 2). These difficulties in any precise definition of second homes and the role of second homes in relation to other types of tourism have frequently meant that the role of second homes both in relation to the social and cul tural aspects of tourism as well as in relation to regional development have tended to be underexamined in human geography, and that issues related to this have been partly neglected both in tourism geography as well as in geographies of regional development.

Second Homes and Regional Development The role of second homes in relation to development has been a highly debated issue. While the development of second home tourism has been a central issue of much regional planning and strategizing for rural regions, there have been heated debates over whether second homes are a ‘curse or blessing’ for the development of rural regions. While much second home ownership is (and historically has been) domestic, second homes are also an important component of international tourism in many countries, especially in Central Europe and Scandinavia. In many cases, second homes account for the highest number of tourists’ overnight stays. Therefore, second home devel opment has also been central for regional strategies and policies, especially in relation to economically declining and/or rural regions. The exact impacts of second home development on local economies have been debated. This is partly because it is very difficult to clearly identify the sources of impacts on the local economy, and partly be cause second home tourists tend to spend less than other types of tourists while on vacation.

The main reasons for regional and local planners to encourage second home development in rural regions have most often been to rejuvenate areas after periods of economic decline often associated with crises in the agricultural and fishery sector. Thus the anticipation of increased local spending in shops as well as increased revenues from local taxes has been a central motivation. There are, however, numerous local concerns that have been voiced in relation to this. Of particular importance is the link between second home development and social inequalities, and the transformation of the coun tryside from productive to leisure space. Thus, there are important economic, social, and cultural potentials for local conflict and disagreement over second home development. First, we have to distinguish between the various forms of second homes. Second home developments have taken many forms in different countries, and the very notion of the ‘second home’ covers a very broad spectrum ranging from the primitive shaft or cabin (such as the ‘bach’ in New Zealand or the mountain cabin in Scandinavia) to planned and regulated second home villages, for example, in marine resorts and to ordinary homes that are now being kept purely (or primarily) in family possession for leisure purposes. In some cases, tents, caravans, and mobile homes are registered as ‘second homes’. Following from this very heterogeneous character of second homes, there have often been heated debates on the regulation of second home ownership which has often been recognized by regional planners as unwelcome intruders into the built environment. Huge efforts have therefore been made, especially in the densely populated countries in Northern Europe, to avoid spontaneous second home development, especially in coastal areas. Second, it is often argued that the development of second homes leads to increased social and economic inequalities. The expectations of second homes’ positive

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impacts on the local economy rest on the central assumption that second home owners do not replace people living in the area designated for second home development. One of the concerns that have often been voiced in debates about local and regional planning is that second home development tends to increase prop erty prices, hence squeezing locals out of the property market. While this has been voiced as a central concern in several cases, it is also oversimplified. Contemporary transformations of the countryside are not primarily a result of the growth of second home ownership, but ra ther related to more general and global processes. The decline of labor in agriculture and industry faced by many rural regions within ‘the First World’ is intimately linked to processes of globalization and deindustrializa tion. As new relations between work and leisure are made possible by more flexible relations in the labor market as well as new transport and communication technologies, the borders of the urban hinterlands move further away, and it becomes possible to commute to the urban core from larger distances. Thus the reason for settling in what is perceived to be ‘rural areas’ may increasingly be based on lifestyle preferences and not on relations to, for example, local employment. In addition to this, the lack of diversity of housing adequate for all social groups, as well as what is in fact often an abundance of empty houses caused by depopulation following economic de cline in such areas is an important aspect of this problem too. Third, the fact that much second home development happens in areas where the local population seems to be less wealthy than second home owners and renters may cause conflicts. The fear that second home owners should emerge as a class of ‘absentee landlords’ over the local population is clearly a source of potential tension, for example, in relation to second home investment from the North in the South, such as the widespread con structions of second homes on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast or along the Mexican Gulf. However, similar concerns have also been raised in relation to second home development in Northern Europe. Here, the dis cussion has often been related to arguments concerning cultural and/or national difference. This concern has, for example, been persistently voiced in relation to dis cussions of ‘English’ second home ownership not only in Wales, but also across national borders this has been an important element. For example, it is not possible for other European Union citizens to own second homes in Denmark, an exception made explicitly to avoid Germans taking over the second home property market along the North Sea coast. While these discussions have often made reference to the impacts of local property markets by ‘foreign’ ownership and so on, questions of national identity ownership have certainly been impor tant in such discussions too.

Fourth, a central concern has been conflicts over identity and esthetic preferences. Apart from conflicts based on national identity, other issues of potential cul tural conflict relate to the more general transformations of the countryside from production landscapes to amenity landscapes. Thus, it has been argued that there is a danger that the countryside is turned into a theatrical spectacle for the growing leisure industries, as second homes and commuters move into such areas. While this may not only be a consequence of second home devel opment, but is also more broadly linked to the changes described earlier, conflicts arising from different sets of lifestyle based esthetic preferences are clearly an unresolved issue in many cases. Thus, different views related to, for example, how to prioritize local amenities valued by second home owners and the interests of local communities in social issues, such as infrastructure, schools, and employment, is clearly an important concern in relation to second home development.

The Future Landscape of Second Homes? The landscape of second homes is not a static field. It contains huge variations in both historical and con temporary society. Second homes are a vital part of the tourism sector in several countries, with regard to both domestic and international tourism. In addition, second home ownership, rental, and use are also important for the way in which mobility configures contemporary society. This implies that the geography of second homes is likely to change as patterns of mobility change. Above all, the impacts of three tendencies in the transformations of contemporary mobility patterns are interesting in relation to the future landscape of second homes. First, changes in transport technology and prices have enabled a space–time compression in relation to second home ownership. The emerging North–South orientation of retirement migration and second home ownership may expand the distances between owners and second homes, pointing to complex global relations of second home ownership and use. Second, changing relations on the labor market point both to more flexible labor conditions as well as to more mobile types of work. Mobility for work (and the use of the second homes as temporary habitation located in convenient commuting distance from (tem porary) places of work), as well as the possibility of re locating the place of work temporarily to the second home, may lead to the situation where the purchase and ownership of second homes will have increasing import ance in relation to the organization of work. Third, mi gration and transnationalist networks are important features of the future of the second home landscape. Many transnationalist migrants keep (or purchase) own ership of houses and property in origin countries while

Second Homes

immigrating. The role of these types of second home ownership both with regard to their impact in countries and regions of origin (e.g., on local property markets and communities) as well as on the (re)production of cultural identities of diaspora communities are interesting and important elements of future relations of second home ownership and use. All these three types of changing global mobility pattern point to a space–time com pression of the second home landscape. See also: Mobility; Tourism, Rural.

55

Further Reading Bærenholdt, J. O., Haldrup, M., Larsen, J. and Urry, J. (2004). Performing Tourist Places. Aldershot: Ashgate. Coppack, J. T. (1977). Second Homes: Curse or Blessing? Oxford: Pergamon Press. Hall, C. M. and Muller, D. (eds.) (2004). Tourism Mobility and Second Homes. Between Elite Landscape and Common Ground. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Jaakson, R. (1986). Second home domestic tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 13, 367 391. Lofgren, O. (1999). On Holiday. A History of Vacationing. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Second World J. Oldfield, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan (1947) was named after George Marshall, US Secretary of State during President Truman’s term of office. The Marshall Plan represented a substantial investment of US capital for the countries of Europe following the end of World War II. Its stated purpose was to facilitate economic revival and economic integration within the region and to encourage closer economic ties between Europe and the USA. At the same time, it is clear that the US administration was wary of a spread of communism from the East during the early post-war years. The Soviet response to the plan was understandably negative and their subsequent rejection of assistance ensured that the majority of aid went to the UK, France, Western Germany, and Italy. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) NATO was formed in 1949 as a military alliance between the USA, Canada, and ten Western European states. There have been five rounds of enlargement since this time and membership currently stands at 26 countries (2007). The most recent expansion occurred in March 2004 when seven Central and Eastern European states joined the alliance. These included Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Post-World War II The tripartite division of the globe into ‘First’, ‘Second’, and ‘Third’ world regions has its roots in the Cold War period. The ideological face off between the capitalist West (spearheaded by the USA) and the socialist USSR created the geopolitical context within which the ‘Third World’ was formed and shaped during the early 1950s as both sides attempted to extend their influence post World War II. While the Third World concept was linked to the emerging discourse of development, the First and Second World categories were propagated by the West and rooted firmly in ideological difference. From the West’s perspective, the Second World came to represent those countries characterized by a socialist development model and the pursuit of communism. The two main players were the USSR and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The implied uniformity of the Second World region disguised a marked degree of internal heterogeneity

56

along sociopolitical and economic lines both between the USSR and China, as well as within their respective spheres of influence. At the same time, it should be noted that both Soviet and Chinese conceptualizations of the global geopolitical situation differed from that promul gated by the West. After the end of Word War II, the USSR was intent upon securing a protective belt along its western border. The USSR’s subsequent efforts to bring Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) within its sphere of influence proceeded unevenly across the region and yet by the end of the 1940s a large number of CEE countries were considered to be under Soviet control (i.e., Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, German Democratic Republic (GDR), and Albania (until 1961)). In contrast, the communist leadership of Yugoslavia resisted Soviet influence and maintained a degree of independence from 1948 onward. The USSR’s hold over what for many in the West became known simply as Eastern Europe, in recognition of the location of the region to the east of the ‘Iron Curtain’ and the presumed uniformity imposed by Soviet rule, was exercised through various means. Military force was used at times in order to bring countries back in to line, most notori ously in the cases of Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968). With respect to economic influence, the USSR initiated the creation of the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) in 1949, which incorporated the satellite states outlined above. This was essentially a trading organization which grew in influence during the mid to late 1960s with the general intention of creating an economically interdependent socialist bloc. Together with the 1955 Warsaw Pact (dealing with security and defense concerns), such initiatives were a direct response to the strengthening of Atlantic alliance between Western Europe and the USA as evidenced by the Marshall Plan for European economic reconstruction and the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The vision of the CMEA was never achieved due largely to the overwhelming dom inance of the USSR and the associated resistance from member countries to its activities. Nevertheless, it did result in a marked geography of trading activity charac terized broadly by the USSR supplying CEE with cheap raw materials in return for manufactured goods (see Figure 1). The PRC was formed in 1949. Writing in 1964, the British geographer, John Cole, captured the importance of the recent developments in China by suggesting that

Second World

57

N Estonia

Latvia

Baltic Sea

German Democratic Republic

Cz

0

km

Lithuania

USSR Poland

ech

o slo

v a kia

600 Hungary Romania

USSR's western frontier after 1921 Territory annexed by USSR in 1939−40, and again in 1945 Territory annexed by USSR in 1945

Yugoslavia

Black Sea Bulgaria

Other states under Communist rule (after 1945)

A bania

Gre e

Soviet Bloc states (after 1945) ce

Figure 1 Central and Eastern Europe. Source: Shaw, D. J. B. (1998). ‘The chickens of Versailles’: The new Central and Eastern Europe. In Graham, B. (ed.) Modern Europe: Place, Culture and Identity, p. 123. London: Arnold. Reproduced by permission of Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd.

‘‘The emergenceyof modern Communist controlled China as a major world power is perhaps one of the most significant events in world affairs in the present century.’’ Superficially, there would seem to have been consider able scope for interaction between the communist re gimes of the USSR and the PRC. However, Sino Soviet relations, which reached their apex in the 1950s before deteriorating, were characterized by a range of problems reducible to differing domestic and foreign policies, as well as ideological differences. Geopolitically, while the USSR looked to exercise control over the afore mentioned states of CEE, as well as making forays into sub Saharan Africa and elsewhere (Cuba also became an ally following Castro’s success in 1959), the PRC occu pied an uneasy position as a significant regional actor in the Asia Pacific region.

Beneath the Cold War Facade The 40 year face off between the USSR and the USA was characterized by alternating periods of heightened tensions and de´tente. Furthermore, with the Cold War manifest in large parts of the globe, periodic conflicts such as those in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the African subcontinent did much to undermine the strength of both superpowers, particularly toward the end of the Cold War period. Within the context of the Cold War, crude charac terizations and mutual misunderstanding abounded. The backlash against alleged communist sympathizers in the USA during the 1950s driven by Senator Joe McCarthy is illustrative of this. Generalizations and negative stereo types were often seized upon in order to advance the

58

Second World

respective geopolitical ambitions of the two power blocs. In a similar vein, Jim Glassman notes the way in which the generalizing work of certain Western geographers during the Cold War period helped to propagate a unified conceptualization of Southeast Asia despite the region’s internal heterogeneity. Such an approach was particularly useful in positioning the region in opposition to neighboring communist China. More broadly, the emergence and consolidation of a more or less homogenous ‘Second World’ within the geopolitical imagination of the West remained influential throughout the Cold War period. In reality, while there were of course marked similarities between the political, economic, and social structures of the USSR, China, and their satellite regions, these existed together with notable differences in ethnic and cultural characteristics, as well as in the type of socialist model practiced. Mention has already been made of the ideological differences that emerged between China and the USSR with Mao Zedong developing his own interpretation of Marxist thought. With respect to CEE, the propensity for differing mani festations of the socialist development model was given additional impetus by the relatively greater freedoms accorded to the region following the death of Stalin in 1953, although the region was still prone to brutal treatment by Moscow when deviations from the Soviet model were considered too great. At the same time, the general failure of the USSR to keep up with the economic achievements of the West gave credence to the search for alternative versions of the socialist development model and associated experimentation such as the intro duction of Hungary’s New Economic Mechanism during the late 1960s. The differences evident between the various socialist states were at least partially reflected in the academic engagement with the socialist region. For example, British geographers tended to focus on either the USSR or else one or more country in CEE in recognition of the range of languages spoken, the existence of distinct cultural characteristics, and the different manifestations of socialism apparent throughout the region. There were also more prosaic reasons linked to the relative ease of accessing certain countries in contrast to others.

End of the Cold War The end of the Cold War, heralded by the symbolic destruction of the Berlin Wall (1989), the collapse of socialist regimes across CEE, and the disintegration of the USSR (1991), undermined the perceived unity of the Second World and allowed the noted heterogeneity of the region to be debated and expressed more openly. The region has been subject to a range of renderings since this time as different factions within the West

(academic, political, economic) struggle to readjust to, and make sense of, the new reality. CEE and the Former Soviet Union The fall of communist regimes across CEE and the former Soviet Union (FSU) was largely unexpected, at least with respect to the speed and finality of the changes that took place between 1989 and 1991. After 40 years of ideological confrontation, it was inevitable that the failure of the USSR’s socialist experiment would generate triumphalist rhetoric in the West. Nevertheless, such sentiments were joined by both concern and uncertainty over the geopolitical consequences of socialism’s failure in the region. George Demko and Matthew Sagers, writing in the newly renamed journal Post Soviet Geog raphy (formerly Soviet Geography), captured something of the dynamism of the period with particular reference to geographical engagement with the region: Changes in the geographical study of the area once known as the Soviet Union as well as in geography as practiced and taught in the states and regions that were once a part of that country have been occurring at an accelerating pace since 1985, and have been absolutely dizzying in their impact upon the world in recent months. Now, the formal end of the USSR as a state in late December [1991] and the rise of a series of successor states signal an even more dramatic shift in develop ments. After more than 70 years, Communism as a state ideology is largely gone, and with it much of the ‘‘Soviet’’ system, including the centrally planned economy. These are the key factors that our new, post Soviet geography must come to grips with. (1992: 1)

The 15 former republics of the USSR were character ized by considerable variation in terms of economic struc ture, as well as social and ethnic composition. At a general level, at least four more or less distinct groups were dis cernible: a relatively industrialized Slavic core centered on Russia and Ukraine; a Western oriented Baltic region; a predominantly agriculturally based Central Asian per iphery; and the Caucasus region incorporating Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. This phase of nationalistic uprising gave rise to a number of conflicts most notably in parts of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Furthermore, attempts by the predominantly Muslim Russian republic of Chechnya to break away from the Russian Federation emerged as one of the bloodiest and most disheartening conflicts of the period and remains unresolved. There was also uncertainty over the changing geo political situation within CEE. The nationalist separatism that characterized much of this region post 1989 resulted in the appearance of several new countries. Notwith standing the emergence of former Soviet republics this period of (re)birth included the ‘velvet divorce’ of

Second World

Czechoslovakia and the disintegration of Yugoslavia. These nationalist assertions were generally welcomed at the time as a legitimate expression of the region’s com plex ethnic composition. Nevertheless, as the historical geographer, Michael Heffernan notes, and with particular reference to the Balkan wars during the 1990s, there was also tragedy wrapped up with the shifting geo political situation and the re emergence of the territorial imperative: Despite a half century of European debate in which sovereignty and citizenship seemed to be increasingly uncoupled from land and territory, the Yugoslavian crisis demonstrates the remarkable persistence of older forms of geopolitical reasoning both amongst the participants in the war and amongst those who sought to arbitrate. Herein lies the ‘sadness of geography’. (1998: 230)

Building Market-Based Democracies in CEE and the FSU The early to mid 1990s witnessed a remarkable effort by the West to encourage the development of market economies and democratically based governments in the former socialist countries of CEE and the FSU. The experience of international financial institutions in parts of the developing world during the 1980s was used as a basis for devising regional financial and economic reform programs suffused with notions of ‘shock therapy’ and ‘short term pain for long term gain’. Such programs were influential in supporting and propagating the notion of societies in ‘transition’ from socialism to liberal democracy. The World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Table 1

(EBRD), and other major financial organizations, as well as political organizations such as the EU have been active in attempting to reduce societal change within the region to a series of planned economic, social, and political development paths. Importantly, these generalized agen das have been criticized for internalizing a relatively simplistic and undifferentiated conceptualization of the post socialist region grounded on linear models of development. Despite such critical attention, idealized versions of a market economy and democratic forms of govern ment came to represent the yardstick by which the performance of post socialist countries was measured. The initial result of the aforementioned policy recom mendations was indeed traumatic for the countries involved. While CEE generally began to recover, at least with respect to macroeconomic indicators, during the mid 1990s, countries of the FSU (with the partial exception of the Baltic States) continued to suffer marked levels of economic and social difficulty (see Table 1). A similar East–West split was also noted with respect to the efficacy of developing systems of political representation with the countries of CEE characterized in general by more robust democratic systems of governance. Efforts to direct societal change within the post socialist region were accompanied by attempts to (re) locate the countries of CEE/FSU within the context of the global economy. In particular, recent analysis has associated the countries of CEE, the FSU, and China with the concept of ‘emerging markets’. The use of this concept gained momentum during the 1990s and is intended to highlight those countries across the globe located outside of the core advanced economies and

General socioeconomic data for selected countries Avg. annual population growth (%), 1990 2003

GDP a, avg. annual % growth, 1990 2003

GDP a per capita % growth, 2002 2003

Carbon dioxide emissions, Millions of tons, 2000

Country

Life expectancy at birth (years), 1981 90

Life expectancy at birth (years), 2002

Bulgaria Czech Republic Hungary Poland

71.4 71.1

72 75

0.8 0.1

0.2 1.4

4.9 2.9

42.3 118.8

69.6 70.9

72 74

0.2 0.0

2.4 4.7

0.7 4.9

54.2 301.3

Azerbaijan Estonia Kazakhstan Russia Ukraine Uzbekistan

69.6 70.0 68.2 68.8 70.0 68.1

65 71 62 66 68 67

1.1 1.2 0.7 0.3 0.5 1.7

2.4 1.5 0.6 1.8 5.3 1.2

10.5 5.3 8.7 7.8 10.2 3.0

29.0 16.0 121.3 1435.1 342.8 118.6

China

68.3

71

1.0

9.5

8.4

2790.5

a

59

Gross domestic product. Sources: World Bank (1996). From Plan to Market: World Development Report 1996, p 172. New York: Oxford University Press; World Bank (2004). A Better Investment Climate for Everyone: World Development Report 2005, pp 256 257, 260 261. New York: Oxford University Press.

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yet conforming more or less to market conventions and considered to possess sound investment potential. The emergence of the concept is indicative of the changing global geopolitical situation. As James Sidaway and Michael Pryke suggest: [T]he general notion of places as ‘emerging markets’ is symptomatic of the diminishing credibility of a passe´ geopolitical division of the world into ‘Third’, ‘Second’ and ‘First’. Beyond the Cold War, in a ‘New World Order’ the old poles of North and South and East and West are less credible. (2000: 189)

More focused reworkings of global economic space have also emerged with Russia and China grouped together with Brazil and India (so called ‘BRIC’ econ omies) as countries characterized by both large popu lations and the potential for marked economic growth in the medium term. While such categories can be useful in challenging old regional geographies, they can also gloss over underlying heterogeneity (see Figure 2).

China In contrast to the dramatic economic and political changes that characterized CEE and the FSU from the late 1980s, China’s societal transformation has been far more gradual with its origins in the late 1970s. China remains a com munist country and the willingness of its leaders to allow gradual economic change has arguably been important in helping the country to avoid the dramatic changes that characterized the final years of the USSR. Where the countries of CEE and FSU have relied heavily on market blueprints imported from the West in order to negotiate their path away from a centrally planned economy, China’s more pragmatic approach has enabled it to record im pressive levels of economic development according to macroeconomic indicators during the course of the last three decades. China is emerging rapidly as a key global economic power, which in tandem with its potential for future growth, has increased markedly its presence on the international stage. China has long borders with both Russia and a number of Central Asian states, and political relations between the different countries have become increasingly fluid since the end of the Soviet period. En ergy is a key factor underpinning these relations with China interested in acquiring a secure supply of hydro carbon fuels from the southeastern part of Siberia, as well as the Caspian basin region. In spite of its relative economic success, China’s communist regime continues to rule in a dictatorial style and this has drawn criticism from many quarters in the West particularly with respect to human rights issues.

The Enduring East–West Division While the events of 1989/91 are often taken to symbolize the end of East–West rivalry and division within Europe, they did not prevent new forms of division emerging which, according to Merje Kuus, represent an active process of ‘reinscription of otherness’. Indeed, Europe’s East–West split has a long history rooted in deep seated religious and ethnic divisions and traceable to the eighteenth century Enlightenment period and beyond. In short, the western parts of Europe are typically posited as both culturally refined and progressive in contrast to a relatively backward and unsophisticated East. Import antly, this East–West division is highly mobile, and the border between the two regions has moved markedly during the last century to reflect the changing geo political situation. Since 1989/91, this division has been further challenged by the collapse of socialist regimes and the progressive enlargement of the EU. The borders of the West are typically and uncritically associated with those of the EU. A related aspect of the reworked geographies of CEE/ FSU concerns the pervasive notion of ‘a return to Europe’ among many countries of the region. This has obvious connections with the noted stereotyping of the East and West whereby certain former Soviet republics such as the Baltic States, as well as former satellite countries perceive considerable political, social, eco nomic, and cultural advantages associated with their realignment with Western Europe. In addition, the pur poseful move to the West is less ambiguously related to a collective desire amongst many of these countries to distance themselves politically from the Russian Feder ation. Evidence of this repositioning is found in the reformulation of maps and other nationalist symbols. At the same time, the chief expressions of this desire to return to Europe are evidenced by the expansion of NATO membership, as well as the ongoing enlargements of the EU. Eight former socialist countries were in corporated into the EU in 2004 (together with Cyprus and Malta). Both Romania and Bulgaria acceded in January 2007 and a further seven countries, including significant parts of the Balkans, as well as Turkey, are considered either ‘candidate countries’ or else ‘potential candidate countries’. In response to the enlargement process and changing geopolitical situation, the EU has reworked its relation ships with adjacent regions. In particular, since 2004, a large number of bordering countries, stretching from North Africa and the Mediterranean Basin in the south to Belarus in the northeast, are now termed ‘neighbours’ in line with the EU’s European Neighbourhood Policy. The stated aim of this policy ‘‘is to share the benefits of the EU’s 2004 enlargement with neighbouring countries in strengthening stability, security and well being for all

Chile

Peru

Brazil

Argentina

Venezuela Nigeria

South Africa

Zimbabwe

Arab Rep.of Egypt

Poland

Pakistan

Hungary

Czech Rep. Slovak Rep

Saudia Arabia

Turkey Jordan

Greece

Turkey

Thailand Sri Lanka

India

China

Malaysia

Indonesia

Philippines

Figure 2 Emerg ng markets 1998. nternat ona F nance Corporat on ( FC) emerg ng markets da y ndex n 1998. Source: S daway, J. D. and Pryke, M. (2000). The strange geograph es of emerg ng markets’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 25, p 192.

Mexico

Morocco

Portugal

Russian Federation

Second World 61

62

Second World

concerned.’’ Importantly, Russia has resisted such rhet oric and relations between Russia and the EU have developed along different lines with the establishment of a ‘common space’ dialogue.

Conclusion The Second World category discussed here has its origins in Western geopolitical imagination during the aftermath of World War II. As such, it differs from contempor aneous Soviet and Chinese conceptualizations of the global geopolitical situation. The Second World category served a purpose during the Cold War period by drawing attention to the ideological division between the capit alist countries of the West and the communist regimes centered on the USSR and the PRC. At the same time, it allowed for the clear demarcation of those parts of the world which fell outside these two dominant blocs and were deemed ‘underdeveloped’ in line with the emerging developmental rhetoric of the period, a rhetoric driven by the USA. The efficacy of the Second World category discussed here was seriously challenged by the revo lutions of 1989/91 in CEE and the USSR and it has little, if any, contemporary relevance. While the shared ex perience of socialism remains a common feature uniting former socialist countries, it is important to acknowledge the variety of socialisms that actually existed during the Cold War period. Furthermore, the range of societal changes that have taken place across CEE and the FSU since the late 1980s coupled with the particularities of the Chinese model of development ensures that any generalizations concerning shared characteristics must be treated with care. See also: First World; Geopolitics; Third World.

Further Reading Bradshaw, M. J. B. and Stenning, A. (eds.) (2004). East Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union: The Post Socialist States. Harlow: Pearson. Cole, J. (1964). Geography of World Affairs (3rd edn.). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cooper, J. (2006). Of BRICs and brains: Comparing Russia with China, India, and other populous emerging economies. Eurasian Geography and Economics 47, 255 284.

Demko, G. J. and Sagers, M. J. (1992). Post Soviet geography. Post Soviet Geography 33, 1 3. Glassman, J. (2005). On the borders of Southeast Asia: Cold war geography and the construction of the other. Political Geography 24, 784 807. Grasso, J., Corrin, J. and Kort, M. (2004). Modernization and Revolution in China: From the Opium Wars to World Power (3rd edn.). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Heffernan, M. (1998). The Meaning of Europe: Geography and Geopolitics. London: Arnold. Hobsbawm, E. (1995). Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914 1991. London: Abacus. Horschelmann, K. (2002). History after the end: Post socialist difference in a (post)modern world. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 27, 52 66. Kochan, L. and Keep, J. (1997). The Making of Modern Russia: From Kiev Rus’ to the Collapse of the Soviet Union (3rd edn.). London: Penguin. Kuus, M. (2004). Europe’s eastern expansion and the reinscription of otherness in East Central Europe. Progress in Human Geography 28, 472 489. Nijman, J. (1992). The limits of superpower: The United States and the Soviet Union since World War II. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, 681 695. Nolan, P. (1995). China’s Rise, Russia’s Fall: Politics, Economics and Planning in the Transition from Stalinism. London: Macmillan Press. Nove, A. (1992). An Economic History of the USSR: 1917 1991 (3rd edn.). London: Penguin. Shaw, D. J. B. (1998). ‘The chickens of Versailles’: The new Central and Eastern Europe. In Graham, B. (ed.) Modern Europe: Place, Culture and Identity, pp 121 142. London: Arnold. Sidaway, J. D. and Pryke, M. (2000). The strange geographies of ‘emerging markets’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 25, 187 201. Smith, A. (2002). Imagining geographies of the ‘new Europe’: Geo economic power and the new European architecture of integration. Political Geography 21, 647 670. Smith, G. (1999). The Post Soviet States: Mapping the Politics of Transition. London: Arnold. Taylor, P. J. and Flint, C. (2000). Political Geography: World Economy, Nation State and Locality (4th edn.). Harlow: Prentice Hall. Westad, O. A. (ed.) (1998). Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino Soviet Alliance, 1945 1963. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press. World Bank (1996). From Plan to Market: World Development Report 1996, p 172. New York: Oxford University Press. World Bank (2004). A Better Investment Climate for Everyone: World Development Report 2005, pp 256 257, 260 261. New York: Oxford University Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.nato.int North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Segregation M. F. Poulsen, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Assimilation The policy of transforming all racial/ ethnic groups to the cultural norms of the majority group. Integration Equal attainment by all racial/ethnic communities in education, the labor market, and the housing market. Multiculturalism The policy of transforming the cultural norms of society to that of a mix of racial/ethnic cultures. Segregation The residential separation of people within urban areas on the basis of race/ethnicity and income. Urban Governance The system by which cities are governed and resources allocated.

Residentially segregated areas within Western cities are primarily ethnic enclaves of unskilled workers, and as such are low socioeconomic areas. By contrast, there has been under globalization, increasingly the development of ethnoburbs, which are ethnic enclaves – usually sub urbs – with skilled workers at higher socioeconomic levels. Particularly striking has been the development of segregated residential populations in Western European nations, most of which were previously sources of immigrants, not recipients. The major political issues that face these multicultural societies are the result of the conflict between a focus in public policy on developing and maintaining ethnic communities – multiculturalism – over that favoring spatial and cultural assimilation. While accepting the need for immigrants to support steady population growth essential for economic growth, few governments would support policies favoring cultural assimilation. The expectation is that cultural assimilation will occur across the generations through the educational system. Such issues are today viewed within the context of debates over integration and social cohesion. These are difficult issues and are at variance with the experience of immigration to the New World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In that period, the expected process of integration was that of assimilation. That is, individuals from different white ethnic communities gave up their cultural identity and values and became part of their new society. Key to that assimilation was their development of language skills. In an age when manual labor was central to the labor market, both integration and social cohesion were rapidly achieved. Individuals from different European origins blended into the new

nation, often within a generation only distinguishable by their surnames. Residential segregation in geography is a major topic because segregated areas form major geographic features within our cities. It is difficult to view major Western cities without considering the impact and likely outcomes of residential segregation. The role of geographers in their study of residential segregation has also changed. In the information age in which we live the geographer is no longer the impartial observer but increasingly the provider of accurate empirical and qualitative infor mation to public policymakers. To support this endeavor the geographic literature cover major themes such as: how we measure segregation; what are the temporal changes in segregation; the comparative nature of seg regation across countries; determinants of segregation; individual life changes; and individual experiences.

Introduction Within Western cities residential segregation is primarily a feature of large cities with substantial race/ethnic populations, where home ownership forms the dominant form of housing tenure. Residential segregation is defined here as locations where 70% or more of the population are of nonwhite backgrounds: in some cases this popu lation is a visible minority. These measurements are usually conducted on data for small census areas where the total population is less than 500 persons, in that the boundaries of ethnic enclaves and ethnoburbs tend to cut across larger spatial units. Within Western cities resi dential segregation for the unskilled ethnic population occurs primarily within some of the cheapest dwellings – usually rented property – in the city. This property in some cities is centrally located and in others its location is suburban. In general, residential segregation is seen to be a normal outcome for unskilled immigrants during their initial period of settlement and as such is seen as a positive outcome in that these communities are very supportive of each other. These are places where cultural and religious differences are maintained, while the population over time becomes increasingly inte grated into the general labor market through educational attainment. Residential segregation usually only becomes a major public policy issue when it persists across the generations or if a major incident occurs. Such communities would probably not be problematic except when members of the ethnic community are trapped at the bottom of the

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Segregation

socioeconomic ladder by living in those areas and are likely to remain so. As a result, there is a fear of the development of parallel societies and second, concern over residential segregation limiting the life changes of the children within those communities.

Five Periods of Research Geographers in the 1950s became involved in the study of residential segregation because these areas are major geographical features within cities. Since that initial research this field of study has gone through a number of phases. While it is difficult to be exact about the dating of each phase, in the first period covering the 1950s and 1960s, the aim was to acquire information on the nature of segregation. The focus was on segregation of the African Americans in the United States because that was where the extremes of segregation existed – and continue to exist. The approach was primarily observational. To do so the index of dissimilarity was used as the standard measure. What this index measures is for each individual racial/ethnic group in a city the percentage of that population that would have to move to be distributed in the same manner as the total population. As a result of those measurements, it was established that in many American cities more than 90% of the African American population would have to move. Today, primarily due to the increase in the Latino populations and the resulting competition for residences, and educational attainment that percentage has dropped by up to 10% in many urban areas. The complexity of the links between racial/ethnic and income residential segregation was initially estab lished in geographic research in the late 1960s and early 1970s (the second so called period of segregation research). The mapping of the three dimensions from social area analyses (socioeconomic status, familism, and ethnicity) established that racial/ethnic segregation only overlapped with low income segregation in a limited number of census areas in the city. Furthermore, outside of America, racial/ethnic residential segregation was often found to be associated with lower middle class areas. These findings suggested a special relationship existed between racial/ethnic residential segregation and income residential segregation. Why this was so and its importance became a major focus of research over the next three decades, with the research focus shifting to linking the research field across the social sciences. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s there were the development and adoption of an increasingly diverse array of racial/ethnic segregation measures. In this, the third period of residential segregation research, the most important measure adopted was the index of isolation. Again a single segregation index for the whole

of a metropolitan area, the index of isolation measures the probability that a person within a metropolitan area will meet another co ethnic within that city. This pro liferation of measures of segregation during this third period of research by the mid 1980s led to the estab lishment of five dimensions of segregation: evenness, exposure, concentration, centralization, and clustering. The first two are aspatial measures, the last three are spatial measures. The purpose in identifying these five dimensions was to refocus segregation research. Whether there are five dimensions of segregation or just two (aspatial and spatial) is disputed. In general, the aspatial measures are considered the primary measures of resi dential segregation with universal applicability, while the spatial measures are contextual measures. The level of segregation, measured by evenness and exposure indices, are seen to be explained by three generic variables: (1) the size of the city, (2) the proportion that the minority population constituted of the metropolitan population, and (3) the national context. By the early 1990s the relationship between income segregation and racial/ethnic segregation, the double aspects of segregation, had been accepted. In this, the fourth period of research, geographers studied a wide variety of topics. In particular, the study of the dynamics of the process of segregation; the relationship between racial/ethnic residential segregation and con centrated poverty; the roles of religion, educational attainment, access to the labor market, access to the housing market, geographic context, geographic scale; and the comparative nature of segregation between cities in different countries. Geographers have also focused on developing spatial measures of segregation based on area and shape measurements, although this work has had limited impact because of the unique geography of each city. More recently the focus has changed yet again. Since 2000, in what we might call the fifth period, at least five themes have emerged. The first theme is the role that urban governance plays in residential segregation. One issue here has been whether different systems of urban governance promote residential segregation. The second theme is the continued development of research into the concept of residential segregation, in particular, research into delimiting the individual com ponents of segregation. Increasingly today, geographers are called upon to provide sound empirical evidence to policymakers so that policies can be developed and evaluated. Many of these policies are geographically specific in that they focus on assistance to communities at the local area scale. Invariably, this involves the devel opment and use of more meaningful measures of segre gation than the single general summary indices for a city developed since the 1950s and the use of qualitative methods. Hence the third theme is the development of

Segregation

better information on residential segregation. The fourth theme is the development and use of better data sets. In particular, the use of longitudinal surveys that record the histories of individual household members over subsequent waves of interviews. The fifth theme is the development of qualitative research aimed at capturing the experiences and attitudes of individuals.

65

population: the poor. Invariably, in the European context, this means housing on estates, where a significant proportion of that poor population are members of minority ethnic groups we have double segregation. The result is essentially the same as the American experience – for the African American and some Latino populations – with poor levels of educational attainment, resultantly poor access to the labor market, and in turn poor access to the housing market.

The Role of Urban Governance Turning to some of these recent themes and issues, how cities are structured in terms of urban governance is seen to be fundamental to understanding residential segre gation. In America, the role of local government by way of the establishment of a multitude of incorporated places within a metropolitan area is fundamental to the continued residential segregation of the African American population. Relying on the ownership housing market to develop income segregation, the white population, by incorporating places of privilege, by de veloping exclusionary zoning, by basing the educational districts on those places as well as the tax base, has en sured that racial/ethnic segregation persists. In the poor inner cities where the African American population live, and increasingly in some cities where large migrant Latino populations reside, educational attainment levels are well below those in the white privileged suburban incorporated places. As a result, access to the labor market for many in the ethnic groups is restricted, and, in turn, as is access to the housing market. It is the reliance on the ownership housing market, as the basis of individual capitalism, the structures of urban govern ance and the electoral system that make it impossible for many individuals from racial/ethnic communities in American cities to have the same life chances, in particular, the African American population and the Latino poor. Without the replacement of the in corporated places by a single metropolitan government for each city, racial/ethnic residential segregation is not going to be overcome. White privilege will continue. The alternative to the ownership housing market is rental social housing for all incomes. Where social housing exists as the dominant market for all income groups – as it does in a number of Western European nations – low levels of income segregation and racial/ ethnic segregation occur. Unfortunately, neoliberalism under globalization has changed many of these housing markets into ownership markets. This has occurred at the same time as increased levels of immigration into these countries. As a result, increasing levels of both income segregation and racial/ethnic segregation have de veloped. In between these two extremes are the nations where social housing applies only to a residual of the

Ghettos, Enclaves, and Ethnoburbs During the last decade there have often been debates over what constitutes a ghetto and if ghettos exist in a particular country. The word ‘ghetto’ is derived from the Italian word for the process of ‘casting out’ in the pro duction of iron. Therefore, if most of the population in a group is forced to reside in an area of a city because they have been cast out of living in other residential areas, then the area they live in can be classified as a ghetto. Such instances are very rare, and usually relate to the African American experience in the early twentieth century and the earlier Jewish experience in Europe. Where residential segregation occurs because of low in come alone then it is not a ghetto but rather an ethnic enclave. The concept of the ‘ethnoburb’ introduces an other dimension to the classification of ethnic com munities – the socioeconomic dimension. An ethnoburb is an ethnic enclave that has developed or risen up above the base of the housing or income ladder. The classic example of an ethnoburb is that of the residential seg regation of the Jewish community, as displayed in Lon don. Many of these ethnoburbs are located in the suburbs, as in some of the Chinese communities in Auckland, Vancouver, and Sydney.

Self-Segregation The concept of ‘self segregation’ implies that individuals in an ethnic group out of choice decide to segregate out from the larger community in terms of their resi dential location. A good example is some members of a religious faith, such as the Jews, who like to or are re quired to live within close proximity of their place of worship; or alternatively, groups that form a community so as to support their co ethnics. Self segregation for all but a few ethnic groups is viewed by many geographers as a contested concept when it occurs beyond the first and second generations. Most research suggests that second and subsequent generations would prefer to live in a mixed community and share in the economic benefits of society, rather than live in their own communities. How ever, in many cities that choice is not available to them.

66

Segregation

Better Measures of Residential Segregation The way residential segregation is measured within cities has been a major theme of geographical research into segregation across the decades, and it is likely to continue to be so, particularly with the increasing focus in geography on the provision of information for public policymakers. The three most privileged measures of segregation are the indexes of dissimilarity, isolation, and diversity; these are very sound measures when applied to extreme levels of residential segregation. But when applied to high or moderate levels of resi dential segregation in a multicultural society they are problematic. The reason is that these single measures are averaging measures. For example, take the situation where the number of nonwhite persons living in segre gated areas (defined as areas within a city with 70% or more nonwhite) increases over time, while the number of nonwhite persons living in mixed areas also increases (defined as areas within a city with 20–70% nonwhite). If the change in the mixed areas exceeds that of the segregated areas, then all of those indices will measure a decline in segregation; when, in fact, the number living in the segregated areas has increased. Hence, geographers have developed a better threshold methodology to separate those differences in the data (see Table 1 and Figure 1). Since the early 1990s geographers have also made a major contribution to the spatial measurement of residential segregation over time at a submetropolitan scale. These measures usually based on census data at sequential censuses have focused on shape, clustering, and the locational changes in the segregation. The problem with spatial

measures of segregation is their comparability between cities, in that each city has a unique topography under lying it. However, these measures do reveal important information about changes in residential segregation within an individual city, especially when those measures are conducted across a set of major divisions within that city.

Life Chances Geographers in Western nations assessing segregated areas and the potential for spatial assimilation today focus on a basic process model containing three com ponents: (1) educational attainment, (2) access to the labor market, and (3) access to the housing market. Each component is interlinked. Educational attainment is seen to determine access to the labor market, and access to the labor market determines access to the housing mar ket. In terms of integration, the geographic literature displays that it is in the field of educational attainment that the initial problems occur for some residentially

Table 1 Conflicting change between the general indexes of segregation: differences in these indices for London, 1991 and 2001 Index of dissimilarity White Black Caribbean Black African Indian Pakistani Bangladeshi

0.028 0.057 0.059 0.031 0.042 0.042

0.047 0.000 0.059 0.006 0.015 0.022

Charter group as percent of total population in area k 100

60

80

40

20

0 100

80

I

67 60

II

40 III

IV 20

0 0

20

50

70

Noncharter group (ethnic groups) as percent of total population in area k

Figure 1 Segregation typology.

80

100

Dominant ethnic group as a percent of the noncharter population in area k

VI V

Index of isolation

Segregation

segregated groups. Because of their small catchment areas primary schools tend to be more highly segregated than the residential area in which they are situated. Within this environment some students within some ethnic communities fail to achieve the same levels of educational attainment compared with that achieved by the white population living in higher socioeconomic areas, although at the same socioeconomic level some Asian ethnic groups achieve higher levels of attainment than the white population. Similarly, although some nonwhite populations have higher proportions attending university, they do not have higher proportions covering the broader range of further education. It is in exposing these issues through the assessment of life chances that geographers assist with the development of public policy (Figure 2).

Qualitative Research One of the major issues in segregation research has been the relationship between information that can be acquired from empirical measures derived from census and longitudinal data and the experiences of individuals at the local level. In the last decade very valuable information on individual experiences has been derived from qualitative research. In general, numerous vignettes conveying the attitudes and experiences of both white and nonwhite populations in local settings have brought to life the experiences and differences between individuals in different places. Geographers however, increasingly need to combine both quantitative and qualitative methods.

67

Issues The span of geographic research on topics covering racial/ethnic residential segregation and income resi dential segregation has expanded in recent years. Trying to integrate a profusion of findings from a wide variety of geographies and topics has become increasingly a daunting, if not impossible, task. The traditional topics such as measurement of the levels of segregation in a set of metropolitan areas still appear in the literature, as do studies presenting new methods of measuring segregation (Figure 3). In almost all cases, geographers aim to supply information that will help those who are disadvantaged to achieve a better life outcome. The imperative of social justice remains dominant, even though at times it might seem that some research yields information that could be misused. Qualitative studies focusing on the experiences of individuals are currently yielding very valuable in formation. A focus on the community impact of migrant groups within different geographical settings, including the experiences of asylum seekers, and race/ethnic histories forms an important body of contemporary geographical research. Segregation, politics, and public policy are also important geographical topics. Moving forward, we need to establish a framework within which the key research goals can be placed. One such framework divides the geographic research field into four major subfields: (1) the measurement of segregation, (2) the understanding of segregation, (3) the experiences of segregation, and (4) projections of segre gation. Within this framework we can position research into the role of urban governance structures, social housing, educational attainment, access to the labor

Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4 Type 5

Figure 2 Character and extent of residential segregation in London (1991).

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Segregation

Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4

Figure 3 Character and extent of residential segregation in London (2001).

market, access to the housing market, integration, and individual experiences. Issues of residential segregation are regularly pub lished in the media. Invariably they come to the fore when a major event occurs, such as the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, the riots in the northern towns of England, the riots in France, the bombings in London, and the riots in Sydney, Australia. Crime linked to low income levels also forms the basis for the media to focus on residential segregation. In each case, the media focuses on the negative aspects of residential segregation, and rarely comments on the positive aspects of the pro cess. Invariably, the media likes to build up a false vision of a divided society, a nation in trouble, in which ethnic communities live in ghettos, and multiculturalism as a failed policy. They do so because such stories sell newspapers. Geographers therefore need to contest many of these perceptions promoted by the media through well developed and accurate research. Geographic research into residential segregation needs to be developed within the context of each country, while comparative research is also important, particularly as different countries have different data sets and levels of residential segregation. For example, in America we need to establish why different racial/ethnic groups achieve different levels of educational attainment? What impact does Latino immigration have on the relationships be tween the white population and the African American population? In Australia, the issues tend to be on how do we speed up the process of integration so that it does not take generations for all individuals in an ethnic group to have equal life chances as members of the white popu lation? How do we redistribute ethnic groups to cities

other than Sydney and Melbourne? Whereas in New Zealand how do we address the problem that of some children among the Maori and Pacific Islander ethnic groups do not achieve their potential position within society? And what advice do we provide public policymakers in Western European nations where social housing for all income groups is declining and as a result income and ethnic segregation is increasing? Or how do we deal with, as in the United Kingdom, ethnic resi dential segregation in the northern English towns where access to the labor market is limited and the white population is declining? Or how do we overcome the containment of many ethnic communities within the lowest socioeconomic stratum? Unfortunately, there are no simple answers in any country, nor global answers that span all countries. In reality, most racial/ethnic groups in Western countries do not live in ghettos. Instead, they live and work in a society where they are needed by the majority white population who are increasingly reliant on these ethnic communities to undertake the lower skilled occupations. While many in the population are uncertain over where their societies are heading when they are made up of a set of separate communities, most see huge benefits in a multicultural society. To assist in evaluating likely futures geographers are currently developing modeling, which allows us to make projections on levels of residential segregation in 10 and 20 years hence. To illustrate one such model based on spatial assimilation starts with an all white urban area, where the initial inflow of unskilled immigrants establishes the ethnic communities that in time form residentially segregated areas. Individuals stay within these areas for the first two

Segregation

generations, with some in the second and third gener ations moving out to areas of mix in surrounding areas within the same socioeconomic stratum. A limited number achieve higher levels of educational attainment and move to areas of higher socioeconomic status, and hence achieve spatial assimilation. Over time, those moving into mixed areas at the same socioeconomic stratum will see their areas transform back into segre gated spaces due to the further settlement of members of the ethnic groups in those areas. Hence, what starts off as both increasing populations in areas of segregation and areas of mix, with mixed areas dominant, will under the worst case scenario time result in areas of increasing segregation unless movement up through the socio economic stratum is achieved by individuals. Hence the importance of spatial assimilation, educational attain ment, and the development of shared values in the development of a new society. Essentially, only through educational attainment can individuals move to higher paid employment within the labor market, and to better quality housing in the housing market. And only through shared values will cities with a set of ethnic based com munities achieve integration and social cohesion. See also: Governance, Urban; Segregation.

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Further Reading Allan, J. and Turner, E. (2005). Ethnic residential concentrations in United States metropolitan areas. The Geographical Review 95, 267 285. Boal, F. W. (1999). From undivided cities undivided cities: Assimilation to ethnic cleansing. Housing Studies 14, 585 600. Clark, W. A. V. (2003). Immigrants and the American Dream: Remaking the Middle Class. New York: Guilford Press. Ellis, M., Wright, R. and Parks, V. (2004). Work together, live apart? Geographies of racial and ethnic segregation at home and at work. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 94, 620 637. Hiebert, D. and Ley, D. (2006). Introduction: The political economy of immigration. Tijdschrift voor Economishe en Sociale Geographie 97, 2 6. Johnston, R. J., Burgess, S., Wilson, D. and Harris, R. (2006). School and residential segregation: Analysis of variations across England’s Local Educational Authorities. Regional Studies 40, 973 990. Massey, D. and Denton, N. (1993). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peach, C. (2006). Muslims in the 2001 Census of England and Wales: Gender and economic disadvantage. Ethnic and Racial Studies 29, 629 655. Poulsen, M. F., Johnston, R. J. and Forrest, J. (2004). Is Sydney a divided city ethnically? Australian Geographical Studies 42, 356 377. Skop, E. and Li, W. (2005). Asians in America’s suburbs: Pattern and consequences of settlement. Geographical Review 95, 167 188. Wong, D. W. (2005). Formulating a general spatial segregation measure. The Professional Geographer 57, 285 294.

Segregation Indices D. W. Wong, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Checkerboard Pattern Spatial distribution with alternate white and black cells like the checkerboard. Composite Population Count Sum of population in the reference unit and populations in the neighboring units. Global Measures Summary statistics or indices that describe the overall characteristics of a region. Local Measures Statistics or indices that describe the characteristics of subunits with a region and can be assigned to each local unit. MAUP The inconsistencies of analytical results due to changes in the sizes or scale of areal units (scale effect) and the zonal boundary structure (zoning effect). Spatial Autocorrelation How the values of observations are related in space, clustering, or dispersion.

measures, starting in the 1970s with the focus to develop measures capturing the spatial dimensions of segregation, followed by another surge in the early 1990s in searching for better spatial measures. Measuring segregation is also of interest to ecologists and biologists in studying the separation of animal and plant species. This article first discusses the nature of segregation and different dimensions of segregation in the next sec tion. Then it reviews several popular measures of seg regation. Because these popular indices are not spatial in nature, several approaches in developing spatial seg regation measures will be discussed. Most measures are global measures that summarize segregation for the entire region; however, local versions of these measures have been developed recently depicting the levels of segregation for areal units within a region. These local measures are reviewed, if they exist. Finally, software for computing segregation indices are discussed.

Introduction

Nature and Conceptualizations of Segregation

Relationships among population groups have always been a concern in several social science disciplines, including sociology, economics, geography, political science, and, to some extent, psychology. The nature of the relationship is often determined by how the population is divided into groups according to demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Among these characteristics, race or eth nicity is frequently used. The general concern is to what extent different population groups interact or are sep arated. From a geographical perspective, it is important to evaluate how different population groups are separ ated in space – a topic often known as segregation. As segregation can be a highly charged political and social topic, researchers have been attempting to develop methods for measuring the magnitude of segregation. These measures are relevant for policy formulation when places are compared according to their segregation levels, and partly to better describe phenomena that are somewhat related to subjective feelings, such as being discriminated against. Sociologists led the efforts in the 1950s to develop measures of segregation when modern census data became widely available, and later econo mists attempted to explain and model individual level behavior leading to the emergence of segregated patterns. Segregation measurements developed by sociologists decades ago are still widely used in contemporary stud ies. Geographers joined the effort to develop segregation

Measurements of segregation are dependent upon the conceptualizations of segregation. Most people equate segregation with separation. When one population group is separated from another one, it is generally acknow ledged that segregation exists. Depending on where the separation occurs, we can label different types of segre gation. If the segregation is manifested in the residential space, we label it as residential segregation. If it happens among schools, we call it school segregation. Therefore, we can label segregation according to where it occurs. However, segregation also involves categorizing population into groups or classes. There are many vari ables we can use to divide the population into groups. Race or ethnicity is the most common attribute used in segregation studies. One can also use income, socio economic status, occupation, demographic (e.g., age, gender), and cultural (religion and language) variables. Sociologists have suggested five dimensions of segre gation, reflecting how segregation is conceptualized and how segregation can be measured. A very common way to characterize segregation is based on the evenness of a group’s distribution. Two extremes are possible when the evenness dimension is concerned. If all population groups are distributed across all units in the same man ner, then perfect evenness or no segregation is achieved. Note that this is not the same as having the equal number of people of the group in all units, but rather the group

70

Segregation Indices

composition or population mix is uniform across all units. This also means that the population mix in each unit is the same as the population mix of the entire study area. On the other hand, if each areal unit is occupied exclusively by one population group, then a perfectly uneven situation or perfect segregation arises. Evenness is a very important conceptualization of segregation. It is best represented by the index of dissimilarity D or the segregation index. Another segregation dimension is exposure, which refers to the opportunity or magnitude of one group’s exposure to another group. The opposite of exposure is isolation. In the geographical literature, exposure is related to the concept of interaction. If one group is highly exposed to another group, the two groups can potentially interact and therefore, the segregation level should be relatively low, and vice versa. Note that the exposure concept is often not symmetrical. When the minority has high exposure to the majority in an area, the reverse is likely not true. However, when the concept of interaction is used, the relationship is often symmetrical. While the exposure dimension focuses on the rela tionship between groups, the concentration dimension is primarily for one group. It is based upon the concept of density. High density of one group may result in dom inance. When one group dominates an area, it is likely that this group is segregated from other groups. Many measures have been used to measure concentration, besides the simple density measure. Location quotient is frequently used in human geography, and can be used to analyze population concentration. Historically, minority populations were concentrated close to the central cities in many North American metropolitan areas. Because of the disadvantaged socio economic condition, minority populations seemed to be trapped in the inner cities, while populations of higher socioeconomic status were suburbanized. Therefore, the fourth dimension of segregation, centralization, refers to the concentration of minority population in the city center. Measures reflecting this dimension are often based upon simple proportions of minority residing within the central city out of the entire metro area. This dimension is both country and time dependent. Many Latin American cities have an urban structure inside out to North American cities: minorities or poorer people reside along the fringe of the cities while the higher socioeconomic classes occupy central locations. Even in some North American cities, a recent trend is that minority groups are moving to suburban locations. Therefore, the general applicability of the centralization dimension is context dependent. As separation of population is the essence of segre gation, one manifestation of group separation is clus tering. When population groups exhibit high degrees of

71

clustering, different groups occupy their own territories and therefore are segregated. Some researchers claim that this conceptualization of segregation is the most spatial of all. Geographers have been deriving measures to reflect levels of clustering. When similar values cluster, positive spatial autocorrelation exists. Many statistics have been suggested to evaluate the level of spatial autocorrelation, including Moran’s I and Geary Ratio C. These measures are appropriate to measure the spatial clustering of population groups. The five dimensions (evenness, exposure, concen tration, centralization, and clustering) cover many facets of segregation, but some geographers strongly feel that measures associated with these dimensions fail to effect ively capture the spatial separation of population – the most important aspect of segregation. Recent resurgence in segregation research in geography is partly in response to this methodological deficiency. New spatial measures have been proposed to include the modeling of spatial relationship of population groups either implicitly or explicitly using some versions of distance, which include adjacency. Another direction of segregation research that has emerged recently the development of local measures to facilitate neighborhood level analysis. Most common segregation measures can be regarded as global measures because one value is used to summarize the overall segregation level of the entire region, which may be a state or a metro area. But segregation often varies quite significantly within the study region. Therefore, relying on one summary value fails to recognize different experiences the residents have within the region. Some local measures are simply the spatial decompositions of the regional or global summary measures, an approach consistent with the development of local spatial auto correlation statistics.

Traditional Measures Several common types of segregation measures will be discussed below. These measures are applicable only to nominal or categorical scale population variables. If ordinal or interval/ratio scale variables are used to classify population, other types of measures will be needed or some modifications of measures discussed below will be required. Dissimilarity Measures Among the five dimensions discussed above, the evenness dimension has been regarded as the most important dimension, and the index of dissimilarity D or segre gation index is regarded as the most effective measure for this dimension.

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Segregation Indices

The dissimilarity index D was developed in North America when African American was the dominant minority group. Therefore, the two groups used in the formulation of the index were white and black. To gen eralize the discussion, we use group A and B. The D index is formally defined as D¼

n 1X ai 2 i 1 A

bi B

½1

where ai and bi are the population counts of the two groups in areal unit i, A and B are the total population counts of the two groups in the entire study region, and n is the number of areal units in the study region. The | | is the absolute value of the difference of the two ratios, which are the proportions of group in areal unit i over the group populations in the region. If the first group is being allocated proportionally more to one unit than the second group to that unit, then the first group will be more dominant. Thus the proportion difference indicates how the two groups are different in their shares in that unit. Bigger differences indicate the dominance of one group. The D index does not indicate which group is more dominant, as the absolute values are taken on their (a) Proportion of black, Washington, DC 0.017−0.215 0.215−0.495 0.495−0.744 0.744−0.903 0.903−1

differences. The index is just an overall indicator of dominance or segregation. The absolute proportional differences of all areal units are summed and half of that is the D index value. The D index has a theoretical range from 0 to 1, where 0 reflects no segregation and 1 indicates perfect segre gation. When the proportions of the two groups are the same for all areal units, or ai bi ¼ 8i A B

then D ¼ 0, indicating no segregation. When each areal unit is exclusively occupied by one group, then D ¼ 1, indicating perfect segregation. Sometimes, the D value is converted into percentage to show the percent of population needed to be moved in order to achieve no segregation. This interpretation of D is one of the reasons why the index is frequently adopted. Using Washington, DC 2000 Census data at the tract level as an example, Figure 1a shows the proportion of black based on the white–black total at the tract level (the two ovals will be discussed later). The residential segre gation of the two groups is clearly visible with blacks

(b) Di (white−black) −0.017− −0.008 −0.008− −0.003 −0.003−0.005 0.005−0.018 0.018−0.032

(c) Standardized diversity index 0−0.118 0.118−0.28 0.28−0.456 0.456−0.621 0.621−0.942

Figure 1 (a) Proportion of black, Washington, DC, 2000 Census tracts, using white black totals as the base; (b) Di index; and (c) Standardized diversity index.

Segregation Indices

concentrated on the east side and whites concentrated on the west. As a result, the distribution offers a D value of 0.7758. A criticism of D is that it can handle only two groups, but multiethnicity is the norm rather than the exception. To overcome this limitation, pair wise comparisons of all possible pairs of population groups can be performed using D. An alternative is to use a multigroup version of D, which is defined as Pn Pm 1 i 1 j 1 jNij Eij j DðmÞ ¼ Pm Pj Þ 2 j 1 N Pj ð1

½2

and Eij ¼

Ni * Nj N

where Nij is the count of population group j in areal unit i. There are n units in the region and m population groups. Then, Ni. is the total population in unit i across all population groups and N.j is the total population of group j across all units in the region. N is the total population of the entire region and Pj is the proportion of population belonging to group j in the region. This formulation is similar to the w2 (chi squared) statistic. D(m) has the same numerical properties as D, such as bounded by 0 and 1. In the Washington, DC example using white, black, and Asian, the D(m) value is 0.7430, very close to the D in the two group case. Both D and D(m) are global measures because they offer one index value for the entire study region, regardless of how large the region may be. Therefore, they cannot reflect the internal variation of segregation level within the region. Local measures may be used to depict segregation at the neighborhood scale and one approach to develop local measures is to spatially decompose global measures. For each areal unit i, the local Di is Di ¼

ai A

bi B

the H index can handle multiple groups. If pk is the proportion of population group k in unit i, or pk ¼ population of group k in i/total population in i, then, Hi, the diversity for unit i, the local version of the diversity index, is Hi ¼

Entropy-Based Diversity Measures Another popular measure under the evenness dimension is the entropy based diversity index H. Different from D,

m X

pk * lnðpk Þ

½4

k 1

where ln( ) is the natural logarithm and m is the number of population groups. Note that the logarithm of other bases can also be used. Though the diversity index has a minimum value of 0 indicating no diversity, its maximum value is dependent upon the number of groups involved. Therefore, to facilitate comparison, the index is often standardized by dividing by its maximum value, ln(m). Because this index measures diversity, higher values in Hi indicate less segregation, while lower values reflect more segregation. The standardized diversity value for each census tract in Washington, DC is mapped in Figure 1c, including white, black, and Asian in the comparison. To derive a global version of the index for the entire study region, there are several ways to ‘scale it up’. One method is to compute an average over all units within the region, but is weighted by the population sizes of units. Formally, Pn Hi Pi H ¼ Pi n1 i 1 Pi

½5

where n is the number of units in the region and Pi is the population count in unit i. Exposure and Other Measures Recent studies have increasingly utilized the exposure concept to evaluate the level of segregation. The exposure index, aP*b , describes the chance that a person in group A will encounter another individual in group B. Formally,

½3

Di is essentially the difference in the group proportions for each areal unit. Di can be positive or negative. Positive values indicate that group A is dominant in i, and vice versa. An advantage of using local measures such as Di is that index values can be mapped to show the variation geographically and thus this approach is appealing for local policy formulation. Figure 1b shows the Di values of Washington, DC. The local index effectively depicts the dominance of the two groups in different parts of the city.

73

* a Pb ¼

n X ai bi * N A i i 1

½6

where Ni is the total population in areal unit i and all other terms are defined as before. The exposure of group A to group B is not the same as group B to group A, but * bPa can be derived in a similar manner. These are global aspatial exposure or isolation measures. Spatial versions of these measures and spatial local exposure measures have been developed. Measures for the concentration dimension are mostly density based measures, including the location quotient. For centralization measures, most of them are simple proportions of population between the inner cities and the entire region. Therefore, they will not be elaborated

74

Segregation Indices

here. For the clustering dimension, some measures are spatial autocorrelation measures, including Moran’s I and Geary Ratio C. Some measures are specific to measuring segregation but spatial in nature. They will be reviewed in the next section.

Spatial Measures of Segregation Most popular segregation measures have a common deficiency: they cannot distinguish different population distribution patterns effectively. The so called ‘checker board’ pattern is the best example to illustrate this weakness. According to most measures, the checkerboard pattern has perfect segregation, as is true for other patterns when each unit is exclusively occupied by one group. It is because most measures assume that inter action across unit boundaries is not permitted, even though those boundaries are often artificially demarcated. If all black cells of the checkerboard are moved to one side and white cells to the other to form a two subregion pattern, the level of segregation should increase, but traditional measures will indicate that all these patterns have the same level of segregation (perfectly segregated). As a result, many spatial measures have been proposed to overcome this weakness. In order to effectively dis tinguish different spatial distribution patterns, these measures incorporate information about the spatial relationships among areal units. One way to measure the spatial relationship between areal units is distance. Therefore, early spatial segre gation measures, such as the distance based segregation index (DBI), incorporate a distance component. As D reflects the proportion of population needed to be moved in order to achieve no segregation, the distance that people are required to move can also be taken into account. Therefore, DBI is the minimum distance weighted by the populations that are required to move to achieve no segregation. To derive the index, optimization methods are required and the details are beyond the scope of this article. Also using distance as an operator to capture spatial relationship between people or areal units, the spatial proximity index was proposed. The index can be defined as P¼

APaa þ BPbb NPnn

½7

where A and B are the total population counts of the two groups in the region and N is the combined total of the two groups. Pnn is the average proximity between all persons in the city regardless of the group member ship. Therefore, Paa is the average proximity of popu lation in group A and Pbb is the average proximity of population in group B. For the average proximity of a

group, let us say A, the computation follows: Paa ¼

n X n 1X ai aj dij 2 A i 1 j 1

½8

where dij is a general distance measurement between units i and j. The distance measurement can accommodate various distance specifications (e.g., Euclidean, network, or Manhattan, etc.) and distance decay functions. Besides distance, contiguity can also be used in ana lyzing spatial relationships between population groups. A family of spatial segregation measures modifies the D index by accounting for the interaction across neigh boring units. The traditional D measure overstates segregation level by ignoring interunit interaction. The spatial version of D suggested by Morrill gives a segre gation value of 0.6444, compared with 0.7758 of the aspatial D for Washington, DC. The spatial version proposed by Wong offers a segregation value of 0.6588, very close to the one by Morrill. Another approach to accommodate interunit inter action is to utilize the concept of composite population counts. To implicitly allow interaction across unit bound aries, the composite population count of a unit includes populations of the reference unit and its neighbors so that populations in the reference and neighboring units will be treated as if they are within one unit. The composite population count of a unit i is defined as cai ¼

n X

fij ðÞaj

½9

j 1

where aj is the population count in unit j, and fij( ) is a neighborhood function, which may carry a binary form of 0 and 1 with 1 indicating that j is a neighbor of i, and 0 otherwise. Then using the composite population counts instead of the raw counts to compute segregation meas ures, population mix of neighboring units will be con sidered implicitly. Several spatial measures, including a generalized D measure, the spatial multigroup D index, the spatial version of the entropy based diversity indices (both local and global, eqns [4] and [5]), and the local spatial exposure indices adopt the composite population count concept in measuring segregation. The spatial multigroup D index for Washington, DC is 0.6553, compared to 0.7430 of the aspatial multigroup D. Several other directions in developing spatial segre gation indices are worth mentioning. The D index is conceptually linked to the Gini coefficient or Lorenz curve for measuring inequality. Like many indices used in human geography, spatial relationship of areal units is not taken into consideration in Gini coefficient and a spatial version of the Gini coefficient has been proposed to measure spatial segregation.

Segregation Indices

75

In another direction, because spatial distribution of a population may be graphically captured by a standard deviational ellipse, an ellipse can be created for each population group and ellipses for different groups can be overlaid. The overlapping area of ellipses reflects the spatial correspondence of these population groups. Therefore, an index formed by 1 (area of ellipse intersection/area of ellipse union) can serve as a possible spatial measure of segregation. Figure 1a shows the el lipses for whites (left) and blacks (right). The intersected area was also highlighted. The two groups did not overlap much spatially. As a result, the segregation value is 0.9757.

the pattern will result in a highly segregated situation. If we divide the region horizontally, both the northern and southern units will have relatively mixed populations and the region overall will have a much lower level of segregation. Therefore, segregation level is affected by how the boundaries of areal units are drawn. The MAUP effects on measuring segregation have been analyzed and, to some extent, are understood. However, it is advisable to take into consideration the MAUP impacts on meas uring segregation in research and practice. An important and challenging topic in ongoing research is to handle and model the MAUP impacts effectively on measuring segregation.

Related Issues on Measuring Segregation

See also: Modifiable Areal Unit Problem; Spatial Autocorrelation.

Most global traditional measures are quite straight forward to compute, but for spatial measures, special software, such as geographic information system (GIS), is needed especially to capture the spatial relationship. Currently, several software packages are available for students and researchers to compute both traditional and spatial segregation measures. A package based upon ArcView 3.X GIS is available for download. Another stand alone program has implemented some 40 segre gation measures and is available. In addition to measuring segregation, researchers have also explored how and why segregation emerges. One approach to explaining the emergence of segregation is through the modeling of individual behavior. Decades ago, Thomas Schelling, the Nobel Laureate in eco nomics, proposed a micro level simulation model to explain the emergence of segregation patterns. Some researchers have implemented Schelling’s simulation model (e.g., SimSeg originally developed by Mark Fossett and Chris Cook). On the other hand, research shows that segregation is not just a result of individual behaviors but of social and institutional forces in different social spaces, including residential, work, and school spaces. Housing market discrimination and redlining are well documented processes which create and reinforce segregation. Most measures of segregation rely on ecological data – data gathered for aggregated spatial units. When ecological data are involved, the so called modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) exists. The MAUP states that results vary depending on the sizes and boundaries of areal units used in measuring segregation. While the literature has addressed how segregation measures are affected by the MAUP, a simple example is used to illustrate the essence of the problem. If Washington, DC (Figure 1a), is divided into two units only, we can choose the division from north to south along the middle. Then each unit will be very much dominated by one group and

Further Reading Coulter, P. B. (1989). Measuring Inequality A Methodological Handbook. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Dawkins, C. J. (2004). Measuring the spatial pattern of residential segregation. Urban Studies 41, 833 851. Duncan, O. D. and Duncan, B. (1955). A methodological analysis of segregation indexes. American Sociological Review 20, 210 217. Jakubs, J. F. (1981). A distance based segregation index. Journal of Socio Economic Planning Sciences 15, 129 141. Lieberson, S. (1981). An asymmetrical approach to segregation. In Peach, C., Robinson, V. & Smith, S. (eds.) Ethnic Segregation in Cities, pp 61 82. London: Croom Helm. Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A. (1988). The dimensions of residential segregation. Social Forces 67, 281 315. Morrill, R. L. (1991). On the measure of geographical segregation. Geography Research Forum 11, 25 36. Reardon, S. F. and Firebaugh, G. (2002). Measures of multigroup segregation. Sociological Methodology 32, 33 67. Schelling, T. (1971). Dynamic models of segregation. Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1, 143 186. Cook, C. The Schelling Segregation Model. http:// www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/demos/schelling/schellhp.htm (accessed on 23 August 2007). White, M. J. (1983). The measurement of spatial segregation. American Journal of Sociology 88, 1008 1018. Wong, D. W. Spatial Segregation Measurement Research. http:// geog.gmu.edu/seg (accessed on 23 August 2007). Wong, D. W. S. (1993). Spatial indices of segregation. Urban Studies 30, 559 572. Wong, D. W. S. (1997). Spatial dependency of segregation indices. The Canadian Geographer 41, 128 136. Wong, D. W. S. (1998). Measuring multi ethnic spatial segregation. Urban Geography 19, 77 87. Wong, D. W. S. (1999). Geostatistics as measures of spatial segregation. Urban Geography 20, 635 647. Wong, D. W. S. (2002). Modeling local segregation: A spatial interaction approach. Geographical and Environmental Modelling 6, 81 97.

Relevant Websites http://www.simseg.com Advanced Simulation for the Social Sciences. http://www.inrs ucs.uquebec.ca Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique. Urbanisation, Culture et Socie´te´.

Segregation, Urban R. Atkinson, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia J. McGarrigle, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Area Effects The net contribution to the life-chances of an individual based on living in a particular neghborhood or area Gated Communities Residential development that has gates and walls or fences and which may be patrolled by guards or have other surveillance mechanisms. Gated communities are also distinctive in combining these physical features with socio-legal and contractual obligations that govern the type of housing and conduct of residents and visitors Lifeworld Taken from sociology, the world around us that is shared and taken as a given for daily social experience. Socially Tectonic Relationships Used to describe the close spatial proximity of social groups, in a neighborhood, but whose social interaction is very limited. Initially used by Tim Butler and Gary Robson in their study of gentrification in London to describe the general absence of social contact between gentrifiers and existing local, working class populations.

Introduction Many commentators have acknowledged that social relationships tend to be conducted with people who are in some way like ourselves. This notion of homophilia, the desire to be with people like oneself, suggests that those who hold similar values and similar status positions, including ethnic identities, will tend to band together. When these tendencies in social behavior are expressed spatially, in towns and cities, this creates patterns of social similarity within neighborhoods. Where choice charac terizes residential decisions, we often find that social areas develop which may show a prevalence of particular social characteristics. Tim Butler, in the context of middle class migration and gentrification in London, talks about these tendencies in terms of a desire to be with ‘people like us’, the sense that people do not necessarily express exclusive ideas about identity but value a local community that reflects their own identities and aspirations. It is important to remember that these social forces are played out within the context of private housing markets so that choice is never fully unconstrained.

76

In housing markets, price operates as an indicator of the value of locational attributes which thereby excludes those who cannot afford properties or rents in such areas. This means that a sorting process of social identity comes about through the interplay of these market forces combined with social forces and produce patterns of relative segregation on the basis of household income. Nevertheless, provision of affordable and public housing has often been planned in ways, particularly in regions like Europe, to maintain social diversity at the neigh borhood level and thus avoid areas of concentrated poverty. In cities like London, patterns of segregation and social mix occur unevenly. Areas like Islington, for example, have not only seen extensive gentrification but also retained public housing, whereby rich and poor live, to some extent, side by side. As Butler has shown, the worlds of these poorer renters and new affluent owners are often not just different but separate from each other. Knowledge of each other is mutually exclusive, in what are characterized as ‘socially tectonic’ relationships – wherein the affluent float separably above a poorer and minority ethnic grouping within the same neighborhood space. This raises a further issue which relates to the importance of scale and how we interpret the prevalence and degree of segregation. At what point can we actually say that segregation exists to one degree or another? We might reasonably set an arbitrary neighborhood size at 2000 households. If this area contained entirely Black residents we might suggest that it was segregated from other areas surrounding it that were entirely White. However, if our imagined neighborhood and the sur rounding areas had an equal number of Black and White residents we would find it difficult to express the extent of segregation. A segregation index would suggest that there was an even distribution and therefore no segre gation. Yet, what if the Black and White residents in many neighborhoods were divided within these spaces? This discussion raises two key issues. First, the measurement of segregation is contentious but remains important because it informs broader public debates about how cities and housing should be managed to achieve socially equitable outcomes. If we believe that segregation expresses prejudice and social division then understandings of its scale are clearly important. As Richard Sennett has argued, the fact that areas like downtown Manhattan are ethnically diverse does not mean that those groups interact with each other.

Segregation, Urban

However, he argues that local social difference influences our understanding of those who are different from our selves. If we do not see this difference in daily life then empathy is made more difficult, with all of the impli cations this has for debates about citizenship and diver sity in civic life. As shown later, the existence of de jure, or legally sanctioned, segregation in countries such as South Africa and the US has shown that contemporary patterns of ethnic clustering are not only merely due to chance or the operation of the housing system but also reflect the historical attempt to minimize contact with their Black populations. The social inequity and injustice that has stemmed from this has become a key feature of contemporary urban and ethnic relations in these countries. Second, where social groups tend to live apart neighborhoods may operate as social containers for the residents of poorer areas that are separated from the wider social and economic life of the city. This issue has been given significant attention by researchers who have focused on what are known as area effects. This concept refers to the net contribution to a person or a household’s life chances that stem from living in an area of ghettoized poverty. If one is on a low income and lives in an area with many other people on low incomes, it has been suggested that such neighborhoods tend to further the reproduction of poverty. These processes operate in various subtle ways. For example, low income areas tend to be stigmatized and unpopular with some prospective employers who see residents as lazy or welfare depend ant. This can, in turn, lead to self fulfilling prophecies that cast low income groups as feckless or incapable. Other problems may stem from the additional burden on essential services, such as schooling, which may be pressured by high concentrations of poorer households. Equally, service providers in such neighborhoods may not see residents as worthy of help. The work of William Julius Wilson has been import ant in highlighting how Black communities have often been stripped of their working and middle classes; a process which has, in turn, had important effects on the socialization of young people, notably by the loss of important local role models. There is clearly some degree of paternalism in such debates and a fear, in European countries, that such arguments run the risk of casting poor, minority ethnic households as an underclass responsible for its own plight. Contrary to this, Jargowsky has shown that, as broader economic opportunities rose across the US in the 1990s, work participation rates also rose in poorer, ghettoized Black communities, sug gesting that segregated poverty is not disconnected from potential economic opportunities. Segregation may not simply be good or bad and may vary in its functions depending on the social and ethnic context of such patterns. This is particularly the case in

77

the European context where the extent of segregation and ghettoization is less advanced than in North American cities. Peach argues that segregation is distinct from ghettoization. For example, the relative segregation of groups such as the Irish, Poles, and others have all tended to change over time as assimilation has occurred and economic well being has improved. Here, spatial clus tering in cities promoted what Peach describes as sup portive ‘ethnic villages’, or sanctuaries, which served protective and supportive roles for their residents. In other words, patterns of segregation may change over time as the relationships between ethnic groups also change. However, Peach also sees that segregation can have negative con notations, where it may represent an attempt by dominant groups to keep underprivileged ethnic populations spa tially and socially excluded.

Global Views on Variations and Explanations of Segregation Much of the literature on segregation has focused on North American cities. Notable contributors such as Massey and Denton have described the growth of seg regation and its underlying causes. The problem has tended to be seen as emerging most strongly following the late 1960s, though ghettoization and concentrated poverty were much in evidence, particularly from the 1930s. Even then we might look further, back to earlier phases of urbanization where such sociospatial divisions were in evidence and a key feature of the work of the Chicago School. By 1970, the majority of the US popu lation lived in the suburbs of its cities, a result, in part, of technological advances, cheap fuel, and ‘White flight’ from the urban cores where unrest and rioting arising from concentrated poverty and an absence of civil rights became pronounced. As a result, patterns of ethnic differentiation became stark in many US cities such as Detroit which moved from being a city with around 16% Black and foreign born in 1950 to 81.6% in 2000, with the overall population dropping from 1.8 million to around 900 000 in 2004. The cost of this segregation and poverty concentration was the perpetuation of social and racial disadvantage, often locked out of suburbanizing work opportunities in what some saw as a spatial mismatch between transport, poor Black households, and the opportunities in new suburban areas. Another key ingredient in the kind of segregation seen in the US was its mandating by law since the late nineteenth century. To a significant extent the features of social life in American cities have continued this legacy and have generally been unable to overcome the abo lition and integrationist concerns that led to desegre gation in schooling and social life from the 1950s onward, and which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

78

Segregation, Urban

To some extent this enshrining of ethnic separation in law stemmed from that used in apartheid South Africa where similar concerns about racial mixing and the potential for racial dilution through marriage were pro hibited by law. In Nazi Germany, prohibitions against marriage between Jews and German ‘Aryans’ from the 1930s led to the ultimate spatial separation and collective isolation of the ghettos of Warsaw, among others in Poland. The term ghetto, while widely used today to refer to places of concentrated poverty, originally stem med from the fourteenth century concentration and, later, containment of Jews in the foundry area of Venice (ghetto being a word derived from the Italian ghetta which was used to refer to the cooling waste material from iron production). While the word ghetto is often associated with areas of extensive Black poverty, the terms barrio and slums are used to refer to areas of Hispanic and White poverty today. Religious segregation continues to be a feature of many cities today. In its most extreme form, in cities such as Belfast, its Catholic and Protestant communities continue to be highly segregated. Middle class move ment out of the city has historically served to further isolate and polarize those left behind in the inner city. Cities such as Glasgow, with its history of Irish migration, have retained a less sharply divided set of sectarian boundaries, yet continue to display ritualized religious and ethnic difference through social life and sport. In the European context, urban life has been charac terized by divergent levels of migration and minority ethnic concentration and generally less extensive socio spatial segregation than is found in US cities, yet concern with the specific problems of such concentration goes back at least to the 1950s, as new waves of migration from the Commonwealth to the UK followed the wake of the postwar boom. In recent years, concern has switched to the integration, opportunities, and relative concen tration of new migrants in European cities who have often fled wars and human rights abuses in countries such as the former Yugoslavia and Iraq, and who have also been attracted by the economic opportunities opened up by European integration for countries in the former Soviet and Eastern European states. All of this raises further issues when segregation is considered in relation to recent housing and urban policies. For example, the desire to build new housing developments with some degree of social mix has become a prominent concern in the UK and in European coun tries. The use of planning arrangements to encourage stronger neighborhood levels of social diversity also says something about deeper assumptions that relate to the desirability of social diversity as a means of combating segregation and reducing the costs of public service provision in deprived areas. Such assumptions continue to assert a value to social diversity though evidence

that greater mix might facilitate stronger futures for poorer residents has remained contentious. In recent years, the emerging picture of segregation has not been positive. Writers such as Kaufman have discussed a new urban poverty in terms of a growing spatial separation based on race in cities such as Chicago. This kind of hypersegregation has been produced as a result of broader shifts in the economies of cities which have seen an erosion of middle tier occupations with a shift to advanced service sector employment in the US and professionalization in Europe, where neoliberal welfare reform has also become more advanced. These processes have also become further entrenched in countries like Brazil, among other emerging Third World economies, where a combination of neoliberal market reforms imposed by institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and social disintegration from economic problems have conspired to produce not only social polarization between rich and poor but also the ‘fortification’ of gated affluent areas marked off as clear territories from the poorer favelas. This has led com mentators to suggest that these forms of segregation and social separation may be emulated in other Western cities in the future.

Measuring Segregation – Debates and Issues There are longstanding debates and considerable con troversy over the measurement of segregation. Measures of segregation are often linked conceptually to five dif ferent dimensions – unevenness, exposure, centralization, clustering, and concentration (defined in more detail below). Some of these dimensions of segregation, how ever, are less applicable to European cities, which have tended not to follow the same model of sociospatial differentiation as American cities. Although there is an ongoing debate regarding which scale might provide the best measurement of spatial segregation, the two most commonly used indices in both the US and Europe are the index of isolation (P*), a measure of exposure, and the index of dissimilarity (ID), a measure of evenness. Measures of evenness measure the distribution of minority and majority groups across subareas of a city (e.g., if all of the subareas of a city were found to be 90% and 10% Black, the Black population would be con sidered to be evenly distributed). The most widely used measure of evenness is the ID. It measures the percentage of a minority population that would have to move to create an even distribution. It computes the sum total in a larger area of the differences in the relative populations in subareas. A figure of zero would denote no pattern of segregation, since the distribution is exactly the same or equal between the two groups being compared. A figure

Segregation, Urban

of 1 would indicate total segregation, where the resi dential distribution between the two populations being compared is totally uneven, or lumped together spatially. In between these two values, an ID less than 0.4 is con sidered low, 0.4–0.59 as moderately high, and 0.6–0.69 as high and above 0.7 is considered very high: k 1 X ID ¼ jxi 2 i 1

yi j

where k ¼ the total number of subareas in the city, xi ¼ the proportion of the city total of the x population in area i, and yi ¼ the proportion of the city total of the y population in area i. The ID is measured as half the sum of the difference between the proportion of the two populations living in each individual k areas of the city. There are key weaknesses that have called the reliability of this measure into question. First, it only measures two groups at a time, so when there are more than two groups it is a less reliable indicator. In this sense it may be more useful for cities where there are only two ethnic groups, though clearly most cities today are multiethnic. Second, it is the problem of scale since the index is aspatial and measures only the degree of segregation, but not its spatial patterns. For instance, if the measured ID is zero, which denotes no segregation, then it could mean that half of the area is Black and the other half White; however, we are unable to tell if the Black and White residents are mixed or if they are each occupying a separate half of a particular area. This is also true of mapping techniques (the second technical approach used to measure segregation), since unless a very small spatial scale is employed we are unable to tell how segregated or evenly distributed the minority group is within an area. Furthermore, erroneous comparisons may be made between studies using different spatial units. Indices of exposure or isolation measure the degree of potential contact between minority and majority group members within the area of the city where they live, so it is dependent upon the extent to which groups live in the same subarea of the city. This differs from measures of evenness as it attempts to measure the ‘experience of segregation’ rather than being based on an assumption of ideal, or even, distribution. There are two measures of exposure: the first, and less commonly used, is the isol ation index, which measures the degree to which mem bers of minority groups are exposed only to one another. The second, more commonly used measure is P *, an interaction index. This measures the potential exposure of the minority group to the majority group. P * is also used to ascertain the group ‘from whom and to whom’ the exposure is directed; it differs from measures of evenness as it takes into consideration the size of the groups being compared, as there will be greater probability that a

79

member of a smaller group will come into contact with a member of the larger group: P* ¼

X fðx1 =X Þðy1 =t 1 Þg

where X ¼ the total number of group X in the city, x1 ¼ the total number of group X in a given subarea, y1 ¼ the total number of group Y in a given subarea, and t1 ¼ the total population in a given subarea. Indices of isolation and interaction are related and can be used together when there are only two groups (adjustments must be made for more than two groups); the isolation and interaction indices sum to 1.0, so lower values of interaction and higher values of isolation both indicate higher levels of segregation. Clustering measures the degree to which spatial units occupied by minority groups are joined to one another. While the other measures consider the distribution of minority areas relative to a set point (i.e., the center of the city) or the distribution of minority and majority group members (the linked measures of exposure and even ness), this measure looks at the distribution of minority areas in relation to each other. If we compare two cities that have exactly the same scores when the other meas ures are computed, but in the first city the minority areas are scattered throughout the urban area, and in the second they are adjoining, it would be suggested that the latter is more segregated. Measures of concentration, which are not widely used and are fewer in number, measure the actual amount of physical space occupied by a minority group, relative to the total land area of the city. This measure (normally termed the Delta index) is based on the assumption that through processes of residential discrimination, minority groups become marginalized and restricted into relatively few neighborhoods that overall occupy a small proportion of the city. There are clear weaknesses with the as sumption that high density denotes either social mar ginalization or discrimination. For example, minority ethnic groups of Asian origin have displayed preferences to live in higher densities in extended family households. Furthermore, lower income populations in several mod ern British cities have been ‘deconcentrated’ from the inner city to peripheral housing estates with more space without greater social mix or amenity.

Mobile and ‘Static’ Forms of Segregation Much of what we have discussed so far relates to what might be seen as static representations of social life, contained within residential neighborhoods, often as though such areas operated as the fundamental daily lifeworld. As we have seen from the area effects debate, these spaces are often more important for low income

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groups, yet movement beyond those boundaries may be common. In this respect, theories of segregation have, while including exposure as a measure, often tended to downplay the spatial movement and social integration of social groups in daily life. With the rise of gated communities and other ‘master planned’ communities, where price and lifestyle operate in excluding ways, we see a growth in nodal geographies in which work, play, socialization, education, and consumption appear as more or less restricted and privatized functions. This kind of segregation can be expressed as a time–space trajectory, wherein patterns of residential sociability, particularly those of the affluent, are extended across daily patterns of spatial movement. The perception of risky urban spaces and engagement with dangerous social ‘others’ has led to segmented spatial trajectories in which groups associated primarily with people like themselves as a defence against such fears. As writers like Graham and Marvin have noted, the splintering of urban areas into ‘premium network spaces’ (such as ‘pay to use’ highways) has forced a new subtle set of excluding moments in urban life. This kind of urbanism means that ability to pay, combined with social identity, has produced forms of segregation which operate across neighborhood bound aries and through fractured corridors of social contact and disconnection. If segregation is a problem because it expresses deeper social fears and prejudices, while consigning lower in come and excluded social groups to poorer residential conditions, then its dynamic forms serve only to broaden our understanding of these social problems. Rising real incomes and mobile technologies mean that, for affluent groups, privacy and personal space is produced as an exclusive space from which other poorer or socially different groups may be excluded.

See also: Ecological Fallacy; Gated Communities/ Privatopias; Gentrification; Segregation; Segregation Indices; Suburbanization.

Further Reading Atkinson, R. and Flint, J. (2004). Fortress UK? Gated communities, the spatial revolt of the elites and time space trajectories of segregation. Housing Studies 19(6), 875 892. Butler, T. (2003). London Calling: The Middle Classes and the Re Making of Inner London. London: Berg. Caldeira, T. (2000). City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in Sao Paulo. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dorling, D. and Rees, P. (2003). A nation still dividing: The British census and social polarisation 1971 2001. Environment and Planning A 35, 1287 1313. Gorard, S. and Taylor, C. (2002). What is segregation? A comparison of measures in terms of strong and weak compositional invariance. Sociology 36(4), 875 895. Graham, S. and Marvin, G. (2001). Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition. London: Routledge. Jargowsky, P. (1997). Poverty and Place: Ghettos, Barrios, and the American City. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Massey, D. S. and Denton, N. A. (1993). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Musterd, S. and Ostendorf, W. (eds.) (1998). Urban Segregation and the Welfare State: Inequality and Exclusion in Western Cities. London: Routledge. Peach, C. (1996). Good segregation, bad segregation. Planning Perspectives 11, 379 398. Wilson, W. J. (1996). When Work Disappears: The World of the Urban Poor. New York: Knopf.

Relevant Websites http://enceladus.isr.umich.edu/race/calculate.html Calculation Formula for Segregation Measures. http://www.censusscope.org/segregation.html Racial Segregation Statistics for US Cities and Metropolitan Areas.

Selection Bias T. J. Cooke, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Heckman Two-Step Model A statistical procedure used to address problems of selection bias in regression analysis. Sample-Selection Bias A type of selection bias that occurs when sample data are gathered in a nonrandom manner. Selection Bias A problem of statistical inference when estimates are made from a nonrandomly selected sample of the population. Self-Selection Bias A type of selection bias that occurs when behavioral processes sort individuals into nonrandom samples. Treatment Effects Model An extension of the Heckman two-step model which provides information on the effects of unchosen alternatives on measured outcomes.

In the presence of both sample and self selection, the estimates of eqn [1] are biased. Assume that selection into the sample is determined by a variable, zi, which is a function of an observed variable, wi, and an error term ei (i.e., an unobserved variable): zi ¼ b0 þ b1 wi þ ei

½2

In normal circumstances, zi is not observed but rather an individual is selected into the sample if zi exceeds some threshold (c). Therefore, the selection process is defined as follows: Zi ¼ 1

if zi > c

½3

Zi ¼ 0 if zi rc

In the presence of selection the correct sample regression function is yi ¼ b0 þ b1 xi þ b2 li þ uî

½4

Introduction Selection bias is an important concern for quantitative human geography. There are two main types of selection bias: self selection bias and sample selection bias. Sam ple selection bias may occur when sample data are gathered in a nonrandom manner. Self selection bias may occur when behavioral processes sort individuals into nonrandom samples. The essential problem of selection bias is that statistical inferences made from nonrandomly generated samples are biased estimates of the population. In human geography, the most important source of selection bias is from residential mobility and migration. Both processes are highly dependent upon self sorting and thus any comparison of populations across space is likely affected by selection bias. Thus, selection bias is a ubiquitous problem in human geography but one that is both frequently misunderstood and underappreciated.

where li is the inverse mills ratio (defined below in eqn [10]) and reflects, as shown below, the probability that an observation is included in the sample as a function of wi. Viewed from this perspective, selection bias is an example of missing variable bias because in eqn [1] li is missing.

Examples of Selection Bias in Regression Models Two examples demonstrate the impact of selection bias on regression analysis results. Both examples rely upon a randomly generated sample of 10 000 observations: ei and ui are randomly generated from a bivariate standard normal distribution with a correlation of 0.45, and vi, wi, and xi are randomly generated from a standard normal distribution. Following the previous logic, zi, and yi, are defined as follows:

Selection Bias in Regression Modeling Selection bias occurs in many types of geographic data analysis but is most frequently thought of in terms of the regression analysis of individual level data. Selection bias is formally thought of in the following manner. Define a sample regression equation as yi ¼ b0 þ b1 xi þ ui

½1

zi ¼ wi þ ei

½5

yi ¼ xi þ ui

½6

Selection is determined by the value of zi, and OLS regression is used to estimate the parameter associated with xi under various levels of selection which are dis played in Figures 1 and 2.

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Selection Bias 1.04 1.03 1.02 1.01 1 0.99 0.98 Population

90% Selection 75% Selection 50% Selection 25% Selection 10% Selection

Figure 1 Selection bias in bivariate regression.

1.05 1 0.95 0.9 0.85 0.8 0.75 Population

90% Selection 75% Selection 50% Selection 25% Selection 10% Selection

Figure 2 Selection bias, example 2.

The first estimate in Figure 1 is for the entire sample. This serves as the reference for selection bias since it is, in effect, the population value. The second estimate in the figure is calculated by estimating eqn [6] but only for observations where zi exceeds the 10th percentile, the third estimate in the figure is then calculated by esti mating eqn [6] but only for observations where zi exceeds the 25th percentile, and so on. Figure 1 demonstrates that as the degree of selection moves from very low levels of selection to very high levels of selection, the degree of bias increases. However, in this example the degree of selection bias is limited. The population value is 1.003 and at the most extreme level of selection, when only 10% of the population is selected into the sample, the parameter estimate increases only to 1.036. The second example introduces a bit more com plexity by first including xi in the selection process and second by adding another random component (vi) to yi: zi ¼ wi þ xi þ ei

½7

yi ¼ xi þ vi þ ui

½8

Figure 2 follows the logic of Figure 1. Here, however, the degree of bias becomes much more meaningful with

an increase in the level of selection. In this example, the population parameter of the effect of xi on yi is 1.003. Even when only 10% of the population is eliminated from the sample, the estimate of 0.960 displays mean ingful bias. When only 10% of the sample is selected, the parameter estimate is reduced to 0.843. These two examples point out the most misunder stood issues of selection bias. In both cases, the source of the bias is the correlation between the unobserved values of the selection process (eqn [7] in the second example) and the unobserved values of the regression model (eqn [8] in the second example). Thus, selection bias cannot merely be solved by including additional independent variables in the regression model and the bias affects all of the parameters of the regression model, not just those associated with the selection process.

Addressing Selection Bias in Regression Models The standard solution to selection bias in this context is the Heckman two step model. The procedure follows the above discussion very closely. In the first step a probit model of the probability of being selected into the sample

Selection Bias

is estimated. Using the second example (eqns [7] and [8]), this would mean estimating the following probit model: ProbðZi ¼ 1Þ ¼ b0 þ b1 wi þ b2 xi þ ei

approaches to addressing selection bias when longi tudinal or geographic data allow for the use of fixed effects models.

½9

and using the predicted values from this model to calculate li ¼ jðgwi Þ=Fðgwi Þ

½10

where j(gwi) is the probability density function and F(gwi) is the cumulative probability function of being selected into the sample as estimated by the probit model. This is the inverse mills ratio and is effectively a function of the probability of being selected. The second step of the Heckman two step estimation procedure is to include l in the selected sample regression (e.g., eqn [4]). Figure 3 shows the results of estimating the Heckman two stage model with the example used in Figure 2. In this example, the Heckman two step estimation pro cedure provides estimates which are much closer to the population parameter than the original models. The Heckman two step estimation procedure is now commonly included in statistical software packages. Two crucial aspects to estimation are identification and the estimated correlation between ei and ui. First, there is considerable controversy in the social science literature as to the degree to which the probit model must include a variable which is exogenous to the regression model and the reader is urged to study this literature carefully. Second, the Heckman procedure assumes that ei and ui are correlated. This correlation (r), and its statistical significance, is usually calculated and reported by soft ware packages. A low level of correlation or statistical insignificance could indicate that there is no need for the correction procedure itself or that the models are not properly specified. In any event, familiarity with the statistical literature and the issues that this approach presents is necessary because there are many cases where use of the Heckman approach exacerbates rather than relieves selection bias. Finally, there are alternative

Selection Bias and Geographic Research Selection bias has been presented as a problem but when the process is well understood, it can provide some very sophisticated insights. The most important use of selection models is in program evaluation because the Heckman two step approach effectively controls for selection bias by including information in the model about alternatives choices. For example, in geography it has been applied to migration research. Migration is thought to contribute to success in the labor market because it enables migrants to select a destination which is the best match with their abilities and skills. Migration is also thought of as a means for accumulating experience and skills. Therefore, migrants are frequently found to have higher incomes and higher status occupations than nonmigrants. However, migrants are also self selected. Migrants differ from nonmigrants in any number of both observable (e.g., age, education, and occupation) and, importantly, unobservable ways (innate ability, delayed gratification, etc.). The problem of self selection bias therefore becomes a question of whether differences in income, for example, between migrants and nonmigrants are due to the benefits of migration itself or due to dif ferences between migrants and nonmigrants. Even more importantly, because self selection occurs with respect to unobserved factors, attempts to take into account differences in age, education, or occupation between migrants and nonmigrants are not sufficient to correct for self selection bias. In this situation, one extension of the Heckman two step model that has been used is to esti mate a probit model to calculate li but rather than just estimating the second model among migrants it includes a dummy variable indicating whether or not the indi vidual was a migrant or not (i.e., a treatment effects

1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 Population

90% Selection

75% Selection Biased estimate

Figure 3 Heckman two-step procedure.

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50% Selection

25% Selection

Unbiased estimate

10% Selection

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Selection Bias

model). The resulting estimates allow for the accurate estimation of the actual effect of moving by comparing how well the same individual would have done had they moved or not. This provides the most accurate estimate of the actual effect of moving. This example demon strates that by fully understanding the sources of selec tion bias and how selection bias can be addressed, geographers can not only estimate more accurate models but also answer questions that were not previously pos sible to answer. See also: Migration; Statistics, Inferential; Statistics, Overview; Quantitative Data; Quantitative Methodologies.

Further Reading Bailey, A. J. and Cooke, T. J. (1998). Family migration and employment: The importance of migration history and gender. International Regional Science Review 21(2), 99 118. Cooke, T. J. and Bailey, A. J. (1996). Family migration and the employment of married women and men. Economic Geography 72(1), 38 48. Cooke, T. J. and Ross, S. (1999). Sample selection bias in models of commuting time. Urban Studies 36(9), 1597 1611. Greene, W. H. (1993). Econometric Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Heckman, J. J. (1979). Sample selection bias as a specification error. Econometrica 47(1), 153 161. Stolzenberg, R. M. and Relles, D. A. (1997). Tools for intuition about sample selection bias and its correction. American Sociological Review 62(3), 494 507.

Self-Other D. Sibley, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Liminal Spaces Spaces which are in between, undecided, resisting categorization and often contested. Orientalism The term generally associated with the work of the Palestinian-American writer, Edward Said, who used it to describe the misrepresentation and stereotyping of the Middle East by western, colonial powers. Psychogeography The term is given various interpretations but used here to indicate imagined geographies, fantasies which have a real bearing on their experience of place.

Introduction Self–other is a dualism that has been used widely in the humanities and social sciences to convey the idea of domination, exploitation, denigration, and dehuman ization. If the self is the subject, the other is the non person, the nonagent. Self and other may not be so starkly opposed as this in discourses of othering but the construction of an individual or group as other generally reflects a power asymmetry and involves negative stereotyping. In representing someone or some group as other, there is an implicit assumption on the part of those doing the labeling that they are whole and ‘normal’. The other is in some respect imperfect and deviant. In this article, ways in which the self–other dualism has been incorporated in geographical analyses of group relations, how the unconscious process of ‘othering’ might be related to the construction of social and cultural spaces and the material world at different spatial scales, and the implications of the argument for the future of group relations, are considered.

Studies of Otherness in the Social Sciences Although self–other is concerned with interpersonal relations, it is aspects of relations between groups that have been the principal concern of social science research and where the concept of the other has been used to signify domination, marginalization, or exclusion. The list of othered groups includes racialized minorities, women, gays, and lesbians, people stigmatized because of mental illness or learning disabilities, and so on. At the

largest scale, we can see the problem affecting global geopolitics as, for example, in the characterization of Russians during the Cold War as Asiatic, implying something less than civilized, and the stereotyping associated with orientalism which still infects western perceptions of the Middle East and contributes to current conflicts in this region. The process of othering has been recognized and challenged in feminist and postcolonial writing in critical human geography, as in other social sciences, although it could be argued that a discipline like social anthropology, where much early research involved colonial encounters, demonstrated an awareness of the problem of othering rather earlier than geography where intensive engage ment with other cultures has been less common. However, using different vocabularies, the analysis of anxieties and conflicts associated with the othering of social groups is part of a fairly long tradition in the social sciences, particularly since the 1960s. Thus, Erving Goffman’s work on stigma in relation to mental illness and Stanley Cohen’s analyses of moral panics triggered by supposedly deviant youth cultures were centrally concerned with self–other relations. Cohen’s writing was particularly important because he was able to demon strate how dominant societies were able to maintain their moral boundaries by amplifying the perceived deviance of groups of young people – such as Mods and Rockers in England in the early 1960s and exaggerating the threat posed by adolescent bust ups in the weakly regulated liminal spaces of English coastal resorts. He identified the popular press as a particularly potent agent in main taining the boundaries of the normal and stereotyping the other. The recurrence of the ‘moral panic’, with the othered group, or ‘folk devil’, changing from one period to another but with the contours of the panic being remarkably consistent, suggested that there were funda mental social and mental processes generating tensions and conflicts. What Cohen’s analysis points to is the transgressive quality of the other, its actual or potential for boundary crossing which threatens the integrity of the self, and this can be a problem at any spatial scale. The perspective developed by Cohen and other British sociologists was used in analyses of sociospatial relations in human geography somewhat later, probably beginning with David Sibley’s studies of relationships between Gypsies and the larger society in the late 1970s and early 1980s. More recently, the othering of individuals and groups has engaged geographers in a wide range of contexts. These include Gill Valentine’s

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writing on food and gender, exploring the implications of ‘the ideal body’ for sociospatial relations, and work by Paul Cloke and others on ‘the rural other’. The latter provides useful critiques of popular conceptions of the rural community and helps our understanding of the treatment of minority groups in rural areas in Britain. Most of this writing, like Stanley Cohen’s, has been concerned with representations of groups as other – in literature, media reports, conversation, and so on. These studies of discursive representations are akin to Edward Said’s writing on orientalism – the stereotypical repre sentations of the east in western discourses. However, we could also look at the process of othering as a problem of the psyche. Some psychoanalysts, such as Robert Young, have argued that anxieties about others are a necessary consequence of the way in which the self develops and discursive representations are a reflection of psychic processes.

Self–Other and the Unconscious The self–other dyad is fundamentally concerned with mental states. Thus, we should explore further some psychoanalytical arguments in order to understand why individuals and groups have a need for an other. The writing of Melanie Klein is particularly suggestive. Although Klein’s theorizing was based on observations of behavior in early infancy, she came to the conclusion that the primitive emotions of infancy were retained in adulthood. She argued that we can never escape the primitive. Essentially, Klein saw libidinal and aggressive impulses as fundamental to experiencing oneself as ‘good’ (both loved and loving) and ‘bad’ (both hated and destructive). In early infancy, these polarized feelings are derived from the sense of the ‘good breast’ and the ‘bad breast’, the initial sources of pleasure and pain (when the breast is not available) and, in Klein’s thesis, they provide the enduring basis of our feelings of anxiety. The first state of anxiety she labeled the ‘paranoid– schizoid’, where ‘paranoid’ refers to a persecutory anxiety, a fear of some invasive malevolence coming from the outside, and ‘schizoid’ describes the defense against persecutory anxiety, entailing the sharp separ ation of the good (‘the good breast’) from the bad (‘the bad breast’). In adulthood, this defense against anxiety, often described by modern Kleinians as ‘psychotic’, is similarly manifest in the clear, unambiguous separation of the good and the bad. Thus, the primitive emotions of early infancy provide a patterning of adult emotions in circumstances where a person senses a threat to the integrity of the self emanating from the outside. Psychotic anxiety becomes a part of social experience through the process of ‘projection’ whereby elements of ‘the good self ’ and ‘the bad self ’ are projected onto

others. Projection was a term initially used by Freud to describe the phantasized (unconscious) or fantasized (conscious) location of unwanted aspects of the self in others. Klein took this further in suggesting that a ‘bad self ’ or ‘good self ’ could be located in an other. The individual thus keeps a connection with the other through a process of what Klein called ‘projective iden tification’. For example, a person who has deep anxieties about their own sexual feelings may defend against their psychotic anxiety through hostility to what they perceive as threatening sexualities. Collective, social and cultural, constructions of the bad and the good can be traced back to primitive anxieties rooted in the unconscious but these anxieties are maintained and reinforced through the ‘introjection’ of good and bad stereotypes, that is, these stereotypes are continuously feeding in to the unconscious. Klein also recognized a developing awareness in in fants about the pain of the mother and then a growing range of others which provided the basis of a sense of guilt (for causing pain or damage to the child’s own loved objects through her own destructiveness) and anxiety about others’ suffering, maturing into a desire for rep aration and making connections with others. This she described as ‘depressive anxiety’. Kleinians would argue that with socialization, primitive anxieties become less pronounced mental states. They do not govern behavior but, still, we oscillate between psychotic and depressive positions, reverting to the primitive defense against psychotic anxiety when we feel threatened by a trans gressive other, some people exhibiting this tendency more than others. Some psychoanalysts, following John Steiner, have argued that people with serious personality disorders may defend against deep anxiety by phan tasizing about a ‘psychic retreat’. This could be a literal space – a house, a cave, a desert – or it could be some kind of collective which provides a strong sense of security, like a religious cult. Steiner’s construction of this defensive geography of the unconscious leads nicely to a consideration of the ways in which psychotic anxieties, in particular, may contribute to the creation of geographies of otherness and, conversely, how social and material geographies can exacerbate or lessen anxieties about transgressive otherness.

Some Geographies of Self–Other Fragmentation and separation characterize residential space in many societies. This is an expression of power to secure territory, the capacity to move widely across space, and uneasiness about the real or imagined mobility of those others who are placed elsewhere, deemed ‘not to belong’ and who might disturb the order and harmony of privileged enclaves. This problem has been associated

Self-Other

primarily with cities in the most developed societies. In Chicago in the late nineteenth century, for example, the othered groups who were causing anxiety for the affluent suburbanites were primarily recent Italian immigrants, often stereotyped as anarchists, and current anxieties in urban America are still largely associated with racialized minorities and, occasionally, the mentally ill. The same pattern has developed in Latin American cities, however, where the material defenses against transgressive others – razor wire, security guards, guard dogs, and so on – are increasingly evident. What this suggests is, first, that individual projections of bad objects onto stereotyped deviant others are also collective; second, that the spatial structuring of cities, including a range of collective de fenses, like gated communities, and family or individual defenses, like panic rooms, are confirming and deepening self–other differences. In other words, the defense against anxiety becomes a part of the problem. We could suggest that, metaphorically, the problem of social conflict and distanciation expressed in the self–other dualism reflects a decline of touch and a shift toward an increasingly cap sular society. For the more privileged in developed and some developing societies, life is experienced within a number of capsules which insulate them from others – homes, retail spaces, workplaces, and cars. The car, in particular, is a capsule that allows extensive movement without the intimate experience of others, as well as connecting a number of other well secured capsular spaces. The prospects for better social relations are clearly not good. This is not just because there is a lack of en gagement with othered groups, but also because the at tempts by the privileged to defend against psychotic anxieties through securing their material spaces are bound to fail. Sigmund Freud, in his reflections on ‘the uncanny’, recognized that the desire to acquire a sense of secure homeliness (the heimlich) only encouraged the re turn of repressed emotions, unsettling feelings (the unheimlich). Similarly, the French psychoanalyst, Julia Kristeva, identified abject sensations associated with bodily residues as a source of anxiety, or through elision, connected with others who constituted bad objects, ‘im perfect people’ who, like body hair and sweat, are always hovering and will return. Thus, we can conclude that attempts to insulate spaces against the imagined incur sions of others actually ensure that anxiety about socio spatial relations is maintained.

Self–Other Ambiguity In other contexts, the self–other question appears more complex. An enduring problem in some societies has been the conflict between sedentary populations and nomads. In the most developed societies, sedentarism is ‘normal’, confirmed by the legal system, and nomads are

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characteristically identified as discrepant and transgres sive. However, in European societies, Gypsies and Roma, have been romanticized as cultures at one with nature and with a remarkable capacity for survival. In this idealization, in psychoanalytical terms, Gypsies are projected as a good object, or a benign other. They represent something that settled society has lost and, as a good object, they express a desire on the part of sedentary selves to reconnect with nature. The consequence of this, however, is that the nomads who disturb the order of settled society, who are constructed as discrepant, as ‘dirt’, are compared unfavorably with their romanticized selves. In racist discourse, the fantasized romantic Gypsy is ‘real’, and the Gypsies actually encountered are confirmed as bad objects and deviant others through comparison with this mythical benign other. It could be argued more generally that this demonstrates the ambivalence of the other, that both good and bad are projected onto others. They do not have singular iden tities, although in the mix of repulsion and desire, it is the former that is dominant in the shaping of sociospatial relations.

The Others of Others In a critical assessment of the use of the self–other binary to represent processes of stereotyping, distanciation, and boundary formation, it is important to recognize those who are othered in relation to dominant groups in society not as passive recipients of the label, other, but as people whose own social relationships and use of space are affected by anxieties triggered by an array of bad objects. Thus, for the writer bell hooks, as a black girl growing up in the American South, the white people and the white part of town constituted a terror. For the children of recent immigrants living on a run down council estate in North London, there may be a whole range of people and spaces beyond the confines of the flat or the tower block onto whom their anxieties are pro jected. This psychogeography can seriously limit their use of the larger spaces of the city. Understanding self–other relations presents a challenge for human geography. If an appreciation of the ways in which people relate to each other spatially, as individuals, groups, cultures, and nations, is affected by unconscious and conscious anxieties and desires, it is essential for the researcher to engage with others – to listen, to converse, and to spend time with people. This is not easy. It requires commitment and this kind of involvement raises ethical questions about privacy, intrusion, and producing know ledge that may not necessarily serve the interests of the group. However, if othering is a process of dehuman ization, to understand the distortions and misrepresen tations, we have to get involved.

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See also: Orientalism; Psychoanalysis.

Wilton, R. (1998). The constitution of difference: Space and psyche in landscapes of exclusion. Geoforum 29, 73 85. Young, R. (1994). Mental Space. London: Process Press.

Further Reading Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Lucey, H. and Reay, D. (2000). Social class and the psyche. Soundings 15, 139 154. Nast, H. (2000). Mapping the unconscious: Racism and the oedipal family. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90, 215 255. Segal, J. (1996). Melanie Klein. London: Sage Publications. Segal, H. (1995). Hiroshima, the Gulf War, and after. In Elliot, A. & Frosh, S. (eds.) Psychoanalysis in Contexts: Paths between Theory and Modern Culture, pp 191 204. London: Routledge. Sibley, D. (1995). Geographies of Exclusion. London: Routledge.

Relevant Websites http://www.learnerautonomy.org/kumar2008.pdf B. Kumaravadivelu, ‘The other side of othering’. http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Klein.html Robert Young, ‘Primitive space: psychotic anxieties’. http://www.rae.com.pt/Freud1.pdf Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay, ‘The Uncanny’. http://www.onlineclassroom.tv/sociology/catalogue/classic collection/stan cohen folk devils and moral panics This includes an interview with Stan Cohen.

Semiotics K. E. Foote, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA M. Azaryahu, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Code An interpretive system in the form of rules and conventions that allows us to encode and decode the messages signs communicate. Connotation The implied, associated, or figurative meanings of a sign often using tropes or stemming from metaphorical, metonymical, or synecdochical relationships among signs. Denotation The explicit, literal, commonsense meaning of a sign. Myth The implied connotative message (cultural values, social norms, ideology) that is associated with the denotative message of the sign. This association leads to naturalization: the connoted system of values appears as a self-evident fact or denotation when, in fact, the meaning is only implied or figurative. Polysemy The condition when a sign has many meanings as well as the likelihood that different people associate the signifier with a different signified. Sign The basic unit of semiotics, the sign is composed of a signifier (the carrier of meaning, the form or expression, the vehicle of signification) and the signified (the idea or mental concept it represents, the content). The icon (or emblem), index, and symbol are three common types of sign. Signification The meaning of the sign as established by the relationship between the signifier and the signified. Text A system of signs. Originally used to distinguish written or spoken sign systems, the term text is now used widely to refer to written and visual sign systems such as architecture, material culture, elements of popular culture, the visual arts, and other realms of symbolism and communication.

Building upon the work of the linguist Saussure and the logician Peirce, semiotics (semiology) is the study of signs and sign systems as modes of communication. Semiotics is a branch of the study of culture that explores the communication of meanings and how messages are en coded and decoded. Semiotic theory has been employed in geography, though not as often as in nearby fields such as social and cultural anthropology, ethnology, sociology, sociolinguistics, social and critical theory, tourism stud ies, art and architectural theory, and literary and cultural studies. The influence on geography has, however, been

relatively indirect. Saussure’s ideas about the fluid and dynamic character of human communicational systems are foundational to structuralism, as well as textual, postmodern, literary, and critical theory. Geographers working in these theoretical areas are heirs to Saussure’s theory, as can be seen in Duncan’s analysis of the ‘city as text’; Olsson’s writings on language, knowledge, and power; recent methodological writings by Laurier and Doel on the limits of text and transcriptions in conver sation analysis; and Richardson’s approaches to material culture and performance. Peirce’s framing of semiotics has been less influential in geography than Saussure’s, but is fundamental to pragmatic philosophy, logic, and mathematics. The indirect borrowing of semiotic con cepts does, however, have its limitations as noted by Sitwell, Foote, and others, in that geographers are not always aware of some of the nuances and ambiguities of semiotic theory. This article focuses on the semiotic concepts and their points of contact most relevant to human geography.

Key Concepts The basic unit of a system of signification and hence of semiotic analysis is the sign (symbol, index, icon). The sign is composed of a signifier (the carrier of meaning, the form or expression of the sign) and the signified (the mental concept or content evoked by the sign). Yet a sign is more than a correspondence between a signifier and a signified – it is an expression recognized by society as correlated with content. This correlation is established by a code (rule, custom, or convention) that, as a shared interpretive framework, is used to encode and decode messages. Social, moral, political, architectural, scientific, and esthetic codes invest signs with meaning and facili tate the understanding of their messages. From a semiotic perspective, the meaning of a sign consists of both denotation and connotation, and a dis tinction is made between a denotative and connotative signified. Perhaps more attention has been focused on issues of connotative meanings because they express, in Geertz’s terms, complex ‘webs of significance’ linking cultural values, social norms, political ideologies, and patterns of language use and communication. Explor ations of these webs of significance are fundamental to the ‘cultural turn’ in human geography over the past 20 years. In his Mythologies, Barthes also drew attention to the fact that connoted meanings which may seem

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self evident, even obvious, are often subtle constructions expressing social conventions and power relations. Bahktin’s notion of dialogic thinking has also been influential in drawing attention to the way the meaning of words and things are dynamic and relational and are constantly being shaped by how they are used in the past, present, and future; that language is a process of endless re descriptions of the world. All of these ideas extend Saussure’s argument that the relation between signifier and signified is always arbitrary and somewhat unstable. Any system of signification (text, language, gesture, etc.) involves interpretation and negotiation, is almost always in flux and transformation, and is very much influenced by the social and material context in which the signifier is used. The prominent use of terms like text and reading is evidence of the linguistic roots of much semiotic theory. Beyond literary texts, films and works of art that are products of high culture, semiotic inquiry extended to include the reading of texts of popular culture and importantly, such that belong to the sphere of lived experience, where meanings are often embedded in social practices, cultural norms, and specific modes of behavior. For critics, the bias in favor of language as a prototype reflects the tendency to privilege language as the natural vehicle through which meaning is communicated. This reflects the linguistic fallacy, according to which it follows that since all languages are systems of signs, all systems of signs are languages. In fact, the a priori, nonempirical nature of much semiotics theory has also been questioned extensively by linguists, sociolinguists, cognitive scientists, and researchers in nonverbal communication. Substantial differences exist among oral, written, visual, nonverbal, performative, and symbolic communicational systems so that casting them all as text or viewing them as language like, fails to account for their own intrinsic dynamics. The bias in favor of representational systems like language also obscures the fact that semiotic analysis can be effectively applied to performative, ritual, and nonverbal systems which are enacted rather than produced, a point which links semiotics to nonrepresentational theory as developed by Thrift and others. However, taken at a more abstract level, semiotic inquiry offers insight into meanings and meaning making, although different theoretical orientations can be discerned. In structural theory, semiotics provides a very useful way of conceptualizing how individuals and collectivities communicate and interact in both denotative and connotative terms. Clear relationships can be seen between semiotics and Blumer’s symbolic interactionism, Turner’s comparative symbology, and Goffman’s frame analysis as well as to comparable themes in the works of Cassirer, Douglas, Durkheim, Firth, Greimas, Langer, Morris, Rossi Landi, Sebeok, Simmel, Singer, and Warner. For structural semioticians,

much attention focuses on cross cultural commonalities of communicational behavior, for example, the use in many cultures of binary oppositions such as inside/ outside, sacred/profane, culture/nature, female/male. Structural semiotics tends to be synchronic and static, with little interest in change through time and the social and historical dynamic of cultural systems. Semiotics has received perhaps more attention within postmodernist theory because it provides tools for deconstructing communicational behavior to reveal ex plicit and implicit power relationships and genealogies of authority and social control. Much work in semiotics in recent decades has called attention to the fact that ‘sig nifieds’ are transient and signification is not about de finitive meanings. Of primary importance in this connection is the notion of polysemy: signs and symbols have different meanings for different users and con sumers, and these meanings may be incongruent and even conflict with each other. Moreover, new signifieds are constantly produced by groups and individuals in the context of social action and everyday life and that control of communicational systems offers control of social relationships. This postmodernist dimension of semiotics has been employed effectively to draw critical attention to ways in which gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race are embedded in communicational systems. The notion of polysemy also underlies social semi otics, a subfield which focuses the multiplicity of inter pretations implicit in communicational behavior and how they relate to historical and social context. Social semiotics is less concerned with the formal relationships between signs. Its main focus is on semiotic procedures that underlie cultural signification in specific social contexts and in relation to particular communities: sig nification is not only a semiotic procedure in the formal sense but, importantly, also a social process. The emphasis is on meaning making in the context of social formation. It employs textual and discourse analysis and draws on social and critical theory. Based on the premise that the political economy of signs and social formation are interrelated, social semiotics explores ideology as a cultural form and myths as focal points of culture (ideology). It investigates the sociopolitical dimension of signs employed in meaning making with a special interest on patterns and representations of everyday life. Since it offers important insights into, and analytical tools for the study of, communication, symbolism, and ideology, semiotics and social semiotics are especially relevant for cultural geography. Not only do cultural geographers have a long standing interest in these issues, but they can make contributions to semiotic theory by drawing attention to the spatial, geographical, and material dimensions of geographical texts and objects. These extend beyond the familiar literary (fiction and documentary) and cinematic texts that are intentionally

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produced and contain a fixed set of signifiers to also include landscapes and landscape features, the built environment and architecture, toponymy, and represen tational (symbolic) texts such as maps and works of art.

Architecture and the Semiotics of Objects Architectural objects are constitutive elements of the cultural landscape and have received more attention in the semiotics literature than most other phenomena of interest to geographers. The analysis of architectural styles has been a long established field of study where the distinction between form and function has figured prominently. A semiotic approach to architecture and to objects of use in general emphasizes the symbolic aspects of architectural features and how they encode and communicate meanings. In his treatment of the semiotics of architecture, Eco maintains that architectural objects denote a certain function and connote a certain ideology about this func tion. He distinguishes between two levels of signification: denotations of utilities and symbolic connotations that refer to all other modes of communication associated with an architectural object. The distinction is between primary functions, such that are denoted (utilitarian functions) and a complex set of secondary functions, which are connoted (symbolic functions). Sidney’s Opera House is not only a place where operas are performed, but also an archi tectural icon of Australia. The popular uses of the building extended its intended function. Importantly, the dis tinction between primary and secondary functions does not imply hierarchical positioning but rather the second ary functions are supported by utilitarian functions. This semiotic model takes into account history in that both primary (denoted) and secondary (connoted) functions may vary in time. The cultural history of architectural objects is an account of the dynamic interplay between different primary and secondary functions. This history reveals the extent to which the symbolic functions of architectural objects are anchored in social contexts and embedded into cultural (ideo logical) codes. The utilitarian function of water towers is to serve the water supply system but, in Israel, the structures have assumed different symbolic and nostalgic meanings, once abandoned.

The City as Symbol and Text The semiotics of architecture refers to buildings as objects of use. A different issue is urban semantics in general: the city as a system of signification, as an ensemble of object messages to be deciphered, and, ultimately, as a text or sometimes as cosmographical representations of religious or cultural values as raised in Wheatley’s work on the traditional Chinese city. Another

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possibility based on recent theories of telecommunica tions and cyberspace is a communicational or message city: a city that functions in order to communicate rather than a city that communicates in order to function. The notion of city as a symbol or as text draws attention to the built environment and material objects in particular as a complex system of signification. It suggests the city as writing, while the user of the city, who moves about the city, is a reader engaged in decoding the messages inscribed unto the built environment. Reading the city is embedded into urban experience; the readings actualized by the users of the city are fragmentary and partial, each a permutation of parts of the text, conducted in the space–time coordinates of everyday life. Such ambitious approaches – as in the work of Duncan in The City as Text – have to take into account the fact that the text has different authors and, unlike literary texts, reading is not necessarily intentional. Concurrently, it is questionable whether reading and use of the city are necessarily synonymous. The notion of the city as a text ignores aspects of urban experience that cannot be reduced to signs. Further, a reading of the city has to take into account that the city – apart from some instances where urban centers grew up around ceremonial complexes – does not have a single and def inite meaning but comprises a vast number of signifiers that communicate different meanings to different audi ences, depending on personal experiences and filtered through social, ethnic, generational, and gender prisms.

Reading Landscapes: Ordinary, Elite, and Symbolic The notion of the landscape as a system of signification suggests that landscapes are texts that are subjected to readings. Another issue is whether landscape is written, namely, if the meanings read are intentionally inscribed. This topic has gained the most attention in studies of ordinary, common, or folk landscapes – those designed or constructed without the help of professional architects, designers, or builders. These studies follow in the humanistic tradition of Jackson, Stilgoe, Meinig, Tuan, Jordan, Jakle, and Ford, where the focus is on what commonplace elements of everyday life – houses, barns, lawns, graves, parking lots, or fences – signify about those who built them. The notion of reading suggests that beyond the reference to the same physical objects, reading of the landscape is about interpretations and the production of meaning. Meanings are not simply ‘out there’: different readings of the landscape represent the cultural per spectives and concerns, and ideological dispositions and points of view of the readers. Thus, landscape can be read as nature, pristine and pure; as history, where physical

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landscape is but the external expression of the drama of history; as a human artifact that is imprinted with the signature of human interference, with humans as creators who redesign the physical environment for the benefit of society; as a place that has a particular character and in this sense it is unique. On the level of denotative signification, landscape is a configuration of physical features and objects. On the level of connotative signification, landscape represents and concretizes cultural values, social relations, and structures of power. Since landscape is not only familiar but also self evident, ostensibly an aspect of the natural order of things in the world, the social relations and ideologies inscribed in the landscape are being natural ized. As experienced in the context of everyday life, the ideological dimension of the landscape is taken for granted. As an act of interpretation, a semiotic analysis of the landscape and the notion of a critical reading of the landscape as a sociopolitical text also involve making explicit that which is implicit by decoding the ideological messages of the landscape. In contrast to the attention focused on reading ordinary landscapes, geographers have applied semiotic concepts to interpreting elite or privileged landscapes and those that are created – often explicitly – and pre served to serve as emblems of power and authority. This work has been pursued on many fronts in widely varied landscapes. The work of James and Nancy Duncan has focused on elites and the politics of the esthetics in the American suburb, Domosh has considered the connota tive meanings of skyscrapers in the nineteenth and twentieth century US, and some of Cosgrove’s early research concentrated on the sixteenth century land scapes of Venice and the Veneto. Cosgrove’s icono graphical approach – a methodology of the fine and visual arts – underscores his approach to elite landscapes. These and many other works affirm the important role that elite and powerful groups often play in shaping and controlling meaning within the semiotic process. For this reason, elite landscapes continue to attract considerable attention, including the planning of inter national and national expositions, major urban buildings, monuments, public art and civic plans, and debate over historical preservation.

The Semiotics of Popular Culture The semiotic perspective has been employed often to analyze elements of popular culture – the beach, the shopping mall, the tourist site, and the theme park such as Disneyland. A semiotic reading entails decoding the meanings of signs and an exploration of how signs align with specific myths, concepts, and themes.

These sites, such as beaches, have gained such attention because they are often positioned at interfaces between public and private, commercial and non commercial, and nature and culture. Reading the beach, for example, involves an analysis of the cultural codes and social norms that govern modes of behavior as well as patterns of meaning that are inscribed into the local architecture. It also involves an exploration of how uses of the beach signify myths of popular culture and the conflicts that arise when different ideologies compete to gain control over beach uses. Shopping malls on the other hand are focal points of the ideology of consumerism. Their primary function as retail spaces is concealed by design forms that sustain and support the appeal of the goods offered for sale. The stark distinction between exterior and interior signifies that though being a quasi public space, the shopping mall is a protected and regulated space that serves as a destination which upon entering becomes a haven of consumption. The spatial layout of the mall is directed to achieve an optimal efficiency. The iconography of shop ping malls abounds with signifiers including corporate emblems and logos as well as those intended to connote popular traditions and notions of community. Tourism has also attracted semiotic attention because a main concern of the tourism industry is the transfor mation of sites into sights. From a semiotic perspective, an attraction is a sign that involves the relationship between markers (signifiers) and a sight (signified). The marker includes the information about the sight: its name, outline map, interpretive brochures and guide books, advertisements, postcards, and plaques. When recognized as a tourist attraction, the sight becomes indistinguishable from its markers to the extent that markers are transformed into sights: the information about a site and the site itself become entwined as a full fledged attraction (sign). Possibly a sight is a marker of another sight: The Eiffel Tower is a popular sight that serves as an iconic representation (marker) of Paris. Of all the tourist sites which have been studied, theme parks have perhaps received the most attention. As contrived environments, theme parks are of particular interest because of the way they are consciously con structed as a set of signifiers grouped around a unifying and explicit theme. Explicitly stated, the theme belongs to the plane of denotation. On another level are socially shared ideologies, values, and myths that, as connotative codes, provide for the popular appeal of the park as a tourist attraction.

Maps and Meanings From a semiotic perspective, a map is a cartographic text that comprises words and graphic signs. The iconic

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aspect is essential to understanding the function of the map as a source of information. Maps as selective representations of reality impose certain interpretations of the world which are underlain by the cultural and ideological presuppositions of the cartographer, points reinforced in the writings of Harley, Cosgrove, Monmonier, Crampton, and Wood. A map translates certain needs and interests into a visual composition of points, lines, and areas differentiated by orientation, value, hue, placement, size, pattern (texture), and shape and annotated with words – points made explicit in Bertin’s Semiologie Graphique. The visual organization of the information encoded in a map is an aspect of the cartographic text: graphic design combines the level of denotative signification (geography) with the level of connoted signification (ideology, values). On the level of myth, maps are instrumental in ren dering objective and hence natural, certain concepts (statehood, cultural identity) by means of a set of signifiers that are aligned with the particular concept. For their users, reading a map is about obtaining geographical in formation about locations, orientations, distances. Reading a map semiotically is about decoding the ideology and values that belong to the level of connotative signification. It is about exposing the mythic layers of the map and the structures of power implicit in the cartographic text.

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connotations, while older ones may lose their power of evocation. Place names also belong to the language of modern nationalism. In a nationalist context, the reference to places by certain names not only acknowledges these places as constituents of the physical world, but also evinces nationalist assumptions and arguments. This is especially significant when different nomenclatures compete for recognition as legitimate and definitive, as is the case with contested areas. The use of place names and the rejection of others is a feature of a conflict. For instance, designating a place as Yarzum (Spanish) or Oiartzun (Basque) is a political statement in the context of the Basque struggle for independence. Naming and renaming places is a taxonomic measure that entails the notion of appropriation. It is a by product of exploration as well as (re)settlement activities. It is also an aspect of nation building. In Greece after 1830, Turkish, Slavic, and Italian place names were Hellen ized; after 1867 it was also practiced in Hungary, and after 1918, also in the new states founded in Central and Eastern Europe. Reshaping toponyms is also an aspect of postcolonial situations, when changes of place names proclaim the rejection of colonial history by a return to precolonial names. Thus, Leopoldsville, the capital of Belgian Congo became Kinshasa, the capital of Zaire. Recently, Bombay was renamed Mumbai.

Toponymy Public Memory and Commemoration Real places are located in physical space, but significantly they are also constantly created in the symbolic realm of cultural signification. Names and the nomenclatures they belong to occupy a central place in any cultural system. The shaping or reshaping of sets of toponyms is a profound example of the connection between political and cultural processes. Place names belong to the cul tural and historical geographies of landscapes and terri tories and to the political geographies of power and dissent. From a semiotic perspective, toponyms signify social and political ideologies and myths. A semiotic approach to the study of toponyms highlights their formation in specific political and social contexts. It sheds light on the ideological dimensions of (re)naming procedures and on the belonging of place names to dis courses of identity. Place names are, for example, laden with the rep utation(s) of the places they denote. The name Las Vegas both denotes a city in Nevada and conjures up its reputation as ‘Sin City’. The name New York City con jures up its reputation as a vibrant metropolis that never sleeps. In some cases, place names associate events, such as Waterloo (a battle, 1814) or Yalta (a conference, 1943). The symbolic meanings associated with place names are historically dynamic; place names may acquire new

The final area in which semiotic analysis crosscuts geography is in the area of public memory and com memoration. This research focuses the ways in which discourse of the past is constructed socially and ex pressed materially in landscape, public memorials, and heritage sites in some form of contemporary experience – a tourist’s visit to a battle site, a community’s celebration of its centennial, the dedication of a new memorial, historical pageants and reenactments, and many other types of events. Memorials have gained much attention because they are instrumental in naturalizing the past they commemorate: the signified (the past) being natur alized as the signifier (the memorial) seems to be a per manent feature of the landscape. Memorials are laden with symbolic meanings and their visual prominence attracts attention, but the work of DeLyser and Hoelscher also call attention to other ways in which history is constructed and staged. Commemorative place names have also gained attention in this area. Though the primary function of place names is to denote a location, they often also have a commemorative function which is symbolic and politically significant. The denotative signification of commemorative toponyms refers to both their utilitarian

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(location) and commemorative (history) functions. In respect to their commemorative function, toponyms connote a certain ideology about what should be com memorated and where. Commemorative toponyms are constantly evoked in contexts that are commonly de tached from the sphere of ideology and the realm of politics. In this symbolic capacity they naturalize the commemorated history: since they appear to be obvious, commemorative toponyms effectively implicate politics and ideology into the practices of everyday life. The ostensibly natural and hence obvious relationship between a memorial (signifier) and history (signified) is disrupted when memorials become controversial. Sus ceptible to different and possibly contradictory interpret ations, the meanings of geographical commemorations are dynamic: their meanings are constantly reevaluated as the result of changes in cultural codes, social values, ideo logical premises, and political power relations. The com memorative history of memorials is possibly punctuated by discontinuities that evince the ideological priorities of successive regimes. When a commemoration is identified with the ideol ogy of a former regime, the signifier is vulnerable to obliteration, as is the case when, following a regime change, monuments are pulled down and streets are renamed. Another possibility is redesigning the memorial to attune its message with the ideology of the new regime. Berlin’s Neue Wache underwent three successive conversions in the twentieth century: from a memorial of the Weimar Republic taken over by the Nazi regime it was later converted into a memorial of the communist East Germany. After German re unification it was re dedicated as a national shrine of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Conclusion Despite these overlapping themes, the contacts between semiotics and geography are likely to remain modest, for two key reasons. First, although it would not be entirely fair to say that semiotics is aspatial, the major theoretical writings of semiotics have had relatively little to say about space, location, and landscape. For semioticians, geography is just one of many disciplines which provide examples of sign systems for analysis. Although semio ticians sometimes write about phenomena of geographic interest like architecture and popular culture, the ana lyses often pay scant attention to the nuances of space and place which are of most interest to geographers. Second, a major thrust of contemporary geography has been to assert the importance of space, place, and environment in economic, political, and social theory. Semiotic theory, which is weak in its conceptualization of space, environment, and geographic patterns and

processes, does not offer the sorts of theoretical and methodological tools of most interest to geographers. The result will be, as outlined in this article, close contact between semiotics and geography in some areas of cul tural and social geography, but not widespread theore tical interaction between the two fields. See also: Cultural Geography; Dialogism (After Bakhtin); Landscape; Material Culture; Memorials and Monuments; Memory; Place Names; Street Names and Iconography; Structuralism/Structuralist Geography; Symbolic Interactionism; Symbolism, Iconography; Text and Textuality.

Further Reading Azaryahu, M. (1996). The power of commemorative street names. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, 311 330. Azaryahu, M. (2001). Water towers. A study in the cultural geography of Zionist mythology. Ecumene 8, 317 339. Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies (trans. Lavers, A.). New York: Hill and Wang. Cosgrove, D. E. (1984). Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. London: Croom Helm. Duncan, J. S. (1990). The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duncan, J. S. and Duncan, N. (1988). Re reading the landscape. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 6, 117 126. Eco, U. (1976). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Eco, U. (1986). Function and sign: Semiotics of architecture. In Gottdiener, M. & Lagopoulos, A. Ph. (eds.) The City and the Sign. An Introduction to Urban Semiotics, pp 55 86. New York: Columbia University Press. Fiske, J., Hodge, B. and Turner, G. (1987). Myths of Oz. Reading Australian Popular Culture. Boston, MA: Allen and Unwin. Foote, K. E. (1988). Object as memory: The material foundations of human semiosis. Semiotica 69, 243 268. Foote, K. E. (2003). Semiotic aspects of geography. In Posner, R., Robering, K. & Sebeok, T. A. (eds.) Semiotics: A Handbook on the Sign Theoretic Foundations of Nature and Culture, vol. 3, pp 2636 2642. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Gottdiener, M. (1995). Postmodern Semiotics: Material Culture and the Forms of Postmodern Life. Oxford: Blackwell. Gottdiener, M. and Lagopoulos, A. Ph. (eds.) (1986). The City and the Sign. An Introduction to Urban Semiotics, pp 55 86. New York: Columbia University Press. Hopkins, J. (1998). Signs of the post rural: Marketing myths of a symbolic countryside. Geografiska Annaler, B 80, 65 81. Laurier, E. (1999). Geographies of talk: Max left a message for you. Area 31(1), 36 45. MacCannell, D. (1976). The Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken Books. Meinig, D. W. (1979). The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. New York: Oxford University Press. Meltzer, E. (2002). Performing place: A hyperbolic drugstore in Wall, South Dakota. In Coleman, S. & Crang, M. (eds.) Tourism: Between Place and Performance, pp 160 175. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Sitwell, O. F. G. (1981). Elements of the cultural landscape as figures of speech. Canadian Geographer 25(2), 167 180. Sitwell, O. F. G. (1990). Reading urban landscapes: Review of Duncan’s ‘The City as Text’, The Semiotic Review of Books 2(3). http:// www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/srb/srb/urban.html (accessed Jul. 2008).

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Wood, D. (1992). The Power of Maps. New York: The Guilford Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/as sa/index.html Applied Semiotics.

http://www.cspeirce.com/ Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway. http://www.semioticon.com/ Open Semiotics Resource Center. http://www.semioticon.com/seo/index.html Semiotics Encyclopedia Online.

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Sense of Place K. E. Foote, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA M. Azaryahu, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Sense of Place Emotive bonds and attachments, both positive and negative, that people develop or experience in particular locations and environments. Also used to describe the distinctiveness or unique character of particular localities and regions.

Sense of place refers to the emotive bonds and attach ments people develop or experience in particular en vironments, from the national, regional, or urban levels all the way to the personal scale of the neighborhood and home. Sense of place is also used to describe the distinctiveness or unique character of particular localities and regions which emerge from their particular histories or environmental settings. In most cases, research has concentrated on exploring the positive bonds of comfort, safety, and well being engendered by place, home, and dwelling. Affective attachments are, however, neither always strong nor always positive. Edward Relph coined the term ‘placelessness’ to characterize the weakened bonds of attachment to community and home produced by the forces of modernism and postmodernism and Tuan and others have explored senses of fear and dys phoria induced by some places and situations. The concept of sense of place has served an important role in debate in human geography over the past 30 years. Although the concept had its strongest roots in Anglo American geography, it has gradually had a broader international and interdisciplinary impact. When first introduced, the concept drew attention to the often subjective nature of human environmental experiences, as well as to the perceptual and cognitive dimensions of these experiences. By focusing on these issues, researchers questioned assumptions underlying pre vailing, objective models of human behavior and agency. The result was that, over the past generation, sense of place has played an important role in reorienting some subfields of human geography by asserting the import ance of considering the subjective and perceptual dimensions of human action, as well as the value of considering geographical phenomena from humanistic perspectives. Sense of place continues to serve as a conceptual bridge among a number of subfields such as social, cultural, and behavioral geography. As a link between widely contrasting methodologies, the term is as likely to appear in humanistic studies of place, dwelling,

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and the existential experience of the lived world as in positivistic investigations of spatial perception and behavior.

Sense of Place as Critique In some respects, the rise of the concept of sense of place can be viewed as a critique of the dominant trends in human geography of the 1960s and 1970s. Under the influence of the quantitative revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, human geographers started to focus largely (although not exclusively) on the theoretical analysis of functional relationships and spatial systems employing spatial analytic and positivistic epistemologies. This research valued the universal over the particular and emphasized objective, quantifiable data and abstract, geometric space. It tended to side step issues of psy chological, social, and cultural meaning and the osten sibly subjective human perceptions and experiences of spaces of everyday life. This approach emphasized space and location as objective categories. The indi viduality of places was no longer considered a key con cern of academic geography, though the distinctiveness of place was often the subject of popular culture and addressed by writers such as Barry Lopez, Jan Morris, Peter Matthiessen, John McPhee, and Patricia Solnit, journalists, and filmmakers whose concern for the qual ities of the particular and the experience of place have always found a large audience, as seen in bestsellers like A Year in Provence (1989) by Peter Mayle and Under the Tuscan Sun (2005) by Frances Mayes. Calls for research into sense of place questioned in two key ways the assumptions of the increasingly dom inant spatial analytic approaches to human geography. First, sense of place drew attention to the perceptual worlds of individuals and to the importance of under standing the perceptual and cognitive dimensions of human decision making. The work of Gilbert White, his students, and collaborators had begun to stress the importance of these factors in understanding human response to natural disasters, and other researchers, like Kenneth Boulding and Kevin Lynch, were having a similar invigorating impact on geography with their writings on the value of considering perception, images, and imagability in the social sciences. The first wave of environmental perception research in the 1960s and 1970s affirmed in numerous studies the strong sense of attachment people often feel and express for their home

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environment, city, state, region, or nation. This first wave of research was so influential that the methods and insights of the field of environmental perception spread rapidly through human geography. Many geographers readily incorporated perceptual and cognitive models in their research which, in turn, led to important theoretical and applied advances across human geography, especially in the subfields of urban, social, and economic geography and in cultural and political ecology. The influence of these perceptual models continues today in many subfields of geography, though usually involving more sophisticated cognitive models than those considered in the first sense of place studies. In this way, sense of place pushed geographers to expand the scope of the positiv istic methodologies they applied to questions of spatial perception and behavior. Second, at the same time, some sense of place studies questioned this prevailing positivistic orthodoxy al together. Radical and Marxist geographers were already questioning mainstream orthodoxies of the time, but sense of place served as a reminder of geography’s long standing humanistic tradition – a concern for human interests and values; a stress on the dignity of the indi vidual; and a focus on morality and reason. These themes had been implicit in the work of a number of first and second generation academic geographers as seen in the writings of Vidal de la Blache on genre de vie; J. K. Wright on terrae incognitae and the role of imagination in geog raphy; as well as in the link established between Carl Sauer and the Black Mountain poets and writers influ enced by Charles Olson. However, it was only later with the rise of humanistic geography and interest in sense of place that these ideas were developed more explicitly from the point of view of a broad range of philosophical approaches to human values, morals, and rationality. The term sense of place was well chosen to spearhead this twofold critique of human geography. The term place, by itself, has a long pedigree in geography, both ancient and modern, and was used frequently in the spatial analytic literature to mean a particular region, settlement, location, or position on the surface of the Earth. By joining the objective concept of ‘place’ with the subjective notion of ‘sense’, writers such as Yi Fu Tuan, Anne Buttimer, and David Seamon were asserting the need to balance objective and sub jective approaches to understanding human geographical phenomena. In his book, The Betweenness of Place, J. Nicholas Entrikin discusses this issue in detail and argues that the objective/subjective dichotomy is funda mental to the academic exploration of place – that geo graphic epistemology rests ‘between’ the objective and subjective approaches to knowledge. Rising interest in the 1970s and 1980s in sense of place can therefore be interpreted as attempts to bring into balance a relation ship between objective and subjective philosophies and

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methodologies that had swung too far toward the ob jective extreme during the 1960s. This counter swing was set in motion in the 1970s by explorations of phenomenology, existentialism, con structivism, transactional analysis, and other humanistic, cognitive, and hermeneutic methodologies which had not previously been used in geography. Geographers saw great potential in works such as La Poe´tique de l’Espace by Gaston Bachelard; Body, Memory and Architecture by Charles Moore and Kent Bloomer; Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture by Christian Norberg Schulz; and Interpreting Environments: Tradition, Decon struction, Hermeneutics by Robert Mugerauer and sought to emulate the work of these philosophers and architectural theorists. Quite quickly, place, sense of place, and pla cemaking became popular terms that highlighted par ticularities and uniqueness in the human experience of place. Interest in sense of place also resonated with a new wave of postmodern critical theory devolving from the writings of Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, de Certeau, Guatarri, and others which sought to explore power structures embedded in everyday life.

Applications and Insights Writings by Buttimer, Tuan, and others were particularly influential in establishing sense of place as a term fun damental to new approaches to human geography interested in the psychological, social, and cultural as pects of the engagement of humans with the environ ment. In 1974, Tuan coined the term topophilia (meaning ‘love of place’) to emphasize the intimate relationship between human beings – either individuals or com munities – and places to which they are attached. Tuan later suggested the perspective of experience, thereby stressing the uniqueness of places as a function of human experience rather than an inherent, objective quality of the place. Space becomes place as it acquires experiential depth. Within contemporary cultural geography, place is about what it means to people. These meanings are expressed in terms of values, obligations, intentions, and commitments, as well as emotional and social involve ments. Since people define themselves through attach ment to particular places, place is important to identity. Place specific shared experiences and common notions about the past and the future of place are important to a sense of community. Recent literature in this general area by Mike Crang, Steve Pile, Tim Edensor, Veronica Della Dora, and others includes explorations of consumption, material culture, nostalgia, memory, and autobiography in everyday life. Work outside geography, particularly in anthropology and architecture, also remains important in this area including, for example, the writings of Tim

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Ingold on perceptions of environment and everyday placemaking. Sense of place is a common allusion to what makes a place distinct, special, or unique. Notably, what sense actually means is rather fuzzy. Sense is the faculty of perception of stimuli such as the sense of sight or a mental capacity such as sense of humor. It denotes a discerning awareness, as in sense of community, or ra tionality, as in to make sense. It signifies a feeling. Sig nificantly it also denotes meaning and suggests signification. On the other hand there is certain confusion as to what a sense of place exactly refers to – a feeling, perception, reasoned awareness, or all of them simul taneously. This ambiguity is not necessarily a disadvan tage since it opens up possibilities as to the different ways in which humans address the special and particular about a place as the result of their engagement with space and landscape. However, it also means that usage of the term is shrouded with vagueness, suggestive as it may be. As it is commonly used, sense of place means the logic and perception of place in connection with the qualities and attributes that distinguish a place from others, give it a sense of authenticity, and induce feelings of attachment and belonging. Sense of place emphasizes the individuality of place in terms of unique personality or distinct character. It suggests a particular feel or a specific character that makes the place stand out among other places, as is the theme of Jacquelin Burgess’s writings on Britain’s Fens or of Margaret and John Gold’s studies of Scottish national identity. These same emphases can be seen in Pierre Nora’s writings on the role of place in the representation of the French national past. Sense of place is thus tied to the process of placemaking through which social, cultural, ethnic, or national groups shape the environment and landscape to leave distinct imprints of their ways of life. This involves considering how people shape the environment to reflect their social identities and tastes symbolically in the built environment of cities and suburbs and the landscape design of gardens, parks, yards, and homes. David Lowenthal, Hugh Prince, Nancy Duncan, and James Duncan have all been instrumental in calling attention to symbols of identity and landscape tastes such as these. For some, sense of place refers to specific character istics that are an intrinsic quality of the place, an objective trait that is ‘out there’ and only has to be experienced in order for it to be perceived for what it is. In this sense of the term, sense of place is closely related to the ‘spirit of place’, or genius loci, or even to practices of geomancy and divination like ilm al raml (Arabic) and feng shui (Chinese). In Roman lore, genius loci was the protective spirit of a place, and hence belonged to the place itself irrespective of human beings. As a modern metaphor, genius loci does not refer to any supernatural

entity, but to the essence of the place as evinced in its particular qualities and distinct character. For others, sense of place consists of feelings and perceptions. Accordingly, sense of place is a function of human sensitivity and cognition rather than an inherent quality of the place itself: it is a relationship between humans and space and locations that is determined by experiences and evinces forms of knowledge on both individual and communal levels. In this meaning it is a foundational term of human geography that is concerned with the psychological and cultural aspects of the engagement of humans with the environment. The concept of a sense of place emphasizes the particularity and uniqueness of place. In this it is the opposite of placelessness. As coined by Relph, placelessness is the result of the erosion or fracturing of the coherence of place since the mid nineteenth century as the result of homogenization and standardization, consumption and commodification, and last but not least: the influence of international patterns of planning and architectural styles which gradually effaced regional and local differences in style. Placelessness means the loss of individuality, distinctiveness, and authenticity. Moreover, the erosion of sense of place also entails a decline of a sense of community, since place based communal attachments become geographically fragmented to the effect that the basic association of place and community is severed. Although Tuan and others have also noted that dys phoria, even fear, can be elements of place experience, it was Relph’s idea of placelessness that captured the attention of many researchers. If sense of place was built upon the direct and full engagement of all senses, pla celessness seemed very much tied to the rise of mediated environmental experiences, such as those mediated through literature, film, television, music, photography and, mostly recently, the Internet, and other network technologies. Joshua Meyerowitz’s No Sense of Place, for example, argued that television had altered the balance between public and private and, in so doing, blurred traditional age, gender, role distinctions, and social boundaries resulting in tremendous social change. This happens because television undermines the clear spatial boundaries among distinct social and personal places by splitting them apart and reassembling them almost at random in narrative combinations which would be impossible without using the editing and splicing cap abilities of electronic media. These ideas have been taken up by geographers who have, in part, argued that media can certainly disrupt a sense of place, as well as easily create new types of experiences. Paul Adam’s notion of television as a gath ering place, Stuart Aitken’s idea that the cinematic image event can challenge views to question everyday expectations and myths, or Jacquelin Burgess’s ideas

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about capturing regional identity in film all point to ways in which sense of place can actually be enhanced through mediated experiences. Indeed, one of the areas in which sense of place has had an important impact is the geographical study of literature, film, and television where scholars like Douglas Pocock and J. Douglas Porteus have drawn attention to the rich senses of place created by writers and artists.

Conclusion Sense of place continues to be an important concept in contemporary human geography. Because the concept weaves together the varied concerns of perception, cog nition, individual behavior, cultural value, symbolism, and meaning, it provides a point of intradisciplinary contact, even unity within today’s pluralistic discipline. For example, in the recent Geography in America at the Dawn of the Twenty first Century edited by Gary Gaile and Cort Willmott, sense of place or human attachment to place was discussed in chapters reviewing develop ments in eight subfields of US geography: aging and the aged; American ethnic geography; American Indian geography; cultural geography; environmental per ception and behavioral geography; historical geography; population geography; and recreation, tourism, and sport. Of equal importance is the role sense of place has played in sustaining humanistic traditions within geography. This has involved adding to the philosophical and methodological richness of the discipline through the introduction of phenomenology, post phenomenology, existentialism, and even post humanistic epistemologies, as well as expanding the range of topics geographers have sought to explore in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Since the 1990s, however, the interest in place as a subject matter of geographical and anthropological inquiry has shifted from sense of place as an inherent quality of place to placemaking procedures, processes, and rituals. Placemaking is about measures undertaken by interested parties to invest place with specific cultural characteristics. The shift from sense of place to place making reflects the growing academic interest in issues pertaining to social construction and cultural formation. Yet placemaking and sense of place are different per spectives rather than different issues altogether: place making is about production, whereas sense of place is the end result. Placemaking underlies campaigns to promote cities, where the manipulation of urban images in the context of public relations campaigns serves promotional purposes. Intended to market the city, such campaigns employ branding strategies to associate the city with positive images.

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Underlying the transformation of places into destin ations, placemaking is also a concern of the tourism in dustry. Since destinations compete with each other for the attention of potential tourists, they must be differ entiated, which also entails focusing on the special and even unique. From the perspective of the tourism in dustry, placemaking assumes the form of place promotion by means of advertisements and guidebooks, travel reports in newspapers, and TV documentaries. By spe cifying the distinct character of a destination and the unique experiences it offers, placemaking associates places with a particular sense of place. In this respect, sense of place, albeit contrived and manipulated, is an asset that can be converted into profit. Sense of place is also relevant to the discourse and analysis of globalization, in particular since the dis appearance of vernacular landscapes and a sense of placelessness are an inevitable by product of homoge nization and standardization of cultural landscapes. The erosion of sense of place and the possible obliteration of traditional features and meanings of place as the result of globalization may lead to conflicts where concerns about traditional senses of place are set against the pressures exerted by globalization.

See also: Behavioral Geography; Existentialism/ Existential Geography; Humanism/Humanistic Geography; Landscape; Landscape Perception; Phenomenology/Phenomenological Geography; Place; Positivism/Positivist Geography; Posthumanism/ Posthumanistic Geographies; Post-Phenomenology/ Post-Phenomenological Geographies; Sensorium; Space I.

Further Reading Buttimer, A. and Seamon, D. (eds.) (1980). The Human Experience of Space and Place. London: Croom Helm. Casey, E. S. (1997). The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell. DeLyser, D. (2005). Ramona Memories: Tourism and the Shaping of Southern California. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Entrikin, J. N. (1991). The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Meinig, D. W. (ed.) (1979). The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes: Geographical Essays. New York: Oxford University Press. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. Olwig, K. (1984). Nature’s Ideological Landscape: A Literary and Geographic Perspective on Its Development and Preservation on Denmark’s Jutland Heath. Boston, MA: Allen & Unwin. Pocock, D. C. D. (ed.) (1981). Humanistic Geography and Literature: Essays on Experience of Place. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble.

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Porteus, J. D. (1990). Landscapes of the Mind: Worlds of Sense and Metaphor. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Relph, E. (1976). Place and Placelessness. London: Pion. Seamon, D. and Mugerauer, R. (eds.) (1985). Dwelling, Place, and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World. Dordrecht: Nijhoff.

Stein, H. F. (1987). Developmental Time, Cultural Space: Studies in Psychogeography. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Tuan, Y. (1974). Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Sensorium D. McCormack, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Oxford, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Haptic Of, or relating to, the sense of touch. Ocularcentrism The privileging of vision as a mode of sensory engagement. Olfactory Of, or relating, to the sense of smell. Sensorium Originally referring to the physiological seat of sensation in the brain, but now often used to designate a historically and culturally specific configuration of the senses.

Introduction The relation between sense and space can be understood in at least two ways. To begin, and most obviously, the senses refer to those familiar perceptual registers of everyday experience such as vision, smell, hearing, touch, and taste through which space and place are experienced. So in this respect the senses are integral to the practice and production of geographical knowledge, particularly if we think of such knowledge as an activity involving some kind of empirical encounter with the world, per haps as part of fieldwork. At the same time, and second, sense can also be taken as the outcome of these en counters and the disciplinary practices and technologies with which they are enabled. Indeed, whether it is everyday and unformalized (think of using a map to orientate yourself around an unfamiliar city) or academic and formalized, the practice and production of geo graphical knowledge is often understood and described as a process of making sense. If sense can be both the raw ‘data’ presented by perceptual faculties and the product of knowledge practices, defining the term is complicated further by the fact that while it might seem to be dependent solely on the physiological capacities of the body, the experience of spatial sensing and sense making is not independent of the social and cultural context within which it is enacted. Consider, for instance, the degree to which touch is or is not socially acceptable either with strangers, or even with loved ones if in public. The kind of implicit spatial regulation of such sensory intense conduct is reflective of the fact that this conduct is caught up in particular sets of culturally inflected dispositions to act which may vary, in subtle ways, across different historical and cultural contexts. If the spaces and practices of touch vary, so do the ways in which we learn to see the world, a point that

can be illustrated through the example of the artistic representation of place, particularly landscape painting. Such representations are not just objective depictions of material space that reveal landscape ‘as it really is’. They also rely upon certain techniques and technologies of visual perception, the most significant of which is per spective. Yet, while perspective seems to have naturalized a particular way of seeing, the culturally embedded conventions upon have been challenged by a whole range of artistic which it is based developments, each of which has sought to infuse representations of landscape with the multisensory nature of place. Any discussion of the relation between human geog raphy and the senses must therefore consider not only the different sensory registers through which space and place are experienced and made meaningful. It must also attend to wider debates about the role of the senses in geographical knowledge production, and the socio cultural–technological contexts within which such de bates are articulated. Recent decades have seen human geographers engage with the complexity of both, prompted by developments within the discipline and by a wider expansion of interest in the senses across the social sciences and humanities. On one level, this en gagement has involved efforts to map out the spatialities of familiar sensory registers such as smell, sound, touch, and, to a lesser extent, taste. Such efforts have also been extended to the consideration of how spatial experience is articulated through kinesthesia, or the sense of movement. But geographers have also begun to inquire with much greater theoretical rigor into the very con ditions that allow sense making to take place, paying particular attention to the body as a site of spatiosensory involvement within the world, albeit one caught up in the techniques and technologies of wider sensoria.

Situating Vision Any consideration of the question of the senses in human geographical knowledge must address the traditional primacy placed within the discipline upon vision. Indeed, one of the most important reasons for the growth in interest in questions of sense has been an increased critical attention to the central role played by vision in geographical knowledge. The ocularcentrism of the dis cipline is most obviously manifest in the simple fact that geographers have and continue to employ a range of visually based representational devices – maps, diagrams, sketches, photographs, and more recently, PowerPoint

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slides. This reliance upon the visual registers of sensory perception is of course not disciplinary specific, but reflects a wider privileging of vision within Western traditions and practices of knowledge production. The reasons for the wider dominance of vision are complex, but can be distilled into at least three factors. In the first place, vision seems to support and facilitate a kind of higher level thinking in which cognition is conceived primarily in terms of the transmission and manipulation of image like representations. At the same time, and second, vision, more than the other sensory registers, seems to offer the most transparent and durable mode of conveying information about the world – after all, in common parlance we tend to equate seeing with be lieving. Finally, of all the senses, vision appears most detached from the influence of the body and the unwieldy energies and forces it contains, particularly passions, emotions, and feelings. Taken at face value then, vision presents itself to us as the sensory register most closely aligned with the pro duction of truthful, objective, and disembodied know ledge. However, recent scholarship across the social sciences, including human geography, has sought to ex plain the primacy of vision within Western knowledge practices in terms of emergence and reproduction of historically and geographically specific arrays of sense – or what we can call sensoria. Part of this work has in volved exploring how understandings of the relation between different sensory registers have shifted over time, of which the relation between vision and touch is perhaps most notable. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, touch actually served as a model for visual perception in the work of philosophers such as Berkeley, Descartes, and Diderot. In turn, this alignment of touch and vision was also predicated upon a specific understanding of space as a kind of geometrical container whose contents could be mapped with a degree of sta bility and predictability. However, this alignment broke down with the emergence, in the nineteenth century, of a much more fluid and mobile visual economy, particularly one caught up in the accelerating tendencies of capital ism. In the process, and as part of a more rigid separation of the senses in the nineteenth century, vision became detached from touch, and assumed an abstract status divorced from the sensuous embodiment of the observer. Such critical contextualizing of vision has proved of particular value for geographers. Rather than offering a space of transparent truth, vision has been recast as part of discursive practices that define the limits of what kind of knowledge and geographies matter. This critical reworking of vision has also been accompanied by a greater appreciation of how the kinds of knowledge underpinned by vision are implicated in the production and reproduction of various forms of power – economic, colonial, and geopolitical. At the same time, geographers

have sought to explore how the tendency to place pri macy upon vision and to render subordinate the other senses is implicated in the mundane practices – such as fieldwork – through which geographical knowledge is produced and reproduced. This tendency is nevertheless loaded with a certain tension, in which the primacy of vision is layered with the pleasures of more than visual sensory encounters with the field, the prospect of which was famously captured by John Kirkland Wright in a 1946 presidential address to the Association of American Geographers: ‘‘In the course of field work or on a summer holiday we have all climbed a mountain and gazed over uninhabited and unfamiliar country. In the contemplative mood that the mountaintops induce, we have brooded over the view, speculated on the lay of the land, experi enced a pleasurable sense of the mysterious – perhaps even felt a touch of the sinister. We have heard the Sirens’ voices.’’ There is much in this brief passage. Most obviously, it places vision at center of the fieldwork – and indeed geographical experience. At the same time, it seems to suggest that the sensory elements of encounters with landscape are generative of a distinctive, if also a some what disturbing sense of pleasure – one that owes much to the kind of aesthetic sensibility associated with romanticism. Crucially, the way in which Wright signals the disquieting associations of this pleasure is by invoking other sensory registers – touch and sound, the latter of which is given a distinctively gendered inflection. The underlying suggestion here is that while it may well be pleasurable, the sound of the Siren’s voices threatens to lead geographical knowledge astray, to cloud its clarity and transparency. Wright’s configuration of the relation between the senses and geographical knowledge is hardly surprising. It associates the nonvisual with a realm of sensory experience not easily accommodated within the epistemological framework underpinning geography’s claims to be a natural and social science. This framework appeals to a form of rational, abstract thinking impervi ous to the influences and vagaries of extraneous sense experience. As Wright suggests, in the terms of such a framework, senses other than vision are at best part of the fringe benefits of geography, and at worst, serve to adulterate the logical, abstract rationality of geographical thought.

Humanistic Geographies and the Place of Sense A second important influence on the renewed interest in the senses has emerged from a critique of precisely these abstract tendencies of human geography. The idea and ideal of geography as a kind of rational and objective form of knowledge was perhaps best exemplified in the

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emergence and disciplinary promise of spatial science in the 1960s. One of the most significant critiques of spatial science concerned the fact that it conjured up an abstract world populated by equally abstract individuals. This was a conception of space in which little if any account was taken of the fact that everyday life involved embodied sensory engagements and encounters. This conception of space became the focus of extensive critique in the writing of humanistic geographers throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. For these geographers, everyday life could not be reduced to such abstract terms – rather it was better apprehended in terms of the dynamic experience of ‘sense of place’, given consistency by multisensory modes of attachment, in habitation, and involvement through which places be came meaningful. In this respect the senses had a crucial role to play. Rather than beginning with an abstract observer, geographical knowledge began with the ex periential, sensing body. Also, rather than the passive container for a rational mind, the body became refigured as the corporeal vehicle for human encounters with the environment. While humanistic geography opened up a space for the cultivation of geography through the proximate spatial relations of what James Porteous called ‘intimate sensing’, its contribution needs some qualification. In the first place, much of this work tended to avoid direct engagement with the relations and structures of power that shape sensory experiences of place. It is not enough to reassert and reaffirm the multisensory experience of place: attention also needs to be paid to how the privileging of different sensory registers is implicated in the politics of knowledge. Sense and sense of place are differentiated through discourses that affirm certain experiences (explicitly or implicitly) as masculine or feminine, rational or nonrational, white or non white, etc. Furthermore, and second, as its name suggested, under writing the experiential phenomenology of humanistic geography was the possibility of developing a fully ‘human’ geography. While this aim may have provided an important corrective to many of the problems of spatial science, it also reaffirmed a view of the human subject as coherent and centered. As such, it can be critiqued on the basis that it fails to recognize adequately the fact that the geographies of sense and sense making are the product of historically and spatially contingent processes involving a range of more than human agencies. These qualifications notwithstanding, the significant influence of humanistic geography can be discerned in one of the key works on the relation between human geography and the senses – Paul Rodaway’s Sensuous geographies: Body, sense and place. In the context of de veloping an argument for cultivating geographies attuned to the multiple senses of the world, Rodaway pays particular attention to touch, smell, sound, and vision.

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As Rodaway observes, of these sensory registers it is perhaps smell that seems most tangential to the concerns of geographical knowledge. Unlike vision, smell proves difficult to map through the attachment of the suffix ‘scape’, because olfactory experiences do not present themselves in the form of views. Nor indeed are they something experienced at a distance. They are diffuse, sensate atmospheres within which the moving sensing body is situated. At the same time, smell is a crucial way in which the affective resonance of particular places are generated – chemically, imaginatively, and emotionally. Like taste, to which it is intimately related, smell can often interrupt the experience of one place with the virtual memory of another. To map spells, therefore, perhaps as part of what Rodaway calls ‘olfactory geog raphy’, is not just to grapple with a spatially diffuse sensory phenomenon. It is also to engage with the ways in which temporality is folded and refolded through the repetition and difference of particular sensory experiences.

Nonrepresentational Senses of Space–Time Precipitated by a critique of vision, and by a reaffirmation of the experiential element of space and place, the renewed interest by geographers in the senses has more recently been amplified by nonrepresentational theory. Mobilizing a diverse range of theoretical resources, this work has contributed to the rehabilitation of the senses in important ways. To begin, and most basically, non representational theory (like some of humanistic geog raphy) reaffirms the centrality of the sensing body in theories and practices of space and place. In this work the body is conceived as a site of mutual sensorial intertwining between self and world. At the same time, nonrepresentational styles of work pay particular atten tion to how the activity of making sense – both in its ‘everyday’ and more narrowly academic inflections – involves more than the operation of cognitive and rep resentational processes. So, to sense something – through taste, touch, etc. – is not necessarily a process akin to forming an image in the mind, recognizing this image as a distinct unit of sense data, and then responding with appropriate behavior. Sensing often happens far too rapidly for such contemplative thinking to occur. As such it exists as a processual, prereflective background to so much of what we do, a background that often only becomes visible when it breaks down. Furthermore, while foregrounding the role played by the senses in everyday experience, nonrepresenta tional theories also seek to displace the kind of subject centered accounts of space that underpinned the writing of much humanistic geography and certain strands of

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phenomenologically influenced work. In the terms of nonrepresentational styles of work, making sense is refigured as an emergent outcome of an aggregate of corporeal, perceptual, and affective processes, many of which take place without much in the way of deliberation or contemplation. Such work also actively distributes the geographies of sense and sense making across a multiplicity of agencies and artefacts operating at a var iety of scales, from the molecular to the sociotechnical. In doing so it opens up the possibility that the space of sensing is not solely the purview of the human. It is also something implicated in a range of more than human geographies, involving texts, technologies, and other forms of animate life.

Mapping the Multiple Senses of Space Influenced by the developments outlined above, but also by recent work beyond the discipline, contemporary geographical engagements with the senses can be defined along a number of interrelated trajectories. The first is a sustained attempt to flesh out the spatialities of dif ferent sensory registers. Of these sound has arguably garnered the most attention. This is evident for instance in the reasonably well established disciplinary interest in geographies of music and in work engaging with the distinctive nature of acoustic space. Such geographies cannot simply be incorporated within the represen tational logics of much of human geographical research. The attempt to think through the properties and pro cesses of acoustic space must avoid the move that would reduce it to the kind of knowing upon which human geography has traditionally been based. The challenges of thinking through the senses are as pertinent to touch, taste, and smell, as they are to sound (and indeed vision). Such challenges are also crystallized in attempts to engage with the kinesthetic element of sensory involve ment within the world. On one level the relation between movement – and our sense of it – seems intrinsic to the corporeal experience of spatiality, an experience which can be apprehended through the kinesthetic energies of somatic practices such as dance which produce par ticular forms of affective experience through heightening the sensory capacities of the moving body. Yet things become complicated as soon as we try to think through this relation as a question of becoming rather than a matter of being. The moving body is no longer a stable sensory anchor but a site of ongoing spatial transforma tion. The importance of this complication is that it serves as a reminder that foregrounding the sensory movement of the body in space does not necessarily provide a shortcut to authentic, phenomenological ex perience. Instead, it opens up the question of sensory experience to a much wider, and more complicated set of

questions about the relation between space, sensation, and movement. A second trajectory in contemporary human geo graphical research on the senses revolves around the question of how different sensory registers are caught up in wider assemblages of technique and technology – what was referred to above as sensoria. Kinesthetic experience provides a useful way of tracing this, particularly insofar as it is thoroughly implicated in some of the key spatial transformations of modern life. For instance the emer gence of new transport technologies such as the railway and the automobile was generative of distinctive forms of sensory experience associated with the pleasures of moving at speed through landscapes whether by car, automobile, or plane. Similarly, while not premised upon the physical movement of the body through space, the emergence of cinema at the end of the nineteenth cen tury also worked upon both the visual and kinesthetic senses, providing a new logic and experience of move ment space. More recently Nigel Thrift has argued that we are witnessing the emergence of a ‘‘new sensorium based on qualculation – which assumes a world of movement.’’ One of the ways in which the emergence of this new sensorium can be traced is through the elab oration of forms of hapticity that extend the geographies of touch over a range of distances and degrees of intimacy. A third, if perhaps underdeveloped trajectory along which research into the senses is moving concerns the opportunities for expanding the terrain of the ethical and political afforded by a renewed interest in this topic. The senses have already been politicized through the critique of the role of vision in human geography and its com plicity with the production and reproduction of dis cursive power. However, any revalorization of the senses has the potential to contribute to a rethinking of the space of power in ways that supplement and challenge the primacy of ideology and discourse as political registers. As philosopher Jacques Rancie`re has argued, politics is intimately bound up in a certain ‘‘distribution of the sensible,’’ where the sensible refers to that which can be apprehended by the senses. For human geog raphers this is of more than theoretical relevance. Indeed it provides a reminder that the production and practice of human geography is implicated thoroughly in a particular kind of distribution of the sensible – in which the visual is bound up with the denigration and partial exclusion of other sensory registers from the serious business of knowledge production. Furthermore, intervening in the politics and ethics of knowledge production, including geographical knowledge pro duction, might also involve imagining and inventing new distributions of sense and sensibility, where sensibilities are understood as corporeal–cultural dispositions to act.

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Conclusion Despite the discussion above it would be a mistake to exaggerate the extent to which geographers have expanded the theoretical and empirical logics of thinking space to embrace and affirm the many modes of sense and sense making. Human geography remains a discipline in which vision is dominant, and it remains remarkably difficult for knowledge produced through other sensory registers to be taken seriously. Furthermore, important questions remain: about the precise conceptualization of the senses and their relation to the production of geographical knowledge; about the kind of methodo logical techniques through which the multiple logics of sense can be apprehended; and about the ethics and politics of apprehending space–time through mul tiple sensory registers. In addressing these questions, human geographers have much to gain from a greater engagement with emerging work on the senses across the social sciences, the best indication of which is perhaps the recent establishment of a journal dedicated to the area – The Senses and Society. This does not mean however that human geographers need to disengage from more traditional spatial concepts and problematics. Indeed, one of the most valuable aspects of a renewed interest in the senses is the opportunity it provides for geographers to revisit and revise familiar geo graphical questions such that they become part of the expanded conceptual and empirical sensorium of human geography.

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See also: Affect; Becoming; Emotional Geographies; Humanism/Humanistic Geography; Soundscapes.

Further Reading Buttimer, A. and Seaman, D. (eds.) (1980). The human experience of space and place. London: Croom Helm. Crary, J. (1990). Techniques of the observer: On vision and modernity in the 19th century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harrison, P. (2000). Making sense: The sensibilities of embodiment. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18(4), 497 519. Howes, D. (ed.) (2004). Empire of the senses: The sensual cultures reader. London: Berg. Paterson, M. (2006). Feel the presence: Technologies of touch and distance. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24, 691 708. Paterson, M. (2006). Seeing with the hands, touching with the eyes: Vision, touch and the enlightenment spatial imaginary. The Senses and Society 1(2), 224 242. Pocock, D. (1993). The senses in focus. Area 25(1), 11 16. Porteous, J. D. (1985). Smellscape. Progress in Human Geography 9(3), 356 378. Porteous, J. D. (1986). Intimate sensing. Area 18, 250 251. Rodaway, P. (1994). Sensuous geographies: Body, sense and place. London: Routledge. Seamon, D. (1979). A geography of the lifeworld: Movement, rest, and encounter. London: Croom Helm. Smith, S. (2000). Performing the (sound)world. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18(5), 615 637. Spinney, J. (2006). A place of sense: A kinaesthetic ethnography of cyclists on Mount Ventoux. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 24, 709 732. Thrift, N. (2004). Movement space: The changing domain of thinking resulting from the development of new kinds of spatial awareness. Economy and Society 33, 582 604. Thrift, N. (2004). Summoning life. In Cloke, P., Crang, P. & Goodwin, M. (eds.) Envisioning Human Geographies, pp 81 103. London: Arnold.

Services, Professional A. James, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Absorptive Capacity A firm’s ability to value, assimilate, and apply new knowledge to commercial ends. Emotional Labor Workers’ deliberate manipulation of their emotions and personalities to create a pleasant experience for the customer/consumer, invariably involving the public display of an emotion that they may not necessarily feel privately. Expatriation The relocation of workers out of the corporate core to overseas countries in order to staff branch offices as firms export their services internationally. Externalities Sources of competitive advantage which lie outside of firms’ individual boundaries, but which accrue to firms as a function of their collocation in space.

Introduction: Professional Services and the ‘New Economy’ It is now widely accepted that fundamental changes within advanced capitalist economies over the last three decades are representative of a transition to a new era of capitalist development. Beginning in the early 1980s, we witnessed a major reorientation in the pattern, form, and sources of capitalist economic growth, involving – on the one hand – a sustained decline in the contribution of heavy industrial manufacturing to national economic output, employment, and trade (‘deindustrialization’), combined with a dramatic growth of employment and output in service activities (‘tertiarization’) on the other. In large part, these changes have been ushered in by technological innovations in information and communi cation technologies (ICTs), developments which have also underpinned an ever increasing functional inte gration of economic activities at the international scale. This major reorientation of the productive structures and dominant sources of employment within advanced cap italist economies has been conceptualized in a number of different ways, in terms of a transition to: a ‘post Fordist regime of accumulation’; the ‘fifth kondratiev wave’; ‘knowledge capitalism’; ‘friction free capitalism’; ‘soft capitalism’; or most commonly espoused within policy and media circles, the ‘new economy’. Whatever the moniker used, all are united in their according central importance to innovation, learning, and creativity to economic success; that is, in asserting that the dominant

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source of wealth creation lies in the production of ideas, knowledge, and know how. In other words, physical capital and human capital are argued to have been usurped by ‘knowledge capital’ and ‘creative capital’ as the primary drivers of wealth creation and prosperity; that the future depends more on ‘brains rather than brawn’; and that we are now (according to some com mentators at least) ‘living on thin air’. Despite many of these claims surrounding the ‘new economy’ having been somewhat exaggerated, nowhere are they perhaps more valid than within the knowledge intensive ‘professional services’ sector, a sector which has exhibited remarkable growth over the last three decades. In professional service firms (PSFs), it is the embodied knowledge, skills, and expertise of highly educated, trained, and accredited employees that comprise firms’ most valuable assets, and which are used to deliver cus tomized solutions to clients’ specific problems. Professional services are characterized, therefore, by intangible prod ucts delivered through intangible personal relationships with clients buttressed by intangible reputations, experi ence, and trust. In the subsequent sections of this article, the causal drivers of recent growth in professional services are sketched out, along with a discussion of the distinctive (emotional) labor process that lies at the heart of wealth creation within this sector. Two distinctive features of the emergent geographies of professional services are then analyzed in terms of their implications for knowledge production and management: namely, localized agglom eration in functionally integrated ‘clusters’ versus the internationalization of professional service firms. The article concludes with some possible directions for future geographical research on professional services and on employees’ experiences of working in this sector.

Professional Services: How Do We Know Them When We See Them? When geographers talk about ‘professional services’ they are referring both to the long established, formally regulated professions of law, accountancy, architecture, and real estate, as well as emergent ‘new economy’ growth sectors of advertising, business and management consultancy, market research, public relations, financial services, data processing, and computing services. These various sectors are recognized as exhibiting a number of distinctive commonalities by which ‘professional service firms’ might usefully be characterized as a coherent entity, centered on the nature of their workforce,

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the labor process, corporate ‘product’, and firm–client relationships. These unifying characteristics, then, are (1) a well paid, highly educated workforce whose entry into the labor market is controlled and sanctioned by a formal institutional body which authorizes and accredits to particular forms of professional competence achieved through prolonged training; (2) a corporate dependence on the embodied skills, idiosyncratic knowledge, cre ativity, trustworthy reputations, and social connections of staff as firms’ most valuable assets; (3) wealth creation through largely autonomous employee engagement in task based, symbolic analytic problem identification, problem solving, and strategic brokering activities on behalf of clients; (4) customized ‘product’ delivery at the point of demand through interpersonal relationships with clients in which expert workers exercise a high degree of personal judgement; and (5) professional practice is governed by a code of ethics. Scholars continue to disagree on which of these five characteristics of professional services should lie at the heart of a single overarching definition of this sector (with consequent implications for which sectors are included under this banner heading in the first place!). Thus for some scholars, it is the degree of contact and interaction with the client that ultimately defines professional services; for other scholars it is the degree of product customization; and for yet others, it is the intensity and duration of professional training that matters. At the same time, scholars also distinguish between professional service ‘firms’ (the corporate enterprises that comprise this in dustrial sector); professional service ‘occupations’ (forms of work involved in the production of professional service products); and professional service ‘functions’ (the uses that clients obtain by consuming products from professional service firms)! Despite this definitional and classificatory complexity, however, it remains a truism that ‘all’ professional services are fundamentally based on highly intangible knowledge inputs to, and outputs from, the production process. At the same time, the clients of professional service firms are typically other firms, organizations, or government departments, such that the outputs of PSFs invariably constitute intermediate inputs to the production processes of client organizations. In this way, professional services differ significantly from other (personal) service industries whose outputs are used for final consumption by private individual consumers.

growing sectors within advanced capitalist economies over the last three decades, exhibiting an average 10% growth per annum in revenues since the early 1980s, with current revenues of over US$1000 billion globally. Employment in this sector has exhibited a similar rate of growth over the same time period and, according to OECD data, professional services now account for around 20% of all employment in the US and Western Europe. This growth dynamic can be explained in a number of ways. One explanation concerns post Fordist strategies of externalization or outsourcing of many service functions previously carried out in house by large vertically inte grated manufacturing firms in the pursuit of enhanced flexibility, efficiency and competitiveness, and shared market risk. However, practices of subcontracting and externalization are not exclusive to manufacturing firms; recent years have also witnessed increased subcontracting of in house service functions by large service firms. A second set of drivers of professional services growth concerns the ever growing demand for such expertise in relation to a new macroeconomic environment. Specif ically, as widespread state practices of de regulation have increased the uncertainty faced by many firms, this has prompted them to develop more elaborate administrative bureaucracies and engage the assistance of financial, ad vertising, sales, legal, marketing, and management experts in order to make sense of, and respond appropriately to, an increasingly complex decision making environment. Third, globalization processes facilitated by new devel opments in information and communication technologies continue to intensify the degree of international com petition between firms, further reinforcing corporate concerns to (re)assess the ways in which they produce goods, and to extend their incorporation of external professional service expertise during the pre production, during production, and post production phases. In turn, the result of these various drivers is a pro fessional services sector that is increasingly polarized into a dual economy comprised of a small number of giant firms operating in conjunction with a mass of smaller companies. The decline of medium sized firms is popu larly explained in terms of their not possessing the economies of scale, international office network and range of expertise offered by large firms, nor the flexi bility, speed, and personal attention to customers as provided by their smaller competitors.

On the Historical Growth and Development of Professional Services

Understanding the Professional Services Labor Process: Embodied Work and the (Gendered) Performance of Emotional Labor

Professional services have attracted considerable atten tion from economic geographers in recent years as they have grown in economic significance and scale of oper ations. Indeed, professional services are among the fastest

The nature of the labor process within professional service work has provided economic geographers with a

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very fertile research agenda, not least because it has helped force a fundamental rethinking of previous ‘culture’/‘economy’ binaries within the discipline. In contrast to manufacturing where the production and consumption of ‘hard’ physical goods occurs at different points in time and space, in professional services, the spheres and production are merged. That is, production and consumption of the service occur simultaneously, such that the cultural identity, personality, appearance, embodied personality, and social characteristics of the worker become ‘part of ’ the product consumed. Con sequently, a central task within professional service occupations involves workers using their emotions and personalities (as well as their physical and intel lectual capacities) to create a pleasant experience for the client. Arlie Russell Hochschild has described this phe nomenon, in which workers actively and consciously manage their feelings and emotions to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display as ‘emotion man agement’. The term ‘emotional labor’ refers to these activities when they are done for a wage in the public sphere. Thus, for example, the daily work activities of lawyers, solicitors, management consultants, stock bro kers all involve personal interaction and face to face contact with clients. Business success is crucially dependent on employees’ presentation of self, negotiating skills, and relationship management in ongoing personal encounters, on the basis of which workers develop and maintain client portfolios. Moreover, professional service workers in variably must display publicly an emotion that they may not necessarily privately feel. As such, management of feeling shifts from being a strictly private act per formed almost unconsciously, to a public act performed consciously according to others’ guidelines. A number of geographical studies in the professional services sector have demonstrated how the performance of emotional labor cannot be regarded as a gender neutral phenom enon; rather, that the gendered construction of social identities fundamentally controls access to, and success within, many professional service occupations. Most notably, Linda McDowell’s work on professional service work within the merchant banking sector in the city of London has demonstrated how women continue to be concentrated within secretarial and clerical grades with little opportunity for career movement into pro fessional occupations (save for a select group of ‘honorary male’ female traders). This is explained in terms of a set of accepted workplace norms and everyday behaviors within this sector which emphasize a particular version of masculinity based on ‘competitive spirit’, ‘self confidence’, and ‘toughness’ as required attributes for workers’ success. As such, dominant notions of the ideal worker are socially constructed as inherently masculine; in contrast, women are cast as ‘other’.

On PSF Clustering: From Transaction Cost Reductions to Interfirm Knowledge Spillovers, Collective Learning, and Innovation One of the most distinctive features of the geography of professional services is a tendency toward spatial agglomeration in functionally integrated ‘clusters’, char acterized by exceptional levels of external networking and interfirm linkages. On one level, scholars have ex plained PSF clustering tendencies in terms of beneficial transaction cost reductions that accrue to firms as a function of their spatial proximity. This thesis is based on a threefold argument. First, instability of markets and an accelerated pace of technological change are met by a disintegration of the production process, and hence a deepening in the social division of labor between firms. This then allows firms to maximize the benefits of specialization and to minimize exposure to risks of overcapacity, labor force hoarding, and dangers of tech nological lock in, and hence to become more flexible. Second, as interfirm transactions become more import ant, so the costs of transport, communication, information exchange, search, scanning, and so forth, become more significant. The increased costs associated with increased external transactions are argued to create a ‘spatial pull’; that firms will seek to agglomerate to minimize the costs of those transaction costs through external economies of scale. Third, spatial agglomeration is also argued to create specialized institutions which further lower transaction costs and hence increase economic efficiency, as labor and other factors of production are pooled among large numbers of specialist producers, and which firms would otherwise not be able to afford individually. However, while this explanation goes some of the way to explaining why PSFs cluster, it is but part of a bigger picture. For professional service firms, competitiveness is sustained by becoming a moving target through con tinuous technological learning and the rapid develop ment and commercialization of new ideas: those firms that can learn and innovate faster become more com petitive because their knowledge is scarce and therefore cannot be immediately imitated or transferred to new entrants. Accordingly, scholars have been keen to examine how spatial clustering also enhances processes of knowledge creation, information dissemination, learning, and innovation on which the economic competitiveness of professional service firms is founded. A number of concrete mechanisms of knowledge transfer and spillover between professional service firms within clusters have been identified, based on the fundamental premise that innovation is an ‘interactive’ learning process in which complementary forms of information and knowledge are combined, to create new forms of knowledge greater than the sum of their constituent parts.


First, in addition to formal cooperation agreements between professional service firms, personal contact networks between individual employees have been widely identified as important conduits of interfirm information exchange, reinforcing more formal types of interaction. While this may mean losses of proprietary knowledge for individual firms, allowing other firms to appropriate returns on their investment, such personal contact networks also allow firms to learn new technol ogies, opportunities, and market challenges more quickly because of higher densities of interaction within these networks. Such informal social interactions are found both within work settings (so called ‘cafeteria effects’) and nonwork settings within PSF clusters, the latter being premised on a porous division between work, social and leisure activities. Employees frequently meet at in dustry seminars, talks, and other social activities organ ized by local business organizations, as well as in more informal venues such as bars, clubs, pubs, cafes, and coffee shops. In these social contexts, personal contacts are established and maintained, providing workers with access to a wider diversity of ideas and bases for com parison with ideas and practices from other firms, often leading to new, often unexpected, ideas or synergies. Indeed, intricate social networks based on personal contacts offer potentially ‘the’ most efficient organiza tional arrangement for sourcing information given that information is difficult to price in a market and difficult to communicate through a hierarchy. Second, as communications technologies have improved the transfer of codified (formal) knowledge between professional service firms, so economic com petitiveness is increasingly dependent upon their ability to access sources of new ‘tacit knowledge’, which is highly personal, context specific, and difficult to for malize (or as Karl Polanyi summarized it, that ‘‘we know more than we can tell’’). However, tacit knowledge is difficult to transfer between firms in the absence of labor mobility, given its embodiment in individuals. It is therefore significant that scholars have documented higher rates of skilled labor mobility within professional services clusters. These interactions are advantageous at two levels: (1) acting to transfer knowledge once and for all by workers taking expertise and knowledge with them to competitor firms; or (2) establishing an ‘ongoing’ link between the firms via the personal relations maintained between the various employees. Either way, as new employees interact and engage with new colleagues with partially overlapping knowledges, comparisons of evolv ing ideas are made with other practices in the firm that are not internally generated. Thus, there is an increased potential for new unexpected ideas, interpretations, and synergies to develop; that is, for increased learning and innovation. Indeed, interfirm spillovers of embodied ex pertise through labor mobility are particularly significant

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in the professional services sector as firms seek to poach workers in order to access their personal client portfolios and established reputations, as discussed in the previous section. In sum, continuous technological learning and innovation within professional service firms are widely recognized as highly dependent on firms’ abilities to ‘access’ external sources of information and knowledge, abilities which are enhanced through spatial agglomer ation. Fundamentally however, successful innovation and learning within professional service firms is also dependent on firms’ abilities to assimilate, reconfigure, transform, and apply new information to commercial ends once it enters the firm, that is, on their ‘absorptive capacities’. Different absorption rates are not random but depend upon both the social and cultural structures within firms, because the ability to absorb new know ledge within a firm will always depend on sociocultural constructions of what is acceptable and desirable. The innovation literature has thus consistently highlighted a set of cultural norms that, if widely shared by the members of a firm, actively promote the generation of new ideas and help in the implementation of new approaches. These norms include a climate of openness in which debate is encouraged; a willingness to listen to other people’s ideas; creative dissent or the right of employees at all levels to challenge the status quo; and multiple advocacy, that learning requires more than one ‘champion’, if it is to succeed. Successful innovation within professional service firms therefore presumes a necessary relationship between learning and active employee involvement at all levels: that all employees can act as independent agents, take responsibility, experiment, and make mistakes as they learn. At the same time, the open exchange of ideas among workers also depends on all employees being able to make themselves heard. As such, the gender inequalities outlined in the previous section potentially constrain professional service firms’ absorptive capacities and restrict firms’ abilities to capitalize fully on the skillsets of female employees.

Internationalization of Professional Services A second distinctive feature of the emerging geography of professional service firms is the development of spatially dispersed, interdependent organizational net works at the international scale as PSFs have ‘gone glo bal’. This globalization process needs to be understood in the context of a number of causal drivers: to follow client firms overseas; to reduce risk by operating in more than one geographical marketplace; to follow other professional service firms in order to reduce their

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competitive advantage through imitation; and to expand operations through merger and acquisition activities. This process of PSF internationalization through international branch plant development is particularly extensive within the accountancy and management consultancy sectors, well known corporate examples including Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst and Young, and KPMG. Indeed, PriceWaterhouseCoopers is now the largest accountancy firm globally, with 130 000 employees in almost 150 countries worldwide. However, in stark contrast to many media accounts which portray this globalization phenomenon as a rela tively straightforward process, professional service firms are faced with a number of significant knowledge man agement challenges as a function of their capital accu mulation strategies ultimately being dependent on the embodied knowledge, intricate personal networks, skills, expertise, and trustworthiness of their professionally accredited employees who engage clients in face to face interactions in order to generate fee income. Above all, how to ‘stretch’ locally rooted tacit knowledge and corporate memory to clients overseas? One organizational response by British legal firms has been to expatriate partners and lawyers to export ‘English common law’ to their international overseas offices, while simultaneously employing the services of local staff to supply jurisdictional law. In this way, British legal firms are able to develop, manage, and diffuse idiosyncratic knowledge from the corporate core to overseas subsidiaries, as well as meeting locally specific client expectations of quality of service and working practices. Accordingly, such strategies are necessarily neither uniform nor homogenous across different professional service firms, nor indeed across all overseas branch office locations within a single professional service firm. As such, the globalization activities of professional services provide further signifi cant evidence to critique the ‘end of geography’ thesis.

Future Research Directions Research on the socioeconomic geographies of pro fessional services continues to develop a distinctive contribution to our understanding of emerging global service networks and new international divisions of labor, as well as the new forms of work and employment which characterize knowledge intensive firms in the new economy more generally. There are a number of directions in which future research on this sector might usefully develop, not least because professional services are widely seen as a ‘flagship’ new economy sector, where work and employment practices are developed first before diffusing out to other industrial sectors.

First, in light of persistent structures of inequality within professional service firms which militate against female and ethnic minority workers progressing as quickly through employment hierarchies as their white male colleagues, future research should continue to dereify so called ‘glass ceilings’ of constraint by grounding them in everyday concrete workplace inter actions, social processes, and their associated causal agents – an attribution of responsibility upon which policy actors might then act. Moreover, by demonstrating empirically the ways in which these same worker inequalities based on gender and ethnicity themselves constrain corporate innovative performance, future studies might also develop arguments for workforce diversity couched in the language of economic com petitiveness that firms (and governments) particularly appreciate and understand. Second, building on previous case studies in the legal services and advertising sectors, there exists considerable scope for exploring the role of local informal and formal institutional context in shaping the internationalization strategies of other types of professional service firms. In so doing, geographers might offer increased empirical and conceptual insights into (overcoming) the spatial limits to knowledge and learning which are likely to underpin divergent development trajectories in the emerging ‘new economy’. Finally, future work might also usefully explore the emergent operations of professional service firms outside of the USA, Western Europe and South East Asia, par ticularly in non English speaking countries – or in other words, outside of economic geography’s domain of empirical inquiry as traditionally demarcated vis a` vis development studies. In this way, new work might con tribute to the nascent ‘postcolonial economic geog raphies’ research agenda which, while conceptually exciting, nevertheless continues to suffer from a rather narrow empirical evidence base. See also: Business Services; Consumption; Corporate Responsibilities; Economies, Borderland; Economy, Informal; Ethnic Economies; Feminism and Work; Foreign Direct Investment; Governance, Corporate; Industrialization; Neighborhoods and Community; Trade, International; Tropical Geography.

Further Reading Amin, A. and Thrift, N. J. (1992). Neo Marshallian nodes in global networks. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 16, 571 587. Ascher, B. (1993). Business and professional services: Competing in a more mobile world. In Aharoni, A. (ed.) Coalitions and Competition: The Globalization of Professional Business Services, pp 20 31. London: Routledge.


Beaverstock, J. V. (2004). ‘Managing across borders’: Knowledge management and expatriation in professional service legal firms. Journal of Economic Geography 4, 157 179. Beaverstock, J. V., Smith, R. G. and Taylor, P. J. (1999). The long arm of the law: London law firms in a globalising world. Environment and Planning A 31, 1857 1876. Bryson, J. R., Daniels, P. and Warf, B. (2004). Service Worlds: People, Organizations, Technologies. London: Routledge. Burton Jones, A. (1999). Knowledge Capitalism: Business, Work and Learning in the New Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coe, N. M. and Townsend, A. R. (1998). Debunking the myth of localized agglomerations: The development of a regionalized service economy in South East England. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23, 385 404. Faulconbridge, J. R. (2006). Stretching tacit knowledge beyond a local fix? Global spaces of learning in advertising professional service firms. Journal of Economic Geography 6, 517 540. Hochschild, A. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kroes, N. (2005). Better Regulation of Professional Services UK Presidency Seminar Brussels, 21st November 2005. http:// www.europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference ¼ SPEECH/05/711&format ¼ HTML&aged ¼ 0&language ¼ EN&guiLanguage ¼ en (accessed Jul. 2008). Keeble, D. and Nachum, L. (2002). Why do business service firms cluster? Small consultancies, clustering and decentralization in London and southern England. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27, 67 90.

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Leadbeater, C. (1997). Living on Thin Air: The New Economy. London: Viking. Lowendhal, B. (1997). Strategic Management of Professional Service Firms. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press. Lowendhal, B., Revang, O. and Fosstenlokken, S. N. (2001). Knowledge and value creation in professional service firms. Human Relations 54, 911 931. McDowell, L. M. and Court, G. (1994). Performing work: Bodily representations in merchant banks. Environment and Planning D 12, 253 278. Nachum, L. (1999). Measurement of productivity of professional services: An illustration on Swedish management consultancy firms. International Journal of Operations and Production Management 19(9), 922 949. Warf, B. (2001). Global dimensions of US legal firms. Professional Geographer 53, 398 406.

Relevant Websites http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk Clifford Chance Centre for the Management of Professional Service Firms, University of Oxford. http://www.oecd.org OECD indicators of regulatory conditions in the professional services sector, Regulatory Reform: Economic Issues, Indicators of regulatory conditions in the professional services, Economics Department.

Services, Rural A. C. Vias, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Back-Office Services Producer services traditionally found in urban centers (e.g., credit card processing), now often found in rural areas as communication technologies improve. Big Box Stores Large-scale stores owned by national and transnational corporations that take advantage of economies of scale and scope to provide lower prices. Distributory Services Activities oriented to moving products of the extractive (e.g., farming) and transformative (e.g., manufacturing) sectors to their markets. High Fliers and Lone Eagles New producer services (often information services) that take advantage of telecommunications technologies to locate in rural high amenity areas. Personal Services Activities providing services directly to households and individual consumers. Producer Services Activities oriented to providing services to businesses and government. Public Administration Activities of government often grouped with the service sector. Social Services Activities supplied to businesses and households, often nonprofit in nature.

Introduction The extraordinary growth of the service sector in gen eral, and in rural areas specifically, is a result of a number of broad changes in the global economy. These changes include an increased demand for services as discretionary income rises in the developed nation and a lack of productivity gains often found in the primary and sec ondary sectors that keeps labor demand high. Further more, changes in the manufacturing sector have led to the outsourcing of service employment and the creation of new independent service firms, especially in the pro ducer services. Finally, new complex manufacturing processes now frequently have a need for new specialized services such as high speed information and computer systems, needs that did not exist a decade or two ago. The above characteristics show the multifaceted processes that drive growth and change in the service sector as a whole, and with respect to its constituent parts. This makes analyses of this part of the economy difficult because aggregate trends hide significant variations:

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within the sector in terms of growth; in the spatial dis tribution of service activities; and with respect to the impacts of services. For example, the processes driving the development of producer services are different from those in retail, and rural areas are experiencing service sector changes much different from those in urban areas. Also, producer services offer great potential for employment and income growth, but many researchers argue that only a small percentage of rural areas can take advantage of these opportunities. This means that any description of rural services needs to tease out this large section of the economy to determine the rationale for locating various types of service establishments, and to find out which parts of the service sector are winners or losers with respect to their ability to promote economic growth in rural areas.

Nature of Rural Services Definition and Classification In recent decades, scholars have devoted considerable effort to untangling the nature and impact of re structuring in rural services. However, services in general remain a difficult part of the economy to analyze. Depending on the focus of the research, a researcher may use different definitions and terminology to describe all or portions of the service sector. At the most rudimentary level, services are a residual that form the tertiary sector, or any employment that is not part of the primary or secondary sectors. This type of definition is overly broad, and really hides the heterogeneity that exists within the tertiary or service sector. In this approach, services can be said to include the following broadly defined sectors: transportation, communications, and public utilities; wholesale trade; retail trade; finance, insurance, and real estate; services; and public administration. A compli cating factor is that the terminology used is often quite inconsistent and/or poorly defined. For example, services is the term often used to describe the entire tertiary sector, while others use the term services to describe a subset of the tertiary sector. Another problem, at least when analyzing US data, is that the classification systems have changed over time. Newer classification systems are superior in many ways because they take into account services in a more meaningful way. For example, infor mation services are a distinct category. However, any changes in a major employment classification system make any longitudinal analyses very challenging.

Services, Rural

Other definitions of services reallocate employment using criteria such as the market served by firms, trad ability of the good or service over space, occupational type, along with hybrid definitions that combine these criteria. For explaining prevailing trends in services, especially their role in rural areas, the hybrid scheme by Singelmann that focuses on markets served is the most useful one. In this system, four service categories are used: producer services (finance and insurance; real estate, rental and leasing; management of companies; administration); personal services (arts, entertainment, and recreation; accommodation and food services); social services (healthcare and social assistance; education; and sometime public administration); and distributory services (wholesale and retail trade; transportation and warehousing; and utilities). Additionally, the equivalents of the primary and secondary parts of the economy are called the extractive and transformative sectors. Another issue unrelated to the various classifications has to do with defining services in rural versus urban areas. In most cases, and for understandable reasons, services have been defined in the context of urban areas, creating descriptions that often may not be appropriate for the rural economy. This issue plus the traditional problems centered around defining rural versus urban using politically defined geographic areas, such as met ropolitan areas, make any empirical analysis problematic. What’s more, the low densities and numbers found in rural areas often mean that data for these areas are suppressed by government agencies worried about con fidentiality issues. Overall, the result of all these prob lems is that all analyses of rural services using data currently available require the use of multiple trade offs, sometimes leading to contradictory findings, or results that are not as reliable as scholars or policymakers would like. That said, many of the most important trends and issues surrounding rural services can still be discerned using current data sources. Some Aggregate Trends in Rural Services The increasing importance of the service sector in the economy of the US is easily shown with data from the Regional Economic Information System (REIS) de veloped by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Although these are US data, many of these trends are quite applicable to other developed countries as well. Table 1 shows the distribution of employment in 2001 and 2005 utilizing the broad sector categories described above: extractive sectors (including farming), transformative sectors (including manufacturing and construction), and services. Public administration, often included as part of services, is also shown. The data show that services, broadly defined, now comprise well over three quarters of all employment in the US. There are some issues with

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Table 1 Sectoral employment in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in the US as a percentage of total employment, 2001 2005 Region

Sector

% Employment 2001

2005

US

Extractive Transformative services Public administration Total

2.9 16.1 67.1 13.9 100.0

2.7 14.8 68.8 13.7 100.0

US Metro


1.8 15.4 69.4 13.4 100.0

1.7 14.1 70.0 13.3 100.0

US Nonmetro


9.3 19.9 54.5 16.3 100.0

8.8 18.5 56.7 16.0 100.0

Source: REIS 2006. (Sectors based on NAICS, 2003).

the data as presented, including the use of full and part time employment rather than full time equivalents, and the utilization of metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas (using US Office of Management and Budget des ignations of 2003) as proxies for rural and urban areas. Nevertheless, there is little doubt about the dominance of services, and the fact that the role of services continues to grow. Perhaps more interesting is that the next two parts of Table 1 also show why theories based on services in urban areas may provide flawed insights on services in rural areas. In nonmetropolitan areas, the extractive and transformative sectors are more important, but employ ment in the service sector is at least ten percentage points lower than that found in metropolitan areas. These structural differences have always existed, although the percentage of people employed in services in metro versus nonmetro areas is slowly converging. That said, there is likely to be significant differences in service employment between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in the foreseeable future. Besides nonmetro areas having a smaller percentage of people employed in the service than metro areas, there are significant differences where people are employed within the service sector as well. Table 2 shows the percentage of total employment in the four primary types of services described by Singelmann: producer, distribu tive, consumer and social services, along with employ ment in public administration. Clearly, the distinguishing characteristic of services in metropolitan versus non metropolitan areas is employment in producer services, with metropolitan areas in general having twice as many people employed in the producer services. This means nonmetropolitan areas are vastly underrepresented in

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Services, Rural

Table 2 Service employment in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in the US as a percentage of total employment, 2001 2005 Region

Sector

% Employment 2001

2005

US

Distributive services Producer services Personal services Social services Public administration

18.5 23.6 13.8 11.2 13.9

18.0 24.5 14.3 11.9 13.7

US Metro


18.6 25.5 13.0 11.4 13.4

18.1 26.3 14.4 12.2 13.3

US Nonmetro


17.9 13.1 13.6 9.9 16.3

17.6 14.4 14.0 10.5 16.0

Source: REIS 2006. (Sectors based on NAICS, 2003).

areas of the economy like finance, insurance, manage ment, and information services. Only in public ad ministration was employment in nonmetropolitan areas overrepresented compared to metropolitan areas. The impact of these differences in service employment are significant for two reasons. First, over the past few decades, the producer services have been a major area of employment growth compared to other types of services. Second, and perhaps more importantly, producer services generally produce higher salaries for each worker than other types of services. In many instances, these differ ences in salary are very large, with salaries in many types of producer services like information and management services over twice as high as other types of services such as retail or personal services. Sadly, while the percentages of employment in services in metro versus nonmetro areas are converging, salaries between different parts of the service sector are generally diverging. On the whole, the data show the increasing signifi cance of the service sector in both rural and urban areas of the US. These trends are generally found in other developing nations as well. Unfortunately, there are some key differences between the service sector in rural and urban areas, with the data indicating that service sector jobs in rural areas are generally less attractive and lower paying than service jobs in urban areas.

The Geographic Rationale of Rural Services Services and Economic Growth For decades, services were treated as a residual, and never the central, focus of rural economic research

because scholars did not believe services were a part of the export base of a community. Traditionally, it was the primary and secondary sectors of agriculture, mining, and manufacturing that formed the export base and was capable of promoting economic growth, especially in rural areas. In recent decades, the role of services in urban and rural areas has been reassessed. There is strong evidence that now suggests that several components of the service sector can act as part of the export base. That is to say, many types of service activities do not derive all their income from local sources. Additionally, new ideas on the role of services in the local economy have emerged, and geographers have increased their study of the location criteria of service establishments. Despite this reevaluation of the service sector, the research on services is often too geographically focused on urban areas. In answer to this dearth of work, there has been an increasing amount of research over the last 10–20 years that has examined services in the context of rural areas. An examination of the components of rural services displays the diversity of the sector, and why rural areas need to be examined separately from urban areas. Underlying these structural changes in services are the changing patterns of consumption of society in general. Researchers have long analyzed consumption and its significant role in the capitalist economy. One of the most significant shifts in consumption patterns was noted by Veblen at the start of the twentieth century, in his writings on the development of a strata of society enjoying ‘conspicuous consumption’. While Veblen spoke of a small fragment of the richest in society, in recent years higher incomes in developed countries have made mass consumption a way of life for a majority of the population. Rising incomes in developing countries have also increased the demand for a much greater variety of goods and services. Additionally, in recent decades, globalization processes have made consumers aware of and capable of obtaining goods from around the world. For this new large segment of society, rural areas have an allure that was rarely found in people living in large cities and the suburbs, especially in terms of environ mental and cultural amenities. This applies to people simply visiting rural areas as well as those taking up permanent residence. These new patterns of con sumption have led to a new demand for goods and services previously not found in rural communities. The impacts of these social changes and their role in rural services are outlined in more depth below, especially in the area of personal services. Distributory and Personal Services In many ways, distributory activities, as defined by Singelmann, are the hardest segment of the service sector to analyze because of the diverse jobs within the category.

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Complicating issues is that most scholars actually do not view transportation, utilities, and wholesale trade as part of the service sector, and hence, little has been written about those activities, at least as it relates to services. Conversely, retail trade has been the focus of many studies, and many aspects of retail make its study as part of the service sector a valid approach. Given the orientation of retail toward consumers, analyzing retail within the context of personal services makes more sense. Over the decades, personal services have been viewed as serving the local community, and with little export potential. Central place theory supports this idea, stating that personal services are driven by local demand and the size of the settlements, all located in a hierarchy of places. While rural areas have never had the variety of personal services found in urban areas, personal services have diversified in recent decades as rural consumers began to demand the same types of goods previously available only in the cities. Despite overall growth in personal services in rural areas, the spatial distribution of these activities has fluctuated tremendously because of the link with local demand, and hence, population. Many of the most remote rural areas, especially in less dense nations like the US and Australia (but also in parts of Europe as well), have experienced population losses along with the decline of personal service establishments and small town central business districts. This is in contrast to certain types of high amenity rural areas experiencing rapid population growth through in migration with an associated expansion and diversification of the types of personal services available to the new residents. These newcomers often have very different tastes in goods and services, and display consumption patterns more often found in large urban areas. However, as discussed later in this article, this type of growth has limited potential for most rural areas. Underlying this spatial reconfiguration of personal services is a broad process of economic restructuring, especially in the retail sector. For example, the emer gence of ‘big box’ stores and giant merchandisers like Walmart and K Mart, and very large international gro cery chains like Tesco and Woolworths, all relying on huge economies of scale and scope, has created a difficult competitive environment for locally owned ‘mom and pop’ stores. For example, in many rural areas of the US, stores like Walmart locate in one service center serving surrounding rural communities and hinterlands. The net result of these new megastores is that retailers of all sorts in surrounding rural areas (any many in the same service town with the new Walmart) are not competitive with the low prices offered by the big box chains. While this decimation of small stores has been widely discussed in the popular media, it is worth noting that many locally owned stores serving distinctive market niches can actually complement big box stores in these regional

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service centers, provided they do not directly compete with the large chain stores. Finally, an added problem for personal services in the most rural towns, but not directly related to retail restructuring, is the loss of smaller, locally owned stores as customers drive farther and farther (as a result of better transportation infrastructure) to shop and take advantage of the greater variety of stores in larger market center malls along with the convenience of one stop shopping. This structural change has been encouraged by increasing car ownership in rural areas as rural transit services decline, especially in places like the UK, as opposed to the US where this type of long distance shopping has been common for a longer period of time. As a result of all these processes, the geography of personal services in rural areas is highly uneven, in constant flux, and very different from that found in larger metropolitan areas. Over time, these changes at multiple spatial scales may lead to a more stable configuration of stores in rural areas, but the process is far from over. Producer Services Compared to personal services, producer services gen erally represent a growth area of the economy. Many rural areas have benefited from the movement of manufacturing firms out of urban centers in search of lower costs, bringing with them many of the producer service activities upon which manufacturers rely to produce goods. Reinforcing this trend has been another structural change forced on manufacturers trying to stay competitive, outsourcing, along with the shift of many producer service operations (e.g., many back office operations) to rural areas as a result of the new tele communications technologies. A classic example of this phenomenon is the well studied move of Citbank’s credit card processing unit to the rural Great Plains in the 1980s. Finally, the transfer to rural areas of small and individual proprietor service companies, often called ‘high fliers’ and ‘lone eagles’, also represents another example of the impact of technological change. This has been especially advantageous for rural areas with the desirable amenities often attractive to these new entrepreneurs. Besides creating new types of establishments in rural areas, producer services are an important indirect in gredient of the rural economy by serving traditional local industries like farming. However, the dynamic aspects and growth potential of producer services, especially as described in much of the literature, may only benefit a small number of rural communities. Most often, producer services that move out of big cities end up locating on the periphery of metropolitan areas, while the most remote areas remain untouched by this growth. Perhaps more worrying is the fact that in the long run, these firms may

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be so geographically mobile that they end up moving completely offshore where labor costs are even lower than in rural areas, following manufacturing firms that have been offshoring their operations for decades. Social Services Finally, social services, which include employment in education and health services, along with public administration, are an important part of the rural econ omy, even more important than in urban areas. Throughout rural areas, social services are among the more stable parts of the economy in terms of employ ment. Unlike personal services, their stability is partly a result of the nature of many of these jobs, which are most often supported through funds from local, state, and federal sources, not the open market. In some cases, employment is actually increasing in the social services as the federal and state governments push for increased educational opportunities in rural areas, and as devolu tion processes push services to more geographically dispersed locations under the control of local com munities. Also, as the population ages, there is an increased need for healthcare for the elderly, although it is unclear whether the funds will be available to provide these services in the most distressed rural areas. How ever, in the long run, neutralizing the potential for the growth and development of new social services in rural areas is their link with the size of the local population. Hence, for the many rural areas experiencing out migration, employment losses for these types of activities are still a real possibility, if not a certainty. There are other issues related to social services in rural communities that may be more difficult to overcome than the annual battles with budget cutting at the national and regional levels. In recent years, social services – more so than other types of services dominated by the private sector – have been affected by broader political and economic changes. These changes have taken place in the US, but seem to be even stronger in Europe and Australia. A broad neoliberal agenda has promoted less government regulation and intrusion into the economy, and the devolution of more and more functions to regional and local governments. Foucalt’s ideas on govermentality help explain these new types of relationships between policy making at the national level, and local public and private institutions (like volunteer groups) that govern through ‘community’. For functions such as education, healthcare, and postal services, the ideal is for decentralized govern ment bodies to more fully ‘own’ and control their local social services and economic development policies, rather than rely on traditional top down approaches. Unfortunately, the end result of these changes has often been the elimination of many types of cornerstone or iconic services in rural governments unable to support

these services financially. For example, in the UK, postal services are being rationalized resulting in the loss of thousands of post offices, leading to a decline in an institution that is more than just another service outlet to handle mail and parcels. In the UK, postal outlets often serve more as a local hub for community activities and as a lifeline for many rural residents to the goods and ser vices not available locally. While rural residents may be saddened by the loss of many types of privately owned rural services (e.g., personal services), the loss of iconic services like local schools, post offices, and medical facilities, all part of the social fabric of rural com munities, has led to broad protests in the UK. In the US, these broad changes in government have led to the consolidation of school districts and rural hospitals in remote rural areas (like the Great Plains in the US) to take advantage of economies of scale, a process hastened by declining populations and improved accessibility to urban centers for many (but not all – e.g., the elderly) rural residents. Impact of Services on Rural Areas Underlying this entire debate on employment and growth in the service sector is the nature of the jobs available. A major issue for many types of service sector jobs is that they are often part time with lower wages and few benefits. For rural areas, this problem is even greater because low wage labor is more likely to be found in the types of services oriented to local consumer demand in rural areas (e.g., personal services, retail, and social services), as opposed to the higher paying producer ser vice jobs most areas would prefer. Thus, even though services as a whole are growing in rural areas, the impact of this employment growth may not be very substantial. Despite this problem, many argue that any vital, vibrant, and sustainable rural community must have a range of services – including producer and personal services not reliant on external demand – that is attractive not only to current residents and businesses, but also to potential businesses and migrants who may want to move into the area. It is important to note that although many producer services generally require greater skills and generate higher paying jobs, there are segments in this area of services with low paying jobs. Unfortunately, these low paying jobs are often the types of producer services likely to locate in rural areas while higher paying producer services remain in urban areas.

Future Growth (and Decline) of Rural Services As the service sector continues to grow significantly in the economy of developed nations, there is strong evidence that rural areas are not benefiting from this

Services, Rural

growth as much as urban areas, especially with respect to service sector jobs likely to promote independent economic growth through external/export demand (e.g., producer services). In most cases, the odds on attracting the most dynamic types of producer services to rural areas remain low. That said, there are small niches of the service economy that can take advantage of new telecommunications technologies like the internet. Additionally, services of all types still play an important support role in all rural communities, even for areas currently reliant on the extractive and transformative industries. A good example where rural areas can develop vibrant service sector growth is for communities endowed with an abundance of environmental and cultural amenities attractive for tourism and recreation. The demand for these new types of goods and services fits quite well with the changing patterns of consumption, and the desire for increasing the numbers of people who can experience the rural environment. These types of services bring external income into rural areas, but unfortunately, are often low paying and seasonal in nature. There is much more to be said about this newly emerging area of rural service growth, but this topic is covered in more depth in another article of this encyclopedia. For other high amenity areas experiencing population growth as a result of in migration, the impact on rural services may be more beneficial. For example, certain types of producer service workers who can take advantage of improved communications technologies (e.g., lone eagles and high fliers taking advantage of the internet) may be a source of long term growth in some rural communities, although this group of employers is relatively small. There is also potential for new rural service business opportunities for residents self employed in small establishments that sell more tradi tional goods. These small entrepreneurs can often take advantage of new technologies like the internet to cater to small niche areas of the market, allowing them to sell goods previously available only locally (e.g., foods, clothing, and other commodities emblematic of the local culture). However, this also remains a small portion of the rural economy in goods and services. While rural communities with attractive environmental and cultural amenities offer some real opportunities for growth in the service sectors, in the end there are only a limited number of rural areas with the amenities that can lead to significant long term economic growth. Addition ally, there are many rural areas in the developed nations experiencing some growth as a result of retiree migration. This is now possible because this large cohort is able to take advantage of mobile, nonemployment income sources, and can now find communities that offer the services needed by an elderly population. Unfortunately, there is also an older cohort of people found in remote rural areas

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with limited amenities, and where out migration is leading to a population aging in place. In this type of situation, services are often on the decline. Finally, and perhaps the most hopeful scenario for rural services in the near future, is to focus on retaining services already in the community. These services are vital to the overall health of the community, and to other businesses. This geography of rural services is more likely to prove successful and stable in the long run, as opposed to efforts aimed at attracting high paying pro ducer services jobs (sometimes called the ‘new buffalo hunt’). These sought after service establishments and jobs – although desirable in many ways – are just as likely to move on from rural areas as their spatial flexibility increases with globalization processes. In the meantime though, many of the most rural areas must contend with depopulation and out migration, a devastating situation for local demand of personal services. Furthermore, economic restructuring in service sectors like retail presents a host of other problems, even for areas main taining their population. This process often decimates locally owned businesses and creates jobs in new mega stores like Walmart, a corporation often disparaged (fairly or unfairly) for the low quality of its jobs. Clearly, socioeconomic forces at the local, national, and inter national scale are transforming the geography of rural services in a process that is far from over. See also: Business Services; High-Tech Industry; Hinterland Development; Local Economic Development; Retail Geographies; Rural Populations; Services, Professional; Tourism, Rural.

Further Reading Adamchak, D., Bloomquist, L., Bausman, K. and Qureshi, R. (1999). Consequences of population change for retail/wholesale sector employment in the nonmetropolitan Great Plains: 1950 1996. Rural Sociology 64, 99 112. Beyers, W. and Lindahl, D. (1996). Lone eagles and high fliers in rural producer services. Rural Development Perspective 11, 2 10. Bocock, R. (1999). Consumption and lifestyles. In Bryson, J., Henry, N., Keeble, D. & Martin, R. (eds.) The Economic Geography Reader, pp 279 290. Chichester, UK: Wiley. Bryson, J., Daniels, P. and Warf, B. (2004). Service Worlds: People, Organizations and Technologies. London: Routledge. Glasmeier, A. and Howland, M. (1995). From Combines to Computers: Rural Services and Development in the Age of Information Technology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Goe, W. R. (2002). Factors associated with the development of nonmetropolitan growth nodes in producers service industries, 1980 1990. Rural Sociology 67(3), 416 441. Gray, D., Farrington, J., Shaw, J., Martin, S. and Roberts, D. (2001). Car dependence in rural Scotland: Transport policy, devolution and the impact of the fuel duty escalator. Journal of Rural Studies 17, 113 125. Herbert Cheshire, L. (2000). Contemporary strategies for rural community development in Australia: A governmentality perspective. Journal of Rural Studies 16(2), 203 215.

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Higgs, G. (ed.) (2003). Rural Services and Social Exclusion. London: Pion. Hornbeck, J. F. (1994). The Discount Retail Industry and Its Effects on Small Towns and Rural Communities. Washington DC: Library of Congress, Congressional Research Services. Kassab, C. and Luloff, A. (1993). The new buffalo hunt: Chasing the service sector. Journal of the Community Development Society 24(2), 175 195. Pamiagua, A. (2002). Urban rural migration, tourism entrepreneurs and rural restructuring in Spain. Tourism Geographies 4(4), 349 371.

Poe, N. and Shaw, T. (2004). Exploring the current and future role of market towns in servicing their hinterlands: A case study of Alnwick in the North East of England. Journal of Rural Studies 20, 405 418. Singelmann, J. (1978). From Agriculture to Services. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Press. Vias, A. C. (2004). More stores, bigger stores or no stores: Paths of retail restructuring in rural America: 1988 1999. Journal of Rural Studies 20(3), 303 318. White, S., Guy, C. and Higgs, G. (1997). Changes in service provision in rural areas. Part 2: Changes in Post Office provision in Mid Wales: A GIS based Evaluation. Journal of Rural Studies 13, 451 465.

Sexuality P. Howell, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Closet Space The spatiality of the closet, which not only operates to render gay life invisible to a homophobic society, but also exists as a strategy for gay sociability and survival. Heteronormative/Heteronormativity The institutionalized assumption that heterosexuality is normal and natural. Performativity The queer theoretical argument that not only gender but also sexual identities are artificial, practiced, and repeatedly performed; the norm of heterosexuality is thus no more than an authorized fiction. Phallocracy Feminist term, literally ‘rule by the phallus’, referring to the ruling power of men simply by virtue of their sex. Queer Theory/Queer Studies An interdisciplinary academic/activist movement, opposed to heterosexual norms, considering all sexual identities to be socially constructed and sanctioned, and inherently unstable. Sex/Gender System The argument that sexuality is actually an effect of gender, rather than the other way round; sex and gender are analytically distinct, but particular social formations institutionalize the ideology that gender identities are a matter of sexual orientation as well as sexual difference. Sexology The pioneering scientific or pseudoscientific analysis of sex and sexuality, largely and uncritically based on the methods of natural science. Sexuality A term popularized by nineteenth- and twentieth-century sexual science, referring to the forms of sexual behavior and practice, and with a particular stress on sexual types and identities. Sexual Citizenship The relationship between individuals, as sexual beings, and the political communities of which they are a part; traditionally exclusive and based on compulsory heterosexual norms, more inclusive forms of sexual citizenship may be proposed and advanced. Sex Work Contemporary term grouping together the variety of modern commercial sex activities, including but not confined to prostitution.

Introduction The poet Philip Larkin famously averred that sexual intercourse began in 1963, ruefully adding ‘‘(Which was

rather late for me).’’ From the perspective of academia, however, it came all too prematurely, as many disciplines had to wait until the late 1970s and 1980s for serious and systematic consideration of sexual themes; none more so than geography, a subject whose initial, hesitant explor ations of sexuality made Larkin appear precocious. Since the 1980s, however, the analysis of sexuality has come to occupy a prominent position in academic research, certainly no longer relegated to the grubby margins. In geography, as in history, the humanities and the human sciences in general, there has been a tremendous upsurge of interest and research. Sexuality has become, in the words of the historian Jeffrey Weeks, ‘‘a continent of knowledge, with its own rules of exploration and its own expert geographers.’’ This metaphor is a distinctly trou bling one; however, the notion of taking possession of virgin epistemological land recapitulates the problems of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century sex ologists who were the first to train their spyglasses on this new continent. We owe to this tradition the whole notion of sexuality as a distinct domain, separate from the other fields of human behavior and social order, powerful, and perhaps even determining. This is a contentious formu lation, and, at the very least, all studies of ‘sexuality’ must be self consciously critical of their epistemological history.

Geographies of Sexuality Sexuality, as it emerged as a domain of knowledge, was always localized. To put it crudely, this was firstly in an inner human nature that was both biologically universal and irreducibly individual; but secondly within an equally problematic social field wherein sexuality was properly installed in the private sphere yet threatened to spill out into the promiscuous public world. The implications of the first of these spatializations would be explored by the various psychological sciences, and by Freudian psychoanalysis, in particular. Though reliant on geographical tropes (Freud famously developed the notion of female sexuality as a ‘dark continent’ for instance), much of this work serves to efface any material and social geography. But the second spatialization equally obviously proposes a socially situated moral geography in which sexuality is recognized as a powerful and fundamental force that requires acknowledgment, channeling, discipline, and perhaps, above all, careful spatial regulation. Sexuality here is normatively private, but is always already threateningly public in its

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pathological forms, in ‘public’ sex (like prostitution) and various other abhorred practices (such as homosexuality). As a concept, then, sexuality’s geography was from the start thoroughly ambiguous, at the same time nowhere and everywhere. It is this problem that geographical studies have attempted – belatedly – to resolve. These studies might be considered, initially at least, in terms of three related but distinct fields of enquiry: what might be called ‘psychosocial’, ‘feminist’, and ‘socioeconomic’ geographies of sexuality. Geographers have had relatively little to say on the psychology and psychoanalytics of sexuality, to take the first of these strands, but it is clear that such an engagement offers rather more than is indicated by the crude char acterization offered above. Rather than simply a matter of discursive localization in the psyche, commentaries on Freud and perhaps more fruitfully on Jacques Lacan and his critics suggest that a more materially grounded, historically and geographically specific, psychosocial analysis of sexuality is possible. There has been some important research, for instance, drawing on psycho analysis and developmental psychology, focusing on geographies of affect and emotion, and above all of embodiment. In such geographies the role of space and place in the production and consolidation of sexual subjectivity is considered in some detail. Some of this work still adheres to a dated and dubious universalism, for sure, but more promising approaches exist, positing for instance the negotiation of sexual identities in spaces of encounter between ‘self ’ and ‘other’, and out of a dialectic of personal experience and social expectation. One criticism that might be leveled at some studies of sexuality is that there has been little enough concen tration on sex, on bodily difference and sexual experi ence; seeing ‘sex’ as an inflection of wider sociospatial sexual relationships is therefore a real step forward in our understanding. At the very least these pioneering psychosocial geographies of sexuality do not prematurely foreclose the claims of either nature or nurture, and they may allow for a rapprochement between psychoanalytical and social constructionist approaches to sexuality. The field within the discipline that grappled most in sistently and most promptly with these issues, however, is feminist geography. Though initially concerned with gender at the expense of sexuality, the redirection of feminist research toward a conjoined analysis has eliminated much uncritical naturalism, and pointed to the spatial practices upon which the sex/gender system de pends. Perhaps, the key move here has been the denaturalization of the so called public and private spheres, which have for so long misrepresented sexuality as purely and properly a private matter; and the marginalization of ‘feminine’ private space reflects the epistemological and actual exclusion of sexuality from the ‘masculine’ public sphere. At the same time, feminists have

been suspicious of attempts to reduce sexual difference to the question of the social construction of gender alone; and without returning to biological essentialism, the importance of embodied difference for social power remains a powerful argument. Analysis of the role of sexual violence, or at least the fear of it, in underwriting men’s privileged access to public as well as private space is one important example of this recognition. And even if the fiercest critiques of phallocracy and patriarchy are uncongenial, it can hardly be denied that the privileges (and injuries) of gender are intimately and politically related to the privileges and injuries – hidden or not so hidden – of sex and sexuality. The relationship between sex, gender, sexuality, and space is particularly complex, but the still largely unanswered challenge of feminist theory and practice is of central importance for understanding the geographies of sexuality. Most of the questions over the constitution of sexual identity, and the role of sexual ideology and sexual experience, or of nature versus nurture, have been rehearsed in geographical work that has had the question of sex and gender at its heart. There is a third strand of thinking about sexuality and space that can be suggested, though. The complex rela tionship between capitalism and the modern order of sexuality has been raised and analyzed within social and economic analysis. At a rather abstract level, the pro duction of sexuality can be seen as necessarily, not merely contingently, tied to modern capitalism’s pro duction of space. For one thing, though all societies need to regulate fertility and ensure the reproduction of the labor force, capitalism has been seen as having particu larly insistent requirements for the control of sexuality in the service of both biological reproduction and the reproduction of workers’ energies. Sexuality, in the form of the reproductive matrix, is inseparable from the his torical geography of the family in the modern, capitalist West. In this analysis the normative heterosexual system, with its clearly demarcated geography of separate spheres – public and private, men’s work and women’s work, the male breadwinner norm, and the ideal of domesticity – is fundamental to the very survival of capitalist society. The ability of capitalism to harness and exploit sexuality in the service of profit has clear implications, not only for high theory, but also in concrete geographical studies of, inter alia, the sexualized workplace, sex work and sex tourism, spaces of commodified leisure and pleasure, place marketing and promotion, the creation of urban villages, and the nature of city life. It may be noted here that the last category encompasses the well recognized phenomenon of gay men’s gentrification of urban space, first properly investigated in Geography by Manuel Castells. This is an indication for many not just of defensive mobilization but also of capitalist society’s ability to co opt even potentially sexually subversive

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identities and lifestyles. The very notion of distinct sexual identities is suspect for its understanding of sexuality as a matter essentially of individual sexual consumer preference: a norm of sexual object choice increasingly authorized and perhaps even required by the dynamics of contemporary capitalism.

Space, Discourse, and Sexual Identity These three strands of research – crudely labeled as they are – remain productive and indeed essential for the geographical analysis of sexuality. Of course, they overlap in many significant ways; they are separated out here only to gesture at the subdisciplinary emphases, out of which a geographical analysis of sexuality has emerged. These three are complemented and challenged, however, by the various projects conducted under the aegis of the ‘cul tural turn’ in social theory. This is an imprecise phrase, but it does encompass the emphasis placed on discourse, social construction, and anti essentialist social theory. In this context, the analysis of geographical discourses of sexuality is prominent, and the influence of Foucault, as in the other social sciences, has been especially pro found. Perhaps most provocatively, Foucault argued in the first volume of his History of Sexuality that sexuality is the product of an explosion of discursive activity in the modern West, the result of a great process of trans forming sex into discourse. One major implication is that the typological classifications so characteristic of the sexological tradition are fundamentally misconceived. Instead of natural sexual identities being revealed by science, Foucault suggests how these identities are pro duced within discourse and within wider relations of power. Now in many ways this analysis is pre empted by the feminist critique of the sex/gender system, but the best known illustration of this argument is Foucault’s discussion of male homosexuality. Foucault decisively asserted that male same sex sexual relations were trans formed, at or around the end of the nineteenth century, from an understanding in which sexual acts are dominant (with the gendered roles of active/masculine and pas sive/feminine determining the nature of individuals’ sexual deviance) to one in which sexuality is invested in types of persons (both partners, whatever their role, now become equally ‘homosexual’). This remains a contentious analysis, and all too easily misconstrued (one long running and largely un productive debate is whether we have to say that there was no ‘sexuality’ before the modern era), but the power of the general argument for the construction of sexuality is largely accepted. What this means for geographers, of course, is that sexuality is not something that preexists the social order and its discursive and material spatialization. Rather, sexuality is dependent

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upon the geopolitical work of culture and discourse. It draws, on the one hand, upon geographical tropes that define the norms and nature of sexuality; and on the other, it redraws the material and imagined geography of the social world according to its dictates. As an example of geographical discourses of sexuality, we can point to the role that geographical imaginations of sexuality at the colonial margins played in the critique and constitution of Western sexuality. It can be noted here that Foucault’s own contrast of a ‘Western’ sexual science and an ‘Eastern’ ars erotica is thoroughly indicative of the im portance of the geographical imagination for the trans formation of sex into discourse, at the same time as being seriously misconceived in its reliance upon orientalist fantasy. Postcolonial critics, inside and outside Geog raphy, are increasingly elaborating on the argument that metropolitan sexual norms were, and are, constructed out of the discursive contrast with the geographical imagination of colonial and non Western sexualities. This attention to discourse can be expanded into a wider spatial history of sexuality, moreover, particularly insofar as it is engaged in the particular and specific manifestation of sexual geographies. A second thematic here points to the importance of spatial practices in the authorized production of sexual subjectivities. The regulation of sexuality, a project or set of projects grounded in space and spatial principles, is certainly one aspect of this theme. Foucault’s own work directs us to various ‘sites of sexuality’ in which eroticism and sensualism are contained and channeled, but which also invite, through the perceived threat of deviant sexuality, surveillance and discipline by authority. The activities of nineteenth and twentieth century moral reform agen cies are thus replete with concerns over urban sites in which transgressive sexualities are seen to flourish; these sites of sexual danger invited intervention by the authorities, which may of course be the point of this discursive activity. But the notion of the regulation of sexuality must also allow for the unsuccessful, contra dictory, and self consciously restrained nature of societal intervention, the careful selection of socially constructed targets, and a suspicion of private morality agencies, all within self professedly liberal regimes in which subjects are granted and even required to have certain freedoms (sexual and otherwise). The regulation of heterosexual space in modern liberal societies was thus far more complex than a matter of straightforward discipline and repression. The nature of this heterosexual space is still under theorized and researched, but it is clear that it is intimately connected to the more glaring social and spatial manifestations of heterosexual deviance, and to nonheterosexual forms that provide the counterpoint to such heterosexual norms. While we can readily agree on the need to recognize the importance of geography for the discursive

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construction of sexuality, we must take this further. The concern with discourse must consider the policing and regulation of sexuality as the result of representational strategies that are themselves the products of specific spatial, procedural, and cultural circumstances. Words, discourses, do not simply produce geographies of sexu ality; they are also interventions in very specifically situated geographies of sexual encounter, experience, and self understanding. In this regard, it is clear that sexual identities are also the product of spatial practices that are not strictly supervised or authorized from above. They are associated in fact with the world of the street and even, to continue the spatial metaphor, with the under ground or sexual underworld. The most well known such practice is undoubtedly that of the nineteenth century urban wanderer and voyeuristic spectator, the flaˆneur, but recent studies that have extended and critiqued this lit erature include work on homosexual cruising and on the sexual implications of cross class slumming. Such work confirms the importance of social space for the emer gence of sexual subjectivities, but is also careful to specify these experiences of modernity. It is particularly im portant here not to valorize such activity uncritically as forms of ‘resistance’ to power and to the projects of sexual ‘repression’ that come from above. These practices reveal in fact the uneven privileges (of gender, class, race, and so on) that characterize sexual citizenship. Sexual sub jectivities are formed in and through socially differen tiated landscapes of power, and contribute to a complex spatial politics of inclusion and abjection. So Foucault’s suspicion of simple narratives of sexual ‘repression’ and ‘liberation’ is of vital importance. Historical and con temporary geographies of sexuality have consistently qualified the dyad of power and resistance. Though there remain difficulties inherent in an opposition between spaces of regulation and spaces of experience, there is no going back to a cosy and comforting narrative of repression and liberation, the spatial story of Victorian public denial and private hypocrisy consigned to history by our contemporary openness about sex.

Queer Times, Queer Frontiers Nowhere perhaps is this more important than in the discussion of homosexuality and other transgressions of the heterosexual norm. It is of course perfectly right to value the resistance of gay men and women to the norms of a heterosexist and homophobic society, and many accounts do this. It is no part of this article to downplay the important work on the political mobilization of sexual minorities, subcultures, dissidents, and radicals in claiming space and thereby rights as sexual citizens; it remains the case that all over the world people are harassed, discriminated against, threatened, and killed for

their sexual orientation, sexual desires, and perceived sexual and gender transgression. Making space, aca demically and politically, for gay men and women, bisexuals, transgenders, and transsexuals, among others, remains of the utmost importance. At the same time, however, there has been a reaction against the kind of social movement theory and identity politics that invests uncritically in such typologies. The expanding canon of sexualities resembles in its ever increasing complexity the classifications of the early sexologists (urnings, ura nians, dionings, and so on), and is subject to the criticism that it naturalizes and essentializes sexual difference. The dichotomization of ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ obviously relies upon the late nineteenth century, and Western, discovery not just of ‘homosexuality’ but also of ‘heterosexuality’. The problem is that ‘gay’ becomes universalized just as much as ‘straight’ does; and the suspicion is that this not only does little to subvert what has been called ‘hetero normativity’ but that it may actually subsidize it. The creation of gay men’s urban enclaves, for instance, is for many an historic achievement, but from a different angle it is yet another kind of ‘tolerated zone’ which assumes that there is indeed something to ‘tolerate’. It may be that such neighborhoods become an unchallenging kind of heterotopia – an alibi, literally – that underwrites the heteronormativity of the sociospatial order. Sexual ‘de viants’ become associated with particular ‘marginal’ spaces in a process that effectively legitimates the norms of heterosexual spatiality. The various interventions collected under the name ‘queer theory’, which set out to destabilize this hetero sexual norm, are based on demonstrating the socially and spatially constructed nature of all sexual identities. Not only is this necessary in terms of the supposed solidity, stability, and security of heterosexuality, it is an inevit able challenge to the notion of a unitary, transcultural, and transhistorical gay identity and subculture. The historian George Chauncey’s landmark study of Gay New York demonstrates for instance the visibility, vitality, and viability of an early twentieth century ‘gay male world’ – a world whose sexual topography was inseparable from the creation of alternative sexual practices and identities. Framing this as a challenge to the narrative of repression and liberation contained in the metaphor of ‘the closet’, Chauncey, along with others who have focused on the historical geography of queer urban culture, shows how sexual difference is constituted in dynamic geographies of public sex and sociability. This is emphatically not about uncovering some pre established but hidden gay culture; the task is rather to show how all forms of sexuality are produced in specific sites and locales, through specific spatial practices, subject to regulative regimes, but often enough irrepressibly and uncontain ably creative. These studies show how geographies of sexual difference were constituted long before the

Sexuality

modern, post closet, era of supposed sexual openness and authenticity. It is important also to note that this his toriography challenges Foucault’s wholly inadequate narrative of the late nineteenth century emergence of the homosexual as a singular type of person, an argumentative aporias that serves only to obscure the sociogeographical construction of sexuality. Several commentators have shown that the supposed deviance of the male homosexual – his ‘queerness’ – remained tied to his bodily and spatial disposition long after this supposed watershed. Sexual transgression, then and now, was a matter of having an appearance, behavior, and attitude deemed ‘out of place’ in particular environments. Whether these ideas and interventions go far enough is something of a moot point, however. Geographers have been both appreciative of Chauncey’s description of the spatiality of a pre closeted gay sexuality and critical of his revisionism. The recovery of gay or queer space(s), marvelous in itself, hardly exhausts the project of a queer geography. Not only does ‘queer’ refer to an enormous diversity of practices, its restless disruptiveness militates against any attempt to pin down and specify sexual identities. It will not do, therefore, simply to counterpose ‘queer spaces’ such as the bathhouse or the cottage, to heteronormative space. The point is rather to show the artifice and ideology behind all forms of sexual spatiali zation. Here the influence of the theorists Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Judith Butler has been particularly important: both have provided thoroughgoing critiques of essentialist positions on sex/gender, and pointed to alternative understandings. And though neither has been particularly keen to specify a materially geographical analysis, their work has been influential in this direction. Butler’s stress on the ‘performativity’ of sex, sexuality, and sexual identity has been extended in geographers’ emphasis on the spaces which allow and authorize such performances, or which are transgressed by them. Sedgwick’s analysis of the necessary contradictions of a culture epistemologically distorted by the reification of heterosexual/homosexual difference also feeds directly into a more straightforwardly material analysis of what she herself refers to as the contingencies and geographies of the closet. Michael Brown’s recent study of the spa tiality of the contemporary closet, demonstrating the diversity and scalar complexity of what he calls ‘closet space’, is a direct response to this question, and a signal contribution to the field. It is a study that, along with other cutting edge work, points the way toward a polit ical geography of sexual citizenship. While Butler’s work appears to take a strong con structivist position on sexuality, in Sedgwick’s work we also have an attempt to bypass the potentially sterile opposition between essentialism and constructivism, nature and nurture. Sedgwick famously borrows the terms ‘minoritizing’ and ‘universalizing’ to point to the

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epistemological work of discourses that, on the one hand, propose the homosexual/heterosexual definition of interest only to a fixed ‘homosexual’ minority, and, on the other, the view that sees this as an issue for all of us, across the spectrum of sexualities. It is thus not a matter of whether essentialists or constructivists are right, but rather of understanding how different discourses of sexuality – themselves contradictory – are deployed in different forms at different times, sometimes trading on the identification of minority sexual identities, and sometimes asserting the instability, indeterminacy, and plasticity of sexuality. While Sedgwick uses these terms to address the problematic modern discourse of homo sexuality, it is clear that many or perhaps all sexual dis courses trade on minoritizing and universalizing ideas. In the nineteenth century, for instance, the idea of the ‘prostitute’ as a woman set apart is ranged alongside the notion of the ‘fallen woman’ that identifies the potential of social and sexual transgression in all women. We might even suggest that sexuality itself is a discourse that is both minoritizing and universalizing: that is, proposed firstly as universal and innate, but at the same time specifically and problematically attached to particular, ‘minority’ communities and identities. The implications for geographies of sexuality are that sexuality is con ceptually all over the map, as Sedgwick puts it: insepar able from social space in its entirety and complexity, and yet particularized in specific sites attached to particular sexual identities. This is of course to return to the con tradictory conception of sexuality noted at the beginning of this article, but not this time simply as a matter of frustration; while we must certainly enjoin skepticism toward the science and conventions of sexuality, we can proceed by analyzing and critiquing the landscape that is the result of sexuality’s paradoxical nature. Queer theory directs us to interrogate the compromised and con tradictory cultural work of sexual categorizations, to repudiate the oppositional categories upon which these categorizations depend, and to work toward a fairer political geography rather than a more accurate map of sexuality. Queer’s notably nomadic spatial valence, its outlaw work, has certainly highlighted the political and academic work that is left to be done: such as resisting spatial fixes of sexual identity and affirming spaces of sexual citizenship in an age of globalization and in the time of AIDS. It may well be that queer has not been fully able to transcend the epistemological categories of sexology – and a post queer (though certainly not anti queer) understanding of sexuality is increasingly advocated. Geographers of sexuality have, however, been directed by the career of queer theory to a strikingly expansive and engaging new topography of sexuality. We recognize that all space is sexed, in that it encodes and endorses societal norms of sexual behavior and identity, but also that,

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Sexuality

because of the unstable and contradictory nature of these sexual categories, all space is actually or potentially queer. To revisit the metaphor introduced at the begin ning of this article, we might be tempted to substitute a proposed ‘queer frontier’ – a liminal, lawless space in which traditional roles and rules are suspended or freely transgressed. This still has troubling colonial overtones, for sure, but it is in this territory that the emergent geographies of sexuality are likely to be found. See also: Body, The; Cultural Studies and Human Geography; Cultural Turn; Culture/Natures; Feminism and Work; Feminism/Feminist Geography; Feminist Geography, Prehistory of; Feminist Methodologies; Flañeur, The; Foucauldianism; Gay Geographies; Gender and Health; Gender, Historical Geographies of; Gender in the City; Heteronormativity; HIV/AIDS in Developed Countries; Identity Politics; Lesbian Geographies; Masculinities; Mental Health; Moral Landscapes; NatureCulture; Natures, Gendered; Other/Otherness; Parenting/ Motherhood/Fatherhood; Performativity; Pregnancy and Childbirth; Psychoanalysis; Queer Theory/Queer Geographies; Social Geography; Social Justice, Urban; Urban Village.

Further Reading Bell, D. and Valentine, G. (eds.) (1995). Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. London: Routledge. Binnie, J. (2004). The Globalization of Sexuality. London: Sage. Bristow, J. (1997). Sexuality. London: Routledge. Brown, M. (2000). Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe. London: Routledge.

Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge. Chauncey, G. (1995). Gay New York: The Making of the Gay Male World, 1890 1940. London: Flamingo. Duncan, N. (ed.) (1996). BodySpace: Destabilizing Geographies of Gender and Sexuality. London: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1998). The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge, vol. 1. London: Penguin. Hemmings, C. (2002). Bisexual Spaces: A Geography of Sexuality and Gender. London: Routledge. Hubbard, P. (2002). Sexing the self: Geographies of engagement and encounter. Social and Cultural Geography 3, 359 381. Ingram, G. B., Bouthillette, A. M. and Retter, Y. (eds.) (1997). Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance. Seattle, WA: Bay Press. Knopp, L. (1992). Sexuality and the spatial dynamics of capitalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10, 651 669. Mort, F. (2000). Dangerous Sexualities: Medico Moral Politics in England Since 1830 (2nd edn.). London: Routledge. Namaste, K. (1996). Genderbashing: Sexuality, gender and the regulation of public space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, 221 240. Sedgwick, E. K. (1990). Epistemology of the Closet. London: Prentice Hall. Spargo, T. (1999). Foucault and Queer Theory. Cambridge: Icon Books. Valentine, G. (2001). From Nowhere to Everywhere: Lesbian Geographies. San Francisco, CA: Harrington Park Press. Weeks, J. (1989). Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800 (2nd edn.). London: Longman.

Relevant Websites http://virtual.yosemite.cc.ca.us/bhutchison/sexuality websites.html A guide to websites on human sexuality. http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu Geography on gender and sexuality. http://www.queertheory.com Queer theory. http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/journals/jhs.html The history of sexuality. http://www.glbtq.com

Shift-Share Analysis R. W. Jackson, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA K. E. Haynes, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Growth Decomposition Technique A method of analysis in which growth is broken down into components to better understand the nature of overall change. Mix Regional change that would be expected if its parts grew at the same rate as the parts at the national level. National Share Regional change that would be expected if its parts (e.g., industries and sectors) changed at the same rate as the nation as a whole. Productivity The amount of output per unit of an input such as labor. Regional Shift Change that is not explained by either the national share or mix components, and is therefore specific to the region.

Introduction Change, the essence of behavior, forms the focus of a dominant portion of social science research. While de scription must often precede explanation, explanations almost always focus on the nature of changes within sys tems or in components of systems. One approach to a better understanding of behavioral processes is the de composition of change into various components of be havior that can be understood by reference to other changes that are well studied. Within this approach, it is often possible to decompose change into components that are expected or attributable to known and well understood forces and the balance of change for which an explanation has yet to be developed. The shift share method in its most fundamental form fits this description. As it is applied in geography, particularly within economic geography, shift share has become a popular tool most commonly used to decompose regional growth into component parts to enhance the understanding of regional economic growth and development. Its popu larity can be attributed in part to the fact that it is relatively simple and straightforward to implement, it relies upon easily accessible data, and it generates a set of results that has clear and intuitive interpretation. In this context, shift share can be defined as a method of dis aggregating regional change to identify and understand better the components of that change. It is derived from a

set of accounting relationships that we develop and present below. In developing the method on the following pages, we focus on regional employment change by industry since that is one of the most common application contexts of this method of regional analysis. However, other values of interest (such as income or value added) could form the focus. Indeed, the basic shift share method has been ex tended and refined in a variety of ways. First, however, we turn to the presentation of the method in its most fun damental form.

The Classic Shift-Share Model Change requires the passage of time. The measurement of change requires values for the beginning and the end of the period of interest. A variety of sources for employment data are available, each of which reports employment levels for geographic regions in total and for the industries that make up the regional economies. In most cases, the employment data will be pegged to a specific date or to an average level for a calendar period such as a month, a quarter, or a year. To make the pre sentation of the method as general as possible, we assume that the analyst has an appropriate set of data, and that the period of interest can be represented by one unit of time. Specifically, we use time t 1 as a reference to the relevant date for the beginning period, and time t for the relevant date for the ending period. In this way, we can examine the change in employment (or income, value added, etc.) from time t 1 to time t. We now define ert as the total employment in region r at time t, eri;t as the employment in region r industryi at time t, ent as the total national employment at time t, and eni;t as the national employment in industry i at time t. Then for beginning and ending periods, we calculate the following three growth rates: r r i ¼ eri;t =ei;t 1 ;

growth rate for regional industry i ½1

ni ¼ eni;t =eni;t 1 ;

growth rate for national industry i ½2

n ¼ ent =etn1 ;

average national total growth rate

½3

By definition r eri;t ¼ eri;t 1 r i ¼ eri;t 1 eri;t =ei;t 1

½4

125

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Shift-Share Analysis

If regional industry i grew at the average national rate, we could write eri;t ¼ eri;t 1 n

½5

and we would attribute the change in industry i in region r simply to overall system change. If industry i is a par ticularly fast growing one nationally, however, there will be a difference between n and ni. Further, if there were no regional variation in industry i ’s growth rate, we could account for the deviation of specific industry perform ance from the average by eri;t ¼ eri;t 1 ½n þ ðni

nÞ

½6

The order of the rates in the new term in parentheses is not arbitrary, because if the industry is fast growing (nationally), eri;t must be greater than the value obtained from eqn [2]. If there is variation in industry i ’s growth rate across geographical regions, then the difference between ri and ni will be nonzero. To reflect this variation in our formal representation, we would then transform eqn [6] into eri;t ¼ eri;t 1 ½n þ ðni

nÞ þ ðr i

ni Þ

½7

The bracketed term in eqn [7] clearly reduces to r i ¼ ðeri;t =eri;t 1 Þ, duplicating and confirming the identity in eqn [4]. If we are interested in examining directly the change in employment, we can subtract eri;t 1 from both sides, yielding eri;t

eri;t 1 ¼ eri;t 1 ½n þ ðni

n Þ þ ðr i

r ei;t 1

ni Þ

½8

or Deri ¼ eri;t 1 ½n þ ðni

between the specific industry’s national growth rate and the national average rate of growth, and

n Þ þ ðr i

ni Þ

1

½9

ni Þ

½10

Ri ¼ eri;t 1 ðr i

ni Þ

the regional shift, that is, growth in the regional industry that cannot be attributed to industry or national effects: often assumed to reflect comparative advantage. Given these definitions, Deri ¼ N i þ Mi þ Ri

½11

Finally, we can sum both sides over all industries and show that X

Deri ¼

X ðN i þ Mi þ Ri Þ

De r ¼ N þ M þ R

½12

½13

A Shift-Share Example As an empirical example, we present in tabular form below a classical shift share analysis for the West Virginia for the 2001–05 period, using Bureau of Economic Analysis Employment Data (Tables 1–3). From Table 3, we can see that 16 of 24 industries in West Virginia performed more poorly than in the US. Eight of the 24 industries outperformed their US coun terparts, but only three of these eight were strong per formers nationally. Professional and technical services, arts entertainment and recreation, and other services, in particular, would certainly merit further, in depth attention by analysts concerned with West Virginia eco nomic development.

and

Early Development Deri ¼ eri;t 1 ½ðn

1Þ þ ðni

nÞ þ ðr i

where Deri is the change in regional industry i employ ment over the study period. We can separate the components on the right hand side of eqn [10], however, yielding the following values and interpretations: N i ¼ eri;t 1 ðn

1Þ

the national share component, which is the growth in the regional industry that can be attributed to the national average rate of growth, Mi ¼ eri;t 1 ðni

nÞ

the industry mix component, or the growth in the regional industry that can be attributed to the difference

Early applications of shift share, sometimes also called mix and share, concentrated on the study of overall regional economic performance rather than on the relative growth or decline of individual industries. The focus lay in the regional shift summary measure – the sum of the regional shift over all industries – called the ‘differential shift’. This part of regional growth or decline is region specific and cannot be attributed to either national or industry wide trends. It is a short conceptual step from this interpretation to the assumption that a positive shift can be associated with the comparative locational advantage of the region for an industry, and vice versa. Subsequent applications focused more directly on shifts in individual industries rather than the region as a whole. Implicit within such applications is the normative

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Table 1

Employment for West Virginia and the US, 2001 Er(t

1)

Er(t)

En(t

1)

En(t)

Total

Proprietors employment Farm employment Forestry, fishing, related activities Mining Utilities Construction Manufacturing Wholesale trade Retail trade Transportation and warehousing Information Finance and insurance Real estate and rental and leasing Professional and technical services Mgmt of companies and enterprises Administrative and waste services Educational services Health care and social assistance Arts, entertainment, and recreation Accommodation and food services Other services, except pub admin

149 524 22 861 4254 28 210 7003 51 149 74 820 26 363 111 678 25 678 15 256 27 988 19 941 35 870 2968 39 463 11 882 106 641 13 428 58 422 50 608

164 940 22 640 3950 30 971 6381 54 376 65 081 26 517 112 986 25 545 13 268 26 773 23 339 39 442 4134 40 490 12 106 115 005 17 191 62 393 55 617

28 183 700 3 056 000 1 022 500 811 400 618 800 9 846 700 16 994 600 6 273 400 18 528 800 5 474 000 4 053 800 7 839 600 5 551 400 10 575 800 1 779 300 9 621 000 3 058 300 15 611 400 3 243 100 10 825 200 9 049 600

33 282 600 2 914 000 1 012 200 820 000 594 100 10 845 700 14 860 900 6 401 300 18 941 100 5 510 100 3 577 100 8 186 600 6 934 300 11 488 700 1 857 000 10 645 100 3 552 900 17 267 000 3 517 300 11 728 300 9 758 900

15 416 221 304 2761 622 3227 9739 154 1308 133 1988 1215 3398 3572 1166 1027 224 8364 3763 3971 5009

Government and gov’t enterprises Federal, civilian Military State and local

21 235 10 140 117 270

21 993 9951 119 679

2 728 000 2 099 000 18 353 000

2 790 000 2 027 000 19 020 000

758 189 2409

1 032 652

1 074 768

195 198 400

207 532 200

42 116

Total

Table 2

Shift-share components ri

ni


1.10 0.99 0.93 1.10 0.91 1.06 0.87 1.01 1.01 0.99 0.87 0.96 1.17 1.10 1.39 1.03 1.02 1.08 1.28 1.07 1.10

1.18 0.95 0.99 1.01 0.96 1.10 0.87 1.02 1.02 1.01 0.88 1.04 1.25 1.09 1.04 1.11 1.16 1.11 1.08 1.08 1.08

9448 1444 269 1782 442 3232 4728 1666 7056 1622 964 1768 1260 2266 188 2494 751 6738 848 3691 3198

17 604 2507 312 1483 722 1957 14 121 1128 4571 1453 2758 530 3707 830 58 1707 1171 4571 287 1182 769

11 635 841 261 2462 342 1962 345 383 1177 302 194 2454 1569 476 1036 3174 1698 2945 2628 903 1042


1.04 0.98 1.02

1.02 0.97 1.04

1342 641 7410

859 989 3148

275 159 1853

1.04

1.06

65 249

854

22 279

Total

Ni

Mi

Ri

128 Table 3


Shift-share summaries Ni

Mi

Ri

M


9448 1444 269 1782 442 3232 4728 1666 7056 1622 964 1768 1260 2266 188 2494 751 6738 848 3691 3198

17 604 2507 312 1483 722 1957 14 121 1128 4571 1453 2758 530 3707 830 58 1707 1171 4571 287 1182 769

11 635 841 261 2462 342 1962 345 383 1177 302 194 2454 1569 476 1036 3174 1698 2945 2628 903 1042


1342 641 7410

859 989 3148

275 159 1853

65 249

854

22 279

Total Interpretations: indicates þ indicates þ indicates þþ indicates

R

þ þ þ þ

þ þ þ þ þ þ þ þ

þ þ

þ þ þ þ

that the industry was a poor performer nationally, and even poorer in the region than in the nation (9 WV industries) that the industry was a poor performer nationally, but better in the region than in the nation (5 WV industries) that the industry was a good performer nationally, but poorer in the region than in the nation (7 WV industries) that the industry was a good performer nationally, and even better in the region than in the nation (3 WV industries)

assumption that an industry in a region should grow at the same rate as for the nation as a whole, an assumption which is the foundation of one of the earliest criticisms of method. Later applications explored the use of the shift share method in regional economic forecasting. If the overall national and national industry growth rates could be projected (perhaps econometrically), all that would be needed would be a projection of the regional shift to project total regional employment. In a forecasting con text, the ‘constant shift’ assumption is that the future regional shift is equal to the past. Scholars debated whether the regional shift com ponent would be stable enough over time to support its use as a forecasting tool, but no consensus developed. Results of forecasting models based on shift share modeling varied by: size of place, level of disaggregation, time frame used, and certain mathematical assumptions (e.g., homotheticity). Although shift share forecasting effectively failed to show adequate potential, the debate uncovered a number of other conceptual issues relevant to even the descriptive, ex post applications of the method.

Analytical Issues Among the issues identified in the study of shift share forecasting potential was the choice of appropriate reference region. Shift share is a method that clearly can only be used when comparing a study area of functional interest to a specific reference region. For example, one might choose to study a US state relative to the Census region within which it is embedded, or a county within a US state, or simply a state/province relative to a country (i.e., a state within the US). The choice of region will influence the results and interpretations. A second issue concerns the choice of an appropriate time period for analysis. The effects of a measurement date relative to business cycle fluctuations can lead to very different results from analyses with start and end dates shifted only a few years. For this reason, analysts typically try to select start and end dates that lie in similar positions on the business cycle (e.g., trough to trough or peak to peak), or apply the shift share analysis in a series of successive estimations over short time periods – a method known as ‘dynamic’ shift share.


With annual data for an extended period, for example, one could conduct the shift share analysis on a 1 or 2 year interval basis, and assess the results both graph ically and with the use of summary statistics. Dynamic shift share provides the opportunity to smooth changes by averaging. A third issue concerns the question of whether the regional shift component truly is reflective of some comparative advantage, and if so, whether this advantage is likely to persist. Positive shifts could, for example, bid up the prices of capital, labor, and other factors of pro duction in the region needed as inputs for the industry, which would ultimately reduce the initial comparative advantage. Alternatively, positive shifts might generate growth that creates agglomeration economies. Lastly, the shift share method ignores inter industry linkages. Are specific combinations of industries especially likely to achieve rapid growth rates? A voluminous literature on industry complexes and clusters exists, supporting the importance of inter industry relationships. Despite shortcomings, the simplicity of the basic shift share model and the ease with which it can be applied has provided a pragmatic justification for its widespread use in regional analysis and has spawned extensions and adjustments in attempts to respond to various criticisms. Since its introduction in 1960, shift share has been adapted and applied to a wide variety of regional issues including intra urban dynamics, analysis of public decision making, manufacturing labor productivity, occupational gender composition, impact of transporta tion employment on regional growth and port competition, regional economic forecasting, regional employment change, regional demographic change, migration turnaround, rural occupational adjustment, analysis of disease death rates, ethnic/racial division of labor, differential employment of citizens and noncitizens in science and engineering, regional convergence in Europe, evaluation of regulationist history, spatial structure and employment change, and telecommunica tions access and efficiency. The classic shift share model has been reformulated as a statistical (two way ANOVA) model and has been shown to have a linear econometric equivalent. However, due to some of the criticism noted earlier and others, there have been several major exten sions and new formulations of the classic model described above.

Shift-Share Extensions During the late 1980s and 1990s, new formulations and extensions, and a wide variety of applications of shift share analysis replaced the widely criticized original model of the 1970s. Yet despite the increasing compu tational capacity of researchers and the availability of

129

more advanced regional models, it has not been totally displaced. This is because in a relatively short time and with little cost, shift share provides reasonable, easily interpreted results. Its simple logic, analytic clarity, and relatively easily accessible data requirements make the model popular both among researchers and practitioners. Output and Productivity Interaction Productivity growth is one of the most important sources of economic expansion and hence it is a key source of the rise in output and income. There is another important aspect of productivity: its impact on employment change. While productivity growth plays a crucial role in eco nomic growth in the long run by attracting new busi nesses and hence creating new jobs, it may have a negative impact on sector specific employment change in the short run because it will be possible to produce the same amount of output with less input, including labor. In that sense, understanding, measuring, and explaining prod uctivity growth and its impact on the regional economy is very important and is a major concern to elected policymakers. This is also important in the promotion of sound economic development policies and programs. To investigate the interaction of productivity and output change on regional economies, several extensions of classic shift share analysis have been developed. In this context, the shift share equations have been expressed in the following forms: TSL NSL þ IML þ RSL

½14

NSL NSðaL Þ þ NSðbL Þ X ¼ Eir ðanL þ bnL Þ

½15

IML IMðaL Þ þ IMðbL Þ X ¼ Eir ½ðainL anL Þ þ ðbinL

bnL Þ

½16

RSL RSðaL Þ þ RSðbL Þ X ¼ Eir ½ðairL ainL Þ þ ðbirL

binL Þ

½17

where the a’s represent the rate of employment change in the region and the reference area that result from vari ations in output over time with productivity constant, and the b’s represent the rate of employment change that result from variations in productivity over time with output constant. The employment change resulting from nonlabor factors’ contribution can be calculated as the difference between actual employment change and employment change that results from output and productivity vari ation. This can be shown as DEP ¼ DE

DEL

½18

130


where DE is the actual employment change over time in the region, DEL is the employment change in the region or state resulting from the change in labor productivity and output. DEP is the employment change resulting from the other production factors’ contribution to total factor productivity. In fact, nonlabor factors, productivity and output change, and their impact on employment can be integrated into shift share models. From eqns [8] and [9] for sector i in region r, TS NS þ IM þ RS

½19

TS ½NSðaÞ þ NSðbÞ þ ½IMðaÞ þ IMðbÞ þ ½RSðaÞ þ RSðbÞ

½20

We can rewrite eqn [19] in terms of employment growth rates as Dln Eir Dln E þ ðDln Ei Dln EÞ þ ðDln Eir Dln Ei Þ

½21

This equation corresponds to the traditional shift share model and Dln E represents the national share, ðDln Ei Dln EÞ represents the industry mix, and the regional share is represented by ðDln Eir Dln Ei Þ. The set of further extensions and variations of the reformulated model is rich and varied. For example, equations can be developed to take into account output change and productivity change resulting from improve ment of capital and labor and a residual that reflects dimensions such as faster than average regional technical progress, scale and external economies, and infrastructure. International Trade and Shift-Share Analysis The traditional shift share model assumes that there is no interregional trade and the region under investigation serves only the regional economy. Further extensions implicitly incorporate interregional or international trade flows by including output change in the model, but these are only marginally linked to the international dimen sion. Other shift share extensions that incorporate international dimensions pay special attention to inter national economic forces essential for the integration of regional analysis into global dynamics. These extensions of shift share that encompass trade (imports and exports) as well as the domestic economy are critical additions in modernizing the method to make it useful in the global economy of the twenty first century. Reference Area–Region Interaction Despite various new formulations and extensions and a wide variety of applications of the shift share method, one important issue remained unaddressed in earlier applications: reference area–region interaction. In the

traditional model and all of its extensions, the reference area contains total employment (income, value added, etc.) including the region’s (state and county) share. In some cases, particularly at the county level of analyses, a large region or sector could dominate the reference area employment having a large share of total employ ment. Hence, below (above) average regional employ ment, growth (decline) could affect substantially the employment growth of the reference area. In such cases, the results of the shift share analysis may be misleading by over or underestimating the components of the shift share model used. This issue poses a serious problem for practitioners because they generally use a given shift share model to investigate the sectoral growth patterns of a given region, state, or county, rather than comparison of regions, states, or counties. Neither earlier formulations and extensions nor the above models have explicitly dealt with a classic reference area component problem. This issue can be addressed by redefining the refer ence area component as the rest of the nation (region and state), excluding the region of interest. In this way, it is possible to isolate the influence of a larger region or sector on the reference area. Since we are investigating the region under consideration relative to the reference area, this redefinition approach provides more realistic information about the region, and avoids over or underestimation problems. This approach can be applied to all extensions of the shift share analysis. Some may argue that this redefinition removes one of the shift share models’ most attractive properties, regional comparison, but in cases where regional analysis is more important than comparison it can be very useful. Note that even in the simplest form of shift share model, the region– reference area interaction is important in its own right and needs to be addressed. However, as the model gets more refined and as the level of sectoral and regional disaggregation increases, this issue becomes increasingly important because the various ratios used become more sensitive to issues of scale.

Conclusions Shift share analysis is a convenient and effective tool when used judiciously. Its convenience of calculation and logical, straightforward interpretations make it a valuable addition to the regional analysis tool kit. Judicious use requires a clear understanding of the method’s strengths and limitations. Shift share is a descriptive tool. It is designed to reveal change regional relative to a reference region benchmarks, but it does not explain differences in growth patterns. A negative shift alone does not indicate that the economy is or will continue to be in decline. One or a set of indicators can signal areas that warrant further


scrutiny, but in and of themselves are not necessarily cause for alarm or policy intervention. As with any ex post analysis, shift share components refer to the past, and may no longer be applicable due to structural or other changes underway. Shift share is best used with other regional analysis methods, such as input–output for industrial structure or data envelopment analysis for as sessment of efficiency and the analytic hierarchy process. Shift share has proven its value over nearly a half century of use. Its flexibility and intuitive appeal will no doubt ensure its continued popularity in decades to come. See also: Input-Output Analysis; Time Geographic Analysis; Time Series Analysis.

Further Reading Barff, R. A. and Knight, P. L. III (1988). Dynamic shift share analysis. Growth and Change 15, 1 10. Bekele, G. and Jackson, R. W. (2005 06). Theoretical Perspectives on Industry Clusters, Working Paper 2006 5, Regional Research Institute, West Virginia University (http://www.rri.wvu.edu). Dinc, M., Haynes, K. E. and Qiangsheng, L. (1998). A comparative evaluation of shift share models and their extensions. Australasian Journal of Regional Studies 4(2), 275 302. Dunn, E. S. (1960). A statistical and analytical technique for regional analysis. Papers of the Regional Science Association 6, 97 112. Haynes, K. E. and Dinc, M. (1997). Productivity change in manufacturing regions: A multifactor/shift share approach. Growth and Change 28(2 Spring), 201 221.

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Haynes, K. E. and Machunda, Z. B. (1987). Considerations in extending shift share analysis: A note. Growth and Change 18(2), 69 78. Hellman, D. A. (1976). Shift share models as predictive tools. Growth and Change 7(3), 3 18. Knudsen, D. C. (2000). Shift share analysis: Further examination of models for the description of economic change. Socio Economic Planning Sciences 34(3), 177 198. Loveridge, S. and Selting, A. C. (1998). A review and comparison of shift share identities. International Regional Science Review 21(1), 37 58. Mulligan, G. F. and Molin, A. (2004). Estimating population change with a two category shift share model. Annals of Regional Science 38(1), 113 130. Nazara, S. and Hewings, G. J. D. (2004). Spatial structure and taxonomy of decomposition in shift share analysis. Growth and Change 35(4), 476 490. Perloff, H. S., Dunn, E. S. Jr., Lampard, E. E. and Muth, R. F. (1960). Regions, Resources and Economic Growth. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. Plane, D. A. (1989). Population migration and economic restructuring in the United States. International Regional Science Review 12(3), 263 280. Sihag, B. S. and McDonough, C. C. (1989). Shift share analysis: The international dimension. Growth and Change 20(3), 80 88. Smith, S. A. (1991). Shift share analysis of change in occupational sex composition. Social Science Research 20(4), 437 453.

Relevant Websites http://www.bea.gov Bureau of Economic Analysis Employment Data. http://www.georgiastats.uga.edu Northeast Regional Project 1011, Shift Share Analysis Website.

Simulation S. M. Manson, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Difference Equation A system of mathematical equations in which each equation relies on the results of other equations, calculated over discrete time steps. Emergence Process by which complex systems gain qualities that result from synergistic interactions among system components. Expert Elicitation The processes of extracting and encoding expert personal knowledge in a way that makes it available to others. Hierarchical Decomposition Solving a problem or understanding a system by reducing it into smaller and more easily solved or understood components. Microsimulation Computer model of a large number of entities whose behaviors are well understood in aggregate, such as households, and their characteristics such as the number of children per family. Object-Oriented Programming A computer programming approach emphasizing modularity through use of discrete software objects. Scenario A plausible story of possible futures or pasts that vary with changes in model inputs or structure. Stochasticity Random or probabilistic changes in model inputs that vary according to known statistical distributions or empirical estimates. System Set of real or hypothetical elements interconnected in a manner that gives the system an overall identity and behavior.

Overview Simulation is a form of computer modeling. Although the term simulation also applies to physical models such as flight simulators or role playing games, the most common definition of simulation refers to the process of translating a conceptual model of some system into a computer model of the system. As with modeling in general, a conceptual model can range from a simple mathematic equation scrawled on the back of an enve lope to a complex natural language description spanning several volumes. A simulation model represents key features of a conceptual model through a software pro gram. This computer model takes data as input, executes its underlying software programming, and produces output data for analysis.

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A simulation model represents a system. A system is a set of real or hypothetical elements interconnected in a manner that gives the system an overall identity and behavior. Systems can range from the atoms in a mol ecule to people in a city to galaxies in the universe. In creating a model of any system, it is imperative for the modeler to describe germane characteristics of system elements and capture important relationships among these elements. The modeler must also describe system boundaries because a system almost always exists within a larger environment. Regional economies or ecosystems are self contained in some senses, for example, but they have connections to larger economies and environments, respectively. Simulation offers both advantages and challenges to modelers, discussed below, but in general it is a useful way to extend knowledge of real or hypothetical systems. Simulation allows the modeler go beyond collecting and analyzing data about a system by using these data to build models of the system in a computer. The use of simulation is growing given the increasing amount of digital data, the ready availability of computers, improvements in programming languages and simulation methods, and the increasing numbers of supporting applications such as geographic information systems.

Uses of Simulation Simulation models are used in a variety of interrelated ways across research, policy, and educational contexts. At their simplest, simulations can explain a system and examine how the system will look in the future or times past, or in many possible futures or pasts. They also support human decision making, especially in systems that are too complicated for any one person to easily understand. The process of simulation can also help elucidate new information by making clear what the modeler does and does not know. Finally, simulation is increasingly used in education and entertainment. Explanation: Simulation is one way to understand and explain the underlying processes of a given pattern in a system or the potential patterns associated with processes in a system. While some critics of simulation see it merely as a way of encoding existing knowledge, the ability of a simulation to link together data and theory about multiple system components actually allows it to generate better explanations. Simulations of the global climate system or transportation networks, for example, combine the research and data from multiple scientific

Simulation

and policy domains to create a better understanding of how these systems work. Prediction: Simulations are used to predict aspects of the future state of a system when the simulations can adequately capture some of its underlying processes. Simulation models are regularly used to project the complex properties of human systems such as popu lations, cities, or economies. In an urban setting, for example, modelers can use socioeconomic predictions to answer questions like how many schools to build in a city or where to route transportation and infrastructure to minimize future ecological harm. Simulation is also a means to recreate past events in a manner analogous to predicting future ones. This use of simulation is especially useful for understanding how past cultures or civilizations changed, or in cases such as the Classic Maya in modern day Central America or Anasazi peoples of the present day southwest United States, collapsed or disappeared. Prediction and retrodiction often imply that simu lations are designed to identify a single past or future outcome, but simulation is often used to construct dif ferent scenarios, or plausible stories, of possible futures or pasts that vary with changes in model inputs or structure. Scenarios have been used to assess the effects of different irrigation schemes on a dam project, for example, and to examine the impacts of variations in future climate change on global sea levels and agriculture. Simulation can supplement or replace expert know ledge in decision making. This use of simulation is widespread in industry and commerce, for example, where it is used to help plan product rollouts or guide the choice of materials in manufacturing. There is also a growing number of simulations designed to allow various publics and policy makers come to better informed decisions about situations like responding to disease pandemics or siting of nuclear power plants. In order to build a simulation, a modeler must understand much about the system being simulated. At the same time, the process of creating a simulation model also helps the modeler order and integrate current knowledge. Simulation can also identify gaps in current knowledge and thereby help prioritize research needs. Finally, simulation also provides, and relies on, approaches such as qualitative interviews or expert elicitation to encode personal knowledge in a way that makes it available to others. Simulation has long been used for educational and entertainment purposes, and the growth of simulation in general has increased these uses as well. Simulation has long been used in the military, industry, and medicine to train people in situations where actual activities are dif ficult, dangerous, and expensive (such as flying airplanes, engaging in combat, and conducting surgery, respect ively). Simulation is also used in schools and universities

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to provide a form of ‘virtual laboratory’ to model urban planning processes or changes in the climate. Simulation Steps While there is a broad array of simulation approaches, most simulation modeling employs a similar set of steps that include establishing the problem, designing the system, creating the model, conducting model runs, and analyzing the outputs. First, it is critical to establish which problem the model will address. As all modeling involves simplifying features of a real or hypothetical system, it is important to ensure that clear questions are posed of the model. Instead of asking ‘‘What will this city look like in the future?’’ the modeler can ask ‘‘How will increases in population change the balance between residential and commercial land use in thirty years?’’ or ‘‘What blend of agricultural and residential land use will best protect the urban songbird population?’’ Second, system definition follows from problem def inition. In order to project future population and land use, the modeler must specify the key demographic and economic conditions that influence land use, and from these, important entities (such as firms and households) and their interrelationships (like travel to work or demand for land). The modeler also defines the system boundaries and determines influences, such as interest rates or immigration, that are external but still important to the system. Third, the modeler must create the model, including gathering input data, choosing a method or combination of methods, and establishing desired outcomes, such as maps and figures. The modeler must also evaluate the model to ensure it works correctly; this process is detailed below. Fourth, the modeler runs the simulation. This process is similar to experimentation in a laboratory, where in puts are modified to produce a range of outcomes. While simulation can be prescriptive, or used to determine optimal system configurations, it is more often used for scenario generation. Scenarios ask a range of ‘what if ’ questions by repeatedly changing one or more inputs and seeing how the simulated system subsequently changes. Sometimes these changes are stochastic, which requires introducing random changes into the inputs according to well understood statistical distributions or directly reflecting the variability found in reality. Finally, the modeler analyzes model outputs in light of the original problem specification – did the model answer the question asked of it? Analysis also involves examining simulation outcomes in aggregate to under stand how the system as a whole changes in response to varying inputs. In some cases, the model will create a suite of largely similar outcomes, while in others there

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may be two or more sets of drastically different outcomes. At this point, it is important to seek expert opinion to establish whether these divergent outcomes are possible or whether the model needs improvement. The modeler will often employ other methods, such as statistical modeling or graphical analysis, to analyze simulation model output. It is important to note that this five step process is highly idealized. In most cases, the modeler must shuttle between the various steps as the problem changes, new questions arise, certain types of data cannot be easily collected, or new methods become available. Many of the advantages of simulation modeling arise not from running the model to create outputs, but from the process of creating the model itself. Establishing a reason able problem and defining the system, for example, are two activities that are often very worthwhile in and of themselves.

History and Approaches Computer simulation in the natural sciences and engineering extends almost as far back as the invention of the digital computer in the 1940s. The earliest significant use of simulation was in government sponsored weapons development, meteorology, and hydrodynamics. It was not until advances in computer hardware and software became widespread in the 1960s that researchers began to use simulation methods on a large scale, particularly in the natural sciences and the social sciences following soon thereafter. The private sector was also quick to adopt simulation, particularly in heavy industries and manufacturing such as aerospace and defense. It was also during this time that models began to be used, or at least encouraged for use, by policy makers for urban, trans portation, and social services planning. Three approaches came into their own in this period: mathematical methods, statistical models, and micro simulation. First, mathematic equations have long been used across the sciences to model systems assumed to be static or existing in equilibrium. ‘Spatial interaction models’, for example, are used to estimate population flows among cities. When the inputs are varied prob abilistically, a mathematical model becomes a simulation model that can create scenarios. Second, simulation models also rely on statistical methods that derive mathematical equations from empirical observations. These equations may then be applied to a variety of new inputs to simulate a range of outcomes. ‘Space–time modeling with statistical approaches’ is an example of the use of statistical methods. Third, since the 1950s, microsimulation approaches have been used, which are essentially collections of formulas that predict changes over time in large collections of statistical data.

They portray systems with a large number of entities whose behaviors are well understood in aggregate, such as households, and their characteristics such as the number of children per family or life expectancy of the head of household. Changes in these characteristics, such as a changing birth rate or increased longevity, can be traced in the artificial population over a series of simulated years. Microsimulation was, and still is, used in planning large scale systems. This approach is particu larly popular for national scale governmental issues such as social service provision or public pensions. In the 1970s and 1980s, simulation methods improved but there was a good deal of debate in the academic and policy communities about the use of simulation, par ticularly about whether it was advisable or even possible to simulate complicated systems such as cities or econ omies. While simulations on the whole became more sophisticated and varied, there were some high profile disappointments in planning and predicting urban land use, economic change, and population growth from local to global scales. In many respects, however, these failures were less a problem with the simulations than with the way they were oversold as catchall solutions to a host of problems. Any model, let alone a simulation, is only as good as its underlying data, methods, and theory. Few real world systems of interest to scientists or planners, such as economies or cities, have a single, well established body of data or theory that can undergird the model. In these situations, the model is perhaps best used as a way of extending theory, establishing new methods, identifying possible futures, and establishing research and data priorities. System modeling became popular during this time of foment and growth for simulation models. This approach remains one of the most common methods, to the point where system modeling is synonymous with simulation for many practitioners. System models are based on a series of difference equations, or those in which each equation relies on the results of other equations, calcu lated in discrete time steps, that in turn are often tied together with intermediary functions and data. System models focus on the stocks and flows of information, material, or energy in a system. They are applied to a broad range of problems in human geography and beyond, such as urban or population modeling, and have been an important approach to modeling human– environment and natural systems since the 1950s. From the 1990s onward, greater amounts of data, better modeling tools, and increasingly inexpensive computers ensured that simulation became a mainstay in many disciplines and industries. Geography has long led the way in spatially explicit simulation, which is increasingly common with access to geospatially refer enced data from sources such as ‘remote sensing’ or ‘census mapping’. Associated technologies include

Simulation

‘graphical computer programming’, ‘space–time model ing with statistical approaches’, ‘spatial data mining’, and ‘geographic information systems’. This last period saw rapid growth in the number and variety of simulation methods, including ‘artificial intelligence’, ‘expert systems’, ‘neural networks’, ‘evo lutionary programs’, ‘cellular modeling’, and ‘agent based modeling’. While most of these approaches have been available for some time (often in more rudimentary forms), it is only in the last decade or so that they have seen broad use across the natural and social sciences. Much of this work is linked to an attendant growth in the use of ‘chaos and complexity theory’. Artificial intelli gence and expert models are designed to have computers act in a way that mimics human intelligence. These approaches use logical rules combined with data to allow the models to simulate novel situations. Conversely, neural networks and evolutionary programs are pat terned after biological phenomena. Artificial neural net works are computational analogs of neural structures in animals (including humans) that evolve over time to recognize relationships between inputs to the simulation and desired outcomes. The related evolutionary pro gramming approach creates computational models of Darwinian evolution to similarly link inputs to outputs. These approaches are used, for example, to predict land use as a function of social and environment factors or translate remotely sensed imagery into land cover. Cellular models examine interaction among cells in a lattice that represents phenomena ranging from vege tation to house occupancy. Cells evolve over time according to their current state and that of surrounding cells. The related agent based modeling approach uses collections of agents, or software programs, that represent adaptive autonomous entities that use information from their surroundings to inform perception, planning, and learning. Key to cellular modeling and agent based modeling is their focus on how local interactions among cells or agents can create complex systems. The future of simulation is necessarily difficult to predict, but it is likely we will see a continued trend of creating simulations that are fully integrated with the system being modeled. We increasingly rely on computer models to guide system behavior in real time, such as routing package delivery, controlling highway traffic, or monitoring communication networks such as phone systems or the Internet. Many cities use traffic simu lations, for example, to integrate real time inputs such as weather data with traffic flow information from sensors embedded in roads. These simulations create short term projections of traffic flow and provide guidance on the timing of stop lights and lane reversals. In sum, given the complexity and range of systems simulations can model, simulation approaches run the gamut from the relatively simple to the extraordinary

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complex. While all approaches rise and fall in popularity over time, each offers distinct strengths and challenges to use. In addition to modelers continually improving in dividual methods, there is also a movement toward better integration and hybridization of different approaches. Models of urbanization and land use, for example, in creasingly combine traditional approaches such as stat istics and system models with more recent approaches such as agent based modeling or cellular modeling.

Critical Evaluation and Challenges Simulation models offer a number of advantages to work in research, policy, and education while also posing significant challenges. Simulation is first and foremost a means to develop new theories, abstract features of reality, and create knowledge. Much of its power derives from offering a tractable means of incorporating sto chasticity and conditionality in an efficient and modular way. Simulation is not without challenges. Evaluating simulation models is a difficult process, often due in part to their great data needs. Simulation must also account for sensitivity to changing conditions and the issues posed by modeling systems across spatial, temporal, and organizational scales. Finally, one of the greatest chal lenges to simulation is adequately conveying exactly what the model does and why. Advantages Simulation is considered a ‘third way’ of doing science because it falls between induction (generalizing from empirical observations to theory) and deduction (testing theory against empirical observations). The classic mode of science holds that a theory will lead to testable hypotheses that we evaluate against observations of reality. This model of science holds true for many situ ations in the natural sciences because theories can be expressed as mathematical formulas and tested against empirical observations. This approach is less effective in social science or for complex natural systems, however, in which case simulation models act as a bridge between reality and theories that are too complex to express as mathematical hypotheses. A key advantage of simulation is the ability to model possible outcomes for situations that do not exist in reality, exist in the future, or for situations that are dangerous or expensive to perform, such as testing nuclear weapons. Simulation is therefore increasingly forwarded as a way to complement, and perhaps even replace, some kinds of experimentation that are impractical. Mathematics or natural language may also be used in this manner, of course, but simulations do it better. Large urban or climate simulations, for example,

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offer insights into the future of these systems that are not available from other approaches. Like other scientific methods, simulation can be used to create knowledge. As noted above, in order to create a simulation, the modeler must identify the necessary data, which in turn leads to consideration of how to meet data needs. When a simulation encapsulates the state of knowledge in a field and yet does not replicate reality (i.e., is wrong), it can help define new hypotheses and lines of research. Simulation similarly points out the limits of current knowledge and data. Simulation allows the modeler to integrate a large amount of data and information on relationships between elements in a system. At the same time, simulation can address problems that are analytically intractable when expressed as mathematic equations. While less expressive than natural language, simulation modeling is more flexible than most mathematical or statistical methods. For this reason, simulation is sometimes termed the third symbol system of science because it complements the first symbol system, natural language, and the second, mathematics. In many respects, simulation also acts as a bridge between natural language descriptions of systems and their mathematical expression. Simulations can incorporate random noise or a range of values for individual parameters in a way unavailable to mathematics. Unlike natural language, simulation allows the modeler to consider the effects of a range of subtly different inputs on complex systems. This allows the modeler to examine the effects of changing inputs on outcomes and, importantly, the amount of possible vari ability in these outcomes. Importantly, some simulation models are also able to capture how minor changes in inputs can create disproportionately large changes in outcomes. This is considered below in greater detail. Simulation is an ideal way to examine conditional, partial, and parallel processes because multiple simulated processes can occur almost simultaneously and interact accordingly. The rise of object oriented programming and attendant approaches such as agent based modeling has allowed simulation models to represent the inter actions among many entities. Consider the modeling of foot traffic in a city by simulating thousands of autono mous pedestrians or highway commuting by simulating hundreds of thousands of vehicles. These models can capture how a single local interaction between indi viduals, such as pedestrians bumping into one another or two automobiles having an accident, will scale up to create system wide gridlock. As noted above, simulations are increasingly inte grated with, and serve to control, the systems they model. More broadly, simulations can be a cost effective way of designing real world systems by offering a means to create virtual prototypes. Industry in particular uses simulation to help design products in the computer

before creating actual physical prototypes. This approach is particularly important in civil, automotive, and aero nautic engineering because these industries build very complex objects, such as vehicles or planes or bridges, that must safely meet a variety of needs. Simulation models are often modular, or comprise multiple interconnected pieces. Modularity supports what Herbert Simon termed hierarchical decomposition, or taking a divide and conquer strategy to problems. The model can be changed or updated by changing one component without having to change all other com ponents. With methods such as agent based modeling, this modularity extends to individual model elements such as people or vehicles. Challenges Evaluation is a broad term that encompasses simulation calibration, verification, and validation. These equate to, respectively: fitting the model to data and theory; determining whether the model runs well; and com paring its structure and outputs to data not used during calibration. Mathematic models are generally axio matically correct by definition, while simulations can rely on computer code susceptible to errors and poor pro gramming. And unlike most mathematical models, simulation models can create a large number of outputs, especially when multiple runs or scenarios are generated. Validating these outputs against empirical evidence or other models is difficult and time consuming. Simulations can require a large amount of data, which follows naturally from a methodology that models many facets of a complex system. Simulations often rely on parameters (e.g., population growth rates, taxes) that can often be derived from actual data, but sometimes are the result of educated guesses. An example of the potential problems with this approach is seen in The Limits to Growth, a report written in 1972 that used a simulation model to project the future of global population and economic systems, sometimes incorrectly. While Limits to Growth has been often unfairly critiqued, one of the drawbacks noted by the authors themselves was the use of expert opinion to estimate critical parameters. Complex systems in reality and in simulations can exhibit sensitivity, or large changes in system behavior that occur in response to relatively small shifts in inputs. This attribute of real and modeled systems complicates the creation and use of simulation models because many methods assume that incremental inputs changes will lead to similar changes in outputs. Complicated situ ations therefore require more sophisticated testing and evaluation that accommodate sensitivity. Simulation gives a variety of ways to examine social, temporal, and organizational ‘scale’. Key to this examina tion is the idea of emergence, or the process by which

Simulation

complex systems gain qualities that result from syn ergistic interactions among system components. To continue an example from above, there is nothing intrinsic to vehicles in highway traffic that creates grid lock, but the interactions among these vehicles can readily lead to gridlock. In part derived from chaos and complexity theory, such systems are termed self organizing because they can change their structure over time in response to either internal or external changes. Self organization and scale also complicate the notion of causality in real and model systems because neither system characteristics nor their causes are known before hand. The ability to model self organization makes simulation a valuable approach to modeling complex systems, particularly with methods such as agent based modeling, cellular modeling, evolutionary programming, and artificial neural networks. The key challenges of scale for any method lie in matching data collected across scales (e.g., household information vs. census information vs. regional data) and linking entities across scales (e.g., how do households interact with social systems?). One of the most challenging aspects of simulation is the need for clarity in model structure and the way in which this structure is communicated by the modeler. One key advantage shared by both natural language and mathematics is that most people are conversant in one or both of these symbol systems. In contrast, a large range of specialized programming languages and systems are used to create simulations. To this source of opacity is added the fact that simulations are often used to model many features of very complex systems, to the point where even a moderately sophisticated simulation can have hundreds or thousands of individual model com ponents. In these complicated models, it is very difficult for the modeler to convey basic features of model com ponents, let alone their interconnections. With the growing importance of simulation there is a movement toward increasing model transparency through common user interfaces and reporting requirements. A significant obstacle to these changes is the wide variety of situations in which they are used, which range from academic researchers to the private companies to public agencies.

Conclusion Simulation via computer modeling has been, and will remain, an important approach to understanding a wide variety of human, human–environment, and natural systems. It offers a way of converting conceptual models of real and abstract phenomena into software programs,

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allowing us to combine existing data and theory to build virtual worlds. Simulation will likely continue to grow in popularity and utility because it can help researchers and policy makers take advantage of the growing amount of digital data, readily available computers, improved simulation methods, and varied cognate approaches such as geographic information science and artificial intelli gence. While simulation will continue to offer a number of key advantages, ranging from theory building to ease of modeling, simulation modelers will continue to address an array of challenges that are shared by human geog raphers in general, such as scale or data needs. See also: Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems; Census Mapping; Chaos and Complexity; Spatial Data Models; Neural Networks; Remote Sensing; Scale; Spatial Data Mining, Cluster and Pattern Recognition; Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization; Spatial Interaction Models.

Further Reading Batty, M. (1994). A chronicle of scientific planning. The Anglo American modeling experience. Journal of the American Planning Association 60(1), 7 17. Gilbert, N. and Doran, J. (1994). Simulating societies: The computer simulation of social phenomena. London: UCL Press. Gilbert, N. and Troitzsch, K. G. (1999). Simulation for the social scientist. Buckingham: Open University Press. Goodchild, M. F., Anselin, L., Appelbaum, R. P. and Harthorn, B. H. (2000). Toward spatially integrated social science. International Regional Science Review 23(2), 139 159. Hanneman, R. (1988). Computer assisted theory building: Modeling dynamic social systems. Newbury Park, NJ: Sage Publications. Hannon, B. and Ruth, M. (1994). Dynamic modeling. New York: Springer Verlag. Jackson, L., Trebitz, A. and Cottingham, K. (2000). An introduction to the practice of ecological modeling. Bioscience 50(8), 694 706. Landis, J. (1994). The California urban futures model: A new generation of metropolitan simulation models. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 21(4), 399 420. Lee, D. B. (1973). A requiem for large scale models. Journal of the American Institute of Planners 39, 163 178. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. New York: University Books. Parker, D. C., Manson, S. M., Janssen, M., Hoffmann, M. J. and Deadman, P. J. (2003). Multi agent systems for the simulation of land use and land cover change: A review. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 93(2), 316 340. Starfield, A. M., Smith, K. A. and Segal, J. K. (1990). How to model it: Problem solving for the computer age. New York: McGraw Hill.

Relevant Websites http://www.scs.org/ The Society for Modelling and Simulation International.

Situated Knowledge, Reflexivity A. Kobayashi, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Epistemic Subject The knowing subject, the subject that constitutes herself or himself through knowledge, as opposed to the use of knowledge in the construction of an object, especially other people, as an object of knowledge. Gaze A term used especially by postcolonial scholars to indicate the practice through which the colonial power constructs the ‘other’ by envisioning the other in a subaltern position. Partial Knowledge Knowledge that is not complete or universal. Postcultural theorists recognize that all knowledge is partial because it comes from a particular vantage point, that such vantage points are constantly shifting, and that the partiality of knowledge is reinforced because it is shared with others. Reflexivity The practice on the part of a researcher of reflecting upon his or her own identity or positionality in relation to those studied, the recursive practice of self-examination and self-transformation in the exchange of knowledge between the researcher and those studied.

Introduction The concept of situated knowledge was adopted initially by feminist geographers during the 1990s, in response to historian of science Donna Haraway’s definition of ‘situated knowledges’ as epistemic positions that are partial, embodied, and localized. Geographers have used the concept to deepen their understanding of the ways in which geographical knowledge is produced, emphasizing both the specific social location of, and the spatial interactions among, people. Since the introduction of the term by Haraway, it has been used in a variety of ways and in many disciplines. Journals of business administration feature articles on how situated knowledge can be used as a marketing strategy by placing people in the field in such a way that their ‘grounded’ knowledge allows them to develop a better understanding of consumer needs. In contrast, nursing journals emphasize the importance of under standing the role of the caregiver as context specific. Education specialists examine the relationship between social situation and learning. So, situation affects not only the production of knowledge, but also the discursive process through which information is received.

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For geographers, the concept of situated knowledge has been used primarily in two ways. The first draws upon the work of Donna Haraway to encourage auto reflexivity in geographical research, acknowledging the subject position of the scholar in relation to ‘others’. A second approach draws also from antiracist scholarship, and in particular from the concept of ‘Orientalism’ introduced by Edward Said, to emphasize the complexity of social landscapes in which ‘others’ are defined by the process of geographical imagination.

Science as Situated Knowledge The concept of situated knowledge emerged in intense discussions by feminist theorists through the 1980s and early 1990s over questions of feminist epistemology: Who holds the power to know? What do they know? What is the role of gender in informing epistemology? Concern was over not only who has access to the power of the academy – including access to publication outlets, research grants, and the ear of the public – but also over how the ‘situation’ of the researcher affects the pro duction of knowledge and the lives of those we study, particularly women and minority groups. These questions led feminist scholars such as Sandra Harding, Nancy Hartsock, and Dorothy Smith to develop ‘standpoint theory’, which argues that feminist scholars occupy a privileged epistemic position because of their own social situation as women. Social and epistemic positioning are interrelated, so that ‘who’ knows is just as important as what they know. This approach is both post Kuhnian in its emphasis on the dynamic nature of knowledge creation, and Marxian, based especially on Georg Lukacs’ contention that privilege (of the capitalist class) impedes the ability to understand exploitation, while the underprivileged (workers) possess a dual vision of both their own lives and those of their oppressors; thus social position is inversely related to epistemic position. The original standpoint theorists have been criticized for a number of reasons, including their reliance on the coherency of gendered perspectives as opposed to other perspectives, and their tendency toward essentialism by privileging gendered knowledge. Postmodern feminists claimed that standpoint theory fails to take account of the ‘multiple’ positionalities, of women and others, that affect the process of epistemic privileging. Nonetheless, femi nist geographers and others have been strongly influ enced by the ability of standpoint theory to differentiate

Situated Knowledge, Reflexivity

one knower from another, and by the recognition that all knowledge is context specific, or situated. These points provide an important conceptual basis for under standing that all knowledge has a geography. It occurs somewhere, grounded and placed. Recognizing scientific knowledge as situated is more about context than location. Donna Haraway’s path breaking contribution was to emphasize that all know ledge is a product of the context in which it is developed. She coined the term ‘situated knowledges’ in a 1988 essay (and a subsequent book) that claims that all knowledge is local, partial, and embodied. Masculinist and racist science performs the ‘God trick’ of establishing itself outside the lives of its subjects, upon whom it visits a neutral, impartial, disembodied, and unmarked gaze. A critical epistemology, in contrast, situates the knower as an embodied subject in relation to other knowers. The act of situating knowledge is often paradoxical, however, because partial knowledge means that situation is never complete: to resort to a belief in the fixity of situation is to revert to the God trick. Rather than (like the original standpoint theorists) positing an alternative position from which to construct yet another form of privileged epistemology, therefore, Haraway calls for a recognition of partial knowledge as a basis for redefining ‘objectivity’ as shared, mediated knowledge founded on political alliances, and as a means of developing critical under standing of the significance of social location and its contingencies.

All Views Are Views to/from Somewhere All views are views ‘to somewhere’. Landscapes, the stuff of geographical knowledge, are both constituted by geo graphical vision and the constituent matter that human beings organize. Landscapes are places placed. Although this point has strong antecedents in the discipline, particularly in the Berkeley School tradition of cultural geography, it is the situation of the researcher within the landscape that differentiates recent critical approaches and their imperative to become more reflexive. For geographers, the concept of situated knowledge has been adopted along with the principle of social construction to emphasize that geographical knowledge is always socially produced. Geographical vision–knowledge is partial, shifting, contingent, and powerful – and has profoundly affected the ways in which geographers see the world and convey their understanding to others. The situation of geographical vision–knowledge provides a vantage point from which to observe the world, actuating a gaze that both positions others and establishes the observer within a discursive field. That gaze is always partial, shifting, and always embodied. Geographical vision is also a view from somewhere.

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The analytical power of the concept of situated knowledge in geography is that it elucidates the inter secting ways in which both researcher and subject, knower and known, are embodied, positioned, and empowered within specific landscapes. The point of understanding situated knowledge as double vision, to and from a particular vantage point, is of course that there is a recursive relationship between knower and known, and that detachment of one from the other is impossible, however much we may wish to step outside of the embodied relationship. Nonetheless, the genealogy of situated knowledge within the discipline of geography is such that there has been a tendency to emphasize either one or the other, the epistemic production of the self, through reflexivity, or of the other, by understanding the historic construction of difference. Situated Knowledge as Reflexivity To be reflexive is to reflect upon the self in a self conscious examination of the relationship between the researcher and the researched. Self reflexivity is a deliberate attempt to situate one’s own knowledge, to emphasize that such knowledge is not detached from the world, that the researcher embodies a range of affects, social meanings, and power. It asks not only the epi stemological question of how one’s own situation affects the production of knowledge, but also the moral question of what right one has to speak about, to, or on behalf of ‘others’, especially when those others occupy marginal social locations that render them less visible or less likely to be heard. Situating the body of the research through self reflection poses some difficult moral and theoretical challenges. There is a growing number of geographical texts that begin with an apologetic situation of the author(s) as white, male, able bodied, and privileged. While such statements indeed call attention to the fact that geography is a social construction dominated by white males who have had a secure hold on the pro duction of knowledge at least since the Enlightenment, such attention does not necessarily ‘change’ the fact that the bodies, if not the ideas, of geographers are still white, male, able bodied, and privileged. Such texts still reinforce the authority of dominant voices. Equally problematic has been the tendency to use reflexivity to shift attention from subjects in the field to the researcher himself or herself. The geographical literature in recent years contains no small number of such articles, in which privileged academics reflect upon intellectual affect, often in beautifully written, evocative prose about what it is like, how it feels, to conduct research, and what kinds of moral and political dilemmas are encountered. Such musings can play an important role in questioning, and defining, the kinds of research in

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which geographers engage, and the kinds of subject they choose to study. Situated knowledge does not just hap pen, in other words, but involves active situation of the researcher, making transparent his or her subjectivity. To situate is to act. But an ironic aspect of such self reflexivity is that it tends to ‘re place’ the focus on the researcher himself or herself, thus privileging the researcher even more by centering knowledge production, albeit with the ‘ac knowledgment’ of the power that the researcher em bodies. Reflexivity runs the risk, therefore, of becoming a kind of academic self indulgence used to justify the fact that change within the discipline occurs only slowly. This conundrum has led some geographers to try to develop methodologies for ‘turning the gaze’ of others back upon the researcher, making the body of the researcher the site of social contestation. Some, however, have claimed that even such attempts run the risk of recentering the privileged body, thus emphasizing the otherness of the other. Such reflexivity, therefore, is an extremely weak pol itical act. Indeed, to continue to occupy the position of power, however reflexively marking the unmarked body, is to maintain the power of difference. Reflexivity is therefore, for most critical geographers, only a point of departure for political action, as self reflexive scholars are above all concerned about the potential for recreating or reinforcing the forms of social exclusion that they study, starting with the differences of class, race, sexu ality, or ability that separate them from their subjects, focusing attention on how to overcome the distance and on the ethical questions of speaking for/with/as mar ginalized others. Reflexivity thus demands political, moral, and personal engagement with the lives of others and the conviction to make a difference. A more powerful way to resituate the body of the researcher is through direct political activism. Growing numbers of geographers now engage in critical social action research, in which they insert themselves into community projects as only one among many working for a common end. Social action research involves going beyond self reflexivity to engage in mutual reflexivity as the researched become researchers. Such attempts have mixed results, and the lessons learned are often intense. The projects often involve considerable investments of time and emotion, and can become risky as the researcher gives up almost completely on the notion of controlled detachment over an agenda set by others. Some have found that despite the explicit, Haraway esque recognition that reflexive knowledge is partial and shifting, the distance from some subjects is too great, and the points of common identity too fleeting, for sustained engagement. For action, research requires more than a commitment to political activism; it also requires social acceptance, credibility, and some degree

of common experience, and mutual reflexivity is nothing if not an exploration of those commonalities, and a critical analysis of how they provide a basis for successful political action. Still others, however, have found that social action research can at times achieve positive political ends, either because it is emancipatory and empowering for those involved or because it attains some specific goal, such as changing the direction of an urban renewal project, or bettering conditions for workers, immigrants, racialized groups, or others situated in marginal social positions. Successful projects also involve risks, of course, as researchers may find that the contingency and spontaneity required of successful political actions results in a remaking of the self; the geographer is thus resituated through the process of the research in ways that may be unsettling, morally provocative, and certainly epistemologically challenging, often involving anxious negotiations that tend to unsettle any pretense to com plete knowledge. The resituation of the self always involves the ongoing reformulation – reflexion – of knowledge. It is not only previously unmarked bodies that are called into question through reflexivity. As the academy has slowly become more diverse, an increasing number of geographers situate themselves and their analyses from the perspective of marginalized groups, writing as women of color, as disabled women, and the like. Their positioning further blurs the boundaries between inside and outside the academy, and offers significant analytical benefits for research that is firmly grounded in the community and based on deeply experienced participant observation. It also sets a challenge, how ever, not to repeat the error of standpoint theorists by positing new forms of epistemic privilege. To adopt an essentialized epistemic position based on identity is to deny the very process through which identity is socially constructed, multiply positioned, and contingent. To carry such logic to its furthest extreme, moreover, is to embark on the slippery slope of solipsism: if representational authenticity depends only upon com mon identity, then the separation of knowers within any discursive field, their alterity, invalidates the ability of any one knower to speak or to know on behalf of anyone but her or himself. To fall into that trap is to reinvoke the God trick from the other side, distancing oneself from one’s subjects not by objectivity but by subjectivity. Recognizing situated knowledge through reflexivity is thus deeply ironic and paradoxical. Any attempt to refashion the relationship between knower and known by acknowledging the power of the knower inevitably results in a repositioning of the knower, and emphasizes the contingency of that which is known. To succumb to the seductive appeal of reflexivity as a means of


understanding the self, therefore, reinforces the extent to which all knowledge – including that of the self – is partial. Situated Knowledge as Geographical Imagination A second approach to situated knowledge emphasizes the construction of the other as a historical project through the production of imagined geographies. This approach entered geography not through feminism directly but through postcolonial and antiracist studies, influenced especially by the work of the literary theorist Edward Said. Rather than focus (at least not primarily) on the role of the researcher as a reflexive subject, that is, the con struction of the ‘self ’, it addresses the powerful discursive forms through that support the construction of the ‘other’. The most in depth work by a geographer from this broad perspective is Derek Gregory‘s Geographical Imaginations. Said’s concept of orientalism has been engaged by geographers to show that colonialism is not only a par ticular set of political economic practices but also a system of power–knowledge, ‘situated’ in such a way as to deploy a set of profoundly powerful discursive for mations, or metanarratives, through which the ‘Orient’ has emerged as a place. That place lies beyond the everyday knowledge of the West, yet is broadly impli cated in the ways in which the West imagines both itself and the other, the oriental. Orientalism as power– knowledge has been carried forward to the present, resituated in present day relationships between the West and the other, as expressed in an immense and complex array of cultural practices, socioeconomic relations, and political realities. Most importantly, the present day construction of the ‘Middle East’, as a product of Orientalism and a site of violence, can be mapped through a cartography of difference produced under an orientalist gaze from colonial times until the present. This concept is particularly compelling for geog raphers because it contains the important notion that orientalism, like all metanarratives, is also a spatial for mation. Geographical writing inspired by Said’s insights has consistently emphasized that spatial formations need to be understood not only in a metaphorical sense (recognizing of course that the power of metanarratives is often metaphorically fueled). Said himself acknowledged the spatiality of the colonial relationship, and indeed the spatiality of all discourse. He wrote little, however, about either the experiences of people embodied by colonial knowledge, or the specific material ways in which spati ality is lived out in particular landscapes. That project has been taken up, often passionately, by geographers. Situated knowledge is about the positioning of the heterogeneous knowing subject. Geographers insist that

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the heterogeneity of subject positions is simultaneously epistemic, powerful, and ‘spatial’. Heterogeneity, or alterity, in itself provides the condition for multiple forms of social and spatial outcomes. Subject constitution – or its obverse, object construction – is therefore a contin gent process. We are not concerned, however, with con tingency as some kind of meaningless, myriad swirl of outcomes but, rather, with the specificity of place and relative situation, or context, through which human relations and meanings are negotiated, resisted, and mediated in multiple ways. The gaps and disjunctions of knowledge, its transformations, its partiality, and its fragmentation, do matter as much as its consistency, hegemony, and continuity across and between real places in which knowledge is situated. People are bounded, transported, connected, and made visible, as situated bodies that are simultaneously knower and known. Their knowledge, however, to repeat, is always situated within a landscape, as a vantage point to and from somewhere. People are positioned within a discursive field, in other words, that influences what they say and do, the power that they wield, with whom they speak, the extent of their inclusion or marginality. It matters, moreover, ‘where’ they are positioned, in buildings, streets, or cities, in what part of the world, and with whom they share proximity, either through direct bodily contact or through the myriad ways in which knowledge is transmitted spatially, shared partially, and embodied meaningfully. The ‘discursive turn’ of the 1990s gave geographers the opportunity to locate knowledge within the pro duction of texts, broadly conceived as stretching from words to landscapes, or any form of representation that carries meaning, and can be ‘read’. The post structuralist recognition of knowledge as socially constructed has been extended in explicit discussions of the ways in which knowledge, and the human relations and forms of social organization through which knowledge is medi ated, are situated. Geographers focus on landscapes, as complex material constellations in which meaning and form are inseparable, in order to ground, or spatialize, the discursive formations that Michel Foucault has shown to be so important to the invention of modern institutions and cultural practices. Despite important differences in their thinking, both Said and Foucault contributed to our understanding that the construction of the other, through practices of surveillance, organization, naming, subju gation, and other means of knowledge–power, is at once an imaginative engagement and the imposition of a normative gaze upon/within a specific landscape. Imaginative geographies thus constituted are simul taneously limitations upon human knowledge, and engagements with the possible. Geographers drew similar inspiration from Benedict Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined community’ (often erro neously interpreted as the ‘invention’ of the nation as

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though a nation could emerge through some sort of idealized act of will) as a set of epistemic bonds through which the nation is made both sovereign and bounded, a place united not (or at least not necessarily) by direct human relations, but by common understanding of what national belonging entails. Imaginative geographies in this sense carry broad implications for who resides inside and outside places of privilege, and for understanding the spatial strategies according to which situated know ledge is engaged to produce social difference. Like the practice of reflexivity, the practice of geo graphical imagination is a contingent process that can have many outcomes. The geographical literature is replete with examples of how geographical imaginations have been mobilized historically in constructing the excluded other, as well as the ways in which present day practices of envisioning difference respatialize colonial relations in many ways. In particular, in the times since 11 September 2001 in which practices of imagining national identities across global distances have become particularly intense, geographers have responded with a flurry of studies that emphasize some specific ways in which knowledge is being mobilized to embody war, to envision the normal, and to spatialize difference. Such studies are paradoxical: while chronicling the effects, often horrific, of geographical imaginations, thus situating knowledge within a contemporary context, they are at the same time engaged in reformulating geographical imaginations to make a ‘different difference’. To return to Gregory, geographical imaginations comprise the history of a discipline that situates know ledge through specific cartographic acts: visualizing the world, embodying its inhabitants, in conjunction with particular forms of spatial organization such as coloni alism, or under the rubric of metanarratives such as modernism or postmodernism. The challenge to geog raphers in the present is to advance both the epistemic project of understanding the relationship between knowledge–power and spatiality and the moral project of making the act of corporealizing vision, one that eluci dates the lived results of past geographical imaginations and projects new ways of seeing, in other words, resitu ating knowledge.

Situated Knowledge and Moral Geography The development of the concept of situated knowledge in geography has involved a moral engagement that goes back for several decades. During the 1970s, geographers engaged in what later became known as ‘relevance debates’ over the significance of geographical knowledge for human being in the world. Those debates emerged simultaneously out of a general uneasiness with the

abstraction of geography as a science of ‘space’, based on the epistemological arrogance of objectivity and detach ment. They emerged also from the social conditions of the 1970s: the anti war movement, the civil rights movement, the upsurge of social concern on the part of students the world over, and from realization of the horrors of life frozen in constant Cold War. Since that time, human geographers have become more and more epistemologically critical, influenced both by the dis cursive turn of the 1990s and by more recent calls to emphasize the material conditions in which discursive events take place. Recent geographical writing has be come much more explicit about the connections between the situation of knowledge and the moral agenda of the academy. The production of geographical knowledge is thus simultaneously a moral and a political project. The dis cipline of geography has always been in this sense a moral project, even at its most abstract moments of embracing the science of space. But critical epistemologies, espe cially, but not by any means exclusively among those engaged in feminist and antiracist scholarship, have shown that situated knowledge is more than simply the ‘location’ of knowledge – it involves the act of situ ating, and thus positioning, embodying, and engaging the knowing self and the known other. The two strands of geographical thought outlined above, emphasizing on the one hand the need for reflexivity in situating the self, and on the other hand the implications of engaging geo graphical imagination to position the other within a discursive field, are not of course exclusive. They are part of a common project of revisioning the world, resituating knowledge, and reimagining geography as a moral project. See also: Content Analysis; Culture/Natures; Monte Carlo Simulation; Neoliberalism and Development; Tourism, Rural.

Further Reading Code, L. (1981). Is the sex of the knower epistemologically significant? Metaphilosophy 12, 267 276. Code, L. (2006). Ecological Thinking: The Politics of Epistemic Location. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gregory, D. (1994). Geographical Imaginations. Oxford: Blackwell. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14, 575 599. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Harding, S. (1983). Why has the sex/gender system become visible only now? In Harding, S. & Hintikka, M. (eds.) Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and the Philosophy of Science, pp 311 324. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Harding, S. (1991). Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking From Women’s Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.


Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell. Kitchin, R. M. and Hubbard, P. J. (1999). Research, action, and ‘critical geographies’. Antipode 31, 195 198. Kobayashi, A. (1994). Coloring the field: Gender, ‘race’, and the politics of fieldwork. Professional Geographer 46, 73 80.

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Merrifield, A. (1995). Situated knowledge through exploration: Reflections on Bunge’s ‘geographical expeditions’. Antipode 27, 49 70. Rose, G. (1997). Situating knowledge: Postitionality, reflexivities and other tactics. Progress in Human Geography 21, 305 320.

Situationism/Situationist Geography D. Pinder, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary De´rive Literally ‘drift’, a form of moving through cities that is usually conducted on foot and in small groups, embodying a critical and ludic attitude toward spaces and their possibilities. De´tournement A practice akin to montage that involves diverting, appropriating, or hijacking elements from cultural forms and discourses, and juxtaposing them to create new and potentially subversive effects. Everyday Life A field outside of specialized activities that is the common ground of human activities and thought; for the situationists, it is both increasingly ‘colonized’ by the commodity and the state and also a terrain of resistance and struggle, such that they called for its revolutionary critique and for the recreation of its totality. Psychogeography The study of urban ambiances and the effects of environments upon emotions and behavior, not simply as a recording or tracing but as an active intervention. Spectacle A stage in commodity production and the accumulation of capital that assigns particular importance to consumption and the image, and that is marked by the ‘colonization’ of everyday life and by the alienation of people so that they become more like passive spectators than active subjects. Unitary Urbanism Presented as a critique of urbanism rather than a doctrine or plan, it envisions the collective creation of the urban environment through the integration of artistic and technological means, and the production of emancipatory spaces that would be dynamic, transcend current divisions and separations, and be lived by their creators.

Introduction The Situationist International (SI) was a revolutionary organization founded in July 1957 by members of several small European avant garde groups. Until its disband ment in 1972 it developed an incisive critique of the economic, social, political, and cultural conditions of modern societies, in opposition to both capitalism and bureaucratic state socialism. The situationists sought the radical transformation of social relations and spaces, believing that revolution must entail changing not only forms of political rule but also the very fabric and texture

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of everyday life. It should be a process by which people overcome the alienation, fragmentation, and division characteristic of life dominated by the commodity form, and discover their true selves and desires. The situationists insisted that to change everyday life it was necessary to change everyday spaces. Radical change would only come about as people transformed their environments and produced spaces appropriate for new ways of living. The central theorist of the group, Guy Debord, therefore described proletarian revolution in his book The Society of the Spectacle, published in France in 1967, as a ‘‘critique of human geography’’ (1994: thesis 178). Geographical concerns were indeed central to the situationist project and the group’s ideas and practices have recently become increasingly well known and influential within human geography, even though they were never meant to court respectability and were forged at the time not as contributions to academic discussion or theory but as weapons with which to harm powerful interests. The SI is sometimes dubbed the ‘last avant garde’. This refers to the militant model of a small group of artists positioned in advance or at the cutting edge of social developments, typically working collectively and internationally, defining its position through manifestoes and radical demands, and seeking to transgress the boundaries between art and everyday life so as to change not merely artistic practice through developing innova tive techniques and modes of representation, but also art institutions and the social world beyond. Whether or not the viability of that model ended with the situationists, it was not a term they usually favored for they rejected the notion of acting as a vanguard or artistic movement. Many of the early situationists were nevertheless artists and their critique of society took up positions within the culture and art of the time, even if they saw their role as undermining existing artistic edifices as they helped to theorize and fuel a new revolutionary contestation. The SI’s roots lay in the historical avant gardes of the early twentieth century, in particular dada and surreal ism. Believing surrealism to have become a largely spent and conservative force by the 1950s, the situationists argued that in its original form it still contained vital constructive possibilities and they took up the challenge of going beyond its efforts to exceed the terrain of art and to change life. While the means of fulfilling this task were the subject of considerable debate, the group came to present it dialectically as the supersession and real ization of art, involving its transcendence as a separate


specialist category through the revolution of everyday life. Marxism was crucial in the development of their theory and practice, although their engagement with it was critical as they operated outside of Communist Party strictures and were vehemently opposed to overt or residual Stalinism in the contemporary Left, as well as currents of Maoism that attracted many political radicals during the 1960s. Since the SI’s formal demise, interest in its ideas and practices has continued in radical political and anarchist circles. Elements of its iconography, language, and slogans have also seeped into popular culture, in Britain and North America especially through punk rock. After years of marginalization and neglect the situationists have further become increasingly common reference points in art practice, art and cultural history, and critical theory, as recognition of their significance has grown with a spate of exhibitions and publications since 1989 positioning them alongside other more established twentieth century thinkers and avant gardes. The pro cess of historicization has not been uncontested, though, with some commentators concerned about its selectivity and the loss of political edge. The situationists often combated the silencing, diluting, or misrepresenting of their positions in their own time and repeatedly rejected the term ‘situationism’, viewing it as a label concocted by those wanting to freeze their ideas into a doctrine that could be more easily incorporated into the reigning cultural discourse. That term’s increasing use today, including in the title chosen for this encyclo pedia article, could be seen as an extension of the impulse to package them in a respectable format along side other ‘isms’ in a way that strips them of their subversive force. Yet, situationist ideas and activities are not only of historical interest for they also speak powerfully to a range of current issues and political struggles, hence the continuing importance of returning to and reassessing them in the light of contemporary circumstances. Their significance for those concerned with geographical questions centers around three themes: critiques of the society of the spectacle; exploration and contestation of urban spaces, including through forms of psycho geography; and utopianism and attempts to imagine and construct emancipatory urban futures. After brief historical contextualization, these three themes will be discussed in turn.

Critiques of the Spectacle The SI brought together selected members of two main movements. The first was the Letterist International (LI), which was based in Paris and included Guy Debord and Miche`le Bernstein. The second was the International

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Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus (IMIB), which had established an experimental laboratory in Alba, Italy, and included the artists Asger Jorn, Pinot Gallizio, and Constant. Also participating in the founding was Ralph Rumney of the London Psychogeographical Committee, an ‘organization’ of which he was the only member and whose title he had invented after encounters and discussions with Debord and other letterists in Paris. The SI had a total of 72 members from 16 different countries. They employed a variety of means to develop and disseminate their positions, central among them being writing in the form of pamphlets, books, and their journal Internationale situationniste, which was published in 12 issues between 1958 and 1969 (since reissued in a complete facsimile edition). They also produced exhib itions, films, paintings, maps, models, graphics, collages, reworked comics, and a range of interventions, provo cations, and political practices. The group was intentionally small and tightly organized as it strove to counter hierarchies and avoid ideological stasis, and to find new modes of political organization. It rejected the idea of ‘disciples’, wanting instead to encourage self determination through actions by autonomous revolutionary organizations. Internal disagreements included those over the role of artistic practice. Most of the practicing artists were expelled or had resigned by 1962, with a number regrouping as a Second Situationist International around Jørgen Nash and others, who had founded a Movement for a Scandinavian Bauhaus Situationist at the Drakabygget farmhouse, in Sweden. Histories of the SI typically present this schism as a move from an artistic and urban phase to a political and theoretical one, centered increasingly on Debord in Paris. Yet, although there were changes in personnel and approach, such charac terizations obscure continuities as the group remained committed to changing both art and politics, and to struggling for the transformation of both society and space, retaining a critical concern with urban geog raphies. Such historical accounts also sideline the different perspectives on these issues among the various situationist groupings, especially those based in Scandi navia and Germany. The most influential concept associated with the SI is that of the spectacle. The situationists argued that the accumulation of capital had entered a new stage during the twentieth century, a stage that was increasingly evi dent after World War II and that was associated with the commodification of ever more realms of social life. Many thinkers and activists of the time noted the significance ascribed to consumerism, leisure, the mass media, and the power of images within the restructuring of capitalism. The growth of television, marketing, branding, and the like indicated an era in which appearances and image management took on new importance. The concept of

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the spectacle addressed such concerns but in a totalizing way and from a basis in total opposition. It was developed within the situationist journal and found its most corus cating articulation in Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle in 1967. In that book Debord targeted the spectacle as a world brought under the sway of the commodity econ omy, a pseudo world apart that is the object of contem plation rather than direct intervention. As the picture of the ruling economic order, it cultivates spectators rather than active agents and induces passivity. Under a barrage of images, life is experienced at one remove, its meaning and prestige derived from appearances. The distinctive qualities of places evaporate along with authentic historical consciousness, to be replaced by the management of a perpetual present. Debord emphasized that the spectacle cannot be reduced to any particular technology such as television, advertising, or propaganda, which are only so many of its manifestations. More fundamentally it is ‘‘a social relationship between people that is mediated by images’. It is ‘both the outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of pro duction’, and ‘the very heart of society’s real unreality’’ (1994: theses 4 and 6). Much academic interest in situationist writings has centered on this concept of the spectacle and compared it with post structuralist or postmodernist theorizations of contemporary social conditions. The term spectacle has thus become something of a buzzword within media and cultural studies. It has also been employed in geography and urban studies to address the emphasis on visual consumption within capitalist urban development and the construction of spectacular landscapes, both histor ically in terms of nineteenth century Paris and London, for example, and in relation to more recent attempts to reconstruct and reimage cities and urban areas, especially since the 1970s. However, references to Debord’s work often dilute its critical force by neglecting its roots in Marxism and specifically Marx’s writings on alienation and commodity fetishism. They also tend to sideline its basis in revolutionary politics and the ways in which it was forged alongside analyses of contemporary issues that included urban uprisings in the United States, and the political situations in Algeria, the Middle East, and China, as well as attempts to establish a basis for radical alternative political organization embodying direct democracy through workers’ councils. Debord’s reading of Marx was Hegelian and had sig nificant connections with work in the Western Marxist tradition by Georg Lukaćs and Henri Lefebvre. Debord had a close and mutually influential association with Lefebvre for several years and, along with fellow situationist, Raoul Vaneigem, shared his interest in developing a critique of everyday life that emphasized the importance of changing it. In a significant move the

situationists wrote of the ‘colonization of everyday life’, a term that was also taken up by Lefebvre in the second volume of his Critique of Everyday Life in 1961, and that was meant to indict the occupation of more and more of social life by the commodity and state power. They coined the phrase at a time when a rapid state led modernization drive in France was accompanied by processes of de colonization and struggles for in dependence in the country’s external colonies, and when there was a concomitant turn ‘inward’ by capital and administrative techniques to focus with new intent on objects and spaces that included leisure, private life, and the built environment. In using the term colonization, the situationists em phasized the geographical nature of the processes involved, as well as the need to resist them and to reap propriate spaces through processes of de colonization. In this way they understood cities and urban spaces, which also became major concerns for Lefebvre in his series of influential books on the subject through the late 1960s and early 1970s, as key battlegrounds that were sites both of social control and alienation and of potential freedom. Their critique of urbanism built on previous explorations of the subject by Debord and the LI from the early 1950s when they attacked urban developments that were driving the working classes and ethnic minority popu lations from the city center to the suburbs, and destroying vibrant streets and neighborhoods. In their view these developments were part of a process by which the urban as a meaningful site of encounter, sociality, passionate interaction, and historical consciousness was being eradicated. Critiques of modernist and functionalist architecture were also developed during the 1940s and 1950s by the Danish artist, Asger Jorn, a prolific painter and theorist who had been a prominent member of the Cobra art group, and during the 1950s by the Dutch artist, Con stant, who had been a fellow member of Cobra and was moving away from painting to embrace forms of spatial construction. When they joined forces in the SI, they placed urban questions at the center of the group’s pro gram. The situationists’ criticism of modernist urbanism was shared by a number of architects, critics, and groups at the time that were closer to the modern movement of architecture but were forging paths beyond its ortho doxies. Unlike architectural and design groups such as the Independent Group and Team 10, however, the situationists took a revolutionary position against con temporary urbanism as a significant component of the society of the spectacle, viewing its creation of oppressive ‘environments of abstraction’ as a means of reproducing class power through ensuring the isolation of individuals massed together, and hence in need of complete trans formation through a struggle against the totality of the spectacle itself.


Psychogeography and Reclaiming Cities The situationists disputed the view held by many intel lectuals during the 1950s and 1960s that the working class was declining in importance in a supposedly post industrial and consumerist age. On the contrary they argued that it now included all those who had no direct control over their own lives and the spatial–temporal organization of society. The name situationist was derived from a concern with constructing situations, based on an appreciation of the significance of particular situations for the constitution and conduct of social life, and of the need to intervene in their production. ‘‘Since human beings are moulded by the situations they go through,’’ the group wrote, ‘‘they need the power to create situations worthy of their desires’’ (SI, 2006: 178). This meant moving from a detached and interpretative position of the kind they associated with most philo sophical and academic studies, such as the existentialism of Jean Paul Sartre, to an active stance that sought to intervene in everyday life and to transform situations. The situationists scoured the political horizon for cases of refusal and resistance, seeing one of their main roles as theorizing and helping to articulate emanci patory struggles through which people reclaimed aspects of their lives and environments. They addressed anti imperialist struggles around the world, as well as revolts such as those that shook the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965 and inner city Detroit in 1967, and wildcat strikes and spontaneous actions by those who were op pressed, alienated, or seemingly bored or nihilistic. In the process they believed they were charting the outlines of a new proletarian assault against class society that was outside the machinations of traditional political parties and trade unions. Such critical activities were one part of the situationist project but others involved direct actions and experiments as the group explored the operation of power and the play of possibilities within cities with the intent of changing them for the better. During its early years the SI devoted considerable energy to psychogeography. Previously developed by Debord and other members of the LI during the early 1950s, psychogeography was the study of urban environments in terms of their effects on emotions and behavior. It involved investigating ambiences, obscure resonances, and zones of attraction and repulsion so as to inform understandings of the interplay between sub jectivity, emotion, behavior, and urban space. As such it shared certain preoccupations with academic traditions of cognitive mapping, as well as later explorations within humanistic geography, although for the letterists and situationists the accent was on activism and political intervention more than detached inquiry. The study of urban ambiences was combined with resisting or pro posing urban changes in an effort to defend favored sites

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and neighborhoods from forces of capitalist development and planning, and to consider how they might be trans formed in accordance with different values. Psychogeography also had a playful and oppositional side especially through its principal mode, the de´rive or drift. The latter technique was a mode of urban passage mainly on foot, typically in groups of 2 or 3 people, and lasting anything from several hours to weeks or even months. It entailed letting go of the usual practical rea sons for moving related to work or leisure, and allowing one to be drawn by the terrain and what was found there. Besides providing the basis for psychogeographical in vestigation, it embodied an experimental, adventurous, and anti authoritarian way of urban living, in particular a refusal of work and leisure as structured within capitalist society, and a transgression of their attendant space–time discipline. As such it was a lived critique of everyday life. Connections may be drawn between situationist de´rives and surrealist strolls in Paris during the 1920s, not least in their questing nature, in their search for possibilities in the here and now, and in their shared interest in ways of defamiliarizing cities and in unfettering movement and activity. The de´rive was less reliant on chance and the unconscious, however, involving a more conscious and collective process of investigation and contestation. Its politicized and collective stance also differentiates the practice from much recent loose use of the term, including in contemporary art practice and criticism where it is frequently invoked. Urban explorations led to the remapping of cities, including the production of psychogeographical maps of Paris by Debord in 1956–57. These maps, which have since become influential in debates about subverting cartographies, were based on findings from de´rives and were composed through a process termed de´tournement. The latter was a key tactic of the letterists and situ ationists that entailed diverting, reworking, or hijacking existing cultural materials and recomposing them to create different propagandizing effects. Recognizing that language and cultural products are realms of class conflict and struggle rather than transparent means of communication, the groups used de´tournement for a range of interventions in different media that included writings, films, paintings, cartoons, and architectural compositions. In the case of cartography, Debord cut existing maps of Paris into segments, each indicating a ‘unity of ambiance’ discovered on de´rives, and re positioned them with arrows suggesting movement toward or away from the sections. The images challenged standard cartographies to depict what Debord called the city’s ‘psychogeographical relief ’, along with the search for alternative passages through its spaces. Traces of de´rives further surfaced in letterist and situationist publications and films made by Debord, where their combative, impassioned, and frequently drunken spirit is

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apparent. However, psychogeography and its techniques of mapping were also meant to look to the future and to the potential construction of new cities. As such they informed utopian visions of cities and struggles for different futures.

Utopianism and Sociospatial Transformation The notoriety of the situationists was established in particular through the revolts in Paris in May 1968, which they helped to instigate and fuel. Events in that city were part of worldwide revolutionary political struggles during the course of 1968. In France occu pations of universities, institutions, and streets in the capital soon led to around 10 million people in the country taking strike action. Daily routines were halted and time and space temporarily transformed. The situ ationists regarded it as an emancipatory festival in which hierarchies melted, and in which communication and community found a new reality and terrain. The influ ence of the situationists was through not only their par ticipation in the occupations movement in Paris but also their prior activities and writings, which anticipated many aspects of the May struggles. The situationists previously developed the idea of revolution as a festival and as involving the transforma tion of everyday space and time in their analysis of the working class reclamation of Paris during the Commune of 1871, which they characterized as a form of revo lutionary urbanism. Questions about revolutionizing urban spaces were indeed long standing concerns as their commitment to creating situations and criticizing existing urbanism attest. They framed this early on in terms of ‘unitary urbanism’, a concept that referred to the col lective, conscious, and continuous creation of the urban environment by people as they construct a different world. Unitary urbanism was utopian in the ways in which it anticipated the transcendence of current social and spatial divisions through the creation of a dynamic space that would be mobile, playful, and lived by its creators. However, the situationists insisted that it was not a doctrine or a plan for some distant future but was rather a critique of urbanism that found expression in immediate experimentation and political struggle. The fullest attempt to outline unitary urbanism came with Constant’s work on an urban future that he entitled New Babylon, and that he developed as a member of the SI before his resignation in 1960 and then independently over the following decade. This utopian project chal lenged contemporary urban conditions and ideologies through promoting ‘an other city for an other life’ in models, plans, maps, drawings, lithographs, paintings, photographs, films, and extensive writings. Constant’s

proposals stemmed from the opposition he shared with the other situationists to the oppressive results of capit alist processes of urbanization and planning, and from their belief that other worlds were possible. They also came out of his desire to find a means of creative revo lutionary activity while rejecting the dominant culture of his time along with its traditional individualized modes of artistic practice. Constant envisaged an urban environment for a postrevolutionary and postscarcity society in which land and the means of production were socialized, work was automated, and life was devoted to play. He presented New Babylon’s structures as largely devoted to social space and entirely flexible, intended as the ever evolving products and medium for the life play of the inhabitants, whose creativity would be unleashed and whose lives would become nomadic as they were freed from the constraints of utilitarian society. Constant insisted that New Babylon was not primarily a planning or design project but was instead an attempt to provoke different ways of imagining and acting in cities, and to encourage, as well as to outline spaces for a new way of urban living. He further denied his vision was utopian in the common usage of that term to denote an impossible but desired place; rather, he claimed that it was realizable so long as the potentialities of current productive forces and tech nologies were seized by people and put to different ends. Constant’s focus on revolutionizing social space brought him into a close dialog with Debord and later Lefebvre, who wrote favorably about his experiments. However, once Constant resigned from the SI after tensions concerning the influence of other artists came to breaking point, the group publicly dismissed his work as its focus on urbanism soon moved away from visionary proposals and toward political critique and action. Debord and others still insisted that a revolutionary struggle must transform the totality of existing conditions to be effective. They did not approach this through the lens of urbanism or esthetics as such, however, with Debord referring more generally to the need ‘‘to reconstruct the entire environment in accordance with the needs of the power of established workers, councils’’ (1994: thesis 179). Constant for his part continued work on New Babylon until the early 1970s, after which he returned to painting. Long neglected by architectural historians, New Babylon was ‘rediscovered’ and its significance for that field asserted in the late 1990s especially by Simon Sadler and Mark Wigley, who traced connections and influences with contemporaneous designers such as Team 10 and Archigram, as well as later practitioners. The situationists more generally have also received increasing attention in geographical and urban debate as Alastair Bonnett, David Pinder, and others have explored and contextualized their writings and activities, and deployed them for


critical ends. In returning to situationist engagements with geographical issues, they have revealed the signifi cant ways in which situationist perspectives anticipate, connect with, or challenge other radical geographical positions, in particular concerning the production and contestation of space within Marxist traditions, and the possibilities of countering hierarchical power and developing autonomous spaces associated with anarchist traditions. Andy Merrifield has similarly asserted the importance of Debord’s vibrant yet undervalued contri bution to the rich lineage of Marxist writings on cities. Situationist ideas may have recently moved from the margins to become strangely respectable, as Erik Swyn gedouw remarks, but they have not been completely sanitized. Not only are their critiques of the spectacle remarkably prescient in current image saturated times, as battles rage over control of the image realm, but they also continue to offer provocative insights and critical impetus for exploring cities and the politics of urban space, and for challenging the processes of the capitalist production of space with a view to how other worlds might be constructed. At a time when dominant powers insist there is no alternative to capitalism and liberal democracy, Pinder asserts that the utopianism of the situationists is of particular significance, retaining the capacity to scan dalize and inspire through its critique of the spectacle and its desire to construct radically different worlds. In addition to considering situationist critiques of urbanism and their experiments with psychogeography, he addresses Constant’s New Babylon, situating it in relation to other currents of utopian critical thought and practice so that its often neglected political con sequences move to the fore, along with the challenges it continues to pose to conceptions of spatiality and processes of urbanization. Much recent literature on the SI has focused almost exclusively on Debord and, especially in France but also increasingly in Britain and North America, treated him as a great moralist and prose stylist, detaching his writ ings from the wider situationist terrain, as well as their Marxist roots and political engagements. As a result the situationist legacy becomes construed as primarily liter ary, artistic, and even bound up with individual heroism, a pure stance to be admired from afar. As suggested above, however, in contrast to this overly narrow view of Debord and the SI, others are positing and activating a more open, entangled, and collective understanding of the group’s historical geographies in the plural and hence of their potential legacies. In this context it is worth stressing that those drawing inspiration from situationist activities are found but especially among political activ ists, artists, and revolutionaries. One prominent legacy of the SI’s geographical con cerns lies in the flowering of interest in psychogeography since the 1990s in Europe and North America that

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typically traces its lineage back to the experiments of Debord and fellow explorers of Paris. This has multiple activist, literary, artistic, and dilettantish manifestations, some quite far from the original source. Among its expressions have been the establishment of a number of psychogeographical groups, associations, and festivals, as well as a more diffuse influence on ways of exploring, imagining, and contesting cities. These have included the revival of a London Psychogeographical Association, which took its name from Rumney’s original formulation and was active during the 1990s, as well as other groups in New York, Manchester, Nottingham, Toronto, Milwaukee, and elsewhere. Their activities have ranged from activist struggles over urban change to explorations, mappings, and imaginatively engagements with places through various techniques, both low tech and new media. The term has also been popularized by the British writers, Iain Sinclair and Will Self. While recent psychogeographical activities have done much to bring into mainstream discussion certain geographical ideas and practices associated with the situationists, the latter’s insistence that these be con nected to revolutionary praxis, committed to bringing about sociospatial transformation, has rescinded from view. Indeed, in some hands the political engagement at the heart of letterist and situationist psychogeography is lost altogether. Yet, another important situationist legacy is apparent in the positions, tactics, and language adopted by a number of radical and revolutionary groups, as they struggle against capitalism and oppressive state power, and as they seek to envisage and build alternatives with an awareness of how geography matters for both the constitution and contestation of power. Far from being a dead terrain, then, different understandings of ‘situ ationist geography’ are continuing to be drawn upon and activated in a variety of ways, both intellectual and political. Their role in future emancipatory struggles may not be negligible. See also: Anarchism/Anarchist Geography; Avant-Garde/ Avant-Garde Geographies; Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Psychoanalytic Theory/ Psychoanalytic Geographies; Radical Geography; Surrealism/Surrealist Geographies.

Further Reading Bonnett, A. (1989). Situationism, geography, poststructuralism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 7, 131 146. Bonnett, A. (1992). Art, ideology, and everyday space: Subversive tendencies from Dada to postmodernism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10, 69 86. Bonnett, A. (2006). The nostalgias of situationist subversion. Theory, Culture and Society 23(5), 23 48. Debord, G. (1994). The Society of the Spectacle, Nicholson Smith, D. (trans.). New York: Zone Books (Originally published in 1967).

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Internationale situationniste 1958 1969 (1997), collected facsimile edition. Paris: Arthe`me Fayard. Jappe, A. (1997). Guy Debord, Nicholson Smith, D. (trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Knabb, K. (ed. and trans.) (2006). Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, revised edition. McDonough, T. (ed.) (2002). Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Merrifield, A. (2002). Metromarxism: A Marxist Tale of the City. New York and London: Routledge. Merrifield, A. (2005). Guy Debord. London: Reaktion Books. Pinder, D. (1996). Subverting cartography: The situationists and maps of the city. Environment and Planning A 28, 405 427. Pinder, D. (2005). Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth Century Urbanism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sadler, S. (1998). The Situationist City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. SI (2006) Questionnaire. In K. Knabb (ed. and trans.), Situationist International Anthology. Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets, pp 178 83 (originally published in 1964).

Swyngedouw, E. (2002). The strange respectability of the situationist city in the society of the spectacle. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26(1), 153 165. Vaneigem, R. (1994). The Revolution of Everyday Life, Nicholson Smith, D. (trans.). Left Bank Book and Rebel Press. Wigley, M. (ed.) (1998). Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper Architecture of Desire. Rotterdam: Witte de With/010 Publishers.

Relevant Websites http://www.bopsecrets.org Bureau of Public Secrets. http://www.notbored.org Not Bored Situationist International Archive. http://www.cddc.vt.edu Situationist International Online, Center for Digital Discourse and Culture.

Situationist City Q. Stevens, University College London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary De´rive An aimless, playful, drifting walk through the city. De´tournement The practice of pirating, reorganizing, and parodying bourgeois art and text in ways which communicate new messages. Psychogeography The study of the laws and effects of the geographical environment on the perceptions, emotions, and behavior of individuals. Spectacle Propaganda, advertising, commodities, and built environments which present images that help to justify a system of social relations, to disguise those social relations, and to produce them, especially by placing the viewer in a position of passive receptivity. Unitary Urbanism A critique of existing urbanism through action, by appropriating and exploiting existing spaces and establishing various new ambiences. Also a spatial milieu conducive to dissolving existing social and functional separations; a complexified terrain for free social play which can further people’s self-realization.

Introduction The Situationist International (SI) (1957–72) was a small avant garde and revolutionary group of writers, artists, and social and political theorists based in Paris. Key contributors included Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem, and artists Asger Jorn and Constant (Nieuwenhuys). Their critique of cities is chiefly known through the translation and republication of numerous short articles from their journal Internationale Situationniste and from Potlatch, the journal of the preceding Lettrist International (1952–57). The Situationists’ artistic roots lay with the nihilism of Dada and the subversion of surrealism, both of which il lustrated the potential for everyday experience and familiar objects to be charged with intensity, a diversity of desires, and creativity. They were also interested in the phenom enology of urban space. Politically and philosophically, their thinking was informed by Hegel’s dialecticism, Marx, Lukacs, and Marcuse, and by the existentialism of Sartre, who was the first to use the term ‘situation’ to describe the individual’s need to constantly negotiate the complexities of everyday life. The Situationists were critical of rapid technological and cultural changes in the 1950s: the functionalism of industrialized production; the growing power of national governments; conservative bourgeois social attitudes;

modernist town planning; and consumerism in Western Europe, with its commodity fetishism, advertising, and passivizing forms of leisure, and in the East, the cult of personality. The SI referred to these as the diffuse and concentrated forms of spectacular society, respectively, and rejected the French Left’s acceptance of the bureaucratic oppression of state socialism. The SI viewed these issues in relation to a broader existential problem: alienation, and the suppression of individual experience, expression, and creativity. Everyday life was characterized by a homo geneous mediocrity, boredom, predictability, a lack of control, or any sense of adventure. While the methods and objectives of the SI were diverse and changeable, their core ambition was the development of new, unalienated ways of living focused around creative play. They sought to pro gress this notion dialectically, chiefly by critiquing the separateness of art and integrating it into everyday living, and through general critiques of modern society which attempted to recuperate and redeploy what they saw as the positive elements of its cultural and technological development, such as mass media, communications, and high speed transport. Through their rhetorical, experimental, strategic, and often explicitly self critical approach, the SI took care to emphasize that their writings, public actions, films, and architectural models served principally as situated cri tiques of existing cities and societies, rather than pre senting an enduring movement based on universal objective truths and tested methods. The latter would have been incompatible with their dialectical under standing of social praxis and their emphasis on direct participation. Their main role was as agents provocateur, hoping to incite citizens to overcome alienation, reclaim urban space, socialize playfully, and invent new ways of life, all on their own terms without mediation or control by experts. Politically engaged, their ideas played a critical role in the popular uprising in Paris in May 1968. The term ‘Situationist City’ was coined by Sadler, who first drew academic attention to the Situationists’ critique of the urban environment, their principles for urban planning and urban living, and their design proposals for urban forms. From the SI’s own perspective, such a construct as ‘the city’ is in itself a reification of built forms, and images of them, as spectacular objects of consumption, a reification of the dominant social order, and a masking of the history of power relations and social processes which produced it. The SI viewed existing urbanism as one of the key causes of alienation and as the enemy of revolutionary social practice. The existing city

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was of core interest to the Situationists because it was the spatialization of the most advanced form of consumer capitalist society, presenting both the extreme of instru mental alienation of everyday life and the greatest po tential for emancipation and revolution. This article explores in turn the nature of Situationist urbanism as an analytical concept, as an object of an alysis, and as a critical proposition.

The Situationist Critique of Urbanism The Situationists criticized the banality of contemporary life, ruled by technological conveniences, architecture, and urban planning which had all liberated man from poverty and the vagaries of the natural environment, but had themselves become fetishized and led to the ossification of everyday life. They argued that the key objective behind Hausmann’s urban renewal plans had been the circulation of troops, and that contemporary urbanism’s key objective was the circulation of motor vehicles. They suggested future urbanism might instead apply itself to the func tional enhancement of psychogeographical possibilities, through the creation of varied psychic and sensory at mospheres, and to the free circulation of people. Their detailed examination of modern urbanism cri tiqued its spectacular ideological character, which en couraged passivity, and which obscured the complicity of planning with the control of urban space and the con ditioning, surveillance, and policing of social behavior in the interests of capitalism and bureaucracy; the reduction of density and the segregation of functions, including leisure, in the name of utility, which fixed people in space and led to social disintegration; capitalism’s emphasis on divisive contests for space; and the promotion of traffic circulation which furthered alienation and restricted so cial encounters. While the SI praised functionalism’s embrace of designing around function and comfort, its rejection of ornament and its technological innovation, they criticized its unconscious alignment with conserva tive social and ethical principles (such as health, relax ation, property, and the family) and its role as a static doctrine. The SI noted that the historic texture of the city connected people to the past, although the catalyzing power of its symbolism was diminished and in need of rejuvenation by bringing new meanings to its landmarks and monuments. They called for a spiritual transforma tion of urban life based on the rediscovery of forgotten desires and the creation of new ones. Many elements of the SI’s critique of urbanism were particular to the context of post war urban reconstruction in France, and specifically Paris, and the class and ethnic tensions underpinning it. They disparaged the museumi zation of inner cities, their presentation as spectacles for tourist consumption, and their gentrification by the

growing managerial elites, as well as the Grand Ensembles, a massive modernization program of new office towers, department stores, cultural institutions, and freeways, which all furthered the circulation of people and com modities and the dominance of commerce and the bur eaucratic state. These changes were exemplified by the destruction of Paris’s historic wine market and its re placement with the expanded modern university; the de struction of the market at Les Halles to construct an underground commuter rail interchange and shopping center; and the destruction of the adjacent poor neigh borhood, Beaubourg, to build a showcase national center of art and culture, Centre Pompidou, where a retro spective exhibition of the SI was held in 1989. The SI was neither nostalgic about old cities nor opposed to modernization. They saw outmoded spaces and ways of life as both evidence of and model for re sistance to the state’s authoritarian decision making. In a letter to The Times regarding plans to demolish London’s Chinatown, they noted: We protest against such moral ideas in town planning, ideas which must obviously make England more boring than it has in recent years already becomey if mod ernization appears to you, as it does to us, to be histor ically necessary, we would counsel you to carry your enthusiasm into areas more urgently in need of it, that is to say, your political and moral institutions. (Bernstein et al. in Andreotti and Costa, 1996: 54)

The Situationists criticized the banishment of Paris’s urban poor and immigrants to new Banlieue (suburbs) on the periphery, and the use of similar methods in France’s colonial domination of Algeria. SI member Abdelhafid Khatib was twice arrested for breaking a police curfew on Algerians. The SI criticized the construction of industrial new towns in France along modernist lines, where the labor and social relations of people’s employment were re produced in the segregation of housing types and lo cations for single people, married couples, families, and high salary employees, with managers living in other, older cities. They often compared modernist housing blocks in these suburbs and new towns to military bar racks, concentration camps, or indigenous reservations and compared single family homes to fall out shelters, completely isolated. The SI were also critical of new towns elsewhere in Europe, and of the new modernist colonial cities Chan digarh and Brasilia, which illustrated and effectuated a centralized bureaucratic worldview rather than pro gressive, modern social ideals. Potlatch had also boy cotted a 1956 festival celebrating Le Corbusier’s Radiant City plan. They described Corbusian tower blocks as slum construction, vertical ghettos, and prisons,

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denouncing Corbusier’s elimination of the street with its prospects for encounters.

Methods of Analysis and Representation The SI developed numerous experimental techniques for studying urban spaces and communicating their per ceptions of them. These methods were closely tied to their theoretical perspective, reflecting their interests in intervention, praxis, and dialectics. Their analytical methods sought to directly put their theories into prac tice, to transform everyday life and achieve the more actively engaged, multidimensional, specific, and au thentic experience which modern society denied, and to aid in the further development of their ideas, by under standing the possibilities and the internal contradictions within social life as they experienced it. The central aim of their investigations was to further the field of psychogeography, their most unique and significant contribution to urban geography. Their key field technique was the de´rive: One or more persons abandon, for an undefined period of time, their usual motives for action and movement, their relations, their labor and leisure activities, and let them selves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find therey the de´rive includes both this letting go and its necessary contradiction: the domination of psychogeographical variations by the knowledge and calculation of their possibilities. (Debord in Andreotti and Costa, 1996: 22)

The SI argued that large cities were particularly conducive to this kind of distraction. The conscious effort to recognize and pursue particular physical dećor, am bience, and social context distinguished de´rive from its models, flaˆnerie, and surrealist chance excursions, as did the emphasis on suspending one’s class consciousness, and active, tactical intervention to expand urban possi bilities. The Situationists often used military metaphors to describe both the existing city and their own activities and objectives; they saw urban space as their theater of operations. De´rive was political, critical, and combative activity because it emphasized and helped produce the use value and emotional qualities of space, contesting the routinized and spectacular nature of urban life and its domination by exchange value and constrained notions of functionality. Some Situationist writings took the form of reports on de´rives: an investigation of the ambience of Les Halles; the discovery of a psychogeographic hub surrounding a ruined rotunda by Ledoux in the 20th arrondissement; troubling encounters with immigrants in a variety of bars. Debord’s now unavailable film On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Period of Time employs

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de´rive, providing a wandering documentation of Paris’s Left Bank and Les Halles, critiquing their architecture and depicting the everyday life of marginal people spending their time freely. Keillor’s 1993 film London il lustrates a fictional series of de´rives purporting to grasp that city’s moods, power relations, and untold histories. A slow sequence of still shots of marginal and mundane locations is accompanied by the ambient sounds of everyday events which crisscross the scene. An unknown narrator makes free associations to the feelings and memories of the fictional de´river, and mentions boredom, disappointments, detours, and unexpected events during the journeys. The narration is often disjunctive with the images. The film is primarily about the situated cir cumstantiality of urban experience; it fails to explain the city. The SI applied a different kind of creative reappro priation to the images which consumer society produced – de´tournement – which exposed, contradicted, and de stabilized the dominant narratives of power propagated through high culture, propaganda, and advertising. Un like surrealist collage and postmodern pastiche, de´tour nement was seen as a collective, anonymous, and political activity. Although de´tourned graphics and public graffiti could illustrate the foibles of consumer society and in spire action, the main link between de´tournement and urban space was through the reception, reuse, and pro duction of maps. Debord and Jorn’s Me´moires, a de´tourned book of poetry, was composed from scattered pieces of maps of Paris, text, and images. One page features map fragments cor responding to Paris locations visited during a 1953 de´rive by members of the Lettrist International. On another page, a historical battle scene is mirrored against a map of Contrescarpe; the Lettrists frequented this area of Paris, admired its playful and forgotten atmosphere and op posed urban renewal projects there. Collaged text here and throughout the book reinforces the combative theme. Another page is crowded with exemplars of picturesque and primitive architecture from various exotic civil izations, depicting the city as a provocative mixture of vernacular and monumental forms. Another similar map, Discours sur les passions de l’amour, and its claimed antecedent, a 1653 map of the Land of Love, emphasize the metaphorical link between journeys through the city, its erotic stimulations, and the emo tional trajectory of social relationships. The fragments collaged from a perspectival rendering of Paris included several indigenous working class neighborhoods which Debord and Jorn felt should be studied and preserved. The ‘Naked City’ is the Situationists’ clearest example of a de´tourned, psychogeographical map. This was a col lage of fragments of a map of Paris linked together by sets of large red arrows. The collage technique undermines the instantaneous unity, totality, order, and detachment

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that a map imposes. The Naked City emphasizes instead that cities are experienced successively in time and in motion by actual, situated subjects, whose movements are guided by the attractions and repulsions of particular atmospheres, and shaped around key psychogeographic loci, to form habitual patterns. The fragments of the map were carefully trimmed to include all streets which contribute to a particular local ambience, and rotated and separated to emphasize the smooth drifting journeys between them along the psychogeographical slopes rep resented by the arrows. A noted antecedent was maps of Paris published by the sociologist Chombard de Lauwe in 1952: those of residential quarters, discontiguous in shape because they were determined by the behavior of the inhabitants, and with arrows showing inward flows; and a plot of the narrow scope of all the journeys taken over 1 year by a bourgeois student. These maps are narrative descriptions of events and feelings rather than objective tools of universal know ledge. They present a critique of town planning and of the instrumental nature of space and behavior; they re port on the Situationists’ own experiences with de´rive, and also provide a stimulus and a guide to escaping con ventional ways of seeing the city and moving through it.

Proposals, Constructions, and Actions The Situationists also made concrete proposals for changes to existing cities, to their planning and man agement, and to social practice. These proposals, like their critiques, are characterized by a freely creative, playful, humorous attitude which itself provides a counterpoint to the pragmatic, conservative, and dull metaphysics of urban planning. The Lettrists’ plan for rational improvements to the city of Paris proposes numerous de´tournements. They ad vocate opening the underground at night after the trains had ended, as well as public parks – although both were to remain unlit or dimly lit for psychogeographical effect, and streetlights given switches so the public could adjust them as desired. They recommended opening buildings’ rooftops to the public and linking them together, and opening prisons for free access. Cemeteries, museums, monuments, and statues were to be eliminated, and the artworks redistributed to bars and cafe´s. Train stations’ destination boards would be removed or scrambled to promote de´rive. Situationist theses on traffic parodied the Inter national Congress of Modern Architecture’s Athens Charter, criticizing planning for the automobile and commuting (which increased alienation and reduced free time) and the zoning of work and residence, and pro posing instead unitary urbanism: not another new doc trine, but a dialectical, lived critique of existing urbanism

which would expose its deceptions, manipulations, and limits and turn its messages and mechanisms back on themselves. Unitary urbanism aspired to an idea of functionalism beyond the immediate and obvious use fulness of objects, and beyond habits, social conventions and taboos. It promoted the appropriation, exploitation, and reintegration of existing urban spaces, buildings, and dećor, including the pedestrianization of city centers. It required the unification of social space to enable social participation and free exchange, but also the establish ment of new and varied ambiences to stimulate a spec trum of feelings. They appropriated the term ‘quarter’ to highlight this ongoing enhancement of differentiation. Unitary urbanism also called for the permanent creative transformation of the city, in opposition to fixed patterns, museumization, and monuments. The de´rive was an ex ample of unitary urbanism because it was simultaneously a means for studying the urban milieu and a social game played within it. It aided the discovery of fragments of urbanism bypassed or forgotten by spectacular urbanism, as highlighted on Situationist maps. Unitary urbanism could be achieved through the de´tournement of existing architecture, urbanism, poetry, and cinema or the creation of new forms. The SI pro duced several avant garde architectural projects intended to de´tourn the separation of art, urban space, and intense personal experience and to promote playful socialization. The Cavern of Anti Matter was based on ‘industrial painting’: a long roll of cloth painted with abstract strokes by a rudimentary machine was spread around walls, ceiling, and floor. Mirrors, lights, perfumes, and music added to a dramatic atmosphere intended to stir visitors into action. A model dressed in the fabric demonstrated its use as clothing, depicting the total merger of the user with their environment. Cheap, mass produced, and sold by the meter, industrial painting demonstrated the SI’s general aspiration that industrial means could help or dinary citizens transform their environment, come closer to art, and experience a new, liberating social atmosphere. A subsequent unrealized installation for Amsterdam’s Stedelijk museum was a labyrinth that merged interior and outdoor environments, featuring artificial rain, fog and wind, variations in light, temperature, and sound, and other provocations. Situationists would de´rive together through this labyrinth, remaining in walkie talkie contact with other groups de´riving the streets and canals of cen tral Amsterdam. Constant would direct these de´rives, map their progress, give instructions, and arrange impromptu experiments. A far larger, more ambitious, and more utopian en vironment designed to promote situations was Constant’s New Babylon. Through several recent books and exhib itions of its models, plans, and architectural drawings, this scheme has become a synecdoche for the Situationist City. Disagreement on the appropriateness of pursuing

Situationist City

such concrete and spectacular spatial visions was the grounds for Constant leaving the SI, the most significant of numerous splits and resignations which marked their history. New Babylon originated with a permanent camp Constant designed for Gypsies: a lightweight, transpor table structure, with movable partitions. New Babylon was an endless megastructure, an irregular labyrinth of buildings elevated on large pylons. The ground surface was left open for vehicles, agriculture, nature, and monuments. Above, the building had no functional zon ing and few private areas. The interior was a multilevel open plan social space with moveable and demountable partitions, floors, roofs, staircases, and bridges which could be constantly reorganized by New Babylon’s no madic inhabitants. Light, color, acoustics, ventilation, odor, texture, temperature, and moisture could all be mechanically modified by the users to create different ambiences to suit their changing needs and desires, or to stimulate new emotional states. The intention was partly to disorient and to confuse conventional spatial ordering; routine, customary behavior, and inhabitation would be impossible. New Babylon was typically presented in models and drawings as 20–30 ha sectors – the term indicating Constant’s aversion to the restrictive bourgeois social relations and possessive domesticity of ‘neighbor hood.’ Constant frequently described the scheme’s many means of movement: wandering on foot, taking cars or underground trains between sectors, or by plane from rooftop airstrips. He later suggested airports provide a harbinger of the future city of nomadism, enabling social contact with difference and long distance adventure for the masses. Later presentations showed New Babylon’s network at different scales superimposed over maps of various European cities and regions. In these views, it bears comparison to the arrows on Debord’s Naked City map: it is an armature which provides new connections be tween previously unrelated parts of the historic urban landscape. Constant’s utopian environment was premised on a technologically advanced society of automation which would allow people to devote their time and energy to adventure, pleasure, play, free and varied socialization, and thereby the development of their creative capacities. Free time and mobility would enable people to engage in a permanent worldwide de´rive through this landscape which they were constantly involved in producing: con tinual rearrangement and reinvention of the space itself was to be part of the game. Critics disagree on interpretations of Constant’s pro posals. Some emphasize New Babylon’s architectural and ideological similarities to other contemporary techno cratic megastructural fantasies, by Utopie (France), the Metabolists (Japan), and Archigram (UK), although these

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varied in their social program and political objectives, and were not as driven by political critique. Some high light its technical shortcomings, impracticalities, and paradoxes. Others praise New Babylon’s metaphoric potency as a critique of the existing historical city, and as a provocation, illustrating how social space could be transformed alongside an unalienated social life. The SI themselves saw Constant’s spatial constructions as pre liminary experiments in form which helped to clarify the problem of unitary urbanism. It was fundamental to the SI’s dialectical, materialist, and phenomenological approach that ideas had to be integrated as much as possible with actions in lived spaces. They aimed to construct situations, and to pro mote people’s free and active participation in such con struction, as a means to help citizens recognize and better understand how different, playful combinations of peo ple, environments, and events could produce certain ambiences and feelings. They also believed that through practices like the de´rive, everyday action could provide insight into new possibilities for experience and for space. Their ultimate aim was to stimulate the raising of everyday consciousness and the ongoing transformation of everyday life, of politics, and of the environment itself. To the SI, this was not just an academic methodology, but a core aspiration for everyday life in general.

The Situationist City Today Urban geographers before the 1990s did not engage with Situationist thought in great depth, tending to theorize spectacle primarily in terms of architectural imagery and failing to examine its pervasive role in structuring social relations and practices, although French sociologists posited that spectator observers could, consciously or unconsciously, resist classification and control by spec tacular, textual urban landscapes. The 1990s saw a dramatic revival in interest in the SI. This interest is splintered, with different disciplinary focuses on their means of analysis, their critique of urban areas, and their design proposals. New Babylon has been widely exhibited, becoming a spectacularized version of the Situationist City, a symbol of the recuperation of Situationism by the very forces they most despised: the art market, the intellectual elite, and their passive bour geois audiences. Much recent secondary literature on the Situationists has been criticized for treating their visions of urban life and the city, their writings, and their per sonalities as commodities, intellectualizing, estheticizing, and depoliticizing them. This interest ignores Situatio nism’s eclectic and shifting membership, aspirations, and strategies, as well as ignoring the practical realities of everyday, situated action in real places. In contrast to this paradoxical reification of Situationist concepts and

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objects, other reappropriations of urban space have been pointed to: Los Angeles’ 1964 Watts riots and recent situations such as Reclaim the Streets and worldwide antiglobalization protests. The primary influence of the Situationists on con temporary urban geography is methodological, show cased by the short lived journals Transgressions and The Journal of Psychogeography, and evidenced through the de´ rived writings of Iain Sinclair and photography of Martha Rossler. There have also been broader impacts on critical theory: the attempt to imagine or uncover a post struc turalist Marxist dialectical utopian urbanism, viewed as a social project which challenges present conditions and where both built form and urbanization processes are open to possibility, social difference, and the develop ment of new norms. See also: Dialectical Reasoning and Dialectical Materialism; Leisure; Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Phenomenology/ Phenomenological Geography.

Further Reading Andreotti, L. and Costa, X. (eds.) (1996). Theory of the De´rive and Other Situationist Writings on the City. Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona ACTAR. Bonnett, A. (1989). Situationism, geography, and poststructuralism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 7, 131 146. Borden, I. and McCreery, S. (eds.) (2001). New Babylonians. Architectural Design 71(3), 67 73. Debord, G. (1994). The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books. de Certeau, M. (ed.) (1984). Walking in the City. The Practice of Everyday Life pp 151 160. Berkeley: CA: University of California Press.

de Zegher, C. and Wigley, M. (eds.) (2001). The Activist Drawing: Retracing Situationist Architectures from Constant’s New Babylon to Beyond. New York: The Drawing Center. Kaplan, A. and Ross, K. (eds.) (1987). Introduction. Yale French Studies 73, 1 4. McDonough, T. (ed.) (1997). Guy Debord and the Internationale Situationniste. October, Vol. 79 (Winter), republished and expanded as McDonough, T. (ed.) (2002). Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Texts and Documents. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pile, S. (2002). The problem of London, or, how to explore the moods of the city. In Leach, N. (ed.) The Hieroglyphics of Space. London: Routledge. Pinder, D. (2000). Old Paris is no more: Geographies of spectacle and anti spectacle. Antipode 32(4), 357 386. Pinder, D. (2001). Ghostly footsteps: Voices, memories and walks in the city. Ecumene 8(1), 1 19. Pinder, D. (2005). Arts of urban exploration. Cultural Geographies 12, 383 411. Pinder, D. (2005). Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth Century Urbanism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; New York: Routledge. Plant, S. (1992). The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age. London: Routledge. Sadler, S. (1998). The Situationist City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sinclair, I. (1997). Lights Out for the Territory. London: Granta. Swyngedouw, E. (2002). The strange respectability of the Situationist City in the society of the spectacle. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26(1), 153 165. Vaneigem, R. (1983). The Revolution of Everyday Life. London: Rebel Press. Wigley, M. (2000). New Babylon The Hyperarchitecure of Desire. New York: Princeton University Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.notbored.org NOT BORED! is an autonomous, situationist inspired, low budget, irregularly published, photocopied journal. http://www.nothingness.org Situationist International.

Slums R. Harris, Hamilton, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Slums A slum is a residential area with substandard housing that is poorly serviced and/or overcrowded, and therefore unhealthy, unsafe, and socially undesirable. A single dwelling can fit this description, but the term is usually reserved for larger areas, rural or more commonly urban. Slums, like the poor who inhabit them, have always existed, but the term was not coined until the early nineteenth century, when it was first used in the largest city of the day, London, England. They became extensive with the rise of the industrial city and are now ubiquitous in the developing world, where they commonly take the form of squatter settlements. The term is culturally de fined and pejorative, with social as well as physical con notations. It is usually applied by outsiders, some of whom have used it to justify their interventions in neighborhood affairs, including slum clearance, and has often been resented and resisted by local residents. The discourse of slums has always been contested.

Definition: Physical and Social Aspects of the Slum Slums are culturally defined, both in terms of their physical characteristics and also in their social correlates. Certain characteristics of dwellings, for example, their materials of construction and quality of electrical wiring (if any), directly affect health and safety, notably fire risk. In general, however, there are no absolute standards of physical adequacy, crowding, or of the residential services that are necessary, even for public health. Most obviously, requirements vary with the physical environment. In warm, dry climates people spend more time outdoors and require less interior space; then, too, the main use of in teriors is for sleeping, which requires only limited space. In areas with low residential densities (dwellings per acre), quite high levels of crowding (persons per room) may be more tolerable, while piped water and sewer systems may be desirable but not absolutely necessary. How people use their housing is just as important. Certain cultures have long emphasized healthy practices such as breast feeding and strict domestic hygiene. This is why, for example, rates of infant mortality were relatively low among North American Jewish households in nineteenth and early twentieth century cities, even though many of these lived in rundown neighborhoods.

Just as bad physical conditions do not always guar antee poor health, better conditions may not be adequate. Rural migrants bring domestic animals, and habits of waste disposal, that make adequate urban housing un healthy. Those unaccustomed to sanitary facilities may not use them properly. In England, some middle class reformers claimed that ignorant working class tenants in new council (public) housing would keep coal in their baths. Patronizing and possibly apocryphal, this story dramatized the usefulness of education programs for public health. Such programs became common in early twentieth century Europe and North America, as med ical knowledge and epidemiology improved. The influence of living conditions on social pathology, although widely assumed, is even less predictable. There has usually been an association between slum conditions and social problems, notably crime. To a large extent this association reflects the underlying influence of poverty. Most people who live in slums do so because that is all they can afford and their low incomes make them vul nerable to crime. Low income households are not mo bile; they shop locally, buy in small quantities, and pay more than average for items of food and clothing. Their incomes are not only low but also uncertain, which undermines their ability to save, whether for their chil dren’s education, periods of illness, or old age. They may rationally conclude that it makes more sense to live in the present rather than try to plan for an uncertain and uninviting future. They are a vulnerable target for those engaged in illegal activity, while the young, especially, may be drawn into crime themselves by the absence of attractive alternatives. This becomes more likely because the stress of living hand to mouth often pulls families apart, so that children have to grow up early, without proper adult supervision and role models. If slum conditions reflect the poverty of their occu pants they also exacerbate that poverty and its associated social problems. This influence is of particular interest to social liberals. Conservatives often argue that poverty and slum conditions reflect low moral standards and the poor choices that some individuals have made. They leave little room for environmental influences. In contrast, ra ther than blaming the victim, liberals have argued that, for most slum dwellers, the choices are limited. From this point of view, among the important constraints that slum dwellers face is the geography of the built environment, not just of the slums themselves but of the larger met ropolitan area. It is generally agreed that social problems

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are compounded where the segregation of the poor oc curs on a large scale. An extensive slum may be the only world that children and many adult inhabitants ever see, or know. In school and in the ‘hood, a child’s peers may all come from poor households, with no role models or social networks to make social mobility possible. The recent African–American experience is a good example. Since the 1960s, a substantial black middle class has emerged and its opportunity to move into still segre gated, but prosperous, neighborhoods has increased. For the most part it has vacated the inner city, leaving behind a concentrated underclass whose problems are com pounded by their physical isolation from middle class peers and employment. In the same period, jobs have moved to the suburbs where they can only be reached by car, and the economic prospects for the residents of inner city neighborhoods have deteriorated. In some cities this has been counterbalanced by inner city re vitalization and residential gentrification. In others, however, the divorce of jobs and low income households has produced a spatial mismatch. The presence of immigrants and ethnic minorities is one of the most important ways in which the social composition of slums can vary because it typically affects the degree and pattern of social interaction. Slums vary in their social cohesion. Because they are likely to contain a high proportion of people with low levels of education and other forms of social capital, and of those who have physical or mental disabilities, slums may lack social networks and organization. This fact has often been overstated by middle class observers, either because they were unfamiliar with life in slum neighborhoods or be cause they had preconceived ideas as to what should count as an appropriate form of social interaction. In varying degrees, every slum contains its own social order. This is especially true where many local residents share a minority culture, since the creation and maintenance of local social institutions may be viewed as necessary to group survival. Immigrants, above all, are likely to create formal and informal associations. Slums that contain a high proportion of immigrants may boast dense social networks, richer than those of more affluent areas where private and individualistic modes of life are viable. Sometimes, discrimination may compel all members of a minority to occupy a ghetto. Ghetto may describe a concentration of people of any kind (e.g., ‘student ghetto’), but the term usually refers to people of a par ticular ethnicity. It is not necessarily a slum: in recent years, many Chinese immigrants in North America have chosen to settle in affluent ethnic enclaves. In contrast, involuntary ghettoes that harbor minorities who face discrimination often contain a mixture of incomes. Here, even well to do members of a community may have to occupy what becomes a slum, in part because crowding is forced upon them by the absence of residential

alternatives. Jewish ghettoes in some European cities during the 1930s were made into slums in this fashion as were some African–American neighborhoods in the early post war decades. Since 2001, rising tensions between Muslims and host societies in Western Europe, North America, and Australia will probably help ghettoize this community, producing similar – although hopefully less serious and only temporary – effects. The enforced concentration of educated, middle class people in slum areas can be a radicalizing force.

Changing Patterns and Types of Slums The character of slums has changed, and now varies greatly. Slums, like the poor themselves, have always been with us. Concentrated districts of crowded and in sanitary housing had always been a feature of ports. They became larger and more common as European powers, first Portugal and Spain, and then the Netherlands, France, and Britain, developed colonial empires from the sixteenth century onward. They grew in colonial cities such as Batavia and Mombasa and in metropolitan cen ters, notably London. But it was the industrial revolution which gathered momentum from the late seventeenth century that put slums on the cultural map. Some writers have suggested that this was because, for the first time, urban conditions for a growing middle class had im proved sufficiently that it was now possible to treat as pathological the sorts of conditions that had previously been viewed as the norm. But most have assumed that the new concern with slums reflected the unprecedented growth of cities, coupled with the emerging political ambitions of the working class. The industrial revolution not only created a new type of urban center, the indus trial city, but also enabled for the first time a sustained process of urbanization that, by 1850, made Great Britain the first urban nation. The term slum dates from the 1820s, being first applied to rooms and then to poorer districts in London and soon the burgeoning industrial cities of the United Kingdom, northwestern Europe, and then North America. Among the most graphic con temporary accounts are those provided by Charles Dickens, of London, by Friedrich Engels, of Manchester, and Emile Zola, of a fictional mining town in northern France. By the 1880s the term ‘slumming’ had been coined to describe how the middle classes visited and patronized slum districts, whether for amusement or charity. Soon, studies of poverty and slums by Henry Mayhew and Charles Booth (London), by Seebohm Rowntree (York), and by the Pittsburgh survey in the United States, helped pioneer the methods of social science. In these cities, ‘slum’ was used in various ways. Sometimes it referred only to the very worst

Slums

concentrations of dilapidation, disease, and vice. Often, however, it was used more broadly to refer to extensive districts of the working class. It became part of a polar ized discourse: Benjamin Disraeli spoke of The Two Na tions and by the end of the nineteenth century the social counterpoint became couched as slum versus suburb. It was in this era that the moral dimensions of slum dis course were most fully developed. Reformers sought to distinguish between the deserving low income worker and the undeserving poor and to separate them physic ally so that the former would not become infected by the undesirable traits of the latter. The decentralization of jobs and the suburbanization of the working class came to be seen as the ideal solution to the problem of the slums. The twentieth century has seen a reorganization of the global geography of slums. In Western and then Eastern Europe, as in North America, Australia, Japan, and in a few of the newly industrialized nations such as Singapore and South Korea, slums have become less common. This trend has been hindered as well as helped by the state. Probably the most important, but least heralded, state initiative has been the introduction and enforcement of building regulations, and then mainten ance by laws. By the nineteenth century, all major European and North American cities had regulations to limit fire risk. By the early twentieth century, new regulations sought to improve ventilation and sanitation. By the 1930s cities commonly enforced by laws that re quired owners to maintain their properties to minimum standards. In theory, and in countries like Sweden in practice, controls almost eliminated substandard housing. In some countries, regulations have been complemented by large scale social housing schemes. These have been a mixed blessing. Low rise, garden city style housing in urban settings often worked well. But some projects were placed in isolated settings so that residents found it dif ficult to find, and reach, work. High rise blocks proved unsuitable for families, especially when they were poorly maintained. Too often, as in the ‘grands ensembles’ of suburban Paris, poor location and design combined to exacerbate and even create major social problems, as was dramatized by riots in November 2005. Other state initiatives have done more harm than good. In the nineteenth century cities undertook slum clearance schemes that made crowding worse because they displaced people without providing an alternative. In England these were encouraged by Parliamentary Acts after 1868. Many schemes were used for purposes of civic beautification and pride, even in a city like Joseph Chamberlain’s Birmingham, which was in other ways an exemplar of municipal socialism. Other schemes enabled railways to build lines to centrally located stations (e.g., London), or to make it easier for the state to exercise control over the unpredictable urban masses (e.g., Haussman’s Paris). In the twentieth century, clearance

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was given a more altruistic tinge. In theory, for example under Britain’s Greenwood Act (1930), it combined demolition with the construction of social housing. In the colonial world some of the earliest and largest examples are provided by India. There, beginning in Bombay in 1896, Improvement Trusts widened streets and built chawls (tenements). In practice, however, more people were displaced than were re housed; there was always a lag of several years; most of those who occupied the new units were more affluent than those displaced. It was a similar story with the various types of urban renewal schemes that most developed nations fashioned after 1945. Some decent housing was destroyed; many house holds were displaced but not re housed, and with little compensation; the new housing was physically adequate but often inappropriate and disliked. If slums have waned in the developed world, especially since 1945, it is largely because suburbanization has reduced the population pressure on inner city districts, and above all because rising incomes have made it possible for the majority of households to occupy at least minimally adequate hous ing. These trends, combined with the enforcement of building and housing regulations, have ensured that in western nations the housing problem no longer takes the form of the slum but of the homeless, for whom none of the available housing is affordable. Since 1945 it is the developing world that has seen the most rapid rates of urbanization and, with it, the flour ishing of slums. These typically take the form of squatter settlements at the urban fringe and are different from the slums of western cities in the industrial era in a number of ways, mostly bad. First, the new slum settlements have not always depended upon the growth of urban industry, or indeed of any type of employment. There are striking exceptions, beginning with Hong Kong, and then in cluding Taiwan, South Korea, and Mainland China. But since 1945, in the developing world many people have moved to cities because of poor conditions in rural areas and not because city jobs are abundant. Their urban prospects, then, and those of the slums they occupy, are poor. Second, many of the new slum dwellers are squatters with no legal right to the property they occupy. They have little or no recourse when, as happened in the early 2000s in Zimbabwe, the state evicts them. Then, too, without title, owners cannot use property as col lateral, and have little incentive to make improvements. Third, the scale of modern slums is unprecedented. Some are huge, amounting to hundreds of thousands of people and constitute cities in their own right. Even those lo cated in smaller urban areas loom large in relative terms. In many cities in the developing world the majority of residents live in districts that may fairly be labeled slums. Even in the time of Dickens, London was never quite like that. This changed proportion undermines the capacity of municipalities to handle the problem. The closest

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analogy might be with those low income suburbs in North America which have had to provide basic services from a weak tax base. Examples in the Chicago area in clude Robbins, an African–American suburb of the 1920s which never prospered and Stone Park, a small white suburb that lacked the resources to prevent Al Capone making it a crime base in the 1930s. Financial problems compelled all of Toronto’s low income suburbs to go bankrupt during the Depression, but at least these could be bailed out by the Provincial government. This is not usually an option in the developing world today. A fourth difference is in the location of many of these settlements at the urban fringe. This point can be over stated. On the one hand, suburban slums were always more common than observers chose to emphasize. In the early twentieth century, the suburbs of many European cities, including Paris, Rome, and Athens contained thousands of low income workers, many of whom had built their own homes in poorly serviced districts. The same was true in North America, around cities like Los Angeles or Toronto, where contemporaries spoke of the suburban shacklands. These attracted less attention than the pockets of poverty in the inner city: they were less visible to the social elite and perceived to be less threa tening. But they were common enough. On the other hand, cities in the developing world contain many inner city districts which can be described as slums. For example, the social geography of the poor in Cairo or Rio de Janeiro includes a mixture of city and suburban slums. But the overall balance is different. The usual nine teenth century slum was found in the inner city; the typical modern slum lies at the squatter fringe. This can have certain advantages: fringe land is cheaper and more abundant, and so settlements there are lower in density and tolerate poorer services. It can also have disadvan tages, especially isolation from jobs, above all those in the formal sector that provide higher and steadier incomes. There is one aspect in which the modern slum dweller is better off than her nineteenth century coun terpart. Rates of infant mortality, the single best indicator of population health, sometimes exceed 0.100 (one in ten) in the poorer squatter settlements, more than ten times as high as in the cities of developed nations. This is an appalling toll. But rates were higher still in many nine teenth century cities, commonly exceeding 0.200. Phys ical conditions in modern slums are as bad as those of an earlier era, but medical knowledge is greatly improved, underlining the fact that culture, in the broad sense, matters. Underlying these distinctions between slums in the developed and the developing world, but sometimes cutting across them, is the varied manner in which they have developed. Those areas that grow through a formal process of development take time to become slums. The

concept of the formal sector refers to those parts of an economy that are visible to, and regulated by, the state. In real estate, it encompasses land sales that are legally registered, builders and tradesmen who are certified, and companies that pay relevant taxes. In societies, or areas, where the formal sector is responsible for land develop ment, very little (if any) housing will be built by the private sector for the poor. It is rarely profitable. Without state intervention, the only way low income households can obtain accommodation is through a process of filtering down: dwellings built for the middle, or upper middle classes slowly deteriorate or become obsolescent. As they decline in value relative to new housing, they become occupied by lower income households. Larger dwellings may be subdivided, which enables still lower income households to move in, while hastening physical decay. Decline may become more rapid where a high proportion of the housing stock is owned by absentee landlords, who calculate maintenance on the basis of profitability. It is hastened when financial institutions red line an area, refusing to make loans because the risks are perceived to be too great. As housing deteriorates and is subdivided, families double up, and respectable areas decline into a slum. This process is not inevitable, as the recent gentrification of many inner city areas has shown. But it has been common enough to be one of the more common ways in which slums have formed. Alternatively, many areas were slums from the be ginning. There are three ways this can happen. First, they can arise in squatter settlements where owner builders lack the incentive, knowledge, and/or resources to build decent housing and so erect shacks where municipal regulations that govern construction are nonexistent or ineffectively enforced and where no municipal govern ment is able or willing to provide basic services. Second, less excusable, are the public housing estates that became instant slums because they were allowed to become overcrowded, because construction and then mainten ance was skimped, or because the design of the housing was inappropriate to their occupants’ culture and needs. Overcrowding has often been allowed by public housing agencies because evictions force people onto the street; skimping has reflected political corruption as well as the usual shortage of funds; poor designs have often reflected the use of styles developed in the west as symbols of modernity. Third, occasionally entrepreneurs see profits in the building of cheap tenements that are poorly built and designed, as well as overcrowded.

Slum Discourse and Public Policy Not all of the districts labeled as slums have required public action to solve their problems. Like other labels,

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‘slum’ simplifies a complex reality and, when made the basis for public action, can acquire a regrettable power. Outsiders, including middle class reformers, have often used the term inappropriately to promote a physical solution that was unnecessary. Sometimes they have failed to understand that a physically inadequate area could be socially viable, and be able to address most if not all of its own problems. Sometimes they have de ployed the label cynically to justify policies, for example, slum clearance, that were intended to accomplish un related goals. From the late nineteenth century until the 1960s, the discourse of slums was a powerful tool that was used by social reformers and urban planners, not always wisely or justly. Beginning, especially, during the 1960s its continued misuse helped inspire a backlash among writers and academics. They raised questions about the meaning and usefulness of the term, to the point that it is now rarely used in the developed world even in situations where it could be justified. They also raised questions about previous attempts to solve the slum problem. The evolution in slum discourse has been apparent among geographers, who have used the term extensively because it meshes with persistent themes in the discip line. Marked by high densities and physical deterioration, slums are distinctive elements in the urban landscape. With concentrations of the poor, and other disadvantaged minorities, they dramatize the way social distinctions and exclusions are inscribed in space. Then, too, the associ ation of crowding and poor sanitation of slum areas with ill health and social deviance suggests how the built environment can affect social life and public health. Geographers have a particular stake in the concept. Influenced by Charles Stokes, many writers now distinguish between slums of hope as opposed to des pair. The former, which are likely to be new and oc cupied by owner builders and recent migrants, are those where residents are in a position to make improvements, as long as the state allows them to do so. They may or may not require public assistance, in the form of mu nicipal services. Slums of despair are typically older and deteriorating, occupied by tenants and, in general, by those who, unaided, can do little to improve their lives. It is these districts that require the most vigorous public intervention. In reality, there is a continuum, while the prospects of even the slums of hope depend critically upon local job growth which in turn is shaped un predictably by the global economy. Hope, like slum, is a relative term. Public intervention can take various forms. Until the 1960s, planners assumed that neighborhood decline was inevitable and that once an area had become a slum the only solution was to clear it. Influenced by Jane Jacobs, during the 1960s this view was successfully challenged in at least two ways. First, writers and planners now

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appreciate that physical planning may relocate, and perhaps improve, but cannot eliminate slums unless it is accompanied by social and economic programs that generate and/or redistribute wealth. Second, they now accept that physical upgrading is usually both cheaper and more effective than clearance, that the best methods will vary with local conditions (including patterns of property ownership), and that to be effective they must involve local residents rather than relying on the pater nalist decisions of local officials, however well inten tioned. Accordingly, starting in the 1970s, in the developed world, governments have encouraged the renovation of existing houses and neighborhoods. In the developing world, international agencies encouraged governments to support owner building by providing sites and services to upgrade slums (often by installing piped water and sewers) and to improve the governance of urban areas. Although these programs are better than those of the past, they have made little headway against the tide of urbanization. The United Nations estimates that one third of the world’s urban population now lives in slums, mostly in the developing world. The challenge that they pose is partly one of urban planning and gov ernance, but even more it is one of poverty, inequality, and global development. See also: Gentrification; Ghettos; Homelessness; Housing; Housing, Neighborhoods and Health; Industrial City; Squatter Settlements; Transport and Social Exclusion; Urban Policy.

Further Reading Byington, M. (1910). Homestead. The Households of a Mill Town. New York: Russell Sage. Clinard, M. (1966). Slums and Community Development. Experiments in Self Help. New York: The Free Press. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of Slums. London: Verso. Dyos, H. J. and Reeder, D. A. (1973). Slums and suburbs. In Dyos, H. J. & Wolff, M. (eds.) The Victorian City. Images and Realities. Shapes on the Ground/A Change of Accent, vol. 2, pp 359 386. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Engels, F. (1952). The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. London: Allen and Unwin. Faure, A. (2006). Local life in working class Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. Journal of Urban History 32, 761 772. Fried, M. (1966). Grieving for a lost home. Psychological costs of relocation. In Wilson, J. Q. (ed.) Urban Renewal. The Record and the Controversy, pp 359 379. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Harris, R. (1996). Unplanned Suburbs. Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900 1950. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The Failure of Town Planning. New York: Random House. Mayne, A. (1993). The Imagined Slum. Newspaper Representation in Three Cities, 1870 1914. Leicester: Leicester University Press. Riis, J. (1890). How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the Tenements of New York. New York: Scribner’s. http://www.yale.edu/amstud/ inforev/riis/chap6.html (last accessed 21 May 2007). Shapiro, A. L. (1985). Housing the Poor of Paris, 1850 1902. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

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Stedman Jones, G. (1971). Outcast London. A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society. Oxford: Clarendon. Stokes, C. J. (1962). A theory of slums. Land Economics 38, 187 197. Suttles, G. D. (1968). The Social Order of the Slum. Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City. Chicago: Chicago University Press. United Nations Human Settlements Programme (2003). The Challenge of Slums. Global Report on Human Settlements 2003. London: Earthscan. Ward, D. (1989). Poverty, Ethnicity, and the American City, 1840 1925. Changing Conceptions of the Slum and the Ghetto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yelling, J. A. (1992). Slums and Redevelopment. Policy and Practice in England, 1918 45, with Particular Reference to London. London: University College London Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu La Guardia and Wagner Archives. http://memory.loc.gov Library of Congress. American Memory. http://www.old8thward.com Michael Barton and Stephanie P. Gilbert, Harrisburg’s Old 8th Ward. http://www.tenement.org New York. Lower East Side Tenement Museum. http://digitalgallery.nypl.org New York Public Library Digital Gallery. http://www.portcities.org.uk Port cities UK. http://www.archive.org Prelinger Archive.

Smith, N. A. L. Hansen, Lund University, Lund, Sweden & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Imperialism The production and protection of unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships (often, but not merely, between nation-states). Lebensraum ‘Living space’. The term comes from the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel’s Politische Geography from 1897. The International Critical Geography group (ICG) An international association established in the late 1990s to provide an alternative to the increasingly institutionalized and corporate culture of universities. The group is comprised of geographers and nongeographers committed to developing the theory and practice aimed at dismantling prevalent systems of capitalist exploitation; oppression on the basis of gender, race, and sexual preference; and imperialism, neoliberalism, national aggression, and environmental destruction.

Smith, Neil (1954 –) Public intellectual and pioneer in the exploration of connections between space, nature, social theory, and history, Neil Smith was born in Leith, Scotland, in 1954 (Figure 1). He earned his BSc from the University of St. Andrews, where Joe Doherty was an important mentor in the early stage of Smith’s formal education. He left Scot land for Baltimore in 1977 to initiate his PhD research on gentrification – a phenomenon he first encountered in Rose Street in Edinburgh’s New Town in 1972, again as an undergraduate in Philadelphia’s Society Hill, and later in New York City’s Lower East Side (and many places around the globe since then). Early on, Smith related the process to broader forces of uneven development. With David Harvey as his supervisor at Johns Hopkins Uni versity, Smith became deeply engaged with the work of Karl Marx, and he fully embraced the transition from the so called spatial science, taught to him as an under graduate, toward a Marxist approach that equipped him to analyze modern capitalist society, first from an urban point of view, later from multiscalar perspectives. After graduating from Johns Hopkins in 1982, Smith taught at Columbia University and at Rutgers University, where he was Chair of the Geography Department (1991–94) and a Senior Fellow of the Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture. From 2000

he was distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City Uni versity of New York (CUNY) and he directed the Center for Place, Culture and Politics. Through the center, Smith has created a vigorous interdisciplinary intel lectual environment where graduate students, faculty members, and the public are engaging in the exploration of crucial contemporary issues. The center’s themes have included: the new internationalism, crossing borders, imperialism, war patriotism and resistance, transforma tive cities, democracy shrugged, catastrophe and dis content, and geopolitics and insecurity. He has received many awards and honors for his work. For example, his 2003 book, American Empire won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography, the AAG Globe Book Award, and the Henry Adams Prize. Neil Smith has produced groundbreaking intellectual contributions in the field of human geography for three decades. His work spans the identification of theoretical concepts such as the rent gap, as well as extensive archival studies that underpin studies such as the prize winning American Empire. In 1979 Smith published an article where he identified the ‘rent gap’ (the difference between actual and potential grond rent) as a key force behind urban change, emphasizing the importance of patterns of in vestment and disinvestment in the built environment. In a later book on The New Urban Frontier he wrote more broadly on New York City, characterizing it as a revanchist city, in which the logic of the market, the state, and police force produce unjust conditions for the urban poor and other socioculturally weak groups while the upper classes ‘reclaim’ the city. The book became a landmark text in

Figure 1 Neil Smith.

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gentrification research, commonly contrasted with David Ley’s book The New Middle Class. Smith’s book Uneven Development (1984–90–2008) con cerns political economy and the production of uneven de velopment, illustrating how space is constructed and reconstructed as expressions of (primarily capitalist) social relations. From this perspective, uneven development is the hallmark of the capitalist mode of production. In the same vein as David Harvey’s Limits to Capital and Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, the book shows how and why space matters to capitalism – an element left almost untouched in Marx’s work. Human societies under capit alism, the book argues, socially produce nature. A ‘first nature’, external to human societies, has been replaced by a socially produced ‘second nature’ through uneven means of the logic of market, private property, and free trade. The book provides a lens to critically analyze contemporary power struggles over the production of nature: e.g., global warming and the Kyoto Protocol, genetically modified or ganisms, biotechnology, and working and health conditions. Another key interrelated idea that derives from Uneven Development is the importance of the understanding of the dynamics of the production of geographical scale and, in later work, Smith followed this train of thought and de veloped a research agenda that has inspired a whole gen eration of social scientists to explore the question of ‘scale’. American Empire, published in 2003 to some acclaim, demonstrates how US global ambitions in the 1940s amounted to an attempt to create American global eco nomic Lebensraum. According to Smith, the US led wars subsequently are to be viewed not only as wars on ter rorism. Nor did the US just want to control the important oil resources. Rather the wars were designed to complete a US centered globalization that has characterized the third moment of US ambition since the 1980s. ‘The endgame of globalization’, as Smith calls it in a later book, is about gaining global control through geoeco nomic means via the long term installation of neoliberal institutional frameworks. Smith’s work collectively identifies a series of shifts that crystallize a new stage in uneven development. In this new stage, Smith argues, the geographic dynamic of uneven development has shifted from national and re gional economies to the nexus between global and local. From this perspective, the geographical scales of human activity are the product of changing social relationships, and are to be understood as something different from the traditional distinction between fixed or given urban,

regional, national, and global scales. The transformation of the global political economy since the 1970s has in volved a restructuring of scales at which different kinds of political, economic, and cultural activities are organ ized, leading to a new form of politics of scale. Apart from major contributions to the understanding of critical issues of contemporary global societies, what makes Smith’s work especially appealing is his unflagging energy to search for more just alternative futures, whe ther through his engagement with alternative survival strategies for homeless people (e.g., the homeless ve hicle), his commitment to the discussions of a democra tized production of nature, or in terms of his midwifery of, and ongoing passion for, the International Critical Geography group (ICG). See also: Critical Geography; Gentrification; Harvey, D.; Imperialism, Cultural; Ley, D.; Nature; Neoliberalism; Public Space; Scale; Space I.

Further Reading Castree, N. (2004). Neil Smith. In Hubbard, P., Kitchin, R. & Valentine, G. (eds.) Key Thinkers on Space and Place, pp 264 268. London: Sage. Smith, N. (1979). Towards a theory of gentrification: A back to the city movement of capital not people. Journal of the American Planning Association 45, 538 548. Smith, N. (1987). Dangers of the empirical turn: Some comments on the CURS initiative. Antipode 19, 59 68. Smith, N. (1992). Contours of a spatialized politics: Homeless vehicles and the production of geographical scale. Social Text 33, 54 81. Smith, N. (1996). The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge. Smith, N. (2002). Scales of terror and the resort to geography: September 11, October 7. Society and Space 19, 631 637. Smith, N. (2003). American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Smith, N. (2004). Scale bending and the fate of the national. In Sheppard, E. & McMaster, R. (eds.) Scale and Geographic Inquiry. Nature, Society, and Method, pp 192 212. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, N. (2005). The Endgame of Globalization. London: Routledge. Smith N. (2008) Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space (3rd edn.). Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.

Relevant Websites http://web.gc.cuny.edu Center for Place, Culture and Politics. http://econgeog.misc.hit u.ac.jp ICG (International Critical Geography group).

Social Capital A. Bebbington, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Heuristics Devices or methods that – often in commonsense, easy-to-grasp ways – help solve problems in a manner that, though not perfect, is reasonably close to an adequate solution. These devices aid in thinking about problems and phenomena that, though they may lack conceptual precision, bring intelligibility. Rent-Seeking A term used in economics and other social sciences to refer to efforts to secure financial gain not through production, trade, or other ‘legitimate’ economic activity but rather through manipulation of legal, regulatory, fiscal, or other such rules governing the economy, or through monopoly control of certain assets. It can refer to means that are both legal and illegal. Washington Consensus (and Post-Washington Consensus) The Washington Consensus was a term initially coined by John Williamson to refer to ten economic policy recommendations that, he argued, constituted a more or less agreed-upon package for resolving macroeconomic crises and eliciting stabilization and growth. It has also been used in a derogatory way – by critics of such reform and adjustment-related policies – to refer to policy prescriptions deemed neoliberal.

Introduction Since 1993, the term ‘social capital’ has rapidly risen to prominence in social science and policy debates. In devel opment studies it has become a buzzword and the author whose work triggered its rapid popularization, political scientist Robert Putnam, was by some accounts the most cited social scientist of the 1990s. This remarkable explosion of interest in and use of the concept also generated a sort of ‘counter literature’, dissecting the limitations of the concept and the many ways in which it is used, and teasing out the (deliberately or not) hidden political project that lay behind the rise and rise of social capital. The concept has become important in a range of in tellectual and policy domains, among them health, community development, urban renewal, and local gov ernance. Another such domain was international devel opment, the focus of this article. In what follows, meanings that have been given to the concept are ex plored, tracing both their points of overlap and

difference. The next section maps how the concept tra veled into development debates, while the subsequent section discusses certain ways in which the concept has been used in development organizations and policy as well as in development studies. The penultimate section outlines some of the criticisms that have been advanced about the concept, and the article wraps up with a re flection on what may have been lost possibilities in these otherwise quite sharp and fierce debates on social capital and development.

Meanings of Social Capital One criticism of the way in which social capital is used in these various policy and research domains has hinged around the multiple meanings given to the term (see later). This diversity of meanings should come as no great surprise, given the equally divergent understandings offered in the foundational works on the concept. Some authors suggest three such foundational authors – Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman, and Robert Putnam – and we add a fourth here, Mancur Olson. Use of the term ‘social capital’ predates each of these authors, but it is in their work that it received some of its most systematic and widely accessible treatment. For Bourdieu social capital is ‘‘the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relation ships of mutual acquaintance and recognition – or in other words, to membership in a group – which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectivity owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word’’ (1986: 248–249). It constitutes one of several ‘forms of capital’ variously referred to as economic, cultural, symbolic, and social. Bourdieu insists that these forms of capital – though not reducible one to another – must be understood in relation to each other. That is, the distribution of social capital is related to that of economic capital, and together with cultural capital is used (consciously and unconsciously) to reproduce power re lations and forms of access to resources that tend to re produce existing distributions of power and capitals. Bourdieu’s is a concept of social capital suffused with no tions of power and political economy. Coleman comes from a quite distinct intellectual lineage, though in important ways his approach to social capital overlaps with Bourdieu’s. For him too, social capital is a resource that inheres in relationships – a feature of social structure – but can be appropriable by

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individuals. This social capital is understood (inter alia) as the norms, sanctions, obligations, and expectations in hering in these relationships. This capital can be mobil ized by individuals in their forms of action, and as a means of accessing resources. However, while Bourdieu’s approach is one in which structure and institutionalized behavior are paramount, Coleman’s analysis lays much more emphasis on individuals’ calculations in the de ployment of social capital. In their different ways, Bourdieu and Coleman em phasize the individually appropriable and contextual nature of social capital – its embeddedness in particular social structures is what gives it its value. In the work of Robert Putnam, while Coleman is invoked, social capital is understood less contextually and more collectively. Putnam emphasizes the norms of trust and reciprocity that emerge from participation in civic associations, and argues that these norms underpin a series of collective benefits: the creation of responsive government (through promoting civicness and accountability), dynamic econ omies (through easing transaction costs and reducing rent seeking behavior), and more generally, vital, en gaged communities (his book Bowling alone applies the argument to the US). Putnam also appears more inter ested in the properties of trust and civility that emerge from participation in groups rather than in the dynamics and groups themselves. This leads him toward a less contextualized understanding of social capital, and he certainly shows a greater willingness to work with ag gregate, de contextualized indicators and data. This emphasis on trust and aggregate qualities of so cial life that enhance collective gain also underlay Mancur Olson’s approach to social capital. Olson, how ever, was far less sanguine about the values of partici pation in organizations (particularly large ones), convinced as he was that many sociopolitical organiza tions rapidly lead to rigidities in the economy and be come vehicles for rent seeking behavior. He was, though, convinced of the value of generalized trust in society and for him – following Douglass North approach to insti tutions and economic performance – social capital in hered in those macro institutions producing trust. Across these four traditions we have quite differing approaches to social capital: social capital can rest pri marily in micro sociological or macro institutional foundations; has to be understood in context, or does not; is appropriable by individuals or collectivities; and has to be understood in relationship to political economy, or does not. As one way of ordering this diversity, Uphoff distinguishes between approaches that emphasize cog nitive forms of social capital, and those that emphasize structural forms of social capital. The former hinge around values and perceptions in which norms of trust and civicness are paramount: they are primarily inter ested in the role of trust in influencing other societal (and

development) outcomes and dynamics. The latter focus on social structures (networks, organizations, and rela tionships) and their role in facilitating access to other resources and institutions. These structural forms of so cial capital can in turn be broken down into different types. One schema distinguishes between so called bonding social capital (close ties between geographically and socially proximate actors), bridging social capital (connecting groups and organizations that, though simi lar, are distant in other regards, especially spatially), and linking social capital (those relationships between or ganizations and actors who are otherwise quite different, socially and in terms of their relative power). These distinctions help map out ways in which the concept was taken up in development studies and policy.

Travels to Development: The Take-up of Social Capital There is no doubt that it was the publication of Putnam’s Making democracy work in 1993 that launched the concept of social capital into wider public debate, and specifically into the world of international development. Various channels were at work here, but two are of particular importance: the World Bank, and a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), coordinated by sociologist Peter Evans. These two channels worked with the concept in somewhat differing ways that would each be apparent in later work on social capital and development. Putnam’s work flowed into the World Bank through two distinct routes. The first of these was via the Development Economics Vice Presidency. This is where the World Bank’s economics research is located. Here the concept triggered two broad types of study. The first understood social capital in its cognitive sense. This research worked with attitudinal datasets, exploring the role of trust in macroeconomic and macro societal dynamics. The publi cations of Knack and Keefer are particularly important here and raised the significance of macro institutional arrange ments in helping foster such trust. Mancur Olson’s con ceptualizations were as influential as Putnam’s in this research. The second line of research sought to combine quantitative and qualitative work as a means of exploring the extent to which measures of social capital might give more robustness to more traditional econometric ap proaches to poverty. As Lant Pritchett, one of these authors would later note, the discussion on social capital helped focus the attention of ‘socially aware’ economists on the ‘social something’ that they knew helped explain forms of collective action, information sharing, and the like, but which they had not yet been able to account for or model adequately. The second channel passed through the Vice Presi dency for Environmentally Sustainable Development,

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whose chief, Ismail Serageldin, began talking of social capital as part of the wealth of nations and as one of four assets for sustainable development. Serageldin suggested that a more complete assessment of the national wealth should include – and indeed account separately for – stocks of human, natural, and social capital as well as the more common measures of financial and fixed capital. The argument was that GNP/GDP and income per capita measures alone were inadequate measures of wealth. It was also argued that sustainability could best be thought of in terms of the mixes and trade offs among produced capital, natural capital, human capital, and social capital, and that sustainability could be con ceptualized in terms of the rules governing the substi tution among these different stocks of capital. Here, as in Bourdieu and Coleman, social capital was being understood as one of several forms of capital. Also, again as in Bourdieu and Coleman, it was increasingly seen as a structural rather than a cognitive phenomenon. By the time of the high profile and polemic World Development Report of 2000/2001, Attacking Poverty, social capital is dis cussed primarily in terms of social relationships and organ izations, and in its bonding, bridging, and linking forms. This, however, was as far as the similarity with Bourdieu went. His attention to the structural relationships between the distri bution of social and economic capital is largely absent in these approaches, as is any real politicized understanding of power and political economy (and some readers will recall that one of the reasons why Attacking Poverty was polemic was precisely because of an effort to excise some such sensibilities from the report). In these broader senses, in the final, ap proved text social capital was conceived more as in Putnam’s work – an asset whose dynamics and qualities could be considered apart from political economy. A structural understanding of the role of social capital in development also emerged from Evans’ AAAS project, though in this case the understanding was also far more contextualized and politically sensitive. This project – enquiring into the place of social capital in development – concluded that one of its most important roles was in fostering synergies: between state and civil society, be tween government and community, and among different civil society actors. Notwithstanding its importance, Evans and colleagues argued, such synergy was generally over looked in debates typically pitched in terms of state or market or civil society. Yet it could play important roles in fostering the emergence of pro poor public services, the creation and maintenance of collective goods, and the consolidation of pro poor and more democratized forms of government. Underlying such synergy were social rela tionships bridging institutional and political boundaries that served to foster both complementarity and account ability among actors. These relationships – understood as social capital – could be built both through long standing interactions embedded in deeper social structures, as well

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as through policy interventions ‘and’ in some cases, pol itical conflict itself. The possibility of their emergence also depended very much on prior political economies of de velopment and distribution.

Social Capital and Development Studies As development studies’ use of the concept of social capital has unfolded since these early interventions, structural (rather than cognitive) notions of social capital have become progressively more prominent, and the need for greater political economic sensibility has become ever more apparent. Social capital – understood as the re sources inhering in social relations, networks, and organ izations – has been understood in two main ways: (1) as an asset among several forms of capital and one that facilitates access to other capitals and institutional spheres; and (2) as a source of synergy among distinct development actors. The asset based understanding of social capital has been most visible in approaches to livelihood, poverty, and welfare that understand these as a function of household access to different types of capital. The quantitative variant of this approach seeks to model the relative effects of social capital (as compared to other assets) on some de fined measure of welfare. As something of a derivative of this work, quantitative and economic approaches to social risk management have also explored the importance of social capital as an asset that helps people reduce risk and cope with crisis periods when they occur. Such quantita tive approaches have, at certain moments, played an im portant role in making the importance of social relations more visible in environments otherwise dominated by rational choice approaches in economics. The qualitative variant of asset based conceptual izations has been perhaps most apparent in the large body of writing on livelihoods and vulnerability. Moser’s work on the asset vulnerability framework was formative here, shortly followed by the sustainable livelihoods framework. Each afforded an important role to social capital, under stood as facilitating access to other assets and to insti tutions such as schools, healthcare centers, or financial service organizations that provide those assets. Social capital was deemed important for such institutional access through providing the necessary contacts and/or by guaranteeing the person’s reliability and accountability. This argument has been particularly used in micro fi nancial services literature and practice, in which social capital (in the form of group membership) is taken as a guarantee that loans will be repaid. Another strand in this writing has viewed social capital as an important safety net, a means of reducing vulnerability. Here social rela tionships (formal or informal) are valued for the role that they can play in helping people recover from or cope with crisis, violence, or other sources of risk and perturbation.

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The sustainable livelihoods framework was adopted by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) just as DfID itself was becoming a far more as sertive (and better financed) actor on the international stage. As such, DfID actively promoted the framework among its various national and international, govern mental and nongovernmental partners, and there can be little doubt that this helped further disseminate the no tion of social capital as an asset of the poor. Subsequently, enthusiasm for asset based livelihood frameworks has declined somewhat and – as with sustainability itself – the sense seems to be that the frameworks were more helpful as heuristics than as research tools. Indeed, if they were to play an important role in structuring research they still had to be combined with broader theories of development and of the dynamics driving asset distri bution. Too often, perhaps, use of the framework re placed any serious engagement with theory. Social capital as an asset fostering institutional syn ergy has received somewhat less attention, a negligence that is perhaps ironic if one were to consider the extent to which people operating within development organiza tions (and development studies institutes) depend on social capital assets as they build the institutional ar rangements that allow them to do their own work. That said, there have been interesting attempts to understand the workings of national poverty reduction programs in these terms. Among academic researchers, Elinor Ostrom’s important corpus of work on institutional ar rangements for delivering development (in its varying dimensions) continues to demonstrate the importance of social capital as a source of synergy. Jonathan Fox’s in depth research in Mexico does the same, while adding a political economy analysis to understanding why certain forms of social capital and synergy emerge (or are absent) in particular contexts.

Criticisms The concept of social capital has, in development studies at least, been criticized with as much gusto as it has at other times been celebrated. Some of these criticisms hinge around what are seen to be the analytical short comings of the concept and its use; others are more concerned about the larger political project that the concept is deemed to serve and that those using it are deemed to be promoting (deliberately or not). In this section, we consider each type of criticism. Analytically, probably the greatest complaint about social capital has been that it has been used to refer to so many dimensions of social life that it becomes vacuous. At different times, social capital refers to trust, values of reciprocity, and norms of civicness; at other times, it is used to refer to the social relationships that produce

these values. At different times, social capital is used to refer to organizations and associations, while at other times, it refers instead to the qualities inherent within the everyday social relationships that can make possible the building of organizations; and so on. The concept is sometimes used to refer to dimensions of social relations that deliver particular results (e.g., trust), at other times it is used to refer to that trust, and at still others it is used to refer to both the relationships and their effects. Put an other way, much social capital writing suffers from con fusion over what constitutes the dependent and the independent variables at play. A closely related problem in social capital research has been to find adequate indicators. Depending on the study in question, studies have used as indicators everything from answers to attitudinal survey based questions regarding how far respondents trust other people through to the number of organizations people belong to and the frequency with which they participate in their activities. Some efforts have been made to de velop standardized tool kits, with different indicators for different types of research and development problems, but it remains the case that social capital research is plagued both with lengthy explanations to justify the selection of particular indicators, and then with critiques which hinge as much on the limitations of the chosen indicators as on more analytical and substantive issues. Another set of criticisms relates to the explanatory power of the concept. Here the argument is that, even if the structure of a person’s social relationships might help explain elements of their livelihood, far more variance in both economic and political practice can be explained by variables other than social capital. Authors drawing on certain Marxian traditions argue that class – defined, broadly, in terms of relationships to the means of pro duction – is far more powerful an explainer than is social capital. Often this argument is made in broad theoretical terms though it has also been made empirically. Das for instance uses quantitative and qualitative data to argue that poverty levels in rural India are far more evidently an effect of class position than of wage laborers’ social capital. He also argues that for the very poorest in India, social relationships are not much of an asset because they are generally with equally poor and asset deprived per sons and so open up very little by way of access to other resources. Cleaver has made similar criticisms of the concept on the basis of research in Tanzania. For her, social capital is of little use either to explain the origins of chronic poverty or to identify ways out of such pov erty. This is so because of: three factors, which severely constrain the ability of the poorest people to actively construct or benefit from social capital through association and public representation. The dependence of very poor people on their own

Social Capital able bodiedness and their inability to sustain this is the first constraining factor. Secondly, they experience little room for maneuver in their kin and wider social relationships, due to small fragile families, unstable marital arrangements, and wider derogatory perceptions of the poor. Finally, the poorest people are constrained by their inability to ar ticulate successfully in public fora and even where the voices of the poor are heard, they are given little weight and exert negligible influence (Cleaver, 2005: 895 6).

In short, people are too subject to illness, disablement, lack of education, and general structural constraint to be able to participate in and gain advantage from social organizations. Observations, such as Cleaver’s, suggest a further problem with the concept, or at least the way it is gen erally used. That is, it encourages a focus on social re lationships, networks, and values in a way that draws attention away from political economy. Emphasizing the potential role of social capital in escaping poverty or building democratic institutions has the effect – intended or not – of de emphasizing the influence of local, na tional, and global political economy factors in producing poverty, weakening democracy, and constraining liveli hood options. Whether the use of social capital ‘needs’ to be so blind to political economy is, however, another question – as we have noted, Bourdieu’s version of the concept is explicitly embedded in a notion of structure and the relationships between economic capital and so cial capital. Still, it is the case that development writing has been far more influenced by Putnam’s political economy weak version of the concept than by Bourdieu’s political economy strong approach. If social capital is so limited in its explanatory cap acity, critics ask ‘why has it proven so popular and so resilient?’ The answer often given opens up a different terrain of critique. This critique questions the political motivations – conscious or unconscious – behind the use of social capital. By ignoring relationships of power and difference, and the relationships between social struc tures, economic arrangements, and the dynamics of ac cumulation, the concept lends itself to work that takes as given the basic arrangements governing contemporary social and economic life. As such, it is – the critique goes – a neoliberal (and neoliberalizing) concept which is therefore deemed to serve the larger projects of both the Washington and post Washington Consensus. In some hands it might become a reactionary concept, accepting the status quo and delivering interpretations that for many critics have the whiff of ‘culture of poverty’ and ‘blame the victim’ arguments that see people as poor not be cause of massive resource transfers out of their countries, but because they have not made the effort to invest sufficiently in their own social organizations and networks.

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Variants of this position seem broadly shared in the literature in critical development studies and critical development geography, and seem to explain the energy with which some authors attack, and dedicate so much effort in trying to destroy, the concept (indeed, for some this has been the explicitly stated goal). It raises the question, however, as to how far the concept ‘necessarily’ serves such a project. The article ends with a brief re flection on this.

Final Words The concept of social capital has proven to be something of a lightening rod, in social science in general, and de velopment studies/development geography in particular. The debates that it has elicited have served to mark clear lines between scholars and between political projects. These lines mark differences not just between radical and conservative projects, but also between radical and re formist projects within the broad socialist/social demo cratic left. To some extent, the debate has been characterized by more or less relentless insistence on the part of radical critics that social capital can only be de politicizing, reactionary, and obfuscating; and a more or less equally relentless insistence from those who have worked with the concept that, on the contrary, it can be useful for understanding how institutional and political boundaries are transgressed and how reformist progress is made toward more inclusive and democratic societies. Potentially bridging these different arguments is the question as to whether it is possible to build what Rankin calls a ‘Marxian approach to social capital’ one which would be centered on ‘‘a structural analysis of social capital y [that] y draws attention to the ideological as well as material dimensions of social change.’’ Such a project would seem to have been the intent (though clearly not the major one) in Bourdieu’s conceptual ization of social capital as one of several forms of capital, a project that did seek to keep hold of some notion of class and political economic structure while also seeking the sources of variance in the practices that derive from such structures. There is some evidence of development scholars slowly moving away from the concept of social capital as a research tool (if not as a heuristic). This seems to have happened before any serious and sustained attempt has been made to respond to Rankin’s challenge. This seems unfortunate, for it is also the case that class based and structural analyses suffer many explanatory limitations, especially when it comes to understanding the nitty gritty of building social movements and political alliances for ushering in and sustaining progressive social change. A Marxian approach to social capital may have had a lot to offer here, and it is not casual that a social movement

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theorist such as Crossley suggests that one of the most fruitful ways forward for theorizing social movements is to work with Bourdieu’s theory of practice and forms of capital. One wonders though, whether within develop ment studies the intensity and fierceness of the debate on social capital has had the effect of crowding out the possibility of elaborating this reflection – a reflection that would have been as strategically and politically valuable as it would have been analytically progressive. See also: Civil Society; Governance; Livelihoods; Sustainable Development; Vulnerability.

Further Reading Bebbington, A., Woolcock, M., Guggenheim, S. and Olson, E. (eds.) (2006). The Search for Empowerment. Social Capital as Idea and Practice at the World Bank. Bloomfield: Kumarian Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In Richardson, J. G. (ed.) Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press. Cleaver, F. (2005). The inequality of social capital and the reproduction of chronic poverty. World Development 33(6), 893 906. Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology 94, S95 S120. Crossley, N. (2002). Making Sense of Social Movements. Buckingham: Open University Press. Das, R. (2004). Social capital and poverty of the wage labour class: Problems with the social capital theory. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS29, 27 45. Evans, P. (ed.) (1996). State Society Synergy: Government and Social Capital in Development. Berkeley, CA: Institute for International Studies. Fine, B. (2001). Social Capital versus Social Theory. Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium. London: Routledge.

Knack, S. and Keefer, P. (1997). Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross country investigation. Quarterly Journal of Economics 12(4), 1251 1288. Moser, C. (1998). The asset vulnerability framework: Reassessing urban poverty reduction strategies. World Development 26(1), 1 19. North, D. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press. Olson, M. (1982). The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press. Putnam, R. (1993). Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rankin, K. (2001). Social capital, microfinance, and the politics of development. Feminist Economics 8(1), 1 24. Scoones, I. (1998). Sustainable rural Livelihoods: A Framework for Analysis. Working Paper 72. Brighton: Institute for Development Studies. Uphoff, N. (1999). Understanding social capital: Learning from the analysis and experience of participation. In Dasgupta, P. & Serageldin, I. (eds.) Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective. Washington: World Bank. Woolcock, M. (1998). Social capital and economic development: Towards a theoretical synthesis and policy framework. Theory and Society 27(2), 151 208.

Relevant Websites http://www.socialcapital foundation.org A Belgium based NGO dedicated to social capital issues. http://www.livelihoods.org/ A repository of thinking about livelihoods in which concepts of social capital feature. Closely related to the UK Department for International Development. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/ The Saguaro Seminar is an initiative of Robert Putnam to discuss social capital in the US. Many useful on links to Putnamesque thinking on social capital and community. http://go.worldbank.org/VEN7OUW280 This links to World Bank resources on social capital.

Social Capital, Place and Health L. Twigg and J. Mohan, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK, and University of Southampton, Southampton, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Collective Efficacy The undertaking of coordinated, group, or collective activities on behalf of the common good. Ecological Fallacy The fallacy of making inferences about individuals from aggregated data. Ecological Studies Research using data for areas as opposed to data for individuals. Epidemiology The study of the causes, distribution, and control of diseases in the population. Multilevel Models The technique of simultaneously modelling data collected at a number of geographical levels, whereby lower level units (e.g., individuals) nest in upper level units (e.g., neighborhoods, counties or regions). Prospective Study A study designed to follow participants forward through time. Reciprocity The act of undertaking a favor for another person, or group of people, without necessarily expecting something in return immediately. Good will prevails and the favor may or may not be called in at a later date. Social Epidemiology The study of the links between the social environment and the causes and distribution of disease within populations.

Introduction Interest in geographical variations in health status and health outcomes can be traced to the writings of the fifth century physician, Hippocrates, whose well known work, Of airs, waters and places, discussed the natural environ ment on health. Today the dominant focus is concerned with the influence of the social environment in ex plaining persistent health inequalities across individuals and populations. This focus, up until the late 1990s, centered on material circumstance and lifestyle. How ever, even after allowing for these factors, there remains unexplained variation, and so analytical attention has moved to the notion of social capital in determining health outcomes.

Concepts, Definitions, and Measurement Broadly speaking, social capital refers to the social or ganization of neighborhoods and communities and in

particular to the formal and informal patterns of associ ational life and community interaction through which relationships of trust are (or are not) established. In areas where social capital is strongly present, it is suggested that economic transactions, trust in governmental insti tutions, and psychosocial well being are all facilitated, to the benefit of all. The term ‘social capital’ has been present in various guises throughout the twentieth cen tury across many subject areas. It is claimed that social capital has beneficial effects on both individuals (e.g., promoting better health, facilitating child development) and communities (e.g., stimulating economic sustain ability and promoting organizational development). Due to this apparent ubiquity, social capital has been taken up by governments and NGOs in both the developed and developing world. The World Health Organization, for example, introduced a ‘Civil Society Initiative’ to help promote a wider understanding of the concept and the World Bank has introduced a Social Capital Initiative to improve understanding and promote dissemination of information regarding policy interventions and best practice to aid in poverty reduction. For a geographical audience the work of Robert Putnam, on social capital as a property of communities, has attracted much attention, but the reason Putnam has reached a much wider audience is because of his ex tensive writings about the demise of social capital in the US. In Putnam’s formulation, emphasis is placed on the amount and quality of social interactions among indi viduals, through participation in relatively non hierarchical associational activities which cut across social divides (Putnam’s celebrated examples include choral societies and bird watching clubs); this is said to inculcate norms of trust and reciprocity. Communities with high social capital are made up of individuals who tend to work for the benefit of the group. They have high levels of respect for fellow community members and treat others as they would expect to be treated themselves. It is through such community interplay that levels of col lective efficacy are maximized. Distinctions can also be made between bridging, bonding, and linking social capital. The first form refers to the relatively weak links that exist between different sets of connections or different social groups. This form of social capital is seen as inclusive and tends to help people get ahead through networking. The example commonly described is the use of such connections when someone is trying to find a job or change their career

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direction. Second, bonding social capital represents much stronger attachments within existing groups that are so cially similar, for example, based on ethnicity, university fraternity, or professional grouping. These tend to be exclusive, inward looking, and help people get along by strengthening the bond between group members. How ever, individuality may be suppressed and outsiders may have difficulty gaining access and negative outcomes are always a possibility (criminal gangs can be regarded as exemplars of bonding social capital). Third, linking social capital refers to vertical linkages across hierarchies of power or status. An example would be the interplay be tween a community based tenants’ group and the local agency or authority responsible for social housing in the area. How can social capital be measured? Analysts have distinguished between the structural and cognitive components of social capital. Structural elements refer to the quantity and quality of associational links or activity and cognitive elements relate to perceptions of support, reciprocity, and trust (some authors have argued that social surveys should routinely include questions asking people what proportion of their fellow citizens can be trusted). The former are arguably more readily open to operationalization and subsequent measurement (e.g., memberships of community organisations), whereas the latter are sometimes more problematic to consistently assess, particularly in comparative studies due to the context sensitive nature of responses (e.g., regarding ob ligations to or perceptions of one’s neighbors: inter national comparisons show that the interpretation of these issues varies across nation states). In other words, peoples’ perceptions of neighborhood are influenced by the locality in which they reside and variations in per ceptions of trust, for example, may not necessarily be an index of social capital but rather an outcome of it. Most of the indicators of social capital described thus far are not measures that are truly ecological in nature. Rather, they are based on the composition of areas and comprise aggregated counts of individual activities (e.g., volunteering, social club membership, church attendance, voter turnout) and/or attitudes (e.g., levels of trust and perceived levels of community spirit). Genuine eco logical measures are much more difficult to capture al though some North American research has attempted to do this through covert monitoring of neighborhood social interaction through the use of hidden videocameras. Other indicators have included the speed with which householders clear snow from the public pathway in front of their property after a snowstorm, though clearly this is context specific! How do these concepts differ from traditional ideas of social support and levels of human capital? Most defin itions argue that it is the ecological nature of social capital that distinguishes it from the former and

geographical analyses now regularly uses indicators of social capital for geographical areas of varying size, such as levels of civic participation (e.g., voter turnout), rates of volunteering, density and levels of club membership, perceptions of trust, and the levels and nature of inter action between immediate neighbors.

Geography and Social Capital It has already been noted that social capital is usually thought of as a property of the places in which people live, and spatial variations in social capital have been associated with numerous outcomes including health. Social capital is conceptualized as a contextual or eco logical (i.e., areal level) explanatory concept, but attach ing a measure of social capital to a particular place involves a margin of error, because it is unlikely that aspects of social capital (e.g., the extent to which people feel they can trust their fellow citizens) will map neatly onto the spatial units for which appropriate data are available. Moreover, indicators of social capital such as civic participation and membership of voluntary associ ations will vary across different ages, genders, ethnicities, and socioeconomic groups. There is, of course, a geog raphy to these compositional variables and so the geog raphy of social capital will reflect spatial variations in such characteristics. Other features of places may be conducive to the formation of social capital, such as more affordable and/or accessible spaces to conduct activities. Furthermore, spatial variations in social capital may also reflect uneven area targeting policies associated with social capital activities. Charitable or voluntary organ izations, for example, may target requests for help in more affluent areas. This challenges the assumption that high rates of social capital precede economic develop ment, as opposed to following it. A useful illustration of these issues is the geography of voluntary activity in England. There are regional vari ations in the proportion of the population who are active volunteers, which prompted the influential Wolfenden Committee on voluntary action (1978) to remark that ‘‘the soil for voluntary activity appeared more fertile in some locations than others.’’ On the face of it such a quote would support a view that there are significant regional variations in social capital. However, when al lowance is made for compositional factors such as gender, socioeconomic status, and age, geographical variations in voluntary activity reduce substantially. There are still variations, which reflect unobserved heterogeneity (e.g., variations in the propensity to volunteer might re flect variations in the distribution of organizations for which volunteering takes place). The variations that exist are less substantial than appears to be the case at first sight.


Social Capital and Health

problems led the epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson to hypothesize that the existence of social hierarchies per se impact on health outcome. He argued that, for developed countries, it is the most egalitarian, rather than richest nations that have the best health outcomes. One of the major pieces of evidence in support of this idea is illus trated in Figure 1 where those countries that exhibit largest income inequalities tend to have the poorest life expectancies. In contrast, Figure 2 indicates that the link between life expectancy and GDP per capita is not so strong. According to Wilkinson and his supporters, large income differentials in any one nation lead to a breakdown in social cohesion, resulting in isolation, anxiety, and in security among individuals which in turn leads to chronic stress. Such psychosocial processes lead to poorer health ‘inside’ (i.e., through biological processes) and ‘outside’ of the body (i.e., through social processes). Negative bio logical processes may result in adverse health outcomes directly via the psycho neuro endocrine mechanism or indirectly as a result of stress induced unhealthy lifestyle behaviors (e.g., increased alcohol consumption or tobacco consumption). Due to the existence of gradients in society (which are evident within organizations which employ large numbers of well educated individuals, such as the British civil service – there is a strong mortality gradient between different grades of the service), social cohesion

Historically in the social epidemiology literature, ideas relating to social capital, such as social support and isol ation, have regularly been used to explain variations in health outcomes. One of the most widely cited examples is the Alameda County prospective study which illustrates that strong ties with close relatives and friends are signifi cant predictors of lower 9 year mortality risk for persons aged less than 70 years at baseline. However, since the mid to late 1990s, there has been a dramatic rise in interest in the impact of social capital upon health. If the search phrase ‘social capital and health’ is used in the Science and Social Science Citation Index, 16 hits are returned for the period 1970–98; in contrast, for the time period 1999 to June 2006, 369 publications are listed. There are a number of ex planations for this sudden growth in interest. The beginning of this article indicated that debate concerning the link between social capital and health builds on previous work that attempts to assess the relative impact of the social environment on health. Two ex planatory problems here were the apparent inability of material circumstances (both individual and areal) and lifestyle differences to satisfactorily explain spatial in equalities in health, and the persistence of health gradi ents, even among the more affluent in society. These

78

173

Pearson correlation: r = 0.86 p < 0.001

Life expectancy at birth (M&F combined, 1981)

77 Sweden 76

Switzerland

Australia

75

Norway Netherlands

Canada

USA 74

UK W Germany

73

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

Percentage of total post-tax and benifit income received by the least well-off 70% of 'families'

Figure 1 A scatterplot showing the relationship between male and female life expectancy at birth and income inequality. Income inequality decreases to the right-hand side of the x-axis where life expectancy tends to be higher. Reprinted from Wilkinson, R. G. (1996). Unhealthy societies: The afflictions of inequality. London: Routledge. Source: Data from Bishop, J. A., Formby, J. P. and Smith, W. J. (1989). International comparisons of income inequality: Luxembourg Income Study, Working Paper 26.

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Social Capital, Place and Health 79

Life expectancy (M&F) at birth

78

77

76

75

74 5000

10 000

15 000

20 000

25 000

Gross domestic product per capita. 1990 US$ at purchasing power parities

Figure 2 GDP per capita and life expectancy in OECD countries in 1990 (classes are split by standard deviation). Reprinted from Wilkinson, R. G. (1996). Unhealthy societies: The afflictions of inequality. London: Routledge.

breaks down as invidious comparisons across the hier archies are made, creating the potential for antisocial be havior and an erosion of social capital. Therefore in the Wilkinson hypothesis, social capital is seen as the inter vening variable connecting income inequality and health. Putnam draws on this research, and on numerous quan titative and qualitative studies, to argue that social con nectedness is one of the most influential determinants of our health and well being. He is not averse to making strong claims, such as the argument that as a ‘rough rule of thumb’ an increase in social engagement for an individual of belonging to just one group (as opposed to none) re duces the risk of dying over the next year by 50%. The inequality theory has been tested across many developed countries and much of the early evidence involved large scale studies using data for the US states. For example, Table 1 shows the correlation results from a study investigating the associations between income inequality, low levels of trust, group membership, and firearm violent crime. At the state level, large positive correlations are derived between rates of homicide, fire arm crime, and indicators of mistrust. Negative correl ations with levels of group membership are also illustrated. More importantly, a path analysis reveals that the relationship between income inequality and

age adjusted firearm homicide is, in part, mediated by social capital. Consistent associations have also been found in other nations such as Russia and Hungary but conflicting re sults have been found for other OECD countries (e.g., Canada). Furthermore, there is a wealth of literature and evidence that challenges the income inequality and health link on a number of points. First, the results are not always replicated in other developed nations. Similar research, such as our own investigation of the effect of social capital on mortality variations across the 15 standard regions of England, finds no substantive evi dence for the direct impact either of social capital (as measured through notions of community and friendliness of neighbours) or of income inequality on all cause mortality, after controlling for median income. Moreover there is no evidence to suggest that social capital operates as a mediator in the relationship between income in equality and health. Second, some strong claims were made by Putnam and others for the causal efficacy of social capital on the basis of relatively simple statistical analyses based on aggregate data for large regions. Apart from the difficulty of conceiving how US State or re gional measures of social capital can be meaningful when it is assumed that social capital is a community or


Table 1

Correlations among indicators of social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime (39 US states) 1

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

175

Age-adjusted homicide Age-adjusted firearm homicide Firearm assault Firearm robbery Firearm suicide Income inequality Group membership Trust 1a Trust 2b Helpfulnessc

2 0.99* 0.61* 0.57* 0.41* 0.73* 0.51* 0.82* 0.72* 0.72*

3

0.56* 0.48* 0.76* 0.49* 0.83* 0.73* 0.75*

4

0.53* 0.50* 0.48* 0.34* 0.55* 0.34* 0.60*

5

0.45* 0.31* 0.33* 0.52* 0.46* 0.54*

6

0.43* 0.05* 0.49* 0.44* 0.51*

7

0.40* 0.73* 0.71* 0.70*

8

0.54* 0.65* 0.54*

9

0.79* 0.81* 0.78*

a

Percent responding: ‘most people would try to take advantage of you if they got the chance’. Percent responding: ‘you can’t be too careful in dealing with people’. c Percent responding: ‘peopleymostly look out for themselves’. * p o 0.05. Source: Reprinted from Kennedy, B. P., Kawachi, I., Prothrow Stith, D., Lochner, K. and Gupta, V. (1998). Social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime. Social Science and Medicine 47(1), 7 17. With permission from Elsevier. b

neighborhood concept operating at local scales, these investigations are problematic because of the ecological or aggregative fallacy. The results are based on averages for very large areas and while some of these studies at tempt to control for material circumstances by including average or median state income, very few of these early studies include individual level measures of material circumstance, poverty or wealth. Hence, research cannot distinguish contextual effects (those due to the nature of a place) from compositional effects (effects of what is in a place – in this case, the characteristics of the people who live there). Following on from and responding to these technical criticisms, the statistical approaches have become more elaborate and robust by using multilevel methodologies to model individual health outcomes against area levels of social capital, while controlling for individual and contextual covariates. Some support has been provided for the effects of social capital, but research findings are not always consistent. For example, complex effects of community level social capital on the probability of re porting self rated poor health were found in a study of 40 communities in the US. Higher levels of community social trust were associated with a lower probability of reporting poor health. Controlling for individual level perceptions of trust, however, rendered the main effect of community level social trust statistically insignificant. However, there was a complex interaction effect, in that the health promoting effects of community level social trust were apparently greater for high trust individuals. This suggests that if there are health benefits to be gained from social capital, they are not equally available to all. Furthermore, once allowance was made for the individual compositional effects of socioeconomic status, there was little impact of communities on poor self rated health. Such quantitative, multilevel studies that are able to use

community or neighborhood level data across large geographical areas are relatively rare. While social capital questions are becoming a common occurrence in many social surveys, such sources are usually unable to gen erate reliable results below the region or state level and through necessity, most quantitative studies employ measures of social capital summarised for these relatively large geographical levels. The scale of these units – American states, British standard regions, etc. – renders it difficult to identify and interpret causal processes which might link social capital and health across these large areas. To overcome this problem data on social capital are needed for small areas, but the kind of systematic social observation discussed above is not feasible for large numbers of areas. An alternative on which we have drawn is the growing body of work on synthetic estimation via multilevel modeling. Figure 3, for example, shows esti mates of volunteering across the electoral wards of England and Wales. These were generated by applying small area census data to multilevel model equations which summarize the probability of an individual undertaking voluntary work for more than 2 weeks over an annual period (hence the term ‘core’ volunteering in the title of the map). The multilevel equations in corporate the importance of individual characteristics on the likelihood of volunteering (e.g., age, gender, and marital status) as well as including estimates for the impact of contextual or small area variables (e.g., levels of car ownership, deprivation scores, social class, and ethnicity). These small area estimates can be validated against ad hoc surveys and the technique has been successfully ap plied to a number of social capital indicators including political, social and altruistic activity, perceived import ance of local friends, perceptions of neighborhood,

176


Percentage engaged in core volunteering 2.5−7.2% 7.2−11.9% 11.9−16.6% 16.6−21.3% 21.3−26.0% 26.0−30.7% >30.7%

Figure 3 Synthetic estimates of ‘core’ volunteering. These have been derived via multilevel model equations which summarize the impact of individual and contextual influences on the likelihood of volunteering. Reprinted from Mohan, J., Barnard, S., Jones, K. and Twigg, L. (2004). Social capital, geography and health: Developing and applying small-area indicators of social capital in the explanation of health inequalities. In Morgan, A. & Swann, C. (eds.) Social capital for health: Issues of definition, measurement and links to health, pp. 83 110. London: Health Development Agency.


willingness to work with others to improve the neigh borhood, voter turnout, and perceptions of community spirit. Furthermore, these have since been used in an analysis of a UK health and lifestyle survey of 9003 in dividuals that was initially undertaken in the mid 1980s. Since this preliminary survey sweep, mortality records have been linked to the relevant individual records, thus facilitating a multilevel analysis of the impact of small area measures of social capital upon mortality whilst controlling for other individual and areal covariates. The findings suggest that there may be an ecological effect for social capital. However, social capital and area level de privation are highly collinear and separating out their effects is problematic. While there is some evidence to suggest that health related behaviors and individual material circumstances mediate the relationship between social capital and health, individual material circum stance far outweighs the importance of social capital on health outcome. Such findings suggest that caution should be exercised in drawing conclusions about the effects of area level social capital on health outcomes.

Qualitative Approaches Many of the extensive, quantitative studies are heavily criticised for being under theorized. Causal processes cannot be fully explored and vague associations are noted as causal without any real justification of plausible mechanisms. Alternative qualitative approaches avoid causal generalizations and focus on identifying aspects of social capital that facilitate health promotion or health enhancing activities. Much qualitative research originates from the health promotion arena and attempts to seek out aspects of community social capital that increase the ability of certain individuals to access health related in formation and health related resources or to engage in more healthy lifestyles. Importantly, these studies are usually context specific and highlight subtle differences that exist in patterns of networks and civic engagement in otherwise similar neighborhoods. The well known ex ample of the Pennsylvanian town of Roseto can be called upon here to illustrate how higher levels of social capital and social cohesion (in comparison to similar neigh boring towns) during the 1950s were used to explain the more favorable rates of coronary heart disease within this community. Again, as with the quantitative approaches, overall findings from the qualitative studies tend to be inconclusive. A number of neighborhood based studies in the UK have suggested a weak relationship between so cial capital and health. However, in contrast, a recent investigation which attempted to determine the extent to which high rates of common mental disorder (CMD) could be linked to deficits in social capital in Gospel Oak in London found no evidence to suggest such a

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connection. Here, social capital was assessed using the phenomenological experience of residents derived via interviews, focus groups, and participant observation. In general the residents found the area to be rich in social capital and it was argued that compositional character istics were more important in explaining the higher rates of CMD within this area. Qualitative approaches have also been useful in recognizing the ‘down’ side of social capital, sometimes termed negative social capital. We have already hinted that the ties that bind might be too tight in close knit communities to allow individual to make choices that optimize their future health and well being. The as sumption that all aspects of social capital are good for your health in all types of contextual setting and at every lifestage is obviously problematic and may explain why null or negative findings are sometimes derived.

Social Capital, Public Health, and Policy Implications Theoretical debates concerning the efficacy of social capital within the public health arena suggest three dif fering perspectives. The first views the health benefits of social capital as arising from mechanisms of broad social support. This perspective acknowledges definitions based on the collective properties of places (e.g., social co hesion, civic participation, and social integration) as well as recognizing individual aspects of social capital (i.e., the ability of individuals to make use of networks to improve social support before, during, and after illness). The re search detailing the benefits of social support has a long history within and outside of the social capital literature, sensu stricto and covers a vast array of health outcomes (e.g., mental health, heart disease, overall mortality, and health related behaviors). Second, as we have already outlined, social capital is said to be a part of the psychosocial pathway linking income and social inequalities to health outcomes. Those societies that are dominated by liberal market economies have resulted in relatively large disparities between the rich and the poor which leads to a breakdown in social cohesion, increased levels of stress and anxiety and a breakdown in social support mechanisms. In this argu ment it is the existence of hierarchies and inequalities in income per se that create the problem, irrespective of absolute income levels. To the extent that social capital mitigates the effects of these hierarchies and gradients, it can be beneficial for health. In contrast to this ‘inequality’ thesis, the third per spective, often termed a ‘neo material’ or ‘political economy’ interpretation, challenges the simple accept ance of social capital as a universal remedy. In this view, not only is the concept of social capital fraught with

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conceptual problems and difficult to measure, but it is simply a way of redescribing material inequalities. Its introduction therefore is a distraction from the tradi tional, but still important, links between health and ab solute income and material disadvantage. There are also two very different views regarding the policy implications of social capital. The first sees social capital as a positive and important element in the tran sition from state based welfare systems toward ‘third way’ alternatives involving greater community control and participation. Here it is argued that understanding the concept and processes surrounding community social capital can be used positively to empower local popu lations to tap into local networks, to ‘use’ local stocks of social capital for mutual benefit. The voluntary sector plays a pivotal role in such policies as the state transfers traditional responsibilities to nongovernmental organ izations. The role of the state is to educate its citizens, to promote sharing, trust, and communication, and to use social capital to enhance health by informing public health policy on the best ways to reach ‘hard to reach’ target groups. In contrast, the alternative stance regards policies that embrace social capital as unproductive since they will ultimately lead to ‘community victim blaming’. The focus on social capital as a major health determinant detracts attention from the more severe problems asso ciated with structural inequalities and the direct effects of material disadvantage. Furthermore, reliance on social capital may contribute to a deficit model, in which it is the responsibility of neighborhoods and communities to build up and enhance stocks of social capital. The com munity can therefore be blamed if it fails to do this and this is politically convenient for governments who are absolved from responsibility for solving social problems.

Conclusions Social capital remains a popular concept in the health inequalities arena. What were initially somewhat sim plistic associative analyses have been complemented by more sophisticated work, based on multilevel techniques, which simultaneously analyze the relative role of indi vidual and area characteristics. There has also been a determined effort to develop a qualitative understanding of the causal processes through which social capital might influence health. Finally, there is an emerging body of work on the utility of social capital as a means of community empowerment to help in the delivery and dissemination of neighborhood based health promotion campaigns. Nevertheless, the precise significance of so cial capital is still the subject of considerable dispute. Substantial disparities in health experience continue to exist, and these are primarily due to material disadvan tages, but social capital may have some influence on

remaining variations in health status. As an overall con clusion, it is fair to say that the jury is still out as to whether social capital has an influence on health in dependent of the effect of material circumstances. See also: Civil Society; Health and Development; Health Geography; Health Inequalities; Housing, Neighborhoods and Health; Participation; Voluntary Sector.

Further Reading Bishop, J. A., Formby, J. P. and Smith, W. J. (1989). International comparisons of income inequality: Luxembourg Income Study, Working Paper 26. Kawachi, I., Kennedy, B. P., Lcohner, K. and Prothrow Stith, D. (1997). Social capital, income inequality and mortality. American Journal of Public Health 87, 1491 1498. Kawachi, I., Kim, D., Coutts, A. and Subramanian, S. V. (2004). Commentary: Reconciling the three accounts of social capital. International Journal of Epidemiology 33, 682 690. Kennedy, B. P., Kawachi, I., Prothrow Stith, D., Lochner, K. and Gupta, V. (1998). Social capital, income inequality, and firearm violent crime. Social Science and Medicine 47(1), 7 17. Lochner, K., Kawachi, I. and Kennedy, B. P. (1999). Social capital: A guide to its measurement. Health and Place 5, 259 270. Mackinko, J. and Starfield, B. (2001). The utility of social capital in research on health determinants. The Millbank Quarterly 79, 387 427. Mohan, J., Barnard, S., Jones, K. and Twigg, L. (2004). Social capital, geography and health: Developing and applying small area indicators of social capital in the explanation of health inequalities. In Morgan, A. & Swann, C. (eds.) Social capital for health: Issues of definition, measurement and links to health, pp 83 110. London: Health Development Agency. Mohan, J. and Mohan, G. (2002). Placing social capital. Progress in Human Geography 26(2), 191 210. Mohan, J., Twigg, L., Barnard, S. and Jones, K. (2005). Social capital, geography and health: A small area analysis for England. Social Science and Medicine 60, 1267 1283. Portes, A. and Landholt, P. (1996). The downside of social capital. The American Prospect 26(May June), 18 21. Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone: The collapse of and revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Shortt, S. E. D. (2004). Making sense of social capital, health and policy. Health Policy 70, 11 22. Subramanian, S. V., Kim, D. and Kawachi, I. (2002). Social trust and self rated health in US communities: A multilevel analysis. Journal of Urban Health 79, 521 534. Szreter, S. and Woolcock, M. (2004). Health by association? Social capital, social theory and the political economy of public health. International Journal of Epidemiology 33, 650 667. Whitley, R. and Prince, M. (2005). Is there a link between rates of common mental disorder and deficits in social capital in Gospel Oak, London? Results from a qualitative study. Health and Place 11, 237 248. Wilkinson, R. G. (1996). Unhealthy societies: The afflictions of inequality. London: Routledge. Wolfenden Committee (1978). The future of voluntary organisation. London: Croom Helm.

Relevant Websites http://www.socialcapitalgateway.org Social Capital Gateway Resources for the study of social capital edited by Fabio Sabatini. http://www1.worldbank.org Social Capital (Topics in Development: Poverty), World Bank Group, The World Bank.

Social Class N. Duncan, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Aestheticization Everyday cultural products and practices are appreciated for their aesthetic qualities. Aestheticization is a kind of mystification occurring when such appreciation obscures the social relations (e.g., class relations that have gone into their production and reproduction). For example, there are hidden stories of unjust class relations behind beautiful landscapes. Class-for-Itself Class interests as determined by objective criteria of which those who share these interests may or may not be aware. Objectivity is of course a matter of degree. Class-in-Itself The individual and collective consciousness of class relations (such as exploitation) and political action based on recognition of common class interests. Contradictory Consciousness Related to the Gramsian concept of hegemony. It is seen as less simplistic and totalizing than the Marxian term false consciousness. Most people have mixed or partial understanding of their class interests. However, it is extraordinarily difficult to trace all the connections and relations that make up many individual’s complex embeddedness in class processes. This may be most pronounced when an individual occupies a mixed labor-capitalist class location. Labor Theory of Value The value of a commodity reflects the wages (costs of reproducing laborer power) plus a profit (average yeild on capital). In Marxist theory, capitalism and the exploitation it enables is based on this logic (commodities produce more value than they cost in labor power). Labor time, wages, prices, etc., vary especially between distant regions; thus, this value is not the same as price. Many Marxists and others today believe this theory is not necessary to explain exploitation.

Introduction Stratification based on structured inequalities in the distribution of wealth, status, and power has existed in most, if not all, societies. Inequalities in life chances and power have been structured in more or less rigid ways largely depending upon the rank, order, caste, estate, or class into which an individual happens to be born. The types of structured inequalities and their bases have varied throughout history and across societies. After

reviewing some of the classical Marxist and Weberian definitions of social class and revisions to these con ceptualizations, some recent social and cultural geo graphical approaches to class in modern capitalist societies will be discussed. Despite obligatory reference to class among what Butler refers to as proliferating etceteras (including gen der, race, sexuality, and age), class has received signifi cantly less attention in recent geographical literature than these other bases of social differentiation, identification, and inequality. This is due to widespread acceptance of post structural critiques of essentializing, reductionist, totalizing, and determinist models of social structure. Among the more favored approaches to social re search in recent decades are those that pay attention to ambiguity, fragmentation, and hybridity and which focus on the fluidity, richness, instability, and general messiness of social life. These emphases have resulted in the avoidance of bipolar structural categories such as labor and capital or oppressor and oppressed. However, it would appear that rather than reformulating definitions of class, many geographers simply avoid using class as an analytic category. It is important to note that there are some prominent exceptions among contemporary geog raphers. Neil Smith and David Harvey are among those who have been most vehement in decrying the fact that class relations are largely left off current research agen das in geography. Sayer and Walker have suggested that despite dramatically restructured class relations and an upsurge of global class organizing during the last three decades, class has been a neglected concept. Smith says that it would be distressingly ironic if class remains an undeveloped area of geographical research given the unprecedented industrial expansion since the 1970s that has resulted in new global class formations. In response Smith calls for the replacement of what he describes as thuddingly inflexible conceptualizations of class inherited from 1970s and 1980s Marxism. He sug gests that more nuanced understandings of class would be compatible with attention to other cross cutting facets of social identity, agency, and structure such as gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, and sexuality. For example, racialization of labor segmentation has become especially relevant with increasing global labor migra tion. Neo liberated global capital has created com petition between regions, increasingly bringing labor into competition with labor from distant regions, dividing labor geographically, undermining labor organization, and reinforcing and deepening wage and employment

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inequalities. These developments call for increased at tention to the experience, consciousness, and, most im portantly, the active agency of workers in the production of capitalist space or what Herod calls labor’s spatial fix in response to capital’s spatial fix. Jackson and many others have called for a general re materialization of social and cultural geography which would bring together advances in cultural analyses of the fluidity, richness, and fragmentation of experience, per formance and identity, grounding these in material cul ture, concreteness of nature, and uneven structures of capitalism. Peet suggests that such a project would link economic with cultural analysis supported by an rich array of intellectual resources which conventional eco nomic thinking currently ignores. When geographers do use the term class, it is usually in a loose, popular sense referring to identity or social status of individuals based on education, occupation, cultural capital, income, and/or social capital. The idea of classes as collective actors and class struggle as a world historical metanarrative have largely disappeared. In fact, it has become increasingly rare to use the concept of class in any way that relates it explicitly to the logic of capitalism. Instead, studies of nonclass bases of identity and experi ence have predominated. Income groups with differing lifestyles and consumption patterns are described, but not usually analyzed in terms of exploitative class relationships or the structuring of inequalities. Furthermore, the post structural crisis of representation has undermined the confidence that academics once displayed in making judgments about misperceptions or unrecognized interests.

Classical Definitions of Social Class: Marx and Weber The term class came into common usage in Europe during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Europe. Most formal definitions today owe their ori gins to nineteenth century social and political thought especially the work of Marx and/or Weber. Although Marx’s sociological descriptions refer to an intricate system of class divisions and ranks, his more abstract political economic analyses of capitalism posit an es sentially dichotomous class system based on members’ relationship to the means of production. It is this class relation that constitutes capitalist societies as capitalist. However, during the nineteenth century concepts such as race and class were used in loose and interchangeable ways to refer to all sorts of divisions such as ethnic groups, nationalities, criminals, and breeds of animal and Marx’s writing are no exception. Nevertheless, in Marx’s formal analysis of capitalism, he predicted that over time members of all the various groupings within a society would eventually coalesce into

two divisions, a broad class of capitalists who own the means of production such as factories and land and a class of laborers who control only their own labor power which they can sell to the capitalists who pay them enough in wages to maintain themselves. These two broad classes are internally related (mutually dependent for their existence as classes). Capitalists as a class depend on laborers as a class to sell them enough of their labor power to generate surplus value (value beyond the wages paid) which the capitalists then use to increase their capital and hence the means of future production and the reproduction of their power over the laborers. Marx’s notion of surplus value is important in explaining the source of exploitation hidden within the logic of capitalism. Marx predicted that those capitalists with access to only small amounts of capital would tend to sink into the class of proletarians as they failed to compete with more powerful capitalists. As factory work became more and more technologically advanced, it would have an in creasingly de skilling effect that would further this process of proletarianization. Laborers largely worked under conditions set by their employers and over time these conditions were more and more alienated from them. For example, one of the incentives for capitalists to create factories was to further increase control over labor. Through unionization and governmental legislation the then newly enfranchised workers managed to recover some degree of control over labor conditions. However, as Marx was unable to forsee, during the late twentieth century the vastly increased geographical mobility of capital due to diminishing transport and communication costs in relation to the relative immobility of labor undermined such efforts on the part of labor. Conditions of capitalist exploitation are thus deepening and broad ening with the segmentation of labor markets inter nationally and the spread of neo liberalism globally. The class consciousness that Marx predicted would develop has not done so due to many factors such as the spatial frag mentation of workers internationally and the cross cutting and particularizing of class with other bases of identifi cation and inequality such as race, gender, and age. Un fortunately, Marx’s bipolar framework does not easily lend itself to nuanced accounts of these intersections. There are some more recent attempts to extend Marxist class theory by taking their cue from Weberian and popular discourse on class fragmentation while retaining the basic structural logic of exploitation. Nevertheless, there still remain many unanswered questions as to the relation be tween what Marx referred to as class in itself (objective class interests) and class for itself (collective and individual consciousness of class relations such as exploitation and the mobilization of common class interests). It should be clear that the above is Marx’s bare bones definition of class, one that he and many later Marxist thinkers have elaborated in many ways. What may be

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most important to retain from this basic perspective, however, is the relationality of the concept of class and the idea that there is a sustained hidden logic to the (albeit fluid) structuring and restructuring of class re lations over time. Weber’s concept of class drew on Marx, but in the spirit of critique. Weber agreed with the basic logic of class exploitation in capitalism. However, he rejected the teleology of class struggle which Marx foresaw resulting in a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and ultimately in a classless society with no privately owned property. It should be added that this teleology is often also recog nized in more recent versions of Marxist class theory as either naı¨ve or as having been purposely simplified by Marx for polemical purposes. The teleology is generally recognized to have been thwarted over time. Weber stressed the complexity of stratification based on status, the experiential dimension of capitalist class systems, and differential bases of power. Weber focused much of his analysis on the bureaucratic and highly rationalized na ture of capitalism. For Weber the ownership or non ownership of the means of production is but one factor affecting life chances. Weber’s more pluralist view saw the distribution of power in society as based not only on class membership, but also on status based on honor, prestige, and lifestyle as well as membership in organized political parties and movements. The latter two he saw as more closely asso ciated with feelings of attachment and conscious identifi cation. Classes, therefore, are not cohesive communities, but highly variable objective situations based on market determined life chances that may or may not provide a basis for mobilizing communal action. He saw social stratification as having multiple and overlapping dimen sions involving complex sets of social relationships. Not all power is economically conditioned; power may be achieved through political organization or complexly related to status, either inherited or acquired. Sometimes power is mobilized and sometimes not, depending upon general cultural conditions and individual life histories and dis positions. Marx saw the ever present underlying source of exploitation and oppression lying hidden within the basic, inescapable logic of capitalism. For him, experience that does not recognize this results from false or contradictory consciousness. In contrast, Weber introduces a complex social psychological dimension to class that is seen as not necessarily, but often reflective of actual class situations.

Class as Stratification In the 1940s American anthropologist Warner published in five volumes an empirically comprehensive study of class as status. It was a study of class attitudes, occupational prestige, and social mobility based on nearly a decade of detailed

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ethnographic research in a small town in the eastern US by a team of researchers. His use of class is descriptive rather than explanatory and is typical of much twentieth century academic and nonacademic writing on class. The study divided the town into classes: the upper-upper class was composed of what he referred to as ‘‘old money’’ or people with inherited wealth, the lower upper class composed of ‘‘new money’’ or people who have made large sums of money, the upper middle class including highly paid pro fessionals and corporate executives, the lower middle class being less well paid white collar workers, the upper lower or working class including blue collar and manual workers, and the lower lower class which consisted of the working poor, the homeless and the permanently unemployed. The dominant sociological paradigm in the US during the mid twentieth century was structural functionalism that posited various similar gradational class schemas based on occupation. These were thought to sort the population into class positions based on capabilities, qualifications, and status attainment. The stratification of occupations was seen as important to the smooth func tioning of society. Such stratification models more closely matched popular conceptions of class such as those de scribed by Warner than the abstract relational or con flictual models. Many similar systems of status stratification have been proposed for the US. Some of these are based on functional reasoning and others merely describe and measure social status and occupational prestige based on differences in skills, incomes, knowledge, autonomy, and authority or status (Parsons, Coleman and Rainwater). Such American models tend to highlight harmony and naturalized differences in ability and at tainment in contrast to British models which have tended more toward conflict and structured inequality models.

Revisions to Classical Theories: Neo-Marxians and Neo-Weberians Sociologists such as Goldthorpe and Wright use com puter technology to analyze large scale social survey data and to empirically test Marxian and Weberian theses. Goldthorpe’s theories attempt to explain class relations rather than simply describe prestige or income hier archies. His main goal has been to understand social mobility through cross national research. Wright has developed a nuanced, multidimensional concept of exploitation by studying class across various types of capitalist societies. He is interested in con ceptually clarifying structurally ambiguous or contra dictory locations within class relations. He shows that the middle class shares in the power of the capitalist class. This includes control over the material means of pro duction, authority over the labor conditions of others, and/or control over money capital or investment. This

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fragmentation and dispersal of power results in unclear class boundaries. In opposition to dichotomous class models, Wright argues that many people occupy inter stitial positions between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. For example, some people control the conditions of the labor of others, but do not own the means of production. Wright says that managers and supervisors occupy a class location between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He has undertaken large scale empirical research which supports his views. For example, he has shown that in contemporary North America, members of the middle class receive significantly higher income as a return on education than do other workers due to their elevated status based on their positions of authority. Small em ployers also occupy the middle ground between the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie. Wright makes it clear, however, that classes are not aggregations of occupations, but can be defined only in relation to other classes. He says of the three possible bases for class formation (material interests, lived experience, and capacity for collective action), material interests are primary. This view goes against the grain of much con temporary theorizing which sees speculation about the objective material interests of others as presumptuous (see Laclau and Mouffe). On the other hand, one could argue that given the global reach of capitalist relations and the complexity of intersecting bases of inequality, it is extraordinarily difficult for social researchers to trace the complex causal connections that constitute class relations and produce differing interests. It would be even more difficult for individuals to trace the various multiple causal connections and relations in order to understand how their own interests are structured. The lived experiences of people who are positioned economically and socially in similar ways can vary con siderably and thus they may not recognize their com monalities or form unified organizations. In fact, there are usually good explanations (including the obvious geo graphical factors such as living in different parts of the world) why they will not do so. Thus, one can see why Wright chose material interests as the most useful basis for determining class, the other two factors being far more tenuous. Wright’s empirical findings appear to contradict some Marxist propositions such as the growing proletarianization of societies. He discovered instead an increasing number of supervisors and managers in the many capitalist countries. He argues, however, that one should not restrict ones analysis to national economies. If one looks globally, it becomes evident that proletarian ization is indeed happening, but it is centered in Third World countries. Thus, his work points to the changing geography of capitalism. Other European sociologists also focus attention on structured inequalities and class conflict. Poulantzas, for example, draws on Althusserian Marxism, but places more

emphasis on class. He argues that classes are distributed by the relations of production and are constituted only in class struggle. Miliband analyzes class relations in terms of domination, but leaves little room for working class agency, hence is less sensitive to class conflict. Others less sure than Poulantzas of the inevitability of class con sciousness pose the development of such consciousness as an empirical question. For example, Lockwood proposes that the determinism in Marxist theory be rejected leaving the relationship between class position and class con sciousness as an open empirical question. Lockwood’s re search shows that the status differences between ‘clean’ white collar and ‘dirty’ factory work produce different class attitudes and mutual antagonisms. As many low status jobs including low paid domestic work have been done by women, there has always been a cross cutting of class and gender which complicates the attribution of class especially within families. Answers to the question of which sorts of low paying white collar jobs might be considered working class or proletarian have varied. Control over conditions of work is often seen as a com ponent; however, attitudes and self ascription are also often thought to play a constitutive role. Empirical research on class psychology and the lived experience of class relations such as the studies done in the 1970s by Sennett and Cobb (in the US) or Willis (for Britain) or the more recent studies by Argyle on the psychology of class or Charlesworth on the phenomen ology of working class experience are relatively rare and tend to be national in focus. These types of study cannot therefore adequately deal with the growing transnatio nalization of class processes. Such approaches, however, do help to explain the hegemony of capitalism and the lack of consciousness of conflicting class interests.

Geographical Approaches to the Analysis of Class Relations Geographical analysis of class processes emerged in the field of geography with the rise of Marxist approaches in the early 1970s. Cultural geographers had generally avoided the study of social processes and social geog raphy was a young subfield at the time. In recent decades, geographers have looked at issues such as the spatial division of labor, the expanding global migration of labor, and the geographical restructuring and transnationaliza tion of class formations. They have researched the ways class relations are transformed unevenly across space due to the differential mobility of labor vis a` vis capital. However, this literature has tended to theorize class ab stractly and has not yet sufficiently tackled the empirical issues of how individuals are related to class processes. Self identification, consciousness, and multiple and contradictory locations of individuals within a class system

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have not been subjected to in depth social–psychological or cultural analysis. The relation between culture and class has been neglected, while interest in cultural identities based on race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation has flour ished. When class is mentioned by cultural geographers, it is usually in an uncritical, gradational sense of status or distinction based on occupation and income or on cultural capital as defined by Bourdieu. Often the term class is used in imprecise, descriptive ways referring to naturalized popular categories such as middle class consumption practices or working class attitudes. Cultural and social geographers rarely use class in rigorous Marxian or Weberian relational senses of the term for fear of economic determinism or essentialism. On the other hand, some Marxist and other political economic discussions of class tend to avoid explanatory uses of culture for fear of blaming the culture of those who are oppressed, rather than the political–economic structures that facilitate exploitation. Although there is a danger in some contemporary work in social and cultural geography of over emphasizing agency and thus in advertently blaming the oppressed for their own op pression, there are some good reasons to look at class categories as they are constructed in the popular im agination. Sayer, writing on the moral significance of class, for example, argues that class inequalities are based not just on differences in wealth and income, but in ac cess to valued ways of life. People tend to include or exclude, or be included or excluded, on the basis of in tangible attributions of social class, some of which are included in Bourdieu’s notions of cultural capital and distinction. Sayer points to the fact that there are in numerable minor, subtle, unintended acts of symbolic domination and resistance to these attributions of class in everyday life. These acts of domination, hegemony, and resistance are thought of by people as class practices and should be studied as such, even if these are only tan gentially related to the logics of capitalism. If class matters to people and effects their interactions with others, even if – or perhaps especially if – they find it difficult to articulate, then it is an important topic for social and cultural geographers to study. Soja uses the phrase ‘space hides the consequences’ to help understand how people may not be able to see the relations between their lives and large scale political– economic processes. Cultural geographers such as Cos grove, Daniels, Mitchell, and Duncan and Duncan look at class conflict as embedded in landscapes (again this is confined to the local or national scale). This work depends upon a critical analysis of naturalized class interests. As such it adopts a more distanced or objective approach to class consciousness than many post structural and phe nomenologically oriented cultural geographers favor. Mitchell, and Duncan and Duncan have filled out Har vey’s notion of the aestheticization of class processes

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empirically in their studies of cultural landscapes. They show how through complex interrelationships individuals are complicit in producing unintended negative outcomes for others. As it is not in such peoples’ collective interest to trace these linkages, the consequences of their collective actions remain either unnoticed or consciously allowed to remain unremarked. In the 1980s, Thrift and Williams looked at the question of how individuals are recruited to class political move ments. However, they and others who have adopted similar approaches have found it difficult to relate the conscious ness of individuals within communities to processes at other geographical scales. In the 1990s, Kearns and Withers looked at the practices of class identity especially the cultural and experiential aspects of inequalities, but again such work proves difficult to employ in studies of class transformation at wider geographical scales. Pred and Watts raise the question of how to rethink class in nonessentialist terms. Massey argues that classes are not empirical groups of men and women and that there is no necessary political unity or consciousness of common interests. Gibson Graham define classes not as social groupings, but as processes and experiences of exploitation (the producing, appropriating, and distrib uting of surplus labor). Their work goes perhaps the farthest in arguing that the hegemony of capitalism is fragile, fragmented, and fluid. In their view the world is less dominantly capitalist than most people assume. They claim that noncapitalist processes are far more prevalent than is usually acknowledged. Class is over determined meaning that it is constituted not just through economic relationships, but through many intersecting social and cultural processes some of which are capitalist and others not. Gibson Grahams’ arguments are intended to call attention to the urgency of empirically based social psychological and cultural approaches to the under standing of class processes and to imagine beyond the all encompassing totality of capitalism in order to under mine capitalist exploitation. The question is whether they place too much emphasis on the potential performative power of thinking outside capitalocentric discourse. This question is best answered through empirical research and community activism as they suggest. Sayer’s work on the morality of class is the most sustained analysis by a geographer of the relation be tween class and consciousness. He argues that not only are entrenched inequalities and the hidden injuries of class difficult to explain, the moral dimension of un deserved privilege and suffering based on natal class lo cation is so uncomfortable and embarrassing that it is often simply ignored by academics and nonacademics alike. As subjective definitions of class are only tangen tially related to capitalist economic processes, class re mains a complex, contested, perhaps even a chaotic concept. Individuals collectively engage in class practices;

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these practices and performances are both conscious and practical (unarticulated). These practices may or may not be consciously organized; usually they are not. Indi viduals may have multiple, overlapping, or contradictory class based interests which may or may not be under stood as such. Clearly, to understand consciousness, practices, and performance of class more cultural and social geographic research is required. See also: Capital and Space; Capitalism; Capitalism and Division of Labor; Cultural Capital; Labor Geography; Neoliberalism; Structural Marxism; Transnationalism and Labor Geography; Underclass.

Further Reading Bradley, H. (1996). Fractured Identities: Changing Patterns of Inequality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Daniels, S. (1989). Marxism, culture, and the duplicity of landscape. In Peet, R. & Thrift, N. (eds.) New Models in Geography vol. 2, pp 196 220. London: Unwin Hyman. Duncan, J. and Duncan, N. (2004). Landscapes of Privilege: The Politics of the Aesthetic in an American suburb. London: Routledge. Duncan, N. and Legg, S. (2004). Social class. In Duncan, J., Johnson, N. & Schein, R. (eds.) A Companion to Cultural Geography, pp 265 278. Oxford: Blackwell.

Gibson Graham, J. K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2001). Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Massey, D. (1984). Spatial Divisions of Labour. London: Macmillian. Mitchell, D. (1996). The Lie of the Land: Migrant Workers and the California Landscape. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Sadler, D. (2000). Concepts of class in contemporary economic geography. In Sheppard, E. & Barnes, T. (eds.) A Companion to Economic Geography, pp 325 340. Oxford: Blackwell. Sayer, A. (1999). Valuing culture and economy. In Ray, L. & Sayer, A. (eds.) Culture and the Economy after the Cultural Turn, pp 53 75. London: Sage. Sayer, A. (2005). The Moral Significance of Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sennett, R. and Cobb, J. (1972). The Hidden Injuries of Class. New York: Vintage. Smith, N. (2000). What happened to class? Environment and Planning A 32, 1011 1032. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press. Wright, E. (ed.) (2005). Approaches to Class Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.centerforworkingclassstudies.org Working class and Labor Geography Bibliography.

Social Geography R. Panelli, University College London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background Social geography has different cultural roots and mean ings. Within selected European traditions, it has been understood as an overarching form of geography that integrates numerous other subdisciplines focusing on populations, land uses, and cultural practices so that a composite socio spatial understanding can be derived for social life in a particular place or landscape. This inte grating, ‘big picture’ notion of social geography contrasts with the more intense and detailed, specialist studies of socio spatial life undertaken in most Anglo American traditions. Anglo-American Social Geography In Anglo American settings, social geography has been widely understood as a subdiscipline that grew in rele vance and popularity in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Driven in part by modernizing tendencies and a strong belief in the benefits of scientific approaches for solving human and environmental challenges, social geography emerged from a wider geographic attention to postwar problems. Especially characteristic of this period was a belief that problems could be overcome with the correct application of scientific (including social scien tific) thinking and the adoption of ‘universal’ truths sur rounding progress, development, and prosperity. Via extensive mapping and modeling exercises, anxieties surrounding slums, ghettos, urban vices, and depressed rural conditions were laid in stark contrast to some of these supposed truths and ideals. As a consequence, considerable focus was given to the study and planning associated with slum clearance, ghetto management, crime prevention, and widespread service provision. Cumulatively, social geography was recognized in some quarters as an applied and policy relevant sub discipline that would contribute to the monitoring and achievement of postwar prosperity: the ‘building of a better world’. But social geography was more potent than this. Drawing on diverse heritage, including nineteenth century anarchic geographies and the emerging energies of the ‘civil rights’, ‘women’s liberation’, and diverse ‘left and socialist’ movements, some sectors of social geog raphy also took up more radical agendas and actions. These resulted in a range of critiques about the uneven and unjust nature of societies in space. Some of the verve and clarity of these theses would be profoundly

challenged in later years, but the critical energies of the late 1960s and 1970s laid a foundation of questions and commitments that ensured the growing popularity of social geography as a taught subject and field of research endeavor in Anglo American related universities (in cluding those of Australia and New Zealand). But to fully appreciate the diverse, progressive, and critical strands of the subdiscipline, together with the more recent chal lenges and developments, an awareness of the contrasting philosophical and theoretical approaches is first required. Contrasting Approaches The breadth of social geography has resulted from the different philosophical and theoretical traditions that have punctuated human geography more generally. These traditions shaped contrasting engagements with social issues and therefore resulted in the production of different types of social geography (summarized in Table 1). Some of the European forms of social geography re flected the attention to description and synthesis achieved in the French regional geography tradition. However, the dominant Anglo American shape of social geography, emerging in the latter part of the twentieth century, initially reflected an interest in positivism and the adoption of scientific method and quantitative ap proaches. The belief in ‘geography as a spatial science’ involved the adoption of statistical techniques and mathematical modeling in consort with increasingly so phisticated computer aided cartography. This produced a hegemony of explanation and prediction that was ap pealing and potent to many of the dominant political and social interests of the time. Residential patterns, migra tion processes, service needs, and problematic or ideal ized forms of social, economic, and political interaction could all be monitored, analyzed, and commented on. Especially popular was the belief that the manifestation of problems could be located and predictions could be posed, based on the continuation or adjustment of nu merous purportedly causal (or at least related) factors. While the power of quantitative and neopositivist scientific analysis of the social world would retain an application and relevance well into the contemporary era, the 1970s saw a growth in two alternative approaches, drawing on contrasting philosophical traditions. First, an interest in hermeneutic and phenomenological phil osophies, combined with ethnographic methods, enabled

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Table 1

A summary of contrasting traditions and results in social geography

Tradition

Foci on social issues

Types of social geography produced

Regional

Social life and relations are interconnected with other (physical and human) dimensions of the region under consideration.

Integrated descriptions of specific areas or

Neo-positivist Spatial Science

Social life can be understood as a function of universal processes and laws that link society and space.

Statistical descriptions of existing patterns of

Humanist

Social life is seen as individual and contextual (rather than universal) and understood via experiences and meanings that individuals and groups will assemble about their lifeworlds.

Text-rich accounts of individuals’ þ groups’

Social life is recognized as organized around the material conditions and relations that sustain a society. Critique of social conditions and processes sustaining capitalism was initially common.

Theoretical critiques of how society is organized

Social life is recognized as organized around the gender divisions and relations that shape and reproduce a society. Critique of patriarchy and gender inequalities was initially common.

Theoretical critiques of the unequal gender

Society and space are seen as diverse, multiple, dynamic and constantly reproduced/contested via discursive meanings and practices. Deconstruction of core social terms and multiple readings of place and space were initially common.

Readings of diverse þ dynamic constructions of

Marxist

Feminist

Postmodern þ Poststructural

regions demonstrating how local society was interwoven as a tapestry of interrelated environmental, demographic, economic þ cultural dimensions society operating over space (e.g., migration, poverty and affluence) Mathematical models, assisting scholars in hypothesizing, testing þ predicting relations between social groups þ space (e.g., ethnic concentrations, housing markets, and social service needs) experiences and the values þ meanings they ascribe to everyday life and the places to which they are attached þ regulated to enable capitalism to be reproduced Case studies exposing unequal, social powerrelations þ material conditions faced by contrasting classes in capitalism Geographies of social conflict at both inter-class þ intra-class levels relations reproducing patriarchy

Case studies of women’s unequal life experiences (e.g., access to housing, employment, and struggles over identity) Later consideration of hegemonies þ diversities of masculinity that help shape women’s, and some men’s, lives social groups þ spaces

Deconstructions and critical accounts of contested social þ spatial relations

Exploration of possible radicalized geographic praxis combining past þ new approaches to social concerns/action

humanist approaches to challenge the homogenizing and universalist claims of spatial science approaches. They could provide a starkly different way of creating social geography. Specifically, humanist geography paid atten tion to the complexity of social life and individual ex periences of space that defy measurement. They developed conceptually and empirically detailed ac counts of everyday people and their experience of place. Second, a belief in radical critique and action enabled both critical philosophies based on Marxism and femi nism to provide alternative perspectives on the social world. Following the social protests and political critiques emerging through the 1960s and 1970s, these approaches offered contrasting forms of practice to those of quanti tative and humanist traditions. Theoretical frameworks

conceptualizing social reality – and explaining the source and perpetuation of inequalities – were established. Consequently, documentation and critique of notions such as ‘capitalism’ and ‘patriarchy’ were detailed along with recommendations on how social relations could be changed. Cumulatively, humanist, Marxist, and feminist ap proaches provided theoretical foundations that enlivened social geography with detail and highlighted the dyna mism of society–space relations. Geographies of every day life and critiques of disadvantage and difference consequently flourished through the latter part of the twentieth century. But a further philosophical current was to challenge these newer perspectives. With the rise of postmodern and post structural thought, questions

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developed concerning the surety and essential or uni versal qualities of concepts such as human life, capital ism, class, patriarchy, and so forth. The social world, and the frameworks we use to understand it, was redefined as a set of cultural constructions. Social life and relations were now understood to be products of particular dis courses and articulations of power; products that would be contingent, relative, multiple, and contested. Con sequently, the effect of postmodern and post structural thought on social geography opened up whole new spectrums of diversity and produced challenging new insights regarding the dynamics of social life. Some sense of the impact of each of these approaches is outlined in the following three sections. These dis cussions highlight both the contrasting outcomes re sulting from these different approaches, as well as acknowledging that each social geography is not only constructed from within particular broad traditions, but also produced by specific people with their own geo graphic biographies and contexts.

Geographies of Social Patterns and Everyday Life While other facets of human geography have specialized in studies of human populations (e.g., demography, mi gration) or experiences (e.g., of labor, health or urban/ rural settings), the broader scope of social geography has resulted in scholars emphasizing the multiple and intersecting dimensions of everyday life. Two significant forms of this focus have involved either quantitative, spatial science accounts of social patterns and problems, or the more humanist inspired investigations of locally specific meanings and experiences of life, articulated by individuals and groups. Mapping Social Patterns and Problems Quantitative approaches to social geography have a long and valued history focussed on the identification of pat terns and processes that are broad in scale and helpful to formal policy interests and activities. During post World War II interest in modernization and social progress, countries and governments such as those in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America sought ways to identify existing social patterns and predict and plan for future social needs. Geographers’ numeric, cartographic, and modeling skills were in high demand. Studies in the 1960s included projects, such as Richard Morrill’s, that responded to the then common imperative of quantification and prediction. Morrill mapped and modeled the dynamics of ethnic minority concentrations in urban space, producing results that were significant for both academic geography and wider political debates. Morrill’s location and simulation of the expanding ‘Negro

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Ghetto’ in Seattle was a classic approach to a social problem of the day, and it stimulated similar work in other Anglo American contexts through the 1970s and 1980s. It also emphasized the detailed, locational, and predictive knowledge that could be generated while also avoiding the more difficult questions of racial discrimination and resi dential segregation. Similar types of quantitative geography were gener ated to identify problems and progress in rural social settings. The ‘rurality index’ first developed by Paul Cloke in the 1970s and later replicated by others in the 1980s and 1990s, enabled a composite measure of living conditions in England and Wales based on a range of indicators of more modern and/or urban life (e.g., household amenities, occupations, and commuting pat terns). These measures were indicative of social hardship or improving quality of life that varied spatially at the time. Importantly, the purported ‘objectivity’ of index ation techniques and the policy relevant demands of the time underpinned Cloke’s choices. It also enabled this work to gain popularity, both within geography and the wider policy and planning environment as England and Wales sought to change and improve living conditions for rural dwellers. In summary, as shown in Figure 1, numeracy, car tography, and modeling were core resources for social geographers. They enabled researchers to assist wider authorities in understanding and managing social prob lems concerning postwar Anglo phone societies and pursuing then assumed, universal goals of progress and development. The potency and applicability of these types of geo graphic studies have faced critique, but retain a clear currency because of their capacity to shed light on the profiles of changing societies and their needs. Most re cently, studies of increasingly complex migration and ethnicity patterns have been important in a range of Anglo American settings (e.g., the heterogeneity of non white British employment and residential patterns; the social and political consequences of defining black/white and Latino categories in the USA; and the in/visibility of Muslim populations in Australian society).

Tracing Meanings of Everyday Lives and Places In contrast to the macro level, and numeracy based char acter of quantitative studies, humanist social geographers moved away from what they perceived as the problematic objectivity and homogenizing qualities of such works. In contrast, humanist approaches offered theoretical and methodological bases from which to build geographic knowledge as contextually focused, even unique. Attention was given to the everyday, mundane, life of individual people and groups of people at personal and local levels.

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Assists in understanding, managing, and planning for current/future living conditions and social concerns

Post-WWII Society

Quantitative Social Geography Geographers Possess: Numerical Cartographic, and Modeling skills

Socially uneven Spatially varied Aiming for progress and prosperity via planning and management

Can produce statistics, maps, simulations, and models of social patterns, problems/ needs and possibilities

Figure 1 Quantitative social geography’s relationship with wider society.

In particular, a focus was made on the ‘dynamism of the lifeworld’ or the ‘world of everyday life’, both via theoretical and empirical endeavors. For instance, theo retical considerations of phenomenology in geography were outlined by Anne Buttimer and Edward Relph, working to establish the philosophical credentials of humanist geography as a valid alternative to the ‘quan titative revolution’ occurring in human geography in the early 1970s. In a complementary fashion, case studies, such as those of Roman Cybriwsky and David Ley, showed the nuanced interpretations that could be gen erated through a detailed study of the social structure, understandings, and daily life of contrasting groups within an individual neighborhood. Patterns of home making, neighborliness, racial tensions, and intergenera tional interaction in a Philadelphia suburb could all be captured through lengthy ethnographic study, and the spatial variation of these social dynamics could be rep resented via photographs (e.g., of graffiti or street scenes), quotations from local residents, and mapping of different activity sites. Across humanist social geography, considerable em phasis was given to agency and human–place relations, in recognition of the significance accorded to notions of human essence, place based experience, and meanings. In some cases, like the work of David Seamon, these were registered at the level of individual bodies and ‘place ballets’. In other cases, attention was given to cumulative and collective meanings attributed to places that were assembled by people over varying lengths of time, via

both daily life in specific residential settings and im aginary literary constructions of place and landscape. Considering these contrasting quantitative and hu manists projects and interests, it is possible to see how both continue to resonate with more contemporary projects in social geography. While preferences in theoretical ap proach have changed over time, the continued merit and relevance of studying the geographies of social patterns and the nuances of everyday life has retained currency across social geography. Moreover, new applications of, and questions about, quantitative and humanistic geog raphy are informing contemporary dimensions of social geography, as will be shown later in this entry.

Critiquing Disadvantage and Difference While mapping social patterns and investigating detailed cases of social life were indisputably popular in the second half of the twentieth, the social and political unrest of the 1960s combined with the development of radical social theory produced the basis of a further form of social geography. Broad social and political challenges presented via the ‘civil rights’ and ‘women’s liberation movements’, together with French students’ and wider Socialist protests enabled interested scholars to review the purpose, practice, and potential of many disciplines, including human geography. Across the various sub disciplines of geography, ideals of modernization, pro gress, development, and objectivity were criticized. Social

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geography was especially affected by these trends, for the living conditions and social relations that were so central to the emerging subdiscipline (and its public policy interface) were now core foci of the new critical devel opments. In particular, questions of welfare, social justice, inequality, and exploitation would take center stage. Key writings by David Smith and David Harvey reflect both their own experience of geography and wider social concerns in the 1970s and 1980s. Each in their own (wel fare and Marxist) geographies would challenge other social geographers to consider not only the nature of uneven spatial patterns but also of living conditions and social opportunities. They would not only identify where social problems were located, but they would also ask the ‘why’ questions. Why are social resources unevenly distributed? Why do some people face poverty while others enjoy substantial affluence? Proposals for a greater commitment to comprehensive welfare for all sectors of society, and for the exposure of social disadvantage, injustice, and socio economic exploitation would grow from this work. A core effort to emerge at this time involved the es tablishment of Marxist geographies that complemented developments in economic and political geography. In social geography, Marxist approaches enable scholars to explain the uneven access and control of space (e.g., for housing, leisure, and transport) in terms of the unequal dynamics of a capitalist mode of production. The concept of class would form a key concept in social geographies of the late 1970s and 1980s and research would variously expose the unequal class relations occurring in housing and labor markets in many urban, rural, and regional settings. For instance, Michael Dunford, Paul Cloke, and Nigel Thrift would each be influenced by Marxist de bates and give increasing attention to uneven and un equal conditions, and show the social disruption and class restructuring that occurred during different phases of capitalist development in France and England. Similarly, harnessing the critical impulses of this period, Mike Berry would document the housing inequalities that sustained capital accumulation in the USA and Australia. Furthermore, the role of the state would also be impli cated, as geographers such as David Harvey and Ruth Fincher, wishing to extend the benefit of Marxist cri tiques in North American geography, would demonstrate how state apparatus and government practices helped to sustain and reproduce the necessary social contexts in which capitalism could flourish in periods of growth, and reassemble itself in periods of ‘crisis’ or ‘restructuring’. Beyond problems of housing and employment, other issues that had previously been studied as ‘social prob lems’, to be mapped and analyzed, were equally re considered in the light of Marxist approaches. In particular, geographies of sexuality would highlight the economies of prostitution (such as those documented in England and the USA by Richard Symanski at varying

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levels of State, metropolitan, street, and bar activity). The heterosexual reproduction of capitalist industries and space would also be exposed. In the latter instance, the impact of feminist geography (discussed below) would intersect with Marxist interests as scholars like Kim England, Larry Knopp, and Ruth Fincher would illus trate how differing forms of urban space, housing stock, and social services sustained hegemonic inequalities that privileged capitalist class relations, and patriarchal and heterosexual practices. Together, Marxist and feminist approaches to social geography would elevate the importance of critiquing social differences (such as class, gender, and sexuality) with the aid of radical theories and detailed case studies. That which had previously been mapped as ‘social variation’ would now be critically named and analyzed as ‘social difference’. Implicit and explicit links between difference and unequal power relations would become transparent and widely studied in critical social geographies. In relation to feminist social geography, two broad developments emerged from the end of the 1970s. First, women were identified as a missing or under represented group within human geography research. While this would influence all aspects of human geography, social geography was a particularly fertile subdiscipline for the growth of new, gender sensitive studies. Commencing with a new focus on women (before later interrogating masculinity in the 1990s), scholars made radical and socialist feminist analyses of the unequal experiences and opportunities women encountered vis a` vis men across all forms of daily life, for example, housing, employment, unpaid domestic, care and community work, access to transport, and social services. Socialist feminist approaches were especially popular in British, North American, and Australian studies of the social and economic inequalities women faced in paid and unpaid work. These investigations would show how disadvan tageous class, gender, and sexual relations entwined to en sure the social and material reproduction of capitalism. They would also show how these relations would vary spatially, where different configurations of gendered space and place specific manifestations of gender would occur (e.g., in English, family farm units, compared to urban, Canadian, working class households). Radical feminist critique of the heteronormative focus of much of this work was also produced. Studies, such as that by Louise Johnson in the mid 1980s, supported both the growth in lesbian and gay geographies and later postmodern and post structural geographies of gender, sexuality, and the body as a site of contested identities and performances (see below). Other differentiation in feminist social geography resulted from the growing nuances being documented between gender and eth nicity. Studies such as those by Susan Hanson and Ger aldine Pratt, and Melissa Gilbert would begin to expose

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the complex contrasts in gendered experiences when analysis of ethnicity and racism were included in feminist social critiques of housing, employment, service access, and social networks. The second development in feminist social geography reflected the wider trends in feminist geography, namely, the recognition of the academic discipline as a gendered social world in its own right. In this respect, numerous women and geography groupings would critique the male domination of departmental and research cultures. They would also establish wide ranging critiques of research practice, reviewing the traditional power relations so often established between researcher and researched, and calling for greater recognition and respect for women’s own voices and agendas in research design and reporting. These innovations would also intersect with broader interests in activist and participatory research practices developing more widely in and beyond geography where emancipation, affirmation, or a reversal of past power hierarchies guided social research (e.g., development of youth, disabilities, and postcolonial geographies).

Diverse Deconstructions of Social Life: Postmodern and Post-Structural Geographies Postmodern and post structural approaches to social geography have focused on the fluid, heterogeneity of everyday life in the era characterized by postmodernity and post industrialism. These approaches document how social life, and previously taken for granted assumptions (e.g., about work, space, identity, and social interaction), have been unraveled. In their place diverse new con figurations of postmodern cities and postproductivist or multifunctional countrysides have been noted. No single, ideal, coherent, or unified notions of ‘the city’ or ‘the rural community’ are possible. Instead, geographers have concentrated on questioning hegemonic or normalizing assumptions about societies and environments, showing how multiple, shifting, and contestable these meanings and practices are in individual cases. Geographers in the last decade of the twentieth cen tury mobilized the skepticism and multiplicity character izing postmodern thought. They recognized that postmodern social geographies might be created to reflect either the configuration of a particular postmodern era or object (e.g., social relations in a postmodern city), or the style and methods that have come to be associated with postmodernity. Specifically, these include a skepticism and critique of ‘modern’ values and generic ‘truths’ such as ‘scientific objectivity’, ‘progress’, ‘development’, ‘equality’, ‘the individual’, and ‘society’. They also included an interest in pastiche, and the mixing and collage of different genres as well as an explicit attention to the multiplicity of

meanings and experiences that might be studied and re presented in geographic research. Drawing on cultural and literary theory social geog raphers have also used post structural strategies to de construct the many previously dominant understandings of society and self, production and consumption, be longing and marginalization, social power relations or resistance. They have also reassessed the notions of class, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality that have been so central to social geography. By showing these notions are discursively constructed and culturally contingent, post structural social geographies have created critical read ings of social norms and showed how everyday life could be read as a more complex negotiation of multiple subject positions. For instance, the work of Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham would move from classic interests in Marxist critiques of capitalism to explore the possibility of post structural and antiessentialist readings of society and economy. They also used postmodern styles, un settling the previously coherent and unitary notion of ‘author’ (to create a new collaborative, plural writing persona), and reconstructing processes of theoretical conceptualization and book structure – inviting multiple and shifting readings of their work. In presenting a post structural feminist critique of Marxist political economy, they showed how essentializing definitions of class could be deconstructed and shown to be overdetermined by (or mutually constituted in connection with) a range of other social dimensions: gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and so forth. Similarly, gender was shown to be diversely con structed and experienced by differing groups of women and men. Gender identity as a key individual and social con struction was also recognized by many scholars as pro viding at least some women and some men with a range of discourses and subject positions by which to make meaning and choose tactics associated with their lives and material or political interests. In addition, race and eth nicity were interrogated for the ways in which hegemonic ‘white’ interests could construct racialized meanings. Diverse work ranging from readings of historic geog raphy text books, through to contemporary census in struments or official place names, have illustrated how dominant (historic and contemporary) notions of white ness can control and marginalize minorities in specific places or across whole institutions and systems of social thought. Similarly, nuanced interrogations of dis/ability and youth/age also began to emerge at this time. Subsequently, diverse sets of identity politics were investigated, illustrating how disadvantaged groups could mobilize strategic meanings and identities from a range of available subjectivities in order to challenge en trenched norms and claim material spaces and symbolic places for these more marginalized interests and activ ities. Readings of the mobilization of gay pride events in

Social Geography

the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and the construction of strategically particular neighborhoods (based on ethnicity and religious observance) exemplify these types of works. The complexity of social relations and spatial strug gles highlighted in these investigations of identity politics stimulated two developments. First, social geographers came to recognize the need to consider the heterogeneity within analytic categories they had previously tended to hold as unities. For instance, past advocacy for the geographies of commonly disadvantaged groups (e.g., working classes, women, ethnic minorities, and homo sexuals) was now accepted as a far more diverse and complex project than previously acknowledged. These issues had begun to appear early in geographies of class and gender, as radical geographers recorded the range of contrasting experiences faced by different groups of women and men, class fractions and intra class conflicts, and groups falling outside any form of income or cap italist/production based classes. Through post structural social geographies, the range of class and gender pos itions became more visible, and critical readings and deconstructions of these categories were carried out. Similar trends occurred in geographies of ethnicity and sexuality, complemented by postcolonial and queer the ories that highlighted the hegemonies of Western and Northern norms that had tended to fix binaries and hierarchies around race and sexuality. In contrast, these new geographies disturbed the homogeneity and pre sumed stability of categories. Moreover, they highlighted the distinct spatial and sociocultural differences across ‘non white’ populations and the instability of definitions and shifting political possibilities across a continuum of sexual identities and practices that refuse categorization in a simple hetero:homo sexual binary. Second, these developments also emphasized the need to build more nuanced critiques of dominant social cat egories. In this way, the complexity of elite classes, mascu linity, whiteness, and heterosexuality has been increasingly exposed. Scholars have shown both the powerful normal izing tendencies associated with some discourses and power relations associated with class, whiteness, heterosexuality, and so forth, together with the consequent spatial and social advantages accorded to such groupings. Alistair Bonnett’s and Wendy Shaw’s interrogations of privileged forms of whiteness (in contrast to ‘color’, ‘Blackness’, and ‘indigene ity’) in the United Kingdom and Australia exemplify these efforts. These types of work have also exposed the degree to which social life varies for individuals who are positioned at apparently advantageous points along such axes of differ ence. In this way, work such as Lucy Jarosz and Victoria Lawson’s analysis of ‘redneck’ geographies in rural USA records the simultaneous ‘advantage’ of white, male pos itions as well as the obsolete and derogatory character that can be associated with these groupings. Similarly, the

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variation within heterosexual social relations has been in creasingly exposed by scholars such as Jo Little, Phil Hubbard, and Mary Thomas in detailed studies of ‘where and how’ sexual relations are negotiated by different ages, in different spaces, and associated with different sociocultural expectations. While social geography has continued to highlight the significance of established categories of social difference, the growth of postmodern and post structural approaches in human geography changed the character of this dif ferentiation. Attention to diversity has meant there has been an increasing interest in differences beyond the established axes of class, gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. Consequently, readings of difference associated with issues as diverse as age/youth, dis/ability, mental health, rural poverty and homelessness, and forms of it inerant and gypsy life have increased voluminously. By concentrating on the discursive constructions of these experiences and the spaces where they are commonly relegated, post structural accounts of marginalization and exclusion have been assembled, showing how tactics of ostracism and constructions of abjection could be fo cused upon these minorities. Deconstruction of ablest discourses, adultist and ageist prejudice, and readings of madness and itinerancy as degenerate, even evil, illus trates just some directions this burgeoning work has taken. The opportunities stemming from the deconstruction of dominant meanings and the attention given to the diversity of social groups and practices have provided a further direction for social geography. Specifically, those interested in the critical possibilities and the alternatives for social power and action have harnessed some of the analytic and practical potential of post structuralism. Geographers such as Fiona Mackenzie and Paul Rou tledge have demonstrated how groups can mobilize dominant and reverse discourses to political advantage in Canada and Scotland. Similarly, J.K. Gibson Graham and Jenny Cameron have recorded the diverse social and economic possibilities of participatory and action research that explicitly seeks to unsettle – and work beyond – hegemonic assumptions about capitalism and development.

Rematerializing and Feeling Social Geography While postmodern and post structural approaches were enormously popular and influential in social geography around the turn of the century, several other perspectives have begun to challenge or complement these develop ments. In response to the perceived overemphasis on social constructions and representations as a way to analyze social life, some scholars have sought to

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moderate the ‘cultural turn’ that expanded with the use of postmodern and post structural perspectives. They have called for a refocusing on to the material conditions of life. Social geography has been invited to ‘remater ialize’ research foci and the geographic knowledge being produced. Results of this ‘material re turn’ involve a whole range of diverse materially attentive studies that highlight social and political implications of quite mundane aspects of life. This includes studies of arrangements of bodies; the use and reuse of clothing; diverse processes of home making; and negotiation of workplaces and public sites of formal or informal significance. For instance, drawing on recent feminist traditions in New Zealand geography, Victoria Guyatt has demonstrated how gendered social relations are embodied and contested through specific struggles over clothing and behavior in contrasting sites within the work spaces of a local hotel. In contrast, engaging the more varied debates surrounding migration, ethnicity, and post/ colonialism in British settings, Divya Tolia Kelly has de veloped detailed accounts of how specific and contra dictory identities surrounding Englishness and Asian ness are articulated via artifacts and the organization of diverse matter within particular homespaces. Benefits of such work are reported to lie in both: (1) the re engagement with the conditions characterizing daily life (including the continuing prevalence of social– spatial inequalities); and (2) the production of socially relevant and policy informing research. Studies showing the strikingly uneven socioeconomic indicators across national populations or the deprived living conditions of immigrant populations in large cities provide one ex ample of this type of rematerialized geography. Other forms of study interrogate the way social identities are materially assembled and experienced through the everyday engagement with bodies, homes, work places, or the encounters with specific education, leisure, and health choices. These types of geography enable an understanding of how lives are socially negotiated through varying material worlds. But in some cases they also provide resources for informing the diversity of policy environments and processes, stretching across government and NGO interests in immigration, em ployment, health, education, and social development. Rematerialized social geography has the potential, therefore, to re engage connections between social geography and policy spheres that partly lapsed as post structural perspectives appeared less accessible and relevant for many policy stake holders. A second way that scholars have sought to qualify discursive and representational approaches to social geography centers on studies of affective experience and relations. At times this overlaps with rematerialized geographic endeavors, but primarily the focus of this second development rests on the contention by Kay

Anderson and Susan Smith that emotions constitute an underrecognized set of relations shaping the social world. Appreciation of this position has some of its roots in humanist geography interests concerning people’s ‘sense of place’. But the focus on emotional relations especially developed from the work of a range of feminist scholars who have produced detailed and critical reflections on their experiences (including emotions) ‘in the field’. Ac knowledging that geographic research involves a plethora of uneven, socially navigated, and place based, emotions explicitly situated geographers themselves within the varied terrain of emotions. Extending from these reflex ive considerations, emotional geographies have begun to be explored across diverse topics in social geography. Commencing with the immediately personal, some scholars have shown the multiple emotions and uneven consequences that surround experiences of fear, memory, and/or affection as they are played out in contrasting family, leisure or public sites. Gillian Rose’s work on emotions infusing experiences and practices surrounding family, motherhood, memory, and photographs illustrates this genre at household levels in Britain. Others have taken interests and concerns, focusing on individuals’ and groups’ navigation of emotional experiences and ‘emo tion work’, encountered through health issues, music, dance and sexuality. Still others (such as Paul Cloke, Harvey Perkins, Owain Jones, and Jo Little) have drawn on the twin understandings of discursive and biophysical dimensions in rural geography, to argue that emotions ranging from fear to adventure and desire are implicated in social relations with specific British and Antipodean places, landscapes, and constructions of nature. In future, the local and everyday experiences of emotion are likely to further intersect with wider critical and political geography interests. This is especially pos sible in emerging critiques of the geopolitics of fear as articulated in globalized, national, and local forms. Past social geographies of crime and fear will engage with established attention to gender, ethnicity, and age to expose the varied emotional topography of contrasting populations as they seek to make meaning of current and future life chances and world events.

Further Social Geographies: Chasms and Connections At the time of writing this entry, social geography ap pears ever more crucial to understanding social prob lems, and imagining, or agitating for social change. While it is evident that advances in opportunities (if not equality) have been achieved in certain places for some groups, it is also true that in the past three decades, Western or Northern societies have become economic ally more differentiated and socially and politically more

Social Geography

polarized, in part replicating the severity of divisions found in other parts of the world. Differences based on ethnicity and identity politics form arguably deeper chasms than ever as geographers have shown recently in critiques of protests against asylum centers in England and mosque developments in Australia. Critique of Anglo-American, Anglophone, and White Geographies Equally, ongoing inequalities within geography have become increasingly obvious following recent docu mentation of white, Anglo American, and Western he gemonies in geography. European scholars, such as Judit Timar (highlighting an East–West experience), have noted the complexity of these dominant ways of pro ducing and circulating geographic knowledge. In add ition, from the particular historical and political circumstances of geography in Greece, Dina Vaiou has called radical geographers to debate Anglophone he gemony and disturb existing patterns of definition, con trol, and regulation. Similarly, in considering women of color in geography, Minelle Mahtani has pointed to the need to critique the social profile and practices of geography itself. Mahtani and others highlight con tinuing privilege of whiteness within the academy and the need for changing practices and support for both faculty and students, and their research. In terms of the textual reproduction of the discipline, some positive re sponses have been made, including the initiation of country reports in the Journal of Social and Cultural Geography and a range of special issues in diverse journals addressing these concerns.

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also have significance for the way geographic studies are conducted. For example, in ‘maori’ or ‘tauiwi’, dialog sur rounding the practice of geographic research in New Zealand, Robert McClean, Lawrence Berg, and Mike Roche have argued that critical reflection of ‘boundary crossings’ and ‘aroha’ are required in cross cultural in vestigations. Similarly, Paul Hodge and John Lester, working from an indigenous research center, record ways geographers can de colonize their own field through re flexive cross cultural innovations. Ethics and Morals More broadly, the current tensions, anxieties, and dis crimination evident in many Western or Northern set tings have prompted social geographers to become more reflective on matters of ethics and morals. In part, this has involved a renaissance of moral concerns previously ar ticulated through welfare geographies and questions of social justice. David Smith, long time advocate for so cially just and morally reflective geographies, has written extensively on the value of moral concerns. He sees these not as fundamentalist, or repressive codes, but as frames of reflection to deter excesses of relativism. In a com plementary fashion, other social geographers – working from quite contrasting traditions and inspirations – have increased the attention given to morally self conscious research design and action, as well as a more ethically reflective and morally nuanced approach to the teaching of geography. Cumulatively, these diverse scholars pre sent the possibilities of imagining fairer, more inclusive, and careful societies in future.

Indigenous Perspectives

Posthuman and More-Than-Human Social Geographies?

There has also been an increasing concentration on in digenous geographies, and the formation of special working groups to address indigenous issues in some geographical associations (e.g., Association of American Geographers, Institute of Australian Geographers). This work promotes strikingly diverse geographies. Acknowledging the specif ically different geographic worlds of social groups deci mated via invasion and colonization within current Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and the USA nation states, scholars are highlighting how indigenous per spectives can challenge and invigorate social (and other) geographies. For instance, using different, and more inte grating perspectives, insights into previous human–en vironment or society–nature binaries have been recorded as Lisa Palmer, Nicole Gombay, and Kathleen Wilson have shown the intimate interrelations connecting people with their environments, history, traditional cultural practices, and contemporary shifting relations, in Australian and Canadian settings. These emerging indigenous sensitivities

Finally, and in part stimulated by disparate environ mental concerns, and debates surrounding ethical, em bodied, and material experiences of life, social geography is being influenced by debates about hybridity and posthumanism. Bruce Braun identifies posthumanism as a questioning of ‘‘the figure of the human, its fixing and bounding’’ and an emphasis on the connections between ‘human’ and other forms and relations. Moving beyond anthropocentrism, Sarah Whatmore’s Hybrid Geographies highlights the possibilities of ethically interrogating ‘human’ life as complexly connected with other, nonhu man forms and processes. This resonates as a new Anglophone ‘discovery’ – in concert with long held in digenous knowledge systems. The implications for social geography, for considering more than human beings and relations, are only just beginning to be considered as some scholars (in and beyond definitions of social geog raphy) commence re reading our material, embodied, and environmentally related, everyday lives via more

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intimate entanglements. These include: our experience of walking outdoors; human–plant relations and ethics in garden settings; indigenous, organic, and slow relations with food; or our passage through illnesses and experi ence of death, including the interface between ‘human’ and other forms of matter, meaning, and memorial. Social geography will continue to be a hugely diverse subdiscipline of human geography. Its practitioners will craft knowledge of social life, problems, and possibilities from widely contrasting traditions and personally pos itioned contexts. Social geographies will always be re cords written by multiply identified scholars constructed from diverse institutional, philosophical, and social con texts. But social geography also now exists as one of numerous human geographies that can face – and benefit from – the challenge of moving beyond historic divisions between human and physical geography. Considering indigenous and posthumanist perspectives in new, more than human interconnections between people and their surrounding worlds will invigorate new material, emo tional, and political accounts of social life; both at the mundane and personal level as well as the wider geo political levels where division and distance most threa tens the possibility of social connection and respect. See also: Ageism and Age; Body, The; Capitalism; Colonialism I; Difference/Politics of Difference; Emotional Geographies; Ethnicity; Feminism/Feminist Geography; Heteronormativity; Homelessness; Humanism/ Humanistic Geography; Hybridity; Identity Politics; Indigeneity; Inequality; Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Masculinities; Participatory Action Research; Patriarchy; Positivism/ Positivist Geography; Posthumanism/Posthumanistic Geographies; Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography; Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies; Race; Radical Geography; Sense of Place; Sexuality; Welfare Geography; Whiteness; Youth/Youth Cultures.

Further Reading Anderson, K. and Smith, S. (2001). Editorial: Emotional geographies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26, 7 10. Bonnett, A. (1997). Geography, race and whiteness: Invisible traditions and current challenges. Area 29(3), 193 199. Castree, N., Nash, C., Badminton N., et al. (2004) Mapping posthumanism: An exchange Environment and Planning A 36 2004 1341 1363 Cybriwsky, R. A. (1978). Social aspects of neighbourhood change. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 68, 17 33.

Dunn, K. (2004). Islam in Sydney: Contesting the discourse of absence. Australian Geographer 35, 333 353. Fincher, R. (1981). Analysis of the local level capitalist state. Antipode 13, 25 31. Gibson Graham, J. K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (as We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Gombay, N. (2005). Shifting identities in a shifting world: Food, place, community and the politics of scale in an Inuit settlement. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 23, 415 433. Guyatt, V. (2005). Gender performances in a service orientated workplace in Aotearoa/New Zealand. New Zealand Geographer 61, 203 212. Harvey, D. (1976). The Marxist theory of the state. Antipode 8, 80 89. Hubbard, P. (2000). Desire/disgust: Mapping the moral contours of heterosexuality. Progress in Human Geography 24(2), 191 217. Hubbard, P. (2005). Accommodating otherness: Anti asylum centre protest and the maintenance of white privilege. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 30, 52 65. Jarosz, L. and Lawson, V. (2002). ‘Sophisticated people versus rednecks’: Economic restructuring and class difference in American’s west. Antipode 34(1), 8 27. Jones, O. (2003). ‘‘Endlessly revisited and forever gone’’: On memory and emotional imaginations in doing children’s geographies. An ‘addendum’ to ‘‘To go back up the side hill’’: Memories, imaginations and reveries of childhood’ by Chris Philo. Children’s Geographies 1, 25 36. Knopp, L. (1992). Sexuality and the spatial dynamics of capitalism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10, 651 669. Little, J. (2003). ‘Riding the rural love train’: Heterosexuality and the rural community. Sociologia Ruralis 43(4), 401. Mahtani, M. (2006). Challenging the Ivory Tower: Proposing anti racist geographies within the academy. Gender, Place and Culture 13, 21 25. McClean, R., Berg, L. D. and Roche, M. M. (1997). Responsible geographies: Co creating knowledge in Aotearoa. New Zealand Geographer 53, 9 15. Morrill, R. L. (1965). The Negro ghetto: Problems and alternatives. The Geographical Review 55, 339 361. Pain, R. (2001). Introducing Social Geographies. London: Arnold. Pain, R. (2006). Policy research in social geography: Seven deadly myths. Progress in Human Geography 30, 50 59. Panelli, R. (2004). Social Geographies: From Difference to Action. London: Sage. Pratt, G. and Hanson, S. (1988). Spatial dimensions of the gender division of labour in a local labour market. Urban Geography 64, 299 321. Shaw, W. (2000). Ways of whiteness: Harlemising Sydney’s aboriginal Redfern. Australian Geographical Studies 38, 291 305. Smith, D. M. (1994). Geography and Social Justice. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomas, M. (2004). Pleasure and propriety: Teen girls and the practice of straight space. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22, 773 789. Timar, J. (2004). More than ‘Anglo American’, it is ‘Western’: Hegemony in geography from a Hungarian perspective. Geoforum 35, 533 538. Valentine, G. (1993). (Hetero) sexing space: Lesbian perceptions and experiences of everyday spaces. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 11, 395 413. Valentine, G. (2001). Social Geographies: Space and Society. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Whatmore, S. (2002). Hybrid Geographies: Natures Cultures Spaces. London: Sage. Women and Geography Study Group (1984). Geography and Gender. London: Hutchinson with Women and Geography Study Group of the IBG.

Social Justice, Urban K. Newman, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Definition Urban social justice is a term that suggests that in equalities are socially produced rather than bound in universal truths. In contrast with theories of social justice that are based on a theoretical construct, the term urban social justice suggests that social justice is embedded in social processes that are directly related to the mode of production as it is expressed spatially. Cities are spaces of oppression and inequality but they are also spaces of political liberation. For Marxist political economists urban social justice is created and produced through a dialectical relationship between the oppression and in equality created by the factors of production in cities and by the spaces of freedom also located in cities. Much like traditional thinking about justice and social justice, urban social justice is about equitable processes and outcomes and it assumes a role for the state in their production. Questions focus on what is being distributed, how it is distributed, and with what outcome. Will just processes produce just outcomes or are inequalities better addressed through redistribution? Can the mode of pro duction remain the same and produce just outcomes? At what scale is social justice produced? Is economic in equality the only source of oppression and injustice? If it is not, what alternative processes are necessary to produce social justice? Is it possible and/or desirable to create a universal idea of justice in multicultural societies? If justice is socially produced and is different for different groups, do intra and inter group cleavages become problems?

Evolution and Main Concepts Social justice theories consider how social processes pro duce and reproduce space and how the resulting spaces affect social justice. The term urban social justice diverged from earlier conceptions of social justice in that it has a decidedly spatial component. Early conceptions of urban social justice recognized that cities play critical functions within capitalist economies as centers for production and exchange. Cities are both the places in which goods are produced and the place to invest surplus capital. In the United States, efforts to increase capital accumulation produced metropolitan uneven development as capital expanded outwards, from the urban core to the suburban periphery and beyond, leaving economically devastated inner cities in its wake. Those who remained in the inner city were left to lament: ‘‘Search for justice, and what do

you find? Just us on the unemployment line, just us sweating from dawn to dusk. There’s no justice, there’s – Huh! – just us’’ (Berman, 1997: 164). Even as capital fled outward, agglomerations of fixed capital sought to draw capital back to the urban core. These fixed capital actors partnered with the state to create what Harvey Molotch called a growth machine to further the potential for capital accumulation by en hancing the competitive position of the city relative to other cities. Cities seek to retain existing and attract new mobile capital and labor by minimizing the costs to capital, such as providing tax breaks, regulating land use, providing cultural amenities and infrastructure, reducing the cost of labor, reducing regulations, and increasing the appeal of residential neighborhoods. This entire process enhances opportunities for capital accumulation, pro duces uneven development, and creates a tension within cities between the city as a place for capital accumulation and the city as a lived place for individuals and com munities. As Merrifield has observed, the entire city is used to maximize exchange value. Globalization has ac celerated these processes and pushed them out into the world creating uneven development at a global scale. Right to the City Cities may be places in which capital seeks to further its interests, but cities are also places in which people live, have families, and build community. Lefebvre argues that those who use the city should have a right to the city. He does not prescribe how inhabitants use that right in practice but it certainly happens outside of the existing formal mechanisms for political participation. Lefebvre points out that existing electoral structures are too narrow to influence the space of the city which is produced and reproduced through social processes. A right to the use of the city challenges the liberal right of property ownership giving those who use the city a right in its production along with those who value it for exchange. Social justice, then, according to Lefebvre is produced as a result of the processes of inhabitants living their daily lives. Don Mitchell builds on Lefebvre’s right to the city and considers how public spaces are used, how that use is governed, what rules shape the city and who creates them, and what that means for who has rights in the city. Campaigns to ‘clean up’ public spaces have removed the homeless which Mitchell argues has removed their right to the city because it eliminates ‘the right to inhabit.’ The right to the city means participating in the discussions

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about producing and reproducing the city. If the home less are removed physically, if they do not have the right to inhabit, they do not have the right to the city. Mitchell argues that a right to property should not be a require ment to live in the city and therefore participate in urban governance. Mitchell sees protest and legal action as ways to engage in the discussion about the future of the city that can produce a more equal society. A right to the city seems to suggest that using that right would take place at the local scale. But what is local and does local participation create a right to the city? Purcell argues that while Lefebvre likely did not anticipate that all action would be local, many who have used the idea of the right to the city have translated it into local action with the expectation that it would produce democratic processes and outcomes. Purcell questions the assumption that local action is inherently democratic suggesting that it is en tirely possible that local action is undemocratic. If the right to the city is translated into a process by which local inhabitants control decision making, Purcell questions whether this process necessarily produces socially just outcomes. He asks how the needs of local interests are interrogated against the needs of broader publics. A pro cess which favors local interests might produce democratic and socially just outcomes, or it might not, but the process, Purcell argues, is not democratic because it favors decision making dominated by the few over the interests of the broader public. The right to the city in Lefebvre’s initial conceptualization was about making the city for those who use it instead of solely for those who seek to use it to increase exchange value. This could happen at many dif ferent scales. In the case that Purcell reviews, community groups and residents in a section of Seattle that is slated for rezoning to encourage the development of bio technology firms could participate in the processes locally but he argues that participation at that scale could actually produce undemocratic outcomes. The most likely way to make decisions that would increase use value would have to take place at a broader scale such as that of the city. Processes and Outcomes Social justice theories vary on preferred processes for achieving socially just outcomes. Lefebvre and Mitchell focus on the production and reproduction of space. It is by producing and reproducing space that residents can claim the city as their own. By claiming their right to the city they can transform the city as a place merely for exchange value to one in which residents can maximize use value. But participating in the production and re production of the city is only one strategy for creating urban social justice. Other theories of social justice focus on distribution of the social surplus. The challenge is to develop an equitable system for equitable redistribution. Embedded in that challenge are two additional

challenges. What sort of system is necessary and what does one use as a metric for distribution. Who has need and how is that determined? Marxists challenge whether it is possible to arrive at a socially just end without changing the production system. They ask whether distribution in an inequitable system can ever produce socially just outcomes. Few Marxist political economists argue for whole scale economic change but many argue for some modification in the mode of pro duction to ensure equitable outcomes. Post structuralist theories follow a similar logic; only they question whether the sources of oppression are solely related to the pro duction system. These theorists, like feminists, point out that even if economic injustice was eliminated, many groups would still be oppressed. They argue that linking social justice to a universal conception of justice, even to one on the left, will not produce social justice in multi cultural societies as groups experience injustice differently. Post structural theorists offer what is sometimes referred to as a cultural politics in which difference and individual and group identity are valued as strengths. Instead of merging groups to create one homogenous population with one theoretical universal idea of social justice, retaining dif ference and identity, in their view, strengthens democracy. Iris Marion Young, for example, takes Marxist con ceptions of urban social justice as a starting point. She defines social justice within the context of social processes but she does not limit the source of oppression to the economic system. In much the way that Marxists might argue that social justice cannot be achieved without transforming the mode of production, Young argues that social justice remedies that are limited to distribution will not produce social justice if there are additional sources of oppression embedded in social processes. No amount of distribution will produce equitable outcomes if oppression and domination are embedded structurally because the inequalities will be reproduced through distribution. Moreover, distributing things like wealth and income does not address alternative sources of oppression. To better understand alternative sources of injustice, Young identifies five faces of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence. The first three are related to the way in which people participate in the economic system and their ability for self determination and self development. Ex ploitation can be seen in unequal labor relationships, such as women’s unpaid labor within the household which benefits men or how certain groups, such as ethnic and racial minorities, work in jobs that are less likely to allow for self determination and self development. Marginalized people such as those who receive welfare benefits are left out of the labor system entirely. In her view, because marginalized people are unable to participate in the labor force themselves, they are also unable to practice full citizenship rights in the economic system. Powerlessness is


the last face of oppression that is related to the economic system. Those who are powerless have jobs in which they have little leeway and must work for others such as pro fessionals compared with menial laborers. Cultural im perialism imposes dominant group ideas and stereotypes and violence is the remaining face of oppression. Acknowledging that society is not homogenous, Young views social justice as something that is produced through a process of deliberative democracy in which groups and individuals maintain their identity and strengthen themselves through discussion and sharing with the goal of facilitating self development and self determination. Young argues that deliberative process deepens democracy and increases accountability by providing a space in which groups articulate alternative viewpoints and make justice claims. This alters group dynamics by making each group accountable to the others. Young argues that this process has the potential to produce social justice under an ideal set of conditions that include ‘‘inclusion, equality, rea sonableness, and publicity’’ (Young, 2000: 23). Not everyone is convinced that cultural politics will produce socially just outcomes. Many critics argue that re taining individual and group identities and using that to socially produce justice will lead to relativism and a weak ening of the concept of social justice. Or they fear that competing group claims will make achieving social justice an impossible feat. Fainstein doubts that post structuralism offers a way forward suggesting instead that it leads to new forms of conflict and group oppression. In her critique she suggests that these oppressed groups can themselves oppress other groups and can even oppress subgroups within their own group, all the while under the cover of post structur alism. Fainstein points out the challenge, if not impossibility, of creating processes that produce equitable outcomes. Further critique suggests that strengthening group identity may weaken community identification which is closely tied to social justice. Low and Gleeson argue that by focusing on individual and group claims social justice claims become fragmented. They offer an alternative approach that involves thinking about communities as things that overlap and interrelate. Social justice, they argued, is created through the idea of community. Instead of narrowing the idea of community to individual groups, the idea of community can be broadened beyond neighborhood, ethnic, race, gender, sexual orientation, and the like and even the nation state expanding com munity and claims for social justice. The goal is to extend the boundaries of community to build connections among people. Low and Gleeson make these ideas real by considering global relationships. For example, people in one country such as the United States may desire access to many inexpensive goods and services. How these goods are produced, who produces them, and how that production affects their environment may not come into consideration. But if the idea of community is expanded

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outward so that the consumers in the United States are part of the same community as the producers in another country, then the lives and communities of both become closely intertwined. Justice can be produced as the ties of community draw these communities together. Viewing community as something broader than individuals, neighborhood, or nation state may shape desires and political action. Low and Gleeson suggest the limitations of geographical difference and favor an appeal to human rights and a global discourse through international in stitutions to pursue universal rights and needs.

Challenging Neoliberalism As capitalism evolves these contradictions are increasing and they are doing so on a global stage. Harvey observes how capitalism, as it has evolved in the early part of the twenty first century, is producing dramatic uneven devel opment making some places very wealthy and leaving some exceptionally poor. Uneven development has ‘‘in tensified’’ as a result of what Harvey calls ‘‘free market utopianism’’ which produces ‘‘spiraling income inequalities, uneven geographical developments, externality effects on the environment, and the like’’ (Harvey, 2000: 178). The neoliberal regime argues for free market solutions but it does this even as it is shaped by state policy. The state has not faded away in the era of neoliberalism; it has not been hollowed out. Far from it! The state has been reshaped to further the advances of capitalism. When it hits the ground with little regulation it produces dramatic inequities. The idea of challenging capital’s structural dominance seems daunting but Castells argues that even though structure is important, it does not eliminate opportunities for activism. Perhaps counter intuitively, capital’s global expansion presents new opportunities for activism. Har vey questions whether geographic difference is at odds with a global discussion of human rights. He counters the traditional Marxist claim that rights are the product of the bourgeoisie and instead suggests that globalization offers a new scale for organizing. Workers are no longer limited by state borders giving them more power to build bigger broader organizations. In fact, the globalization of capital has made the contradictions ever more clear as uneven development is spread globally with far greater extremes between the haves and the have nots. While Harvey suggests the potential for organizing at the global scale, efforts to reshape the global can occur at other scales. Globalism could be altered by local action. Wil liam Sites suggests that global capital has to actually take place somewhere and how states respond to global actors locally shapes globalization. If states pursue neoliberal agendas then a neoliberal agenda gets reproduced at the global scale. But, if states shape global actors locally, then they can also shape globalization. If the state continues

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to act in response to neoliberalism through a hands off policy of facilitating capital’s expansion, then it merely reproduces that at the global. But perhaps it is within the city that social justice is produced and reproduced through struggle. Andrew Merrifield questions whether social justice must be cre ated from a universal idea or ideal type or whether social justice is an activist concept. His question emerges from challenges not to the traditional liberal thinkers but ra ther to those on the left. He questions whether Marxist approaches that require a change in the mode of pro duction to achieve social justice are necessary if not unnecessarily utopian. He wonders instead what happens if one tries to make these ideas – of urban social justice – real? Instead he suggested adopting a ‘practical dystopian politics’ which he views as an approach that links theory with reality in contrast to the Marxist ‘utopian alter native’. This more realistic approach involves a dialect ical struggle between urbanization and urbanism. Merrifield defines urbanization as the process and ur banism is the place as we experience it. Merrifield does not see this as something that will be ultimately resolved. Instead it is a process – a dialectic. Social justice, then, is produced through these conflicts, through the effort to make social justice real in the city. Eliminating inequality through a change in the production system is unlikely. It is only through group conflict in the city that social justice is created. These battles in turn create and re create the city so the struggles take place in space but they are really over the space – what it is, who it is for, and what it will be. These struggles are witnessed in any city on a daily basis. In New York City, for example, the battles between labor and employers takes on a larger than life character as union workers regularly protest developers who hire low wage nonunion laborers by erecting enormous inflatable rats in front of job sites. In response, developers erected their own inflatable cat. What started out as a narrow effort by some unions has expanded from construction workers to many different types of laborers with some unions even renting their rats out for use by other groups. The battle to create the city, to negotiate exchange versus use value, and to gain the right to the city is evident on the streets. Monthly bike rallies challenge whether the streets are solely to increase the flow of goods and labor and the accumulation of capital or is their other value in their use? In many cities once a month these streets become a place of public dialog and discussion as bike riders take to the streets in an effort known as critical mass. This mass bike ride started in San Francisco in 1992 and later spread to cities across the country. As bike riders take over the streets of San Francisco and New York and other cities across the country, the streets become contested ground, the con tested ground that helps to continually reshape the city.

The streets are places of liberation as people seek to influence how public space is used and challenge who the city is for. But the same streets are also spaces of op pression in New York City as the police department videotapes critical mass rides to collect evidence for fu ture use in court. The battle for public space continues as the discussion over the use of public space winds its way through the streets and the courts. These processes, these struggles for space, are what Merrifield calls a dialectical urbanism. He sees the city as both a space for emanci pation and a space for oppression. The city is the place in which injustices occur and also in which justice is sought. See also: Neoliberalism, Urban; Uneven Development; Urban Growth Machine.

Further Reading Castells, M. (1985). The City and the Grassroots. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fraser, N. (2003). Redistribution or Recognition: A Political Philosophical Exchange. New York: Verso. Harvey, D. (1973). Social Justice and the City. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Harvey, D. (1989). The Urban Experience. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Harvey, D. (1997). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. New York: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2000). Spaces of Hope. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Lefebvre, H. (2003). The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Leitner, H., Peck, J. and Sheppard, E. (eds.) (2007). Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers. New York: The Guilford Press. Logan, J. and Molotch, H. (1987). Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Low, N. and Gleeson, B. (1998). Justice, Society and Nature: An Exploration of Political Ecology. New York: Routledge. Merrifield, A. (2002). Dialectical Urbanism: Social Struggles in the Capitalist City. New York: Monthly Review Press. 2002. Merrifield, A. and Swyngedouw, E. (1997). The Urbanization of Injustice. New York: New York University Press. Mitchell, D. (2003). The Right to the City. New York: The Guilford Press. Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (2002). The urbanization of neoliberalism: Theoretical debates neolibearlizing space. Antipode 34(3), 380 404. Purcell, M. (2006). Urban democracy and the local trap. Urban Studies 43(11), 1921 1941. Sites, W. (2003). Remaking New York. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, N. (1990). Uneven Development. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, N. (1996). The New Urban Frontier. New York: Routledge. Young, I. (1990). Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Young, I. (2000). Inclusion and Democracy. New York: Oxford.

Relevant Websites http://chicagocriticalmass.org/ Chicago Critical Mass. http://gothamist.com/2005/10/27/cat vs rat at radio city music hall.php Gothamist: Cat vs. Rat at Radio City Music Hall. October 27, 2005. http://www.righttothecity.org/ Right to the City Alliance.

Social Movements M. Ramutsindela, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bioregionalism Ideas and practices that relate to connecting peoples’ cultures to the environment in which they live at a small scale. Environmental Movement A group of people who are mobilized around the health of the planet and the impact of human behavior on it. Green Parties Political parties that are formed to promote particular environmental policies and actions through an electoral process. Social Mobilization The process by which specific concerns become a rallying point for mass action. Social Movement An organized and sustained collective group of people, who seek to challenge power holders and institutions entrenching inequalities of all sorts. Social Movement Theory A set of ideas and perspectives that are used in the process of explaining social movements. Transnational Public Sphere An environment that enables people to organize themselves across national boundaries. Universalist Propositions Statements that are applied everywhere with no regard for geographical differences.

Introduction The study of social movements within geography and the relevance of geography to their study have recently at tracted the attention of geographers. With regard to their place in geography, there is a view that the discipline has no well developed tradition of studying social move ments. Moreover, geographers have been highly selective in engaging with the literature on social groups. This undermines geography’s contribution to the broad inter disciplinary debates on social movements. Equally, re search in disciplines such as sociology and political science has neglected the relevance of geography in the devel opment of social movement theory. The impor tation of geography into the study of social groups and vice versa takes place by inserting the importance of space and scale in the analysis of these groups. There is a real ization that political mobilization, which is at the heart of social movements, has a spatial context that cannot be ignored if we are to fully understand them. Geographers

have also argued that there are geographical differences and variations in the development of social groups and identities; the distribution of resources that are mobilized by social groups; the scales at which social movements operate; and the circumstances and influences of particular places. Against this backdrop, the interdisciplinary nature of social groups and insights from the analyses of scale and place in geography provide opportunities for deepening our understanding of human action within the broad field of human geography. The question that could be asked is how best can human geography harness those opportun ities? This short article uses political geography as one of the platforms on which human geography can contribute to, and benefit from, social movement research. This de mands understanding social groups as a political force, the strategies they adopt, and the influence they have on the political landscape.

Social Movements and Research Trends Social movements bring groups of people who collect ively seek to change systems that govern or affect their lives. They are concerned about the social and political power and the presumed legitimacy of existing insti tutions and practices; the gaps between freedoms and entitlements, and the ways in which benefits are extracted and shared; imposition of lifestyle choices; oppression and emancipation, and so forth. In this way, social movements are different from other formations/group ings in that they represent a conscious and sustained effort to change society and have a longer lifespan than, say, a single protest. They are composed by ordinary people coming from diverse backgrounds who aspire to change society for the betterment of everybody’s life. The pertinent questions that have occupied most social movement research have been why and how such movements are formed, and what strategies do they use with what effect? Answers to these questions have gen erated various intellectual responses, which set the fol lowing general theoretical foci: 1. Before the 1960s, scholars studied social movement through the lens of an angry mob, meaning that they were frightened by the mob, which they regarded as dangerous. Theories of the origin of social movements focused either on the character of participants or on conditions in the broader environment which the movement faces, the intention being to find out how best to prevent social movements. Theorists

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collaborated with law and order enforcement agencies in identifying social forces and to ‘know the enemy’, as was the case with Project Camelot. The Project was funded by the US Department of the Army and operated as a joint venture between US and Latin American scholars with the aim of identifying social forces committed to change in Latin America and to develop counterinsurgency. Generally, social movements were seen as a problem and as outsider actors from ‘normal’ politics. It should be noted that scholars were generally less sympathetic to partici pants in social groups at the time, because they re garded those participants as irrational and as people who blindly and stupidly followed their leaders. 2. The 1960s saw a dramatic change in attitudes toward social movements. This was particularly occasioned by the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, which not only attracted people of different social strata but also made the demand for freedoms and improvement in the well being of those at the bottom of society, a justifiable course. In other words, what changed the perception of social movements as irrational groups was in part the change in the rank and file members of the movements, which included students, the middle class, professionals, and so forth. Indeed, social movements in the 1960s and 1970s were regarded as ‘new’ social groups partly because they were seen as an outcome of a rational choice. The feminist move ment and liberation struggles added another layer to the rationality and acceptability of social movements in the 1960s and 1970s. 3. In the 1980s, emphasis was placed on the cultural side of social groups, particularly the processes by which organizers frame their issues in order to recruit mem bers and the methods by which a social group develops its collective identity. Unsurprisingly, a strong body of work focused on identities and nationalisms in different socioeconomic and political settings. The consequence of the shift in the perceptions of social movements was that research not only sought to offer various explanations for the rise of these movements, but also sought, and still seeks, to understand the strategies and resources at their disposal. It has been suggested that in the developed capitalist societies, social movements emerged from the industrial working class struggle and the political ideology, which justified the contrast between conservative right and reformist left. However, this does not answer the question of the geographical spread of these movements and the differences between them. To be precise, why do the same conditions (e.g., socioeconomic) not lead to similar patterns of social mobilization? Notably, social movements result from the ways in which difference and inequalities in society are framed as a political significance in order to mobilize social action. The process of mobilization in turn

depends on the capabilities of social groups, the resources available, and the environment in which that process takes place. Social movements have also emerged as a result of globalization, which prompted people to mobilize to protect their lands, identities, and their autonomy. It should be noted that the attempts to explain the emergence and character of social groups are central to theories of social movements. For example, the theory of movement origin focuses either on the characteristics of participants or on conditions that the movement faces. The resource mobil ization school emphasizes variation between social move ments as a result of the availability of resources. It suggests that the more resources are available to social movements the more such movements are formed. For its part, the political process approach pays attention to the opportun ities that changes in the state give to social mobilization. These theories have led to some conclusions regarding the interconnections between the strategies of social groups and those of the state: 1. The encounters between social forces and the state are underscored by the dynamics on both sides of the equation. Social movements therefore continuously monitor their tactics both to evaluate their effectiveness and to respond to the state apparatus. Equally, protest and police tactics adapt to each other through a process of reciprocal influence, involving innovation and adaptation. 2. Collective action is channelled around policy specific opportunities or group specific environment. That is to say social movements are opposed to one or more elements of the existing social and political order. 3. More repressive, diffuse, and hard techniques of po licing tend to discourage the mass and peaceful protest on one hand, while fuelling the more radical fringe on the other hand. In other words, the nature of the state’s response to social movement plays an important role in shaping the character of social movements. For ex ample, the banning of liberation movements and the use of the army in crashing down opposition to the state created conditions for armed struggles in most of the former colonies around the world. 4. Apart from overt and repressive measures, the state can also respond to protest by social movements through a deliberate inaction. This is meant to create conditions for counterviolence, especially where there are major divisions between sectors of society. For example, the apartheid state fuelled and sponsored violence between ethnic and racial groups in South Africa in the 1980s in order to undermine the liberation struggle. 5. The growth of international agreements among gov ernments has been accompanied by a proliferation of transnational civil society associations. For example, the creation and practices of the World Trade Or ganization provided a stimulus for the rise of fair trade movements while the international recognition of

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indigenous collective rights opened up opportunities for the engagement of the state by indigenous social movements. 6. Transnational activist networks cast the goals of move ments in universal terms with local contexts. The cre ation of a transnational public sphere to advance shared agendas expands the strategic choices available to social movements. This is possible, because a transnational public space not only allows movements to draw their resources from a wide range of sources, but also helps them to articulate local struggles and to entwine them with global issues of all sorts. The environmental movement best illustrates the creation of a transnational public sphere and the main strategies that movements can adopt in their engagement with the state.

Lessons from the Environmental Movement Unlike other social movements (e.g., feminism and black consciousness) that are associated with political iden tities, the environmental movement is mobilized around a shared sense of humanity and offers universalist prop ositions. Notwithstanding the caution that universalist propositions have legitimized the subjection of other peoples and regions, the environmental movement gar ners support from various sectors of society across the world, because it confronts challenges to the protection and management of the environment and adopts a mul tipronged approach and a multilayered discourse. For the purpose of our discussion in this article, attention is paid to the environmental movement’s challenge to, and in timate relationships with, the state. The environmental movement challenges the state on several grounds. These include the ways in which the state participates in the destruction of the environment; its incapacity to respond to environmental challenges; and the desirability of the state as an appropriate social organization. These challenges have shaped the en vironmental movement’s engagement with the state, and also resulted in the mushrooming of different environ mental interest groups. These are those that cooperate with the state, those opposed to the state, and those that are unconcerned with the state. While there are no fixed boundaries between these categories, each of these cat egories on their own deepens our insights into the state– social movement interactions. Cooperating Environmental Movements The world’s largest environmental nongovernmental movements, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the World Conservation Union or International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN),

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The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and Conservation International (CI) all consider conserving biodiversity as their global mandate, which can successfully be achieved in cooperation with the state. They cooperate with the state so as to avoid confrontation, to influence state policies, and more importantly, to access bureaucratic and informal op portunities offered by government institutions and agencies. In order to achieve these goals, they consider the state an important partner. For example, as of January 2007, the IUCN had 1020 members consisting of national non governmental organizations (NGOs) (717), government agencies (109), state members (82), international NGOs (82), and affiliate members (30). These organizations adopt conventional lobbying strategies and use donor funding, scientific information, and international platforms to influ ence government policies and to push for international agreements. The cooperation between these NGOs and the state has also been elevated to the global level in order to establish an international environmental governance struc ture. Effectively, that cooperation has cemented the rela tionship between environmental movements and the state, thereby blurring the boundaries between formal and in formal politics and allowing government officials to become environmentalists and vice versa. By way of example, the former South African Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Valli Moosa, became the President of the IUCN after successfully hosting the World Parks Congress in Durban (South Africa) in 2003. Environmental Movements in Opposition to the State There are environmental groups that challenge the state by directly engaging the state as a political opposition. They participate in the electoral system as is the case with most Green parties. They do this in order to gain formal political channels that would provide opportunities for combining civil protests and legal–administrative strategies. Their common point of entry into the electoral system is an ideological critique of the state’s preoccupation with ma terialist concerns and the exclusion or marginalization of environmental issues in state policies. Unsurprisingly, the majority of Green parties originated in industrialized countries, where industrialization and nuclear energy and weapons stimulated the mobilization of social groups. Practically, the participation of Green parties in elections through the ‘green issue’ ticket has narrowed the political space for most of these parties. This is so, because most states have incorporated environmental issues in their policies as required by international laws and protocols, and politicians are increasingly using ‘green issues’ in their political campaigns. The point here is that, by participating in national and regional elections, Green parties such as the German Green (national) and the European Federation of Green Parties (regional) have collapsed the boundaries

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between formal and informal politics at both national and regional levels. Notably, not all oppositional environmental movements regard participating in political elections as a strategy for engaging the state. Instead, they could form a pressure group to influence state environmental policies and actions, as is the case with the environmental justice movement. The principal goal of the environmental justice movement is to challenge environmental policies and pro grams that undermine the rights and values of inhabitants. Environmental Movements Independent of the State Though bioregionalism shares the same concerns with other environmental movements, it does not take the state as its point of departure in as far as the future of the planet and humans is concerned. Instead, it propagates a complete reorganization of the world into bioregions in order to integrate human cultures into their life support systems. It dismisses the modern state on the grounds that the state imposes monoculture on people of diverse backgrounds; it has failed to address the crisis of eco logical peril and the political systems that have caused ecological disintegration; and that it is at odds with natural laws, which govern biotic communities without coercion, organized force or recognized authority. Its radical stance against the capitalist economy, industrial ization, exploitations of humans and nonhumans, cultural imperialism, and so on, makes it attractive to other social movements which are not necessarily concerned with environmental issues. The groups of environmental movements discussed above illustrate the artificial separation between social movements and the state as representative of informal and formal politics, respectively. The complex relation ships between the state and social movements, together with the broad literature on social groups, offer prospects for expanding and enriching the content and scope of political geography, as is shown below.

Social Movements as a Subject Matter of Political Geography The fact that the most significant changes in society in the twentieth century were brought about by social movements makes these movements a ‘natural content’ of political geography. Indeed, political geographers have made a contribution to the study of imperialism and decolonization, nationalism and identity formation, all of which emphasize the need to understand the spatial contexts and the role of power relations as the bases for social mobilization. There has been a sustained interest in the study of feminism as a social movement and on the contribution that feminist perspectives have made to political geography and to social science as a whole. For

their part, electoral studies have highlighted the inter actions between citizens and the state. The studies contributed to our understanding of the impact of cir cumstances and factors on the outcomes of elections. These include electoral systems, the nature and financing of campaigns, party support, voting behavior, and the demarcation of voting zones. Notwithstanding these important contributions, the study of social movements forms a negligible part of political geography. With few exceptions, most political geography textbooks rarely refer to the concept of social movements in their entries. This is more than an omission, but reflects the weak conceptualization of social movements as part of ‘normal politics’ and a subject matter of political geography. It would be fair to suggest that political geography has not yet maximized its contribution to the study of social movements despite its traditional focus on the state and politics, because of the following reasons. First, political geography has been preoccupied with formal politics (e.g., elections, nation state, identity, borders, citizenship, etc.) for much of its history. In this way, the artificial dichotomy between formal and in formal politics led to the neglect of social movements, which are generally seen as informal and noninstitu tional. As the brief review of social movements above has shown, the dichotomy between formal and informal is less useful if we are to understand political behavior. The intellectual space that social movements offer to political geography is that they blur the distinctions between the two (i.e., formal and informal politics). This happens through the ability of social movements to push issues from the informal arena into the domain of the formal political agenda, thereby involving ordinary people to participate directly in the political process. Social movements are often the first to articulate new political issues and ideas. The space for inserting such issues and agendas by the state itself is severely limited, because bureaucracies in modern societies are preoccupied with economic and political control in order to ensure sta bility while preventing the unexpected. Second, a combination of the dichotomy referred to above and the state centric view that dominated much of the research in political geography imposed limitations on our understanding of the impact of the state beyond the narrow confines of formal politics. Social movements provide the space for appreciating conditions that the state creates or imposes upon the masses and how the masses respond to those conditions and why. The nation state is by and large a mobilizing context for social movements. The state’s legislative and judicial system, electoral rules, alliances and conflicts among elites, and capacities for state action, provide conditions for the rise of social movements. There are two dominant views on how the character of the state impacts on the emergence and nature of social movements, the first being that

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democratic states are conducive for social movements mainly because they are tolerant. The second view is that repressive regimes lead to the development of violent social movements than regimes that are tolerant. Third, though political geography has contributed to our understanding of the role and function of the state in a capitalist world economy , there is still a need to further grapple with questions of the extent and nature of the impact that the state’s participation in the capitalist world economy has on social movements. It has been suggested that movements making ethnic demands are largely the product of the failure to build a national state in the per iphery of the capitalist system. The relationship of the state to the capitalist economy could shape collective action against the state, not least because the process of capital accumulation (e.g., privatization) and its effects (e.g., widening inequality) create conditions for protests. For example, the dismantling of rural development programs through neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s provided the incentive for indigenous social movements to protest. Fourth, there has been an enormous outpouring of work on theories of the state that emphasize the lineal evolution of the modern state. In that linear evolution, the intricate relationships between political parties, states, and social movements is given less attention. Political parties and social movements are mutually dependent in shaping politics as the example of the en vironmental movement above has shown. This is so be cause there is a fuzzy and permeable boundary between institutionalized and noninstitutionalized politics. Social movements do not only shape elections, legislatures, and courts, but also give rise to political parties. Participants in social movements can adopt a dual membership by being activists in social movements while, at the same time, presenting themselves as political candidates. In reality, social movements can also become political par ties and political parties do appeal to particular interest groups. Labour parties are one such common example in that they naturally draw their strengths from labour unions. It is commonly held that the ascendance of social movements into the levers of the state has generally weakened the transformative agenda of most move ments. In other words the consequences of blurring the boundaries between social movements and formal insti tutions of power not only change the power dynamics between the two, but also result in compromising desir able social changes. In Africa most liberation movements that became post independence governments have failed to pursue the agendas of the liberation struggles for all sorts of reasons.

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Conclusion The emergence, character, and activities of social groups are shaped by a combination of factors, which in turn differentiates one group from another. Notwithstanding their differences, social movements are intimately con nected to the activities of the state and therefore blur the boundaries between formal and informal politics. This blurring of boundaries provides fertile ground for in corporating social groups into the analysis of the political in political geography. The fact that social movements have contributed to changing the world’ political map means that they are a political force that cannot be ig nored by political geographers. See also: Activism; Colonialism I; Environmental Studies and Human Geography; Nationalism; Political Boundaries; Sovereignty.

Further Reading Aberley, D. (1999). Interpreting bioregionalism: A story from many voices. In McGinnis, M. V. (ed.) Bioregionalism, pp 13 42. London: Routledge. Della Porta, D. (1988). Recruitment process in clandestine political organisations: Italian left wing terrorism. In Klandermans, B., Kries, H. & Tarrow, S. (eds.) International social movement research vol. 1, pp 155 169. London: Jai. Dryzek, J. S., Downes, D., Hunold, C., Schlosberg, D. and Hernes, H. (2003). Green states and social movements: Environmentalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Norway. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldstone, J. A. (ed.) (2003). Bridging institutionalised and noninstitutionalised politics. In States, parties and social movements, pp 1 24. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, J. and Jasper, J. M. (2003). Introduction. In Goodwin, J. & Jasper, J. M. (eds.) The social movements reader: Cases and concepts, pp 3 7. Oxford: Blackwell. Laurie, N., Andolina, R. and Radcliffe, S. (2005). Ethnodevelopment: Social movements, creating experts and professionalising indigenous knowledge in Ecuador. Antipode 37(3), 470 496. Miller, B. (2000). Geography and social movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Nash, J. (2005). Social movements: An anthropological reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Painter, J. (1995). Politics, geography and ‘political geography’: A critical perspective. London: Painter. Ramutsindela, M. (2007). Transfrontier conservation in Africa: At the confluence of capital, politics and nature. Nosworthy Way: CABI. Staeheli, L. A., Kofman, E. and Peake, L. J. (eds.) (2004). Mapping women, making politics: Feminist perspectives on political geography. London: Routledge. Tarrow, S. (1996). States and opportunities: The political structuring of social movements. In McAdam, D., McCarthy, J. D. & Zald, M. N. (eds.) Comparative perspectives on social movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wignaraja, P. (ed.) (1993). New social movements in the South: Empowering the people, pp 76 100. London: Zed Books.

Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge B. Greenhough, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Actor-Network Theory An approach to Science Studies developed by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law, which asserts that scientific knowledge is co-constructed by human and nonhuman actors. Enlightenment A philosophical movement, usually dated to late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of European history, which believed that the real nature of the world could be revealed through the application of careful and rigorous scientific methods. Posthumanism A philosophical position that challenges the notion of a singular universal human subject by drawing attention to the ways in which human identities are formed through relationships with human and nonhuman others. Reflexivity A methodological approach which involves considering and/or reflecting on the researcher’s own social background and standpoint. Relativism A view that all knowledge and experience is understood differently dependent on the standpoint or position from which one encounters it. Science and Technology Studies (STS) An approach to Science Studies which, unlike SSK, stresses the role of nonhuman agencies (animals, machines, institutions) as well as human societies in shaping scientific knowledge. Social Constructivism A hermeneutic approach to social science which asserts that all forms of knowledge are shaped by the social and material cultures within which they are produced and consumed. Social Studies of Science or Science Studies An interdisciplinary research area that draws on social science methods, and in particular social constructivism, to explore the production and consumption of scientific knowledge. Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) An approach to Science Studies which stresses that scientific knowledge is shaped by the social conditions of its production and therefore can never produce absolute or universal truths about the world. Strong Program An approach to SSK, advanced by the Edinburgh and Bath schools of Science Studies, which argued that all kinds of scientific claims – both successful and unsuccessful – were equally susceptible to social influences (often contrasted with the so-called weak program of Thomas Kuhn who used social factors

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only to explain the failure or decline of scientific theories).

Introduction Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge, or Science Studies as they are more commonly known, are con cerned with what counts as scientific knowledge and how it comes to count as scientific knowledge. Traditionally, what distinguishes scientific knowledge from other forms of claims about the world (such as those made by re ligions or cultures) is the belief that scientific methods offer a definitive view of the world as it really is, rather than a subjective interpretation of it. Science is supposed to be about discovery. Scientists uncover ‘facts’ about the world through a process of dispassionate and objective observation. As a result, the sciences appear to offer a disembodied ‘view from nowhere’, producing knowledge that is universally true or applicable. Conversely, Science Studies scholars argue that scientific knowledges are ‘views from somewhere’, the result of particular studies conducted at particular times and in particular places, and that as a result they are socially constructed or shaped by the social environment within which they are produced. In order to support this claim, Science Studies research draws attention to the local conditions and material resources necessary in order to generate a par ticular scientific observation or discovery. However, the approach taken to this research varies widely, ranging from historical and archival studies exploring the social, political, and intellectual environments that surrounded particular scientific discoveries, to in depth anthropo logical investigations of science in action in the field or the laboratory. While Science Studies scholars share a conviction that scientific knowledge is socially constructed, there are considerable differences of opinion regarding the extent to which science is socially constructed and as to how we should study science and its knowledge making practices. The origins of critical Science Studies are usually traced back to 1962, when Thomas Kuhn published his Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argued that the failure of some forms of scientific theory was the result not of scientific error, but of changes within the culture of sci entific institutions (which he called paradigm shifts). This work formed the basis for the development of a critical Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) by David Bloor

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and his colleagues at the Edinburgh School of Science Studies, who contrasted Kuhn’s focus on scientific failures with their own ‘strong program’ of research which argued that all kinds of scientific claims – both successful and unsuccessful – were equally susceptible to social influ ences and were the product of particular locations, times, and places. Scholars of the Bath School of Science Studies added a further empirical dimension to this program, producing in depth analyses of scientific con troversies to highlight the uncertainty and doubt that surrounds many scientific discoveries. Unsurprisingly, SSK met with considerable opposition from within the scientific community. Social constructivism, by ques tioning whether or not scientific techniques could access the ‘truth’ about the world, represented a direct threat to scientific authority. This intellectual conflict, which continued throughout the 1990s, became known as the science wars. In 1979, sociologists Steven Woolgar and Bruno Latour published a book called Laboratory Life, which was to in spire a new approach to Science Studies known as Science and Technology Studies (STS). Laboratory Life was an ac count of an ethnographic study of a neuroendocrinology laboratory in La Jolla, California. In this account, Latour and Woolgar seek to demonstrate how scientific facts are socially constructed by mapping out the geographically specific combinations of laboratory environment, person nel, materials, machines, scientific peer review procedures, and publication processes necessary to produce a scientific fact. Latour and Woolgar’s ethnographic observations of science in practice mark a turning point in Science Studies. They seem to find a middle ground between the two extremes of absolute scientific objectivity and those versions of social constructivism that argued scientific knowledge is entirely the product of social processes. Furthermore, they move from a focus on the texts and arguments produced by science in the form of books, papers, and publications, to focus on the materials of sci ence through which that knowledge is produced and verified, including machines, instruments, and even the subjects and objects of scientific analysis themselves. What Latour and Woolgar describe is a kind of sociomaterial constructivism. They still assert that scientific knowledge is produced rather than discovered, but highlight the role of nonhuman (technologies, materials, organisms) as well as human factors in that process of production. One of the key outcomes of STS has been the actor network theory (ANT). Developed by Latour, along with Michel Callon and John Law, ANT is an approach that looks at the different actors (scientists, samples, machines, animals and institutions, among others) involved in the production of a particular scientific discovery or fact, and considers the diverse ways in which they are connected to or relate to each other (networks). ANT provides a means of investi gating the relationships and interconnections between

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human and nonhuman factors in an analysis, and therefore it holds considerable appeal for geographers working in fields that combine scientific and social interests such as agriculture, environment, and medicine. Alongside these developments, a strong feminist ap proach to Science Studies has also emerged which both highlights and questions the very male centered environ ment of scientific research. Feminist scholars such as Donna Haraway, Sarah Franklin, and Evelyn Fox Keller have ar gued in various ways for a more situated understanding of scientific knowledge which takes into account the social background of the scientist. They use the insights of social constructivism to question the kinds of knowledges pro duced by scientific research and the social, political, and economic motives of the scientists and institutions that produce them. For example, Haraway has explored the links between the development of the Internet and the Cold War; Franklin, the links between patriarchy and reproductive technologies; and Fox Keller, the different approach to sci entific investigation undertaken by female scientists like the biologist Barbara McClintlock. Methodologically, this work places a great deal of emphasis on reflexivity, the need for the researchers to take their own social position into account when conducting and reporting research encounters. At the same time, Haraway (among others, including Katherine Hayles) also sees within the hybrid, messy, and unnatural products of scientific innovation, such as cy bernetic organisms or genetically engineered mice, a metaphor for a new kind of perspective on the world sometimes referred to as posthumanism (although Haraway herself strongly resists this label). These per spectives stress how innovations in biotechnology – like genetic engineering – are making it hard to establish where humanity ends and the rest of the world begins, making a singular human perspective increasingly dif ficult, if not impossible, to establish. Such work demon strates how scientific knowledge does not stand apart from the world, but actively intervenes in it, reordering the relationships between human subjects and the world. Rather than seeing scientific knowledge as a form of privileged, god like anthropocentric perspective, which promises control and domination over the natural world, geographers have drawn on posthumanism to begin to explore how scientific knowledge is reconfiguring our relationships with nonhuman others ranging from do mestic and wild animals to drugs and machines. This work also links to Latour’s more politically orientated works including We Have Never Been Modern, which place emphasis on bringing the nonhuman into political de bates. Latour argues that modern society has created a false division between the natural and social worlds, in which we accept that the only way to access the natural world is through the facts of scientific representation. As a result, scientific controversy and nonhuman agency have been excluded from the political realm. Latour’s

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work suggests we rethink the place of scientific know ledge (and those nonhuman agents it claims to speak for) within political debates. Instead of seeing scientific knowledge as a source of externalized authority, we should perhaps see it as a form of what Donna Haraway calls situated knowledge, one which offers new ways of understanding and intervening in the world. We should also recognise that these new perspectives are partial and open to uncertainty and contestation like any other form of political representation. To date, the influence of Science Studies on main stream geography has been limited, but SSK, ANT, and posthumanism have been drawn upon by geographers seeking to question both the geographically contingent nature of scientific practice and, historically, the use of scientific approaches within geography.

History of Scientific and Geographical Knowledge One way in which geographers have engaged with the social construction of scientific knowledge is through work in historical geography. The historian of science, Steven Shapin, has argued that the social study of science poses particular challenges for geographers as scientific knowledges, by definition, are supposed to be universal and independent of the times, places, and cultures within which they are produced. Critical historical geographers respond to the claim that science offers a universal viewpoint by ‘placing the view from nowhere’, relocating scientific ideas within their social and cultural contexts. Our images of science tend to associate science with stereotyped sites such as the laboratory or the scientific conference. This view is challenged by the work of his torical geographers like David Livingstone and Charles Withers, who explore how scientific knowledge is pro duced, manipulated, circulated, and consumed in a wide range of sites and locations. These sites range from conventional sites such as laboratories and museums, to ships, coffee houses, pubs, and pigeon breeding clubs. Furthermore, they show that in each of these locations, the kinds of scientific knowledges that are produced and consumed change (or are manipulated) in response to the situation. The kind of science presented as a museum exhibit or discussed in pigeon breeding clubs is very different from the kind presented to peers at a scientific conference. The key point is that space matters in the production of scientific knowledge. A second dimension to the historical geography of science arises from the recognition that geography itself is in many ways a scientific discipline. Geographers share one of the key dilemmas faced by sociologists of science, the recognition that they need not only to engage crit ically with the methods and claims of those they are

studying (scientists), but also to reflect critically on their own quasi scientific methods and approaches as well. This need for reflexivity in geographical approaches to science is in some senses anticipated by wider changes in the discipline. Since the 1970s and the cultural turn in human geography, the discipline of geography has seen a growing divide between those scholars who adopted a scientific approach to geographical research (including many physical geographers, modelers, and quantitative geographers) and those who, drawing on postmodernist literatures and philosophies, sought to question the claim that those ‘scientific’ approaches offer an objective view of the ‘real’ world. Historical and cultural geographers became increasingly interested in how geographical knowledge was in itself socially constructed, and how it reflected and was influenced by the dominant intellectual traditions, beliefs, methods, and approaches of its time. In particular, these scholars sought to tease out the rela tionships between the origins of geographical science and the Enlightenment period (late seventeenth and eight eenth centuries) of European history, which is usually associated with the triumph of scientific method and reason over more subjective, mostly religious explan ations of the world. For example, in 2001, the historical geographer Felix Driver drew on a combination of Sci ence Studies and history of science approaches in his book, Geography Militant, which paints a picture of the geographical enterprises of discovery and observation as a set of cultural practices that involve mobilizing people and resources across vast distances, and translating ob servations and samples collected in one context into a form of knowledge that would make sense back home. He describes in great detail how the practices of discovery were not standardized and objective procedures, but highly contested and diffuse approaches where com peting scholars sought to proclaim the superiority of their own methods and discredit the validity of their rivals. Furthermore, Geography Militant highlights how geogra phers, through the application of scientific methods to processes of surveying, mapping, collecting, and biopros pecting, were complicit in the Enlightenment’s coloniza tion of the globe and the promotion of Western science as the one, true objective worldview. Acknowledging the influence of social factors in the production of scientific knowledge was an important breakthrough for studying geography as science, because it highlighted considerable historical inequalities between those who had the know ledge, resources, and status to be involved in the pro duction of scientific facts, and those who did not. For example, during the Enlightenment period, women were actively excluded from many of the gentlemen’s clubs and saloons where scientific debate took place and were rarely noted as contributors to scientific research, though some were considerable scholars in their own right. In accounts


of the exploration of the areas which later became Euro pean colonies, such as Africa and the Americas, the contribution of native peoples to scientific expeditions as bearers, guides, or field assistants was rarely acknow ledged. Scientific objectivity became a way in which Western society separated itself out from those worlds and societies it colonized, serving to legitimize the beliefs and practices of a colonial government. As an Enlightenment science, geography played a key role in legitimating and upholding colonial authority within the British and other European colonies, often at the expense of other sup posedly nonscientific worldviews. Science Studies are now drawn on by contemporary geographers in order to crit ically interrogate colonial science. Bruce Braun draws on a combination of Science Studies and post structuralist approaches to highlight how scientific understandings of nature became incorporated into political projects of colonization. Braun shows that by representing the forest landscapes of British Columbia as a natural resource ‘empty’ of society, both colonial scientists and con temporary environmentalisms effectively write out the presence of First Nations peoples and their claims to land and resources. More recently, Science Studies has become a resource for economic and quantitative geographers seeking to reflect more critically on their own quasi scientific methods. In particular, the economic geographer Trevor Barnes has drawn on the work of Haraway and ANT in order to interrogate the shift from quantitative to more hermeneutic approaches to the study of economic pro cesses. More generally, Doreen Massey, Felix Driver, and Beth Greenhough have all drawn on the work of Latour, STS, and ANT to draw critical parallels between the way in which geographers in the past have imagined their field sites as a process of scientific discovery, and the ways in this same geographical imagination shapes con temporary fieldwork in geography.

Rethinking the Place of Science in Nature–Society Relations Science Studies has not only allowed the development of a critical and reflexive history of science and geography, it has also informed more contemporary critiques of the discipline. Drawing on the methods and findings pion eered by Science Studies scholars, geographers have begun to rethink how scientific knowledge shapes the way we approach the study of natural and social worlds. These geographers critically engage with the assumption (inherited from Enlightenment science) that the natural world is distinct and separable from the social world. But in contrast to other approaches which seek to ex plore the relationship between nature and society either through cycles of economic production and consumption

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(Marxism) or through practices of representation (cul tural geography, postmodernism), geographers drawing on social studies of science argue that nature and society are inseparably mixed. Therefore, rather than seeking to explain phenomena as either natural or social, this work takes an actor network approach, exploring the rela tionships between the different human and nonhuman actors that co produce a particular phenomenon. Rather than focusing on science explicitly (as in the historical projects discussed above), this work instead considers how scientific knowledge is enrolled in wider debates about, for example, agricultural production or medical research. The result is an understanding of a phenomena or problem which does not prioritize either human perspectives and claims to objectivity (as does science) or human issues and concerns (as does social science), but which instead, considers the role of scientific inter ventions alongside the agency and interests of a diverse range of actors. There are three broad concerns that have arisen through this research. First, removing humans as the central focus of re search generates new ideas about exactly who should be considered when thinking through the social, political, and ethical implications of a particular scientific practice. This approach calls for an expanded political community, one in which the interests of nonhumans are taken into account in social and political decision making processes. For example, in her essay on relational ethics, Sarah Whatmore maps out the different networks and rela tionships which link human food producers and con sumers with plants, animals, and environments in a range of different locations (Figure 1). What she seeks to argue is that when debating the ethics of a particular form of scientific intervention, such as the use of hormonal treatments in beef production, we need to consider not just human interests, but also the rights and interests of other constituents within the network as part of an ex panded ‘ethical community’. Science is studied not just as a source of knowledge about the world, but as a par ticular kind of intervention in the world, which affects the world through its relationships with (in this case) other elements in the food chain. Science Studies has led geographers to rethink the relationship between scientific knowledge and its objects, interrogating how the subjects and objects of science ef fectively answer back or object to the ways in which science seeks to understand and represent them. For example, Steve Hinchliffe and Nick Bingham have demonstrated how entities as varied as BSE disease prions and machines (respectively) resist their scientific characterizations and in so doing articulate their own form of nonhuman agency. Second, STS has opened up the possibility of re thinking the way we look at environmental issues such as global warming. Following on from earlier historical

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Social Studies of Scientific Knowledge Corporate industrial complex State regulatory institutions

Hormonal treatment (for example, bovine somatotrophin)

Chemically treated pasture

Animal-dervied feed compounds

Industrial cow

FEED

Producers and/or sites of production

MILK

Land and/or water pollution

MEAT

Meat products and animal derivatives

Exposure of humans and animal to chemical toxins

Liquid mi k, and dairy products

Corporate industrial complex State regulatory institutions Consumers and/or sites of consumption Dietary Chemical and hormone residues Lactose allergies or intolerance

Environmental Waste packaging energy (transport and cooking)

Figure 1 Diagram of agro-food network from Whatmore (1997) showing the complex relationships between producers and consumers of milk.

critiques of geographical practices, David Demeritt has used STS to look at the social construction of global warming and forestry science. His work points to how the interplay between the social and political aims and ob jectives of particular interest groups (governments, en vironmentalists, industry) can both influence and be influenced by the kinds of scientific research undertaken and the kinds of scientific knowledge produced. For ex ample, different scientific understandings of forestry can be used to argue for either the conservation of ancient woodland with no commercial exploitation or the bene fits of sustainable commercial forestry. Politically, such moves are important as they create links between seemingly abstract processes of scientific experimentation and their social, cultural, and material interventions in

the world. Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, through both their own work, and through two edited collections in 1998 and 2001, Remaking Reality and Social Nature, have sought to bring together writers whose work shares an interest in how different scientific and nonscientific representations of the natural world are drawn upon to justify political and social positions. In short, this work poses the question that if nature is socially constructed who (or what) is it constructed for? Third, geographers have combined Science Studies with an interest in political economic geographies to think through how scientific innovation and bio technology are transforming processes of production and consumption. Genetic engineering has resulted in chan ges in the way we produce and consume plant and animal


resources by creating new forms of genetically modified agricultural crops and animals. Economic geographers have shown how new scientific techniques of genetic extraction and manipulation have allowed plant and animal resources to be commodified in new ways as genetic resources for the development of crops, farm animals, drugs, and pharmaceuticals. Authors such as Bronwyn Parry have highlighted how such commodifi cations often involve complex and unequal transactions between so called less developed countries that are rich in genetic resources and the American and European pharmaceutical firms that have the technologies and re sources to exploit them. The perspective of STS helps these geographers to trace the pathways through which nature is commodified and ask again, ‘who benefits from this commodification of nature’?

Remapping the Human A final strand of work has drawn on feminist Science Studies and posthumanist philosophies in order to re think the human in human geography. Traditionally, human geography has arguably seen the human as a discrete and autonomous human subject. Posthumanism challenges this by drawing on Science Studies, and, in particular, its attention to the transformative potential of scientific knowledge and perspectives, to suggest that there is no one human, no essential version of what it is to be human. Instead, they argue it is our relations in and with the world that define us, including the myriad of complex ways we are linked to our biological and ma terial environment. These more conceptually orientated studies have provided useful metaphors for thinking through exactly what it means to be human in an era of genetic engineering and nanotechnology. In a famous essay written in 1980, Haraway draws on the cyborg figure as metaphor for rethinking our political status (as humans) by recognizing that our bodies as well as our minds are engaged in and affected by political decisions and scientific innovations: I am making an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an im aginative resource suggesting some very fruitful coup lings. By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hy brids of machine and organism; in short we are cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics.

This cyborg metaphor provides a potent device for repositioning our gaze or perspective on the world and emphasizing our connections with nonhuman others, a process Donna Haraway calls figuration (see link to the Open University website for a webcast of a lecture given by Haraway on ‘When Species Meet’). If we accept that

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the conceptual world that we inhabit as society and the material world into which science intervenes are in separably linked, we are faced with a whole new series of challenges to come to terms with. These challenges range from acknowledging our own role in setting scientific agendas to thinking through how our own bodies become sites of scientific experimentation when we ingest gen etically modified foodstuffs or try out a new drug. We make decisions not as discrete human individuals, but as people who consume genetically modified foods, donate and receive blood, organs, and DNA, co habit with pets and other animals, and enhance our bodies with visual, auditory, and other forms of technologies. The cyborg and other metaphors have provided in spiration for empirical research within geography look ing at how science is reshaping the relationships between humans and the world. Bronwyn Parry and Beth Greenhough have studied the ways in which our bodies are increasingly redistributed and traded across space as bodily commodities – blood, tissue, DNA, and personal medical data. Gail Davies has marked how, at the same time, our bodies become the site for nonhuman inter ventions through the processes of organ donation and xenotransplantation. Catherine Nash has charted how genetic technologies and the possibility of tracing our genetic ancestry can create new kinds of genealogical identities and histories, and new ties between people and places across the globe. In different ways, these authors suggest that the human is not a finished project, but that we are being constantly made and remade in ways that tie us to diverse geographical sites and locations, or as Sarah Whatmore would suggest, how we are always becoming more than human. On a larger scale, science fiction has also provided fertile ground for trying to make sense of a society transformed by scientific innovation. Urban geographers in particular are attracted by the ability of the cyborg metaphor to capture the complex inter meshing of natural, social, and technical elements that makes up the contemporary city.

Critiques While geography’s engagement with Science Studies is fairly recent in origin, there are perhaps three key areas of conflict. First, there is a concern that a focus on actors and relations, rather than underlying social economic structures (like capitalism) or issues (like social inequal ity), means that ANT and Science Studies are apolitical or relativist. In particular, writers from a Marxist per spective are less sure of the ability of ANT to provide theoretical basis for engaging with what political econ omy sees as underlying structural inequalities and social injustices within society. This leads to a second set of concerns, namely the way in which, so far, a focus on

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‘Western’ forms of scientific knowledge has led to a marginalization of other non Western forms and ways of knowing. The root of Science Studies in the critique of Enlightenment science tends to assume that western knowledges will always dominate/obscure other forms of knowledge. However, other accounts, such as Michael Bravo’s study of navigation published as part of an edited collection on Geography and Enlightenment suggests scien tific knowledge was both exchanged and negotiated, even within colonial encounters. Third, posthumanist and social constructivist approaches have also received cri tique from the more scientifically orientated areas of human geography, including quantitative geographers, who, not unlike scientists in other areas, are concerned that Science Studies undermines their claims to object ivity and thereby their contribution to geographical knowledge. In addition to these, it is interesting to note that much of the critical engagement with geography as a science has focused on geographers from the past, with little work being done at present to critically engage with the work of contemporary geographical scientists. There are some notable exceptions to this rule, however, in particular a series of conversations organized by Doreen Massey, and colleagues in physical geography including Stephan Harrison and Keith Richards.

New Directions Medical geography is one area within which the insights from Science Studies promise to produce geographies that are both theoretically innovative and politically sig nificant. For example, Edward Hall’s studies of the role of genetics in heart disease treatment provides inspiration for the development of more critical health geographies by combining a Science Studies approach to studying biomedical innovation with an empirical interest in health and care practices. Second, scholars are combining the ethnographic approach employed by Science Studies with theoretical ideas on materiality and embodiment in order to interrogate how scientific insights and innovations are being incorporated into our everyday life. For example, Jon Murdoch and Emma Roe have combined an interest in ANT with work on esthetics to explore how science is changing the way we think about and react to so called natural products such as food, changing our perceptions of what is edible and inedible, healthy and unhealthy. Third, emerging work in geographies of biosecurity has begun to explore how genetic and information technol ogies are reproducing and challenging geographical boundaries and identities. By shifting the attention from human to nonhuman entities and by acknowledging nonhuman agency, geographers can explore how our so cial conventions and political boundaries are transgressed by a whole host of nonhuman entities. This work is

exploring how viruses, pets, and feral species challenge the ways in which we seek to order the world, creating fear, disruption, and panic. Overall, the relationship between geography and Science Studies looks to remain both provocative and productive, offering a means for geographers to engage with the implications of scientific innovation while re flecting critically on their own quasi scientific inter ventions in the world. See also: Animal Geographies; Cyberspace/Cyberculture; Human-Nonhuman; Nature, Historical Geographies of; Nature, Social; Nature-Culture; Posthumanism/ Posthumanistic Geographies; Urban Habitats/Nature.

Further Reading Barnes, T. (2001). Retheorizing economic geography: From the quantitative revolution to the cultural turn. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91, 546 565. Biagioli, M. (1999). The Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. Bingham, N. (1996). Objections: From technological determinism towards geographies of relations. Environment and Planning D 14, 635 657. Braun, B. and Castree, N. (eds.) (1998). Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium. London: Routledge. Castree, N. and Braun, B. (2001). Social Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics. Oxford: Blackwell. Demeritt, D. (1996). Social theory and the reconstruction of science and geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 21, 484 503. Driver, F. (2001). Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire. Oxford: Blackwell. Franklin, S. (1997). Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception. London: Routledge. Greenhough, B. (2006). Tales of an island laboratory: Defining the field in geography and Science Studies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 31, 224 237. Greenhough, B. and Roe, E. (eds.) (2006). Theme Issue: Towards a Geography of Bodily Biotechnologies. Environment and Planning A 38, 416 498. Hall, E. (2004). Spaces and networks of genetic knowledge making: The ‘geneticisation’ of heart disease. Health and Place 10, 311 318. Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs and Women. London: Free Association Books. Harrison, S., Massey, D., Richards, K. et al. (2004). Thinking across the divide: Perspectives on the conversations between physical and human geography. Area 36, 435 442. Hayles, K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Keller, E. F. (1983). A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman and Co. Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope. London: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Livingstone, D. N. and Withers, C. W. J. (1999). Geography and Enlightenment. London: University of Chicago Press. Massey, D. (2003). Imagining the field. In Pryke, R. & Whatmore, S. (eds.) Using Social Theory: Thinking through Research, pp 71 88. London: Sage. Nash, C. (2005). Geographies of relatedness. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 449 462. Parry, B. (2004). Trading the Genome. New York: Columbia.


Shapin, S. (1998). Placing the view from nowhere: Historical and sociological problems in the location of science. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23, 5 12. Whatmore, S. (2002). Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces. London: Sage.

Relevant Websites http://www.ensmp.fr Bruno Latour has a personal website which includes copies of many of his articles in both French and English, as well as a biography of Latour and details of some of his many projects.

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http://stadium.open.ac.uk The following website contains a recording of a lecture given by Donna Haraway at the Pavis Centre, Open University on the Wednesday 11th October based on her forthcoming book, When Species Meet. In the talk she outlines the process of figuration, and how it helps her re think nature society relations.

Socialism S. Engel-Di Mauro, SUNY New Paltz, NY, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Origins By the time it circulated in print in the 1820s in Britain and France, the term socialism already described several, sometimes mutually antagonistic political currents in different parts of Europe. In part, this diversity can be attributed to the relatively deep roots of socialist political movements and philosophies. The peasant dominated revolts, alternative communities, and neo Platonic and millenarian philosophical schools beginning some 500 years ago all contributed to the shaping of critical per spectives that eventually evolved into what is now called socialism (some argue for even earlier origins, but the social contexts and philosophical content of earlier re bellions, such as the one led by Spartacus, are much too different from and hardly linked to specifically socialist struggles). Responding to late feudal social contradictions and tensions, these rebellions, alternative political practices, and new conceptions of society were inspired by com munalistic ideals, which were often supported through religious principles and argumentation and posited in contrast to an emerging social order that threatened or destroyed peasant livelihoods and many forms of socially cooperative practices. Alternative societal ideals were also influenced by the first sustained and ultimately de structive contacts between Native Americans and Afri cans and largely Western European colonists. The spread of knowledge in Europe about societies radically differ ent from those then known (among European elites) in spired much speculation about alternative social realities.

Utopianism Combined with major philosophical and religious shifts, such speculation resulted in the first writings engaging with the social tensions associated with an emergent social order (e.g., Thomas Moore’s Utopia and Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas solis). Such works envisioned the development of morally just societies based on the cul tivation of social harmony through the imposition of strict behavioral codes and asceticism and on the sup pression of money, profit, and/or private property. In his History of political economy of 1839, Jerome Blanqui would refer to these precursors as ‘utopian socialist’, a term adopted and popularized through Marx and Engels’ Communist manifesto of 1848, to demarcate these earlier

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prescriptive imaginings from what was viewed as a more progressive scientific approach. These precursors to socialist thought were largely isolated from the mostly peasant movements and millenarian philosophies, which arose in response to the economic duress imposed by aristocratic elites and hardly sought the formation of an entirely new social order. Though a direct link between utopians and peasant uprisings did not exist, utopian critiques had gained widespread influence among both social reformers and leaders of mass movements through the circulation of translations in debating circles among both clerical and secular elites and scholars (e.g., the revolutionary theol ogy of Thomas Mu¨ntzer, Huldreich Zwingli’s social program in 1520s Zu¨rich). Such influence on movement leaders can be discerned in the insistence on specifically communal access or even control of land, besides the demands for the reduction of levies, which already questioned the legitimacy of elite privileges. Through land struggles, peasant movements challenged the dis tribution of wealth on the basis of private property. This can partly explain the especially savage and vindictive manner through which the feudal monarchies suppressed millenarian movements. However, peasant revolts were not the only a manifestation of late feudal social tensions. There were sporadic, urban centered artisan movements struggling for higher wages, better working conditions, and greater control over the means to livelihood. The first such struggle occurred with the Ciompi Rebellion of 1388, which met a fate similar to peasant revolts. At times, the interests of peasants and artisans converged so that the two groupings merged into single mass movements. The extreme reprisals and moderate concessions of the sixteenth century contributed to a relative hiatus in the demands for greater political inclusion and more economic equality. The exception was in Britain with the Levelers and Diggers (whose ideas were largely repre sented in the writings of Winstanley) in the 1640s and 1650s. Communities sometimes inspired by mixtures of millenarian and utopian socialist principles were also founded in the American colonies, at times to seek refuge from persecution (e.g., Bruderhof Hutterite communes). Otherwise, peasant and urban insurrections continued, with hundreds if not thousands of peasants murdered by better organized armies, but their content was largely limited to reactions to overwhelming taxation systems (e.g., France under Louis XIV) or foreign rule (e.g.,

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against the Spanish Crown in the Kingdom of Naples). Radical intellectual circles were similarly decimated and it was not until the mid to late eighteenth century that utopian socialist writings re emerged in trenchant critical form, most famously with those of Rousseau but also through Morelly and later Mably, who advocated reforms toward the development of a communist society. These critiques were in reaction to philosophical apologists of capitalism, such as Quesnay and Voltaire, with whom they engaged in lengthy debates. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the twin developments of peasant dispossession and proletarianization and industrialization, mainly in Britain and its North American colonies, waged worker dis content added considerably to preexisting peasant unrest. Though early worker revolts manifested themselves through general strikes (e.g., in 1740 and 1786 in France), radical intellectual circles were hardly responsive to or representative of workers’ and peasants’ conditions or demands, possibly because most intellectuals’ interests lay in the reform of monarchical and emerging capitalist arrangements, rather than their overthrow. The exception was again Britain and its North American colonies, where the increasing proletarian population was more effect ively integrated through greater political concessions thanks to the war and succeeding constitutional reforms of 1688 (workers already associated into craft unions by the 1720s). In other parts of Europe, regimes were much more dictatorial and capitalist elites were embryonic, so that conditions for the emergence of specifically socialist al ternatives did not yet exist. In Germany, for example, it took political economic unification, state directed in dustrialization, and a repressive monarchy, and the defeat of Lassalle’s brand of socialism, among other processes, to produce viable socialist and trade union movements (which enabled the formation of the most influential socialist force in Europe in the Social Democratic Party by the 1890s), and this did not transpire until the nineteenth century. However, in mid to late eighteenth century France, famine, excessive taxation burdens, a general fiscal crisis, and political repression, among other factors, led to a simultaneous revolt of both a rising bourgeoisie and the peasant and proletarian poor. The latter swelled the ranks of a highly variegated, grassroots movement (the sans culottes) that was strongly influenced by Rousseau’s ideas and therefore excluded demands for the abolition of private property and/or money, in con trast to earlier political struggles described above. Constitutional changes following the toppling of the monarchy in 1789 therefore addressed only formal pol itical structures. In any case, various forces conspired violently in the 1790s to ensure that only a privileged male capitalist minority would mostly benefit from the revolution (as reflected in the guillotining of playwright

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and women’s rights advocate Olympe de Gouges in 1793). Despite the nonsocialist nature of the revolution, events in France became a fulcrum for the development of socialist thought and movements. This is partly due to a minority of radicals that took the egalitarian promises of the revolution seriously and thereby endeavored to develop systematic socialist programs. A conceptual ization of politics in terms of class struggle emerged later, along with a delineation of a specifically communist and more systematic political platform. At first, it was very much the view of a small minority, especially associated with the Conspiracy of the Equals (a secret society led by Baboeuf), most of whose membership became another victim of postrevolutionary repression. In the aftermath of violence and political repression in France and with the spread of large scale industrial methods of production, solutions to the ‘social question’, as tensions connected to capitalist development came to be understood, were increasingly formulated in terms of the collective management of the economy. Self de scribed socialist groups began to form by the 1820s and envisioned a progressive improvement of workers’ con ditions through formal political bargaining and/or an extension of private property to economically disadvan taged groups, whose suffrage would be thereby secured. However, each group developed different strategies for a socialist transformation of society. The followers of Fourier, Owen, and the cooperative movement built or promulgated writings on exemplary, self contained communities or producers’ societies in Europe, as well as the Americas. The followers of Saint Simon pressed the state for the establishment of a tech nocratic order based on the large scale scientific man agement of the economy. Most syndicalists, especially in Britain, organized workers to improve social conditions and largely accepted the legitimacy of the existing social order, at least in economically prosperous years. Finally, Jacobins, a prominent grouping during the French revo lution, strove to turn state institutions into organs for the gradual extension of political rights for all. Shared by all the major socialist movements was the belief that everyone involved in production could eventually co operate to improve society for mutual benefit, which assumed a harmonious relationship between, for instance, peasants, industrialists, and workers.

Scientific Socialism, Internationalism, and State Power It was not until the 1830s and certainly following 1848, with the suppression of mass revolts and the onset of even more repressive regimes, that most socialist political movements and philosophies increasingly converged toward a more Baboeuvist tendency, though not

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necessarily in the form of secret societies. This tendency intermingled with existing evolutionary theories that saw social change unfolding through contradictory tensions within society itself, as formulated by Cabet, Spence, and Saint Simon, for example. Such strands of thought, as well as those of Hegel and the Ricardians later on, are what enabled Marx and Engels’ analysis of capitalism as a system of dispossession and exploitation and their development of dialectical historical materialism. Their ideas eventually impacted socialist movements inter nationally with the publication of the Communist manifesto and through the debates in the International Working men’s Association (the First International). They became highly influential from the 1890s onward as part of the political philosophies propounded by the German Social Democratic Party. Eventually, a few of the Marxist scions evolved into statist and vanguardist approaches that formed the ideological backbone of state socialist dicta torial regimes (these approaches are reminiscent of the communist current represented by the Conspiracy of the Equals in late eighteenth century France and, in the succeeding century, that of Blanqui). Other theories also developed out of similar critical perspectives, such as Proudhon’s federalism and Godwin’s social individual ism. Their ideas prepared the ground for the reception of theories from Bakunin, Kropotkin, and the Owenite Benbouw, among others, who stressed the inseparability of state and capitalism and therefore the necessity to overcome both simultaneously. Such ideas influenced the formation of revolutionary syndicalist and anarcho communist movements, especially in southern Europe, and revolutions in places like the Ukraine, Mexico, and Spain, in the 1900s. In other words, by the time an internationalist socialist organization took shape in the form of the First Inter national in 1864 (which fell apart less than a decade later), socialism was already broadly divided into syn dicalist, anarchist, communist, and statist factions. This diversity deeply affected any attempts at international coordination among socialist movement. From the very beginning, the major contentions among and within the different camps were over the level and type of cen tralization and coordination (both internal organizational structure and a future and/or intermediate society), the type of general strategies (national and international, seizing the state and stage based progression, gradualism through electioneering and reforms, immediate singular or succeeding revolutions, etc.), methods of political engagement (propagandist, insurrectional, parliament arian, and/or interventionist, etc.), and the relationship to and role of state institutions. The lack of consensus on these issues often degenerated into bitter struggles for political influence and/or institutional supremacy. The effects were such salient self defeating events as the lack of support from British and some French socialists for the

Paris Commune in 1871 and the folding of both the First and Second International (the Third International was essentially reduced to a foreign policy organ of the USSR), as well as the subsequent proliferation of inter national socialist organizations that ignored each other, multiplied similar efforts, or actively sabotaged one another. Some socialist groupings eventually succeeded in gaining political power through statist strategies (e.g., in 1848 France, 1890s Germany, in 1917 Russia) and evolved into social democratic or labor parties and/or repressive rulers of socialist states or states rising from anticolonial national liberation struggles (if one were to confine the analysis to mere labels, socialist political practice could even include neoliberal capitalism, judging by the policies of socialist parties in Western Europe represented in the Socialist International). As part of institutionalized political formations, socialism is therefore often difficult to distinguish from other mainstream political practices centered on modernization and capitalist economic ar rangements (e.g., wage based employment). Other socialist camps remained largely on the fringes of the political mainstream and at times suffered mas sacres at the hands of both liberal democratic and Soviet or Maoist state socialist forces. However, they were influential in the global revolts of 1968, which was an outpouring of liberation movements long excluded within most socialist institutions, and have arguably been important in current antisystemic movements, through the World Social Forum, among other international groupings. In sum, since the 1800s, socialism developed into di verse theories and movements that gradually gained prominence in Europe and in parts of the world colon ized by European empires. Partially as a result of global capitalist expansionism and the collapse of one exploit ative statist model (the USSR), socialist ideas and politics continue to proliferate worldwide at the level of both grassroots organizing and state and international insti tutions. The persistence of this influence has prompted reactions, sometimes violent, on the part of elites op posed to any concessions to socialist or socialist inspired demands.

Socialisms and Geographers Even though geography had been institutionalized by the 1820s (first in Germany), socialist ideas did not become influential to any appreciable degree until the late 1960s, when institutional socialism, reduced either to Soviet or Maoist dogma or parliamentary reformism, was already under pressure from alternative grassroots movements. In fact, from their very beginnings, all socialist variants were challenged and shaped by actual social practices and

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historical events, such as the Haitian Revolution of 1804 and early feminist movements of the nineteenth century, that is, prior to the emergence of human geography as part of academic institutions. However, the questioning of colonialism, racism, and masculinism implied in such events and movements rarely took center stage in the debates and policies of the various socialist camps, at least not until the 1960s. The overwhelming majority of academic geographers genuinely believed in the neu trality of their work or shied well clear of politically risky involvement. The tendency, regardless, was to reinforce, if not willfully contribute to prevailing ideologies, state apparatuses, and imperialistic foreign policies. The nineteenth century writings and political engagement of the anarchist geographers Peter Kropotkin and Elise Reclus represented very rare instances of social critique. By the late 1960s, heterodox variants of Marxism and, to a lesser extent, collectivist anarchism gained more academic support more than a century later as a result of changes in the social composition of academic geography, changes that fostered greater sensitization to con temporary political upheavals. Within the rising radical geography wing of human geography, it was Marxist theories that gained prominence, due to their greater theoretical systematicity, larger body of available litera ture, and relatively more politically prominent history and clout. Arguably, it was in select Western European and North American geography departments where a major shift occurred and where deep dissatisfaction with existing academic orientations compelled a minority to shape new areas of study of greater relevance to wider society. The dissatisfaction originated from a dissonance between the theoretical potentials discovered through political activism and the prevailing geographical epis temologies and methodologies (largely closed and de scriptive quantitative perspectives implicitly imbued with capitalist ideologies) that constrained the development of social theory. Richard Peet’s founding of the journal Antipode in 1969 provided a pivotal academic outlet for radical geographers, whose early work primarily engaged with issues of social justice (e.g., discrimination against women, racism, worker exploitation, uneven develop ment, environmental degradation). Internal theoretical debates and the establishment of the Union of Socialist Geographers in 1974 eventually steered radical geog raphy toward more socialist and especially Marxist per spectives. Scholarly works of wide intellectual influence subsequently propelled such theoretical approaches into the mainstream of Anglophone geography by the 1980s (e.g., David Harvey’s Social justice and the city, published in 1973; Neil Smith’s Uneven development, published in 1984; or the 1980s recuperation of Henri Lefebvre’s The pro duction of space, published in 1974). These socialist strands were soon challenged from within the same radical intellectual circles. This was due

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to a lack of involvement with other coeval social struggles and theory building that addressed inequalities and repressive practices related to cultural constructions of race, gender, sexuality, ability, among other processes exploitative and suppressive of corporeal diversity that were largely ignored by most Marxists. Feminist scholars, for instance, questioned the treatment of working class perspectives in universalist terms, since they often re flected the realities of only some men in some social contexts. Such empirically erroneous universalizations on the part of many Marxists bear unfortunate resemblances to historically tunnel visioned political practices, such as the indifference of trade unions or socialist organizations and parties toward the outcomes of the strikes of the 1830s by women workers in Lowell textile factories in the United States or the women’s suffrage movements in different parts of the world. Since the late 1980s, there have been many debates about the status of class relative to other social processes that have problematized the masculine, white European, heterosexual subject implied in much of socialist thought and political practice. In spite of the splintering of various groups and sometimes acrimonious nature of argumentation, the de bates have resulted in constructive shifts in different socialist strands, within and outside human geography, which finally take seriously and integrate analytically the many axes of social processes, including patriarchy, heterosexism, raciali zation, ablism, and agism. The influences of many social movements, including feminist, antiracist, postcolonial, and queer, on socialist groups and on human geography have greatly improved the epistemological and ontological premises of socialist practices and theories in academic settings, leading to integrative approaches such as Marxist and anarchist feminisms. At the same time, greater concern for ecological and nonhuman realities have opened up dif ferent forms of socialism to more holistic understandings that are now emerging in the forms of such movements as ecosocialism, ecoMarxism, material ecofeminism, and Marxist feminist environmentalism. In spite of these con vergent tendencies, there remain many obstacles to inte gration of different strands of socialism within human geography (as in the world generally), while some existing socialist movements and human geographers of socialist persuasion continue to ignore the above mentioned cri tiques, especially within institutionalized political formations that still claim affinity to socialist philosophies. In the Soviet dominated or influenced contexts, geographers mostly followed (or were forced to follow) a rigid catechism that was a parody of Marx’s (and even Lenin’s) writings. Academic geography was often sub ordinated to the functioning of the administrative organs of the state. No socialist geography actually developed that was independent of ruling party elites, but there were major shifts in the late 1950s (e.g., expressed in Anuchin’s work) and the late 1970s and 1980s, with the

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appearance of social or humanistic geography. This was also part of a general reaction against the reductionism of quantitative approaches that was facilitated by wider political apertures, a reaction not too dissimilar to its radical counterpart in Western Europe and North America and that would merit a comparative analysis. An account of alternative academic geographies en compassing other parts of the world remains to be writ ten. However, one might expect substantively different intellectual histories as well as continuities. Though largely Eurocentric socialist theories (especially of the Soviet and Maoist varieties) have often been super imposed in a facile manner in (post)colonial situations for geopolitical expedience (e.g., in national liberation struggles), most non European intellectuals have also been trained through Eurocentric canons. Heterodox geographical traditions may therefore be ensconced within non European socialist theories, not necessarily within academic geography (as in the case of Bogdanov in Russia or Foucault and Lefebvre in France). The emergence of these traditions may be enabled by the USSR’s demise and the intensification of capitalist ex pansionism, which has facilitated renewed interest in socialist theories and politics and a blossoming of re search on socialism in practice. See also: Anarchism/Anarchist Geography; Capitalism; Colonialism I; Colonialism II; Imperialism, Cultural; Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Patriarchy; Racism and Antiracism; Social Class; Structural Marxism.

Blunt, A. and Wills, J. (2001). Dissident geographies: An introduction to radical ideas and practices. New York: Prentice Hall. Braunthal, J. (1967/1961 3). History of the international (2 vols.). 1967/ 1961 3, New York: Praeger. Cole, G. D. H. (1953 1960). History of socialist thought (5 vols.). London: MacMillan. Gue´rin, D. (1970). Anarchism: From theory to practice. New York: Monthly Review. Guillaume, D. (1993). L’Internationale Socialiste. Histoire et sociologie du socialisme international (1945 1990). Paris: Presse de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. Hofmann, W. (1971). Ideengeschichte der sozialen Bewegung des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. Marshall, P. (1993). Demanding the impossible: History of anarchism. London: Fontana Press. Mazurkiewicz, L. (1992). Human geography in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. London: Belhaven Press. Monk, J. and Hanson, S. (1982). On not excluding half of the human in human geography. The Professional Geographer 34, 11 23. Peet, R. (1998). Modern geographical thought. Oxford: Blackwell. Peet, R. and Thrift, N. (eds.) (1989). New models in geography. London: Unwin and Hyman. Renton, D. (2004). Dissident Marxism: Past voices for present times. London: Zed Books. Robinson, C. J. (2001). An anthropology of Marxism. Aldershot: Ashgate. Salleh, A. (1997). Ecofeminism as politics: Nature, Marx, and the postmodern. London: Zed Books. Salmon, S. and Herod, A. (2003). Socialist geography. In Gaile, G. L. & Willmott, C. J. (eds.) Geography in America at the dawn of the 21st century, pp 209 220. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, G. E. (1989). Planned development in the socialist world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spini, G. (1992). Le. origini del socialismo. Da Utopia alla bandiera rossa. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore. Wallerstein, I. (1991). Unthinking social science: The limits of nineteenth century paradigms. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Relevant Websites Further Reading Arrighi, G., Hopkins, T. K. and Wallerstein, I. (1989). Antisystemic movements. London: Verso.

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu Anarchist Archives. http://www.marxists.org Marxist Internet Archive.

Society–Space S. M. Ruddick, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Fordism A system of mass production and consumption that originated with Henry Ford, and led to stabilization of wage relations, guarding against overproduction or underconsumption through state entitlements, regulation of trade agreements, and a culture of mass consumption. Keynesianism A system of social entitlements that included unemployment insurance, healthcare, mother’s allowance, and welfare, originating with John Maynard Keynes and instituted after the Great Depression of the 1930s in many industrialized nations. Neoliberalism A strategy of governance that attempts as much as possible to reduce a state’s responsibility for social entitlements and to download responsibilities for care onto cities, communities, families, and individuals. Post-Fordism A globalized system of production and consumption characterized by the increasing use of robotics in production systems, externalizing uncertainties of the market to small-time suppliers who produce on demand (just in time), and the marketing of specialized goods to globalized ‘niches’ of consumers. Post-Structuralism A movement in French continental philosophy centered on the de-stabilization of claims to truth and variously connected to the antihumanist rejection of a unified rational subject; a rejection of binary oppositions; and a view which sees knowledge as fluid, unstable, and discursively produced rather than ideological.

Introduction When figures as divergent as conservative British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and left leaning political philosopher, Ernesto Laclau, declare society is an ‘‘im possible object’’ we might ask – why investigate the re lationship between society and space? The topic appears so vast that when properly charted – like Borges’ famous map drawn at a 1:1 scale – so much ground is covered as to become practically and analytically useless. Moreover, the relationship would seem a truism: societies create spaces that best express their needs; spaces in turn con strain or enable societal developments. But how we conceive of this relationship subtends any attempt to understand, critique, or transform, the social world. Our understanding of society–space, as a totality, determines

the vantage point from which we understand the social world. It locates these delimited processes, both literally and figuratively, in relation to a social whole. The first approach views society–space in terms of ex ploitative relations organized in a ‘structured coherence’ – a social formation, whose territorial boundaries loosely ap proximate politicojuridical boundaries. Rooted in a Marxist vision of social inequity, whereby societal relations are defined by exploitation – alienated labor – its debates have focused on the logical primacy of particular unequal re lations (classed, gendered, and racialized) and their at tendant spatialities (workplace, home, underdeveloped neighborhoods, regions, and nations). The second approach sees society–space as a ‘strategic field’ – constituted through productive relations of governance – an occupied zone in which struggles resemble the engagements of a war. Underpinned by philosophical approaches rooted in the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Clausewitz, in this view, societies are organized through a constellation of discursive logics, enacted in everyday spaces, and through these practices the abnormal are contained, controlled, excluded, or policed. The third sees society–space as ‘per formative field’, beginning with the premise that society is fundamentally unstable, its subjects perpetually hybridizing, caught in structured instabilities – in a social field that is conflictual and paradoxical. In the fourth approach, society– space is an ‘immanent field’, an expression of continuous differentiation, its subjects are unstable because they con tinuously transform themselves, engaging in acts of con junction, connection, or collaboration with their milieu. These four approaches share a recognition of per sistent structural social inequities, a conviction that space is complicit in the production and possible transforma tion of these relationships, and the belief that one should not merely analyze societies but attempt to change them – to create a more equitable world. Looking Backward: Overcoming Newton and Kant The contemporary view is that the relationship between the spatial and social is an iterative one. This is by now so commonplace as to seem self evident. However, this in sight has only recently returned to geography after a long conceptual slumber in the seductive embrace of math ematical description. Mathematical approaches enabled a complex description of either social or spatial processes, but little theorization, and as David Harvey noted, no strategy at the interface between the spatial and the so cial. Geography’s significant role in articulating of a

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concept of society and space, and the discipline’s part in a larger spatial turn in social theory can best be appreci ated through a brief historical detour. The mapping presented here attempts to be as com prehensive as possible, but does not exhaust the field. Other trajectories include systems based, phenomeno logical, psychoanalytic, ethnomethodological approaches, which are part of contemporary geographical investi gation. There is, as well, a more complete archeology of influences on geography than addressed here, includ ing the influences of Vidal de la Blache on geographical thought. The emphasis here, moreover, is on the chan ging status of the ‘spatial’ in the society–space couplet. A shifting understanding of the social through the course of twentieth century Continental and English speaking geography is charted elsewhere by Philo and So¨derstorm. Early social theorists – the sociologist, Georg Simmel, and geographer, Freidrich Ratzel, for example, posited an iterative relation between society and space. Inspired by the rapidity of urban industrialization in the late 1800s, they counterposed rural existence to the distinctive qual ities of urban life. Urban life, they theorized, became blended and compressed, a locus where anonymity en couraged nonconformity in thought. Apart from their theoretical insights, geography was for the most part, ruled by idiographic tendencies – detailed descriptions of spe cific places, which were useful for exploration, coloniza tion, and conquest, but resistant to theoretical production. By the 1940s normative and methodological impulses prompted a move away from even these early theorizations. Ratzel’s concept of Lebensraum was discredited through its appropriation by the Nazi party: a development that, per haps, propelled German geography at the end of World War II back to the safe terrain of idiography and de scription. The rising methodological hegemony of quanti tative approaches encouraged the revival of a Newtonian view of space as a container of social processes, and a search for pure pattern in the mathematical and geometrical ex pression of social processes in their spatial forms. Social area analysis, which reached its zenith in post World War II quantitative geography, viewed human societies as an aggregate of myriad individual decisions, which became routinized and achieved equilibrium in distinct spatial forms. Undergirding this approach was a neoclassical economic model of rational choice – perhaps suited to the economic and political stability following World War II, but ill equipped for what was to come afterward. By the late 1960s social unrest began to trouble the implied equilibrium of this framework. For Anglo American geographers, including David Harvey, the ‘problem of the ghetto’ remained resistant to quantitative explanations. Harvey’s Social Justice and the City was the first of a collection of transitional texts in geography, charting a course from the limitations of quantitative approaches to the possibilities of Marxism, setting a

radical reorientation of human geography that has per sisted to this day.

Society–Space as Structured Coherence This is the first approach. The turn to Marxism in the late 1960s and early 1970s compensated for quantitative geography’s weaknesses: class analysis provided the tools to explain social inequity; the concept of dialectically induced crisis, propelled by the conflict between capital and labor, offered a mechanism of societal transforma tion. The deductive power of the dialectic, moreover, compensated for both the idiographic tendencies in descriptive accounts that characterized early work in geography and the agnostic politics of quantitative ap proaches that came after. However, for geographers, Marxism came with add itional challenges. Marx himself had tended to ignore space entirely or reduce it, as Soja noted, to Hegel’s notion of space as a state idea, remaining within the ‘simplifying assumptions of a closed national economy’. With Marxism this attitude shifted from mere indifference to active hostility. Beginning with the Second International and writings of Gyo¨rgy Lukaćs (considered the founder of Western Marxism), attention to space was considered a fetish and diversion from class struggle. Under Stalinism, it was relegated along with culture and politics to the realm of superstructure, an irrelevant epiphenomenon. Geographers countered this legacy with a frontal at tack, arguing it was precisely the undertheorization of geography and space from Marx forward that had im poverished radical political theory and practice. Early debates in Marxist geography revolved around how far one could push the significance of space without risking spatial fetishism or subordinating class struggle – a social struggle – to a spatial one. Hyphenated Marxisms (femi nist, antiracist, etc.) within geography were intent on challenging the explicit hierarchy of laboring forms within the Marxist framework. The latter privileged particular subjects (the white male Fordist worker) and their at tendant spatialities (the factory in industrialized Western countries) as the linchpin of societal transformation. From Spatial Fix to Socio-Spatial Dialectic One line of enquiry reconceptualized the relationship between society–space: the ‘–’, if you will. Here concepts of spatial fix, time–space compression, social space, and the sociospatial dialectic, each charted a different course between the Scylla of ignoring space entirely, and the Charybdis of fetishizing it altogether. Working perhaps most closely with Marx’s texts, David Harvey interrogated the role of space in the circuit of capital. For Harvey, space constituted a limit to the

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process of circulation – Harvey’s concept of spatial fix. However, technological developments in the labor pro cess could also erode distances between places – time– space compression. Harvey’s concept of spatial fix un masked the geographical and territorial dimensions of the concept of dead labor – labor invested in particular in frastructures and technologies that weighed ‘heavily on the living’; time–space compression on the other hand expressed the manner in which capital transformed technologies (and the division of labor) to overcome this predicament, at the same time, annihilating fixed space with accelerated time. These two extremes of fixity and flight delimited the terrain of societal reform, and the extent to which surplus might be diverted from capital that was bound to a region, before it could leave. It was one thing to argue that space could act as a break or an accelerant to the circulation of capital; it was quite another to propose a historical inversion in the relationship between capital and space. Lefebvre’s con cept of social space – a counterpart to Marx’s concept of social labor – did just that. Space left the realm of covert strategy and was elevated to the status of necessity. Space was not merely a productive component of contemporary capitalism; capitalism was now produced, itself, by space. Working along multiple trajectories Lefebvre charted the geohistory of spaces. This he traced from the world of early human history organized primarily through natural spaces (in which natural features were discovered and exploited), to contemporary abstract spaces, wherein distinctions between places in the globe were erased and nature was subordinated to a grid of functions. In this vision, (inspired by Lefebvre’s own lifetime experience of the French state’s relentless modernization of its coun tryside), modernity and modernization were not eman cipatory conditions, but rather an expression of a commodification tending toward barbarism. Modern ization was a means by which capitalism ensured, by stealth, its survival. Social space raised questions about the centrality of class as the sine qua non of social trans formation. The city was elevated from its status as a micro expression of larger socioeconomic processes to a central point of intervention. Social space reconceptua lized the terrain of struggle: spilling out of the factory and on to the streets. For some geographers, such as Harvey, this position bordered dangerously on a fetishizing of space; for others – Edward Soja in particular, it marked the return of space to its proper place in critical social theory after a century of its subordination. Soja’s sociospatial dialectic took Lefebvre’s dialectical materialism, a dialectic no longer tied to temporality, as a point of departure. Drawing on Lefebvre’s argument that space was in some ways homological to class structure, expressing major contradictions and acting as a vehicle for societal transformation, he reassessed the latent

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spatiality of the work of Marxist theorists within the discipline and beyond. The sociospatial dialectic neatly side stepped the question of logical primacy in the society–space couplet. More provocative than the dialectic was Soja’s argument that the intersection of simultaneous synchronic socio spatial processes, emanating from multiple locales, took precedent over the diachronic, which viewed social change as a sequence of local developments unfolding in place. This viewpoint amplified a similar argument made by scholars of English literature (such as John Berger), that the linear narrative form of the novel had been superseded by a multiplicity of intersecting viewpoints. Although space and the social were iterative, in this view space now trumped time; geography trumped history. Socio-Spatial Formations Although these contributions addressed the role of space in the society–space couplet, they still begged the ques tion as to how one bounded this concept. Where did one society begin and another end? The political implications were clear: one had to understand what ‘larger’ processes must be considered in any study of social inequity in order to appraise the political field that might over de termine it. Marxists sought to rescue politics and culture from their status as epiphenomena and counter Stalin’s base superstructure model by drawing on and extending Lenin’s and Marx’s concepts of the socioeconomic for mation. The resulting conception of the social formation was understood as the complex articulation of social, economic, and political practices that together expressed a coherent society – a structured coherence, or totality of instances. Its boundaries were roughly congruent with national economies, but this scale reflected the hege monic importance of national economies in the 1970s – today the European Union might be considered a social formation. The sociospatial formation (introduced by South American radical theorist, Milton Santos, in collaboration with geographer, Dick Peet), marked the first tentative vision of active space, countering the Newtonian view that the nation state was merely the container of relevant social, political, and economic processes. Space figured actively in both production and social reproduction. Santos’ inspiration for the concept came from a Hegelian understanding of things (as endowed with content and purpose), and practical observations about the role of modern planning infrastructures, which, in nonaligned South American economies at that time, acted as a means to attack and transform noncapitalist economies. Here the reorganization of space had preceded economic and political transformation as a mechanism of accelerated capitalist modernization.

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The implicitly national agenda that underpinned early conceptions of the sociospatial formation reflected an unstated understanding that the national arena was central to any serious political agenda for societal transformation, and the vehicle from which to revive an international politics. The structured coherence of societies coalesced, logically, at the national level – a view reinforced by the centrality of the Keynesian welfare state during the Fordist period. The implication was that the nation state itself was the target of any necessary change. The demise of the Keynesian bargain, the differen tiation of the economic fates of regions and cities, the rise of frontier zones, and the intensification of globalization were to erode this view – echoed in evolving debates about regional and urban specificity, the interpenetration of global and local, and finally, the salience of scale itself as a concept. At the same time theorists were beginning to grapple with the complexities of global–local rela tionships and their articulation in specific places. Doreen Massey’s concept of power geometries captured the dif ferentiated nature of globalizing societal processes, which propelled jet setting elites around the world with in creasing ease, while confining the less fortunate to in creasing immobility or distended travel times – long waits in bus lines to gain access to shopping centers, green grocers, and basic amenities to cover the bare necessities of life. The Paradigmatic City In the mid 1970s the national context so predominated as to provoke a debate around the specificity of the urban: not simply a microcosm of larger societal processes (within the structured coherence of a sociospatial for mation), nor entirely its own separate reality. By the 1980s however, the city not only asserted its own speci ficity: it was considered paradigmatic of a new social– spatial form. For Soja, Los Angeles undermined the underlying precepts of the structured coherence of the sociospatial formation and offered, in its place, the city as a global node in an urban hierarchy, defined by its rela tive position in a global network of cities. This polycentric, post Fordist agglomeration became the platform from which to theorize three interrelated restructurings of the society–space relationship: post historicism, that is the ascendancy of geographical over historical thought; post Fordism, which was the shift from national economies of mass production and consumption to global economies that organized geographically dis persed labor pools, an international division of labor, and marketed to niches; and postmodernism, which admitted a cacophony of social subjects and processes into the arena of societal change. Some theorists considered this singular focus on Los Angeles a somewhat paradoxical maneuver – to declare a city as paradigmatic at the same time as it

demonstrated spatial heterogeneity raised questions about the significance of other places. Nevertheless, Postmodern Geographies was perhaps the most forceful elaboration of the thesis on the centrality of space in the society–space couplet and another key text marking a turning point in geographic thought. For feminist geographers however, Soja’s recognition of cac ophonous, differentiated voices had not gone far enough: a geography on the postmodern, to be sure, but written from a modern perspective. Although the book acknow ledged the significance of a multiplicity of different voices, questions about the specificity of these differences awaited further investigation. The view of society–space as a social–spatial for mation has been the subject of two principle critiques. The first – against diffusionism – challenged the implied hierarchy between the First and Third World or de veloped and underdeveloped nations; the second – privileging social reproduction – challenged the primacy of subjects and spaces of production. Against Diffusionism Theorists working on underdevelopment, and later post colonial studies, raised questions about the unstated Eurocentrism and diffusionism of many Marxist ap proaches, which presumed that societies, (nationally con figured) were expected to follow the European model of modernization and transition to capitalism. C. L. R. James and the Caribbean school challenged the implied tele ology of European development, arguing that slavery in Haiti provided the economic basis for the French Revo lution. Geographers deepened this analysis. James Blaut’s The Colonizer’s Model of the World offered an extensive cri tique of the many manifestations of Eurocentrism and myths of diffusionism – which suggested that European models of society were the most highly developed forms, to be adopted over time by more backward societies. Clyde Woods’ Development Arrested countered similar mythologies about the United States. The typical view was that societal development in the United States was led by a modernizing industrializing north, contrasted by an ana chronistic form of economic and social development in the American south. Woods’ research documents the persistent underdevelopment of the Mississippi Delta, whose peoples and resources have been continuously plundered by plantation economies from the late 1600s on. The political and economic forms in the south moreover, presage con temporary neoliberal strategies of dispossession. Geographers have offered ways to conceptualize the resonances between processes of underdevelopment common to the First and Third World. Jim Blaut’s con ception of the American ghetto as an internal neocolony has contemporary relevance to understanding the wanton neglect of infrastructures leading to the destruction of

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New Orleans. Katz’s concept of disintegrating develop ments links parallel processes of impoverishment in places as far flung as New York and Howa, recently documented in Growing up Global. The full significance of these works, and the extent to which they demonstrate the complicity of slavery and nonindustrial forms of exploitation in the rise of capit alism and modernity – not just as precursors, but active laboratories, has yet to be fully appreciated. These works challenge the implied hierarchy of sociospatial develop ment, symptomatic of a persistent colonial mindset, which suggests that only when countries have passed through specific stages of capitalist development might they be ripe for any kind of transformation.

Spaces of Social Reproduction Feminist geographers opened a battle on two fronts – first to insist on a Marxism that did not consider gender issues and the production of labor power as derivative, but rather as central to social struggle, and second, to demonstrate the specificity of gendered spaces in this dynamic. They were inspired by early work of radical feminists, and Torsten Haagerstrand’s insights on time geographies, which detailed the particular spatial patterns emerging from people’s daily journeys from home to work, shop ping, school, and the like. The challenge initially, was to document the difference that gender made. Feminists charted the gendered characteristics of capitalist space – from suburb to gentrified central city, the former badly serving women who had joined a secondary labor force by the mid 1970s, and the latter reducing distance be tween home and work. The doubled roles of women as homemakers and as part of a paid labor force introduced its own spatial dynamics into the development of capit alism. For example, industry’s flight to the suburbs in the 1970s was as much to exploit a female labor force tied close to home as it was to flee organized unions in urban areas. The difficulties in advancing a feminist perspective in the early years should be underscored. Feminist geographies were sometimes castigated by established academics in the field, as being ‘not the stuff of geog raphy’, but rather more like urban sociology. Declining state responsibilities for services associated with social reproduction, the aggressive downloading of these responsibilities to cities, communities, and families that characterized the 1990s, all conspired to rework the scalar nesting of home, national, and international spaces in complex ways. Peripheralization at the core was one manifestation of this reworking, exemplified in the re organization of home space with the transnational mi gration of childcare workers. Feminist geographers also began to unpack the ways that apparently local sites of

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social reproduction, from school classrooms to hospital birthing stations, supported national agendas. Feminist geographers reworked the spatial imaginary along two axes. First, they argued for a shift from understanding social functions as operating in bounded quasi territorial containers (the city, the nation state) to a focus on nodes and flows of activities and practices (diasporas, transnational migrations). Second, they ex plored the disruption of the comfortable scalar nesting of practices: local, regional, and global were no longer thought of in terms of a kind of Russian doll set of containers; local practices might produce national or international effects; and inversions of all kinds were possible.

Society–Space as a Strategic Field The second approach envisions society–space as a stra tegic field. The limits of the field are not political boundaries; the dispersal of particular institutional sites and technologies of rule that are constituted through them, map out the extensive space of the discursive re gime – for example, the spread of asylums, prisons, or hospitals. Subjects are differentiated in terms of their relationship to societal determinations of normal and abnormal (e.g., the criminal, the insane). Foucault’s work is central to this approach, but it includes others inter ested in the societal production and regulation of trans gressive subjects: how different societies define disability, sexuality, or aging, for example, becomes a means through which to understand how societal norms are constituted. In this approach subjects (prisoners, pupils, soldiers, teachers, doctors, the ill, the insane, the priest, the penitent) are not defined by their alienated labor, they are produced through discursive logics about what is true and what is false, what is normal and what is abnormal – the rules of conduct governing conduct itself. These find expression in a variety of institutional mechanisms and practices to produce the norm and to curtail, contain, and exclude the abnormal (the school, the military, prison, the hospital). Over the past decade geographers have been ex ploring the changes in discursive regimes arising in response to shifts in governance. With the rise of neoli beralism, states are increasingly interested in promoting right behaviors to limit collective costs (e.g., exercise and healthy eating to reduce healthcare costs). New cat egories of social exclusion – for example, the enemy noncombatant, or the illegal alien – place subjects outside of the range of entitlements afforded ordinary citizens and juridical protections decreed through international law. Space is being deployed in new ways as a technology of control, for example, through the banning of convicted

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drug users from certain parts of the city, and the de marcation of limited ‘zones of protest’ as a space of free speech for demonstrators. Biotechnologies, such as the iris scanner, face recognition technologies, thermal registers (deployed at airports during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic) form part of a range of new technologies of surveillance. Additionally – biopower – the politics of ‘life itself ’ has become a subject of governance as interest in the productive capacities of living matter (DNA, genetically modified organism (GMO)) raises regulatory questions and becomes part of the lexicon of governance of human populations. Cam paigns around bioethical citizenship forge a link between people’s ability to act responsibly, to pursue the right lifestyle, and their ability to gain access to social services. Dispositif Within the strategic field, particular kinds of spaces (e.g., the school or the prison) become organizing and ori enting mechanisms for a larger society – a dispositif, or underlying diagram of power relations. Theorists have argued for the iconic status of different spaces in dif ferent historical periods: for instance Foucault suggested the school/prison/barracks expressed the logic of dis ciplinary societies and template for subject production in the modern era, whereas Agamben has argued that the concentration camp is a better signpost. The camp, for Agamben, marks the division between those included within the productive technologies of the state and those over which the state has absolute power, but who are reduced to bare life – states of exception. Agamben’s approach has become increasingly popular as we witness a growing range and variety of excluded individuals not subject to the protection of conventional laws (e.g., refugee populations, illegal migrant workers, un recognized states, enemy combatants). Within this approach, changes in the dispositif emerge genealogically – through accidents, adaptations, and improvisations, rather than through an internally driven logic (the unfolding of the dialectic characteristic of structured coherence). The discursive technologies that exclude or contain transgressive subjects can become the organizing principle for the entire social field. These iconic subjects and their corresponding spaces become a vantage point from which the underlying discursive logic of an entire society can be revealed, although in any given period, technologies may coexist, and strategies overlap, fuse, or evolve separately. The concept of power in this approach draws on the philosophical heritage of Nietzsche and Clausewitz: it is nondialectical – opponents confront one another on a terrain much like a battlefield. Society is a strategic field of engagement, in which each side defines the terms of conflict differently. Power focuses on relationships of

governance rather than economic relations. Shifts in strategies of governance relate only opportunistically to economic changes: political and economic forces are not bound by a shared logic. Power is not defined through class relationships and then refracted through other forms. Power is productive: organized neither through ideology nor repression, (as Deleuze was to remark). Although power is dispersed – it is ‘everywhere’ – it also takes specific forms at each site, something critics of Foucauldian analysis often neglect to acknowledge. It is expressed as a series of specific technologies of rule; passing ubiquitously through individuals as a relay – each one subordinated to and exercised by power in specific ways. Historically, shifts in power relations express changes in state (and other institutions’) strategies of government: from the patrolling of boundaries of nation states to guaranteeing internal security within the population. In class based analyses the concept of population is often viewed as an obfuscation: here it becomes an object of rule. Governance of the daily conduct of subjects miti gates societal processes such as unemployment, migra tion, birth and death rates. Interests of governing elites are only tangentially linked to economic concerns. Al though relations of power are negative to the extent they channel behaviors, they are also productive, rather than strictly repressive or ideological: subjects are not duped nor coerced, they are invested in their identities. Femi nists have critiqued this viewpoint as reproducing the colonizer’s view of the colonized, unable to acknowledge the extent to which subjects are cognizant and critical of their subject positions, aware of their paradoxical position even as they participate in their production. This approach emphasizes the optic and technical qualities of space: the space of the gaze, disciplinary spaces, spaces of surveillance, are organized in such a way as to enact particular discursive technologies. The uni form rows of desks in the classroom, for instance, allow for maximum observation by the teacher, and emphasize the uniform status of the pupil; the organization of the hospital according to specific illnesses allows for enclosure, partitioning, and creation of functional sites and the ranking of their uses. Geographers have explored the limits and possibilities of this approach through investigations of its philo sophical heritage. On the one hand, they have critiqued the unidimensional tendencies of this view of space, which merely reflects the discursive program that has organized them, inattentive to the multiple possibilities for redefining, challenging, and inverting relationships within them. Harvey and Thrift have each lamented this treatment of space as rigid and inanimate, rather than ‘lively’ – the former arguing for a return to the dialectic, and the latter suggesting an appreciation of space that would be haptic, as well as optic. On the other hand,

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geographers have clarified philosophical influences within the approach. In Mapping the Present, Stuart Elden explores connections to Heideggerian and Cartesian views of space: as techne and extension. As techne, space is a technology expressing and enacting relations of power. As extension, institutions, and corresponding discursive arrangements, disperse across a social–spatial field, not limited by political boundaries – for example, schools, hospitals, and prisons have proliferated across Western nations. Power relations are enacted in a dis persal of institutional arrangements through space. Civil society is thus thought of as an occupied zone, a battlefield. Localized practices are not understood as resonating within a larger societal field, a structured coherence of larger economic, political, and cultural processes. Instead societal discourses themselves, emerge through micro geographies, the localized space of the school, the church, the barracks, the prison cell, the confessional. The interconnection, fusion, or coordin ation of their logics comes to express different discursive constellations whose variation marks a historical shift from one system of technologies of rule to another. This is a bottom up rather than a top down approach, res onant with Nietzsche’s frog’s eye view of power relations. Different historical periods are distinguished by distinct dispositifs – diagrammatic relations of power, connections between discursive logics at different sites, which subtend the organization of society as a whole, and reflect how societies think about and organize the relationship be tween what is considered normal and abnormal. Genealogy’s Geography

Geographers have also explored the relationship between genealogical transformations and their context, guarding against a totalizing view that sees new spaces and dis cursive technologies as simply steamrolled across an in different or accommodating landscape. In this account, variations in location, topography, and social environ ment are not simply relegated to the status of accident or contingency. Environment (geography, territory, already built form) figures in the genealogy of discourses as an active element in this process. One excellent example is Philo’s exploration of the geographies of madness. This rich account details the variation in therapeutic regimes in England and Wales – not simply imposed upon an indifferent landscape, but rather wrought from the Earth, an ‘original chaotic space’, a geographically differentiated brew of highway wanderings, sacred healing waters, and secluded forests and abbeys. This reanimation of the geography of discourse has extended to an analysis of places of scientific knowledge production – the locales and networks, which were the sites of development of quantitative techniques for the analysis of population. Geographers have explored the spaces of exception that correspond to states of

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exception. Guantanamo Bay, the nonstate of Palestine, and the refugee camp have been figured as extra territorial extrastate spaces. However, there are in ternalized states and spaces of exception as well, such as the workspace of transnational domestics who migrate to work in foreign lands without the benefit of local regu latory protections. Critiques of the ‘strategic field’ approach have focused on its tendency to view resistance as inseparable from the power structures that constitute their subjects; an in difference to the multiple subject positions that might confound an individual’s relationship to a particular discursive structure; and a resultant reluctance to explore the multiplicity of contested positions that might coexist in relation to a given discursive regime.

Society–Space as Performative The third approach takes as its starting point the in stability of multiple subject positions as a productive uncertainty – a performance or a becoming. Society is inherently unstable, improvisational, continuously dif ferentiating. Its stability must be explained. The emphasis on marginality is neither simply exclusion – the Marxian view of the lumpen proletariat – nor subject production, the Foucauldian view. The spaces the marginal occupy are seen as performative, paradoxical, or cramped, ex pressing the ways they must knowingly negotiate their own subordinated positions within discursive constructs. These spaces become the vantage point from which to uncover blind spots in hegemonic discourse, or as de Lauretis put it ‘‘chinks and cracks in the power know ledge apparati.’’ This perspective is subtended by an emphasis on radical instability and difference: there is no singular, privileged vantage point from which to understand so ciety–space as a totality – rather this perspective reveals a range of heterogeneous spaces embodying different modalities of oppression and possibilities for resistance. Subject positions are fundamentally unstable because subjects must negotiate between competing discursive frameworks. Subjects are not preexisting, autonomous entities that relate to one another across clearly defined boundaries. Subject identity is in a state of flux – emer ging in the in between space negotiated with others. Central to this project is the idea that the position of marginality is not simply one of exclusion: marginality offers a vantage point from which to critically appraise hegemonic relations of power. The political impetus for this approach has been to understand resistance to soci etal norms that might emanate from outside of hege monic power relations, rather than simply reacting against them – something that Foucault and his adherents gesture toward but do not fully explore.

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Paradoxical Spaces

For theorists working in this vein, inspiration has come from the conscious acts of negotiation or resistance by transgressive or marginalized subjects (e.g., the act of passing for white when black, or straight when gay or transgendered) and from social struggles that have set their own terms of reference and political objectives outside of the ‘normal’ frame of negotiation. Exemplary in this regard is Gillian Rose’s Feminism and Geography, and her concept of paradoxical space. Other geographers have extended her perspective to investigate phenom enon of passing. Griselda Pollock, a scholar of the arts, has undertaken a similar reassessment of spaces of modernity through analysis of impressionist paintings. For example, Morisot’s On the Balcony, is not viewed by Pollock as a masculinist vision of modernity, but rather a record of a white bourgeois woman’s experience of spa tialized, gendered difference, marked by the distance between balcony, and street – semiprivate and public space. While the margin marks a site of exclusion, it is thus understood as a potential site of recuperation and resistance. Hooper and Soja deepen this line of argument, drawing upon bell hooks’ insights on the meaning of home for black women. They conceptualize the space that difference makes as a productive, counter hege monic project. As Caroline Desbiens notes, the question remains as to whether this space of resistance exists in a beyond (implying an as yet unrealized utopia) or an elsewhere, as sites of critical engagement that are part of the here and now, akin to the space off in film (denoting the space off screen). The idea that these spaces operate in the here and now has been forcefully demonstrated in McKit trick’s mobilization of paradoxical space in Demonic Grounds. Here she explores the range of micro geog raphies that depict American slavery as intimately bound up in the constitution of modernity. For example, the auction block displayed a perverse rationality as a site of measurement of human worth. However, she also argues these spaces can afford possibilities for resistance. Thus a cramped attic space, which functioned for 7 years as a space of extreme confinement for an escaped slave was also a transit point to freedom. This approach invites a deeper exploration of politics through a range of spa tialized concepts – third spaces, passing, transgression, border zones, a politics of location, ‘between ness’, cen ter margin all come under scrutiny. Society–Space as Immanent Field The fourth and final approach shares much with the third, in that it sees instability as an endemic, persistent societal condition. This approach can be linked most strongly to post structuralist feminist and Deleuzian in fluences. Where it differs from the third approach is that

the instability of subject positions does not arise through a structured paradox. In this view society flees. The ‘lines of flight’ or ‘becomings’ of the subjects are the paths wrought by their perpetual improvisation – subjects, bodies are not bounded entities, containers, but rather ‘organizational arrangements’ in a continual state of re action to their milieu. These improvisations can become channeled into stable recurring relationships, or blocked, diverted, or even overthrown. Matter is, in this view, wayward – kinetic, dynamic – and systems arise through patterns of exchange, the coding of flows of matter (people, goods, sewage, water, microorganisms) within a milieu. Through this coding stable assemblages emerge. Theorists working in this vein eschew Cartesian boundaries to think differently about configurations of space and subjects. Their work includes alternative conceptualizations of the flows, conjunctions, and con vergences of processes in a world rendered increasingly complex through globalization, and a rethinking of con figurations across traditionally conceived boundaries of human/nature, human/animal, human/machine, sub jects/spaces. Longhurst and other feminist geographers, for example, have focused on the affective and leaky qualities of bodies and other spatialized concepts of human subjectivity that belie the neat and bounded categorizations of Cartesian thought, suggesting that an approach open to the porosity and flexibility of subject production might also offer new kinds of alliances. Others have focused on complexities of landscapes. Bonta’s study of Honduras, excerpted in Deleuze and Geophilosophy, explores a variety of practices that consti tute its landscapes. He suggests that the point is not to disaggregate complex spaces into their constituent parts – ‘peasant and rancher, human from forest’ – but rather to understand how spaces and subjects are increasingly ‘entangled’. These places do not constitute discretely bounded territories: they jostle one another at the edges, ‘beans taking over forest; forest taking over ranch land’. This process of becoming, the nomadism of space and subjects is central to this approach. In this view of society–space as an immanent field, space is not strictly a techne, nor a juridicopolitical boundary, but the manifestation of process itself, a kind of becoming. Space is thus deterritorialized and reterritor ialized; smoothed – in a process where relationships within a milieu are relatively free form, determined only by one’s tactical position in relation to others; or striated – in a process whereby subjects’ capacities are invested through particular roles that they carry regardless of their location. This is a Leibnizian rather than Cartesian space: relational, enfolded, understood in terms of interfaces, interconnections, conjunctions, and interpellations. Even bodies themselves are not viewed as discrete bounded objects but rather a coding of the flows of heterogeneous materials, which confounds conventional notions of

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‘inside’ and ‘outside’. Indeed one might argue that in this view, the boundary between ‘space’ and ‘subject’ has dissolved. All of matter is viewed in terms of its active or expressive capacities, rather than reduced to its repre sentational forms. In social terms, assemblages channel desire and code activities into particular flows and pathways. These forms – the band, the state form, and the capitalist axiomatic – do not represent discrete historically distinct phases, but rather modus operandi that coexist and overlap. Subjects do not resist societal norms and inequities simply by reacting against structures: they draw on their own inspiration and creativity, ask their own questions, and formulate their own problems to conceive a more equitable world. Not to do so, risks remaining within the reference frame, channels, and codes, of the very struc tures one seeks to transform. This view of resistance draws upon a concept of power that explicitly rejects Hegel’s (and Marx’s) resort to a negative dialectic – a dialectic whose movement is achieved exclusively through a reaction against intoler able conditions. It draws instead on Spinoza and Leibniz to rework concepts of power and space. Power is viewed as manifesting in two distinct forms: potestas – an alienating form of power which separates its subjects from their own capacities, and tends to be associated with feelings of melancholia and sadness; and potentia – or an emancipatory power which enhances subject’s capacities to act in their best interests, and tends to be associated with feelings of joy. It is this second form of power, which provides the impetus for societal transformation based on affirmation, on the positive (rather than the dialectical movement of the negative). One example of such is the wildcat strike of autoworkers in Turin, Italy in the 1970s. They refused a simple negotiation of better working conditions, rallying around the slogan ‘‘Volle Tutte’’ – We Want Everything! Another is the creative, inventive, and constantly evolving political agendas and practices of social movements around the globe in the late 1960s. In this view, individuals must decide themselves whether a relationship expresses potentia or potestas – no one else can determine this for them. Space and subjects are not thought of solely in terms of their optic qualities – how subjects are organized in space, but their haptic qualities – the space of sensation, emotion, affect, which in turn help to constitute a normative, ethical basis for a politics. The approach offers a different vantage point from which to understand societal transformations, or social movements (both negative and positive). Subjects can just as equally desire fascism as liberation. For example, in the rise of Nazi Germany the masses wanted to be led, they wanted fascism, a view expressed most strongly by Deleuze and Guattari. The point is to understand the basis of that desire, not simply assert that subjects have

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somehow been duped. Desiring production is a mech anism through which societies are constituted. The manner in which desire becomes channeled, blocked, or confounded with other objectives is central to this understanding of society–space. Geographically inspired variants of this approach have concentrated at its antipodes. At one pole they have explored the constitution of the social in the interface between bodies and sensations. Post structuralist feminist works and nonrepresentational geographies, the latter pioneered by Nigel Thrift, have investigated the affective and expressive, rather than representative dimensions of society and space. They begin with the body as a vantage point, and suggest new ways of approaching the political and the transformative, emphasizing the haptic – the sensory – dimensions of everyday life as a starting point from which social change begins. At the other pole, we find a Deleuzian reworking of complexity theory in the geo coding of flows of matter. The most provocative of these, perhaps, is Michael DeLanda’s A Thousand Years of Non Linear History. Although he is not a geographer, his work provides a provocative intersection of both geo logical and human activities, reinterpreting the last mil lennia through flows of geological, biological, and cultural–linguistic matter. Arun Saldahna suggests one oversight of these appli cations (works of Bonta and others aside) is that the political questions of exploitation and the restrictive constitution of subjects are often overlooked – politics has been eviscerated, leaving us with a simple celebration of creativity, reformulated narrowly as cultural com modity production, or wondering about the complexity of existence. One might argue, however, these explor ations have attempted to extend the terrain of the pol itical, and indeed there is much to suggest that research on bodywork and other engagements of affect might prove a potent avenue of enquiry. But clearly much work remains to be done on the ways in which flows and codings help to constitute institutions that enshrine state power, advance imperialism, and channel desire into frameworks that justify and perpetuate, rather than transform, social inequities. An investigation of this di mension of Deleuzo–Guattarian space remains firmly on the agenda.

Issues Before the radical turn in geography some 30 years ago, David Harvey lamented the lack of strategy at the interface in quantitative geography – expressed in the inability of quantitative methods to reconcile social and spatial processes. In working through the four broad approaches outlined about, geographers have been adept at demonstrating the salience of space to social theory

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and restored its dynamism in the society–space couplet. In each of these approaches, geographers have offered analytical insights and new conceptual orientations toward space as a site of both research and praxis. At times they have built on or sharpened spatial concepts elaborated by theorists working outside the discipline and at times created their own, particularly where the sali ence of space had been ignored. Space is indeed ‘back on the agenda’. New chasms, however, have appeared in our thinking of social–spatial relations. The most pressing concern in contemporary human geography is how one might think of the interface between these competing visions of the subject and its attendant spatialities. It would be difficult to suggest that one of these approaches is more relevant than the others. In a world where the gap between rich and poor is, if anything, accelerating with attendant decline of cities and regions; where new and troubling forms of sur veillance (with the introduction of biotechnologies) are coming into being; where new hybridized subjects are surfacing; and where desire is being mobilized to sustain affective regimes and intensified exploitative produc tion, each of these approaches offers insights into con temporary societal transformations and social inequities. These varied approaches are often characterized as ir retrievably antagonistic, even in the face of evidence to the contrary in the original writings that they draw upon. Al ternately they are combined, sometimes indiscriminately. Work needs to be done to explore their commonalities and differences more fully – to specify more carefully the complex terrain in which these diverse subjects are pro duced, and the particular configurations of society and space that sustain them. A new strategy at the interface is required, in order to be able to imagine different possi bilities for life and work in a more equitable world. See also: Feminism/Feminist Geography; Fordism; Fordism, Post-Fordism and Flexible Specialization;

Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Non-Representational Theory/ Non-Representational Geographies; Poststructuralism/ Poststructuralist Geographies.

Further Reading Blaut, J. M. (1993). The Colonizer’s Model of the World. New York: The Guilford Press. Bonta, M. and Protevi, J. (2004). Deleuze and Geophilosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Crampton, J. W. and Elden, S. (2007). Space, Knowledge, Power. Foucault and Geography. Hampshire: Ashgate. Crang, M. and Thrift, N. (2000). Thinking Space. London: Routledge. Elden, S. (2001). Mapping the Present. London: Continuum. Fincher, R. and Jacobs, J. (1998). Cities of Difference. New York: Guilford Press. Gregory, D. (1994). Geographical Imaginations. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1973). Social Justice and the City. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Katz, C. (2006). Growing up Global Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Keith, M. and Pile, S. (1993). Place and the Politics of Identity. London: Routledge. McKittrick, K. (2006). Demonic Grounds. Black Women and Cartographies of struggle. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Philo, C. (2004). A Geographical History of Institutional Provision for the Insane from Medieval Times to the 1860s in England and Wales: The Space Reserved for Insanity. Wales: Edwin Mellen Press. Philo, C. and Soderstrom, O. (2004). Social geography: Looking for society in its spaces. In Benko, G. & Strohmayer, U. (eds.) Human Geography. A History for the Twenty First Century, pp 105 138. London: Edward Arnold. Pile, S. and Keith, M. (1997). Geographies of Resistance. London: Routledge. Rose, G. (1993). Feminism and Geography. The Limits of Geographical Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Soja, E. (1989). Postmodern Geographies. London: Verso. Thrift, N. (1996). Spatial Formations. London: Sage. Woods, C. (1998). Development Arrested. London: Verso.

Soja, E. A. Latham, University College London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Exopolis A generally low density, sprawling, suburban-like form of urban settlement, often without clear structures of public governance, that has become an increasingly distinctive element of much contemporary urbanization. California’s Orange County is a paradigmatic example of the exopolis. Postmetropolis The contemporary American metropolis. It refers to how the present postmodern epoch has transformed the dynamics of contemporary urbanization. In essence, the term is simply a contraction of the term postmodern metropolis. Simcities Cities or parts of cities, which are built around the simulation of other, often fantasy, times, and/ or places. Sociospatial Dialectic The dialectical relationship between space, society, and history. Synekism ‘The stimulus of urban agglomeration’ according to Soja (2003). Synekism refers to the generative properties of urban density; the way in which the presence of large, diverse populations creates a whole range of dynamic and often unexpected relationships not possible in smaller, less diverse populations. Thirdspace Refers simultaneously to a style of analysis that places a spatialized trialectics at its analytical center, and a conceptual space that captures the full material and imaginative texture of people’s everyday experience of the world. Trialectics An extension of the established Marxian dialectic to include space as well as time. Trialectics is essentially a reworking of Edward Soja’s earlier term sociospatial dialectic.

profoundly undermined its ability to understand the dy namics of the contemporary capitalist system. To begin to take space and spatiality seriously, he argued, required the rebuilding of critical social theory from the ground up. Thus, in a trilogy of books, Postmodern Geographies : The Re assertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (1989), Thirdspace : Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places (1996), and Postmetropolis : Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (2000), Soja undertook that very task. In these books, and a parallel series of articles, Soja presents an intellectual archeology of the origins of critical social theory’s re pudiation of the spatial, highlights a range of alternatives – and spatially attuned traditions – of critical social theorizing that offer ways of radically spatializing critical social theo ry’s conceptual imagination, and lastly, provides a series of exemplary case studies focusing on contemporary Los Angeles to show what a properly spatialized – postmodern – critical social theory might look like. (Figure 1) Born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, Soja began his academic career in the 1960s as a specialist on African development. In 1972, after a period of teaching at Northwestern University following the completion of his doctoral studies at Syracuse University, Soja moved to The Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Plan ning at the University of California, Los Angeles. This

Soja, Ed (1941–) Urban geographer, social theorist, and key member of the so called ‘Los Angeles School’ of urban studies, Ed Soja has been a Professor at the UCLA department of urban plan ning since 1972, and has been a Visiting Centennial Pro fessor at the London School of Economics since 1999. Soja became internationally renowned for developing a post modern human geography that offered both a radical cri tique of mainstream social science, and a thoroughgoing consideration of the foundations needed for a genuinely spatialized critical social theory. His central argument has been that critical social theory, like mainstream social sci ence, has failed to take space seriously and this has

Figure 1 Soja, E.

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was to mark a major shift in the intellectual and geo graphical focus of Soja’s work. While his early publi cations on Africa had been broadly sympathetic to spatial science and the then dominant paradigm of modern ization theory, through the 1970s and early 1980s, Soja increasingly distanced himself from these traditions. At the same time, the focus of his work shifted from Africa to Los Angeles. In a series of essays that culminated in the publication of his most highly regarded and cited book Postmodern Geographies : The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, Soja undertook an intellectual archeology of critical social theory’s neglect of the spatial. How was it, Soja asked, that within this otherwise com pelling intellectual tradition that space had come to be ‘‘treated as the dead, the fixed, the undialectical, the immobile [ywhile] time on the contrary was richness, fecundity, life, dialectic?’’ (Michel Foucault, cited in Soja, 1989: 10). Simultaneous with this archeology, Soja also sought to bring to attention an emergent countercurrent within the critical social theoretic tradition that re pudiated this ‘historism’ and instead reached toward a profoundly spatialized mode of thinking based on a triple dialectic of ‘space, time, and social being’. With their direct engagement with social theory, and their attempt to relocate human geography at the center of contemporary social theory, these essays, and indeed Post modern Geographies itself, were closely aligned to the work of Marxist human geographers like David Harvey, Richard Peet, Neil Smith, and Doreen Massey. But Soja’s aim was not simply to bring human geography to the center of the western Marxist tradition: it was to reshape critical social theory. Thus, besides drawing on Marxist geographers, Soja assembled a diverse collection of writers – some Marxist, some not – that ran from Henri Lefebvre, Ernst Mandel, Jean Paul Sartre, and Louis Althusser through to Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, John Berger, Marshall Berman, Fredric Jameson, and Martin Heidegger all of whom (he argued) had in some way sought to place spatiality at the center of their intellectual projects. Of these figures the most influential on Soja was Henri Lefebvre. A Marxist French philosopher, Lefebvre had since the 1960s been arguing that the production of spatiality rather than history had become the central armature of capitalist development and contradiction. Lefebvre’s thesis became the central logical armature to Postmodern Geographies; as it is to Soja’s whole postmodern project. Following on from Lefebvre, Soja argues that both the theoretical project of postmodernism and the concept of postmodernity understood as a distinct historical epoch are defined by the centrality that space and spatiality play within them. The spatially oriented definition of the postmodern and postmodernism set out by Soja in Post modern Geographies was a distinctive, if not to say, highly idiosyncratic reading of the postmodern. Indeed, while most postmodern theory was defined by what the

philosopher Jean François Lyotard famously termed an ‘incredulity towards meta narratives’ – in particular, those of Marxism and historical materialism – Soja tied his postmodernism tightly to both of these traditions. For him, his postmodern geographies were truly postmodern be cause they recognized the salience of Lefebvre’s claim that it is ‘space more than time that hides things from us’. If the modern era and modernism are defined by their fixation with time and the temporal, postmodernity and post modernism are defined by the importance of space and the spatial. Hence, Soja’s account retained at its center a no tion of a coherent, structured, historical progression. Thus, following the Belgian Marxist economic historian Mandel, Soja suggested that the current postmodern epoch should be read as but the latest – if highly distinctive – mani festation of a series of long waves of capitalist develop ment. Simultaneously, the aim of a postmodern critical social theory is to make sense of the emergence of the distinctive capitalist restructurings that have brought this postmodern epoch into being. In short, Soja provided a ‘very’ modern version of postmodernism. Postmodern Geographies was a hugely influential book. It presented one of the first and most compelling responses by a human geographer to the challenge of postmodern ism. It made an impressive case for the need to put space at the center of critical social theory. But if the breadth of Soja’s scholarship was widely admired within human geography and, significantly, the broader social science community, the vision of a postmodern geography set out in Postmodern Geographies also met with widespread and frequently vociferous criticism within the discipline. Some critics argued that the basic premise of Postmodern Geog raphies was wrong. The world might be changing in rapid and unexpected ways but this, they argued, was no reason to ditch established modes of analysis in favor of some kind of unproven postmodernism. Others, more sympa thetic to postmodernism, wondered about Soja’s style of postmodernism. A key attraction of postmodernism was its democratic, eclectic, and inclusive ethos. The best post modern writing sought to break down established barriers between popular and high culture, open up spaces within which previously marginalized groups might be heard, and possessed a healthy irreverence toward established schools of knowledge. The postmodernism of Postmodern Geog raphies appeared to be strangely suspicious of this plural istic spirit. Still other critics wondered about the way Postmodern Geographies, despite its claims to be profoundly concerned with everyday spatialities, constantly reduced the everyday to little more than an epiphenomenon of underlying economic processes. This is most obvious in the final two chapters in Postmodern Geographies that focused primarily on Los Angeles. As Derek Gregory complained in an in depth review of Postmodern Geographies, while stating his intention to show how the experience of space and time in the metropolis is being transformed, Soja

Soja, E.

actually offered the reader an account of the city ‘rarely disturbed by human forms’. That said, related accusations were made of David Harvey’s Condition of Postmodernity: together, both served as key reference points in debates surrounding geography’s future trajectories as the discip line approached the millennium. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places (1996) and Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (2000), the two books that Soja authored after the publication of Postmodern Geographies, offer both a response to these critiques and at the same time further elaborate Soja’s vision of a radically spatialized, post modern analysis. In both books, Soja introduced a number of new concepts meant to help clarify and crystallize the key coordinates of his project. For example, the ‘socio spatial dialectic’ first introduced in an Annals of the Asso ciation of American Geographers paper in 1980, and developed in Chapter 3 of Postmodern Geographies, was refined into the notion of a ‘trialectics of being’ – the insight that the ontology of being can only be interpreted through the interlocked terms ‘spatiality, historicality, and sociality’. In a similar way, he used the term ‘thirdspace’ to refer to a style of analysis that placed a spatialized trialectics at its center as well as a particular texture of everyday lived space that exceeds the compartmentalized knowledges of the conventional social sciences. Furthermore, Soja was keen to demonstrate the openness of his postmodern/ thirdspace project. So while in both Thirdspace and Post metropolis Lefebvre retained his privileged position, a new range of postcolonial and feminist writers like bell hooks, Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Gloria Anzalduá, and Gillian Rose were added to – and were absorbed into – Soja’s intellectual project. Yet, for all the opening of Soja’s theoretical horizons to postcolonial and feminist writers, huge swathes of the social sciences were simply dismissed for their narrow focus on what are dubbed firstspace (‘the ‘real’ material world’) or secondspace (‘imagined’) representations of spatiality perspectives. For Soja, thirdspace is the privil eged space of analysis, despite the fact for all the hun dreds of pages of Thirdspace and Postmetropolis, it remains a uniquely slippery and flexible term. In Soja’s own words: Everything comes together in thirdspace: subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unimaginable, the re petitive and the differential, structure and agency, mind and body, consciousness and unconsciousness, the dis ciplined and the transdisciplinary, everyday life and unending history (original emphasis). (Soja, 1996: 56 7)

Thirdspace is accordingly claimed to encompass everything there is to say about anything. Hence, in his attempt to continue fashioning a radically new style of

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thinking, and his keenness to stress just how new his ‘radical postmodernism’ was, Soja often de anchored himself from any established intellectual tradition. This compelled him to work at a level of abstraction that, in some eyes, undermined the most productive and inter esting elements of his argument. Indeed, while much of the critical reception of both Thirdspace and Postmetropolis focussed on Soja’s theoretical arguments, the most compelling sections of both books are where Soja turns to describing the contemporary metropolitan condition. In these sections, the majority of which focus on Los Angeles, Soja presents a series of routes through what he calls the contemporary postmetropolis: the new spaces of industrialization and economic ex ploitation (‘the postfordist industrial metropolis’); the city turned inside out (‘the exopolis’); the city reshaped by globalization (‘the cosmopolis’); the city of multiple and divided sociality (‘the fractal city’); the privatized and sanitized city (‘the carceral archipelago’); and spaces of urban simulation (‘simcities’). Taken together, and com bined with Soja’s attempt in the opening chapters of Postmetropolis to outline a geohistorical account of the importance of urban agglomeration (what he calls ‘synekism’) to all social development, these accounts offer some of the most comprehensive and daring at tempts to summarize and interpret what is happening to the western cityscape over the past two decades. See also: Gregory, D.; Harvey, D.; HistoricalGeographical Materialism; Lusophone Geography; Marxism/Marxist Geography I; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Massey, D.; Postmodernism/Postmodern Geography; Scott, A.

Further Reading Scott, A. and Soja, E. (eds.) (1996). The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California. Soja, E. W. (1980). The socio spatial dialectic. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70, 207 225. Soja, E. W. (1985). The spatiality of social life: Towards a transformative retheorization. In Gregory, D. & Urry, J. (eds.) Social Relations and Spatial Structures, pp 90 127. London: Macmillan. Soja, E. W. (1986). Taking Los Angeles apart: Some fragments of a critical human geography. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 4, 255 272. Soja, E. W. (1987). The postmodernization of human geography: A review essay. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77, 289 296. Soja, E. W. (1989). Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real and Imagined Places. Oxford: Blackwell. Soja, E. W. (2000). Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Oxford: Blackwell. Soja, E. W (2003). Writing the city spatially. City 7(3), 269 280.

Sound and Music M. Duffy, University of Melbourne, Carlton, VIC, Australia & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Embodiment This refers to the bodily aspects of human subjectivity and is the central theme of European phenomenology. Recent cultural geographic research has drawn on developments in social theory, in particular that of psychoanalysis and the work of Henri Lefebvre and Michel Foucault. Music Although the definition of music has been challenged and expanded by composers, generally it is defined as an art form constructed from certain patterns of sounds and silences, and associated elements such as melody, rhythm, dynamics, articulation, and texture. Noise Any undesirable or unwanted sound is defined as noise. How sound is experienced as noise physiologically is dependent both on the intensity and the frequency of the tones. However, defining what is undesirable or unwanted also arises out of particular cultural contexts and power relations. Moreover, contemporary composers and sound artists have used ideas of noise to rethink ideas about the definition of what constitutes music. Rhythm At a very simple level this means regular repetition. It can mean regularity, lawfulness, and measure, but it is also an expressive or compelling motion, gesture, or shape. Rhythm is an important means of shaping the processes of communication. The interaction we have with each other is rhythmic and interpreted as expressive and meaningful because it occurs within a background pulse as well as recognized cultural codes. Sound It is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave. It is further characterized by the generic properties of waves, that is, frequency, wavelength, period, amplitude, speed, and direction. Sound is perceived through hearing as well as through vibrations felt by the body.

The Difficult Nature of Sound (and Music) Although physical properties of sound, such as pitch, rhythm, timbre, and tempo, can be measured in precise ways, such measurements tell us little about the ways in which sound is embedded within and articulates ideas cir culating through society. Sound and music are not simply physiological outcomes of hearing sonic qualities arising within the environment. As John Cage’s composition, 4 0 3300 ,

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demonstrates, what often goes undetected in everyday life are the ways in which certain acoustic properties are ac corded particular and ideologically loaded meanings. For example, sound becomes music when placed within an appropriate context, be that the physical space of a concert hall or the marking out of a temporal frame as performance. Further, as Jacques Attali argues in his seminal text, Noise: The Political Economy of Music of 1992, the ways in which sound is defined as music or noise is an expression of power, one where the appropriation and control of sound reflects and affirms the sociopolitical structures of a community. The effects and impact of sound can be difficult to capture. Music in particular is generally described – or represented – as something that has happened in the past, although there are exceptions to this in research under taken outside of geography, such as in the work of soci ologist Tia De Nora and ethnographer Stacy Holman Jones. Sound and music unfold in time and place, and methods need to take into account this immediacy as well as sound’s fleeting nature. Nor do the ears alone hear sound; our bodies are in fact sounding boards that pick up the vibrations so that we are enveloped by sound. This immersion has important implications in geographical study. While sight distances us from the world, sound makes us aware of our connectivity. These qualities mean that sound, and music in particular, appears to speak directly, to communicate ideas that nonetheless remain ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations. Geographers need, then, to consider methods appro priate to sound’s multisensory qualities, the numerous processes in which sound constitutes and is constituted by the everyday (and the extraordinary), as well as strategies for (re)presenting such research in meaningful ways. Further to this focus on the acoustic and sonic qual ities of place, sound and music can be very useful methods in themselves in thinking about research frameworks, as well as in the teaching and learning of geographical concepts and practices. This is exemplified in recent work in human geography which has deployed the notions of ‘rhythm’ and ‘scale’ as a means to develop conceptual frameworks that contextualize various social interactions operating at spatial and scalar relationships. Sound Methods The majority of geography’s earliest studies of sound and music draw on the discipline’s more traditional methods of fieldwork analysis. In particular, music is conceptual ized as an object – a score, a performance, and a sonic

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environment – and hence a text that can then be read and deciphered. Although less engaged with the specific qualities and unique aspects of the sonic in the world, this methodology does uncover significant detail about geo graphic and social relations.

are combined in ‘becoming’ and bring into being that space as it unfolds.

Cartographies: Diffusion

Many researchers have noted the centrality of geography in determining the relationship between sound and place. This cartographic emphasis is particularly strong in studies of popular music, where music styles are de scribed in ways that intimately link musical activities to specific local and regional places, as well as in the con struction of local musical scenes. Studies of late 1990s youth cultures in the UK, such as the relationship be tween Manchester and rave culture, or Blackburn’s warehouse parties, examine the ways in which naming of specific places such as buildings and streets creates these imagined geographies of music culture. As such work demonstrates, the material elements associated with these activities are significant to creating localized feelings and experiences, further reinforcing the connections between music scene and local place. Strategies of economic and social regeneration also draw on the distinctiveness of place as created through particular forms of music and music practices. For ex ample, Chris Gibson and John Connell in their recent publication, Music and Tourism, point out that the rise of niche tourism within the broader tourism industry has led to the development of markets with a specific music orientation. Music festivals and other music related events are used to promote designated places with the aim of increasing social and economic benefits. Methods investigating sound and music in this context require an unpacking of the complex processes involved – issues of culture, such as notions of authenticity, heritage and es sentialism; economic considerations of investment, em ployment, and the stimulus of local, regional, and even international economies; as well as the significance of recreation, enjoyment, and nostalgia to individual and community well being.

Music is linked to place in very specific ways. Music can be characterized as a discrete object, with definable fea tures that mark it as representative of a clearly demar cated and spatialized community or group. These features then are used as representative of complex entities such as nation, or as groups defined by ethnicity, or cultural and subcultural practices, gender, and sexuality. The mapping of sound and musical styles or genres can therefore be used to demonstrate the migration of groups across space, or the movement of cultural practices and knowledge through a mapping of the music itself, dis seminated via technology or performance tours. These mapping methods also uncover the ways in which sound and music are contained and controlled. This is important as these mappings of boundaries – how sound is defined and located, who defines sound as ‘noise’, ‘music’, or ‘si lence’ – are politically motivated expressions of power. Much early research, particularly that of George O. Carney in North America since the 1970s, has focused on the diffusion of certain musical forms across geographical locations. This work itself drew on early studies in an thropology and ethnomusicology, and was based on some what essentialist assumptions of identity. In this approach, certain sound characteristics are defined as representative of specific group identities. For example, musical styles or genres such as folk music, gospel, and blues are associated with particular racial, national, or class groups. These early geographic studies, typified by Alan Lomax’s cantiometrics project of 1976, mapped the movement of music genres and styles as they traveled out from a designated origin. Such a methodological framework and analysis produces detailed local studies with an emphasis on place bound theories around identity and culture. However, this fixing of identity through certain essentialized characteristics is problematic, as it dis regards the fluid and hybrid natures of the concepts of identity, place, and the cultural product of music itself. A further important critique of this focus is that it fails to recognize the social and cultural contexts in which music is produced and consumed. Even within a defined group, there will be different expressions of culture and identity, and such differences will be subject to hegemonic pro cesses of control. Finally, this framework constructs space and place as simply sites in which sound/music occurs or through which it diffuses. Sound is an active agent in the formation and creation of place such that space and time

Cartographies: Cultural ‘Distinctiveness’ and Place

Imagery: Lyrics, Narratives, and Language The consumption of music, that is, how listeners imagine place, has been particularly important in popular music research, and the methodologies of linguistics, semiotics, and musicology have influenced and shaped similar re search in geographic inquiry. This type of study primarily examines how listeners imagine place, and such an ap proach generates very detailed and rich material on the evocation of place through text. In this way, it is an obvious means of expressing localized, geographic connections. However, song lyrics are not isolated from social practices, but embedded within a sound structure with its own set of semiotic codings. A closer reading of song is

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demonstrated in the work of Lily Kong, and her study of popular music in Singapore. Rather than simply search ing song lyrics for geographical references, she demon strates how the place of Singapore is conveyed also through the use of the rhythms and instrumentation of the various different ethnic and cultural groups resident in Singapore, as well as through the juxtaposition of their languages (Malay, English, and Chinese) and the distinct form of English used in Singapore, ‘Singlish’. These aural sounds of place accompany a lyric content that tells of a distinctly Singaporean society, such as the city’s cuisine and its multiracial character. Kong’s studies demonstrate that it is equally important to examine extramusical elements, those activities and processes in which the music and the music scene are embedded. Visual culture, for example, album covers and promotional material, is important in helping mark out the spaces of these scenes. The materiality of the places in which these scenes occur locate and anchor the scene to specific locations. In this way, performance venues are an integral part of the music scene’s geographic imaginary, while the existence of local record labels, independent record stores, an active local press, and local radio promote and reinscribe the connections between the music scene and place. Development of technology, particularly the increase in internet use and the employment of web based sources such as YouTube, has significant implications for the geographic study of sound. The music–place rela tionship is not simply one of text and context. As research into song shows, sound’s intertextuality is an important means for understanding its significance to place making. This has important implications for understanding the political power of sound/music.

Cartographies: Dissemination Much of the entanglement between the sounds of music scenes and their material constitution can be approached using existing ethnographic methods (see also below). However, the meanings assigned to music scenes and their components are significantly part of larger networks – of youth cultures, of the music industry. Local and regional sounds therefore may be captured, marketed, and dis seminated well beyond that of the originating geographic location, but in ways that retain, and even emphasize, the scene’s geographic origins. This, in turn, may impact on other parts of the network, with new cultural alliances forming, but which themselves are embedded within lo calized forms of cultural production. For example, studies of rap, a style originating in the Bronx and Los Angeles, have demonstrated the importance of this music as a means for repressed groups to challenge dominant ideologies of contemporary society. Strongly associated with its origins in inner city ‘ghettoes’ and black struggles

for recognition of equality, rap and hip hop have become important forms with which to express resistance to marginalization in many Western societies. Yet each geo graphic location gives rise to variations that make this genre ‘local’, so that we can now discern French rap, say, from New Zealand or Italian hip hop. Recent research has drawn on cartographic methods, such as geographic information system (GIS), as a means to capture the nodes and networks of cultural processes, such as the production, reception, and consumption of music cultures. This approach is now used in studies of the creative industries as a means to map out the con nections between people, place, industry, and leisure so as to understand and better guide urban development. Ethnographies Ethnographic studies are an important means of teasing out the ways in which sound and music are embedded within a wide ranging set of relations – social, sensual, symbolic, and economic. This methodology draws on anthropological methods of observation and participant observation in order to examine how sounds, images, events, and artifacts circulate within communities and are given meaning within and through social practice. In this framework, sound and particularly music are con ceptualized as active ingredients in social formation and therefore play a significant role in establishing, main taining, and transforming social relations. Social relationships arising within sound/music practices enable (or prevent) interactions between peo ple. For example, relations of kinship, friendship, and fandom can bind people to place physically, conceptually, and emotionally, through their collective involvement in communication, exchange, reciprocity, and investment in activities and associated places of music making. These various interactions themselves operate within a range of spatial relations: local power inequalities, local and re gional relations, as well as those interactions at local, national, and international levels. The detailed material generated out of ethnographic methods (anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s ‘thick de scription’) demonstrates that there is no simple cor respondence between sound/music, place, and identity, although, as anthropologist Sara Cohen points out, dif ferent places do make different noises. Rather, these studies reveal the contested nature of place making. Sound and music are cultural materials that can be used to create or reinforce place specificity. Music notably has the ability to affect and articulate mood, atmosphere, and emotion, and to trigger the imagination. Sound, music, and music making not only reflect but also produce notions of place, hence influencing people’s experience of place. The music–place relationship is therefore a powerful source of belonging or alienation.

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Ethnographic methods can, however, be somewhat lim iting. They usually involve small scale research populations and face to face interaction, so generating very detailed and profuse amounts of material that then requires appropriate management. The size of the research population raises issues around representative sampling techniques – can the analysis derived from this group be applied to others? Pre sentation of this very descriptive data also presents its own challenges. The detailed material collected needs to be in corporated in ways that enrich the study and avoids banality. Too much concern with local details can also be detrimental, as we may ignore the ways in which this particular sense of the local is part of wider networks, activities, and places. Interviews and Surveys In many ways the interview process is not separate from ethnographic methodology. However, interviews are an important means of accessing more in depth material; in particular they may provide different perspectives on sound in its social context. The type of interview con ducted – in depth, semistructured, and formal, or informal – is also an important consideration, as is the choice of participants targeted and the number of interviews undertaken. For example, do you want more qualitative or quantitative data? Is the project examining audience re sponses to music performance, or is the focus on the ways in which a music scene is shaped by local council bylaws? The timing of interviews may also be crucial. More generally, when conducting research into music related activities, interviews with concert organizers, promoters, and audience members, carried out at the performance space before, during, and after musical events, can provide information on not just about how performances are set up and/or staged in particular ways to appeal to certain audiences, but they can also tell us something about the manipulation, mutation, and management of material space within a musical event. For some projects, it is important to collect a more raw response, for example, by carrying out short, ‘on the spot’ interviews conducted during or imme diately after the performance. While perhaps less articulate, using this method may give the researcher access to the affective responses of those interviewed, in comparison to the more considered responses of formal interviews. Quite different data are generated through survey methods, which nonetheless yield very detailed infor mation for a range of parameters, but this does require a significant size of population for meaningful analysis.

Economies of Sound Although sound and music can be framed as having very specific geographical links, analysis of the ways sound is produced and consumed raises different and often much

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more complex sets of spatial relations. Moreover, in pro jects involved in the study of the music industry, re searchers need to keep in mind the tension between music conceptualized as an ephemeral even nomadic activity, with industry’s attempts to construct a product, something that is static, fixed, immobile, and available for purchase. A focus on music as part of the cultural economy explores the ways music is not only bound up in industrial and commercial enterprises and shifting of capital, but can also help us better understand the networks and connections between the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’. The marketing of place through sound has become an important strategy for economic regeneration. Many pla ces have used the music festival structure as a means to brand a local community in the hopes of generating in come through ticket sales and associated activities. The recent focus on the creative classes generated by Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Classes in 2002 has also demonstrated the significance of music in creating and developing social capital within specific spatialized ways that then provide economic benefits for local communities. Understanding the importance of how certain spatial re lations operate in these contexts requires examining such things as the pattern of employment in the music industry, as well as the regulatory and institutional settings within which music is created, developed, and promoted. Further to this, one needs to be mindful of the socially constructed linkages between people and industries. These networks of trade are also networks of influence and knowledge transfer, which are not themselves static but negotiated, renewed, severed, or generated in new ways. Sound, and particularly music, is significant in these economic/social networks; its ability to rapidly transform place is because of its spatial mobility. There fore, these networks are open to negative influences such as exploitation, the erosion of local differences as a result of globalization, cultural imperialism, and the loss of intellectual property. On the other hand, examination of the economies of sound can also demonstrate the ways in which trade practices are opened up, or how interaction between culturally and spatially diverse groups may give rise to new, hybridized form of cultural practice.

Experiencing Sound A considerable amount of cultural geographic focus on sound has been on music and its significance to con structions of place and the associated concepts of identity and belonging. However, sound is also understood as an important signifier of nature and particular types of en vironment, such as that of the urban or rural. Soundscape studies are then, too, an examination of power relations, as certain sounds are defined in terms of nature, the unnatural, the built environment, and well being.

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One aspect of this type of research is the analysis of the environment for ‘appropriate’ sounds, and their regulation and control. The measurement of sound levels is the chief methodology used here. Sound levels are measured in units of decibels (dB), with normal conversation measured at around 65 dB, while at 125 dB humans feel pain. Al though not necessarily related to such measurements, noise is defined as any undesirable sound. However, the disturbing effects of noise do depend on both the intensity and the frequency of its sound. Definitions of sound as ‘noise’ or ‘music’, and associated ideas of such sound as ‘unhealthy’ or ‘beneficial’, have important implications in the construction and development of place through zoning laws and public health acts, as well as building design. Analyses of the debates that define sounds as acceptable or not – which sounds can or should be present in the public realm? Is nature quiet? What sounds are of benefit to community well being? – point to contested values within the community. As David Matless suggests, these evalu ations are exercises in mapping a moral geography. While the use of sound and music to construct identity is a common strategy for community represen tation, this obscures the ways in which music shapes and influences our actions in, and experiences of, place. Identities are not simply constructed through musical forms, rather subjectivities arise and are constituted within the time–space of the event. The study of sound and music in geographic inquiry, therefore, is a significant factor in understanding spatial relations that arise out of sensual, affective, and embodied modes of being. The methodologies used for this type of research draw our attention to the acts of sound making, and the ways in which spaces and people are brought into being through engagement with sound. Susan J. Smith has done significant work in this area. This approach emphasizes immediacy and presence in the relationship of music, place, and sociality. Place and social relations are con stituted through sound in the very acts of people en gaging with the event of the sound’s performance. This framework moves away from assumptions about musical communication as unidirectional and unmediated, and conceptualizes music as a dialogic process in which various subject positions arise within the sound space. Recent, exciting work in cultural geography has ex perimented with a range of techniques that draws on nonrepresentational practices of place making, such as performance as method. This concern with the ex periential can uncover unexpected and hidden, but nonetheless important, processes at work in the everyday. The Body and Space An experiential approach asks us to think less about the body’s cultural meaning and to focus more on its physiological responses in place. In this context, the

body’s materiality – its movements in space, its relation to other bodies and objects, and its soundings – is about the becoming of spaces of musical possibility, what Nigel Thrift has called ‘as if ’ spaces. The body’s response to music in the form of dance has provided a creative means to consider embodiment and affect. Dance, as Thrift argues, is an example of the ex pressive and playful elements of embodiment, yet these very characteristics have made it a difficult form to address in the social sciences. The dancing body can be con ceptualized as an important strategy of eluding power, and demonstrates different experiential frameworks that are beyond that of the spoken or written word. Through studying the corporeality of the experience of sound – the impact of rhythm, timbre, and melody on the body – we can examine how the physical practice of making sound shapes esthetic forms and their social spaces. Capturing and reflecting on these processes have, in turn, led to in ventive analysis practices, such as McCormack’s depiction of the body’s responses and actions in (sonic) space through nonrepresentational diagrammatic practices. Listening A further important strategy is the practice of listening, which highlights our involvement with sound as a par ticipatory activity. Listening invites response and the possibility of dialog. This focus can reveal how emotional engagement with sound constitutes spaces of sociality, how the individual connects to the broader community, as well as the potential this has to giving rise to an in tensification of relations in place. Therefore, listening, as opposed to seeing, focuses on the ways we are connected rather than how we differ.

Future Directions in Research Very creative methodological approaches in cultural geography have come out of art practices, particularly the work of sound artists, along with increased availability of recording technology to a mass market. Sound walks – in which participants move through particular spaces guided by portable soundtracks that tell of stories, memories, and other forms of narrative about that place – offer an ex periential mode of engaging with place, a means of placing the listener almost literally in someone else’s shoes. These methods also emphasize that we listen carefully to place. As Michael Bull and Toby Butler demonstrate in their explorations of urban spaces through such portable sound technology, this refocusing of attention enables an embodied, sensory, and more dynamic ex perience of place, and offers an important means of ac cessing someone else’s relationship to place. Methodologies such as these open up discussion on a range of issues germane to the heart of geographic

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research – our relationship to place – and the complex manifestations of this through concepts of physical movement, subjectivity, representation, experience, mem ory, performativity, intercultural relations, and spatial unconsciousness. See also: Affect; Anthropology and Human Geography; Belonging; Creativity; Cross-Cultural Research; Cultural Economy; Cultural Geography; Cultural Studies and Human Geography; Diaries (Video, Audio or Written); Embodied Knowing; Emotional Geographies; Ethnography; Festival and Spectacle; Fieldwork; Heritage and Culture; Identity Politics; Interviews: In-Depth, SemiStructured; Non-Representational Theory/NonRepresentational Geographies; Participant Observation; Performance, Research as; Performative and Embodied Mapping; Performativity; Popular Culture; PostPhenomenology/Post-Phenomenological Geographies; Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies; Representation, Politics of; Sense of Place; Sensorium; Social Movements; Soundscapes; Subjectivity; Time Geography; Tourism; Tourism, Urban; Urban Design; Wellbeing; Youth/Youth Cultures.

Further Reading Bull, M. (2000). Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Berg: Oxford. Carney, G. (1997). The Sounds of People and Places: Readings in Geography of American Folk and Popular Music. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Connell, J. and Gibson, C. (2003). Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place. London: Routledge. DeNora, T. (2000). Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Duffy, M., Waitt., G. and Gibson, C. (2007) Get into the groove: The role of sound in generating a sense of belonging at street parades. Altitude online at www.altitude21c.com (last accessed 15 May 2008). Gibson, C. and Connell, J. (2005). Music and Tourism: On the Road Again. Clevedon: Channel View Publications. Kong, L. (1996). Popular music in Singapore: Exploring local cultures, global resources and regional identities. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, 273 292. Leyshon, A., Matless, D. and Revill, G. (1998). The Place of Music. New York: The Guilford Press. Matless, D. (2005). Sonic geography in a nature region. Social and Cultural Geography 6(5), 745 766. McCormack, D. (2002). A paper with an interest in rhythm. Geoforum 33, 469 485. Revill, G. (2004). Authenticity and nonrepresentational theory cultural geographies in practice: Performing French folk music: Dance. Cultural Geographies 11, 199 209. Rodaway, P. (1994). Sensuous Geographies: Body, Sense and Place. London: Routledge. Smith, S. J. (2000). Performing the (sound) world. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18, 615 637. Smith, S. J. (1994). Soundscape. Area 26, 232 240. Wood, N., Duffy, M. and Smith, S. J. (2007). The art of doing (geographies of ) music. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25(5), 867 889.

Relevant Websites www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au Australian Sound Design Project. www.naisca.ca New Adventures in Sound Art Sound Travels. www.ascc.gov.au Noise control. www.reverberant.com Noise control. http://interact.uoregon.edu World Forum of Acoustic Ecology. www.sfu.ca World Soundscape Project.

Soundscapes A. Saldanha, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Crowd Concentration of bodies in space, especially in cities, and its affective impacts. Diffusion Transformation of cultural traits through their spreading in space. Embodiment The given that people maintain sensuous and particular relationships to their environment and each other through physiology and movements. Music Exceptionally and intentionally organized sounds with emotional significance for a particular group. Phenomenology Philosophical analysis of the meaning to a person of things, other people, time, and space. Representation Meanings arising through culturally regulated reference. Soundscape A space–time cohered by particular sounds; the representation of such a space.

‘Soundscape’ is a crucial term to conceive how sound gives meaning to spaces and places. By filling not only time but space, sounds such as music help orientate the lives of all humans, as much as sight does. However, to be sensed, sound has to be embodied. Because bodies differ and be cause bodies cohere in crowds, embodiment introduces social differences into soundscapes. Given geography’s emphasis on vision, the geographic study of local soundscapes is embyronic. Mostly, geographers have studied the representation and international diffusion of music. Nonetheless, the embodiment of soundscapes in vites fruitful exchange with cognate disciplines.

Sight, Sound, and Music The European tradition of geography has always placed central importance on the faculty of sight, which made the planet’s surface legible through navigation instruments, maps, satellite imaging, and remote sensing. Visual de pictions of exotic species and landscapes have also con tributed to geography’s quest to visualize the Earth, as have photography and cinema. Writing itself, whether adminis trative or literary, is mostly a visual medium. All these media interlock to form a global visibility that has been crucial not only for academics, but also for governments, artists, armies, planners, companies, consumers, and non governmental organizations (NGOs). It is impossible to

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deny, therefore, that Western culture’s emphasis on vision has been immensely productive and useful. The question is whether visual technologies do not actively block out the other kinds of information that surroundings contain. The marginal status of the geography of sound, smell, touch, and the other senses would strongly suggest so. Sound is an obviously spatial as well as temporal phenomenon. It necessarily occurs within a place, and gives meaning to that place according to the recognizable cultural associations it provokes. Almost all sounds in our lives are what in semiotics is called ‘indexical’: their meanings are quickly understood by most humans be cause they are largely given by their obvious physical origin. The bark or smell of a dog signifies ‘dog’, a deep rumble signifies ‘airplane’. However, some sounds are intentionally organized in extremely particular ways, such that their meaning becomes much more than in dexical and highly culturally specific. These sounds are called ‘music’. Musical sounds are per definition capable of producing feelings that are central to a sense of identity. Music has been studied by academics for a couple of centuries, of course, but almost exclusively as a temporal, formal, and disembodied process. Only since the mid 1990s have a handful of scholars started paying consistent attention to the spatial aspects of music and other sounds. Though the work remains scattered, an interdisciplinary framework for soundscape studies is emerging in which geography plays an integral role. There is a larger epistemological stake involved. Al though the production and circulation of knowledge are almost inconceivable without writing, images, and map ping, paying more geographic attention to nonvisual media and faculties enriches our understanding of what it means to be human and to interact with the environment. Still marginal to the discipline, the geography of sound and music can be expected to grow simply because its object is ubiquitous. As fleshy beings, and however able bodied, humans continually engage in a myriad of senses. More critically, the study of these other senses reveals which social groups might benefit from the conventional overemphasis on sight. Over the 1990s, cultural and feminist geographers have criticized the discipline’s dis proportionate dependence on vision. It would seem that some kind of emancipation of the senses of hearing, touch, smell, taste, balance, temperature, etc. was then inevitable. This has profound implications for the way the production of knowledge is understood. In geography and cognate disciplines, such as history, cultural studies, urban studies, and anthropology, roughly

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three relationships between space and sound have been researched. First, sound is heard (or listened to) and thus embodied within particular spaces or soundscapes. Sec ond, sounds and music spread over space, to particular cities or over particular channels. Third, musical sounds signify places to the people who know and enjoy these sounds. Research into these three geographical aspects of soundscapes requires methodological experimentation and a phenomenological sort of conception of everyday life.

The Embodiments of Sound Silence and the Body In the mid 1950s, the American composer John Cage pronounced that there is no such thing as silence. In a soundproof chamber or floating in outer space, there are still sounds that cannot be eliminated: the sounds of the body, like breathing, blood circulation, digestion, and even brain activity. As organisms living in air we cannot avoid inhabiting soundscapes. Sound is after all merely air molecules vibrating. A first set of questions in the study of soundscapes revolve around classifying en vironments in terms of how their sounds affect the body. A subset of questions ask where and why these sounds are called music, and by whom. As avant garde music since the 1950s has shown, the boundaries between silence, music, and noise are contentious. Some environments could be called ‘silent’ when there is a relative minimum of ambient sounds, with the definition of this minimum depending on the situation. Soundscapes such as a village dance, funeral, or sitar concert become ‘musical’ if they are designed to facilitate certain special feelings and social bonding. ‘Noise’ is unwanted sound, again depending almost entirely on how the situation is defined and by whom. What ‘ambient music’ attempts to do is erase the distinction between music and background noise. Silence, music, and noise are only comprehensible in relation to each other. There has been more work in esthetics, music therapy, and psychoacoustics addressing these questions, than in geography. Soundscapes With the conceptions of silence and sound challenged in their foundations, Cage’s influence on sound art and its academic study were decisive. Henceforth music was no longer something artificially isolated from its surround ings, but both performatively and conceptually situated within the ever changing sonic environments of concert halls, art galleries, and the city. The concept of soundscape was comprehensively developed by the Canadian com poser and pedagog R. Murray Schafer in the late 1960s. He demanded of musical composition not only a physico acoustic understanding of sound and the environment, but

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an esthetic appreciation of everyday sounds as music. The latter includes a historical and anthropological knowledge of the importance of sound to human culture. Music is only a very unusual, and therefore deeply meaningful, soundscape. Industrial modernity has greatly increased the amount of noise in our midst, for city dwellers threatening to obliterate the sounds of the nonhuman environment, such as birds, insects, frogs, rain, rustling leaves, and streams. A sound, if it is heard by a human, necessarily en velops his or her body. Ears cannot be shut, and their evolutionary function is precisely to be able to register information from places the eyes cannot see. As the deep bass in dance clubs testifies, airwaves of sufficient mag nitude are registered throughout the body. ‘Volume’ is not only a linear measure of amplitude, but also a three dimensional quality of sound. It is precisely the ‘scape’ of the soundscape. The ‘higher’ the volume, the greater its extension, the more impact it has on present bodies. The location of a body within the volume, say the distance from the speakers or the stage, affects the way that body inhabits the soundscape. Volumes above 140 dB can be painful; a body 5 m from a drill experiences about 100 dB. From teenage bedrooms to flight paths above residential zones, volume is a political problem worth investigating by human geographers. Sonic Sense of Place Human geography has since the 1970s been heavily in fluenced by phenomenological philosophy and became interested in studying the meanings places have for people within it. The sense of place of a location is the collection of experiences and associations the location provokes in its users. As phenomenology comprehends well, in order to experience a place fully, a range of bodily senses come into play, among them hearing. In fact, given their biological importance for orientation and balance, the ears might be as important to sense of place as the eyes are. The current question for human geog raphy is how rapidly changing soundscapes (e.g., as a result of cellular phones and the iPod) alter modern people’s senses of place. A sharp increase of research into sonic sense of place and auditory culture has occurred in art criticism and popular music studies, which experienced a turn toward space and the body over the 1990s. In ethnomusicology, there has longer been a trickle of studies of sound cul tures outside the West. Unfortunately, research on con temporary urban soundscapes tends to be concentrated in urban Europe and the United States. Judging from its long tradition of engaging with both phenomenology and cross cultural fieldwork, human geography seems bound to follow suit, and widen understandings of the diverse effects of sound on place and identity.

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Historical Soundscapes

Sound and Power

Cultural history, long interested in visual landscapes, has since the 1990s gathered evidence of what soundscapes in the past must have been like. Though most historical documents are visual, they nonetheless contain crucial clues as to what soundscapes were like in the past. In deed, soundscapes are seen, painted, and written down, as much as they are heard. Much of the pleasure of a concert, for example, derives from being able to observe musicians playing their instruments. Richard Leppert’s work has spurred scholarship exploring the reciprocal relationships between sight and hearing in history. Another flourishing line of investigation is the inter play of modernity and recording and transmission tech nologies. One historian examines the working together of electroacoustics, architecture, and the organization of social order in inter war New York. Another historian has inquired into what cohesive function church bells had for French villages. Bells did not only mark important times of the day and people’s lives (weddings, funerals, wars, etc.), but both civil and church authorities knew how to use them in order to structure social life on the coun tryside. One could think of the use of radio for totali tarian propaganda. In popular music studies and cultural geography, the unusual history of music of economist Jacques Attali has also been influential. Turning the Marxist base super structure metaphor on its head, he argues that music heralds socioeconomic change. If listened to carefully, soundscapes can be shown to point to certain deep ten dencies of the social formation they are part of. The philosophical implications of conceiving sound, music, and noise as more fundamental to an era than writing or science have yet to be drawn out.

An important qualification feminist geography adds to the phenomenological soundscape approach is the fact that different people have, or rather are, different bodies. If a soundscape is necessarily embodied, the question becomes what kind of bodies we are talking about, what they are allowed to do, and in which circumstances. Treating crowds as homogeneous might benefit counting or policing them, but is not helpful to understanding why they should dissipate or converge in the first place. A riot or carnival is evidently experienced differently by women and men, children and adults, immigrants and natives, and tourists and terrorists. Some bodies will shout more, while others will keep to themselves. Fragments of scholarship exist across the human sci ences that show how soundscapes are fully enmeshed in relations of power. If the turn toward the body in human geography leads to the study of soundscapes, it will have to be demonstrated that collective embodiment of sound and music can result in both identity (the coherence of bodies) and differentiation (the segregating of groups of bodies). Shouting political slogans coheres some bodies, but threatens others. The everyday example of the an noyances of cellular phone conversations on the bus attests that a soundscape can contain more than one meaning, as different bodies are involved in it. Differ ential embodiment brings the critical study of sounds capes immediately to considering the politics of place. The historical soundscape literature shows that some soundscapes are clearly manifestations of the spatial strategies of the nation state, urban planning, capitalism, and public order. Sound is controlled for a wide range of purposes; in fact, without the control of sound social life cannot run smoothly. The tranquility of places of wor ship, the strict patrolling of speech in hospitals and lib raries, the Muzak played in hotel lobbies or subway stations, and the Christmas carols in shopping malls demonstrate the almost unconscious infusion of politics in sonic space. The sounds of ‘nature’ or ‘yesteryear’ that technological change excludes (of the rooster, the blacksmith, or the steam engine) thereby attain nostalgic, potentially reactionary ideological meanings. On a var iety of scales, therefore, soundscapes matter deeply to political geography.

Crowds Anthropological and evolutionary evidence suggests that music is crucial for keeping human formations together. This is most clearly appreciated in village dances, armies, and sports games. In these soundscapes, many bodies move in unison to emotionally charged sounds, and thereby attain a strong sense of purpose and identity. In cities the world over, crowds of bodies cohere during fairs, festivals, parades, protests, and markets, not only through physical proximity, but through sharing sounds. Few authors have approached these collective events as soundscapes. A soundscape approach would emphasize the many bodies that are required to inhabit and produce the coherence of the soundscape. According to one ac complished historian, the bodily togetherness, the shared heat and pleasures, and the mimicked rhythmic move ments of such phenomena as dance and marching have accompanied much of world history.

The Diffusion of Soundscapes Music Geography A small subfield of American cultural geography, music geography has concerned itself mainly with the origins and spread over space of genres, musical instruments, and performance styles. Questions asked include where European folk dances survive, where blues was taken by African American migration, and why hip hop exhibits

Soundscapes

regional variations. This music geography shares with ethnomusicology and American studies an interest in explaining the existence of music through its function for local culture, but geographers, in addition, map musical similarities over multiple cities, regions, and countries. Economic geography meanwhile explains the com mercial and legal nature of music’s international distri butions. It can be inferred from the study of diffusion/ distribution that there are some similarities in the soundscapes within places where a given musical phe nomenon exists. The diffusion of electronic dance music, for example, largely coincides with the diffusion of clubbing culture. In the wake of British cultural studies over the 1980s and 1990s, a number of problems with both economic geography and American cultural geography were poin ted out. First, the supposed origin or hearth of a musical trait only leads to further questions about which routes went into constituting it. Second, diffusion is also trans formation, as is easily observed in musical styles and in struments. There cannot be certainty about the similarity of soundscapes from merely knowing a musical trait is present in a location. If diffusion attempts at main taining a pure version of cultural traits, as is the case with European classical music, critical music geography would ask what class, gender, and ethnic distinctions this underscores. Third, diffusion is always uneven, reflecting the unevenness in wealth, population density, access to media technologies, and cultural tastes in the world. While economic geography to some extent maps the conditions for the creation of markets for a certain genre, the concrete dynamics of bodies and sounds within the actual soundscapes have to be included to obtain a sense of the collective pleasures that that genre fulfills. A final, fourth way of problematizing the diffusion of music derives from the fact that the meanings and pleasures of musical soundscapes are not automatically apparent to everyone who hears it. Work in the sociology of music shows that the diffusion and enjoyment of music intersects with social relations of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Simply mapping the presence of jazz or reggae in certain places does not tell us which groups within those places attain a sense of identity through the music, and which groups resist being exposed to it. Thus, whe ther or not a city’s soundscape includes reggae depends on much more than reggae’s musical characteristics. A critical geography of the globalization of music would suggest that power relations in society and between so cieties greatly affect the spatial reach of a musical genre, dance step, or pop star. The Global Soundscape Except music, there has been close to no academic work on the diffusion of everyday soundscapes. With more

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humans living in cities than in the countryside, the planetary soundscape is transforming rapidly. Not only are there many documented cases of biotopes being disrupted by the onslaught of sonic modernity, but there are also a few examples of species adapting to modern noise (pigeons and squirrels). While the spread of cinema houses, televisions, cars, telephones, cassettes, jet fighters, computers, fridges, vacuum cleaners, and highways has been hotly debated from the 1970s onward, the same cannot be said for their accompanying sounds. Noise pollution has of course been an established social and legal concern since the nineteenth century, but system atic geographical scholarship is still wanting. Given the growing theoretical interest in sound and the ecological effects of changing soundscapes across the globe, how ever, it can be expected that it is a matter of time before geographers attend to the acoustics of industrial modernity. Sounds Representing Place The most indirect and enigmatic relationship between space and sound occurs when sounds make absent places psychologically present. Whereas embodiment and dif fusion deal with sounds inhabiting and thereby giving meaning to tangible places, in this third case, space is presented to minds in a virtual or imagined way. Such sonic representation can only take place if the listener is familiar with the ways that the sounds are supposed to mediate. For example, to someone unfamiliar with Chi nese opera, that singing will not evoke China. The lyrics of a Bollywood movie hit enable making imaginative connections to India easier for a migrant who knows Hindi. Soundscapes are therefore capable of becoming more than merely volume circumscribing a physical place, and more than a dot within a global distribution. Through the working of the imagination, soundscapes can also transport its participants to faraway locations and landscapes. This representational function of soundscapes is of course most appreciated in music. Though indexically music can be said to refer to the instrument and the player’s body, the musical represen tation of places can in nonindexical ways go much further in space. Representation is a notoriously elusive concept, per haps especially so when it pertains to music. It is gen erally used to conceive how language is related to the physical world of things and situations. For example, the word ‘cow’ represents the milk giving farm animal. However, there need to be rules learnt quite consciously to be able to understand that the three letters c o w are supposed to represent this animal. Without knowing the rules the letters mean nothing. This is why learning a new language takes a lot of time. Most scholars believe the meanings of music come about very differently than

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the meanings of words. This is because musical sounds vary so much and so subtly, and are embodied in such variable ways (mostly unconsciously) that they cannot be easily formalized into rules. By enveloping the body and never stopping, music seems to affect people in a more immediate and inevitable manner than words. Though scholars agree it is somehow meaningful, there is no agreement on whether music ‘represents’ anything at all. Still, insofar as there are meanings in music that need to be learned by its users, and insofar as music makes things present that can also be described in words, many would agree music is capable of representing places, persons, or concepts, even if it is often enjoyed without any identi fiable representation. Music geography and musicology have both elucidated this evocation of place in music, which can happen in one of three ways. First, there is a properly linguistic com ponent of song, namely, the lyrics. Songs are in a language identified with a particular region or country. They speak about circumstances, people, sentiments, mythologies, and landscapes relevant to people from a specific origin. Sec ond, the sounds of instruments from a particular place can invoke that place to those who know it, for example, the fiddle for Ireland or the didgeridoo for Australia. Melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and timbres can all represent cultures and regions. In much popular music this is used efficiently to add a hint of the exotic, as with the sitar and India. With sampling technology, the entire soundscapes of places are reproduced accurately, and thus we have albums with soundscapes of the rain forest or dolphin games. Third, within the soundscape, there might be media other than sound or lyrics that represent places. Photo graphs of Thailand might adorn a restaurant with Thai music in Vietnam. The embodied reception of music, es pecially in collective dance, can itself come to stand for a place or country, as when immigrants maintain a tradition of dancing on special occasions. Thus, in order to probe into a soundscape’s representational work, its entire space– time including tastes, smells, rituals, and architecture, not just its sound, has to be taken into account. This holistic and more ‘fleshy’ or ethnographic approach to represen tation is not yet an explicit research agenda item, but is found in some work, especially on migrant place making. It balances an overemphasis on lyrical content and formal musical analysis that much work on the imaginary geog raphies of music has tended to.

Future Directions Given geography’s long standing marriage to visual methods, the growth of soundscape studies within the discipline has been slow compared to art criticism and history. Yet, cognate disciplines continue learning much

from geography’s long standing theorizations of space, place, scale, unevenness, and flow, even if these were primarily studied through sight. As geographers became intensely interdisciplinary over the 1980s and 1990s, scattered exchanges on music and sound started occur ring. These are the conditions in which a geography of the embodied, diffuse, and representational nature of soundscapes can take hold and grow. See also: Affect; Body, The; Difference/Politics of Difference; Diffusion; Embodied Knowing; Media; Phenomenology/Phenomenological Geography; Place, Politics of; Sound and Music; Visuality.

Further Reading Attali, J. (1985). Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Bull, M. and Back, L. (eds.) (2004). The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. Cage, J. (1961). Silence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Carney, G. S. (ed.) (2003). The Sounds of People and Places: A Geography of American Music from Country to Classical and Blues to Bop (4th edn.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Connell, J. and Gibson, J. (2003). Sound Tracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place. London: Routledge. Corbin, A. (1998). Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth Century French Countryside. New York: Columbia University Press. Feld, S. (1990). Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression (2nd edn.). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Leppert, R. (1993). The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Leyshon, A., Matless, D. and Revill, G. (eds.) (1998). The Place of Music. New York: Guilford. Matless, D. (2005). Sonic geography in a nature region. Social and Cultural Geography 6(5), 745 766. McNeill, W. (1997). Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Saldanha, A. (2002). Music tourism and factions of bodies in Goa. Tourist Studies 2(1), 43 62. Schafer, R. M. (1994). The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny. Smith, S. J. (1997). Beyond geography’s visible worlds. Progress in Human Geography 21(4), 502 529. Thompson, E. (2000). The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900 1933. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.acousticecology.org Acoustic Ecology Institute. http://www.6villages.tpu.fi Acoustic Environments in Change Project. http://www.globalmusicproject.org Global Music Project. http://www.ubu.com UbuWeb, online avant garde sound poetry database. http://interact.uoregon.edu World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.

South Asia G. P. Chapman, Centre for Advanced Study, Oslo, Norway & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Caste A social group maintained by a restricted endogenous marriage group, whose status is ascribed and differentiated within a hierarchy of castes. Caste is word of Portuguese origin. In India the terms ‘varna’ (colour) and ‘jati’ (the marriage group) are more commonly used. Diaspora Emigrants who in their country of adoption nevertheless retain distinctive identitive links with their country of origin. Initially the term was mostly used to refer to the Jewish diaspora scattered from Palestine. Nowadays it is frequently used with reference to South Asians living outside South Asia. Westphalian Replacing the religious-imperial overlordship of the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire, the term refers to the system of independent sovereign nation states which was the outcome of the Treaty of Westphalia (1648).

Introduction Use the term ‘South Asia’ in any context, be it as the title of an academic course, as part of a newspaper headline, or as the setting for a nature film, and then ask the listener/ reader/viewer where the feature is set, and he/she will most often respond ‘Southeast Asia’. The term South Asia has not registered in the minds of the public of many beyond (and as we will see, to some extent, within) the region, whereas ‘Southeast Asia’ definitely has. It is not clear when either term was first used, but it is almost certain that they both date from during or soon after World War II and the start of the Cold War. The United States and the Western Allies contrived to contain the Soviet Union with a series of encircling alliances. In the west was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which included Turkey; further east came the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), which included Turkey, the then monarchies of Iraq and Iran, and the military regime in Pakistan, plus Western powers; and the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), which was intended as a bulwark against communism in Indochina and the Philippines. SEATO also partly overlapped with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a later economic (and geopolitically rooted) group growing in the same region. Both were in part the result of the Vietnam Wars, and perhaps they were responsible for raising the profile of Southeast Asia in Western minds.

There never was a SATO – much though the US would have liked to have had one – bringing independent India into the grand coalition of the mischievously named ‘Free World’. This was because what had once been known and seen as a single world region – India, or the Indian Empire (the ‘jewel within the crown’ of the British Empire) – had broken up at independence in 1947, into the larger part, the Republic of India, and the smaller part, Pakistan, which were almost immediately at war with each other over disputed territory and whose creation involved massive population transfers and vio lence that would change the social (‘communal’) geog raphy of the region. Ultimately both sides looked for allies, and as Pakistan aligned itself with the US (and later sought links with China), India sought aid and arms from the USSR. Hence the divisions of the Cold War became entrenched in South Asia, and the wholeness of the region was further riven. There are, however, regional destinies. The Cold War fracturing of Europe between the west and east has largely been mended. SATO may not exist, but the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC, founded in 1985) does, which to some extent has taken ASEAN as its model, and which reflects the realization of what an integrated South Asia could achieve. However, the regional destiny will not be completed until there are defense alliances (or at least a culture of security and cooperation) between the current great protagonists, when divisions within South Asia are mended and the states collectively face the outside world. It is almost inconceivable that the term ‘India’ will be used for this greater entity as once it was – but, not impossible.

The Distinctiveness of South Asia The wholeness of South Asia that suggests this regional destiny is not imaginary; it has framed much of the his tory just discussed. The wholeness starts with plate tec tonics and geological history, and the directly consequent geopolitical history. There is a Eurasian tectonic plate, spanning the Old World from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Indian plate is now attached to the south of the Eurasian plate, but that arrived from elsewhere. Until about 200 million years ago, what is now the Deccan Block was part of what geologists call Gondwana(land), the southern supercontinent that included Africa, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica. The name Gondwana comes from the Gond(i) tribes of the central Deccan, in whose lands the first recognition of the

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geological signature took place. The Indian plate broke off, became an island (like Madagascar or Australia), and drifted across the Indian Ocean, beginning its collision with Eurasia about 60 million years ago. It lifted the Tibet plateau, pushed up the Himalayas, the Hindu Kush, and the mountains on the Assam–Burma border. The collision is ongoing, and the mountains continue to be pushed up in what is one of the world’s most seis mically active zones. Looking at a physical map of the world, it is easy to see this huge dent which ‘India’ has made in Eurasia. The high mountains block the seasonal migration of the jet stream, and hence they impact on the onset of the monsoon; they are the source of three of the world’s greatest rivers – the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brah maputra; they are the source of the sediments which have built the world’s greatest riverine plains and the world’s greatest delta; and they block easy migration and invasion from all sides, of all forms of life, from flora and fauna to human beings. The South Asia thus framed has so many extremes – the highest mountains, the flattest plains, the wettest place on Earth (in Meghalaya), and one of the hottest and driest (the Thar Desert). But, despite this diversity, it always remains true that movement within South Asia is easier than movement by land into or out of South Asia. It is easy to see how this large region, attached to only just a part of Eurasia, has been labeled a subcontinent. Indeed, the idea that it is ‘the subcontinent’ lives on in that inheritance from the British Raj, cricket. West Indian and English cricket teams go on a tour of ‘the sub continent’, in the process usually playing matches against India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. In geo political designations too, the idea of a subcontinent has proven enduring. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder considered that the Columbian epoch of European expansion was over, and that the world now constituted a global system. (This was about globalization before the word was coined for the current phase of it.) In wondering how the physical structure of the land masses and oceans impacted on political history, he surmised that the world was com posed of two major parts – a heartland, or, the Eurasian land mass (which excludes maritime Europe), and the rest – the maritime dependent outer arc. His thinking was about the possibilities of movement. The heartland either has internal drainage or drains to the Arctic Ocean, and is therefore not open to the naval powers. It is an arena of land movement, in premodern times, by horse. At the time he wrote, long distance economic integration on land was possible for the first time because of the advent of the railways. The maritime arc constituted those territories amenable to integration by ships. To begin with, this lumping together may come as a surprise.

But when the distribution of population in this arc is considered, it becomes more persuasive. The populations of both North and South America are on the east and west coasts, not the interior. The populations of Africa are mostly by the coasts, and so are those of Australia; even most of China’s great cities (and today, its special economic zones) are on or near the coast. Mackinder’s visions influenced much world geo political thinking through both world wars, were signifi cant in the Cold War, and are arguably applicable (and much debated with respect to) to the new rise of Russia. One of the recent interpreters of his ideas, Saul B. Cohen, divides the world first into its two major geostrategic regions, and then subdivides those into geopolitical re gions, areas of similar culture and proximity and move ment, wherein integration is possible. So the Caribbean is a geopolitical region within the maritime world, and so is the Maghreb of Africa. In his scheme, the subcontinent is unique: it is the only geopolitical region which is independent of a geostrategic region. It has incubated independent land empires, but it is skirted by sea. It is attached to Asia, but protected from it. This independence and ambiguity sums up the subcontinent’s history.

The Cultural Origins Early human settlement was almost certainly a result of the migration of hunter gatherers by land. It seems likely that a significant group among these settlers were the forebears of the Dravidian people – a category whose meaning is disputed, but which refers today to the peo ples of South India who speak Dravidian languages (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, and others). By 2600 BC they had founded one of the world’s first great hydraulic civilizations, by the Indus in Sind, where the capital city of the Harappan civilization was Mohenjo Daro. Starting from about 2000 or 1500 BC, waves of Aryan invaders/settlers arrived, through the passes of the northwest frontier. These people were lighter skinned, and spoke a language (Sanskrit) which is an offshoot of the Indo European stem. It is disputed how much of Hinduism stems from the Aryans, from the Dravidians, or from an assimilation of both traditions, but there are some facts which cannot be disputed. The linguistic in vasion of India is incomplete: the northern languages from Baluchistan to Bengal, from Himachal Pradesh to Maharashtra and Orissa – thus spanning Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh – are descended from Sanskrit, in much the way the Romance languages in Europe are descended from Latin. But the southern states remain Dravidian speaking. A second fact is that there are complex ‘racial’ gradients in South Asia. In general (and to simplify) in any locality, the higher castes are lighter skinned, and

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there is a geographical gradient from the lighter north west to the darker south. While these discriminations were bolstered by the categorizations made under colo nial rule, they cannot be simply reduced to that, and have proven persistent. Hinduism is not a ‘revealed religion’ with an im mutable source of authority from a specific date – as Islam and Christianity have, for example. But it does have sacred texts, the Vedas, starting from oral traditions be fore 2000 BC. It is commonly said that it is not a religion at all (or must be understood on its own terms, not through comparison with Islam or Christianity), but a way of life, following rich, complex, and sometimes contradictory philosophies. Most people who would consider themselves Hindu have the following in com mon (though to varying degrees and few of these things are exclusive to Hinduism): a belief in reincarnation; veneration of cows, and an inclination to vegetarianism; divinity in all creation, including rivers and mountains and animals; and acceptance of arranged marriages within their jati (local caste formation). Many and com plex are the ways that castes are ranked in any locality, but most can be mapped approximately into Brahmin (priestly), Kshatriya (warrior and ruler), Vaisya (mer chants and trading), and Sudra (menials and laborers). Beneath them come the outcastes, the untouchables, whose tasks are the most polluting ones, of cleaning cesspits and cleaning carcasses. Gandhi made a point of staying with the poorest, and called the outcastes ‘Hari jans’ (the children of God). In modern India, the term Dalit is used. There have been swathes of legislation promoting positive discrimination in favor of poor and backward castes, but of course, enforcement means the recognition of caste and caste membership. In general, modern India may have provided better education and many new job opportunities, but this many millennia old social system is never far from the surface. Well before the rise of the West, the Ganges valley was, in comparative world terms, a densely settled agricultural area supporting a large population. Early Hindu empires were based around the modern day city of Patna in Bihar – ironically Bihar is now seen as the most ‘backward’, cor rupt, and violent state. It was also in Bihar that Gautama, a Kshatriya Hindu prince, found enlightenment and became the Buddha and for the next few centuries it seemed that Buddhism rather than Hinduism might become India’s dominant belief system. (The two share much, but Bud dhism rejects caste.) It was from this base that the first emperors such as Asoka extended their sway into the Deccan and as far as Afghanistan (where the great Bud dhas of Bamiyan stood until their ideologically motivated destruction by the Taliban in 2001). The pattern estab lishes some general truths about South Asia. Invasions normally occurred through the northwest frontier; power became based on the agricultural wealth

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of the Ganges valley; India provided sufficient resources and geographical range that empires became self suf ficient; and closed off the northwest frontier, they ex tended into the Deccan as a land based power, using large armies, building roads, and using elephants and pack animals. In the heart of the empire, movement on the Ganges and its tributaries was important to sustain the imperial centers. The scientific advances of early Indian empires were spectacular, in astronomy, in me tallurgy, in mathematics, in philosophy, and a lot else, and much of what Europe thought it obtained from the Arabs, including their decimal numerical system, actually has it origins in India. The cycle of the empire is a topic which exercises many a historian. Their rise and fall may be partly a result of internal dynamics. It is suggested that over generations, the ruling elite became progressively effete, and there was increasing and increasingly costly bur eaucracy. It is not proposed to get into these details here, but suffice it to say that successive empires in South Asia have declined, often accompanied by new invasions from the northwest, to be followed usually by a constellation of pettier kingdoms and chieftainships. But the cultural continuity has remained. This India, imperial or divided, was and is one of the world’s great cultural heartlands. After the death of the Prophet Mohammed, Islam was spread rapidly by Arab armies in Arabia and North Af rica. In India it was almost certainly spread into the Indus valley quite early by Sufis, who were of a missionary mystic nature. It was probably introduced by sea, to southern India and to Bengal. It made its first large scale impact by land with Afghan invasions from the northwest frontier, starting in the twelfth century. By the middle of the thirteenth century, the first of the Delhi Sultanates had been established, recognized by the Khalif of Bagh dad. This was an empire that geographically matched that of Asoka, more than a 1000 years earlier, except that the most significant cities, like Lahore and Delhi, were further west than Bihar. But in cultural terms it was new: the ruling elite shared a religion with a revealed source of truth, the Koran. Some conversion of the masses was attempted, but the cultural distinction between rulers and the ruled had its uses, bonding the former together. ‘The Sultanate’ was a period which embraced several dynasties, internal strife, and assault from without. It ended when a new Islamic force, that of the Mughals (so named because they originated from Mongolia), invaded in 1525, and defeated the army of Ibrahim Lodhi at Panipat, northwest of Delhi. This was the beginning of the Mughal Empire that became famed in Europe for its power and wealth: to this day, in England the term ‘mogul’ is used to indicate the tycoons who head the media empires or the oil industry. Ironically, the empire grew as Europeans were establishing themselves on the coast for the first time, starting with the Portuguese in

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Goa in 1510, followed by the Danes, the Dutch, the British, and the French. India (like China) was one of the world’s leading manufacturers. The Europeans wanted above all, not just cotton and silk cloth, but finished articles of clothing, in addition to spices, jewels, and saltpeter. Mostly what the Mughal Empire wanted from them was silver bullion, in which the rupee was denominated, which was unavailable in India. The British East India Company had in dependent centers on the west coast (Bombay, now Mumbai), the south (Madras, now Chennai), and Bengal (Calcutta, now Kolkata), often in close proximity to other European factories. After two centuries, the Mughal Empire went into decline at the center, and in 1739, Nadir Shah of Persia sacked Delhi, and withdrew with the Peacock Throne. A little later, the practically independent Nawab of Bengal tried to evict the British, but instead was himself over thrown and the Company took charge of Bengal. So for the first time, power had arrived in South Asia by sea, from the maritime arc. Drawn in by the instability and power vacuum following the decline of the Mughals, the British had dominion over almost the whole of India by the early nineteenth century. Since not much of it was of commercial interest to them, in many areas they ruled indirectly, by accepting the internal autonomy of princely states. Many of these were in the central and north western Deccan, some in the mountains, the largest of which was Kashmir. The nature of trade changed radic ally: the industrial revolution in Britain took off, raw materials like cotton were needed, supplanting handspun cotton and finished goods; and Britain used India as a market for its cutlery and milled cotton. Later, the rail ways entrenched the new coastal ports, and suddenly India’s geography had been turned inside out, and its economy de industrialized. The great land cities of La hore, Delhi, Agra, Hyderabad, and Mysore were eclipsed by Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. Ironically, in 1911 the maritime power proclaimed its inheritance by shifting its capital to the land base of Delhi.

nation to emerge as inheritor of the whole of the British Indian Empire?’’ The guiding force of the nationalists, Mahatma Gandhi fervently hoped that the answer would be yes. But even in the nineteenth century, enlightened and concerned British commentators such as John Bright MP thought that a more ‘European’ Westphalian out come was likely – with five or six large, successor states. The founders of the Muslim League that challenged Gandhi’s vision believed, to begin with, that there would be separate Muslim states in the Indus valley in the west, the central Deccan, and in Bengal, and that Rajasthan and Sikh Punjab should also be independent. The Muslim leadership feared Hindu overlordship, and did not be lieve that a secular India was either desirable or likely to last. The outcome of the struggle was a composite, with a very large India embracing its myriad languages and cultures, and a smaller Pakistan, in two halves. The human loss of life as this partition occurred was horrific – more than a million people died as Punjab and Bengal were split between the successor states, and more than 12 million people were (to use a phrase that has been ap plied to other such forced transfers) ‘ethnically cleansed’ (though in practices, ethnicity and religion did not co incide in any straightforward way). Then, 24 years later, another one million died as Bangladesh hived itself off from Pakistan. The partition has not achieved the separation of all Muslims and Hindus. India is the world’s second largest Muslim state, because 15% of 1.1 billion is a lot of people. This is problematic for the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, on which India has observer status. India has remained a democratic state with a secular constitution, but in recent decades Hindu nationalism has made major political advances, and some political leaders have either tolerated or instigated attacks on some Muslim communities in India. For all of this, and the continuing dispute over Kashmir, there is a linguistic and cultural continuity between Pakistani and Indian Punjab, and between Indian and Bangladeshi Bengal. Indeed, most Pakistani Punjabis might feel more affinity for their Indian kin than their Pathan compatriots in the northwest frontier.

The Imperial Intrusion of Modernity Britain also implanted in much of India (and what be came Pakistan and Bangladesh), begrudgingly and start ing from small steps at the lowest levels of municipal government, the seeds of democracy, new forms of state apparatus, and university education in English, a true lingua franca for the whole of India’s intelligentsia, for the first time. Within the British Empire there also circulated a Westphalian ‘national goal’ – as colonies became self governing states (achieving ‘home rule’). The question that was posed as the British Empire crumbled was therefore: ‘‘Is it possible for a democratic Westphalian

Westphalian South Asia After independence, India rejected the colonial economy of the maritime trading worlds, and sought relatively autarchic development with a major role for central planning and state industry. In the first four decades of independence, it grew slowly – the term ‘the Hindu rate of growth’ was coined as a rather derogatory epithet. But a measure of social justice was achieved, and the sense of nationhood built. This was the inheritor of the land empire model. In the modern world the trajectory failed,

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as technology is now traded internationally, and no state ‘does it all’ by itself. After a foreign exchange crisis, change was forced on India. Liberalization since the 1990s has brought pains to many, particularly poor farmers, but also a flood of inward investment, much of it from rich Indians in the diasporas in Europe and North America, and the economy is now growing at a speed not far short of China’s. Growth is regionally unequal. The lower Ganges areas of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal (and Bangladesh) contain the world’s greatest number of poor people – far more than in Africa. It is in the south, west, and northwest that the cities are fueling India’s economic spurt (notably Mumbai, Bangalore, and other centers that have become plugged into a new wave of globalized capitalism). There are tensions here that could threaten the union in the future. Pakistan has one of the world’s fastest growing populations, and has had a very poor record in education. Its public services have been stunted by defense ex penditure to balance the perceived threat, to its in dependence, by India. Whether or not the public support this has hardly been tested: the military are more often than not the government, setting their own budget, and when not formally the government, still tell it what to do. For many observers, three ‘A’s rule Pakistan: Allah, the Army, and America. For 24 years, it exploited East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and when it was forced out, that state was impoverished, described by a senior economist as ‘Malthusia’. It is still remarkably poor, but both Bangladesh and Pakistan have in recent years begun to grow fast economically, both of them in an era of greater economic liberalization. Bangladesh now exports finished garments, as it used to when the British first arrived. It is also exploiting its saline/brackish coastal areas from shrimp production. Cotton textiles are im portant for Pakistan too, which has bought up much of the machinery being decommissioned in Europe. In sum, in the new globalizing world, it seems that South Asia is becoming a more significant part of the maritime arc. Modern South Asia is probably best defined by the membership of SAARC. The seven founding countries were the Maldives, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. They have been joined since 2007 by Afghanistan, although whether this re inclusion of this ancient Indian realm will endure is yet to be seen. The United Nations includes Iran in its definition of South Asia, perhaps not only because of its location, but because Iranians speak Farsi, an Indo European language. Farsi (Persian) was the court language of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire and in their early period was used by the British administrators as well. Hindustani which has embraced Persian words and which is written in the Per sian/Arabic script is known as Urdu, and is the official language of Pakistan and one of the official languages of India. Hindustani which is written in Devanagari script

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and which uses a vocabulary more derived from Sanskrit is now known as Hindi, and is the most important language of South Asia. India, the regional hegemon, has fought several wars with Pakistan, in one of them acting as midwife to the birth of Bangladesh; reversed a coup in the Maldives; imposed a peace keeping force in the predominantly Tamil part of northern Sri Lanka; for a while blocked trade with Nepal; and formally dominates Bhutan’s for eign policy. A free and powerful SAARC would soon see the peripheral small nations forming alliances against Indian power. Because of this, India insists that SAARC discusses only general issues of interest to all, not bi lateral ones. So, for example, Bangladesh cannot raise specific cross border water issues with India inside SAARC. Because of this, and its very limited budget, SAARC is widely seen as toothless.

South Asia and the Diaspora In the fifteenth century, Europe knew of the fabled eastern lands of silk and spices, the Indies, but was blocked from direct overland trade by Arabic and Turkish Empires. The 400 year Columbian epoch began when Christopher Columbus set sail westward to reach the Indies from the other side. When he struck the New World he assumed at first that he had completed the circumnavigation and had reached the Indies. The word stuck; the inhabitants of the New World became known as Indians (only later to be distinguished as Red Indians), and the islands of the Caribbean became the West Indies. So, an early export of South Asia in the first phases of globalization was its own identity. After the establishment of European empires in Asia and Africa, and after the abolition of the slave trade, labor was still often in short supply in many of the colonies, but abundant in India. Thus one of the great migrations of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century was indentured labor from India to South Africa, East Africa, the Caribbean, Burma, and Malaya, and even the Pacific (Fiji). These migrations were often summed up as tro pical–tropical. After the end of World War II and the end of Empire, there have been several more waves of out migration, but of rather different types. From Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh the first migrants into the UK were mostly in relatively low skilled factory jobs. They were followed by entrepreneurs setting up small businesses – one sector being the ‘Indian’ restaurant. Since the ma jority of Indian restaurants in Britain were owned by Bangladeshis (from one district – Sylhet) the adjective Indian is inaccurate but ineradicable. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have a new currency in the UK which pro vokes debates about integration and assimilation, com munalism, and secularism. Educated professionals have

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made their mark in the health services and in banking and IT. Indian multinational companies are now pur chasing companies in Europe. The migration of educated scientists and engineers (particularly in IT) to the US and Canada has been pronounced – and has necessitated the introduction in America of the term Asian Indian (or sometimes East Indian), since in North America, the terms Asian and Indian have not usually been associated with folk of South Asian origins or heritage. From both the UK and North America, there is return migration and investment to South Asia. With these migration streams and the constant exchange of visits flow the cultural exchanges. From Britain to India, the export of chicken tikka masala curry (a dish forged by Bengalis to satisfy English tastes), and from India to Britain and the USA, the flamboyant movies and music of Bollywood which have in recent years become an influence on popular culture in the West, have provoked debate about hybrid cultural identities and their geographies.

A Common Future? Five times in history, most of South Asia has been in corporated into an imperial state. In between, it has been split into smaller kingdoms and tribal territories. In the last three empires (the Sultanate of Delhi, the Mughal, and the British) the ruling elite had a cultural back ground that distinguished them from the masses, and that distinction was part of what maintained the integration of the area. The peasantry remained impoverished, hardly served by communications, and served not at all by education. Has South Asia’s history been not just written by the elite, but also exclusively made by them? In recent decades, the authors behind a project known as Subaltern Studies have tried to write a new history of local em powerment and of resistance to the elite, which provides a new understanding of the true roots of ‘India’. Different events in history are reexamined and given a new in terpretation. A classic example is the term ‘First War of Independence’ used in India to describe what the British call the Indian Mutiny of 1857, when British forces very nearly lost control of India. The events of the mutiny were uncoordinated and spasmodic, more a kind of re action to and collective punishment of the British ‘in truders’ than an attempt to rescue a homeland. Delhi was recaptured with the help of Sikh and other forces who had no conception that they had something in common with Bengali sepoys. Whatever degree of agency was granted to the masses, they were not about to achieve independence of their own accord. How then, and by whom, was an independence movement led? The answer, by whom, can be given very easily: by the relatively very tiny, educated class of In dians that had emerged under British rule. But they were

small enough to be easily watched, and put in and out of prison as and when necessary. The how therefore re quired what in modern jargon would be called force multiplication – use the masses. It was part of Gandhi’s genius that he could and did connect with the masses. But the masses had little or no idea of an Indian identity – they were Muslim or Hindu Bengalis, Muslim or Hindu Gujaratis, Muslim, Hindu, or Sikh Punjabis. The leaders of the independence struggle may have been nationalist (and communalistic in some cases) but the masses were frequently communalistic. When they were roused, inter communal strife often rose. Nehru, leader of the All India National Congress, had imbibed from the West, the idea of a secular state: but other Congress leaders (particularly at provincial level) and the Muslim League had not. The failure of Congress to persuade Jinnah that Muslim interests would be protected in a future federal and secular state, was a major cause of the partition. This is why the struggle over Kashmir is so intense. It (the Indian part of Kashmir) is the only Muslim majority state in India, and ‘proof ’ that a separate homeland for the Muslims was not necessary. For the Pakistanis, the in surgency in Kashmir is proof that Muslims need a homeland of their own. A military or political victory in favor of either state would enable them to rewrite history. Although Nehru passionately believed in the identity of India, and had been persuaded by his own propaganda that perhaps the peasantry did too, he was well aware of the fragility of the new state. The autarchic development plans were part and parcel of the huge effort to persuade the people of the largest democratic state ever created, to retain their unity. The simultaneous adherence to dem ocracy and the achievement of national identity was one of the most stupendous political feats of the late twen tieth century. Westphalian India seems a huge success. These days, Indian newspaper editors talk of the ‘post national’ class of readers. These are not people who have gone beyond nationalism: indeed, they are fiercely na tionalistic. They are post nationalist because these are the business leaders and the elite in Chennai or Mumbai or Kolkata, who accept that India is now a reality, accept it as a working proposition, and who can look outward with confidence. But the common man’s identity is still mostly within the local community. Pakistan by contrast is only a state because its borders (most of them) are recognized and accepted by the international community. It failed to develop a national identity between its ori ginal constituent wings (West and East Pakistan), and is now failing to develop a common identity between Punjabi, Sindhi, Pathan, and Baluchi, let alone accom modate the fundamentalist and moderate wings of Islam. The word Hindu means the people who live by and beyond the Indus (known in Sanskrit as Sindhu). The Pakistanis and others frequently refer to India as Hin dustan – as the British used to recognize the north of

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India as Hindustan and its language as Hindustani. The word India has the same root, but is not used within vernacular languages in India – in which it is known as Bharat, a word meaning emperor and empire from the first Hindu empires. The expression of less secular Hindu India has been marked by the rise of the Bharatiya Janata (people’s) Party – the BJP – espousers of Hindutva. The divisions within South Asia are those of class and col lective identity – and these are often parochial in soci eties which are only half literate, where poverty is still extensive, and languages distinct. Gandhi thought of the two world wars as Europe’s civil wars. It has taken Europe those tragedies to get from there to its current state of mutual respect and acceptance, where what is common is valued, and what is different is largely restricted to economic, cultural, and sporting rivalry. Perhaps we can accept that South Asia will take its time too, to find its regional destiny, to realize that what unites is more significant than what divides. The biggest leap of all would be when the people of the Indus and the Ganges and the Deccan are happy again with that embracing and secular term, India. Then perhaps ‘South Asia’ will have been forgotten, before the term is lodged in the minds of the outside world.

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See also: Asia; Diaspora; Empire; Ethnicity; Imperialistic Geographies; Religion/Spirituality/Faith; South Asia.

Chapman, G. P. and Thompson, M. (eds.) (1996). Water and the Quest for Sustainable Development in the Ganges Valley. London: Mansell. Cohn, B. S. (1971). India: The Sociology of a Civilization. Princeton, NJ: Englewood Cliffs. Corbridge, S. and Harriss, J. (2000). Reinventing India: Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Coupland, R. (1943). Report on the Constitutional Problem in India, London, Pt I The Indian Problem 1833 1935, Pt II Indian Politics 1936 1942, Pt III The Future of India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dumont, L. (1970). Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, Translated from the French by Mark Sainsbury. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Khilnani, S. (1997). The Idea of India. New York: Farrar Straus, and Giroux. Kumar, D. and Desai, M. (eds.) (1983). The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 2, pp c1757 c1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Michel, A. A. (1967). The Indus Rivers: A Study in The Effects of Partition, 595p. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Nehru, J. (1961). The Discovery of India. New Delhi: Asia Publishing House. Philips, C. H. and Wainwright, M. D. (1970). The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 1935 1947. London: MacMillan. Rahula, W. (1967). What the Buddha Taught. London: Gordon Fraser. Raychaudhuri, T. and Habib, I. (eds.) (1982). The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. 1, pp c1200 c1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, F. (ed.) (1989). Cambridge Encyclopaedia of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schwartzberg, J. E. (1992). An Historical Atlas of South Asia. New York: Chicago University Press. Oxford University Press. Talbot, I. (1998). Pakistan: A Modern History. London: Hurst and Co. Wallace, P. (ed.) (1985). Region and Nation In India. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH.

Further Reading

Relevant Websites

Allchin, B. and Allchin, R. (1982). The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Basham, A. L. (1954). The Wonder That Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub continent before the Coming of the Muslims. London: Sidgwick Jackson. Chapman, G. P. (2000, 2003, 2008/9). The Geopolitics of South Asia: From Early Empires to the Nuclear Age. Ashgate: Aldershot.

http://www.londonsocialisthistorians.org London Socialist Historians Group. http://www.saarc sec.org South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. http://www.tufts.edu Tufts University whose links provide a very useful summary and lots of useful references.

Southeast Asia Eric C. Thompson, National University of Singapore, Singapore & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Association of Southeast Asia A regional cooperative grouping of Malaya, Thailand, and the Philippines, which predated the formation of ASEAN. Entrepoˆt A transshipment port rather than final destination along a trade route. Eurocentric Ideology and other processes that take Europe as their primary point of reference. Geo-Body Territorial dimensions of a polity produced through cultural processes and technologies, particularly mapping. Maphilindo A proposed regional confederation of Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, which predated the formation of ASEAN. Plural Society A society composed of two or more culturally differentiated groups. Polity A system of social–political organization, such as a city-state, nation-state, or kingdom. Sanskrit Language of politics and scholarship through much of Southeast Asia in the first and early secondcentury CE; it originated in India. SEATO Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. Swidden A system of shifting cultivation in which land is prepared by cutting away and burning existing vegetation, commonly referred to as slash and burn.

Southeast Asia is a regional geographic construct. It re fers to an area south of contemporary China and east of the subcontinent of contemporary India. The region of Southeast Asia is currently organized politically under the ten member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. These constructs and concepts of Southeast Asia as a region and ASEAN as a regional political forum are founded on a complex and contested spatial, physical geographic, social, and cultural processes. Southeast Asia is currently more contested (less taken for granted) than some other regional concepts such as Africa, Asia, Europe, or Latin America. In many accounts, both past and present, Southeast Asia is presented as an artificial construct driven by exogenous geopolitics and cultural forces. Yet during the second half of the twen tieth century, Southeast Asia has emerged as a locally relevant regional frame of reference, in ways that some

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other well known concepts, especially the Orient or Far East, have not.

Realism and Constructivism In 1984, Donald Emmerson produced a key article on Southeast Asia, in which he contemplated whether the region should be considered more of a rose or a unicorn. The former, invoking Shakespeare’s famous lines from Romeo and Juliet, implies that Southeast Asia is a name referring to something with an underlying reality not contingent on the process of naming or conceptualization itself. The unicorn, on the other hand, implies that Southeast Asia is primarily a product of creative imagination; only through the human cultural capacity to create order out of chaos does Southeast Asia come into being. In this latter case, the search for any underlying reality to Southeast Asia, apart from its cultural invocation in area studies writing or geopolitical man euvering, is a chimera. Emmerson traces a process through which the imagined unicorn like Southeast Asia was gradually emerging as a rose like reality, a trend which has, if anything, consolidated since the 1980s. Emmerson highlights the dominant and competing realist and constructivist approaches to Southeast Asia. The simplicity of this dichotomy covers not only a wide range of approaches, but also two very different aspects of realism and constructivism. On the one hand, each of these is a scholarly, theoretical standpoint. In this regard, realists favor descriptions and understandings of the region that focus on processes such as trade patterns, politics, geography, and the like that may or may not demonstrate Southeast Asian regionalism. Constructiv ists, from the standpoint of scholarship, focus on various more or less intentional or conscious processes through which Southeast Asia is brought into being – in other words, as a social and cultural construction. But con structivism and realism are also used in debates over Southeast Asia as an object itself, not in reference to the theoretical inclinations of particular scholars. Realism in this sense takes the region to contain an underlying, if evasive, unity while constructivism takes the region to be an area of relatively discontinuous cultural, economic, geographic, political, and social patterns woven together in various narratives of scholars and politicians more out of convenience than for any other reason. The distinction is important, since at least some scholars who are constructivists – emphasizing the social and cultural construction of reality – nevertheless take objects thus

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constructed, such as Southeast Asia, to be no less real than products of other processes, such as geological systems or trade networks. A fair amount of scholarship on Southeast Asia is also marked by strident rejectionism or enthusiasm, of those who either vociferously reject the notion of regional legitimacy or authenticity and others who with equal vigor defend the notion of Southeast Asia as both legitimate and authentic. The realist–constructivist debate cuts across many disciplinary fields – from history to political science to geography. The disciplines most actively involved in debates over the status of Southeast Asia as a region have been history and political science (specifically international relations specialists), with some inter ventions from geographers, anthropologists, and others. Most scholars working in these latter disciplines have been more concerned with examining spatial and social processes within the region rather than the status of Southeast Asia as a region per se. Nevertheless, the area studies focus, especially dominant in American uni versities, has been important in framing research as Southeast Asian studies.

Physical Geography Southeast Asia is conventionally divided into mainland and maritime subregions. Maritime Southeast Asia en compasses the Indonesian and Philippine archipelagos and the Malay Peninsula, as well as the coastal regions of contemporary Vietnam on the South China Sea, the Bay of Siam, and the Bay of Bengal. This coastal, maritime, archipelagic region has been a major thoroughfare over millennia for trade connections stretching from the East Asian regions of China, Japan, and Korea through to India, the Arab peninsula, Africa, and the remote regions of Europe. Mainland Southeast Asia is defined by a series of river basins bordered on the north and west by mountain ranges which created a natural barrier to human interactions. These features created a unique propensity toward land based isolation and sea based interconnections both within the region and between the region and the rest of the world. They also account for a second dimension along which the human and physical geographies of the region intersect; that of highlands and lowlands. Highlands have historically been home to populations with subsistence economies based on swid den cultivation considered outside of or marginal to the lowland state societies organized around irrigated agri culture and trade. The relationship between lowland and highland populations continues to be a major area of scholarship, especially in anthropology (see Figure 1). Since at least the middle of the first millennium CE, a series of mainland and maritime based states have risen and fallen. The mainland states have been situated

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primarily in the fertile river valleys of the Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya, Mekong, and Red Rivers. The latter two rivers in particular link the areas of contemporary Southern China, especially Yunnan province, to main land Southeast Asia. In recent years, a new regional concept has gained some currency – the Greater Mekong Subregion, encompassing the five nation states of main land Southeast Asia and Yunnan province. Physical geography did not determine the location and extent of state formation in a simple and straight forward fashion. But features of the mainland clearly contributed to the location and extent of various states, including current nation states. Moving across mainland Southeast Asia from west to east, it is relatively easy to discern the natural features that have facilitated and hampered political and cultural integration within the region. The Irrawaddy and Chao Phraya river basins have been fertile soil for a succession of polities and currently form the center of the contemporary states of Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand. Forerunners of Myanmar and Thailand have played out a long standing rivalry over many centuries, including numerous wars and border skirmishes, but neither has exerted sustained domination over the other. To the east of the Chao Phraya, the Khorat Plateau, bordered on the north and east by the middle Mekong, and the basin defined by the confluence great lake Tonle´ Sap and lower Mekong, form two further natural lowland regions conducive to early state consolidation. The latter was the central site of the Angkorean empire, mainland Southeast Asia’s most ex tensive, sustained and successful early polity, and now the territory of Cambodia. Contemporary Laos is situated on the northeastern portion of the Khorat Plateau, while the bulk of the plateau has been incorporated into Thailand. Historically, this middle region of the mainland has been the site of shifting, expanding, and contracting polities. Finally, much of the coastal strip of the mainland that is now the site of Vietnam was at an earlier point in history claimed by Champa, a constellation of more or less integrated ethno linguistically Malay polities. Further north, the Red River Valley was home to the ethno linguistically Kinh or Viet polity known as Dai Viet. For roughly the first millennium CE, the Red River basin was a direct vassal state of Imperial China. After achieving independence in CE 939, especially from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, the Dai Viet expanded down the length of the coast at the expense of the Cham states. The mainland geography of mountains, highlands, river basins, and valleys insulated the region to some degree from overwhelming Sinic or Brahmanic influence, while the maritime geography connected the region to those neighboring civilizations. An important geographic feature of maritime Southeast Asia is the narrow Strait of Malacca, between the Malay Peninsula and the island of

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Figure 1 Two views of Southeastern Asia. From Kratoska, P. H., Raben, R. and Nordholt, H. S. (2005). Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Sumatra. A succession of port cities have thrived on es tablishing themselves as the preeminent entrepoˆt for trade flowing through this choke point of Asian maritime commerce. The most sustained power being the Srivi jayan Empire centered on Jambi/Melayu on the East

coast of Sumatra from the eighth through twelfth cen turies. Srivijaya was succeeded by Pasai, Malacca, and other lesser ports and later by competition between British and Dutch colonial powers contesting dominance over the Straits from either side of the waters. The

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current economic preeminence of Singapore in the re gion is a testament in part to its inheritance of the mantle of foremost Malaccan Straits entrepoˆt. The Malacca Strait ports were supplemented and interconnected with other important entrepoˆts between the Malay Peninsula and southern China as well as throughout the Indonesian archipelago. This mainland maritime division of Southeast Asia was never a simple divide. Not only did trade form an ongoing basis of circulation of things, people, and ideas between mainland and islands, the archipelago was home to important inland polities, such as Mataram on the island of Java, and some mainland polities, such as the Ayutthaya located on the Chao Phraya river, were also maritime powers. But even with the regional systems and subsystems, conditioned at least in part by these features of the physical geography, Southeast Asia is still con strued mainly as a residual category, as the lands south China and east of India. The region is defined as much by connectivity, a maritime crossroad of the Asian continent, as it is by demarcating boundaries.

Historical Antecedents There is an active and ongoing debate among historians regarding the coherence of the region over many cen turies or even millennia preceding its formalization in the past hundred or so years. Anthony Reid has argued that important intraregional connections can be identi fied especially in what he periodizes as the ‘‘early mod ern’’ period, or ‘‘age of commerce’’ from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Reid argues that this was a historical era when Southeast Asia was operating as a regional sociocultural system, subsequently disrupted by the disintegrative effects of European colonialism under which colonial powers carved up the region and inhibited interactions among the indigenous populations. Reid’s thesis has been challenged by Victor Lieberman, who argues that Reid’s thesis may work for maritime or coastal Southeast Asia but is less applicable to the mainland. In Lieberman’s view, Reid also privileges intra Southeast Asian connections at the expense of a more complex set of broader global and Eurasian processes. More generally, the work of Reid and others has been criticized for projecting a twentieth century perception of Southeast Asia backward into the sixteenth century. A useful historical antecedent for thinking about contemporary Southeast Asia is Suvarnabhumi, a Sanskrit term, meaning literally the golden land. References to Suvarnabhumi throughout Southeast Asia date to the first and early second millennia CE, described by Sheldon Pollock as an era of Sanskrit cosmopolitanism. Polities of Southeast Asia, such as Angkor, Pagan, Ayutthaya, Sri vijaya, as well as a multitude of smaller entities were

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culturally interrelated through the Sanskrit lingua franca which carried with it a loosely integrated set of political and cosmological beliefs related to Brahmanic traditions later to become known as Hinduism and Buddhism. A limited amount of historical (written) documentation and a greater wealth of archeological evidence demonstrate that a substantial circulation of goods, people, and ideas bound together (at least loosely) a region stretching from the Cham principalities of what is now south and central Vietnam to the Indian subcontinent and through the Indonesian archipelago and mainland Tai, Khmer, and Bamar polities (where Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar are now located). In this era, the Red River Delta was under direct Chinese political control and cultural influence and the Philippine archipelago was largely outside of the maritime flows of commerce and culture. Suvarnabhumi remains a poetic inheritance in many places in contemporary Southeast Asia, reappearing in forms such as Charles Keyes’ The Golden Peninsula, the name of the new international airport in Bangkok, and references in the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, where it is translated somewhat parochially as tanah Melayu (the Malay lands). But any sense of Suvarnabhumi as a substantial geopolitical region did not survive the disintegrative effects of European colonialism. With Islamization of maritime Malay polities from about the eleventh century onward, any regional sense of Suvarnabhumi was probably already very much on the wane well before the colonial era and in any event was never even remotely established to the extent that the concept of Southeast Asia became in the late twentieth century. Nevertheless, Suvarnabhumi remains an instructive comparison to contemporary Southeast Asia, as its co gency derived from many analogous processes (insofar as it did become a relatively widespread signifier of a region stretching from contemporary Vietnam to the Indonesian archipelago and through the mainland Tai and Bamar polities – where Thailand and Myanmar are now lo cated). The diffusion of the Suvarnabhumi concept rested on the diffusion of Sanskrit as a privileged language of religious and political discourse in the region, much as English is the preeminent lingua franca today. This was also the basis for intraregional political relations between polities and individuals who not only could communicate between mutually intelligible languages, but implicitly comprehended a political grammar and syntax of polities organized on principles described by Stanley Tambiah as ‘‘galactic polities’’ and O.W. Wolters as ‘‘mandala states.’’ As useful as Suvarnabhumi may be for thinking about some of the region forming processes, such as language, politics, cosmology, commerce, and the like, Southeast Asia as now understood is undoubtedly the cultural product of the past century.

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Convenient Constructs and Contingent Devices The use of Southeast Asia as a term to designate the region south of China and east of India appears only in idiosyncratic references prior to the twentieth century. From the sixteenth century onward, European colonial powers laid claim to their territories with terms such as the Netherlands East Indies and French Indochina. Only well into the twentieth century do we find Southeast Asia and variants used with regularity in different languages, including for instance Asia Tenggara in Malay and Indo nesian, Asia Akhane in Thai and Lao, and Dong Nam A´ in Vietnamese. The Allied South East Asia Command established in 1943 during World War II is often cited as the earliest widely influential use of Southeast Asia. However, Shi mizu Hajime has shown that by 1919, the term Tonan Ajiya (literally Southeast Asia) had entered Japanese geography curriculum in modern state schools. Hajime argues that the displacement of earlier terms such as nanyo (South Seas, derived from the Chinese nanyang) played an important conceptual role in guiding Japan’s military colonial expansion into the region in the sub sequent decades. Hajime and others suggest that the Allied concept of Southeast Asia, therefore, was largely a reaction to Japanese imperial ideas and actions. Following World War II, the idea of Southeast Asia received further support with the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), estab lished as an American initiative to counter Chinese and Soviet influence in the region in the context of the Cold War. But from within the region, only the Philippines and Thailand were members of SEATO (others being Aus tralia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the United King dom, and the United States). The organization clearly had more to do with American Cold War activities than the ideas or interests of governments or people living in the region. A very strong, if not dominant, stream of scholarship on Southeast Asia since the inception of the term in English language discourse has focused largely on the SEATO like constructions of the region. That is, the forces and ideas acting largely on the region from with out, based on extra regional interests and motives with only marginal interest or input from individuals, insti tutions, organizations, or states within the region. Like wise, much attention has been given to the establishment and role of Southeast Asian Studies in the United States particularly in the context of the Cold War, a central focus of Emmerson’s important article. In a 2005 article, Jim Glassman provides a useful review of this sort of external, Cold War driven conceptualization of Southeast Asia, focusing especially on English language scholarship in the discipline of geography. Glassman

compares the environmental determinist approach of Charles Fisher to the pragmatic constructivist approach of Donald Fryer, a dichotomy played out in various ways across English language social science and humanities scholarship. Glassman’s approach also typifies the stream of scholarship that treats Southeast Asia as tinged with in authenticity and largely ignores the role of governments and people within the region – who are acted upon, but are not themselves agents of the ideological and social processes constructing Southeast Asia. Given the prevailing dominance of English medium cosmopolitanism over the past century, English language scholarship on Southeast Asia has been particularly powerful in shaping recent ideas about the region. One of the more significant effects is that English cosmo politanism is plagued by a concern for authenticity of the other; that is to say authenticity of the native, conceived of as standing outside of the space and time of most English language scholarship. Implicit standards of native purity lurk in the subtext of this scholarship; with the effect that the ‘polluting’ effects of foreign ideas – in particular the effects of English cosmopolitanism itself – are taken as signs of inauthentic regionalism. When such signs can be discerned, Southeast Asia is cast as a somehow less than worthy cultural construct. Critiques of regionalism – of scholarship on the sub ject and of active diplomacy and interactions – are at their most vigorous carried off with a combination of cynical realism and rational choice reductionism. Somewhat inexplicably, these arguments particularly in the realm of international relations scholarship take na tion states (which did not exist a century ago) to be real actors with real interests while casting Southeast Asian regionalism as an elite Panglossian fantasy. In a similar vein, many of the same authors as well as others insist that forces external to Southeast Asia – such as Cold War superpower actors and American based scholars – must be understood as substantially instrumental in the formation of Southeast Asian regionalism, while intra regional initiatives are to be understood as insubstantial, fleeting, and illusory.

Realizing Southeast Asia Given the Anglo American centered, English medium biases of scholarship over the past several decades, the most underappreciated and discursively dismissed con ditions of Southeast Asian regionalism are the initiatives undertaken from within the region. Amitav Acharya’s succinct analysis of Southeast Asian regionalism pub lished in 2000 made an important contribution to ad dressing this lacuna by developing the story of Southeast Asian regionalism with a focus on intraregional actors, but with less overt advocacy than found in much of the

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writing of ASEAN enthusiasts. Acharya’s thesis is that Southeast Asia has in many respects been realized – brought into being – through a combination of broad political, economic, social, and cultural conditions of the late twentieth century and the active role of Southeast Asian politicians and diplomats. He traces the cultivation of Emmerson’s rose, but with much greater attention to the local gardeners. In the mid twentieth century, the fraught and con tested process of decolonization entrenched nationalism as the basis for new polities in the region. At the same time, European colonial powers were supplanted by Cold War superpowers of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, each with their own designs on the region. While not dismissing the substantial effects of Cold War geopolitics on the region, the significance of Acharya’s thesis is to undermine the overbearing, Washington, Moscow, or Beijing reading of the region as a theater in which their own passion play was performed, with local petty lords as bit players. Acharya reads the field instead from the point of view of the motives, desires, and ac tivities of local actors, with the Cold War geopolitics, the retreat of Europe, and the rise of America, China, and the Soviet Union a backdrop. From within Southeast Asia, the master narrative is one of decolonization and the rise and normalization of nation states, not the global ma neuverings of Cold War superpowers. From the post World War II era through the 1990s a range of initiatives by actors within Southeast Asia aimed at establishing linkages transcending Cold War divisive ness. In 1946, for instance, Acharya notes that Ho Chi Minh was writing to the Prime Minister of Indonesia in an initiative to develop a ‘‘Federation of Free Peoples of Southern Asia’’ to include Vietnam, Indonesia, India, Burma, and Malaya. But in the early post war period, when much of the region was involved in violent strug gles over decolonization, an inchoate sense of regional distinctiveness was weak at best. Rather, Ho Chi Minh, Sukarno, and others had grander visions of broad Third World alliances. These initiatives undoubtedly reached their zenith in the 1955 Afro Asian Conference in Bandung. Such attempts at broad alliances waned in subsequent years, as their shear scope made them dip lomatically, strategically, and politically unworkable. In the 1960s and 1970s, the first substantial initiatives toward a more modest and Southeast Asia focused internationalism were launched. These included the Association of Southeast Asia spearheaded by Malaysia’s Tunku Abdul Rahman and Malphilindo (Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia) initiated by Philippine President Diasdado Macapagal. While each of these ideas was short lived, they set the stage for the August 1967 establish ment of the ASEAN. ASEAN was composed of the pro capitalist and anticommunist governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, the

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Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. In the first decades of its existence, it was commonly looked upon as a pro capitalist block at odds with the Vietnamese dominated pro communist region of Indochina (including Laos and Cambodia) and with socialist Burma. Here again there is cause to see some dissonance between American and other external Cold War readings of the region and the primary concerns of actors within ASEAN and Southeast Asia. The anticommunist concerns of the ASEAN gov ernments had far more to do with internal struggles for power in the context of making new nations than with ideological and geopolitical concerns of distant Cold War superpowers. The ASEAN governments were concerned with the countries of Indochina (and perhaps more so China) as communist states, but primarily to the extent that Vietnam or China might give support to the internal communist movements in each ASEAN country. From its inception, ASEAN had the aim to incorporate all of the countries considered geopolitically within South east Asia and its chief driving ideology was non interference between territorially defined nation states, not anticommunism. From its founding through the 1990s, ASEAN did much to solidify the concept of Southeast Asia. The nation state came to define both the limits and foun dations of Southeast Asian regionalism. ASEAN de veloped as a mapped geo body, in much the same way that its constituent members developed as territorially recognized polities, by cultural and political processes described in great detail by Thongchai Winichakul for Thailand. Various ambiguities were worked out, such as the status of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) – considered for inclu sion in ASEAN at an early date, but eventually denied membership. And by the end of the 1990s, with the rapid dissolution of Cold War conditions and just as import antly the dissolution of serious internal communist threats with member states, ASEAN came to include its current ten member states, incorporating Indochina and Myanmar (Burma). Of course, such historical closure is always subject to ongoing changes; the ambiguous status of newly independent Timor Leste (East Timor) being the most obvious example. Even at its most complete, the contemporary ASEAN based notion of Southeast Asia remains contested within and beyond the region. One of the most common bases of discursive dismissal (in frequent and almost reflexive discounting of local initiatives) is the Eurocentric concept of political re gionalism as nation state writ large. This is not just vaguely Eurocentric, but the very specific tendency to take Europe as the model for all political regionalisms. Europe and the political entity of the European Union is premised on an ethno racial identity that is more than analogous to the idealized ethno racial identities which (often problematically) underwrite the political legitim acy of nation states. Europe and the European Union are

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taken as prototypical of what a region should be and any entities that lack the characteristics of this prototype are then found wanting. This is grossly evident throughout assessments of Southeast Asia and ASEAN in particular. The ASEAN community does not replicate a nation state writ large so much as a plural society writ large. The strengths and weaknesses, possibilities, and limits of ASEAN reiterate those of plural societies more so than those of nation states. It is worth recalling that the pre eminent theorist of the plural society, J. S. Furnivall, was himself casting it as an unworkable construct of colonial machinations, in which the ability of natives to forge the common will of a European type national society was thwarted by cultural divisions fostered by and for the benefit of European colonialists. At the same time, the conditions identified by Furnivall became political real ities for postcolonial states and fostered multiculturalist political ideologies, such as Indonesia’s ‘Unity in Diversity’. In Acharya’s work and that of others of similar in clination, there is ongoing ambivalence toward the origins and legacy of Southeast Asian regionalism. It is possible – as Reid and others have done – to trace historical con tinuities into the present from the millennia old patterns of commerce and cultural diffusion, not to mention the physical geography and environment. Yet at the same time, it is easy to see how such sense of region is always contingent; a reality made and unmade through systemic political, economic, and social forces as much as through intentional human agency and imaginative practices. Southeast Asia has been an imaginative geographic construct for Westerners, Japanese, Chinese, and Soviets. Embodied at present in the form of ASEAN, Southeast Asia has also been substantively realized through in digenous imaginative practices. But realization at present is not the end of history. Moreover, Southeast Asia cum ASEAN remains as much an aspirational construct as a

realized entity. In parallel to the concept of ‘nations of intent’, developed by Shamsul A. B. to describe Malay sian nationalism, we could likewise consider ASEAN as a ‘region of intent’. Southeast Asia is as much a process as a product or an object. See also: Asia; Ethnicity; Geopolitics; Physical Geography and Human Geography; Place, Politics of; Political Geography; Regionalism; South Asia.

Further Reading Acharya, A. (2000). The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson, B. (1998). The Spectre of Comparison: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. London: Verso. Emmerson, D. K. (1984). Southeast Asia: What’s in a name? Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 15(1), 1 21. Glassman, J. (2005). On the borders of Southeast Asia: Cold War geography and the construction of the Other. Political Geography 24(5), 784 807. Kratoska, P. H., Raben, R. and Nordholt, H. S. (2005). Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space. Singapore: Singapore University Press. Lieberman, V. (2003). Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800 1830. Vol. 1: Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pollock, S. (1998). The cosmopolitan vernacular. Journal of Asian Studies 52(2), 261 297. Reid, A. (1988). Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450 1680, Volumes 1 and 2. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Reprinted 1993, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.] Rigg, J. (1997). Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape of Modernization and Development. London: Routledge. Shamsul, A. B. (1996). Nations of intent in Malaysia. In Tonnesson, S. & Antlov, H. (eds.) Asian Forms of the Nation, pp 323 347. London: Curzon Press. Winichakul, T. (1994). Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo Body of a Nation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Wolters, O. W. (1999). History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Revised Edition). Ithaca: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University.

Sovereignty M. Coleman, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Critical Geopolitics Study in political geography of geographical assumptions embedded in discourses about world politics, and how these enable particular stories to be told about the shape and substance of world politics. Deterritorialization Undoing and/or remaking of particular territorialities. External Territoriality Use of borders and boundaries to control movement and restrict access to a territory. Internal Territoriality Creation of regulations to manage how resources are used or how people act within a territory. International Relations Subdiscipline of political science dedicated to the study and understanding of world politics. Power Entangled and sometimes incoherent social relationships of authority, domination, coercion, consensus, compulsion, confession, etc., may be proximate or distant. Realism Perspective within international relations which treats states and their national security interests as the most important constituents of world politics, major focus is on the state as a rational and unitary entity. Spatiality The organization of power and social relations through and across space, place, and territory. State Government over some territory which claims a monopoly on the exercise of force, as well as overriding political and legal authority, typically thought to be centralized. State Territoriality Assumption that state accords to a discrete and carefully demarcated territory. Territoriality Strategy of classifying, communicating, and enforcing control over space used by individuals, groups, and organizations. Territory General term to describe a chunk of space occupied by a person, group, or state.

Introduction: Final and Absolute Legal–Political Authority That sovereignty is a commonplace yet systematically under investigated concept in political geography and international relations (IR) has led many contemporary critical scholars concerned with the spatiality of power to defer the search for a decisive definition of the term. Their

point is important, and bears careful consideration: that sovereignty does not submit neatly to a logic of represen tation, in which analytical concepts are simple and surefire referents of things in the world. Rather, sovereignty dis closes a quite different set of intellectual practices con cerning the stabilization and inheritance of knowledge, which some scholars refer to as ‘disciplinarity’. From this perspective sovereignty is literally about the setting of limits to social practice – whether in the form of statecraft or scholarly inquiry about statecraft – via epistemological appeals about how best to know and act in the world. Among other things this suggests that one must not ne cessarily look to shore up a definition of sovereignty, as if an affirmation of something ‘out there’. Rather, the task is to understand how, for what ends, and in what contexts the term is used and expounded upon, as well as attend to the work done by it. This said, we can still attempt a definition, or at least review how the concept has been used by others. Sover eignty is typically held as the exclusive, independent, and transcendent right of an entity (i.e., deity), person (i.e., monarch, citizen, dictator), or political body (i.e., parlia ment, legislature, executive, judiciary, the nation, com munity) to exercise ultimate legal–political authority over an indivisible geographic area and its attendant popu lation, conceived as an amalgamated body politic. This is the definition favored in E. H. Hinsley’s classic on the topic, Sovereignty. Indeed, Hinsley describes sovereignty as the final and absolute political authority in a community for which there is no other source of final and absolute authority. Community and sovereignty are, in this reading, expressly statist terms. For example, Hinsley attributes the development of sovereignty as an intellectual construct to ‘primitive’ and ‘stateless’ peoples’ abandonment of homo geneous ‘tribal groups’ and their gathering into state col lectivities. His claim is that this new constellation of power demands an answer to the question of the location and nature of political authority, which sovereignty ultimately provides. (This account is corroborated by Claude Lefort who argues similarly that sovereignty is an attempt to fix states’ political authority in a certain transcendent lo cation. His point of departure is that this attempt is in the end doomed and that the result is a totalitarianism of one sort or another.) From this standpoint, then, states – of all stripes and colors, democratic, monarchical, theocratic, aristocratic, authoritarian, etc. – can be said to be sovereign if they enjoy unrestricted and effective authority over all peoples and places within a discrete and unified territory, absent interference from external interests or forces.

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Classical liberalism speaks slightly differently of sov ereignty. The emphasis here is on ‘individuals’ as free, equal, independent, knowledgeable, self interested, in divisible, primarily private, minimally obliged, self suf ficient, and socially unencumbered political subjects. From this perspective, sovereignty is about a person’s intrinsic self determination, as well as their self posses sion of inalienable rights, with respect to other similarly self governing subjects. However, this reading of sover eignty is not totally distinct from the long and compli cated history of scholarship of which Hinsley’s book is a part. Indeed, there are important connections between classical liberalism’s definition and sovereignty as is perhaps more familiarly encountered in Anglo American scholarship on power as a defining attribute of the modern interstate system, and specifically of the states that together comprise this system. For example, sover eignty in mainstream research on states tends to repro duce classical liberalism’s atomistic individualism in their discussion of what constitutes the essence of states. Sovereignty in much political geography and IR schol arship on states is frequently analogized to individual sovereignty, as if the former was a scaled up version of the latter. Indeed, neorealist scholarship in IR makes exactly this link, and proceeds as if states are coherent, individual, and unitary actors. This accounts for why sovereignty – as in state political authority – is frequently described as neither episodic nor ruptured, but as emanating from a center point and extending in a con tinuous and smooth fashion to the edges of the state, where it abruptly ends.

of the English civil war, who proposed a theory of un limited sovereignty. Treated as a key building block in sovereignty’s intellectual edifice by realist IR scholars in particular, Hobbes articulated a pessimistic and com petitive view of human beings. He described, in the Le viathan, a hypothetical ‘state of nature’ which was, as he famously put it, ‘‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.’’ Hobbes argued that individuals, however primarily self interested, might exit this presocietal condition of con flict and turmoil by entering into a social contract or covenant governed by some overseeing authority. Hobbes called this authority the Leviathan – an ‘artificial person’ – to whom individuals could cede their rights in return for a peaceful existence. The Leviathan (supreme ruler) was to maintain order and peace through a monopoly on coercive authority or what has been referred to as a ‘right of the sword’, clearly displayed on the frontispiece to Leviathan (see Figure 1). Importantly, Hobbes posed absolute command as the only alternative to anarchy. This tradition of sovereignty as supreme command has influenced many thinkers, including Weimar Re public era political theorist and jurist, Carl Schmitt. As

Sovereignty as Supreme Command, Sovereignty as Political Authority Sovereignty raises some conceptual question marks in part because of the uneasy ways it conjoins power with authority. On the one hand, for example, sovereignty has been elaborated as a sort of transcendent command or injunction to obey. Jean Bodin (1530–96), in his Les Six Livres de la Re´publique, which was written in the aftermath of Europe’s sixteenth century religious conflicts and which in essence substantiated the power of the French king against his many challengers, put forth what is generally considered to be the inaugural definition of sovereignty along these lines. For Bodin, sovereignty was the unfettered power to make laws and exact obedience to them from a population, regardless of consent. Sov ereignty here translated as a matter of compelled and centralized authority in the head of state – a power be stowed by office but no less absolute. However, if Bodin understood souverainete´ to be in the end limited by customary, natural, and divine law, it was Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), writing during the turmoil

Figure 1 Frontispiece to Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651).

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he wrote in The Leviathan and the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes, post World War I liberalism’s emphasis on human rights and constitutional reform sapped the state of its sovereign authority and turned it into a mere association among myriad other private groupings. Against this ‘le galization’ of what he understood as sovereign legitimacy and order, Schmitt articulated a strong definition of sovereignty as the power to decide on the exception, or to act if need be extrajudicially and without consultation through emergency powers to stall civil conflict or otherwise safeguard the erosion of the public sphere. On the other hand, sovereignty has been explained differently as political authority. John Locke (1632–1704) objected that a sovereign’s authority could be considered absolute. In Two Treatises of Government, Locke put forth that legitimate government was a revocable authority bestowed by the ruled on the rulers in order to facilitate and safeguard an individual’s rights of liberty, health, property, and life. In comparison to Hobbes this repre sented a sort of decentralization of sovereignty, as well as an argument against the wholesale transfer of political authority from individuals to a princely figure standing above and apart from them. Jean Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–78) objection to sovereignty as supreme command was stronger still. In The Social Contract Rousseau wrote with Hobbes that political authority was something conferred to the sovereign by the people. However, against Hobbes Rousseau concluded that sovereignty – ‘popular’ sovereignty, that is – was derived from the people’s ‘general will’ and as such could not be given up to the sovereign in the manner sketched out in the Le viathan. For Rousseau this meant that political authority could never be forcibly estranged from the people. As a result he claimed that people should deliberate together on matters of government, participate directly in the production of law, and moreover should not be obligated to laws which are deemed to contravene the common good. Opposition to sovereignty as unrestrained and limit less command finds a more recent home in arguments made by Hans Kelsen, twentieth century Austrian legal theorist and legal advisor to the United Nations War Crimes Commission. Kelsen, Schmitt’s principal intellectual antagonist during the 1930s, championed the curtailment of a narrowly conceived state sovereignty – which he understood as the conditions of possibility for imperialism – through the institutionalization of parlia mentarism and constitutionalism on the domestic front, as well as through a pacifist global legal order to which state governments would ultimately be accountable. It was exactly Kelsen’s reconfiguration of sovereignty in relative terms – checked ‘at home’ in the form of parliamentary democracy and in account ‘abroad’ to some overarching juridical structure, such as the United Nations – that Schmitt understood as itself imperialistic,

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designed to shift authority from a transcendent sovereign seat above the social world with which a territorial col lectivity could affiliate, to multiple, disconnected private seats defined by uninterrupted social contest and material labor. The point here – well summarized in the clash be tween Schmitt and Kelsen – is that sovereignty is defined in the canon as both supreme power and political au thority, and that these competing translations are not without their points of conflict. However, in general we can say that today sovereignty is referenced in main stream political geography and IR as a condition of ‘political authority and legitimacy’ rather than as an ex ercise of unconditional and supreme power. (This does not include a resurgent critical literature on sovereignty’s states of exception, which we will get to below.) Political scientist David Held, for example, summarizes sover eignty in his Democracy and the Global Order as an ‘‘im personal and privileged legal or constitutional order, delimiting a common structure of authority, which spe cifies the nature and form of control and administration over a given community.’’

Sovereignty and State Territoriality It should be obvious from the comments above that sovereignty in political geography and IR, defined in either way as supreme command or political authority (or indeed as some combination of both), is regularly defined in explicitly statist terms and as such is used – often with limited reflection, or at least on the presumption that the concept is stable across time and space – to describe the location, scope, and efficacy of political order ‘in and by states’. The result is ultimately a state territorial template for mapping political power in the global political economy. In this context it makes sense to speak ex plicitly of sovereignty qua state sovereignty. Indeed, sovereignty as conventionally defined is held as syn onymous with ‘sovereign statehood’, the ‘geography of state power’, the ‘state’, the ‘nation’, the ‘nation state’, as well as ‘centralized state authority’, which as a result are terms too commonly collapsed into one another. That sovereignty – that is, political authority – might not be an exclusive property or characteristic of the territorial state or a community of territorial states is too seldom con sidered, as is the possibility of a political authority or power exercised nonterritorially or through a scattered network like structure of nodes and flows. Typically, the advent of sovereignty qua state sover eignty is dated to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which put an end to the Thirty Years’ War in Europe. The idea and practice of an overarching territorial authority was not novel to 1648, however. The prior English and French experiments with absolutism, as well as the free

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Figure 2 Dominant views of the nature of sovereignty as a principle governing relations between states, as seen from the core of the sovereign state system. Reproduced from Murphy, A. (1996). The sovereign state territorial system as political territorial ideal: Historical and contemporary considerations. In Biersteker, T. J. and Weber, C. (eds.) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, pp. 81 120. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, p 88. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

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cities of late medieval Europe all disclosed a territorial ordering of political authority. However, as Steven Krasner argues in his Sovereignty – Organized Hypocrisy, the conventionally held opinion in IR (and to this we can add political geography) is that the princely authority over religion (cuius regio, eius religio) occasioned by the West phalia treaty marked a watershed transition to a new geography of noninterventionist and absolute political power – often dubbed ‘Westphalian sovereignty’ or ‘the Westphalia model’. The result was none other than the undoing of a feudal landscape of poorly deline ated, nonmonopolistic, overlapping, fragmented, non contiguous, multiply constituted and nonexclusive power networks (i.e., through parishes, manors, guilds, etc.) and their replacement with a modern structure of political authority rooted in the rule and apparatus of the cen tralized territorial state. As such, the Westphalian model amounted to an exclusive agglomeration of political au thority in delimited state spaces. Indeed, the often told story is that the treaty’s emphasis on political and re ligious self determination, nonintervention, and formal legal equality spelled out, for the first time, sovereignty as specifically a state’s twofold ability to: on the one hand, ‘containerize’ or rule over a territorially captive popu lation through an effective ‘inward looking’ internal political organization of state space (‘internal sover eignty’, ‘intraterritoriality’); and on the other hand, to exclude or limit the influence of other states on this newly circumscribed population through an effective ‘outward looking’ external bounding of sovereign state space based on reciprocality, or the mutual recognition of state authority by other states (‘external sovereignty’, ‘interterritoriality’). Of course, in practice Westphalia by no means in stantaneously constituted a fully formed and unchanging sovereign state ‘chessboard’ of domestic and world pol itics. As many political sociologists have argued, the territorialization of political authority in states in the aftermath of the seventeenth century proceeded in fits and starts via state elites’ coercive and consensual or ganization, communication, and enforcement of control over socioeconomic and political space. The three cen turies after 1648, for example, saw the gradual territorial organization or bundling of political authority in states, through conscription, the waging of war, taxation, and the organization of markets, among many other things. This period also witnessed the piecemeal making and breaking of sovereignty as a principle of interstate relations, with war a frequent violation of the principle of non interference. The upshot, as Alec Murphy has usefully mapped out (Figures 2 and 3), is that if state sovereignty as a solution to the where and what of political authority ‘within’ states was more or less steadily incremental in the 300 plus years after Westphalia, then certainly sovereignty as a principle governing relations ‘between’

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Figure 3 Dominant views of the appropriate political territorial structure for international society, as seen from the core of the sovereign state system. Reproduced from Murphy, A. (1996). The sovereign state territorial system as political territorial ideal: Historical and contemporary considerations. In Biersteker, T. J. and Weber, C. (eds.) State sovereignty as social construct, p. 81 120. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, pp 89. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.

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Sovereignty, Security, and the Limits of Political Community Sovereignty qua state sovereignty is an inherently geo graphical problematic, if by geography we in part mean attention to spatial division and delimitation. This is so because sovereignty qua state sovereignty describes the conditions of possibility for a plurality of formally dis tinct and nonoverlapping territorial blocs of space con taining distinct peoples and places. In other words, sovereignty qua state sovereignty makes at least theore tically possible the partitioning or bracketing of global space into singular, fixed, and differentiated parcels of political authority. As pointed out by critical IR scholars in the late 1980s and as reiterated by critical geopolitics researchers in the early 1990s, this spatialization of political authority in the territorial state places starkly bordered limitations on the scope and substance of political community. Due to its emphasis on the divisibility and exclusivity of political rule and authority across space, the concept of sover eignty by definition circumscribes the spatial and tem poral horizons of political community and belonging to life within state borders. As a result, politics (democratic or otherwise) is made conditional on the physical integrity of state borders, as well as on mechanisms of state surveillance and policing over territorially enclosed populations. (This is precisely the logic that allows contemporary theorists of world politics to divvy the world up into so called ‘tame’ and ‘wild’ zones com prising, respectively, orderly democratic states, as well as their ‘collapsed’ or ‘failed’ counterparts, who are unable to control their populations, as well as what crosses their borders.) From this standpoint, as R. B. J. Walker points out in his Inside/Outside – International Relations as Pol itical Theory, sovereignty in standard political geography and IR research is best approached as a philosophical or political theoretic articulation which, in setting apart a ‘thick’ domestic sphere from a ‘thin’ international sphere, not so subtly consecrates a very historically and geo graphically specific account of the possible ‘wheres’ and ‘whats’ of political identity and community. This commitment to sovereignty qua state sovereignty is not, however, unique to political geography or IR re search. Rather, the assumption that sovereignty qua state sovereignty is the grounds for political community that constitutes much of the contemporary scholarship on democracy in political theory. Many liberals, for example, presuppose that rights bearing political subjects, while pursuing comprehensive moral projects in the private sphere, adhere to constitutional rules and procedures brought to bear throughout a sovereign statist public institutional–political sphere. Communitarians too, al though typically counterposed to liberals in terms of their emphasis on goods and not rights, adhere to a

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similar modeling of sovereignty qua state sovereignty. Communitarians’ conceptualization of membership, for instance, is typically imagined in terms of a conventional state territorial geography of political authority and le gitimacy, such that belonging and entitlement are often imagined as dependent on a prior condition of geo graphical closure, as well as on the nonrecognition of political and ethical claims by subjects beyond state borders. It is perhaps only a relatively recent school of radical cosmopolitan democrats who have queried sovereignty qua state sovereignty as the geographical basis for politics, and who have insisted instead on a less grounded and more networked modeling of political community and democratic engagement. The work done by this pervasive domestic/foreign ordering of places – that is, by sovereignty’s mapping of an indivisible civic culture on the inside (deserving of the moniker ‘politics’) and mere raison d’e´tat on the outside – accounts, among other things, for the moral differen tiation between violence against ‘citizens’ (us), deemed illegitimate, and violence against ‘others’ outside the state (them), deemed unfortunate but necessary, in the name of national security. The result is most often a strict territorialization of empathy to the ‘inside’ and danger and incomprehension to the ‘outside’ – a common geopolitical theme in the US after September 2001. The ‘war on terrorism’, for example, has in large measure been justified by a sovereign language of internal in divisibility/comprehension and external dangerousness/ incomprehension. That sovereignty in this way ‘enables’ conflict has lead political geographers to roundly criticize the prevailing assumption that sovereignty provides for security. Indeed, sovereign state territoriality is frequently held in security studies and elsewhere as a ‘prerequisite’ for politics – a protective bulwark which holds an anarchic and lawless ‘outside’ at bay such that politics can proceed in an orderly fashion on the ‘inside’. Feminist geopolitics scholars in particular have argued compellingly that state security and human security (i.e., access to food and shelter, public safety, meaningful employment, and edu cation, etc.) are not analogous, and specifically that the latter is not always – if ever – provided for by the former. Their point is that the provision of security for select interests within the state, for example, via war, by ne cessity implies the subjugation of people, livelihoods, and communities elsewhere, and thus that the practice of national security is as such directly a condition of pos sibility for human insecurity. Other scholars have also pointed out, in a corroborative mood, that the prevalent sovereign state territorial reading of security ‘inside’ and danger ‘outside’ conveniently forgets about geopolitical violence and injustice meted out within the state, for example, against indigenous populations.

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Spatialities of Power, Plural Although sovereignty qua state sovereignty continues to inform much research in political geography and IR, it is now also the case that scholars of world politics have embarked on a substantial rethinking of the spatiality of political authority beyond what John Agnew has called the statist ‘territorial trap’. The empirical reasons for this are legion, and can only be but hinted at here: the abrogation of Bretton Woods, and the attendant explosion of foreign direct investment and global finance; the growth of transnational production and transnational firms, as well as free trade regimes governing states’ control over production and investment; the scaling up of political authority to entities such as the European Union; the emergence of global protest movements; neoliberalism and the gutting of the welfare state in the global North; the debt crisis in the global South; the phenomenon of un authorized global migration; the end of the Cold War and the emergence of networked forms of nonstate geopolitical practice; and among things, what might be referred to in

the shorthand as US imperial ambition on the world stage in the new millennium. Indeed, due to these and other events, which lead in common to a fundamental ques tioning of the sovereign state as a final and absolute locus of political power and authority, there has been a signifi cant rethinking of the role of states and state authority in the modern world economy. This has in turn led to the development of mappings of power and authority exercised through diffuse net works rather than over blocs of segmented space. Indeed, Agnew suggests (Figure 4) that contemporary transfor mations in the geography of political authority necessi tate a more careful historical interrogation of political power as tending over time from simple ‘ensemble of worlds’ and ‘field of forces’ models (perhaps closest to the sovereignty qua state sovereignty ideal) to more complex ‘hierarchical’ and ‘world network’ models in which pol itical power and authority function in ways that funda mentally challenge the Cartesian coordinates of the modern interstate system. Agnew adds that authority and power in the contemporary global political economy are

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4. World society Based upon: Marie-Françoise Durand, Jacques Lèvy, and Denis Relaillè, Le monde: espaces et systemes (Paris: Presses de la Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1992),18.

Figure 4 Spatialities of power and political authority. Reproduced from Agnew, J. A. (1999). Mapping political power beyond state boundaries: Territory, identity, and movement in world politics. Millennium 28, 499 521.

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no longer neatly ‘pooled up’ in territorial states; rather, they are to be found in the ‘effective co presence’ of the four models of power outlined in Figure 4.

Global Sovereignty, States of Exception There has been a recent return to sovereignty, at least nominally, to explain the shape and substance of current world politics. We can think of the two most prominent models as sovereignty as biopolitics and sovereignty as abandonment. On the one hand, there has been considerable interest in the emergence of a ‘global’ sovereignty. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, for example, have written of the emergence of a new form of ‘placeless’ political authority – anathema to state power – predicated on the globalization of the American constitutional experiment of ‘divided powers’. Indeed, in their much read and celebrated Empire, Hardt and Negri suggest that political authority in world politics, now best described as disorderly and multiply sited, accords to a loosely structured three tier pyramid. At the height stands the US as a military superpower acting in collaboration with other states through the United Nations. In this top layer are also private credit and debt rescheduling organizations such as the Paris and London Clubs, as well as the G7 states which control key global monetary instruments and regu latory organizations. In the second tier, transnational corporations (TNCs) weave vast production networks throughout the globe, and bargain with a general set of increasingly hollowed out states. The third tier concerns structures of global civil society that percolate upward through states, media conglomerates, religious institutions, and networks of nongovernmental organizations NGOs. All three tiers feed parasitically off the creative and productive energies of the ‘multitude’, a mass of mostly disenfranchised subjects whose labor constitutes the material basis of the global economy (hence sovereignty as biopolitics). Overall, the point is that political authority has shifted from a sov ereign state territorial template to a hybrid, flexible, and modulating apparatus of control which Hardt and Negri typify as a more or less ‘smooth space of uncoded and deterritorialized flows’. On the other hand, due in large part to post 9/11 US geopolitical strategy in the ‘war on terrorism’ – which has brought to light such practices as ‘extraordinary ren dition’, as well as a slew of extrajurisdictional prison camps (i.e., Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantańamo, etc.) – scholars have become increasingly interested in sover eign power as a ‘state of exception’. Perhaps the most important thinker here is Giorgio Agamben. Unlike much contemporary discussion of authority and power in terms of opaque webs of relations, Agamben zeroes in on the sovereign’s unique ability to abandon political beings to a state of exception. He calls this abandoned form of

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‘creaturely life’ homo sacer, a form of existence made possible by one’s exclusion from the law, as well as by the physical possibility of death or subjection to extreme violence allowed by this exclusion. In other words, sov ereignty as abandonment operates as a suspension of the law and a surrendering of bodies to a zone of indistinc tion where they can literally be left to die with impunity. Although in some ways this model of sovereignty can be read as a return to older theories of political authority, specifically by virtue of its interest in sovereignty qua state sovereignty, it may also be considered a quite radical refashioning of the canon. For example, among other things, it is the sovereign’s double placement ‘before’ the law and ‘as’ the law – its ability to literally embody and straddle both the ‘state of nature’ and the ‘state of law’ – that gives it what amounts to the ability to forcibly sur render bodies to spaces of neglect and decay. See also: Empire; Geopolitics; State; Superpower; Territory and Territoriality.

Further Reading Agamben, G. (1998). Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agnew, J. A. (1999). Mapping political power beyond state boundaries: Territory, identity, and movement in world politics. Millennium 28, 499 521. Anderson, J. (1996). The shifting stage of politics: New medieval postmodern territorialities? Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, 133 153. Bartelson, J. (1995). A Genealogy of Sovereignty. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Held, D. (1995). Democracy and the Global Order From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hinsley, E. H. (1966). Sovereignty. London: C. A. Watts and Co. Hyndman, J. (2001). Towards a feminist geopolitics. Canadian Geographer 45, 210 222. Krasner, S. (1999). Sovereignty Organized Hypocrisy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mann, M. (1986). The Sources of Social Power vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Murphy, A. (1996). The sovereign state territorial system as political territorial ideal: Historical and contemporary considerations. In Biersteker, T. J. & Weber, C. (eds.) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, pp 81 120. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Sack, R. (1986). Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shapiro, M. J. (1996). Violent Cartographies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Walker, R. B. J. (1993). Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Weber, C. (1995). Simulating Sovereignty Intervention, the State and Symbolic Exchange. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc/ Globalization and World Cities website.

Space I S. Elden, Durham University, Durham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Space is, in many ways, the key topic of geography. It is probably the most often cited term that gives geography its identity and unifying focus. While biology studies life, and sociology society, geography lacks this specificity, as the etymology of the term would suppose a focus on the world (geo) rather than space. Yet, attempts to redefine geography as spatial science privileged this term, and though criticisms of this position offered alternative ap proaches, they did not fundamentally shift the emphasis from space. Thus both human and physical geographers use the word regularly, but it is frustrating to define and to many appears so diverse as to lack any useful specificity. One of the reasons that space is so difficult to define is that it has many uses and a complicated history. Indeed, it seems incontestable that space is a historical concept, determined by advances in science and debates in philosophy. Many of the initial disciplinary histories of geography tended to obscure differences in how space was thought in order to lend a degree of coherence to the imagined trajectory of the subject. Where space is defined, or perhaps better, assumed, it tends to be un problematically done so as a container for things to exist in, a place where events happen. Others are content to leave these big questions to one side as they pursue more narrowly defined questions within their own specialism. Yet some awareness of these debates is in valuable to a geographer, however concrete the focus of their work. Key philosophical questions that geographers have engaged with include: we experience in space or experience space? • Do What distinction between space and place? • What isis the the between space and time? • Is the world relation in space or is space in the world? •

Space in the Philosophical Tradition The word ‘space’ is derived from spatium, which in clas sical Latin meant a distance or a stretch. It could also mean a fixed distance such as the course in a race – a spatium or a curriculum was a lap in a chariot race. In the late Middle Ages some writers started to use the term as more akin to a container, as a synonym of a particular sense of locus, or place.

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For later writers such as Descartes, what defined space, spatium, was its extension – or stretch – in three dimen sions: length, breadth, and depth. For Descartes this gave rise to a particular determination of the material world as what he called res extensa – an extended thing – and because of this fundamental determination the world becomes accessible to us through the science that best allows us to comprehend it. This, for Descartes, is geometry, which he reconfigures in such a way to enable each point in space to be mathematically determined, and therefore effectively the same as any other. The notion of Cartesian coordinates (x, y, and z) derives from this understanding. Space in these terms becomes more understandable, and therefore controllable, through being understood in such a way. Philosophers since have written about space in a number of ways, though it is interesting that it is much less the focus in itself but rather as one of a pair of terms. This is either because space is paired with ‘time’, or opposed to ‘place’. Space and Time It is tempting to suggest that space is like time in at least one respect. This is St. Augustine’s famous remark in his Confessions, Chapter XIV, that if nobody asks us what it is, we know; yet if we are asked, we do not know. In the philosophical tradition, time has generally been accorded a priority over questions of space. Whether this is because of a belief that while all events happen in time some happen solely at the level of thought and are therefore unplaced, or whether the priority is accorded to temporality and thinking spatially is derived from it depends on the par ticular thinkers. Some suggest that space measurements are ultimately reducible to ones of time, and that therefore time is prior, logically, to space. Often time is looked at as progress, change, and development; space as static, fixed, and merely a container. Kant argued that the senses of space and time were effectively hard wired into our brains that we could not perceive except in space and time. Kant however thought that time was prior to space. For some writers, ideas of the three dimensions of space – x, y, and z – are partnered by a similarly calculated dimension of time, t. Temporal change has long been known to change the dynamics of space – Heraclitus famously declared that you cannot step into the same river twice, since other waters are continually flowing in. In Einstein’s work the relation between time and space is not merely coexistent, but co dependent.

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Space and Place Many writers see a distinction between space and place, in that place is the more experienced, lived form of our encounter with our environment, and space is the more mathematical, abstract imposed view of this. Place in these terms is understood in large part through the body, and our perception of what it moves through and inter acts within. Yet it is worth remembering that many of our units of measure are derived from our body – foot, inch, fathom, and cubit, for instance, and an acre was the amount of land one man and an ox team could plow in a day. Others see that place is to be understood as a more localized way, whereas space is larger and less personal. On that basis place is ‘in here’ and space ‘out there’. Other approaches see that place is more open and dis persed, whereas space is bounded and exclusive. While two things can be in the same place, this is not the case with space, as things take up space, they occupy it. This view, which was certainly held by Descartes, is founded on the claim that the calculative measurement of space is the same both for the volume of objects and the ‘con tainer’ they are within. As the remainder of this article notes, many of the ways in which space is understood within contemporary human geography are closer to some of the traditional understandings of place, and some closer to the more mathematical. Other ways of seeing this are attempts to mediate between the two positions.

Spatial Science The quantitative revolution in geography was often characterized as seeking to reconceive geography as a ‘spatial science’. This was part of a wider development within the social sciences, but saw space as a fundamental variable which conditioned both the social context and the actions of individuals within it. Space is thus the focus, and scientific method the means to explore and analyze it. Within this approach to space, issues of dis tance and arrangement take on a particular priority, alongside direction and connection. The goal of accurate general rules and prediction led to an increase in the objects of study and the development of tools to make this possible. The pursuit of the spatial order that conditioned spatial relations thus becomes important, which requires more than a straightforward view of space as a static box. Objects and events take on an importance in terms of their spatial proximity and relationships. While this was often unquestioning of what space actually was, the use of mathematical methods and quantification tends to lend support to the idea of space as a calculative, measured construct. In these terms, this is strongly influenced by positivism as a scientific approach. Advances in geog raphy more recently, including geographic information

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systems, work on a similar understanding of space. Cri tiques tended to suggest that this either saw space as a separate domain or it had causal properties – separatism or fetishism. In these terms, geographers suggested that other disciplines from within the humanities were more useful in grounding geography rather than the social sciences, or at least the latter with the stress more on the social than the scientific. Structuralist thought approached space from a related perspective. Many structuralist writers, including the anthropologist Claude Le´vi Strauss and the Marxist theoretician Louis Althusser, made great play of spatial language and metaphors in their work. These included terms such as field, terrain, site, and position. Yet they also stressed the question of space, often at the expense of time. Structuralists sometimes claimed that their work was interested in the freezing of time in order to look at things in terms of their relations and structures. This was known as concentrating on the synchronic rather than the diachronic, which examined change through time. The argument was that this was a way of containing temporal change in order to examine the deeper structures of human thought and society. Spatial rather than temporal relations became important in the framing of these structures. It was a way of avoiding the idea that different societies in the world were simply at different stages of development, where they were situated as further along a simple temporal succession. The problem, as many of the structuralists themselves came to recognize, was that this tended to occlude the possibilities of change through time, even within these societies. Later thinkers recog nized that though structures or frameworks exist, these are dependent on knowledge, power, and truth, all things that are historically constructed. In this way, they began the process of thinking questions of temporality and spatiality together.

Ways of Thinking Space Contemporary human geography tends to use the word space in a wide range of ways. While their methodo logical approaches differ in numerous ways from spatial science, the object of inquiry remains. Indeed, the advent of social/spatial (or sociospatial) theory has tended to emphasize the interrelated nature of social and spatial phenomena, suggesting that to think one without the other is to miss an indispensable part of the picture. This stresses the way in which space functions as a constituent element in social processes – not in a purely determinist way, but rather as continually intertwined, made, remade, and making. This is not the spatial fetishism that some geographers have been accused of in the past, where landscape makes people, and spatial variation is un problematically assumed. Social relations are not merely

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spatial relations, but neither is there any way to separate them. These claims suggest that for too long social theory has neglected the spatial aspects of human interaction, while it has generally recognized the historical elements. Many geographers have seized upon Michel Foucault’s suggestion that while the obsession of the nineteenth century was history, the present epoch will be the one of space. Yet, as with Foucault’s work, this development has not been simply to reintroduce an unproblematic sense of space, but rather to recognize the plurality and fecundity of this term. This gives rise to the relation between space and property, with an emphasis placed on the difference between privately owned land and public space. Politic ally, much of the debate about space is related to the notion of territory, from that which belongs to individual states to smaller scale territories of groups, gangs, or individuals. In some of this work there is a link between human and nonhuman geographies. Territory in its modern sense of the land controlled by a state is closely related to the development of techniques of measuring land and controlling terrain. In this respect, territory can be understood as a particularly political way of rendering space, and territoriality as a strategy of humans to control and dominate it. In these terms the question is not so much what space ‘is’, but how ways in which space have been understood have conditioned particular types of human interaction and understanding. These issues are not confined to geography, of course, since space clearly exceeds that disciplinary focus. Physics, philosophy, and art all have sense of space which is important in understanding the changing senses of space. The space of Renaissance art – of linear perspective and representation – for example, was shattered by the fragmented geometries of Cubism or abstract expressionism. Art in this sense was a challenge to form as well as content. Categorizing these different understandings of space can be done in many ways, yet three ways have proved to be particularly influential. These are absolute versus relative space, and the later introduction of a notion of relational space; Henri Lefebvre’s distinction between kinds of space; and the work of Deleuze and Guattari on smooth and striated space. Absolute, Relative, and Relational Space When space emerged as an explicit category of Western thought, it tended to be thought in a way that has come to be characterized as ‘absolute’. This is space as fixed, as a container, as something in which all things happen. This is the space of classical physics, in the writings of Newton, Galileo, and Descartes. Space can therefore be represented as a two or three dimensional grid, imposed over a landscape in surveying or cartography. Each point is

effectively the same in a homogenous expanse, amenable to scientific procedures based on coordinate geometry. Space, as understood in this, is directly understandable through measurement and calculation. This is the view of space that underpins modern science generally, with an emphasis on the arrangement of things or phenomena within space and less on the things or phenomena them selves. Thus, space is built up from points to lines, to planes to volumes. Space, in this absolute sense, fits with the axioms of Euclid’s Elements, giving rise to the term ‘Euclidean space’. This is somewhat misleading, since Euclid’s Greek does not contain a word that is the equivalent of ‘space’, but the term can be understood to mean a view of space that accords with his axioms and postulates. In opposition to this view of space, yet sharing many of its essential elements, is ‘relative’ space. One way to understand this is to recognize that space is not an empty container, but filled with objects and relations. Space is, on this argument, in part dependent on that relation to objects, as it is a positional quality of a world of material things. Relative space can also be based on challenging the fixed geometries of absolute space. This would include the development of multiple geometries that rejects some of the key postulates of Euclid, while re taining a coherency and consistency, and recognizing that the perspective of the observer plays a key role. Spherical geometry, for instance, shows that two parallel lines will meet if laid on a spherical surface, such as the curved space of the globe. Two parallel lines laid north to south do meet at the poles. This has important implications for triangulation as a means of measuring the Earth’s surface and helps to explain the reason for the distortion of two dimensional maps, such as the Mercator projection, which sacrifice shape and area for the ability to plot straight line courses. Notions of latitude and longitude depend both on this, and also on a clear sense of how absolute space allows division and abstract models. When looking at speeds close to the speed of light, Einstein realized that space was related to time, and that space–time is the most appropriate way to see this. Other writers have focused on how space appears dependent on other things. On this view, space and our experience of it is relative to other things – to time, to cost or other economic factors, to social interaction, or the way in which we cognize or perceive it. In these terms, prox imity may not be the same as distance – I am closer, for instance, to the person I am speaking to on the telephone than to the neighbor next door; I have more in common with the other participants on an e mail discussion list, dispersed across the world, than the people in the next town. This can equally be understood as the difference between pattern and process. Leibniz’s dispute with Clarke is a famous instance of a debate between absolute and relative views of space.

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Clarke defended the absolute view of space of Newton against criticisms leveled by Leibniz. Leibniz had many points to make, but crucial to them was that space was not an absolute reality, devoid from any substance, or it would be more real than any substance. Kant agreed with this criticism, and Clarke is generally acknowledged to have had little response to this. Leibniz also argued that motion was not something that could be measured only through space itself, but solely understood through re lation to other objects. Clarke replied that even objects moving in a void were effected by forces, which could not be related to anything else. Leibniz also suggested that direction in space is relative to the things within it – up and down, left and right, and compass directions are all dependent rather than self evident. Space for Leibniz is thus relative, as it cannot be understood solely in relation to the single point, but only in relation to others around it. This challenges some of the assumptions of positivism or empiricism about how we can measure things. Kant attempted to reconcile these positions by suggesting that space, as part of our internal perceptive apparatus, was real enough to be amenable to scientific examination, yet not an attribute of things aside from through their per ception by us. More recently, some of these ideas have been de veloped further, but as relational space. In this sense, space is relational because objects exist only as a system of relationships to other objects. Space is thus seen as the product of interrelations, as constituted by them. Space is a multiplicity, heterogeneous rather than homogenous, plural rather than singular. Space is, therefore, always in the process of making, never finished or closed. Doreen Massey, in particular, has suggested that we should understand space in this way. If the differences between this and relative space are perhaps overdrawn, this is a way to understand space that exceeds the mathematical more generally, that is the space of social relations, metaphorical spaces, spaces of poetry, art and emotion, and dream and aspiration. Relative space is, for some contemporary geographers, too close to the understand ings of spatial science, and the stress on the relational allows them to escape from more narrowly conceived ideas of the relative. It is through practical analyses that spatial issues are seen to be embedded in social relations. Geographies of emotions and the recent emphasis on affect link to these ideas of space in a less confining way. Lefebvre’s Understandings of Space Henri Lefebvre was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, who wrote on a wide range of topics. Al though not a geographer, his work has been widely read by geographers, especially since the 1991 translation of The Production of Space. This was a book he came to write only in his mid 70s, after several decades of work on

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urban and rural sociology, studies of everyday life, and Marxist theory. Lefebvre argued that space was poorly understood and some specificity needed to be introduced. Yet, this was not to propose a fixed, unitary definition. Like other ways of looking at space, and in partial re lation to the work of David Harvey, Lefebvre proposed a dialectical way of thinking about space. Harvey and other writers – notably Edward Soja and Mark Gottdiener – had previously introduced Lefebvre’s ideas into debates in English language geography. Although Soja’s appro priation of Lefebvre was criticized his stress on the es sential spatial nature of social life – the argument of the sociospatial dialectic – and the argument that space needed to be reasserted in social theory had a major impact in geographical work and in related fields such as urban studies. Although Lefebvre took many of his ideas about space from German philosophy, including Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger, he read them through a deep at tachment to Marxist politics and the spaces of twentieth century France. Lefebvre argued that there was un doubtedly a way of thinking of space as physical and material – the spaces of architecture, towns, and nature. This was space as we perceived it in the world around us. He called this ‘spatial practice’, and some have suggested it can be understood as real space. This is the organic, physical space of the world. Lefebvre also argued that there were ‘representations of space’, space as we con ceive of it. This was a mental construct, and would in clude the spaces of maps, of plans, space as geometry, and space as imagined. This tends to dominate ways in which space is thought. Lefebvre therefore suggests that the traditional ways of thinking of space have tended to be concrete or abstract. Lefebvre’s dialectical point is that these two ways of thinking about space are, in themselves, understandable, but that in our everyday lives we encounter space in a way that, while it has elements of both, exceeds their determinations. These he calls ‘spaces of representation’ (the English translation renders them as ‘representational spaces’). This is the social space of lived interaction, the spaces of symbolism and meaning and, in Edward Soja’s term, space as simultaneously ‘real and imagined’. Lefebvre therefore challenges both a crudely materialist analysis and a politically detached idealist one. He sug gests that this lived space is dominated by the tactics of abstraction, and overlays the physical space of the world, imbuing it with meaning. As a Marxist, Lefebvre was particularly interested in introducing this analysis into his historical materialism. Some have suggested that this spatial element makes for a historical and geographical materialism, but this perhaps runs the risk of too much emphasis on the additionality, and not enough on the disruptive introduction. To inject this kind of spatial perspective is simultaneously to

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challenge how we think about time and history, with change through space and time rather than simply his torical progress being one of the results. Lefebvre also claimed that time should also be understood in a lived sense rather than a mechanized or measured way. Lefebvre particularly emphasized the way in which spaces were produced – that is constructed, coded, re coded, and used through a range of practices. For Lefebvre, social space is a social product. These practices were not only confined to material building projects or abstract schemata of town planners, or regional devel opers but also the everyday interactions of people and groups. His analysis therefore not only owes much to political economy, in that space is an economic and social product, with analysis of rent, exchange and use value, and profit, but also exceeds this to develop a more gen eral politics of space. Space and time thus are not neutral, preexisting frames for human events, or the way in which we experience other things. Space and time are produced and shaped through actions and reactions, experienced in themselves. Lefebvre’s notion of social space can also be under stood as lived, embodied space, and so has links to some of the literature on ‘place’. This is somewhat complicated by Lefebvre’s use of the term espace, which, in French, arguably carries a wider range of resonances than the English ‘space’. Many of those meanings would not straightforwardly be understood as ‘space’, and are per haps closer to the English use of ‘place’. Lefebvre rarely used the term space in isolation from some kind of qualifying adjective. Indeed The Production of Space is filled with a number of other spaces – concrete space, abstract space, contradictory space, and differential space. This is an important and neglected point, in that Lefebvre proposes the three part schema only to complicate and historicize it in later chapters of The Production of Space. For Lefebvre the mode of production is important in terms of determining how space will be seen, and he is particularly interested in how capitalism produces space. Smooth versus Striated One final way to think about space is found in the work of the French thinkers Gilles Deleuze and Fe´lix Guattari. Deleuze was a philosopher by training while Guattari was a Lacanian trained psychoanalyst. They wrote exten sively individually – especially Deleuze – and a number of books together, of which A Thousand Plateaus is prob ably the most influential in geography. Deleuze and Guattari suggest a distinction between smooth and striated space. Smooth space is crisscrossed with lines, overlapping and jumbled points in a web of connections. This is space as immense and sprawling, space defined through movement, lines, and trajectories. Striated space is organized, hierarchical and largely

static, channeled, and divided into shapes of various sizes. Politically these can be represented as the globalized world of the third millennium, of far flung points con nected in a network society, nodes in a system; as op posed to the nation state map of ordered Europe, which progressively eradicated the overlapping sovereignties of medievalism, redistributing land to remove almost all the enclaves and exclaves. However, Deleuze and Guattari convincingly argue that smooth space only appears to be free of striation, and that while striated and smooth space can be theoretically disassociated, in practice they continually entwined. This has been useful for some geographers in trying to understand the way in which the smooth space of global networks is imposed over the striated spaces of mod ernity, with nation states still attempting to cling to their sovereignty and territorial integrity in an age of global izing markets and culture and emergent global modes of governance. To use two of their other terms, this is, for Deleuze and Guattari deterritorialization partnered with reterritorialization, the continual making and remaking of spatial relations.

Conclusion In his recent work, Harvey has suggested that in many of the ways geographers operate, we think of space as ab solute, relative, and relational all at the same time. While perspective is important, this does not mean that we can abandon some of the ways in which absolute understandings of space condition our daily lives. Har vey’s point is that contemporary geography may be concentrating too much on the relational and forgetting the concrete and relative; just as the positivism of a previous generation was too obsessed with the absolute and relative. For Harvey, this fits with his views of space as dialectical. Harvey has also attempted to reconcile the absolute/ relative/relational schema with Lefebvre’s ideas, sug gesting that these can be turned into a matrix of mean ings for understanding space. If this perhaps is too neatly dialectical in attempting to reconcile all differences within a confining system, it does point to the ways in which these different ways of understanding space are not mutually exclusive, and it is possible to recognize geographers working with a number of these ideas and frames of understanding today. Many of these ways of conceiving, perceiving, and living space illustrate the unequal dynamics of human society. Space can be understood economically as a form of property, particularly through the notion of land; as a military strategic issue of terrain; and as the political notion of territory. Certain spatial frames are imposed, made to seem obvious and unproblematic, and yet have

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profound impacts on people’s lives, in a variety of ways. If we think about power as creative, and not just repressive, and therefore about the making and remaking of social relations, it is clear that thinking about power requires a thinking of questions of space. Similarly, thinking about space requires an understanding of questions of power, since it is about interaction, determination, and control. In that sense ‘space’ really is at the heart of what geog raphers – both within and beyond the discipline of ‘geography’ – do. See also: Mapping, Philosophy; Marxism/Marxist Geography II; Military Geographies; Phenomenology/ Phenomenological Geography; Philosophy and Human Geography; Place; Positivism/Positivist Geography; Quantitative Revolution; Scale; Territory and Territoriality.

Further Reading Benko, G. and Strohmeyer, U. (eds.) (1997). Space and Social Theory: Interpreting Modernity and Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Bonta, M. and Protevi, J. (2004). Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Casey, E. S. (1997). The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Cloke, P. and Johnston, R. (eds.) (2005). Spaces of Geographical Thought. London: Sage. Crang, M. and Thrift, N. (eds.) (2000). Thinking Space. London: Routledge.

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Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, vol. II. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Elden, S. (2004). Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible. London: Continuum. Gottdiener, M. (1985). The Social Production of Urban Space. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Gregory, D. and Urry, J. (eds.) (1985). Social Relations and Spatial Structures. London: Macmillan. Harvey, D. (2006). Space as a keyword. In Gregory, D. & Castree, N. (eds.) David Harvey: A Critical Reader, pp 270 293. Malden: Blackwell. Jammer, M. (1958). Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics. New York: Dover. Kern, S. (1983). The Culture of Time and Space 1880 1918. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lefebvre, H. (1991). The Production of Space (translated by D. Nicolson Smith). Oxford: Blackwell. Lefebvre, H. (2009). State, space, world. In Brenner, N. & Elden, S. (eds.) Terror and the State of Territory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage. Ray, C. (1991). Time, Space and Philosophy. London: Routledge. Sack, R. (1980). Conceptions of Space in Social Thought. London: Macmillan. Soja, E. W. (1989). Postmodern Geographies. London: Verso. Soja, E. W. (1996). Thirdspace. Oxford: Blackwell. Thrift, N. (2003). Space the fundamental stuff of human geography. In Holloway, S. L., Rice, S. P. & Valentine, G. (eds.) Key Concepts in Geography, pp 95 107. London: Sage. Tuan, Y. F. (1977). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. van Fraassen, B. C. (1970). An Introduction to the Philosophy of Time and Space. New York: Random House, 1970.

Space II R. Kitchin, NUI Maynooth, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Absolute Space Space is understood as a geometrical system of organization (usually Euclidean geometry with x, y, and z dimensions) within which people and objects are located and move through. Here, space is understood as natural, given, essential, and measurable. Cognitive Space Space as mentally constructed. While space per se is absolute in nature, to be able to operate in the world and undertake complex spatial choices and decisions people rely on their ability to remember and think about spatial relations. We might occupy absolute space, but we live in cognitive space. Idiographic Science A form of science that focuses on the individual or the unique, and is illustrated in geography by a case-study approach to people and places. Masculinist Space Feminists argue that both absolute and relative conceptions of space are highly masculinist in character, underpinned by a masculinist rationality and reason that seeks to be autonomous, context free, and objective. Space in these terms is masculinist in conception, something that can be rationally and scientifically understood and mastered. Metaphorical Space A kind of relational space wherein the production of space is articulated through metaphor. Nomothetic Science A form of science that involves the search for abstract universal principles, in the case of geography, spatial axioms, and laws about the world. Ontogenesis A form of ontological thinking that focuses not on what something is, but rather how something becomes. In so doing, it rejects the notion that objects or concepts are ontologically secure – fixable, definable, and knowable – instead arguing that their ontological status is contingent, relational, and unfolding. Ontology The branch of philosophy that studies the nature and operation of reality or being. It concerns the set of specific assumptions about the nature of existence underlying a theory or system of ideas, beliefs about what exists and can be observed, and therefore known. Paradoxical Space The notion of paradoxical space recognizes that much about the production of space is unrepresentable and unknowable, given that it is

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diversely produced by multiple actors and actants who are often working in contradictory ways. Relational Space In contrast to absolute space, relational understandings of space conceive space to be contingent and active, as something that is produced or constructed by people through social relations and practices. Space is not an absolute geometric container in which social and economic life takes place, rather it is constitutive of such relations. Spatialization A process whereby attributes with no spatial qualities are given spatial form. For example, attributes of size or number might be transformed into attributes of distance, or proximity or territory, producing a metaphorical space that can be visualized and analyzed spatially. TimeSpace The dyadic conjoining of time and space that recognizes that they are mutually constituted, and it therefore makes little sense to conceive of them separately. However, time–space extends beyond the idea of four-dimensional space–time (a four dimensional version of absolute space) to recognize a multiplicity of space–times that are relational, contingent, dynamic, and paradoxical. Virtual Space The space within the realm of technologies, such as the Internet, that are entirely immaterial, consisting entirely of ones and zeros.

Introduction Space is a key geographical concept. Along with other core concepts such as place, landscape, scale, mobility, nature, and environment, it helps define the discipline as one that is explicitly spatial in its focus and thinking. Unsurprisingly then, geography is often described as a spatial science. As such, while human geographers are interested in social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental issues and undertake historical ana lyses, they do so cognizant of the role of space in shaping the world around us and using theories and methods that illustrate why space and spatial processes matter. This article details how thinking about space has evolved significantly since the 1950s, focusing in particular on how theorists have conceptualized the ontology of space. To illustrate the differences between the various ways of thinking about space, an example of how cities are understood within different ontological frameworks is used.

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Absolute Conceptions of Space Implicitly Absolute Space Interestingly, given the centrality of space to geo graphical work, prior to 1950s, it is fair to say that beyond the works of theoretical physics (such as works of Newton, Liebniz, and Einstein) and branches of phil osophy little conceptual work had been undertaken concerning the ontology of space. Geographers, who might have been expected to be most interested in such philosophical thinking, were more concerned about spatial processes across and within space, rather than the nature of space itself. Space was simply understood as a container which things happened; space was implicitly absolute in nature having fixed dimensions across which things could be mapped. As such, while not formally recognized by those working at the time, conceptually space was understood as natural, given, and essential, and spatial processes were teleological and measureable. There was no need to seriously think through the ontology of space, as it was beyond question – it was simply the spatial dimensions in which life took place. As a consequence, geography as a discipline was highly descriptive detailing spatial patterns and processes and the interrelationships between places. Underpinning this kind of geographical research was an exceptionalist belief that geography and its method were unique, being an ideographic science (fact gathering), as forwarded by influential geographers such as Richard Hartshorne, rather than a nomothetic (law producing) science. Epi stemologically empiricist, research was then largely analytically naı¨ve, consisting of the accumulation of facts as evidence for generalist theories. From this perspective, cities were understood as unique, but related entities, and analyzed by mapping patterns of different variables, such as commerce, transport, and types of residence, and by charting the functional relationships between cities and regions. Absolute Space From the early 1950s, a number of geographers started to challenge the status quo in geographical research by arguing that the discipline needed to become more sci entific in its thinking and method. For example, Frederick Schaefer, in a paper often cited as the key catalyst for the adoption of scientific method in human geography, argued that ‘‘geography has to be conceived as the sci ence concerned with the formulation of the laws gov erning the spatial distribution of certain features on the surface of the earth’’ (Schaefer, 1953: 226–249). For Schaefer and others, this meant explicitly recasting the implicit ontology of space using the language of science. Here, space was defined and understood in absolute terms as a geometrical system of organization (usually

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Euclidean geometry with x, y, and z dimensions) within which people and objects are located and move through. Spatial processes operating within this space could be measured objectively and scientifically, then analyzed using quantitative techniques and spatial statistics. Highly essentialist in formulation, space is effectively reduced to the essence of geometry, its properties natural and given. For converts to this new way of thinking, geography became the science of spatial laws wherein spatial relations could be explained through functional equations and could be modeled and simulated. Although few of these converts referred to the philosophy of positivism in their work, it is clear that many of spatial science’s central tenets are drawn loosely from this school of thought. This mode of thinking became very popular during the 1960s with the development of spatial laws and models with respect to many phenomena and re mains the cornerstone of much spatial science and geo graphical information science (GISc) research. From this perspective, cities have an absolute system of geometry that directly shapes spatial processes and behavior and are complex systems of interlocking spatial relationships and laws which can be calculated, modeled, and predicted. Cognitive Space During the 1970s, the concept of absolute space was complemented with that of cognitive space. This per spective argued that while the space in which people live is absolute in nature, it is not perceived or cognized as such. Rather, to be able to operate in the world, to undertake complex spatial choices and decisions, people rely on spatial understandings of places, their ability to remember, and think about spatial relations. Con sequently, human spatial behavior and, therefore, most spatial processes of note are based on cognitive space – space as mentally constructed. As such, behavioral geographers and environmental psychologists argued that while we might occupy absolute space, we live in cognitive space, and therefore we should study the interrelationship between the two. For them, cognitive space is ontologically abstract, representational, and in tangible; it is a product of the mind. Epistemologically, there are two dominant schools – analytic and phe nomenological. The first takes a classic psychology approach seeking to scientifically measure and analyze the properties of cognitive space – its components and its geometries – and to model how it approximates to, and is mapped onto, the absolute space of the world. The latter is more concerned with the sense of place and peoples’ beliefs, values, understandings, and attachments to par ticular spaces. For behavioral geographers, cities may well consist of absolute spaces, but spatial behavior and many fundamental spatial processes are founded on

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cognitive space and how people think spatially about the city.

Relational Conceptions of Space Relational Space Also developing from the 1970s onward, as a more explicit counter to the ontology of absolute space, were the more relational ontologies of space. These ontologies differed markedly to the concept of relational space as defined in physics and were first explicitly articulated within human geography by radical geographers (e.g., Marxist and feminist scholars) who were challenging the ideas and ideology underpinning spatial science. These theorists argued that spatial science was highly reductionist and that absolute notions of space emptied space of its meaning and purpose and failed to recognize the diverse ways in which space is produced. Space, it was argued, was not a given, neutral, and passive geometry, and essentialist and teleological in nature. Instead, space was conceived as relational, contingent, and active, as something that is produced or constructed by people through social re lations and practices. Space is not an absolute geometric container in which social and economic life takes place, rather it is constitutive of such relations. In such thinking, it is recognized that the spaces we inhabit – the built environment, transport systems, and the countryside – do not simply exist, preformed and awaiting meaning. Rather they, and the spatial relations they engender, are produced – made, shaped, managed, and given meaning by people; they are the products of diverse material and discursive practices that in turn actively shape social relations. Conceived of in these terms, an everyday space like a football stadium can be seen to be both a physical form constructed by certain agents and institutions for particular ends as well as a space given meaning through myth, language, and ritual: its use and occupation is shaped both by its material form and the immaterial meanings that coalesce around it. Cities are thus composed of relative spaces, produced in contingent and relational ways by people. Epistemo logically, what this relational conception of space de manded was a shift from seeking spatial laws to focus on how space is produced and managed to create certain sociospatial relations. This relational understanding of space is perhaps most fully developed by Henri Lefebvre in his book The Pro duction of Space. As Merrifield notes, Lefebvre sought to develop a ‘unitary theory of space’ that would provide a ‘‘rapprochement between ‘physical’ space (nature), ‘mental’ space (formal abstractions about space), and ‘social’ space (the space of human action and conflict)’’ (Merrifield, 2000: 167–182). He suggested that these seemingly different types of space are actually of the

same substance and force, each produced through the entwining of three elements, which he determined were key in the making space: spatial practices, representations of space, and spaces of representation (or represen tational space). Spatial practices refer to the processes, flows, movements, and behaviors of people and things that can be perceived in the world. Representations of space refer to the discursive media (e.g., images, books, films, maps, plans, and so on) which serve to represent the world spatially in order to make sense of it and to think through what is and might be possible. These represen tations work ideologically to legitimate or contest par ticular spatial practices and as such do not simply represent space but rather produce space. Spaces of representation are the spaces that are produced by the body in everyday practice; the spaces lived and felt by people as they weave their way through everyday life. The relations between these three elements are complex, and analytical priority cannot automatically be given to one element over the others, but in combination they bind together Lefebrve’s three forms of space (physical, mental, and social) to produce space. Crucially, the re lationship between the three elements varies over time and with context, as Lefebrve demonstrated by trans forming Marx’s periodization of capitalism into a history of spatial production, thus showing how different con figurations produced different spatial relations across time and place. In so doing, Lefebvre’s work implies that the main struggle in society is one of spatial conflict, of contesting the production of space. Masculinist and Paradoxical Space From the early 1980s, feminist geographers have been making important interventions into both disciplinary practices and the foci, theorization, and praxis of human geography. Geographers such as Doreen Massey, Susan Hanson, Jan Monk, Linda McDowell, and Gillian Rose and others have highlighted that what counts as geo graphical knowledge and who produces such knowledge is skewed by the fact that the discipline has been highly dominated by men. As such, they argue, geographical theory and praxis is highly masculinist in character, largely underpinned by a masculinist rationality and reason that seeks to be autonomous, context free, and objective. As a consequence, they suggest that our understanding of space is similarly masculinist – space is something that can be rationally and scientifically understood and mastered. In contrast, Gillian Rose in Feminism and Geography argues that space is never fully knowable as we can never achieve an all encompassing, exhaustive God’s eye view of the world, only views from particular positions that are differentially shaped. She forwards the notion of para doxical space – of an understanding of space that reflects

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the researchers’ viewpoint, while at the same time is sensitive to the myriad ways in which space is experi enced and produced by others, and acknowledges that there is much about the production of space that is unrepresentable. For her, this involves producing relational geographies that recognize the complex, entangled, and often contradictory power geometries that produce space, rather than constructing grand, all encompassing theories that seek to ‘tell it like it is’ and, in so doing, silence different viewpoints (as with, for example, much Marxist analysis). As Rose notes: ‘‘space is multidimensional, shifting and contingent. It is also paradoxical, by which I mean that spaces that would be mutually exclusive if charted on a two dimensional map – centre and margin, inside and outside – are occupied simultaneously’’ (Rose, 1993: 140). Space from this per spective is simultaneously knowable and unknowable, representable and unrepresentable, produced by complex and often contradictory forces to produce a ‘‘precarious conceptual geometry of the non Euclidean type’’ (Rose, 1993: 141). In such a view, city spaces are diversely produced and understood and their analysis requires the careful uncovering of its paradoxical nature. Metaphorical Space Metaphorical space is a particular kind of relational space, most often articulated in disciplines beyond geography, especially literary and cultural studies. It became a popular way to conceive of space from the 1990s onward. Here, space and its production are seen to take metaphorical qualities that are far removed from absolute conceptions of space. So, for example, the pro duction of city space is seen akin to a text that is written and read (city as a text), as organic and living entity (city as a body), as a massively complex assemblage of nuts and bolts (city as a machine), as a network of flows and fluxes (city as a network), and so on. Such metaphorical understandings of space seek to detail the diverse nature of space with respect to its constitution, meaning, func tion, and complexity that is not always easily captured or expressed in other articulations. In other words, meta phor is used to try and articulate the paradoxical nature of space – to provide a shape to explain complex geographies. Virtual Space More recently, with the development of Internet tech nologies and the advent of cyberspace, spatial theorists have sought to think through the nature of virtual space. Often considered as aspatial (spaceless and placeless) by many commentators, as many geographers have demon strated, cyberspace is inherently spatial and possesses diverse spatialities. Cyberspace consists of a diverse collection of interlinked domains. Some of these domains

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are explicitly spatial in nature with direct geographic referents (e.g., virtual models of a geographic location), some are explicitly spatial in nature without a geographic referent (e.g., virtual worlds and multiuser dimensions (MUDs)), some have real world referents but no explicit spatial form/attributes (e.g., a list of names, a Web page), and some have no or little geographic referents or spatial form/attributes (e.g., computer file allocation tables). While the latter two lack formal spatial qualities, they are often given spatial form through a process of spatialization, that is, a spatial structure is created through the conversion of defined attributes into spatial attributes (e.g., size to distance/proximity or territory) producing a metaphorical space that can be visualized. All forms of virtual space, however, are very different in nature to geographic space being entirely immaterial, consisting entirely of ones and zeros, produced through code. Such spaces are free to possess geometries and forms impossible to recreate in geographic space. What this means is that virtual spaces can possess very chaotic geometries that lack Cartesian logic being multidimensional and noncontinuous, where ‘travel’ between domains is nonlinear and rhizomic; every location being each others’ next door neighbor. Spaces can be both territory and map, with space itself also the means of navigation such as with hypertext in web pages. From this perspective, cities are complemented with virtual spaces of information, interactions, and transactions that can be mapped onto geographical space in diverse ways. TimeSpace So far, the discussion has focused exclusively on space. Yet, everyday life occurs in both time and space. For some geographers, it therefore makes little sense to think of time and space as two separate categories as the two are inherently mutually constitutive. They sug gest we should think not about time or space but of TimeSpace. The interlinking of time and space in con temporary geography has its roots in the work of Torsten Ha¨gerstrand and his notion of time geography, developed initially as part of his doctoral research, completed in the 1950s, and continued throughout his lifetime. Ha¨gerstrand was interested in patterns of settlement, migration, and innovation diffusion over time, often at an individual level, and how they could be understood, modeled, and simulated. For him, it was important to place spatial changes into a temporal context in order to map how patterns had evolved. This was not an act of simply producing historical geographies, but of pro ducing explicit time space paths of movement of people, objects, and ideas – literally mapping in four dimensions (x, y, z, and time). This contrasted with much other quantitative research at the time which tended to focus

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purely on analyzing spatial processes and patterns with out placing them fully in a temporal context. Just as thinking about space has evolved, so has thought concerning the interlinking of space and time. For Ha¨gerstrand, these were two interlinked but separate variables (hence the hyphen often used to join them – time space or space time). For some contemporary thin kers, they are two sides of the same coin (hence the lack of a hyphen to denote they are dyadic – mutually consti tuted). In their book TimeSpace, Jon May and Nigel Thrift argue that thinking about time and space as separate categories tends to lead to one being prioritized over the other. This has negative consequences because a priori tization of time produces a ‘debilitating historicism’ that reduces space to a neutral backdrop and a prioritization of space leads to debilitating ‘spatial imperialism’ that over emphasizes space at the expense of time. Yet, time and space work in conjunction with each other – everything happens at some time in some place – and so time and space need to be conceptualized as conjoined: TimeSpace. For them, this is not simply thinking of things as four dimensional space time (a kind of four dimensional absolute space), but of recognizing a multiplicity of space times that are relational, contingent, dynamic, and paradoxical; that our experiences and understandings of TimeSpace are shaped by timetables and rhythms, disciplining regimes, instruments and devices, and vari ous discourses. What these produce are a heterogeneous set of TimeSpaces that are complex, sometimes contra dictory, and which need to be carefully mapped, as they demonstrate through a discussion of time space com pression. Most analyses of time space compression argue for a significant speeding up and shrinking of the world post Industrial Revolution due to advances in transport and communications. In contrast, they highlight how time space compression was uneven (across the globe, class, race, etc), contradictory (just as some things speeded up, others slowed down), worked at different rhythms, and how other technologies had significant impacts on TimeSpace, such as power, light, cinema, and so on, to restructure in multiple ways, rather than accelerate TimeSpace. From this perspective, geog raphers need to examine the timespaces of cities, tracing out the various heterogeneous rhythms of daily life.

Ontogenetic Conceptions of Space All of the conceptions of space outlined above are unified through the examination of the ontology of space, wherein they explore ‘what space is’. More recently, a group of scholars have begun to challenge such an ontological position and to develop and forward onto genetic conceptions of space. In so doing, they change the central question of enquiry from ‘what space is’ to ‘how

space becomes’. Space (and everything else in the world), they argue, is not ontologically secure – a fixable, de finable, knowable, predetermined entity. Rather, space is always in the process of becoming; it is always in the process of taking place. Space, in these terms, is a prac tice, a doing, an event, a becoming – a material and social reality forever (re)created in the moment. Here, space gains its form, function, and meaning through ‘practice’. Space ‘emerges’ as a process of ontogenesis. As Marcus Doel has pointed out, from this perspective, space can be seen as a verb rather than a noun, with him suggesting that the term ‘space’ might better be replaced by ‘spacing’ to better capture its ceaseless production. These ideas have been extended to other core concepts underpinning spatial thought, such as scale, place, nature, and land scape, recasting each within ontogenetic terms (chal lenging the ontological security of the concept itself, and rethinking each as emergent in nature). Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life sought to move beyond theories centered on represen tation and behavior to consider ‘practices’ that are con stitutive of both. In particular, de Certeau (drawing on Foucault) was interested in how people live within, negotiate, and challenge circuits of power and the ‘proper’ order of space as reproduced by dominant elites such as the state and corporations. Here, space is an outcome of the complex interplay between discursive and material strategies that seek to reproduce ‘‘places in conformity with abstract models’’ (de Certeau, 1981: 29) of scientific rationality and political economy, through persuasion, seduction, coercion, domination, intimi dation, violence, and so on, and resistive tactics that seek to undermine such citational practices by ‘‘manipu lat[ing] events in order to turn them into opportunities’’ (de Certeau, 1981: xix); for example, avoidance, organ izing protest, transgressing social norms, and so on. de Certeau understood tactics as performative, as emerging unconsciously within a context, so that as individuals ‘‘move about, their trajectories form unforeseeable sen tences, partly unreadable paths across a space’’ (de Certeau, 1981: xviii), where a trajectory ‘‘comes into being, the product of a process of deviation from rule governed y practices’’ (de Certeau, 1981: 5; original emphasis). Individuals actualize spatial possibilities, making space exist as well as emerge; they invent and transform space; they create a ‘‘mobile organicity, a sequence of phatic topoi’’ (de Certeau, 1981: 99; original emphasis). This actualization is citational, ‘‘making credible the simulacra produced in a particular place’’ (de Certeau, 1981: 189). de Certeau explains: Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities. On this view, in relation to place, space is like

Space II the word when it is spoken, that is when it is caught in the ambiguity of an actualisation, transformed into a term dependent upon many conventions, situated as the act of a present (or of a time), and modified by the transformations caused by successive contexts. y In short, space is a practiced place. Thus the street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into space by walkers. (de Certeau, 1981: 117; original emphasis)

In other words, for de Certeau space emerged in context through practices. From a related perspective, Gillian Rose draws on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity to argue that: ‘‘space is a doing, that does not pre exist its doing, and that its doing is the articulation of relational perform ances y space then is not an anterior actant to be filled or spanned or constructed y [i]nstead, space is prac tised, a matrix of play, dynamic and iterative, its forms and shapes produced through the citational performance of self other relations’’ (Rose, 1999: 248). To Rose, space itself, and thus its production, is brought into being through performativity – through the unfolding actions of people. She thus argues that this produces a ‘radically unstable notion of spatiality’ that allows for a critical analysis of space as ‘‘extraordinarily convoluted, multiply overlaid, paradoxical, pleated, folded, broken and, per haps, sometimes absent’’ (Rose, 1999: 247). In other words, she suggests that a performative understanding of space allows for a nuanced analysis that appreciates in dividual differences across place, time, and context, and the paradoxical, contradictory, and complex nature of sociospatial relations as lived and expressed by people. Drawing on the ideas of Butler, Latour, and Deleuze, among others, Nigel Thrift has developed the notion of nonrepresentational theory. Thrift suggests the world emerges through spatial practices that are often unre flexive and habitual, and that are not easily represented and captured because they are unconscious and in stinctive; they are performed without cognitive and rational thought. These human practices are com plemented by other actants – animals, objects, machines, circuits, networks – that do diverse work in the world. In particular, Thrift is interested in how new sentient technologies automatically produce space, that is, bring space into being without human interference. Dodge and Kitchin have extended this work by con sidering how software does work in the world – pro cessing information, making decisions, controlling technologies that shape peoples lives in a myriad of ways (how software augments, mediates, controls domestic appliances, transport systems, communications technol ogies, healthcare, work environments, utilities, financial networks, and so on). Software, they suggest does not simply help produce space, it transduces it – transforms it from one state to another. They argue that space is

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constantly brought into being as an incomplete solution to ongoing relational problems – enabling people to meet or work or play, getting from A to B, etc. For them, this means that software is helping to transduce different formations of space into being. Two such spaces are what they term code/space and coded space. Code/spaces are spaces dependent on code to transduce them into being, wherein the relationship between code and space is ‘dyadic’ – that is, without code the space would not come into being as intended. For example, checking in areas at airports are now dependent on software systems to function – the old manual way of checking in has been discontinued for security reasons. If the software crashes, there is no other way of checking passengers in and the space is produced not as a checking in area but as a waiting room. Coded space, on the other hand, is where a transduction is mediated by code, but whose relationship is not dyadic – software mediates the solution to a problem, but it is not the only solution. For example, a PowerPoint presentation transduces the space of a lecture theater, but if the computer crashes the space continues to be produced as a lecture theater, although the talk might not be as effective as it might have otherwise been. The ceaseless production of space articulated by these theorists can be illustrated in many ways. With respect to spatial form, it is clear that the world around us is not static and fixed. Instead, spatial forms are constantly being altered, updated, and constructed through the interplay of complex sociospatial relations in ways that alter, in often subtle and banal ways, the spaces we live in. At a macro scale, there are new local, regional, and national development schemes that are enacted daily to transform and regenerate built environments, transport infrastructures, and ‘natural’ landscapes. For example, modifications in road layout, new buildings and infra structure, additional and reorganized public transport provision, new zones of business and housing, land management schemes such as drainage or irrigation, and so on, that alter the physical landscape and time–space relations of places. At a more micro scale, infrastructure is modified, repaired, redesigned, and so on so that streets and rooms are always in a process of being refashioned and remodeled and spatial layouts rejigged. For example, streets are dug for cabling, shop fronts updated, shop interiors redesigned and maintained, trees are planted, buildings painted, grass mowed, litter dropped and cleaned up, and so on. In other words, the material fabric of space is constantly (re) created through spatial prac tices that vary in their pacing, so some changes are more immediately noticeable than others. As processes of erosion and entropy at abandoned buildings demonstrate, however, all places are in the course of change, slowly mutating to another state. Similarly, the function of spaces are not static but alter with time (e.g., seasonally – tourist destinations;

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daily – day and night time economy) and the use of space is negotiated and contested between individuals and groups. Spaces thus have multiple functions, and through the daily flux of interactions, transactions and mobilities are always in the process of being made dif ferently. For example, Trafalgar Square in London functions as somewhere to meet, to have lunch, to chat, to visit museums, to gather for protests, to party, to take tourist photos, to travel across, to feed pigeons, to catch a bus or tube, to sunbathe, to people watch, and so on. It is a space in flux, constantly being created in the moment as a collective manufacture composed of hundreds of recursive, interconnected relationships between people and place. Trafalgar Square does not simply exist, fully formed – a still landscape. It is endlessly remade, ceaselessly reterritorialized. Likewise, the meanings associated with spaces shift, ever changing with mood, action, memory, events, and so on. Again in relation to Trafalgar Square, the meanings inscribed on that location vary as a function of how the space is used (as tourist, or Londoner), how the viewer interprets Nelson’s Column and the surrounding build ings (as visually stimulating scenery or imperialist cele bration), the social background and attitudes of a person, that person’s memories and understandings of the square, and so on. Similarly, meanings attached to home, work, buildings, and routes mutate over time. How space is related to, and the spatiality that engenders, is therefore never static, but emerges, varying over time and across people and context. Drawing the examples above together, it should be clear that Trafalgar Square (and indeed the notion of what Trafalgar Square is) is always in the process of taking place – its form, function, and meaning is ever shifting across people, time, and context. Its reproduction as Trafalgar Square appears to be relatively stable, because it is maintained as such through a diverse set of discursive and material practices, including street cleaning, stone repair, policing, traffic management, his tory lessons, reading guide books, viewing postcards, sitting on steps, splashing in fountains, and so on. In other words, Trafalgar Square is constantly remade through repeated, iterative practices enacted by people and things. These practices are citational, in that they end lessly, but imperfectly, cite the previous moment and thus give the appearance of coherence and continuity. Trafalgar Square then is something that happens rather than something that is. Cities emerge ceaselessly through multiple, overlapping spatial practices.

Conclusion Space, far from being simply the unquestionable back drop to everyday life, is open to various different

ontological conceptualizations. Since the 1950s, geog raphers along with others have developed a number of different ways to think about space with relative and ontogenetic understandings seeking to replace absolute conceptions. This article has outlined a number of these ways, but it should be noted that beyond geography, theorists of cosmology and physics, and of theology and philosophy, have also continued to produce experi mental, observational, and theoretical reflections on space and time. It is fair to say that the conceptions of space outlined, from implicit to ontogenetic, are today all in use by geographers around the world. For example, absolute conceptions of space still predominate in spatial science and GISc and relative conceptions of space are popular with radical and feminist geographers. While new con ceptual thinking is evolving all the time, as some geog raphers seek ever more sophisticated ways to think about and analyze the world, older ideas persist rather than simply being replaced. What this means is that space remains a fertile concept for contemporary philosophical thinking and debate. See also: Human Geography; Place; Scale.

Further Reading Amin, A. and Thrift, N. (2002). Cities. Boston, MA: Polity Press. Bunge, W. (1962). Theoretical Geography. Sweden: Lund Studies in Geography, Royal University of Lund. Curry, M. (1995). On space and spatial practice in contemporary geography. In Earle, C., Mathewson, K. & Kenzer, M. (eds.) Concepts in Human Geography, pp 3 32. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. de Certeau, M. (1981). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2000). Mapping Cyberspace. London: Routledge. Dodge, M. and Kitchin, R. (2005). Code and the transduction of space. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95(1), 162 180. Doel, M. (1999). Postructuralist Geographies: The Diabolical Art of Spatial Science. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Gatrell, A. (1983). Distance and Space: A Geographic Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Golledge, R. G. and Stimson, R. J. (1997). Spatial Behavior: A Geographic Perspective. New York: Guilford Press. Hagerstrand, T. (1967). Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Haggett, P. (1965). Locational Analysis in Human Geography. London: Arnold. Hartshorne, R. (1939). The Nature of Geography. Lancaster: Association of American Geographers. Kitchin, R. and Blades, M. (2001). The Cognition of Geographic Space. London: IB Taurus. Lefebvre, H. (1972/1991). The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage. May, J. and Thrift, N. (2001). Timespace: Geographies of Temporality. London: Routledge. Merrifield, A. (2000). Henri Lefebvre: A socialist in space. In Crang, M. & Thrift, N. (eds.) Thinking Space, pp 167 182. London: Routledge.

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Rose, G. (1993). Feminism and Geography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rose, G. (1999). Performing space. In Massey, D., Allen, J. & Sarre, P. (eds.) Human Geography Today, pp 247 259. Cambridge: Polity.

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Schaefer, F. K. (1953). Exceptionalism in geography: A methodological examination. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43, 226 249. Thrift, N. and French, S. (2002). The automatic production of space. Transactions of Institute of British Geographers 27, 309 335.

Space-Time J. D. Gatrell, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN, USA E. W. LaFary, The University of Auckland, Auckland, NZ & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Biography Formation The concept of biography refers to the interactions between structure and human agency and how those interactions shape the lives of individuals and determine the collective geography of places. Chorology The study of the spatial distribution of people, phenomena, or other characteristics and how the distribution can be used to create a ‘synthesis’ of a place or region. Space–Time Compression The phenomena of diminishing the relative distance between people, places, or infrastructures that is the result of changing technologies and/or social change. Structuration A theory of social organization that recognizes agents (or people) interacting across space and over time with other agents within a given collection of existing social structures. In turn, agents simultaneously modify or influence social structures within a given space–time configuration. Structure–Agency Debate During the 1980s, a great deal of intellectual energy was focused on the politics of micro- and macro-level explanations – in essence geographers were attempting to situate social theory at either the local (agency) or more global (structure) scale. The structure–agency debate contributed to the development of a new middle ground known as structuration. In the process, geographers began to address not only issues of scale – but (re)define the relationship between time and space.

Introduction Time complicates geography in a fashion similar to the way in which geography, or more accurately space, com plicates the natural and social sciences. Ironically, time is the primary social construct that unites the sometimes disparate worlds of physical and human geography insofar as geographers investigate the changing landscape and the ways in which humans interact with or alter the natural environment and/or order the political, economic, and social worlds. Consequently, the challenge for geographers is to (re)conceptualize the inherent relationship between chorology and chronology. By leveraging the interaction between time and space, geographers create synoptic ac counts of the world, as well as the interdependencies of its

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people, regions, places, and landscapes, in both real and imagined spaces. In this article, the historical development of key concepts associated with space–time will be examined including diffusion, time geography, place construction, and technology. Additionally, the article will examine the potential for rearticulating the space–time relationship as a unifying theme within the discipline – particularly as space–time issues impact geographic in formation science (GIScience). Finally, the article will examine contemporary debates surrounding space–time that increasingly challenge the discipline’s definition of space as a physical attribute and the resulting space–time geography.

Diffusion Geographers interested in the cultural landscape and the diffusion of new ideas, species, and other physical/social phenomena recognized the relationship between time and movement across space. This work was pivotal to the development of a ‘time’ informed discipline as it bound early regional geographies with similarly scaled histories to construct new syntheses of the natural and physical world. As the following paragraphs illustrate, the manner in which the landscape, regional and quantitative tradi tions incorporate time and space–time varies and con tinues to inform contemporary conceptualizations of space–time within the discipline. Cultural Landscape: A Human–Environment Interface Geography is primarily concerned with the society– environment interface. While the definition of the interface and the myriad environments (social, physical, and even virtual) of geography investigations are increasingly complex and at times disjointed, the rela tionship between human beings and their natural environment has been a primary concern of human geography. Indeed, much of contemporary human geography finds its genesis in investigating this essential dynamic and can be traced to the early works of the Berkeley School. The Berkeley School – which was dominated by the influential work of Carl O. Sauer, as well as his students – emphasized the impact of human agency upon the natural environment. Specifically, this collection of researchers explored the changing dynamics of the landscape over time and the role of humans as

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agents of change. In the process, geographers began to sort out geographies of diffusion and established a new culture of geography that was inherently bound in both space and time known as the cultural landscape. By in vestigating and dating artifacts in the cultural landscape, these researchers began to tease out the relationship between space and time within the context of the spatial diffusion of innovation insofar as innovation was under stood to be cultural practice. Regional Geography Within geography, areal differentiation – more com monly referred to as the ‘regional concept’ as it came to be embodied in the work of regional geographers – served as the empirical foundation for much of the dis cipline’s academic legitimacy throughout the twentieth century. Fundamentally, regional geography treated space as a timeless commodity that could be observed, cataloged, and described. In the process of cataloging space and drawing regional boundaries, the simple chorology of early regionalists acknowledged time but did so in a fashion that was decidedly historical. While the regional paradigm recognized certain people mi grated to a region over time or an industry emerged, the primary concern was (and is for those few individuals still performing research in this paradigm) who or what was there at the time of observation. By that, we mean to suggest time – as a variable – was not conceptualized. In fact, Richard Hartshorne – recognized by most geog raphers as the most prominent regionalist in the United States – was mindful (even insistent) that regional geography was not history. For this reason, the region was a static feature with items, people, and phenomena to be observed. Put succinctly, regional geographies offered well defined ‘slices’ of space–time – and thus failed to interrogate change as a ‘process’ situated in and con textualized by both space and time. By neglecting time, the relationship between society and physical systems, regional geographies obscured the human–environment interface and observed conditions were frozen in place and time. As a result, contemporary readers of regional geographies published in the 1940s or the 1970s would be left with the misguided impression that regions exist today as they did then. Conceptually, change over time and across space were in some respects the enemy of the regional concept as they underscored the primary weakness of traditional regional geography in that re gions might become more similar or more different in the future. As a result, time challenged the wisdom of simple empiricism of the region – and insofar as the cultural landscape approach began to ask questions that sought explanations – and would eventually give way to a new explanatory approach that would come to dominate the discipline for nearly two decades.

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Modeling Diffusion: A Quantitative Approach While the notion of the cultural landscape would emerge as the dominant theme of the Berkeley School, the dynamic relationship between social and physical sys tems and how these relationships change over time and across space would serve as the foundation for a great variety of geographic research in future years. More importantly, within the context of this article, the work of these early human geographers coupled human and physical geographies in space and time under the rubric of innovation and in the process established a new human geography of innovation. By focusing on innovation and how ideas, concepts, and practices move across and change the landscape over time, the earlier geography of the 1920s would emerge as an explanatory science in the 1950s. Like all sciences, the premium on explanation led to the development of sophisticated (to be read complex) and elegant (to be read simple) statistical models in the 1950s and 1960s. As in earlier years, diffusion of ideas, peoples, and phe nomena were dominant themes of early quantitative geography. Early on geographers recognized the simple explanatory power of distance and space relative to the diffusion of phenomena from an initial point of origin. Building on the works of other social scientists, the primordial research focused on the diffusion of ideas from urban centers to the hinterland and matured to include examinations within and between urban hier archies. Likewise, geographers were using diffusion models to understand migration patterns of people, lan guage, and characteristics. Yet, the emphasis on modeling, methods, and abstractions of space as embodied in the simple geometries of distance tended to alienate the temporal dynamics of sociospatial processes. That is, time while certainly an interesting and informative facet of innovation was little more than the ‘x axis’ extending to infinity upon which spatial diffusion occurred and hence an external factor that could not be fully engaged within the context of a theoretical geography and the then emerging field of regional science. By the late 1960s though, quantitative geography’s overemphasis on simple metrics began to obscure the very interactions and dynamics at the core of geography’s disciplinary identity – the human–environment interaction. Indeed, a small collection of geographers began to openly question and engage the interaction between time and space and began to assert that ‘time geographies’ should be investigated.

Time Geography The reunification of space and time within the discipline, referred to as ‘time geography’, began with the collective work of Torsten Haagerstand. Influenced by the field of

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human ecology, time geography evolved in the 1960s from earlier quantitative efforts at modeling diffusion and the recognition that both innovation and diffusion are contextualized processes that are simultaneously bound in space and time resulting in spatially and historically distinct diffusion patterns. In many respects, time geog raphy was an initial step toward repeopling quantitative geography. It was this conceptual reunification of people as agents within human geography that forms the bed rock of time geography. By repopulating human geog raphy, time geographers provided the impetus for a more detailed construction of time and space within and across the social sciences – and these principles serve as the foundation for the emergence of new social theories and conceptualizations of historical geography. Ha¨gerstrand’s Ideas Ha¨gerstrand, a proponent of geography’s quantitative revolution, began to recognize the inherent complexity of spatial modeling and proposed the existence of the so called ‘space–time prism’ through and within which all actors and structures exist. The space–time prism facilitated the visualization of what Ha¨gerstrand termed space–time paths. Implicit to the model are restrictions placed upon individuals as they interact with and (re) shape the places/spaces/persons within their domain. According to Ha¨gerstrand, ‘prisms’ account for and define the activity space of individuals. Within prisms, the activities of individuals are limited by three factors: authority, capability, and coupling. Authority refers to social constraints that limit the movement of individuals or groups. For example, the social constructs of citizen ship or class may serve to limit movement across national borders or urban spaces, respectively. Yet, time geog raphy recognized that interactions would occur beyond the structured boundaries, if permissible. In contrast, capability refers to the physical limitations of everyday life. Indeed, the spatiality of everyday life may be limited by commute times, household responsibilities, or other factors that limit the spatial extent of activities. Finally, coupling is the temporality of grouped interaction (e.g., the number of hours one works or the time spent in queue for a coffee) within and across individuals or groups. Based on these three limiting factors, the model charts the prisms, paths, and stations of everyday life. In concert, prisms, paths, and stations form an interconnected as semblage of paths at stations within the prism which form ‘webs’ of social interaction producing both real and imagined landscapes. Ultimately the model suggests that time and space are limited; a postulation that is at the heart of contemporary debates by geographers, as well as others on the nature of time and space or space–time within the social sciences (see Figure 1). Nonetheless,

the works of Ha¨gerstrand and others advanced theore tical conceptualizations of the daily interactions of people, places, and societal structures.

Biographies and Geographies: Structuration The explosion of research across the social sciences into the role of human agency in shaping social systems gave rise to a vast literature on ‘structuration’. The structure– agency debate as it came to be called resulted in a new accounting of how space and time interact to produce unique social structures and ultimately new geographies. This section will also examine space–time as it relates to place construction. Within geography, time geography served as the initial salvo in an aggressive attempt at repopulating human geography with people as agents of social change within a quasi quantitative framework. One mechanism for understanding human agency in a systematic way was to creatively borrow from the critiques of logical positivism, particularly structuralism and humanism, to understand how people acting within localized (or even global) structures create ‘places’. For the humanists, place is the product of human agency and for the structuralists place represents the concretization of social structures at the local scale. Through time the two divergent understandings of the lived experience in place would be reconceptualized under the new theory of structuration. Structuration – as defined by sociologist Anthony Giddens and later translated by geographers – recognized that ‘place’ is a dynamic scene which cannot be ad equately frozen in time and is constantly (re)created by human agency and whereby human agency is constantly (re)created by social structure. In this sense, Giddens built on the earlier work of Ha¨gerstrand to construct a theory of structuration that asserts that people influence the cultural, social, and physical landscape and that these landscapes in concert shape the geographies of indi viduals. In other words, structuration was the confluence of actions and processes that produce and reproduce individual belief systems, institutions, and structures and in the process construct an agency–structure dialectic from which everyday geographies are derived or more accurately unfolded. Furthermore, structuration includes the idea that rules and norms of society are both creative and inhibitive in regards to human agency. The processes of structuration are not static. They occur at both multiple spatial scales and various points in time and therefore act on one another through the regular inter action of individuals, as well as institutions. And it was structuration’s interest in the changing geographies that result from the interaction between people and

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Sociospatial bundle

Station

Figure 1 The time space model.

institutions that produced local, regional, and global change over time that contributed a reconceptualized regional geography. As a result, a great deal of geographic research examined how local communities and local decision makers interacted with more global structures – such as economic restructuring. Still other geographers were interested in how local politics create a distinct sense of community and place distinct from neighboring cities or even nearby neighborhoods. While structuration was a popular approach through out the 1980s and appeared to capture the sociological complexities of the structure–agency dialectic – two prominent critiques were eventually levied by geog raphers. First, structuration could not be explicitly linked to the personal scale of individuals. As such, structuration does little to truly afford people agency per se and/or related individuals to local structures. Second, structura tion was ahistorical and in the here and now – or at the very most could only be used to understand contemporary change. More importantly, Gidden’s innovative theory was insufficient to capture the importance of history on placemaking – specifically, the theory was unable to cap ture uninterrupted space–time flows.

Place, Biography, and History: New Regional Geographies To address the deficiencies of structuration, geographers interested in place construction and the historical de velopment of place began to situate people and their biographies (personal narratives) within known social structures to understand the role of agency in producing and reproducing local (and even global) social structures. For these historical time geographers, charting individual paths and institutional projects were essential to under standing places. As such, the everyday biographies of people (and how these biographies are shaped by con temporary institutions) could be used to unlock the hidden dynamics of place over time. The basics of biography formation – as it would be known and articulated by Allen Pred – borrowed from Haagerstand’s imagery of the path asserted personal everyday tasks have both spatial and temporal charac teristics and the collection of these activities are neces sary to complete institutional or societal goals. In addressing the role that biography plays, biography is defined as uninterrupted individual paths through time

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and space which is at all times and across all spaces (or in space–time) constantly subject to multiple constraints. The formation of individual biographies and its simul taneity with the already constructed and continuously modified physical environment is inextricable. That is to say that as one travels through the physical environment, their thoughts are inherently linked to action. Con sequently, individual thoughts, feelings, and actions are derived from the memories acquired through a lifetime of their daily paths intersecting with other paths and institutional projects. In short, individuals make decisions based upon the influences of intersecting paths on a daily basis as defined by already existing power relations and institutional projects or much more succinctly, by means of chance. It is the intersection of a collection of individual paths that construct a shared sense of place and history. The interactions of human agency and the ‘natural’ landscape – and the landscape’s constituent elements – are so deeply embedded in the process of becoming that extrication is not possible. These elements are the product of all previous interactions among locations, humans, laws, norms, mores, and things within the physical environment. The result being that alteration of both natures (nature and outer nature) are directly linked to localized struc turation and a myriad of relevant power structures. Those power relations, which are both historically contingent and place specific combine, dialectically, ensuring that citizens must accept the power of an institution or project over themselves. As place becomes, individual and collective biographies are formed as normality overtakes the exotic granting the authority to no longer question one’s inter actions along daily and life paths. Biographies are shaped by imprinting their experiences upon the material and physical landscapes. In addition to localized actors upon the development of biography, as well as the sense of becoming place are extralocal actors. A key determinant of whether or not a place will be altered by noninhabitant entities or individuals is the degree to which they are or are not embedded within that place. Specifically, ‘who is making the decisions at/for the local level?’ is a question which should be explored. Obviously, if decisions are made by local actors then the biography will retain its current trajectory of becoming. Throughout the late 1980s and through the 1990s, structuration emerged as a dominant theme in new cultural and regional geographies. In contrast to the descriptive approach of earlier researchers, ‘new’ geographers were building on the work of Pred and others to understand (and more importantly explain) the persistence of culture in place and over time. For example, the historical geographies of Gillian Rose actively explored how a shared history and contemporary politics can be used to construct and pre serve a sense of identity and self sufficiency within East London’s Poplar district. Put simply, shared histories and

the sustained politics of local places that are derived from the compounded actions of human agents within an existing structure simultaneously reproduce sameness and differ ence and preserve ‘place’. As such, the geographies of Rose, as well as other new cultural and regional geographers moves beyond simple geographies of the way places ‘used’ to be and use space–time to explain observed social conditions and the persistence of place. In this sense, place, as Alan Pred asserts, is a historical contingent concept and process.

Planes, Trains, and WiFi? Technology and Space Technology plays a crucial role in altering the landscape that geographers investigate. Indeed, technology func tionally and literally reconfigures how people interact with each other, the firm (e.g., workplace), their com munity, and larger social structures. As the popular author and New York Times columnist, Thomas Fried man, often notes, technology has functionally removed barriers between people, countries, and continents. While proponents of his ‘world is flat’ paradigm envision tech nology as a great egalitarian equalizer, the reality is that it – like all capitalist structures – is inherently contra dictory and produces an abundance of uneven social relations. While it is debatable whether technology (particularly information technology) will make global structures more equitable, it is undeniable that rapid technological change continues to alter the landscape and redefine the everyday lives of people in local places around the globe. Technology–Space–Time Compression To understand the transformative role technology plays in geography, it is essential to refer to quantitative geo graphy’s emphasis on distance and geometric primitives. When considered within the context of distance and the relationship between distance and time, technology con tributes to space–time compression. That is, technology has the capacity to make space (e.g., distance) ‘virtually’ irrelevant insofar as the distance between two places as measured in convenience (e.g., time) is decreased. The wider debate surrounding the role of technology in producing space–time compression focuses on not only compression (e.g., reducing the functional signifi cance of space) but also convergence and distanciation. A (re)conceptualization of space–time is necessary as technological innovation continues at a tremendous pace and these innovations are transforming how people, firms, and institutions interact in meaningful ways at increasing distances instantaneously and with limited disruptions. By facilitating time–space compression and compressing space–time (which are related but distinct), technology

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reconfigures the geography of everyday life. To begin the process of understanding these changes, recent con ceptual modifications of space–time and related appli cations are presented in the following paragraphs within the context of situated narratives, networks, and place. This section will begin with advances in transportation and will close by focusing on the space–time implications of new social spaces – specifically the Internet – and information technologies inclusive of GIScience. Transportation The distance that personal space could incorporate with the addition of the automobile radically altered the landscape of towns, cities, regions, and states. Resulting in the requisite of (re)conceptualizing one’s personal space, the extent of one’s daily paths, professional space, but most profoundly – urban morphology. Cities were no longer developed with the pedestrian as the center of concern. As the automobile became an ubiquitous aspect of contemporary society, the needs of combustion trumped those of the sustainable commuter. No longer did citizens have the option of ignoring technology; instead, a dialectical relationship, which continually unfolds, was borne between automobiles and humans, impacting the urban morphology, biography, and more generally becoming. As people and their cars spend in creased time together, a codependence develops as the car becomes an extension of its operator. Informatics, ergonomics, and artificial intelligence, each influence the ability for technolgies to be extensions of the user. Things interacting and in instances anticipating the actions of their human operator have transformed things distinct from humanity into expressions of human agency. It is this extensibility afforded by the seemingly perpetual evolution of technology that allows for cyberspace to become a new social space rather than a technology limiting social intercourse. The Ubiquity of Space, Time, and Power in the Age of the Blogosphere: Human Agency in Action Geographies of time and space and the role technologies play in creating new sociospatial structures – such as the Internet – are rapidly changing the ways in which people interact with each other, engage in economic enterprise, maintain social structures, and reconfigure social (and even physical) space. More importantly, the proliferation of new complex and user friendly technologies have afforded individuals seamless access to new worlds, economic opportunities, and sociospatial relationships, as well as empowered and legitimized individual critiques of dominant social structures. From the geographer’s perspective, as Paul Adam asserts, technology is reducing

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the friction within, between, and across both physical and virtual space and the result is to broaden the scale, scope, and impact of individuals on social structures. Insofar as technology is increasingly ubiquitous in the developed world and new notions of extensibility (the capacity for individuals to overcome the friction of physical, virtual, and social distance), the role of the individual in pro moting social change has and will continue to evolve as new technologies converge and access to these technol ogies expands. While the utopian values (e.g., more consumer choice, access to information, telecommuting, and so on) are often attributed to the Internet, the promise is only now being realized. However, the Internet’s most dramatic development has been in the area of politics and current events. Specifically, technology has expanded the space for ‘other’ voices from other ‘places’ and in doing so afforded new legitimacy to those alternative voices vis a` vis increased access, technology integration, and media convergence (the integration of telecommunications, print, video, and electronic resources). Conceptually, the Internet has centered traditionally marginalized voices, rescaled narratives, and transformed local politics into global forces. Functionally, the World Wide Web has proven to be an effective ‘real time’ mechanism for mobilizing spatially disparate groups vis a` vis com plex technical and social networks to affect real social and political events at a variety of scales (e.g., scale jumping). One of the most visible mechanisms for social change on the Internet is the ‘blog’. Initially conceptualized as either recreational or reflective activities akin to daily journaling, blogs have become highly specialized spaces that focus on everything from current events to athletics. Since the mid 1990s, blogs have evolved from simple online diaries to hybridized chronologies of everyday life that include political analysis, edgy commentaries, and interactive editorials that allow authors to communicate directly with their readers. In the process of special ization, blogs became a recognized vehicle for news delivery – particularly stories (and gossip) situated at the margins of the traditional print and broadcast media. By the turn of the century, blogs had become a powerful force in the public discourse that enabled writers, jour nalists, and would be journalists to forward controversial positions that were often difficult to place in more commercial outlets through the space of new media. Simultaneously, the blogosphere is able to forward new unheard stories from writers and individuals who authored daily diary entries from around the world, in combat zones and transitioning regions. While these stories do not enjoy the visibility of celebrity bloggers like ‘Wonkette’ Ana Marie Cox or Andrew Sullivan, these personal web diaries provide new texture to the complex geographies of people in local places embedded in very

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real global conflicts, facing the economic uncertainty of globalization, or struggling to promote social change in their local communities. Beyond the blog, converging technologies from file sharing to instant messaging and activities (e.g., online equities trading, shopping, etc.) are transforming global and local flows of data, restructuring capitalism, and redefining normative values. Yet, as the geography of cyberspace continues to evolve it is becoming apparent that new hierarchies and sociospatial relationships are emerging which both challenge and reinforce existing social structures. For example, the blogosphere has become a highly articulated space comprising conserva tive, progressive, and radical networks. In concert, these networks have developed sophisticated strategies for moving news, opinions, or YouTube downloads from the realm of new media to the mainstream media to forward their ideological agenda. In this sense, a new – albeit alternative – collection of gatekeepers (which has sim ultaneously re visioned and reproduced existing social relations) has evolved and these new social relationships are shaping and defining the structure and flow of information at all scales. Beyond the blog, geographic research on the space– time implications of the Internet has already demon strated that information technologies have altered the everyday time geographies of individuals in key ways. For example, the Internet relaxes space–time constraints on individuals in urban areas. Specifically, the web pro vides new intervening opportunities to shop online, communicate, and obtain information thereby offering individuals new opportunities and flexibility to access urban resources at different times and locations. Of course, the ability of cyberspace to relax space–time constraints is uneven and determined by a variety of access issues (to be discussed later). In addition to pro viding new opportunities in cyberspace that relax real world constraints, geographers are also investigating ways in which cyberspace is informed by and informs contemporary conceptualizations of space and place, redefines cartography, and affords ready access to a myriad of opportunities to visualize a great number of space–time conceptualizations ranging from Internet maps of real time instant messaging activity to the dizzying world of Second Life. In many respects, cyberspace has defined new spaces and places that are responsible for redefining institutions at multiple scales. Specifically, the convergence of tech nology facilitates the globalization of local events and the ability of local agents to challenge traditional social structures. Going forward, it is the challenge of geog raphers to unlock the complexities of new media con vergence (and technological convergence more broadly); chart the new paths of virtual space, and identify the constraints that structure these new geographies.

Moreover, the capacity for the Internet (and no doubt a successor technology) to facilitate new and exciting space–time interactions will continue to expand and redefine the landscape of time geography.

Time as Unifying Force: GIScience, Human and Physical Geographies This section examines emerging discourses on space– time, specifically as it relates to GIScience and the potential for time to be recast as a dominant theme that unites an increasingly fragmented discipline. While one of geography’s greatest strengths is its ability to spatialize virtually any phenomenon, human geography’s aggres sive and expansive spatiality has created a cleavage be tween physical and human geography and more recently aided in the development of GIScience (which examines both human and physical geographies). Since human geography’s spatial term has not been paralleled in physical geography, it can be argued that many poten tially rich areas of enquiry – particularly human– environment interactions, public policy, or applied geography – have not been fully realized. Given this reality, recent ‘space–time’ advancements in the field of GIScience may have the potential to facilitate new linkages between human and physical geography – and in doing so strengthen the relationship between GIScience and the discipline. In short, space–time has the potential to reintroduce the physical world (broadly conceptual ized) to human geography and repopulate the world of physical geography. Time in GIScience The role of time and history in contemporary geography is often a difficult and complicating factor for any researcher. In the case of GIScience, time proves espe cially problematic as it – unlike space – is a difficult variable to model in a digital landscape. While certainly geographers can chart change over time in the form of simple land use and land cover change models, the exact role of time – as a factor or force – is unknown. Instead of trying to capture the relative impact of time as a process, time is reduced to a simple variable that can be frozen, dissected, and examined as a snapshot in dependent from events on either side of its chronological ordering. This response is not unexpected as it mirrors the earlier work of quantitative geographers who em braced the time series. Yet, the Swedish school’s time geography demonstrated that time was indeed an im portant factor to account for when performing geo graphic research. By rejecting that phenomena or activities can be independent events, time geographers asserted that phenomena (particularly social action) represented an accumulation of earlier interactions with

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people, spaces, and institutions over both time and space. While geography was radically altered by the Swedish concept of time, data collection proved problematic (at multiple scales, particularly the individual) and limited in depth enquiry.

Temporal GIS and Spatiotemporal Modeling Geographic information system (GIS) and the field that would become GIScience has long understood the importance of accounting for and modeling space–time elements. Like earlier quantitative geographers before them, the reality of developing a temporal GIS proved especially difficult and collecting data at the individual scale was frustrated by software and hardware limitations. Due in part to these limitations, initial efforts at building a temporal GIS adopted the ‘snapshot’ approved that assessed change over time. Yet, this approach – as men tioned earlier – fails to capture the complexities of space–time and the degree to which both space and time structure human interactions in the social and physical world. By the late 1990s though, hardware improvements, new data structures – specifically object oriented data bases, enhanced commercial software, and emerging concepts from computer science were beginning to lay the foundation for more dynamic spatiotemporal mod eling. In concert, these advancements were enabling GIScientists to visualize and model human and physical activity in both space and time. More recently, wireless technologies coupled with location aware technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS) are enabling real time data collection at the level of the individual. Today, GIScience and the related field of visualization are well positioned to realize the ambitious goals of Ha¨gerstrand and the Swedish School. For example, technology now permits the visualization and analysis of daily paths through space–time. The ability to model space–time now allows researchers to ask (and answer) new questions and opens up entirely new research possibilities. As Mei Po Kwan’s research illustrates, GIScience models that interrogate space–time and asso ciated constraints have the capacity to yield new insights into the everyday lives of individuals and cities. In the process, Kwan’s analysis of gendered urban opportunities problematizes traditional ‘locational’ models that tend to focus on distance and the less time sensitive variable of commute times. Still other researchers have proposed using a range of novel techniques such as cellular au tomata to situate people in space–time. Likewise, GIS cientists are interrogating the intersection between virtual and physical space and how the interaction of these two produce new space–time prisms that simultaneously situate individuals locally in physical space and globally in virtual space.

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As these examples underscore, space–time research in GIScience is pushing the boundaries of both human and physical geography. While the above examples are primarily human oriented, advancements in visualization and space–time are also transforming geomorphology, climatology, and nearly all subareas of physical geog raphy. However, GIScience has the potential to unite human and physical geography insofar as spatiotemporal GIS applications can be used to investigate human– environment interactions. For example, GIScience has the capacity to model human responses to natural haz ards such as flooding or hurricanes and in the process contribute to the formation of more efficient and effective emergency planning. In any event, GIS technologies will no doubt empower geographers to (re)conceptualize space–time as it relates to the morphology of the land scape, as well as the effects of human agency and their related biographies on the environment.

The Problem(s) with Space–Time Time geography and space–time are contested concepts within and outside the discipline. While many geographers acknowledged the importance of time and space–time and still others have diligently worked to develop method ologies for unlocking the everyday geographies of peoples and places at multiple scales and around the world; time geography in general has been widely critiqued as un important, reductionist, imprecise, and even ethnocentric. Over time though, these same critiques have led to im portant methodological advances including new method ologies for charting space–time and the integration of new technologies to more accurately measure movement across space and over time. Likewise, critiques have led to con ceptual advances – like structuration and more nuanced understandings of place. Indeed, the critiques have prompted geographers to reconsider the meaning of space and the historical context that informs our working def inition of it. And in the process, contemporary human geography has expanded our understanding of space–time in unique and creative ways and challenged the historical underpinnings of space and space–time. Perhaps the most vexing facet of the space–time debate is the degree to which time or temporality is (or should be) embedded within the geographer’s notion of spatiality. That is, how essential is time – as a concept – to the investigation of human or physical geography. Accordingly, Doreen Massey asserts time is an essential construct and process for geographers to investigate as conceptualizations of space and place change over time and are inherently linked to the specific historical geographies from which meanings are attributed in both the physical and human ‘worlds’. For this reason, if time is a unifying theme for the discipline, then interrogating

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the relationship between time and space is an essential task. However, the exact interaction between space and time and the role of space–time in geographic research is unclear insofar as contingents within the discipline of geography – aided by the expansion of GIScience – embrace natural science methodologies that have the potential to minimize the significance of space–time and the historical perspective. In recent years, this debate within geography has been increasingly centered on the evolving relationship between geography, other disciplines, and interdisciplinary subfields. While time geography has strengthened the connection between geography and the social sciences, particularly sociology, its impact on the natural sciences has been less distinct. For this reason, critical discussions of the themes of space–time and change over time and space in fields such as geology, geomorphology, and geoarchaeology have been more or less absent from the literature. For example, how might space–time be used to more fully understand – not necessarily explain – geologic processes? Likewise, can space–time be used to forge new linkages between discip lines and illuminate the unique contributions of geography to the subfields of geomorphology and geoarchaeology? That is to say, the interconnectedness of spatial and tem poral characteristics in geomorphology, geoarchaeology, and even biogeography serve to underscore the geography in each. Or alternately, to what degree have allied subfields developed increasing aspatial research agendas rooted in the scientific rigor of ‘hard’ sciences that serve to marginalize both the spatiality and temporality of each. Having said this, the potential exists for subfields in allied disciplines to demonstrate how space–time can effectively be used to understand fluvial systems, landscape ecology, and human settlement – and in the process unite physical and human geography. It is essential for both human and physical geographies to constantly reconceptualize space–time and develop an appreciation for historiography. The Differential Velocity Issue, Technology Gaps, and Other Complications The efficacy of time geography – as conceptualized by the Ha¨gerstrand ‘Swedish School’ – has been questioned from a variety of perspectives. First, modeling space–time is problematic as it focuses almost exclusively on ‘phys ical’ interactions. As a result, time geography assumes shared access to social and physical infrastructures that facilitate known and discrete interactions. Unfortunately, as critics note, the concepts presented in the prism model are exceedingly diffuse. Indeed, what exactly constitutes a coupling/bundling, intersection, or path? Do these basic concepts truly represent the inherent complexity of paths through space–time or is the notion of a single ‘path’ itself too simplistic? Similarly, are the accumulated influences of intersections and bundling in the real world

equivalent to virtual intersections? What types of inter actions produce change and which interactions serve to reproduce existing structures? As these questions suggest, the reductionist and physical nature of time geography poses a range of methodological complications relative to accuracy and emerging technologies. More importantly though, the meaning (or significance) of time geography hinges on the answers to these very real concerns. A second and salient critique of time geography and emerging geographies of time (particularly cyberspace) are rooted in differential velocity (i.e., the absence of uniform velocity). That is, access to key technologies and infrastructures is highly uneven and how (and at what rate) people across the street or around the globe proceed through physical and virtual space differs greatly. For this and related reasons, the most elegant models and col lection of potential path trees (e.g., a map of potential interactions) are unable to account for the reality that billions of people do not and will not reasonably have access to key space compressing technologies such as the Internet, airplanes, or even cars. Moreover, many con ceptualizations of space–time are decidedly Western in orientation and subject to charges of ethnocentrism. Consequently, the ability of blogs to capture everyday geographies in places around the world is highly suspect. Further, space–time (and its inherent linkage to tech nology and related infrastructures) is situated in a his torical and spatial context and may or may not be relevant to the experiences of individuals in developing contexts. Therefore, space–time is an inherently con textual concept informed by an individual researcher’s own positionality. Within the context of geography as a ‘science’, the situational and subjective nature of space–time limits its adoption and legitimacy across the discipline. However, differential velocity and access alone are not merely infrastructure issues. Time geographies are also derived from more global processes, flows, and associated power relations. The result of these more global processes has been the creation of what Doreen Massey calls a ‘power geometry’ that is inherently uneven as a result of time–space compression and rapidly revised notions of space. In short, the instrumental (or technological) facets of globalization are creating new and ever shifting collections of social relations, institutional contexts, and social divisions of space from which an increasing col lection of people are (or may be) absent, disengaged, or in Massey’s more dramatic terms ‘imprisoned’. In a very practical sense, the power geometry of globalization and its spatial and temporal dynamics has contributed to not only uneven geographies at the global scale but also at the local scale. Hence, the geometries of decision makers, followers, and the disenfranchised are produced, repro duced, and deepened in place as a result of the interaction between time and space. In this sense, space–time and

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time geography reside in a highly contested landscape facilitated by technology (e.g., time–space compression) and characterized by a new social division of space. As these critiques suggest, scientific geography’s emphasis on uniformity, specificity, and measurement continue to place constraints on the ability of time to inform the geographer’s understanding of space. Yet, the strength of time geography, the elegance of the prism model, the efficacy of social networks, or the utility of the temporal may not be their collective ability to replicate the real world experience – but their challenge to social scientists (and natural scientists, too) to imagine the world in space–time and the diverse collection of social, physical, and virtual forces that influence human decision making and alter the landscape.

Conclusion Nearly a century after the Berkeley School conceptual ized the interconnected nature of human agency and the physical environment – arguably widening the gap be tween geography’s physical and human realms – GIScience is allowing the reunification of geography’s two primary research areas by incorporating facets of human ecology and time geography to (re)conceptualize space–time. Likewise, continued efforts to interrogate the meaning of physical space, imagined space, and the spatiality of post structural thought have made time geography a fertile ground from which geographers can reconceptualize the relationship between chorology and chronology. Theoretical debates such as post modernism, post structuralism, structuration, and actor network theory have enabled the researcher to study and consequently more fully understand the dialectical relationships among human agency, biographies, societal projects, the physical environment, and the roles of lan guage and text. Technology is redefining space–time as space–time concomitantly redefines the tools of technology and the manner in which geographers materialize the world. These modifications in the land scape of geographical thought ensure the debate is far from over as to how ‘best’ to define the spatiotemporal characteristics central to geography. Thus, both space and time and the resulting space–time need to be regularly

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(re)conceptualized to ensure appropriate research methodologies, as well as for the development of theo retical concepts for both the social and physical sciences. A new way forward, as it turns out, is not altogether new. See also: Critical GIS; Diffusion; GIS and Society; GIS, Mobile and Locational Based Services; Positivism/ Positivist Geography; Space-Time Modeling; Spatial Science; Structuration Theory; Time and Historical Geography.

Further Reading Adams, P. (1995). A reconsideration of personal boundaries in space time. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 85, 267 285. Adams, P. (2005). The Boundless Self: Communication in Physical and Virtual Spaces. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Brabyn, L. and Skelly, C. (2006). Modeling population access to New Zealand hospitals. International Journal of Health Geographics 1, 3. Giddens, A. (1986). The Constitution of Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hagerstrand, T. (1967). Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kwan, M. (1999). Gender and individual access to urban opportunities: A study using space time measures. The Professional Geographer 51, 211 227. Kwan, M. (2002). Time, information technologies, and the geographies of everyday life. Urban Geography 23, 471 482. Kwan, M., Janelle, D. and Goodchild, M. (eds.) (2003). Special Issue: Accessibility in Time and Space. Journal of Geographical Systems 5(1). Langran, G. (1992). Time in Geographic Information Systems. London: Taylor & Francis. Lenntorp, B. (1999). Time geography: At the end of its beginning. GeoJournal 48, 155 158. Massey, D. (1999). Space time, ‘science’ and the relationship between physical geography and human geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24(3), 261 276. Massey, D. (2005). For Space. London: Sage. Miller, H. (2007). Place based versus people based geographic information science. Geography Compass 1, 503 535. Pred, A. (1977). The choreography of existence: Comments on hagerstrand’s time geography and its usefulness. Economic Geography 53(2), 207 221. Pred, A. (1984). Place as historically contingent process: Structuration and the time geography of becoming places. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 74, 279 297. Sykora, L. (1994). Local urban restructuring as a mirror of globalization processes: Prague in the 1990s. Urban Studies 31, 1149 1196.

Space-Time Modeling M. Yuan, The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Conceptualization A mental process to abstract and generalize reality or a problem domain. Data Models or Database Models A formalization of objects, attributes, and relationships in information systems. Georelational Database Model A way to organize spatial data by linking sets of spatial objects (i.e., points, lines, and polygons) and attribute tables to characterize geography. Geospatial Lifelines The space–time path of an individual’s continuous movement with a sequence of time-stamped locations in geographic space. Object-Oriented Database Model A way to organize spatial data in which a data object encapsulates both spatial and nonspatial properties. Ontology A specification of a conceptualization for knowledge sharing and reuse. Representation A surrogate for reality in physical, graphical, or digital forms.

Introduction Space and time are two fundamental dimensions in geography. As early as 1961, geographer James M. Blaut promoted the idea of space as the basic organization of geographic concepts and ‘‘every empirical concept of space must be reducible by a chain of definitions to a concept of process’’ (Blaut, 1961). His argument repre sents a classic space centered view of geography and a process based approach to unite space and time. Indeed, uniting space and time is essential to understanding geographic worlds as space–time interactions drive change and movement in geography. Space–time modeling, in the context of information science, refers to spatiotemporal information constructs of reality and organizations of these information con structs. Specifically, geographic information science (GIScience) approaches to space–time modeling aim to capture essences of space, time, and geographic things manifesting themselves in space and time in support of information analysis and mathematical modeling. To be explicit, space–time information modeling may be used to distinguish GIScience approaches from mathematical approaches. While there is only one reality, information

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constructs and their organizations can be perceived in many distinctive ways from different perspectives. GIScience approaches to space–time modeling in volve three main issues: conceptualization, represen tation, and data modeling of geographic space over time. Conceptualization is a cognitive process that abstracts and generalizes meaningful properties of space and time as well as identifies geographic entities or features that are significant to problems on hand. At the highest level of distinction, conceptualization of space and time can be absolute or relative. The Newtonian view considers space as a container populated with objects, whereas Einstein rejected the idea of empty space. In Einstein’s Relativity, space–time exists not on its own but as a structural quality of a field. The absolute versus relative conceptualizations of space and time correspond to object and field based representations of reality. Geography, on the one hand, exhibits discreteness as many geographic entities can be conceptualized as individual wholes, such as countries, lakes, wells, and roads. On the other hand, continuous properties are also apparent in many geographic fields, such as elevation, soil moisture, population density, and census tracts. In some cases, individual wholes, such as lakes, can be transformed conceptually into a continuous field, such as lakeness. Temporal extensions to object and field based representations have helped enhance geographic information system (GIS) abilities to repre sent complex geographic features and their relationships beyond what can be recognized in static object or field only perspectives. Conceptualization processes determine geographic entities and relationships significant to particular space– time concerns. Subsequently, representation processes address how space and time should be framed in a GIS and how geographic entities and relationships should be coded digitally. Representation involves creating a surrogate for reality, and in the context of GIS, a digital surrogate. Representation of space and time is a complex, multidimensional issue, and existing spatiotemporal databases encompass only limited properties of space and time. How geographic entities are represented in a GIS determines the type of queries that can be supported and the accuracy of GIS solutions. Any entities that cannot be represented are considered nonexistent in the GIS. Results from GIS analysis are consequently limited to what can be represented in the system. Simply put, if a GIS is incapable of representing three dimensional (3 D) features, the GIS cannot support analysis of groundwater

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flows or movements of people in a high rise building. In a nontemporal GIS, temporal objects and relationships are considered nonexistent. Following representation, space–time modeling in volves the development of formal models that specify coding schemes for entities and relationships. In addition to considerations of objects, fields, entities, and relation ships, formal models of space and time detail specific data structures, attribute sets, data types, and data linkages. Georelational database models that link tables of geom etries and attributes to represent geographic entities have been popular in GIS applications. Later object oriented data models have attained much attention to address the need to encapsulate geometry and attribute in structuring data objects as well as hierarchical relationships among data objects. Modern GIS data models tend to be object relational, taking advantages of both relational and ob ject oriented approaches in computation and integration. Specifications of data models are expressed in a data modeling language, such as entity–relation diagram or more recently Universal Modeling Language (UML) with computer aided software engineering (CASE) tools. In addition to space, space–time data models are further categorized depending upon the way and type of time incorporated in the space–time model. GIScience approaches to space–time modeling address issues on conceptualization, representation, and data modeling of space and time. The following dis cussions highlight the major developments since the late 1980s, except for algorithmic development.

Incorporating Time into Database and GIS Time can be categorized as world time (also referred to as ‘valid time’ when the fact of interest is true in the modeled reality), transaction time (also referred to as ‘database time’ when a database fact is current in a database), and user defined time (i.e., an attribute defined by the user). A database without transaction time or valid time encoded is a snapshot database. If transaction time is encoded, transaction relations support rollback databases in which every transaction relation can be mapped to exactly one system supported transaction time. On the other hand, valid time relations support historical data bases because a valid time relation maps to exactly one system supported valid time. When a database has both valid time (i.e., the intrinsic time aspect of a fact) and transaction time (i.e., the extrinsic time aspect of a fact), we have a bitemporal database. Bitemporal relations are considered ‘fully temporal relations’ because when combining historical relations and transaction relations, the database enables incorporation of both intrinsic and extrinsic time aspects of facts and therefore provides the full story.

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Temporal database systems and temporal GIS share common thoughts in research developments. Spe cifically, both communities apply various time stamped approaches to handle temporal data. Time stamps may correspond to world time, transaction time, or user defined time. Temporal database systems mainly apply time stamping techniques to incorporate time into relational or object oriented databases by time stamping tables, attributes, or values. In parallel, temporal GIS adopts the snapshot model by time stamping individual data layers, the space–time composite model by time stamping individual attributes associated with a spatial object, and the space–time object model by time stamping individual values with attributes of a spatial object (Figure 1). The space–time composite model and space–time object model face similar challenges in spatiotemporal data management. Because both models only allow spatial objects with uniform properties, a given attribute can only have one value at the given time for a specified spatial object. However, temporal properties may change to only a portion of the spatial object. Both models require reconfiguring a new set of objects (or atoms in the case of space–time object models) to account for the partial changes to a former spatial object. Consequently, the space–time composite model must assign spatial identifiers to the new set of spatial objects. Keeping temporal lineages of spatial objects before and after a spatial reconfiguration is not a trivial task, especially when the study area becomes more and more fragmented over time. The space–time object model is able to overcome the issues related to tracking temporal lineage of spatial objects and is useful for recording cadastral histories, for example, but it cannot represent movement, dispersion, and complex geographic processes.

From Space–Time to Geographic Dynamics Representation of change, movement, dispersion, and other geographic processes requires thinking geographic dynamics in space–time modeling. Change and movement are observables of geographic dynamics. Without change or movement, geographic dynamics arising in space and time will go on without being noticed. Brian Berry’s geographic matrices of places and characteristics are effective means of spatial representation to support place to place comparison of geographic variables, and when arranged in a temporal sequence for a set of places, geographic matrices can facilitate study of changes in spatial association and areal differentiation. In analyzing possible dimensions that geographic dynamics can manifest, Goodchild et al. proposed a

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Figure 1 ‘‘Similar developments in incorporating time into database systems and GIS. Panel (a) time-stamped tables; (b) timestamped layers; (c) time-stamped tuples (rows): an ungrouped relation; (d) time-stamped attributes (columns): space time composites; (e) timestamp values (cells): a group relation [11, 60] represents a period starting at t11 and ending at t60; and (f) time-stamped space time objects: the spatiotemporal object model. Part (c) from Snodgrass, R. and Ahn, I. (1986). Temporal databases. IEEE Computer 19(9), 35 42; part (d) from Langran, G. and Chrisman, N. R. (1988). A framework for temporal geographic information. Cartographica 25(3), 1 14; part (e) from Gadia, S. K. and Yeung, C. S. (1988). A generalized model for a relational temporal database. Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 251 259. New York: ACM; and part (f) from Worboys, M. F. (1992). A model for spatio-temporal information. Proceedings: The 5th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, pp. 602 611. Bristol, PA: Taylor and Francis. Whole figure modified from Yuan, M. (1999). Use of a three-domain repesentation to enhance GIS support for complex spatiotemporal queries. Transactions in GIS 3(2), 137 159.

conceptual cube to identify eight basic types of possible transformations of geospatial phenomena (Figure 2). The cube provides a basis for GIScience researchers to conceptualize different ways of space–time modeling to capture a full range of geographic dynamics. Currently,

GIScience research addresses well attribute changes and location changes (i.e., movement). Significant research efforts are needed to address changes to geometry and changes to internal structure. With attempts to sum marize developments in this research area, the following

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sections discuss change and movement, in which change is mostly related to change in attributes. Discussions on changes to internal structure and geometry are limited due to the infancy of the research emphases.

Change in the Context of Geographic Dynamics Change is often inferred by comparing properties and forms over time, and inferring processes from forms to understand geographic dynamics. Sauer’s school of cul tural–historical geography stressed the importance of research to record, illustrate, and synthesize geographic patterns and explore geographic processes. In doing so, historical and cultural geographers build a ‘retrospective science’ of cultural and historical processes in geography that enables us to look forward. Geographic dynamics pervades space and time, and their pervasiveness em powers the past as the key to understanding the present and predicting the future. The time stamped approaches in space–time data modeling are well suited for change detection and change analysis. Change detection can be performed by spatial overlays of consecutive snapshot layers. Intuitively, one would attribute the discrepancies between two snapshot layers as change from t1 to t2. However, there are many potential causes for the discrepancies, such as data quality, scale issues, and ontological consistency. To as sure change, one must relate the discrepancies to ‘‘actual

processes, not just the geometry of space–time’’ (Chris man, 1998). The space–time composite model addresses this issue by representing change explicitly in GIS databases and builds histories at locations with temporal transitions of uniform properties over space. The space– time object model uses changes to identify space–time atoms and assemble them to space–time objects. Change is also central to the event based spatiotemporal data model (ESTDM) in which an event is recognized by change to attribute values in raster cells, and the model organizes locations of change in a time series to facilitate temporal data retrieval and analysis (Figure 3). In order to determine ‘change’ based on comparing attributes at two different points in time, we assume that the observed location or object remains the same identity from t1 to t2. Persistent identities (i.e., the identifier of a location or an object remains constant in the database after updates and other data manipulations) allow the observer to recognize and trace the same objects for change analysis. Hornsby and Egenhofer proposed an identity based change model with a set of primitives and operations. The set of primitives include ‘identity states of objects’ and ‘transitions’. There are two basic identity states of objects: existence and nonexistence. Transitions express the progression of an object from one state to another, that is, temporal sequences of identity states of an object. Moreover, the model attaches two qualifiers: ‘with history’ and ‘without history’, to existence and nonexistence and therefore results in four possible identity states. Operations then can be used to determine

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the legality of transitions from one of the four possible identity states to another. When changes occur to shape (or geometry) and internal structures, multiple spatial representations are needed to record the varying spatial properties. The spatiotemporal object model applies spatiotemporal atoms to capture geometries at different times and forms spatiotemporal objects by aggregating spatiotemporal atoms (Figure 1). As long as spatiotemporal objects keep persistent identities, spatiotemporal objects represent well the development of a defined property (such as a land use type) over time. One constraint to the spatio temporal object model is that the defined property needs to be homogeneous (i.e., no spatial structure or variance) over space and time. Changes to the internal structure of geographic ob jects have only been recently recognized in GIScience literature, particularly for some geographic objects ex hibiting spatially heterogeneous properties. For example, storms move as individuals, but a storm’s properties, such as precipitation intensity and temperature, vary spatially within the storm. Another example relates to cities. When a city grows, its internal structure, such as demographic distributions and population density, changes accordingly. Both the internal structure of geographic objects and changes to the internal structure are resulted from dy namics operating in and carried by the geographic objects

(Figure 4). Complex, hierarchical spatial objects are needed to trace changes in the internal structure in which large scale objects constitute spatial aggregates of component objects at a smaller scale. One solution is the use of ‘field objects’ to emphasize internally varying spatial properties. A hierarchical field object data model was proposed to capture the entities as individual and their embedded field properties (Figure 5).

Movement in the Context of Geographic Dynamics Ha¨gerstrand’s Time Geography developed in 1970s pro vides the conceptual basis for movement analysis in GIScience. Time geography is based on a simple idea that an individual’s movement can be considered as a space–time path in a 3 D (2 D space and 1 D time) cube. Depending upon the individual’s constraints on time and means of transportation, a space–time prism can be constructed to determine the potential space where an individual can reach at any given point on the indivi dual’s space–time path. The potential spatial extent that one can reach provides an estimate of opportunities for activities, such as shopping and running errands. The combination of time geography and GIS analytical and visualization functions has promoted research on

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Figure 4 Examples of geographic objects with spatially variant properties. Precipitation intensity varies spatially within each storm cells. The panels are National Weather Services NexRAD images in a time sequence during the 3 May 1999 Oklahoma City tornado outbreaks. From Yuan , M. and K. Stewart. (2008). Computation and Visualization for the Undertanding of Dynamics in Geographic Domains: A Research Agenda. CRC/Taylor and Francis.

human activity patterns and use of space by different populations, such as the space–time paths (Figure 6) of women with different ethnicities and demographic char acteristics. Hybrid activities (i.e., activities with multiple purposes) and embedded meanings became apparent when spatially contextualizing these activity paths. For example, Kwan’s study of women’s movements in Portland, Oregon, suggests that African American women appear more geographically confined when compared with Asian and Caucasian women. Kwan’s research on the daily activities and feelings of Muslim women after the 11 September event reveals ‘a geography of fear’ by generating space– time trajectories from her surveys to recognize where Muslim women feel most threatened in Columbus, Ohio. With space–time prisms of multiple individuals, an alysis can be made to the degree of spatiotemporal ‘co incidence’ in which these individuals’ space–time paths coincide – for example, a group of people meeting at a coffee shop. Employing GIS overlay concepts, inter sections among space–time prisms can be resolved to determine the potential interactions among individuals. In addition, spatial and temporal constraints in com munication, and how the constraints are affected by new communications technologies have been analyzed via space–time modeling in GIS. The idea of space–time paths can be applied to daily activities or long term geospatial lifelines, such as one’s history of residency. Geospatial lifelines are temporally ordered discrete points sampled at regular or irregular

time intervals, and therefore, geospatial lifelines are essentially stored as multiple points with estimates of intermittent paths among these points in a GIS database. When contextualizing environmental factors in GIS, geospatial lifelines can reveal one’s environmental ex posures, other life experiences, and proximity of resi dence over a period of time. They can be also used for fine tuning a lifeline’s temporal granularity or general izing the lifeline’s pattern at a coarse scale. Speed and direction provide the reference for movement patterning and parameters for interpolation and generalization. While geospatial lifelines represent individuals as points, spatiotemporal helixes (STH) (see Figure 7) consider 2 D objects and track the objects’ outline de formation over time. An STH consists of a spine and prongs. Spines are the trajectory of the center of a given object, and prongs represent the expansion or collapse of the object at a given time. When identifying geographic features from motion imagery, the STH model first applies self organizing map technique to identify spines and then uses the deformable contour models (a.k.a. snakes) to elicit prongs.

Space–Time Ontologies and Beyond GIScience approaches to space–time modeling can be addressed in the frame of space–time ontology. Rooted in philosophy and linguistics, ontology is ‘‘the metaphysical

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Figure 5 A hierarchy of grids and vector attribute tables to capture internal structures of rainstorms. From McIntosh, J. and Yuan, M. (2005). Assessing similarity of geographic processes and events. Transactions in GIS 9(2), 223 245.

study of the nature of Being and Existence’’ (Fellbaum, 1998). When applied to information science, ontological study examines fundamental elements, concrete or abstract, in our world. GIScience approaches to space– time modeling need to consider spatial ontologies, temporal ontologies, and their integration. SNAP and SPAN present upper level ontologies to distill concepts about space–time occurrents and space– time continuants. Both ontologies have been addressed in GIScience approaches to space–time modeling, and strong connections to the intended domain of appli cations are important. There are two alternative ontolo gies of geographic dynamics: SNAP considers successions

of instantaneous snapshots of the world and SPAN em phasizes a unified view of space and time. The SNAP ontology centers on existence at a defined instant, and consequently, SNAP entities have no temporal parts; they are spatiotemporal occurrents. SPAN entities, on the other hand, are continuants; they may have existed and will continue to exist for some time. The snapshot model and geospatial event model fol lows the SNAP ontology. This is because a GIS considers objects on different data layers as different objects, even if they represent the same geographic entities at different times. Changes can be identified by comparing two snapshots or states before or after an event through

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Figure 7 The spatiotemporal helix model with a spine and prongs (a). The model is based on extracting moving objects from motion imagery. Spines are identified using self-organizing map techniques, and prongs are derived from differential snakes method (b and c). Spines represent objects’ movement trajectories, and snakes keep tracks of outline deformations. From Stefanidis, A., Eickhorst, K. et al. (2003). Modeling and Comparing Change Using Spatiotemporal Helixes. The eleventh ACM international symposium on advances in geographic information systems. New Orleans, LA: ACM Press.

spatial overlays in GIS. A SPAN entity, on the other hand, consists of temporal parts which constitute its history or lifeline. The space–time composite model, spatiotemporal objects model, event based spatiotemporal data model, and process based field object model all address the SPAN ontology. Because the SPAN ontology considers the continuum of an entity over space and time, SPAN based space–time models support identification, infor mation, and analysis of deformation and movement. Research efforts are needed to expand SNAP, SPAN, and other ontologies relevant to spatiotemporal databases to include geographic dynamics, processes, events, and activities for a comprehensive coverage of the eight possible geographic dynamics in Figure 2. In addition to unifying space–time knowledge, ontologies have been shown to be an effective means for data integration. Ontological understanding of and ontological commit ments to geographic dynamics can promote conceptual integration and exchanges of space–time modeling in GIS databases to strengthen GIS facility to spatio temporal analysis and geocomputation models. Similar to the development of diverse GIS functions to address object and field based geospatial data, comprehensive treatments of SNAP, SPAN, and other space–time ontologies shall result in rich sets of GIS functions for spatiotemporal analysis and geocomputation methods to address the full spectrum of dynamics in geographic worlds.

Summary GIScience researchers have made theoretical and tech nological advances in space–time modeling since late 1980s. From the perspective of information systems, space–time modeling address issues about conceptual ization, representation, and data modeling of spatio temporal properties in geography. Diverse views of space and time promote distinctive conceptual models of space and time as continuous, discrete, absolute, or relative. These conceptual models are captured by a wide spectrum of space–time representational schemes and accordingly implemented in numerous spatio temporal data models. Ultimately, the goal of GIScience approaches to space–time modeling is to capture geo graphic dynamics in GIS databases and computation. Change and movement, as the two primary observables of geographic dynamics, have been the foundation in the development of space–time data modeling and analysis. The above discussion highlights some of the space–time data models proposed in the GIScience literature and the analysis of their representational power in capturing spatiotemporal properties. The emerging ontological study of geographic dynamics promises to promote knowledge sharing of space, time, and dynamics in geography. A robust ontology of geographic dynamics can serve as a foundation to further integrative and innovative GIScience in space–time

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modeling for a wide range of physical and human research. See also: Simulation.

Further Reading Blaut, J. M. (1961). Space and process. The Professional Geographer: The Journal of the Association of American Geographers 13(4), 1 7. Chrisman, N. R. (1998). Beyond the snapshot: Changing the approach to change, error, and process. In Egenhofer, M. J. & Golledge, R. G. (eds.) Spatial and Temporal Reasoning in Geographic Information Systems, pp 85 93. New York: Oxford University Press. Fellbaum, C. (ed.) (1998). WorldNet: An Electronic Lexical Database. Language, Speech, and Communication. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Galton, A. (2004). Fields and objects in space, time, and space time. Spatial Cognition and Computation 4(1), 39 68. Goodchild, M. F., Yuan, M. et al. (2007). Towards a general theory of geographic representation in GIS. International Journal of Geographic Information Science 21(3), 239 260. Grenon, P. and Smith, B. (2004). SNAP and SPAN: Towards dynamic spatial ontology. Spatial Cognition and Computation 4(1), 69 104. Hornsby, K. and Egenhofer, M. (2000). Identity based change: A foundation for spatio temporal knowledge representation. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 14(3), 207 224. Kwan, M. P. (2004). GIS methods in time geographic research: Geocomputation and geovisualization of human activity patterns. Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography 86(4), 267 280. Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F. et al. (2005). Geographic Information Systems and Science. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

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McIntosh, J. and Yuan, M. (2005). Assessing similarity of geographic processes and events. Transactions in GIS 9(2), 223 245. Miller, H. (1991). Modeling accessibility using space time prism concepts within a GIS. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 5(3), 287 301. Peuquet, D. J. and Duan, N. (1995). An event based spatiotemporal data model (ESTDM) for temporal analysis of geographical data. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 9(1), 7. Sinha, G. and Mark, D. M. (2005). Measuring similarity between geospatial lifelines in studies of environmental health. Journal of Geographical Systems 7(1), 115 136. Stefanidis, A., Eickhorst, K. et al. (2003). Modeling and Comparing Change Using Spatiotemporal Helixes. The eleventh ACM international symposium on advances in geographic information systems. New Orleans, LA: ACM Press. Yuan, M. (1999). Use of a three domain representation to enhance GIS support for complex spatiotemporal queries. Transactions in GIS 3(2), 137 159. Yuan, M. (2001). Representing complex geographic phenomena with both object and field like properties. Cartography and Geographic Information Science 28(2), 83 96. Yuan, M., Mark, D. et al. (2004). Extensions to geographic representations. In McMaster, R. & Usery, L. (eds.) Research Challenges in Geographic Information Science, pp 129 156. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor and Francis.

Relevant Websites http://www.cs.auc.dk Aalborg University, Department of Computer Science: consensus glossary of temporal database.

Spanish Language Geography A. Albet, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain P. Zusman, University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Association of Spanish Geographers Association created in the 1975 gathering of both academic and professional geographers in Spain. Latin-American Geographers’ Meetings Congress of Latin American geographies and geographers. Held every 2 years, it is the most successful and massive meeting of the region. Modern Geography Project Discipline proposal inspired by European geography dating from the beginning of the twentieth century and intended to disrupt the Encyclopedic Geography project in place in Latin America. Pan-American Institute of Geography and History Created in 1928 under the auspices of the Pan-American USA policy, to promote knowledge in areas such as cartography, geography, history, and geophysics. Spanish Language Geography Geography developed on countries where Spanish is the main official language (Spain and Latin America).

Geography in Spain Slow Beginnings In Spain, the Public Instruction Act (known as ‘Ley Moyano’) that was passed in 1857 rationalized the nu merous and chaotic syllabi and reforms of public in struction that had appeared since the beginning of the nineteenth century. This law became the basis for all the legislation related to education until the early decades of the twentieth century and firmly established the teaching of geography in primary and secondary schools with basically a descriptive bias and closely related to history. One could expect, therefore, that many chairs of geography should have been created in Spanish uni versities and that the institutionalization of geography would have occurred at an early date. But, in fact, the few chairs of geography that were created were subordinated to other curricula and were taken by professors trained in other fields, as was the case with geologists, botanists, and mathematicians in the Faculty of Sciences and historians in the Faculty of Arts. In the latter, historical geography was initially taught, but at the end of the century it was changed to political and descriptive geography. At the university level, geography was also included, for several

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decades, in the Faculty of Sciences under titles such as cosmography and Earth physics, geodesy, phytography, and botanical geography. In spite of the steps taken by the Geographical Society of Madrid (created in 1876, the first one in Spain), in response to this situation, there was no significant change until the 1940s. Geographers were unable to influence the decisions of the Spanish gov ernment as long as their scientific projects were in competition with other projects. Geography without University Geographers: The Contribution of Catalan Geographers Academic geography (‘‘la geógraphie des professeurs’’ in Yves Lacoste’s words) was almost nonexistent until the 1940s. But things were different with the utilization of geographical knowledge and with the professional prac tice of geography outside the university. Geographical knowledge was highly valued in the nonacademic circles (like cultural associations, as well as political and ideo logical lobbies). According to the cultural initiatives, from its beginning, there was a close connection with the hiking movement, especially in those regions of Spain where this movement had a strong nationalistic flavor as was the case of Catalonia. On the political–ideological contributions, the geopolitical approach brought by geographers (in the form of books, articles, and open lectures) should not be overlooked. They mainly refer to Spain’s colonial problems or to the geostrategic position of the Iberian Peninsula in the Mediterranean and the European context. It has to be pointed out that this strongly ideological and geopolitical discourse persisted during the first years of Franco’s dictatorship (especially between 1940 and 1945) due to its close connections with the German National Socialist re´gime. During the 1930s, professional practice of geography in Catalonia showed a vitality, quality, and modernity that clearly contrasted with its low level of insti tutionalization in the Spanish universities. In 1932, the Generalitat (the Catalan autonomous government) as signed the geographer Pau Vila to prepare a project of territorial division. Although Vila was considered to be a follower of the Vidalian tradition of regional geography (he published the first regional monography in Spain following Vidal de la Blache’s proposals), together with a group of professionals, he planned the new administrative map of Catalonia that was really very innovative for his time. Vila (who had never taught at the university but was a recognized teacher of primary school and an

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educator in training schools) and a small group of geographers also designed, for the first time in Spain, a syllabus to obtain a specific university degree in geog raphy at the University of Barcelona: this syllabus had to be implemented in the 1936–37 academic year but the Civil War destroyed this project, among many other things. Times of Growth Geography as an academic discipline, both at school and at university level, was held in high esteem by the Franco re´gime (1939–75). Geography (as well as history) was conceived as a tool to transmit the national–fascist ideology, to reinforce the sense of unity of the country, and to enhance the Spanish patriotic spirit. For this reason, teaching geography in primary and secondary schools was expanded but its presence at the university level was more conspicuous in the Faculty of Arts than in the Faculty of Sciences, where it was represented by only one chair of physical geography in Spain. Nevertheless, topics and approaches uncongenial with the dominant ideology were taken out of the official syllabi. Lacking a critical methodology, and the most prominent geog raphers being in exile, geography easily became a de scriptive and apolitical discipline. Between 1940 and 1965, the scientific community of geographers increased slowly in parallel with the rela tively low number of pupils at secondary schools and universities: in 1959, there were only eight full time professors of geography in the Faculty of Arts and four in the Faculty of Sciences. Between 1965 and 1980, the number of university students enrolled in the Faculty of Arts increased from 17 000 to 100 000, and geography gained advantage by this process. This spectacular growth was a key factor in the institutionalization of academic geography, now almost exclusively concentrated in the Faculty of Arts, where specific units of geography ap peared during the 1970s. Growth was impressive in every aspect that could be considered: the emergence of new units, the number of students, the number of doctoral dissertations, the publication of new journals, etc. For instance, before the 1970s, geography was present in the Spanish universities only through a dozen subjects, including those taught in the Faculty of Sciences by geologists. As a matter of fact, in the Faculty of Arts only three subjects were taught, that is, general geography, geography of Spain, and world’s descriptive geography. But at the end of the 1970s, about 150 different titles were taught in Spanish departments of geography. It is important to point out that in 1974, a decree was passed that allowed the creation of departments wherever spe cific geography courses were taught, and this eventually led to the creation of specific curricula in geography in some universities. This formed the basis for the

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impressive increase in the number of students majoring in geography during the 1970s and 1980s. Again, the pioneer role that Catalan geography played at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s has to be taken into account. Some young lecturers spent periods at geography departments in British and North American universities and became deeply interested in and receptive to new ideas. The atmosphere was one of methodological crisis and there was an urgent need to break away from the past (mostly the Vidalian tradition) and find more means of analysis and interpretation of geographical facts. Unlike the rest of the Spanish uni versities, in 1968–70 a flexible study curriculum was es tablished in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Barcelona and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, providing a strong basis for the development of modern geographical studies, introducing quantitative, Marxist, and humanistic geographies for the first time in Spain. As a matter of fact, for the first time in any Spanish uni versity, a degree in geography was created in 1968 at the University of Barcelona and it proved to be an important factor in giving geography a firm foothold in the Catalan university. In the recently founded Autonomous Uni versity of Barcelona, geography courses were imparted within the Department of Social Sciences, a vinculum which encouraged marked interdisciplinary overtones in geography and a definite tendency toward the develop ment of a very innovative human geography. Introducing New Academic Systems The University Reform Act of 1983 introduced a major set of regulations that, among many other things, allowed the majority of Spanish universities to offer, for the first time, the right to design their own study plans in geog raphy and, also for the first time, a full first degree in geography: in the past, universities had to follow plans laid down by the Ministry for Education, and geography was mainly considered within or as a part of a degree in history or in arts. For a minority of Spanish universities, in particular the Catalan ones, the Act proved to be a step backward because it established many compulsory com mon subjects that constrained the decisions on their syllabus and promoted a more traditional type of geography. Since 1983, many new public and private universities have been created in Spain and a degree in geography is offered only in public universities. It is also remarkable that a new degree in environmental sciences created in 1995 is offered in 26 universities (four of them private) and often syllabi are partially provided from geography departments that do not take great advantage from the social and professional development of this new field. This degree has great social success and good marketing promotion, and geography students see it as one of their

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main sources of professional rivalry. Since 2001, the Autonomous University of Barcelona has been offering, for the first time in Spain, a full degree in geography through the World Wide Web. Since 2005, the ‘Bologna system’ introduced a new degree similar to that in the rest of the European uni versities; in fact, the new system has been an occasion to seriously question the degree in geography, looking for impossible private market profitabilities in public uni versities. Anyway, restructuring of most geography de partments and readjustment of faculty staff are probably unavoidable steps for recasting the discipline within the Spanish university system. Apart from the first degree studies (‘licenciatura’), some departments offer doctoral studies to obtain the PhD degree and many others participate in postgraduate programs usually with a very applied orientation. In many Spanish universities, geography finds inclusion in the syllabi of other related degrees like humanities, en vironmental sciences, social and cultural anthropology, tourism, sociology, political sciences, etc. Publications and Foreign Influences Despite the synthetic nature of many of the subjects taught, there are as yet few publications in Spanish lan guage within the scope of students. A substantial part of the bibliography is made up of foreign books, only few being translated from British or North American text; before 1980, authors and works from the French school dominated. Although considerable efforts are being made by certain Spanish teachers and publishers, very few books by Spanish writers have been published. Para doxically there are a large number of geographical journals, published by different universities. Difficulties in fluently reading and writing in English have slowed not only publishing articles in foreign journals but even the normal use of basic texts. This is especially problematic when the Spanish university sys tem demands its staff to publish in peer reviewed Brit ish–American journals. For many Spanish academic geographers, the Erasmus program of the European Union has brought, for the first time, the possibility of creating contacts and some research links with foreign universities. Due to the historical evolution of Spanish geography (and also budget shortages), the relation with Latin American geography is not as fluid and systematic as it should be and is supposed to be. Although at some time Spain has provided new texts to Latin American geography, the reverse has been very rare; thus Argen tinian and Mexican publications are only occasionally present in Spanish geography. Although not firmly recognized, the Vidalian tradition is still strong in many Spanish universities: classical re gional geographies are common, and a very descriptive

geography is still taught, although the introduction of some quantitative methodologies seem to give it a touch of modernity. In many circumstances, geography still balances between humanities and social sciences, but nowadays geography is almost definitively removed from the faculties of science. The Role of the Spanish Academic and Professional Geographical Associations The development of geography led to the creation of the Association of Spanish Geographers (AGE) in 1975 (with around 1200 members, mostly academic geographers). This association promotes geographical research as well as teaching, by encouraging academic meetings and general conferences every 2 years. It also tries to increase relations with other national and international geo graphic associations. In the mid 1980s four working groups were established: rural geography, quantitative methodology, physical geography, and teaching geog raphy. Lately, more groups are established, that is, cli matology, Latin America, population geography, regional studies, services geography, economic geography, tourism and leisure geography, urban geography, information technology, history of geographical thought, and local development. Since 1984, AGE has been publishing the biyearly ‘Boletıń de la Asociacioń de Geo´grafos Espa nõles,’ a well known reference journal in Spain. In recent years, geography has established itself as an emerging profession in Spain, mainly in four different but related fields: city and regional planning, environ ment, cartography, and geographic information systems (GISs). Since the arrival of democracy in 1977, the cre ation of regional autonomous governments and the need for planners and policy managers at municipal level has brought an excellent opportunity for geography gradu ates and their skills, but concurrence with other pro fessionals is strong. In this sense, academic curricula pay too much attention to market demands and consequently reinforce those technical and applied aspects in which the expertise of geographers can be most valuable. Still, a solid ground of theoretical concepts and intellectual resources should be secured as well as a clear ability for interdisciplinary work focusing especially on the inter pretation and intervention on the territory with a global and integrated perspective. However, the prospects for geography as a pro fessional field appears to be vulnerable because of a great dependence on the public sector. For instance, about 70% of the members of the Catalan Professional Geog raphers Association (created in 1988) are employed in the regional and local administration. The rest of the mem bers are employed in the private sector, mainly self employed, and a large proportion of them have the public sector as their main, final customer. In order to overcome


this dependency, imaginative efforts should be directed to promote the presence of geographers in the private sector, mainly in service firms not related to the ad ministration. A significant step toward this end is the Official Spanish Professional Geographers Association (College, created in 1999), which is a useful tool to safeguard their professional rights and promote a wider social comprehension of what geography and geog raphers are able to do. Because in Spain there is no direct relation between the academic degree in geography and its professional field, the popular image of geography is mainly linked with a descriptive, cartographic, and memoristic tradi tional field. Only very recently landscape, water, sus tainability, meteorology, and GIS are, in some way, newly identified with geography. Anyway, there is a possible drift by which geography becomes just a qualified pro fessional study with a low theoretical background, easily displaced by other fields with a more substantial social presence.

Geography in Latin America Geographical Associations and Military Geographical Institutes Between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, the term ‘geography’ in the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America was asso ciated with the practices of the modern nation states defining their territories (exploration, reconnaissance, and appropriation of areas under indigenous control; definition of international borders; and territorial dis putes). Geographical societies (as the Mexican Geo graphical and Statistical Society, 1833; the Argentinian Geographical Institute, 1879; the Argentinian Geo graphical Society, 1881; the Lima Geographical Society, 1888; the La Paz Geographical Society, 1889; the Sucre Geographical Society, 1900; the Geographical Society of Colombia, 1903) played an important role in the pro motion of territorial practices. Imitating their European counterparts, they had an active role in the production of information (descriptive, cartographic, and pictographic) about the land. Geography was seen as a useful know ledge that guides the training of geographic engineers in countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina. One of the first instances of the institutionalization of geography was through education. Knowledge of the physical and demographic characteristics was considered relevant to educating the inhabitants of the countries (often, ethnically differentiated) in the national values defined by the ruling elite. The participation of geog raphy in the creation of the imagined community of every Latin American country made the training of geography teachers a requirement in many countries at

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the beginning of the twentieth century. While the first curriculum and textbook proposals were devised on the basis of an encyclopedic geography, at the beginning of the 1920s this perspective was substituted by the modern geography project influenced by the French, German, North American (in the case of Cuba), and British proposals. It should be stressed that geography had a strong presence in the military sphere. Thus, for example, the Military Geographical Institute in Argentina (1904), Chile (1922), Colombia (1935), or Bolivia (1936), were in charge, for a long time, of handling all issues related on geodesy and cartography in these countries. In some areas, these institutes ended up being the official geo graphical organization in each country. From Applied Geography to Critical Around the 1950s, in many Latin American countries, geography was separated from history and institutional ized as a degree within the Faculty of Arts or within the Faculty of Sciences (Argentina, 1948; Peru´, 1948; Cuba, 1962; Venezuela, 1964; Chile, 1966). This institutional ization was accompanied by a deeper professionalism in the degree. In fact, the preexisting model, with clear references on a humanistic, erudite geography and pri marily devoted to the training of teachers, was brought into question to introduce a new model more directed toward the professionalization of the degree both in terms of research and as an outlet for new jobs outside the academia. It was perhaps in Cuba where this model of professional geography was first developed: there, from the very creation of the degree itself, research had an applied character to be useful for the economy, the productive processes, or the social organization, together with exchanges between Cuba and countries of Eastern Europe. Of course, this level of professionalism did not mean that the traditional perspectives, now inspired by the regional model of Hartshorne, disappeared. In fact, re gional geography continued being strongly used in the sphere of teaching, and geography meetings organ ized by certain associations of geographers assured the continuity of this model (Association of Geographical Studies in Argentina, 1922; Chilean Association of Geographers, 1955; Colombian Association of Geog raphers, 1967). Geography in Latin America was not oblivious to the political and social changes that were experienced on a world and regional level in the 1960s. It was the period in which a proposal for a critical geography was designed to prioritize the analysis of social issues from a Marxist perspective. At the same time, the idea of ‘social space’ appeared as a key concept of the analysis. In this context, two meetings on new geography took place in Latin

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America: in Salto (Uruguay, 1973) and Neuqueń (Ar gentina, 1974) where socially committed geographers, such as the Uruguayan Germań Wettstein and the Brazilian Milton Santos, as well as many students, participated. With the dictatorships that were established in the Southern Cone, social geography lost all possibility of spreading. Many of the mentors had to go into exile, confining themselves to private centers or professional practice. Hartshorne’s geography and the theoretical– quantitative geographies supported and legitimized the military plans while, at the same time, they removed social geography from the universities. The model of social geography, mostly recognized as critical geography, was taken up again around the mid 1980s when dem ocracy returned to the region and when displaced geographers came back to the universities in the 1970s. The impact of critical geography had been different in each country. It was evident in Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Colombia. Milton Santos was one of the most influential figures in this area in all of the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America. His thoughts on space, globalization, and on the spatial dynamics of the economy, had an impact on almost all of the countries in the region.

The Recent Renaissance of Geographic Studies Between the end of the 1980s and 1990s, many of the geography courses in the region had organized post graduate studies in geography (Pedagogic and Techno logical University of Colombia, 1984; University of Panama´, 1993; University of San Marcos, Peru, 1995) or in related subjects (Masters in Land and Environmental Policy, Buenos Aires, 1995). Simultaneously many geog raphers in these countries went to study in Europe or North America. In certain national contexts, an attempt was made to eliminate geography as a subject and inte grate it into the social sciences. Nevertheless, the interest raised by the environmental issues and by the GIS, have led to a renaissance in geographic studies. This can be seen in the fact that, in the last few years, new geog raphy degrees have been organized in certain countries (Autonomous Metropolitan University, Mexico, 2002; University of Concepcioń, Chile, 2003; National Uni versity of Co´rdoba, Argentina, 2004). Most of the geography graduates in Latin America become school teachers. Currently, however, a growing number of geographers can be found working in minis tries and services related to infrastructure, transportation, irrigation, town planning, social programs, poverty pro grams and policies, education, housing, health, and state modernization and decentralization. Others work in city governments, in positions such as administrators,

executives, or consultants in community development works, planning departments, education health councils, and environmental offices. The demand has also in creased in the service sector and consulting firms on environmental issues, productive investments, and pro ject location, as well as on consulting firms owned by geographers in fields related to regional planning, natural resources, environment, and cartography. Some of these geographers work as academicians in higher educational facilities in the teaching, research, and expansion of geographical knowledge. Finally, some have been inte grated into international nongovernmental organizations of both regional and world scale. The first precedents for organizing congresses ori ented toward the whole region can be found in those periodically organized by the Pan American Institute of Geography and History. This institution was created in 1928 under the influence of the USA Pan American policy, and was oriented toward the promotion of knowledge in the areas of cartography, geography, his tory, and geophysics. Currently, the most successful re gional events are the Latin American geographers’ meetings, where all kind of themes, models, and positions are presented. To date, 11 such meetings have taken place: the first one in 1987 in Aguas de Saõ Pedro (Brazil) and the last one in Bogota´ (Colombia, 2007). The Saõ Paulo (Brazil) sessions in 2005 brought together 2000 specialists from the region.

Fields of Research and Professional Interest Spanish speaking Latin American geographers work primarily on environmental issues and regional planning and management. Social vulnerability, such as facing natural threats like hurricanes or floods, is a major issue for Central American countries. The application of GIS also attracts the attention of many of these specialists. Another theme that sparks the interest of geographers is the impact of globalization and its relation with invest ment in rural productive activities and in the process of valuation in urban areas. Latin American urban geog raphy is devoted to study new functional uses of urban industrial land, new paths of urban consumption, new wealthy (gated communities) and poor districts, and the processes of gentrification; in general, these analyses are associated with the study of social exclusion (polarization, urban segregation). City, governance, and local govern ment are also subjects of increasing interest for Latin American geographers. Rural geography seems to be interested in studying the way in which agrarian agents participate in the new productive procedures, in life strategies of small scale farmers, and in rural social movements, as well as the effects of neoliberal policies on industrial farming concentration and on regional


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restructuring. Lately, a new field of work lies on the re lation between rural areas, environment, and local development. The strong relation between geography and education explains the relevance of geography in all kinds of edu cational plans all over the region. Epistemological and cultural approaches are tackled only by a small number of geographers. Geography of gender is mainly devoted to analyzing women’s participation in the labor system in rural and urban areas, sometimes migrant, often through illegal jobs. A subject that has started to grow since the 1990s and that is attracting increasing attention is the relationship between tourism, land values, and local development. Geography in the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America receives influences both from French and from British–North American geographies. But some authors think of a ‘third geographical tradition,’ following the theoretically hybrid character of present day geography, by which foreign influences are adapted through the lenses of other social sciences and through the local problems and perspectives.

Garcia Ramon, M. D., Albet, A. and Zusman, P. (2003). Recent developments in social and cultural geography in Spain. Social and Cultural Geography 4(3), 419 431. Garcia Ramon, M. D. and Nogue´, J. (1994). Nationalism and Geography in Catalonia. In Hooson, D. (ed.) Geography and National Identity, pp 197 211. Oxford: Blackwell. Go´mez, F. J. (1990). Los estudios e investigaciones geogra´ficas en Euskal Herria. Lurralde 13, 9 18. Go´mez Mendoza, J. (2001). La geografıá espanola: final y principio de capı´tulo. In Asociacioń de Geo´grafos Espanoles (ed.) Actas del XVII Congreso de Geo´grafos Espanõles, pp 19 27. Oviedo: Asociacioń de Geo´grafos Espanoles. Hiernaux, D. and Lindoń, A. (eds.) (2006). Tratado de geografıá humana. Barcelona: Anthropos. Mendiza`bal, E. and Albet, A. (2005). Una aproximacio´ a la geografia als Paısos Catalans (1985 2005). Afers. Fulls de recerca i pensament 50, 153 175. Trinca, D. (2006). Los encuentros de geo´grafos de Ame´rica Latina. Revista Geogra´fica Venezolana 47(1), 5 7. Valenzuela, M., Molla´, M. and de La´zaro, M. L. (2004). Geography in Spain. Belgeo, 2004(1), 145 158. XXX IGU Congress, Spanish Contribution (2004). Spanish geography on the challenges of contemporary society. Report of the XXX IGU Congress, Spanish Contribution. Glasgow: International Geographical Union, Spanish Committee. (http:// www.realsociedadgeografica.com/es/pdf/geografia ingles.pdf.) Zusman, P., Castro, H. and Soto, M. (2007). Cultural and Social Geography in Argentina Precedents and Recent Trends. Social and Cultrual Geography 8(5), 775 798.

See also: Anglo-American/Anglophone Hegemony; Francophone Geography; Geography, History of; Human Geography; National Schools of Geography; Possibilism; Santos, M.

Relevant Websites

Further Reading Abalos, J. A. (2004). Resena de: La geografıá profesional en Chile, pasado y presente, de Oscar Liendo. Polis. Revista de la Universidad Bolivariana 3(8), 1 9. Berdoulay, V. and Mendoza, H. (eds.) (2003). Unidad y Diversidad del pensamiento geogra´fico en el mundo. Retos y perspectivas. Me´xico: Instituto de Geografıá, UNAM. Capel, H. (1976). La geografıá espanola tras la Guerra Civil. Geocrı´tica 1, 1 35. Ccente Pineda, E. A. and LaTorre Ruiz, F. M. (2003). El devenir de la geografıá en el Peru´. Lima: Universidad Nacional de San Marcos. http://cybertesis.unmsm.edu.pe/sisbib/2003/ccente pe/html/ index frames.html Conferencia de Geo´grafos Latinoamericanos (2006). El estado actual de la geografıá en los paı´ses hispanoamericanos. In Reunioń de la Asociacioń de Geo´grafos Americanos, pp 1 49. Chicago. http:// sites.maxwell.syr.edu/clag/GeoLA.pdf. Dory, D. and Douzant Rosenfeld, D. (1995). Geografiá y geo´grafos en Bolivia y en Cuba: ensayo de sociologıá histo´rica comparativa. Documents d’Ana`lisi Geogra`fica 27, 57 73. Garcia Ramon, M. D. (2005). Enfoques crı´ticos y praćtica de la geografıá en Espana. Balance de tres dećadas (1974 2004). Documents d’Ana`lisi Geogra`fica 45, 139 148.

http://age.ieg.csic.es/ Asociacioń de Geo´grafos Espanoles / Spanish Geographers Association. http://www.geografos.org Colegio Oficial de Geo´grafos / Professional Geographers Association (Spain). http://www.ingeba.euskalnet.net/ Euskal Geografi Elkargoa / Basque Geographical Institute. http://www.ub.es/geocrit/menu.htm Geocri´tica. http://www.geoinstitutos.com/ Geoinstitutos. Plataforma de los Institutos Geogra´ficos Latinoamericanos / Geoinstitutos. Platform for Latin American Geographical Institutes. http://www.ieg.csic.es/ieg.do Instituto de Economiá y Geografiá CSIC / Economy and Geography Institute CSIC (Spain). http://www.ipgh.org Instituto Panamericano de Geografiá e Historia / Pan American Institute of Geography and History. http://www.realsociedadgeografica.com Real Sociedad Geogra´fica / Royal Geographical Society (Spain). http://www.sgxe.com/ Sociedade Galega de Xeografia / Galician Geographical Society. http://scg.iec.cat/ Societat Catalana de Geografia / Catalan Geographical Society.

Spatial Analysis, Critical T. Schwanen, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Complexity Theory A diverse set of theories and notions for understanding the development and functioning of complex systems. More recent versions contend that complex systems are defined more by the relationships between constituent parts than by those parts themselves. Epistemology Theories about the nature of knowledge and what counts as (scientific) knowledge. Essentialism The tendency to attribute natural or inherent qualities to certain categories and states. Essentialist thinking has been discredited in critical geography because it fails to appreciate the contingent nature of the associations between states and qualities. Ontology While the term has multiple meanings in philosophy, geographers generally use it with reference to theories and beliefs of what exists in the world. Positionality The notion central to (feminist) poststructuralist epistemology that researchers always see, interpret, and understand the world from specific embodied locations, which thus necessarily mediate in the knowledge they produce. Reflexivity A strategy of self-critical introspection that researchers can adopt to better understand the ways their own positionality mediates the research process and the outcomes produced. This strategy has been advanced in particular by feminist geographers.

A Contradictio in Terminis? Every new theoretical tradition within human geography since the late 1960s has heavily criticized spatial analysis or quantitative geography. Over the years, numerous radical, humanist, feminist, post structuralist, and most recently nonrepresentational geographers have dismissed and denounced the use of quantitative methods (including geographic information system (GIS)), considering them inappropriate for the type of analysis they advocate. The long list of criticisms on the practices and philosophical underpinnings of spatial analysis makes it tempting to conclude that critical geography and quantitative inquiry are indeed at odds with each other and that the differences between them are insuperable. There is, nonetheless, a long standing tradition within quantitative geography that seeks to contribute to pro gressive social change but does so on the basis of largely

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positivist understandings of scientific practice and know ledge. Though sometimes disparaged by other critical geographers, this strand of literature is indicative of a mismatch between the actual practices of quantitative geographers and the representations about spatial science circulating through certain sectors of academia. Add itionally, most critiques on mainstream spatial analysis take the link between quantitative methods and positivism for granted. However, as more and more critical geog raphers point out, the association between quantitative methods and positivism was actively created during the heydays of the quantitative revolution in Anglophone geography in the late 1950s and 1960s. Accordingly, these (critical) geographers argue that utilizing quantitative methods is not identical to accepting the philosophical position of positivism, and that adherents of post positivist geographies should be careful not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Quantitative methods are thus con sidered one set of methods on the repertoire of the critical geographer that can be used to address at least a subset of the research questions in which s/he is interested. This is not to suggest, however, that reconciling quantitative methods and critical inquiry is always easy and straight forward. Nor is it true that critical spatial analysis con stitutes an internally homogeneous and coherent body of work. Researchers have elaborated or are elaborating their own versions, which, as a whole, are sometimes contradictory. This article provides an overview of critical spatial analysis. It is organized around the most familiar criticisms of mainstream spatial analysis and the ways critical geographers deploying quantitative methods have alleviated and circumvented these. To this end, the remainder of this text starts with those critiques on quantitative geography and then proceeds to discuss reactions and responses to them. It should be noted that the terms spatial analysis and quantitative geography are used interchangeably hereafter. Additionally, the term ‘quantitative methods’ is used to denote simple enumeration (counting), statistical analysis, mathematical modeling, and GIS. Despite recent contributions to the literature that challenge the usual alignment of GIS with more traditional tools for quantitative analysis, these methods are considered together here, because critical spatial scientists try to overcome the quantitative/ qualitative dualism and because some of the most exciting developments within critical spatial analysis pertain to GIS, particularly in the USA. Finally, the term ‘critical geography’ is used to denote those currents in

Spatial Analysis, Critical

human geography that challenge different forms of oppression and exploitation, promote tolerance and dif ference, and actively bridge the gaps between scientific research and progressive social movements.

Criticizing Spatial Analysis and Beyond Criticisms leveled at quantitative geography provide a good starting point to appreciate what critical spatial analysis is about. It is beyond this article to review all criticisms (partly because some are not relevant anymore and others have never been very accurate); the focus will be on those issues that critical analysts have sought to address. A first major group of issues are ‘political’; many geographers have rejected quantitative methods – and continue to do so – because of the links between spatial analysis and forms of social conservatism, such as neoliberalism, imperialism, and patriarchy. Though ori ginally put forward by radical geographers in the 1970s, the argument that quantitative approaches perpetuate the social status quo continues to be used today. Even though quantitative methods are used widely in applied and policy oriented research with the best intentions of effectuating progressive social change, many argue that statistics and GIS are used widely to support non progressive government and corporate interests. The second major group of criticisms of mainstream spatial science pertains to the ‘positivist worldview’ (ontology and epistemology) with which quantitative geography became associated in the 1950s and 1960s. Perhaps positivist understandings of objectivity have been criticized most extensively. While radical geog raphers in the 1970s and 1980s already challenged the alleged value neutrality of scientific research, feminist geographers in particular have expanded these notions and also deplored the detached and disinterested observer stance and associated view from ‘nowhere’ (a neutral, transcendental location). These epistemo logical premises have been denounced because they imply that the positionality of the researcher is hidden and his/her connectedness to the people or phenomena under study lost. Feminists have also questioned the hierarchical and asymmetrical power relations with an active and controlling observer, on the one hand, and a passive subject, on the other, that often characterize positivist research processes. Another common criticism of mainstream spatial analysis concerns its tendency to concentrate (only) on similarities, regularities, and universalities, to be grasped through transcendence of and abstraction from concrete contexts. Therefore, the resulting knowledge tends to lack attention for difference and heterogeneity, and can be characterized as de contextualized and disembodied. The focus on similarities cannot be seen as separate from

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most spatial analysts’ commitment to reductionism – the assumption that the world is an aggregate of distinct objects and phenomena behaving in regular ways. This reductionism is convenient insofar as it allows analysts to grasp the whole through studying the actions and motivations of individual decision makers and to resort to analytically tractable models. It should be noted, however, that some spatial analysts have addressed both similarities and heterogeneity through the development of context dependent or local statistics. Examples in clude the expansion method, geographically weighted regression, and multilevel regression modeling. Also aligned to the focus on similarity is the positivist belief in the prevalence of order and stability. Much spatial science has moved away from its early focus on geometry and ordered patterns to focus more extensively on spatial processes and context dependence; however, this work generally continues to be premised on a structured ontology based on fixity and categorization. While practices of fixing and classifying are inherent to almost all research, spatial scientists often unre flectively adopt rigid, dualistic, and/or essentialist taxo nomies of the events and phenomena under scrutiny. Consequently, they tend to use taken for granted, hard and fast theoretical categories of, for instance, gender and race/ethnicity. These categories are not only unable to capture the complexity and richness of everyday practices and experiences; they also conceal the relational processes through which they have been constituted. That quantitative geographers tend to start from taken for granted understandings is also evident in dominant representations of space time. Space and time are often seen as containers, as neutral and external Cartesian grids, in which structures, behaviors, and changes evolve and take place. The notion that space time is produced by and internal to those structures and behaviors in often highly uneven ways remains counterintuitive to many spatial scientists. Critical geographers using quantitative methods subscribe to many or all of these criticisms. They have adopted various strategies to accommodate or circumvent these issues, which can be grouped into two main cat egories: those centering on research questions and those evolving around the separation of method and philo sophical basis. Where the former are concerned with the articulation of marginalized views and perspectives, the latter interrogate the possibilities of using quantita tive methods given a realist, feminist, post structuralist understanding of scientific practice and knowledge. As argued before, the latter strategies follow from the recognition of the historically contingent connections between positivism and social conservatism with spatial analysis. Most of these efforts argue that quantitative methods can be reappropriated for critical purposes and used to destabilize hegemonic representations of reality

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in the language of dominant discourses, which often draw support from numerical information. Critiques of those discourses using the same frame of reference cannot be dismissed as irrelevant easily, it is hoped.

More Progressive Research Questions A first type of studies discussed here consist of quanti tative investigations of issues of social distribution that question the current state of affairs in subtle ways. The subtlety lies in the adoption of largely conventional notions of epistemology and ontology that also dominate mainstream spatial analysis. These studies pragmatically draw on mainstream methodology understandings – for instance, with respect to notions of objectivity – to enhance the visibility of underexposed social groups or interests in dominant intellectual and policy discourses. While examples can also be found in the radical geog raphies of the 1970s and early 1980s, this version of critical spatial analysis is perhaps best exemplified through the body of work known as feminist empiricism. Feminist empiricism constitutes one of the oldest forms of inquiry in feminist geography; though still important, its peak arguably fell in the 1980s and early 1990s. Consistent with traditional epistemology, it seeks to produce more accurate representations of the world by showing that disregarding women and gender issues biases research outcomes. Early work aimed to articulate the spatial dimensions of women’s inequality. For in stance, Ha¨gerstrand’s constraint oriented time geography provided a useful conceptual framework for largely quantitative assessments of the implications of women’s prime responsibility for domestic and caring responsi bilities for everyday activities and commuting patterns. Other studies have shown how gender, income, and race/ ethnicity interact in shaping women’s access to employ ment and services and their everyday life in general. Work along such lines continues to be very helpful in documenting women’s lives and in generating the numbers that inform the formulation of public policies attempting to mitigate inequalities. While feminist empiricist research may not be so prevalent in geography as it used to be in the 1980s, similar work is now undertaken more frequently in neighboring disciplines, such as urban and transportation studies. This research is also informed by conventional epistemologies but does not focus on gender issues alone; it also concentrates on race/ethnicity, age, and other axes of social differentiation.

Challenging Positivist Worldviews During the 1980s and 1990s, methods became more and more essentialized, which intensified the association between qualitative research and critical geography and

resulted in more suspicion toward using quantitative analysis for critical purposes. This made critical geog raphers with more favorable opinions about quantitative methods rethink the usefulness of quantitative analysis for critical geography and identify various contributions. First, it has been argued that quantitative methods can be employed to give ‘partial’ answers to ‘some’ of the research questions of interest to critical geographers. Some feminist geographers, for example, have contended that especially questions focused on the broad contours of dif ference on the basis of such axes of social differentiation as gender, class, or race/ethnicity can be addressed effectively with quantitative methods. While there is some overlap with the research in the previous section, these studies distance themselves more explicitly from positivist epistemologies, instead of exploring the possibilities of combining quanti tative methods with notions from critical realism and post structuralism. Feminist geographers have been attracted in particular to the notions by Donna Haraway about situated knowledges. In brief, her argument holds that all knowledge is socially constructed and that the researcher’s embedd edness in power relations always mediates the ways s/he studies phenomena and collects and interprets evidence, implying that knowledge is necessarily partial and political. She contends, therefore, that only acknowledging this par tiality and exploring its implications promises a useful version of objectivity and a view from somewhere. Har away’s work has allowed critical geographers to reclaim GIS and other quantitative methods in ways that challenge traditional yardsticks of scientific rigor like generalizability and detached objectivity. Reflexivity is often employed as an analytical strategy to arrive at quantitative narratives in which researchers try to identify and explain how their own positionality, feelings, beliefs, and understandings of phenomena have mediated the research process. That is, reflexivity is used to produce quantitative geographies from somewhere rather than from nowhere. Critical geographers who favor statistics and math ematics but may not identify themselves so directly with feminist geography have also suggested various epistemological strategies. One example is the use of Bayesian statistical theory, which allows researchers to incorporate their prior beliefs into ex post evaluations of modeling outcomes. Another is (very) cautious deploy ment of inferential statistics; critical geographers tend to be far more reluctant to generalize conclusions from analyzed data to larger populations than most spatial analysts. Still another strategy is to focus statistical and mathematical research on difference rather than on similarities using the advanced modeling approaches mentioned above. Second, critical geographers have argued extensively that quantitative inquiry might be used to contextualize more in depth case study research with qualitative meth ods. More specifically, the outcomes of enumeration,


statistical, or mathematical analysis can be used to sub stantiate the selection of particular case studies or to support statements about the transferability of the out comes of in depth case study research to other geo graphical contexts. This implies that quantitative analysis becomes integrated into mixed method research in which different methods are employed to answer ‘different’ research questions. This way of utilizing quantitative analysis also constitutes a departure from traditional notions of epistemology; it is actually better compatible with the (philosophical) pragmatism by Richard Rorty and others than with positivism. At any rate, this way of mixing methods is often defended on the grounds that it allows researchers to capitalize on the strengths of different methods. This mode of combining methods in a single research project has become very popular in human geography in recent years. Third, quantitative methods can also be accorded a larger role in mixed method research than contextual izing other modes of inquiry. Some critical geographers have argued that outcomes of quantitative methods can be triangulated against those obtained with qualita tive methods. This implies that different methods are employed to answer (‘more or less’) ‘the same’ research question(s). Method triangulation is usually adopted to detect consistencies and corroborations across methods; the production of similarities is then considered a form of validating findings and data. However, though much less common in the literature, it is also possible to use triangulation to explore inconsistencies and the silences between data produced by different methodologies. In this way the situated and partial nature of different forms of scientific knowledge can be explored; this form of triangulation thus draws directly on the writings of Donna Haraway. A rare but very good example of this approach is the work by Andrea Nightingale who trian gulated aerial photo interpretation and in depth inter views in a study of forest change in Nepal to show the insufficiency of hegemonic representations produced by positivist, statistical research that dominate policy discourses. Fourth, critical researchers have been keen to address the often hierarchical and asymmetrical power relations in research processes, especially with regard to GIS in the USA. Participatory GIS is a process oriented approach to GIS for altering the relations between researcher and the researched so as to empower and enhance the participation of the latter in planning pro cesses and decision making. One strategy to achieve this is the joint development of GIS applications with mar ginalized groups and/or resource poor organizations that enable the inclusion of their views, perspectives, and needs. In this way, a view from somewhere is produced in line with the work of Haraway and others. Of course, similar forms of participatory action research in which

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critical academic researchers collaborate closely with grassroots movements and resource poor organizations also exist for other analysis techniques, but these have received less attention in the academic literature in recent years than participatory GIS. Fifth, some of the ontology related criticisms of positivist spatial science have been addressed using mathematical models and GIS, although the number of studies engaging with such issues is rather limited to date. In the modeling tradition it is increasingly argued that models drawing on complexity theory can to some extent bridge the differences between mainstream spatial science and social and cultural geographies. This is pri marily because complexity theory is holistic rather than reductionist due to the central role it accords to the concept of emergence, which implies that system effects are more than the sum of the effects of components and also stem from interactions between constituent parts. For example, work by Paul Plummer and Eric Shep pard suggests that mathematical models informed by complexity theory can mediate between mainstream spatial science and critical geography. These authors have specified models for regional competitiveness in capitalist economies that seriously question positivist approaches prioritizing stability and order. Their model allows for the ontological assumption that structure and agency are mutually constitutive. This enables them to trade the assumptions of rational choice theories for those favored by critical economic geographers. Not only may knowledge be imperfect (also accommodated in some rational choice theories), preferences can also be shaped by the social and cultural contexts in which agents are situated and actors can engage in collective action. Moreover, their specified model also enables alternative representations of space that are no longer Newtonian (space as a container) but reflect endogenous and uneven spatial interdependencies. It goes without saying that models of this kind produce outcomes that clearly differ from those cast in the mould of mainstream spatial science. However, the additional level of com plexity comes at the price of substantial difficulty when it comes to model estimation. The development of dedi cated computational approaches – not only algorithms but also guidelines for how to deploy these in ways consistent with critical methodologies – is still in its in fancy, at least in geography. Critical GIS is another burgeoning field where critical researchers are broadening the ontological and repre sentational spectra of spatial science. Recent, feminist inspired work has sought various ways to include con textual complexity into knowledges and representations produced with GIS. These include, but are not limited to, the incorporation of difficult to quantify phenomena, such as place bound emotions and webs of economic practices. For instance, in her work on place specific

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feelings of safety and anxiety among Muslim women after 9/11, Mei Po Kwan employed time–space diaries, in depth interviews, and ethnography to construct what she terms collaborative three dimensional (3 D) GIS videography from the vantage point of the research participant. Her research thus also addresses the claim that GIS – and spatial science in general – produces disembodied knowledges. However, as before, the levels of intensity and complexity of such GIS approaches pose significant technical challenges. While technological developments are rapidly expanding the possibilities of ‘qualitative’ GIS, the scaling up of produced represen tations to the levels of aggregation needed for convincing interventions in policy and decision making processes remains an important concern for the near future. Finally, the above endeavors also suggest that critical quantitative geographers attempt to add nuances to the hard and fast theoretical categories common to main stream spatial science. This remains a difficult challenge, however, because making events and phenomena dis cernible and commensurable is required for quantification to become possible. The use of fuzzy logic, which accepts that category membership is gradual (expressed through a [0,1] range) rather than a binary condition, may mitigate some of the problems identified but still assumes that different ontological states exist. Other strategies that have been outlined and employed to circumvent rigid classifications are less technically intensive. These include reflexively accounting for the adoption of certain cat egorizations; sensitivity analyses to assess how outcomes are affected by different categorizations; and the use of segmentation and interacting variables in statistical analysis and mathematical modeling. Work by Geraldine Pratt in the early 1980s already showed that segmentation and interacting variables help researchers avoid overly universalizing claims. She used a segmentation approach to statistical analysis to interrogate Marxian statements about the links between housing tenure and political ideology, which showed that this connection was mediated by occupational status and unionization.

Conclusion Critical spatial science is a variegated and heterogeneous body of work that takes issue with the criticisms leveled at positivist analysis and that develops novel ways to connect critical/qualitative and analytical/quantitative geog raphies. Though earlier versions in particular started from positivist worldviews, most recent work tends to be premised on the notions that using a set of techniques does not necessarily entail a specific philosophical position. This implies that not only progressive research questions are addressed, but also that alternative under standings of scientific objectivity and ontology are

explored with quantitative methods. Despite its internal heterogeneity, recent critical spatial analysis also exhibits various commonalities. These include the recognition that quantitative methods may not be appropriate for all questions interesting critical geographers; a focus on difference, contextuality, and contingency instead of, or in addition to, regularity and similarity; and a process orientation to doing research. Moreover, much research transcends the qualitative/quantitative binary, primarily by mixing different research methods and by outlining simi larities in the practices associated with different methods. Despite its vibrancy, the field of critical spatial science also faces various challenges. For instance, one important trend is the use of ever more complex tools and appli cations demanding high levels of expertise from the user. While this tendency is very welcome, it is important that efforts to advance new tools are not only restricted to technical aspects. Equal attention needs to be devoted to the development of guidelines for using those applications as a researcher and for communicating research to others in and especially beyond academia in ways compatible with radical, feminist, and post structuralist understandings of science. Additionally, given that utilizing such tools and applications is often time and resource consuming, issues of unequal access to these developments are likely to remain relevant. Notwithstanding these and other challenges, it is essential that the initiatives to integrate critical theory and spatial analysis are continued and expanded. This is because quantitative information pervades all aspects of contemporary societies and appears to become even more important, implying that the significance of numbers as tools of empowerment is also likely to increase. The attempts described in this article allow for constructive critiques of dominant scientific practices and represen tations of the social world that leave the voices and per spectives of certain groups unarticulated and thus form a necessary ingredient of a critical discipline. See also: Chaos and Complexity; Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems; Critical GIS; Cultural Turn; Economic Geography, Quantitative; Feminism/ Feminist Geography; Feminist Methodologies; Mixed and Multiple Methods; Positivism/Positivist Geography; Poststructuralism/Poststructuralist Geographies; Pragmatism/Pragmatist Geographies; Quantitative Revolution; Scientific Method; Triangulation; Visualization, Feminist.

Further Reading Barnes, T. J. and Hannah, M. (2001). Theme issue: The place of numbers: Histories, geographies, and theories of quantification, part 2. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19, 505 572.


Elwood, S. (2006). Critical issues in participatory GIS: Deconstructions, reconstructions and new research directions. Transactions in GIS 10, 693 708. Fotheringham, A. S. (2000). Context dependent spatial analysis: A role for GIS? Journal of Geographical Systems 2, 71 76. Hanson, S. and Pratt, G. (1995). Gender, Work, and Space. London: Routledge. Haraway, D. J. (1991). Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Jones, J. P. III. and Hanham, R. Q. (1995). Contingency, realism, and the expansion method. Geographical Analysis 27, 185 207. Kwan, M. P. (2002). Quantitative methods and feminist geographic research. In Moss, P. (ed.) Feminist Geography in Practice: Research and Methods, pp 160 173. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Kwan, M. P. (ed.) (2002). Special Issue: Feminist Geography and GIS. Gender, Place and Culture 9, 261 303.

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Kwan, M. P. and Knigge, L. (eds.) (2006). Theme issue: Qualitative research and GIS. Environment and Planning A 38, 1999 2074. Mattingly, D. J. and Falconer Al Hindi, K. (eds.) (1995). Focus: Should women count? Professional Geographer 47, 426 466. Nightingale, A. (2003). A feminist in the forest: Situated knowledges and mixing methods in natural resource management. ACME: An International E Journal for Critical Geographies 2, 77 90. Philo, C. (ed.) (1998). Theme issue: Reconsidering quantitative geography. Environment and Planning A 30, 191 332. Plummer, P. and Sheppard, E. (2006). Geography matters: Agency, structures and dynamics at the intersection of economics and geography. Journal of Economic Geography 6, 619 637. Pratt, G. (1989). Quantitative techniques and humanistic historical materialist perspectives. In Kobayashi, A. & Mackenzie, S. (eds.) Remaking Human Geography, pp 101 115. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman.

Spatial Autocorrelation D. A. Griffith, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Auto- A prefix literally meaning self; spatial autocorrelation means self-correlation, or values within a given variable are correlated, resulting in the variable being correlated with itself. Correlation A description of the nature and degree of a relationship between a pair of quantitative variables. Geary Ratio An index of spatial autocorrelation, involving the computation of squared differences of values that are geographic neighbors (i.e., paired comparisons), that ranges from 0 to 1 for negative, and 1 to approximately 2 for positive, spatial autocorrelation, with an expected value of 1 for zero spatial autocorrelation. Geographic Connectivity/Weights Matrix An n-by-n matrix with the same sequence of row and column location labels, whose entries indicate which pairs of locations are neighbors. Map Pattern The systematic organization of values for some variable across a map resulting in visually conspicuous texture that consists of global, regional, and local trends, gradients, swaths, or mosaics. Moran Coefficient An index of spatial autocorrelation, involving the computation of cross-products of meanadjusted values that are geographic neighbors (i.e., covariations), that ranges from roughly (–1, –0.5) to nearly 0 for negative, and nearly 0 to approximately 1 for positive, spatial autocorrelation, with an expected value of –1/(n – 1) for zero spatial autocorrelation, where n denotes the number of areal units. Moran Scatterplot A scatterplot of standardized versus summed nearby standardized values whose associated bivariate regression slope coefficient is the unstandardized Moran coefficient. Negative Spatial Autocorrelation For the geographic distribution of some variable across a map, high values tend to be geographic neighbors of low values, intermediate values tend to be geographic neighbors of intermediate values, and low values tend to be geographic neighbors of high values. Positive Spatial Autocorrelation For the geographic distribution of some variable across a map, high values tend to be geographic neighbors of high values, intermediate values tend to be geographic neighbors of intermediate values, and low values tend to be geographic neighbors of low values. Redundant Information Information in data that is duplicated, and hence unneeded for spatial statistical analyses; for georeferenced data, this duplication arises

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from locational closeness that results in mutually shared information, allowing an awareness of nearby values once the value for a given location is known.

Introduction ‘Spatial autocorrelation’ is the correlation among values of a single variable strictly attributable to their relatively close locational positions on a two dimensional (2 D) surface, introducing a deviation from the independent observations assumption of classical statistics. Spatial autocorrelation exists because real world phenomena are typified by orderliness, (map) pattern, and systematic concentration, rather than randomness. Tobler’s first law of geography encapsulates this situation: ‘‘everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.’’ To this maximum should be added the qualifier: ‘‘but not necessarily through the same mechanisms.’’ In other words, spatial autocorrela tion means a dependency exists between values of a variable in neighboring or proximal locations, or a sys tematic pattern in values of a variable across the locations on a map due to underlying common factors. Selected physical models portray the existence of spatial autocorrelation. First, and foremost, pictures (analogous to map pattern) would not be discernible on a television/computer screen without spatial autocorrela tion. Nor could sliding tile or jigsaw puzzles be solved. Magnetic sculptures constructed from separate pieces of metal piled upon a magnetized base more completely illustrate spatial autocorrelation: when the pieces of metal are placed on their magnetic base, they can be sculpted into a 3 D figure; when the pieces of metal are moved far from their magnetic base (as well as any other magnetic source), they simply are independent pieces of metal that only can be brushed into a pile. The spatial autocorrelation mechanism here is the magnetic field that is transferred from piece to piece by metal pieces touching. Meanwhile, a number of real world examples also portray the existence of spatial autocorrelation. Most mineral deposits cluster at relatively few locations on the Earth’s surface; they are not ubiquitous. House prices and house value assessments are established in the real estate market by comparisons between a house and similar nearby houses. Zoning ordinances force similar land use types to group together in coterminous locations. Dis eases, such as West Nile virus, creep across a landscape


through contagion. Finally, unabated water (wind) pol luters generate negative consequences for those down stream (downwind) of their locations; a similar but more fully 2 D example is furnished by defunct smelter superfund sites.

Conceptual Meanings of Spatial Autocorrelation Spatial autocorrelation has many interpretations. The most dismissive is as a ‘nuisance parameter’. Spatial autocorrelation is captured by a model specification because its presence is necessary for a good description, but it is not truly of interest and only interferes with the estimation of other model parameters that are of true interest. This interference tends to be for parameters such as variances, rather than means. Scientists increas ingly are deciding that spatial autocorrelation should not be treated as a nuisance parameter. Interpreting spatial autocorrelation as ‘self correlation’ is literal. Correlation arises from the geographic context within which attribute values occur, and as such can be expressed in terms of the Pearson product–moment cor relation coefficient (r) formula, but with neighboring values of variable y replacing those of variable x. Here, the correlation being ascertained is an average of that between location specific time series of a variable for all possible pairs of locations. But these time series are not observable, and hence the assumption invoked is exchangeability (i.e., the set of time series can be permuted without affecting results – the order in which a time series mechanism generates values across a map is irrelevant). Interpreting spatial autocorrelation as ‘map pattern’ emphasizes conspicuous trends, gradients, swaths, or mosaics across a map. Consider a constant, which is the degenerate case (i.e., a constant has no variance) of perfect positive spatial autocorrelation: once the value of a constant is known at a single location, it is known at all locations. Next, consider a variable that portrays a north–south (or east–west) linear trend across a map. If this variable has a mean of 0, then it is geometrically independent of any constant. These north–south and east–west oriented linear trend variables also are in dependent. A variable with mean 0 whose values’ mag nitudes form a 3 D symmetric hill (or valley) in the center of a map constitutes yet another mutually in dependent map pattern. These three variables display maximum levels of positive spatial autocorrelation when geographic variance is present, and may be described as global geographic patterns. Alternating sequences of moderately large hills and valleys with either an east– west or a north–south orientation portray moderate positive spatial autocorrelation, and constitute regional map patterns. Alternating sequences of small hills and

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valleys with either an east–west or a north–south orien tation portray weak positive spatial autocorrelation, and constitute local map patterns. This fragmentation con tinues through randomness (zero spatial autocorrelation) to arrangements of increasingly alternating values (i.e., single value hills and valleys), which portray increasing negative spatial autocorrelation. Most substantive vari ables have geographic distributions that can be described by combinations of some subset of these mutually in dependent varying hill–valley cluster size map patterns. As a ‘diagnostic tool’, spatial autocorrelation plays a crucial role in model based inference, whose foundation is a set of valid assumptions rather than a scientific (i.e., random) sampling design. Detected spatial auto correlation can signify model misspecification, including treating nonlinear relationships with a linear specifi cation, such as an exponential relationship between a predictor variable, x, and a response variable, y, that is described with a straight trend line. It also can signify ‘missing variables’ for a regression equation, and as such serves as a ‘surrogate’ for variation otherwise un accounted for because these variables are missing. This surrogate role occurs when autocorrelation map patterns displayed by predictor variables align with autocorrela tion map patterns displayed by y. Moreover, the same set of distinct map patterns is common to both a set of missing variables and y. Accounting for spatial auto correlation in this context can do a surprisingly good job of representing missing variables in an equation specifi cation. In contrast, spatial autocorrelation that remains unaccounted for tends to distort classical correlation coefficient interpretations. The term correlation alludes to the notion of ‘redundant information’. If x and y are perfectly correl ated, then knowing x means exactly knowing y. In other words, the information content of y is perfectly dupli cated in x; this degree of duplication decreases as the correlation coefficient moves toward 0. Spatial auto correlation extends this notion of redundant information to georeferenced data. The value at a given location can be predicted with some degree of accuracy from the values at nearby locations; this spatial data feature con stitutes the foundation of cartographic interpolation. Recalling the example of housing prices, such redundant information results from ‘spatial spillovers’: house values at one location spill over to impact upon house values at nearby locations. Building an expensive house near an inexpensive house tends to reduce the value of the expensive house while increasing the value of the inexpensive house, all other things being equal. This mechanism is similar to a river that floods its banks into its flood plain. Another example, at the micro level of geographic resolution, is second hand smoke generated by smokers. And yet another example is the noxious smell generated by such facilities as sewage treatment or

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rendering plants that permeates their surrounding neighborhoods. Spatial autocorrelation can materialize from some course of action operating over a geographic landscape, such as contagious diffusion of a disease, resulting in it being interpreted as a ‘spatial process mechanism’. The diffusion of West Nile virus across the coterminous United States (US) illustrates this interpretation. This disease quickly became a serious problem in the US, extremely rapidly diffusing from Long Island in 1999 throughout the remainder of the country following northeast to west and south paths. A weather front moving across a geographic landscape can be viewed in a similar way because it results in highly spatially auto correlated local weather conditions. Finally, interpreting spatial autocorrelation as an ‘outcome of areal unit demarcation’ relates it to the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP), whereby results from statistical analyses of georeferenced data can be varied at will simply by changing the surface partitioning used to demarcate areal units. For example, a standard eight by eight checkerboard pattern exhibits negative spatial autocorrelation between the red and black colors of its squares. But if these squares are aggregated into compact clusters of four (i.e., two by two groupings), and the red and black colors averaged (resulting in a constant dark red color across the checkerboard), then the spatial autocorrelation becomes maximally positive. Pol itical redistricting involving gerrymandering (i.e., electoral district or constituency boundaries are manipulated in order to achieve a prespecified geographic aggregation result, such as some political advantage) exemplifies this general situation in practice.

Illustrations of Spatial Autocorrelation Most empirical spatial autocorrelation cases involve moderate, positive relationship tendencies between nearby values on a map. Remotely sensed satellite images are one exception, almost always displaying a very strong positive relationship. Most socioeconomic/demographic data display a moderate positive relationship. And, negative spatial autocorrelation rarely is encountered in practice. Strong Positive Spatial Autocorrelation Remotely sensed images are one exception to the geo referenced data norm of moderate positive spatial auto correlation, frequently displaying very strong positive spatial autocorrelation. This feature partly results from light reflectance scattering, rather than being neatly contained in pixel boundaries, which are imaginary, hence spilling over into nearby pixels measured by a satellite’s sensors.

A 1000 by 1000 pixel subset was extracted from a satellite image of the Florida Everglades for illustrative purposes (Figure 1a). The amount of green vegetation in this region can be quantified with a normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), which is calculated with the spectral reflectance values for the near infrared (B5) and visible red (B3) bands as follows: B5 B3 B5 þ B3

Positive values beyond about 0.3 tend to represent green vegetation, whereas negative values tend to rep resent swamp areas; positive values closer to 0 tend to represent soil. The 1 000 000 selected pixels yield only 3033 different NDVI values. This measurement was modified mathematically (i.e., transformed) in order to better align it with a bell shaped curve (Figure 1b). The image appearing in Figure 1a displays very strong positive spatial autocorrelation. The outline of the Everglades is apparent, as is the southeast coast of Florida, south of Miami. The absence of autocorrelation would result in this image appearing as a shuffling of the set of colors, similar to the picture distorting momentary white specks that appear on a television screen when, for example, atmospheric static is dominant when, say, a cable connection is lost. Moderate Positive Spatial Autocorrelation Maps of population density tend to display moderate positive spatial autocorrelation, in part due to urban ization at a regional or national scale, and zoning at a local scale. Data from the 1993 census of Peru furnish population counts by districts across the Cusco depart ment; an ArcGIS shapefile furnishes area measures for these 108 districts. Population density tends to be skewed, with a natural lower bound of 0, and few areal units with relatively sizeable concentrations. Population density by district in the Cusco depart ment ranges from 0.8 to 11 579.2 per unit area. Its inverse square root, after adding 11 to each density, better mimics a bell shaped curve (see Figure 2). This trans formed population density displays moderate positive spatial autocorrelation, forming an elongated mound map pattern with a single peak. The highest density is in the city of Cusco, with the next highest densities stretching along an economic corridor formed by the Vilcanota River valley; the lowest densities are in the most rural areas of this department. Moderate Negative Spatial Autocorrelation Few empirical examples of negative spatial autocorrelation are reported in the literature. Usually this phenomenon is discussed conceptually in terms of geographic


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99.9999 99.99 99 95 Percent

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Figure 1 A Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM þ ) image of the Florida Everglades for 1 January 2002. (a) A composite image constructed using all spectral bands, with the subregion of analysis outlined with a red rectangle and the nonimage areas blacked out; (b) a quantile plot of the 1 000 000 transformed NDVI values for the subregion; (c) visible red spectral band (wavelength 0.63 0.69 microns (i.e., nanometers/1000)) for the subregion, with data values in the range 13 175; (d) mid-infrared spectral band (wavelength 1.55 1.75 microns) for the subregion, with data values in the range 1 173; and (e) transformed NDVI, with values in the range 0.84 to 1.89. Note: the gray scale for the maps is directly proportional to the pixel values.

competition. In other words, if a finite amount of land is available, gains in land size of one territory can occur only through the loss of land size in nearby territories. The World Wars fought on the European continent illustrate this situation. Continental Europe principally in terms of the European Union is partitioned into 22 countries. Treat ing the capital of each country as its seat of power, and hence its focal point, this portion of the continent also can be partitioned into Thiessen polygons (Figure 3b). The ratio of each country’s actual to corresponding Thiessen polygon land size gives an index of local com petition, whose normal quantile plot (Figure 3a) implies a frequency distribution that conforms well to a bell shaped curve. This areas ratio displays negative spatial autocorrelation: Switzerland, Luxembourg, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic are islands of very low ratio values that are completely surrounded by countries that have the highest ratio values (Figure 3c).

Estimators of Spatial Autocorrelation Historically, once the spatial autocorrelation concept was established and widely recognized, spatial scientists became interested in quantifying it, and then testing hypotheses about it, with an ultimate goal of incorpora ting it into models. The two most commonly used quantitative indices are the Moran coefficient (MC) and the Geary ratio (GR). From r to Moran Coefficient Exploiting the interpretation of self correlation, spatial autocorrelation can be expressed in terms of the formula for r, but with neighboring values of variable y replacing those of x Pn qP n

i 1 ðxi

i 1 ðxi

xÞð yi yÞ=n qP n xÞ =n yÞ2 =n i 1 ð yi 2

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Figure 2 The 1993 population density across the department of Cusco, Peru. (a) A histogram constructed with the 108 raw population densities; (b) a histogram constructed with the 108 transformed population densities; (c) a quintile map of the geographic distribution of transformed population density values; and (d) a quintile map of the composite spatial autocorrelation map pattern latent in the geographic distribution of transformed population density values. Note: the gray scale for the maps is directly proportional to population density.

becomes Pn Pn i 1

qP

j 1 cij ð yi

n i 1 ð yi

P P yÞð yj yÞ= ni 1 nj 1 cij qP n yÞ2 =n yÞ2 =n i 1 ð yi

The left hand expression converts to the right hand one by replacing y’s with x’s in the right hand side, by com puting the numerator term only when areal units i and j are nearby (cij is an indicator variable – often called a spatial weight – whose value is 1 for neighbors, and 0 otherwise), and by averaging the numerator cross product terms over the total number of pairs denoted as being nearby. The denominator of this revised expression is the sample variance of Y, s2Y . But unlike the values 71 for r, the extreme values of the MC are determined by

sophisticated mathematical quantities called eigenvalues that are computed when the set of n indicator variables is organized into a table, much like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, called a matrix. These values rarely are 71; more often, the lower bound is between –1 and –0.5, and the upper bound is between 1 and 1.1. Nevertheless, like the relative values for r, MC values greater than –1/(n – 1) indicate positive spatial autocorrelation (e.g., using the ratio MC/MCmax, where MCmax denotes the maximum possible MC value, 0.25 to 0.50 denotes a weak, 0.50 to 0.70 denotes a moderate, 0.70 to 0.90 denotes a strong, and 0.90 to 1.00 denotes a marked degree), whereas values less than –1/(n – 1) indicate negative spatial autocorrelation. The ‘MC’ is a covariation (i.e., pairwise products of deviations from the mean) index, and is defined by the

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Spatial Autocorrelation 99

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(d)

Figure 3 The geographic distribution of hypothetical land size competition across continental Europe. (a) A quantile plot of the ratio between actual and Thiessen polygon areas, by country; (b) the Thiessen polygon partitioning of the continent (gray lines), with country capitals as focal points; (c) a quintile map of the geographic distribution of the areas ratio values; and (d) a quintile map of the composite spatial autocorrelation map pattern latent in the geographic distribution of the areas ratio values. Note: the gray scale for the maps is directly proportional to the size of the values mapped.

preceding right hand expression. Its sampling distri bution can be constructed in one of two ways: randomly sampling from a hypothetical probability distribution or taking the set of observed values as given and con structing all possible permutations of their values across a given surface partitioning. In the former case, present distributional results assume that a normal probability model underlies variable y. In either case, the expected value of the sampling distribution is –1/(n – 1), the boundary separating positive and negative spatial auto correlation. The standard error formulae for the MC are rather complicated, but can be well approximated by s

2 Pn Pn i 1

j 1 cij

P P when n is at least 20; the sum ni¼1 nj¼1 cij counts the number of 1’s in the n indicator variables, which equals twice the number of neighbors. This standard error result is not surprising, recalling that the standard error of a sample correlation coefficient relates to n, and that all neighbors are double counted (both i to j and j to i).

The MC values for the preceding empirical examples are 0.78 for the Everglades transformed NDVI, 0.51 for the Cusco transformed population density, and –0.33 for the European areas ratio. Their respective standard de viations are: 0.058 78, 0.000 71, and 0.171 18. The ‘GR’, the other popular spatial autocorrelation index, is based upon paired comparisons (i.e., pairwise squared differences), and may be defined as follows: Pn Pn i 1

j 1 cij ðyi P 2 ni 1 ðyi

yj Þ2 =

Pn Pn

yÞ2 =ðn

i 1

j 1 cij

1Þ

This expression, which involves an average squared dif ferences term, also involves the unbiased variance esti mate for variable y. A ‘2’ appears in the denominator because of double counting ðyi

yj Þ2 ¼ ðyi

yj þ y

yÞ2 ¼ ðyi yÞ2 þ ðyj 2ðyi yÞðyj

yÞ2 yÞ

The expected value of GR is 1. It ranges between roughly 0 and 2, with 0–1 signifying positive spatial autocorrelation (i.e., ðyi yj Þ2 goes to 0), and with 1–2

314


signifying negative spatial autocorrelation (i.e., ðyi yj Þ2 is increasing in magnitude). Again, the actual extreme values are a function of eigenvalues affiliated with the matrix constructed with their spatial weight indicator variables. In addition, 0 can never be reached, because it is associated with the degenerate case of a constant across a geographic landscape, and hence yields a division by 0. The GR values for the preceding empirical examples are 0.22 for the Everglades transformed NDVI, 0.41 for the Cusco transformed population density, and 1.67 for the European areas ratio. Relationships between the Moran Coefficient and the Geary Ratio The MC and GR values tend to give consistent impli cations when y is a normal random variable. In this case, a useful rule of thumb is that the two coefficients should sum to approximately 1. Dramatic deviations from 1 by this sum suggest that y may be non normal. Meanwhile, most – but not all – empirical cases yield roughly the same MC and GR values for raw data as well as data transformed to better mimic a bell shaped curve. And, the MC is the statistically most powerful of the two in dices: it does the better job, on average, of differentiating between null and alternative hypotheses. The algebraic relationship between the MC and the GR highlights this feature

GR

n

i P P 2hPn Pn yÞ2 = ni 1 nj i 1 j 1 cij ðyi 14 Pn n yÞ2 =n i 1 ðyi

1 cij

3 MC5

This equation reveals that the GR incorporates locational information in addition to that included in the MC. This additional information is the ratio of squared deviations times their number of neighbors, divided by the sample variance. If outliers are present, then this numerator can become excessively large; if an areal unit has a large number of neighbors, then this numerator can be markedly influenced by the corresponding deviation. If variable y conforms to a bell shaped curve, then this additional information term is approximately 1; as n becomes increasingly large, the ratio (n – 1)/n converges on 1. Therefore, adding MC to both sides of this equation would result in (MC þ GR)E1. The sign for the MC term in this preceding equation is negative, emphasizing the negative relationship be tween the MC and the GR: MC values approaching 1 correspond to GR values approaching 0 (positive spatial autocorrelation), and MC values approaching –1 cor respond to GR values approaching 2 (negative spatial autocorrelation). Zero spatial autocorrelation corres ponds to an expected value for the MC of –1/(n – 1), which asymptotically converges on 0, resulting in the corresponding GR value converging on 1, its expected

value for zero spatial autocorrelation. This negative relationship can be seen simply by constructing a scat terplot of MC and GR values for the three preceding empirical examples.

Graphical Portrayals of Spatial Autocorrelation Spatial autocorrelation is a concept that lends itself to visualization, including scatterplots and mappings. Various graphical portrayals of this concept can be con structed, including a Moran scatterplot, a semivariogram plot (based upon the GR and interareal unit distances), and a spatial correlogram (based upon MC and GR values for 1st, then 2nd, then 3rd, and so forth, nearest neighbors). The first of these, a Moran scatterplot, can be constructed by: converting georeferenced data values to z scores (i.e., subtract the mean and then divide by the standard deviation), summing Pn the surrounding z scores for each areal unit (i.e., j ¼1 cij zj ), and then plotting these pairs of z scores (horizontal axis) versus sums of surrounding z scores (vertical axis). The slope of the resulting trend line is proportional to the MC (i.e., it P P needs to be divided by ni¼1 nj¼1 cij ). Moran scatter plots for each of the three preceding empirical examples appear in Figure 4. P The Moran scatterplot portrays nj¼1 cij zj versus zi, whose trend line highlights the global trend across a given geographic landscape. These sums of neighboring values’ quantities also can be visualized with a map. Doing so produces local indices of spatial autocorrelation (LISA) statistics, which enable clusterings on a map to become more conspicuous. Again, hills (i.e., clusters of surrounding values above a mean) and valleys (i.e., clusters of surrounding values below a mean) constitute the pat terns of interest. LISA quantities highlight local trends across a given geographic landscape, emphasizing any clusterings in the deviations from the global trend line. These individual contributions to an MC reveal whether spatial autocorrelation essentially is the same in all parts, or differs from one part to another part, of a geographic landscape. Local indices can be constructed with a global GR, too, as well as with statistics computed from geos tatistical quantities (e.g., the pair of Getis–Ord statistics). Inspection of a map often suggests the nature and degree of the spatial autocorrelation it contains. This composite map pattern can be viewed in terms of global, regional, and local map pattern components. For ex ample, the composite map pattern associated with the geographic distribution of population density across the Cusco department appears in Figure 2d, and comprises 14 individual distinct map patterns, of which 11 are global and regional (strong to marked positive spatial autocorrelation), and three are local (weak to moderate


315

30 10 20 5 Cz

Cz

10 0

−5

−10 −20

−10 −5.0

−2.5

0.0

2.5

5.0

7.5

Z

−3

−2

−1

0

1

2

3

Z

(b)

sum of surrounding z-scores

(a)

0

4 3 2 1 0 −1 −2 −2

−1

(c)

0 z-scores

1

2

Figure 4 Moran scatterplots for the three empirical examples. (a) Everglades transformed NDVI subregion; (b) Cusco transformed population density; and (c) European areas ratio.

positive spatial autocorrelation). The most prominent among this selected set of map patterns is a northeast– southwest trend, followed by the hill shaped map pattern; the most fragmented of these map patterns (i.e., a local pattern) includes nine visually detectable clusters scattered across the department, many of which are partly merged. This composite map pattern accounts for roughly 62% of the geographic variation (i.e., redundant information), and for all but a trace amount of the positive spatial autocorrelation in population density across the department. Similar descriptions can be fur nished for the Everglades NDVI and the European areas ratio maps. These local map patterns relate to LISAs. The totality of these map patterns relates to geographically weighted regression (GWR).

Theoretical Statistical Properties of Spatial Autocorrelation Classical statistics furnishes criteria to distinguish useful from useless spatial autocorrelation measures, including unbiasedness, efficiency, sufficiency, and consistency. The arithmetic mean of the sampling distribution for an ‘unbiased estimator’ equals its corresponding

population parameter. This property has been used extensively to evaluate the case of zero spatial auto correlation measures, and the impact of nonzero spatial autocorrelation on conventional sample statistics. For many, but not all, conventional statistical models, sample means, and regression coefficients tend to be unbiased, whereas sample variances and correlation coefficients tend to be biased, by nonzero spatial autocorrelation. Thus, the principal impact of spatial autocorrelation is on standard error calculations. Because a correlation coefficient is the ratio of a covariance and two standard deviations, spatial autocorrelation impacts in both of these calculations largely cancel each other when the ratio is calculated. An ‘efficiency estimator’ is both unbiased and has the smallest possible standard error. Because spatial autocorrelation mostly impacts upon variance calcula tions, which in turn are used to compute standard errors, this statistical property is the one most affected by nonzero spatial autocorrelation. In the presence of posi tive spatial autocorrelation, a variance tends to be in flated. The net result is that the corresponding sampling distribution is flatter than traditional statistical theory indicates. Redundant information introduced by spatial autocorrelation results in, for example, sample sizes being

316


misleadingly large. Consequently, more geographic sam ples are needed to acquire a given margin of error. A ‘sufficient estimator’ utilizes all information con tained in a sample that is relevant to a particular par ameter. Conventional statistics applied to georeferenced data overlook locational information contained in nearby values. Recognition of this information is required for sufficiency to be preserved. For example, an arithmetic P meanP not onlyPneeds ni¼1 yi , but also the cross product term ni¼1 yi nj¼1 cij yj , which is used to measure spatial autocorrelation. Finally, a ‘consistent estimator’s’ sampling distribution concentrates at the corresponding parameter value as n increases. The efficiency criterion implies that this will occur for unbiased statistics, such as the arithmetic mean, but at a slower rate when spatial autocorrelation is present than is suggested by conventional statistics. Asymptotic concentration will occur even with variance calculations, although not necessarily at the correct value. If geographic sampling intensifies in a given region (infill sampling), then sample points increasingly become closer as n increases, resulting in spatial autocorrelation increasing, and hence concentration increasingly slow ing down. If geographic sampling involves expanding a region while maintaining the same average spacing between sample point (increasing domain sampling), then the rate of convergence will be constant rather than decreasing, and thus consistency relies only on the finiteness of all or part of the globe.

Summary and Contemporary Issues Spatial autocorrelation has many faces, with its most common interpretations being expressed in terms of self correlation, map pattern, and redundant information. Its preferred measure is the MC, and one of its two most popular graphical portrayals is the associated Moran scatterplot. Few empirical examples of negative autocorrelation have been found, with most empirical examples involving moderate positive spatial auto correlation; remotely sensed images tend to display strong positive spatial autocorrelation. Impacts of spatial autocorrelation on conventional statistics can be assessed with standard mathematical statistics criteria, such as unbiasedness, efficiency, sufficiency, and consistency. Today, spatial scientists routinely compute measures of spatial autocorrelation, and rather than test hypotheses about its presence, automatically include it in their model specifications. Doing so often costs only 1 degree of freedom. Spatial autocorrelation with linear models is well understood, and has yielded spatial autoregressive tools used in spatial statistics and spatial econometrics. Spatial autocorrelation with generalized linear (mixed)

models is not well understood, with only a few cum bersome tools available to handle it. Spatial filtering, which is in its infancy and exploits the map pattern in terpretation, offers an approach that spans both linear and nonlinear statistical models with tools that account for the presence of spatial autocorrelation. This meth odology decomposes an underlying composite map pat tern into global, regional, and local components of spatial autocorrelation. The frontiers of spatial autocorrelation research entail fuller development of contemporary techniques such as spatial filtering, and efficient extensions of existing techniques to massively large datasets. For example, the Everglades remotely sensed image contains 41 611 007 land coverage pixels, whereas the simple preceding analysis was challenged by dealing with only 1 000 000 of these pixels. Furthermore, a need still exists for de velopment of quality spatial autocorrelation measures, especially robust ones, for non normal data. See also: Regression, Linear and Nonlinear; Segregation Indices; Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of; Spatially Autoregressive Models; Statistics, Spatial.

Further Reading Anselin, L. (1995). Local indicators of spatial association LISA. Geographical Analysis 27, 93 115. Besag, J. (1974). Spatial interaction and the statistical analysis of lattice systems. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B 36, 192 225. Getis, A. and Ord, J. K. (1992). The analysis of spatial association by use of distance statistics. Geographical Analysis 24, 189 206. Griffith, D. (1987). Spatial Autocorrelation: A Primer. Washington, DC: Association of American Geographers Resource Publication. Griffith, D. (1992). What is spatial autocorrelation? Reflections on the past 25 years of spatial statistics. l’Espace Geógraphique 21, 265 280. Griffith, D. (1996). Spatial autocorrelation and eigenfunctions of the geographic weights matrix accompanying geo referenced data. The Canadian Geographer 40, 351 367. Mardia, K. and Marshall, R. (1984). Maximum likelihood estimation of models for residual covariance in spatial regression. Biometrika 71, 135 146. Richardson, S. and He´mon, D. (1981). On the variance of the sample correlation between two independent lattice processes. Journal of Applied Probability 18, 943 948. Tiefelsdorf, M. and Boots, B. (1995). The exact distribution of Moran’s I. Environment and Planning A 27, 985 999.

Relevant Websites http://www.geoda.uiuc.edu Geo Da Centre for Geospatial Analysis and Computation. http://ncg.nuim.ie/ncg/GWR/ National Centre for Geocomputation. http://www.ecoevol.ufg.br/sam/ Spatial Analysis in Macroecology. http://spatialfiltering.com/ Spatial Filtering.

Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of Y. Lu, Texas State University – San Marcos, San Marcos, TX, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Complete Spatial Randomness (CSR) A process in which any event has an equal probability of occurring at any location in the study area and the location of any event is independent of the location of any other event. Correspondence of Spatial Clustering The spatial autocorrelation in paired point locations. It evaluates if a subset of points cluster when the subset of their corresponding (paired) points cluster. Hot Spot A spatial cluster of point events or of high values. A spatial cluster of low values is called cold spot. Multivariate Spatial Analysis Analyze the spatial correlation patterns between different variables or different types of events. Space–Time Cluster The cluster of events through space and dependent on time. Spatial Autocorrelation The correlation of a variable with itself through space. Positive spatial autocorrelation refers to the patterns where nearby or neighboring values are more alike; while negative spatial autocorrelation refers to the patterns where nearby or neighboring values are unlike. Spatial Cluster Positive spatial autocorrelation. 1st-Order Analysis Global scale analysis, aiming at assessing if the pattern under investigation shows spatial autocorrelation. 2nd-Order Analysis Local scale analysis, aiming at detecting the location and spatial extent of the cluster.

Introduction Clustering detection and analysis examines the spatial autocorrelation patterns imbedded in the distribution of geographical phenomena. A clustering pattern exists if the nearby or neighboring measurements tend to be similar. The identification of spatial clusters often facilitates the establishment of hypothesis related to the patterns of the geographical phenomenon and the rela tionship between the phenomenon and the underlying process. The testing for such a hypothesis often leads to better understanding of the phenomenon and the underlying process. Cluster detection fulfills two tasks: to examine if the distribution is clustered and to reveal the location and extent of clusters. These two aspects are investigated through 1st order and the 2nd order analysis, that is,

global and local scale analysis. For both types of analyses, the observed measurements are compared with the expected measurements, which are often derived from random distribution. A spatial distribution of geo graphical phenomena might display three different types of patterns: regular pattern, random pattern, and clus tered pattern. Figure 1 illustrates the three different patterns using point events as examples. A set of events show complete spatial randomness (CSR) if: (1) the number of events in a region follows a Poisson distri bution, and (2) given n events in the region, the location of the ith event is independent of that of every other event in the distribution. In other words, CSR refers to a pattern in which any event has an equal probability of locating at any position within the study area, and the location of any event is independent of that of any other event. The detection of clusters is normally conducted through evaluating the divergence of the patterns under investigation from a random pattern. If nearby values are more similar to each other than in a random pattern, or if there are more observations within a neighborhood than would be for a random distribution, the distribution under investigation is claimed to be clustered. The neighborhood that contains more similar values or more observations defines a cluster.

Fundamental Considerations for Cluster Detection There are three fundamental issues for cluster detection and analysis: (1) the measurement of spatial separation, (2) the scope of analysis, and (3) the searching strategy. A cluster detection method is normally developed based on a certain approach for each of these issues. Since no clustering analysis method can take care of all the three issues from all aspects, each cluster detection technique has its strength and weakness. To assess if spatial autocorrelation exists in a set of geographical events is to examine if the nearby meas urements are more similar than expected or the events are closer to each other than expected. In both cases, the measurement of spatial separation is the key. Cluster analysis techniques generally adopt two types of ap proach to measure spatial separation between events: continuous distance function and a grid of spatial cells (regular or irregular) draped over the study area. These two approaches are commonly called as ‘distance view approach’ versus ‘neighborhood view approach’ or ‘distance method’ versus ‘quadrat method’. The distance

317

318


(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 1 The three different types of point patterns (with 30 point events in each set): (a) a regular pattern, (b) a random pattern, and (c) a clustered pattern.

method has the flexibility of evaluating the clustering patterns on any preferred spatial scale; the cells of a quadrat method can be designed to accommodate the spatial structure of the underlying process. However, it can be a challenge for a distance method to account for the spatial variation of risk population. For example, one should not expect to observe the same number of disease cases within equally sized subregions everywhere as population distribution is uneven. Another potential problem with the distance methods is the tendency for overcomputation. The same subset of events might be evaluated for multiple, overlapping subregions; this can cause repetition of clustering evaluation. Similarly, there are challenges for the quadrat methods. First, the definition of the quadrat impacts the output of cluster detection. A point events distribution might show a clustering pattern when investigated with one set of quadrats, but no clustering with a different quadrat set. This is a typical modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP). Second, when the pattern is analyzed through a series of scales, the discrete nature of the cell size might result in significant clustering patterns that exist at a certain spatial scale not being identified. Cluster detection techniques assess spatial clustering at different scopes. Some are based on an exclusive examination of the entire data set (global methods)

aiming at assessing if clustering patterns exist in the whole distribution. Other techniques examine local variation in clustering (local methods) by evaluating the observations at a neighborhood scale to identify the locations of clusters. Put another way, global methods evaluate clustering within the entire study area, whereas local methods assess clustering within distinct subregions of the study area. Logically, a global view test should be conducted before any local view investigation. In practice, given the availability of great computing power nowadays, some local cluster detection methods are directly applied to the whole data set provided that the whole study area is examined thoroughly. Examples of such include methods based on moving window approaches or a spatial scanning process. Table 1 pro vides a quick summary of some of the commonly used clustering analysis methods. The third aspect that differentiates cluster detection methods is related to the searching strategy for clustering detection. There are general tests and focused tests. General tests conduct an exclusive search through the whole study area to identify all the clusters in the area. Focused tests evaluate the existence of clusters around certain, predefined locations. For example, a focused test can be conducted to see if there are more drunk and drive cases near taverns. When using a focused search

Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of Table 1 analysis

Most frequently used techniques for spatial cluster Scale of observation Global view

Local view

Continuous distance

Ripley’s K function, Nearest neighbor index

Getis’ and Ord’s G*, Kernel density

Discrete zoning

Moran’s I, Geary’s C

Anselin’s LISA, Local Moran, Kulldorff SaTScan

Perception of separation

strategy, a focus location is first identified and then the events surrounding the location are evaluated for clus tering. When there is no obvious hypothesis about the spatial relationship between a facility and the events, a general cluster analysis of the whole event set is usually conducted. The results of cluster analysis, when plotted together with the distribution of facilities, might aid in establishing hypotheses about the relationship between the events under investigation and the locations of facilities. John Snow’s mapping and analysis of the locations of cholera cases and water pumps in 1854 in Broad Street, London, is a well known example. It is important to note that, although frequently seen for point data analysis, spatial cluster detection and analysis is very valuable for areal and linear/flow data as well. Examples include investigating the spatial clustering of socioeconomically disadvantaged neigh borhoods and the positive autocorrelation (clustering) of journey to work trips. The former is commonly analyzed to reveal urban segregation or to investigate social or environment injustice issues. The latter pattern can provide valuable recommendations related to urban land use and road construction planning.

Point clustering detection methods are different in multiple aspects. One group of techniques examine the points pairwise to see if they are closer to each other than expected or if similar measurements (variables measured at the point locations) are closer to each other than expected. Nearest neighbor analysis and related methods are such examples. Another group of techniques compare the observed number of points within a sub region or the measurements within a subregion with the expectance for a same subregion to decide if the obser vations are clustered. A subregion can be defined by a set of quadrats or a zoning system over the study area. It can also be defined as within certain distance from a focal location or any location in the study area. Figure 2 illustrates how these two approaches define a subregion for clustering analysis. Not intended to exclusively discuss all cluster detection techniques, the following section sum marizes the basic ones for point pattern cluster analysis. Moran’s I Moran’s I statistic is a quadrat method and assesses the clustering pattern of point distribution on a global scale. It applies a zoning system (consisting of regular or irregular cells) to the study area and uses a contiguity matrix to define neighboring zones. The index is calcu lated according to the following formula: P P n i j ai wij ðxi xÞ xj x P I ¼ P P x Þ2 i j ai wij i ðxi

½1a

where n is the total number of zones, xi is the intensity of points in zone i, x¯ is the mean of xi in the study area, and wij is weight measure to indicate the contiguity of zone i and zone j. The expected value of Moran’s I is 0. A positive value indicates a spatial cluster. A variation of Moran’s I is the Local Indicator of Spatial Association (LISA) indicator. The local Moran’s I is defined as

Spatial Clustering Analysis for Point Data Many geographical phenomena can be conceptualized as point events, for which the spatial information is recorded as point locations and attributes may be asso ciated with each point. Examples of point events include the distribution of a species of trees, the patterns of diseases or crime activities, and the spatial arrangement of stores within a study area. The techniques of spatial cluster detection for point data were first developed and applied by botanists and ecologists in the early years of the twentieth century. It was not until the mid decades of the last century when spatial point pattern analysis became widely accepted and applied by mainstream geographers.

319

I i ¼ Zi

X

wij Zj ij

½1b

j ai

Where Zi represents the point intensity in zone i in a standard form. A pseudo significance level test of Ii can be obtained by either a conditional randomization or a permutation approach. A small p value indicates the presence of a clustering pattern in the neighborhood surrounding zone i. Geary’s C Geary’s C is similar to Moran’s I. Instead of checking the variation of the observations from the mean, Geary’s C is based on the weighted sum of the square difference

320


r

(a)

(b)

r

(d)

(c)

Figure 2 Different ways of measuring spatial separation by different cluster detection methods: (a) and (c) illustrate the definition of a subregion using distance methods for a random pattern and a clustered pattern, respectively; (b) and (d) illustrate the definition of subregions using quadrat method for a random pattern and a clustered pattern, respectively.

between observations. It is defined as P P ðn 1Þ i j ai wij xi P C ¼ P P 2 i j ai wij i ðxi

xj

2

xÞ2

½2a

While the denotation in the above equation is the same as eqn [1a], the expected mean for Geary’s C is 1. A value of less than 1 typically indicates the presence of clusters. Compared with Moran’s I, Geary’s C is more sensitive to the variation between immediate neighbors. Local Geary’s Ci also provides a local scale measure ment for cluster analysis. It is defined as Ci ¼

X

wij Zi

Zj

2

½2b

j ai

An approximately normalized G can be calculated as Z(G). A high positive Z(G) indicates that the spatial pattern is dominated by clusters of high values, while a strong negative Z(G) indicates that the spatial pattern is dominated by clusters of low values. One limitation of the G statistic is that it can only be applied to positive data value with a natural origin. For local scale cluster analysis, Gi(d) was developed to assess the concentration of observations in all zones that are within distance d to the focal zone, i. Gi(d) is defined as P Gi ðd Þ ¼ s wi ðn

j

1 ðn

A pseudo significance value can be obtained. A small p value indicates the similarity of the observation at i with those surrounding it. Getis’ G Getis’ G is a global statistic. It is defined as P P i j wij xi xj G¼ P P i j xi xj

½3a

wij xj

xi P wi Þ j xj 1Þðn

xi

j ai

½3b

2Þ

P 1 P where x¯i ¼ xj , wi ¼ j ai wij ðd Þ, and {wij} is n 1 j ai a symmetric binary spatial weight matrix. A significant and positive Gi(d) indicates a cluster of large values surrounding the location i whereas a significant and negative Gi(d) indicates a cluster of small values sur rounding i. This statistic cannot identify negative spatial association (i.e., high value with surrounding low values and vice versa.).


Nearest Neighbor Index

provides a continuous evaluation of clustering over a range of distances, and hence is claimed to be free from MAUP. Given a set of points, K function compares the ˆ Þ, with the expected K observed K value at distance d, Kðd value, K(d). By increasing d from small to large, typically with 50–100 small increments to cover the extent of the ˆ Þ can be obtained and plotted point set, a series of Kðd ˆ Þ with that of against d. By comparing the curve of Kðd K(d), one can tell if the observation set is clustered, randomly distributed, or dispersed at certain distances. For significance testing, Monte Carlo simulations are usually conducted to generate a series of random distri butions of n points in the same study area. For each simulated distribution, a K(d) value is calculated for each distance band. It is a common practice to generate 100 or ˆ Þ is then 1000 simulated distributions. The observed Kðd ranked with the set of K(d)s from the simulated distri ˆ Þ is ranked to be significantly larger than butions. If Kðd the simulated K(d)s (e.g., larger than 99% of the K(d)s), the points are said to be clustered at distance d. In Figure 3, the dotted lines represent the envelope defined by the maximum and minimum of the simulated K(d) values across all distance bands, and the solid line rep ˆ Þs. The graph indicates that resents the observed Kðd the point data are clustered up to 4.51mi; the data show a random pattern between 4.51 and 4.78 mi, and a dis persed pattern beyond 4.78 mi.

Nearest neighbor index (NNI) is a distance method. It compares the average distance between the nearest neighbor points with that in an expected, random point distribution. NNI is the ratio of the observed nearest neighbor distance, dnn, and the expected nearest neighbor distance, dran: NNI ¼

d nn d ran

½4a

If NNI is smaller than 1, the point events are closer to each other than would be expected on the basis of chance. If NNI equals 1, then the observed point pattern is a random distribution. It is worth pointing out that NNI only tests for the clustering of the nearest neighbor points. While it is expected that most clusters consist of more than two points, NNI can be extended to high order neighbor points. The Kth order NNI, NNIk, is calculated as NNI k ¼

d nn;k d ran;k

321

½4b

where dnn,k is the average distance between a point and its Kth order nearest neighbor point, and dran,k is the mean random distance between a point and its Kth order nearest neighbor point. K-function

Kulldorff’s Scan and Other Spatial Scan Techniques

K function is also called Ripley’s K function. It is a dis tance method and is commonly used to detect the spatial extent of clustering in a point distribution. K function

Kulldorff developed a spatial scan statistic which uses circles as scan windows to test for spatial clustering.

0.50

0.40

K value

0.30

0.20

0.10

5.16

4.89

4.62

4.35

4.08

3.81

3.54

3.28

3.01

2.74

2.47

2.20

1.93

1.66

1.40

1.13

0.86

0.59

0.32

0.05

0.00

−0.10 Distance bands (mi)

Figure 3 An example of the output from K-function. The dotted lines indicate the envelope defined by the maximum and minimum K values for all the distance bands from the 100 simulations, and the solid line represents the K value for all distance bands for the observed point distribution.

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The spatial scan statistic defines a circular window that moves across the study area. The window centroid can be placed at the centers of polygons that cover the study area (e.g., census units) or at arbitrarily defined regular grid points. The radius of the window varies continu ously from zero to a predefined upper limit. To deter mine if clustering exists within a window, a likelihood ratio is derived by comparing the observed number of points within the window with the expected number of points according to a particular point distribution model (Poisson or Bernoulli). Based on the likelihood ratios, the method provides a list of the scan windows that most likely have clusters in them. Kulldorff ’s scan technique is implemented in the downloadable software, SaTScan. There are other scan based techniques to detect cluster patterns. Geographical Analysis Machine (GAM) is one of these. GAM was progressively developed by Openshow during the 1980s and was modified in 1990s. Similar to Kulldorff ’s method, GAM uses an increasing sized, moving window to scan the study area for spatial clusters. Based on the number of points within the moving windows, GAM produces a surface map to illustrate the clustering patterns. Most scan techniques allow for a series of increasing sized scan windows to search through the study area. The point count or density of the observed patterns in the scan window is compared with that of the expected patterns. A common challenge in this group of techniques is to model the expected point distribution when the point process is unknown or hard to describe. Monte Carlo simulation methods are commonly used to gen erate a large number of expected point distributions, against which the observed pattern can be compared. Another challenge for the scan based cluster detection methods is the efficiency of the search strategy. When the whole study area is seamlessly scanned, significant redundancy exists in the searching process: multiple search windows of the same size include the same subset of points. This can result in statistical bias associated with multiple comparisons.

searching strategy. The techniques for point cluster detection are relatively more developed and form the foundation for many linear and areal clustering detection techniques. The clustering analysis of linear or areal data is closely linked to that of point data. Linear feature clustering detection and analysis can be conducted either as vector autocorrelation analysis or the analysis of cluster correspondence between the cor responding end points. Vector clustering refers to the spatial pattern of a group of vectors that are located close to each other and have similar direction and length measurements. There is a general lack of techniques and applications for vector autocorrelation analysis in geography. Berglund and Karlstro¨m’s investigation of vector association collapses back to the G* statistic through assigning the vector outflow and inflow zone information to the end points of vectors. The cluster correspondence analysis developed by Lu and Thill proposes to ‘decompose’ a vector into a ‘from point’, an ‘end point’, and the distance and direction from the former to the latter. Therefore, the autocorrelation pat terns of flow data can be revealed by examining the clustering of the ‘from points’ and ‘end points’, respect ively, and then linking them together. A ‘high–high’ cluster correspondence between two sets of paired points indicates the existence of vector clustering. Clustering analyses of areal data are also closely related to those of point data. The measurements within a polygon can be aggregated to the polygon centroid or the attribute of a polygon can be assigned to its centroid. Either way, the techniques of point clustering detection can be applied to the analysis of the patterns of polygon centroids. The spatial separation among areal features is commonly measured by a contiguity matrix. Thus, the traditional clustering detection methods, such as Moran’s I, Geary’s C, Getis’ G, and SaTScan, are all applicable to areal data.

Other Issues in Spatial Cluster Detection and Analysis Scale Issue and Cross-Scale Analysis

Clustering Detection for Linear and Areal Data In addition to points, geographical phenomena are fre quently conceptualized as lines and polygons. Migration trajectories, telephone communications, and monetary flows are examples of linear features. Flood zone, election zone, and urban neighborhood are normally represented as area objects. Cluster analyses for point data, linear/ flow data, and polygon data are related. They all share the same fundamental concerns relating to the measurement of spatial separation, the scope of analysis, and the

Spatial clustering detection is very sensitive to the def inition of the study area. A set of events with a regular pattern may appear clustered if the boundary of the study area is expanded. It is very important that the study area be defined to fit the spatial extent of the geographical distribution and of the area of interest. Furthermore, the same set of events may show different patterns when analyzed at different scales. For quadrat approaches, different definitions of the quadrat grid will result in different estimates of point intensity in the zones, which may lead to different conclusions about clustering patterns. Changing from one geographical


scale to another can generate different clustering results. For the same set of crime data, the clustering pattern detected at the census block group level might be dif ferent from that at the census tract level. Similarly, for the distance approaches, clusters identified at one dis tance might become insignificant at another distance. This is true for both the K function analysis and the scan based techniques. Cross scale analysis of clustering pattern is frequently conducted when the dominant scale of the underlying process is not clear or hard to detect. Cross scale cluster analysis involves applying the same cluster detection technique at a series of spatial scales to reveal the dynamics of clustering patterns in the same distribution. The purpose of cross scale cluster analysis is more as a means to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the clustering patterns across scales rather than to identify the best scale for the analysis. For example, an environ mental justice study on the relationship between the locations of landfills with hazardous materials and the residences of socioeconomically disadvantaged popu lations can be conducted at block group, census tract, county, and even state level. The major contribution of a cross scale study on this topic is not to reach a consistent conclusion regarding environment injustice; rather, it provides a full picture of the environment injustice problem at different spatial scales, with implications for policymaking and public practice at those scales. Edge Effects Cluster detection methods are influenced by edge effects, which are biases that occur when evaluating clustering close to the boundary of the study area. Statistics cal culated along the boundary may be inaccurate because of the reduced window size and the ‘missed’ geographical events in the ‘chopped off ’ area. To address this, one can build a buffer zone along the boundary of the study area. This is done either by defining the study area as smaller than the spatial extent of the observations or by obtaining more samples beyond a fixed study area. A second type of approach is to simulate the distribution of geographical events beyond the boundary. This is commonly done by mirroring the distribution within the boundary to adjacent areas outside the boundary. Multivariate Clustering Analysis Cluster detection methods have been extended to analyze spatial clustering of multiple types of variables. Developed in botany and ecology, these methods evalu ate if events of one type tend to be clustered or dispersed around events of another type. This group of techniques can be used to examine if certain types of stores tend to be located close to another type of stores or if one type of crime is spatially very close to another type of crime.

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Both the quadrat approach and the distance methods for univariate clustering detection can be modified and extended to handle the cluster detection of multivariate geographical patterns. Clustering of Multilocation Events: Correspondence of Clusters and Other Issues Certain geographical phenomena are associated with more than one location. ‘Journey to work’ and patient’s migration trajectory are such examples. These phenom ena are multilocation events. Each event involves mul tiple locations; the specific connection between locations of different types is preserved for the clustering analysis. For ‘journey to work’, each trip is specifically defined by the connection between a residence location and a workplace. Any change in either the residence or the workplace results in a different journey to work event. Correspondence of cluster analysis investigates the spa tial clustering of multilocation events. When a set of type A locations cluster, cluster correspondence exists if the corresponding set of type B locations are also clustered. Cluster correspondence analysis tests for the clustering patterns of multilocation events by examining the co existence of clustering patterns among the corresponding locations that define the multilocation events. Some multilocation events consist of events that occur through time. In such cases, the associated time stamp for each location is critical. ‘Geospatial lifelines’ is a term coined to describe geographical events each consisting of a sequence of locations at specific time periods. Clus tering analysis of such events needs to consider both space and time simultaneously. Techniques for space– time clustering analysis have been developed to search for clusters of events in space and time.

Summary Spatial clustering methods analyze the positive spatial autocorrelation patterns embedded in the geographical events under investigation. These events can be repre sented as points, lines/flows, or areas. Clustering analysis evaluates the distribution of the observed events and compares it with that of the expected. The fundamental considerations for analyzing clustering of point, linear, or areal features are the same. Clustering methods are well developed for point features, and cluster detection for linear and areal features often collapses back to point pattern analysis one way or another. That being said, quite a few point pattern analysis techniques were developed mainly for the analysis of areal data. Such examples include Moran’s I and Getis’ G statistics. Nevertheless, clustering detection techniques for vector data remain an important challenge. Another challenge is to develop methods for space–time clustering detection

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of multilocation events, or geospatial lifelines. Further development of clustering detection methods also calls for approaches to account for the dynamics of clusters in the same data set through time, that is, cluster sur veillance. The evaluation of local scale clustering when large scale spatial autocorrelation exists is yet another challenge for future research. See also: Edge Effects; Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis; Modifiable Areal Unit Problem; Point Pattern Analysis; Spatial Autocorrelation; Statistics, Spatial.

Further Reading Bailey, T. C. and Gatrell, A. C. (1995). Interactive Spatial Data Analysis. Harlow, UK: Longman Scientific & Technical. Berglund, S. and Karlstrom, A. (1999). Identifying local spatial association in flow data. Journal of Geographical systems 1, 219 236. Boots, B. N. and Getis, A. (1988). Point Pattern Analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Diggles, P. J. (2003). Statistical Analysis of Spatial Point Patterns (2nd edn.). London: Arnold. Everitt, B. (1974). Cluster Analysis. London: Heinemann Education Books. Kulldorff, M. (1997). A spatial scan statistic. Communications in Statistics Theory and Methods 26, 1481 1496. Lu, Y. and Thill, J. C. (2003). Assessing the cluster correspondence between paired point locations. Geographical Analysis 35, 290 309.

Mark, D. M. and Egenhofer, M. J. (1998). Geospatial lifelines. In Gunther, O., Sellis, T. & Theodoulidis, B. (eds.) Dagstuhl Seminar Report No. 228: Integrating Spatial and Temporal Database. Wadern, Germany: Dagstuhl. Odland, J. (1988). Spatial Autocorrelation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Ord, J. K. and Getis, A. (1995). Local spatial autocorrelation statistics: Distributional issues and an application. Geographical Analysis 27, 286 305. Rogerson, P. A. (1997). Surveillance systems for monitoring the development of spatial patterns. Statistics in Medicine 16, 2081 2093. Sinha, G. and Mark, D. M. (1995). Measuring similarity between geospatial lifelines in studies of environmental health. Journal of Geographical Systems 7, 115 136. Tobler, W. (1979). Cellular geography. In Gale, S. & Olson, G. (eds.) Philosophy in Geography, pp 379 386. Dordrecht: Reidel. Upton, G. J. G. and Fingleton, B. (1985). Spatial Data Analysis by Example, Vol. I: Point Pattern and Quantitative Data. New York: Wiley.

Relevant Websites https://www.geoda.uiuc.edu GeoDa An Introduction to Spatial Data Analysis. http://www.satscan.org SaTScan. http://www.terraseer.com/products clusterseer features.php TERRASEER.

Spatial Data Mining, Cluster and Pattern Recognition T. A. Arentze, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Clustering The task of grouping objects in a database into meaningful classes (clusters) based on similarity or dissimilarity of objects given their attributes. Data Mining The process of discovering interesting and useful patterns in large databases through automated methods. Discrimination Classification The task of assigning objects to one of a set of predefined and mutually exclusive classes based on their values on one or more attribute variables. Feature Selection The selection of attributes to be used for training a classifier from a database with the aim to improve the accuracy or interpretability of the classifier or both. Inductive Learning The process of discovering relationships in data of a finite set of cases in a domain that are generalizable to other, unseen cases in the same domain. Knowledge Discovery The process of extracting rules from data or from patterns extracted from data generally by using an inductive learning technique and sometimes by direct mapping techniques. Spatial Data Mining Data mining of ‘spatial’ databases, that is, databases where one or more attributes used to describe units of observation are dependent on the specific locations of the units in geographic space. Supervised Learning Inductive learning of rules for classifying objects based on examples of objects of which the target class is known. Unsupervised Learning Inductive learning of rules for classifying objects based on examples of objects of which the target class is unknown. Validation of a Classifier Estimating the ability of a classifier to predict classes of unseen cases accurately usually by testing goodness of fit of predictions on a holdout set (i.e., cases that originate from the same dataset as those used for training the classifier).

Introduction Data mining is the process of identifying interesting and useful patterns in large databases by means of automated methods. The databases of interest in (human) geography include spatially referenced observations of some kind that are described in terms of spatial as well as nonspatial

attributes. The detection of clusters and patterns in spatial databases is a relevant issue in many areas of geographic research such as the interpretation of remote sensing data of the Earth’s surface, the analysis of spatial dispersion of crime, diseases, and other phenomena, the study of space–time behavior of individuals, households or firms, and so on. As for terminology, the terms data mining and knowledge discovery in data (KDD) are generally used as synonyms. However, extracting rules from patterns revealed by a data mining algorithm is sometimes implemented as a post processing step to aid interpretation activities. Then, the terms data mining and knowledge discovery are also used to refer to the two components of a single KDD process. Data mining is a relatively young field of research which emerged in the 1990s in response to a combination of mainly two developments: the increasing availability of very large datasets through automated data recording methods (e.g., transaction data in marketing) and the increasing availability and power of machine learning methods emerging from work in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The field brings together various disciplines, including statistics, pattern recognition, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and information systems. Unlike established statistical methods of data analysis, machine learning and pattern recognition methods implement local search algorithms which can handle very large feature spaces efficiently. Large databases are common in geographic analysis, due to a general aim to study spatial phenomena on a high spatial (and temporal) resolution, the wide application of automated data collection methods such as remote sensing and Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking methods, and availability of powerful geographic infor mation system (GIS) software to manage and process the data. Furthermore, data mining techniques do not rely on specific assumptions about the form of data distri butions and, hence, are suited to reveal nonlinear, irregular, as well as linear relationships in data. Clustering and pattern recognition is only one of the standard tasks considered in data mining. Other data mining tasks include regression, summarization, dependency modeling and change, and deviation detection. Clustering and pattern recognition are forms of classification problems that differ on an important characteristic. In clustering, the classes to which objects are to be assigned are not predefined, but rather to be identified based on distributions of objects on (spatial and/or nonspatial) attributes. The aim is to identify

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groupings of objects such that objects of the same group are as similar as possible to each other and objects of different groups are as dissimilar as possible. On the other hand, in pattern recognition, also known as dis crimination classification, classes are predefined and the task considered is to assign objects to classes based on their attributes. Learning based data mining techniques to develop classifiers of these types are known as unsupervised learning (clustering) and supervised learning (dis crimination). In both forms of learning, rules are to be learned by induction, that is, by identifying generalizable characteristics in data from a limited set of cases provided to the classifier. In supervised learning, the so called training cases are preclassified, whereas in unsupervised learning the training cases have no class label. Well known examples of inductive learning techniques are decision trees and neural networks. Apart from algorithms based on principles of inductive learning, numerical algorithms stemming from longer traditions in statistics and pattern recognition fields play a role. In the remainder of this article, we discuss issues and developments that play a role in these areas of (spatial) data mining. The discussion is organized in several sec tions. The first two sections look closer into existing methods of clustering and (discrimination) classification. The sections that follow then focus on issues and methodology that are relevant in the application of both types of classifiers. These pertain to validation testing, feature selection (FS), knowledge discovery, and treat ment of spatial data.

Classification by Clustering In this area, numerical algorithms stemming from statistics and pattern recognition play a more important role than inductive learning algorithms. Three groups of numerical approaches can be distinguished: partition based algo rithms, density based algorithms, and hierarchical clus tering algorithms. Partition based algorithms assume that the number of clusters, k, to be identified is given and try to find a way of assigning objects (i.e., data points) to clusters that maximizes the homogeneity of clusters or distance between clusters in attribute space. A well known example of this group is the k means algorithm. This algorithm tries to improve an initial solution of cluster centers by an iterative procedure of moving cluster centers and re allocating data points in each solution to the nearest center. An error score of the cluster solution is calculated based on measuring the distance in attribute space between each data point and cluster center. Density based algorithms too assume the number of clusters, k, as given. However, rather than an all or nothing classification they use cluster membership probabilities and try to find

the cluster solution that maximizes a likelihood function. The expectation–maximization (EM) algorithm is often used to estimate the parameters of a cluster solution that maximizes this likelihood function. Hierarchical clustering algorithms, in contrast, do not assume a predefined num ber of clusters, but rather develop a hierarchy of possible cluster solutions. Based on a matrix of distances between data points, these methods produce a hierarchy usually by a process of successive merging of rows and columns into clusters. The hierarchical cluster structure has a useful visualization, known as a dendrogram, which supports the analyst in determining the optimal degree of clustering considering cluster number and cluster distance criteria. In the study of spatial dispersion of phenomena such as crime, diseases, etc., which is an important topic area of geographic study, the data points are located in geographic space. Established algorithms reviewed above are not readily applicable to this problem. Because the population that produces the phenomena considered is generally not equally spread across space, the relevant question is not ‘where are spatial clusters of the data points?’, but ‘where are clusters with higher occurrences of these ‘events’ than expected given the background population?’. Furthermore, given the large size and high spatial resolution of study areas typically involved in these studies, methods relying on the construction of a distance matrix are often not feasible as they would require too long computation times. Finally, the Gaussian form of density distributions, which are assumed by parametric methods, such as EM, often do not hold in the geographic domain where distributions are commonly skewed. The Geographical Analysis Machine (GAM) developed by Openshaw and colleagues is an example of an influential spatial cluster detection technique that intends to overcome all these problems. In this method, a cluster is defined as a circular region with greater than average point density (e.g., of a disease) and an exhaustive search for clusters in all possible circles at all possible locations (in a grid) is implemented. Improving com putational efficiency and reducing the number of false positive detections are problems that have been addressed in alternative approaches or extensions of the GAM. Genetic algorithms and graph based algorithms are alternative approaches that have been developed. In the study of space–time behavior of individuals, the problem of identifying clusters in activity travel data has attracted attention. A special characteristic of this cluster problem is that the units of analysis are not points but rather sequences of points in space and time, namely activity sequences conducted by individuals in some time window (usually a day or a trip chain). String alignment methods have been developed to measure distances (i.e., dissimilarities) between activity patterns as an alternative to traditional Euclidean based methods, to take sequence information into account. String alignment methods


measure the distance between two strings of characters as the amount of effort required to make the strings identical through deletion, insertion, and substitution operations. They originate from microbiology where they are used to measure (dis)similarity between deoxyribo nucleic acid (DNA) strings and were introduced to the domain of activity analysis by Wilson in the late 1990s. Applications in activity analysis have focused on finding clusters in activity pattern data either through aligning all strings simultaneously (multiple string alignment) or by constructing a pairwise distance matrix first and then using an existing hierarchical cluster algorithm to iden tify clusters. An extension to the case of multidimen sional strings has been developed by Joh and colleagues to better deal with the multidimensional nature of activity sequences. Methods to detect common elements in sequences and to deal properly with location and time dimensions of activity strings are topics of current research.

Classification and Supervised Learning In this type of task, the classes objects can belong to are known a priori and the objective is to discover clas sification rules based on a set of examples. This task is relevant in several areas of geographic research. The area where it is investigated most extensively is, without doubt, information extraction and pattern recognition in remote sensing data (e.g., to detect or predict land cover changes). However, it also finds application for the dis covery of patterns in datasets from various sources such as census data, count data, administrative record data, survey data, etc. Although inductive learning algorithms are more important in this type of task compared to clustering, they are not the only class of techniques used. Overall, we can distinguish the following approaches: decision tree induction (or, decision tree discovery), decision rule induction, Bayesian classification, nearest neighbor approaches (e.g., case based systems), max imum likelihood classification (e.g., logistic regression), and neural network approaches. Neural networks and decision trees are the most widely used techniques and because they are illustrative for a wide range of approaches we will consider them here in more detail. Neural networks are used for more data mining tasks than just classification. When used for classification, the feedforward network or, more specifically, the multilayer perceptron (MLP), with a backpropagation learning al gorithm, is usually the most suitable type of network. Figure 1 shows the architecture of an MLP with one hidden layer. The number of hidden layers and number of nodes within layers should be chosen depending on the characteristics of the problem at hand. Nodes in the input layer represent the attribute variables used for

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Hidden

Input Output

Figure 1 Architecture of an MLP with one hidden layer.

classification and the nodes in the output layer stand for the class labels. Input nodes simply transmit their input values to the next layer. Nodes in hidden and output layers use a function to aggregate received inputs (usually, weighted summation), a function to determine the activation level (usually, a logistic function), and a function to calculate the output (usually, the identity function). The output pattern represents the classification result. Usually, the assigned class is identified as the class represented by the node having the highest activation level. During the network training, the weights of links are adjusted through backpropagation of classification error at the output nodes. The link weights after training represent the knowledge the network has extracted from the data. A decision tree has also a graph representation, but here the nodes and links constitute decision rules. Figure 2 shows an arbitrary example of a decision tree. There are two types of nodes in a decision tree: test nodes and leaf nodes. A test node defines a test to be carried out on the value of an attribute variable. The branches at the node represent the possible outcomes of the test. Leafs are the terminal nodes of the tree. They specify the class to which an unlabeled case is assigned by the tree. A decision tree is learned from examples by an inductive learning algorithm. Well known induction systems, such as C4.5 and CART, use a top down approach. In this approach, a tree is developed starting from the root node by recursively splitting the training set on attribute variables until cases within partitions are homogeneous in terms of the class label. The way of splitting the sample at each node of the (growing) tree is the result of selecting, in a greedy manner, the candidate test that maximizes a splitting criterion. For example, C4.5 uses the information gain (or, to be precise, the gain ratio) and CART the Gini index as splitting criterion.

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# Cars in household

0

2+

1

Driving license

Yes

No Train connection

No

Trip distance (m)

, where i is an object and a1 through am are attributes of the object. Because spatial objects are often identified based on their boundaries, the importance of attributes is most evident when identifying spatial regions. These spatial objects and spatial regions are identified by the magnitude and spatial distribution of attribute values. These include, but are not limited to, the magnitude or threshold of attribute values (e.g., pollution zones), the homogeneity or dominance of attribute values (e.g., land use and land cover zones), or the spatial association of attribute prototypes (e.g., cities composed of residential, commercial, and industrial areas). Process, the fourth criterion, is interpreted inter changeably with concepts such as activity, operation, and function. Process may change the state of a phenomenon, and all things change. The information about process is essential in the identification of spatial objects and regions. This criterion is particularly important for

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human geography because, by definition, human geog raphy is concerned with human activities. Similar to attribute, the importance of process is more evident in the delineation of spatial regions than that of spatial objects, because the latter can be readily identified by their boundaries. There are plenty of examples of spatial regions that are delineated by various social, economic, legal, political, and cultural processes, such as adminis trative regions, electoral districts, and traffic generation zones. The magnitude, dominance, and direction of processes are often used to identify spatial objects and spatial regions. Because process can be represented as attribute change, the attribute and process criteria are often paired together. Mobility has often been used as a criterion to identify spatial objects in small space or large space. Because mobility implies the independence of objects from locations, it is a criterion in its own right, although it can be considered as a special case of the process criterion or a spatially explicit attribute criterion. While moving, objects maintain their identity, properties, and behavior. Many spatial objects in human geography studies can be mobile or can be moved. When an object, such as a vehicle, moves, all parts of the object move together, along with its structure and function. Spatial regions can also be mobile, but it is its attributes and process that move, not its parts. A close analogy is the movement of ‘wave’ in a sport stadium. By a sequence of vertical motion of audiences (standing up and sitting down), a wave moves around the stadium, while its parts (audi ences) do not change location. This ‘pseudo’ movement of spatial regions has many implications in selecting spatial data models. In summary, spatial objects and spatial regions can be identified through any number or combination of the aforementioned criteria. The genuine spatial objects exist in both small space and large space, have discrete boundaries, properties, and processes, and are mobile (or movable). Spatial regions are extracted out of continuous space, mostly in large space. They have definable, but nonexistent boundaries, and can be mobile. Properties and process are most important for the identification of spatial regions. Both spatial objects and spatial regions can be conceptualized as objects, although spatial regions carry dual qualifications. Fields As opposed to objects, fields are spatially continuous. By this definition, fields are viewed as a mapping between attributes and an indefinite number of spatial locations. The formal model of fields can be expressed as ox, y, z1, z2, y, zm>, where x, y are continuous locations, and the attributes at the location x, y are represented by the set z1 through zm. Fields can be categorized in several types,

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Spatial Data Models

including scalar, vector, and tensor fields. A scalar field presents a scalar value of an attribute for each location (e.g., population count or density). A vector field identi fies the direction and magnitude of a phenomenon at a location (e.g., population migration). A tensor field rep resents strains at multiple directions through a matrix at every location (e.g., direction of population migration). Many researchers have sought to identify the char acteristics of fields. Although fundamentally different from objects, fields can also be described using the cri teria discussed earlier, namely, spatial scale, boundary, attributes, process, and mobility. Fields are most often in large scale space. They are spatially extended without a boundary or the boundary is not a concern. Each location in a field is associated with attributes and processes, and these attributes and processes vary continuously across the field. The motion of parts or the entire field is represented through the movement of attributes and process. These characteristics, that is, the large scale, no boundaries, the continuous change of attributes and processes, and the pseudo mobility, fundamentally dis tinguish fields from spatial objects. Spatial regions, as parts of a field and often con ceptualized as objects, do not comply fully with the continuous definition of fields or the discrete definition of objects. The dual qualification of spatial regions presents challenges, as well as flexibilities in their representation. Networks are a special, one dimensional field em bedded in a two dimensional space. It is considered a field because it is continuous, though in a linear form. The variation of its attributes occurs only on the network, not in the intervening spaces. The formal model of fields, ox, y, z1, z2, y, zm> is applicable to networks, where x, y identify an infinite number of locations constrained to this linear field. The attributes represented by z1, z2, y, zm can be any of the types for two dimensional fields. Linear segments extracted from a network are equivalent to those spatial regions in a two dimensional field.

Spatial Objects, Regions, and Fields in Human Geography Human geography deals with a variety of spatial phe nomena. Some of these can be easily thought as spatial objects, some as typical fields, and others as spatial re gions extracted out of continuous fields. Using the five criteria discussed above, namely, scale, boundary, attri butes, process, and mobility, these spatial phenomena can be categorized into several types of spatial objects, spatial regions, and fields. The identification of these categories helps the appropriate selection of spatial data models in human geography studies. 1. Individuals: These individuals exist in both small and large scale space, have clear boundaries, attributes,

and processes. These individuals can be mobile or sedentary. Mobile individuals are independent of spatial locations, while the sedentary individuals are bound to their locations. The most typical examples of mobile individuals are individual humans or vehicles, while the typical examples of sedentary individuals can include individual buildings in a city. The unique identity, attributes, and behavior (including the mo bility) of individuals in this category are of great interest in modeling and analysis. These individuals, the mobile and the sedentary, are normally con ceptualized as objects. Both types are fundamental subjects of many human geography studies. 2. Masses of individuals: This category is an extension of the category of individuals. As the constituents of the mass, these individuals are identifiable, but are small in size or large in quantity, or both. These constituents can be mobile or sedentary. The most common examples of the masses of mobile individuals include a human population composed of mobile individuals, or a traffic flow composed of individual vehicles. Examples for the masses of sedentary individuals include urban landscape composed of individual buildings. The collective attributes and behavior, the continuous distribution, and the dynamic or sedentary nature of the masses are important in modeling and analysis. Whether a mass is dynamic or sedentary is relative to the time step and duration of a study. 3. Regions of individuals: This category is an extension of the masses of individuals or another extension of the individuals. These are spatial regions extracted from the continua in the masses of individuals. A region can be mobile or sedentary, dependent upon whether the location of the region as a whole is mobile or not, and independent of whether the constituents of the regions are mobile. Electoral districts extracted from the spatial distribution of population and resi dential areas extracted from an urban landscape are two examples of sedentary regions. Examples of mo bile regions include the spread of disease and urban sprawl. The unique identity, attributes, and behavior (or function) of the regions are of great importance in modeling and analysis. Regions are often con ceptualized as objects. Whether a region is dynamic or sedentary depends on the temporal scale of a study. 4. Continuous masses: Phenomena of this type are spa tially extended, continuous, and spatially varying. The attributes and function of this type of phenomena vary across space, and the mass may be dynamic or sed entary. Land and roads are examples of sedentary masses in two and one dimensional space, respect ively. Population density and air pollution can be examples of the dynamic masses (note that the population density refers to a continuous surface expressed as a rate, while the population example

Spatial Data Models

used in the masses of individuals refers to a collection of discrete individuals). The continuous form and the dynamic or sedentary nature of the attributes and function of this type are important to modeling and analysis. Both continuous sedentary mass and continuous dynamic mass are typically conceptualized as fields. 5. Regions in mass: This category is an extension of the continuous masses as the regions are extracted out of the continua. Similar to regions of individuals, the constituents of the regions in mass can be mobile or sedentary, but the mobility of these regions depends on the location of the region as a whole. Land use and land cover areas extracted from the continuous land and high accident sections of a road are examples of sedentary regions in mass. The population density of a certain workforce and plumes of air pollution are examples of dynamic regions in mass. Both sedentary and mobile regions are often conceptualized as ob jects. The unique attributes and behavior (or func tions) of these regions are important for modeling and analysis. The five categories discussed above represent a spectrum of spatial continuity with the most typical objects on one end and the most typical fields on the other, converging to spatial regions in the middle. The first three types begin with phenomena that are perceived as spatial objects and then aggregated into spatial regions and fields. The other two types begin with continuous fields and are then discretized into spatial regions. Spatial phenomena in human geography can be placed anywhere along this spectrum of spatial continuity, not necessarily in distinct categories. A same phenomenon may qualify in a number of categories depending on the objective and scale of a study, as well as the convention in a dis cipline. For example, a population can be perceived as either mobile or sedentary individuals, a mass of mobile or sedentary individuals, regions of individuals, a con tinuous mass if presented as population density, either dynamic or sedentary, or regions in the mass of popu lation density. The examples used in aforementioned categories focus on ‘things’, such as humans, vehicles, buildings, land, roads, etc. For human geography that deals with human activities, it is often the activities that are per ceived as objects, regions, or fields. Examples of the activities may include crime incidents, cases of disease, the flow of information, the transportation of goods, the migration of populations, and the dispersion of pollutants. In these situations, the activities are perceived as the spatial features, and spatial data models are used to register the spatial distribution of these activities. Regardless of things or activities, the same criteria apply in the identification of types of objects, regions, and fields.

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The identification of these spatial objects, spatial regions, and fields helps select the appropriate spatial data models for the intended investigation. The section below examines spatial data models implemented in GIS and their compatibility with the representation of spatial objects, regions, and fields.

GIS Data Models for Spatial Objects, Regions, and Fields Object-Oriented Implementation of Data Models Since the 1990s, object orientation has become the computing paradigm and software industry standard. GIS data models have been implemented in the object orientation environment since the later part of the 1990s. The object orientation approach consists of a number of basic principles. Of these, the encapsulation and composition principles tend to be considered conceptual, while others are implementation concerns. The en capsulation concept states that each object has an iden tity, properties, which are represented as attributes, and behavior, which is represented as methods. Attribute values describe the states of the object, whereas methods can change the state. The identity, properties, and behavior are encapsulated within the object. The com position principle states that objects can be organized into a class hierarchy. Objects in a subclass inherit properties and behavior from its superclass, in addition to their own unique properties and behavior. Objects can also be organized in aggregations and associations. An object is an integral part of the aggregated whole or a member of the associated set. Extensive research has been conducted in the design of object oriented GIS databases. The object oriented version of spatial data models has adopted the same space partition as in the traditional data models. Geometric primitives, such as points, lines, polygons, their deriva tives in the vector data models, and grids in the raster data models are implemented as software objects. These software objects are encapsulated with attributes and functions and are organized into various hierarchies, associations, and aggregates. Despite the identical geometry, the object oriented vector models differ from their traditional equivalents. In traditional vector models, data are organized based on location, expressed as coordinates of spatial features. Attributes and topology are attached to the location. Any change in the location requires that the coordinates be updated and the attributes and topology be reestablished. This design makes the representation of movement difficult, thus limiting the usefulness of the vector data model, especially for mobile objects and mobile regions. With the object oriented implementation, spatial features, represented as software objects, are built on

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Spatial Data Models

their identifiers. Location is no longer the basis for organizing spatial data. Instead, it is treated as an attri bute, such as the ‘shape’ attribute in ArcGIS. With this treatment, changes in location can be easily implemented by updating the location attribute, while the identity, other spatial and aspatial attributes, and functions of the object remain intact. This change is one of the major improvements of object oriented vector models over the traditional ones and has significantly increased the use fulness of GIS in many applications. The differences between the traditional version of raster data models and their object oriented version are less prominent than those for vector data models. Object oriented implementation of the raster data model not only keeps the same spatial partition as in the traditional one, but also maintains the basic form of array of cells. The cells may be aggregated into different levels of blocks according to the needed generality. Each block can be treated as a software object. Note that it is the entire array of cells or a block of cells, rather than an individual cell, which is implemented as a software object. Occa sionally, individual researchers may treat cells as objects in their own in house object oriented GIS applications. While technically feasible, the conceptual advantage of this practice (individual cell objects) is, however, subject to debate. Both vector and raster data models can support the representation of the five types of spatial objects, spatial regions, and fields, though to various degrees. The appropriate choice of spatial data models depends on the compatibility between a data model and the conceptual model of phenomena, that is, spatial objects, regions, and fields. Spatial Data Models for Spatial Objects Spatial objects include the category of individuals dis cussed earlier. The vector representation for spatial objects is rather straightforward. The discrete form and the use of spatial features (points, lines, polygons, or their derivatives) as the basic unit (as opposed to grid cells in rater data models) make vector data models inherently compatible with spatial objects. This allows vector data models to readily support the representation of scale, boundary, attributes, processes, and mobility of spatial objects. Attributes of spatial objects can be internal (geo metric, socioeconomic, etc.), background environment, and spatiotemporal. Vector data models can readily support them. The representation of the scale and boundary of spatial objects can be accommodated by internal attributes, such as shape. The mobility of an object can be supported by updating the spatial and temporal attributes, as discussed earlier. The processes of spatial objects may include the actions of individuals, the

interactions between them, and their interactions with the background environment. Because spatial databases mostly support spatially oriented processes, additional tools may be required to support the representation of some of the other spatial and nonspatial processes. For raster data models, a single cell or an assemblage of connected cells may be used to represent a spatial object, depending on its scale and geometry. Because the basic unit of raster data models is a cell, not a spatial feature, the representation of boundary is implicit. For attributes and processes, their representation is, in gen eral, straightforward. Because a raster database does not have the built in ability to identify a spatial object, for processes that require spatial objects as the basis, additional program ming tools are normally needed. It is seldom a challenge for raster data models to support these tools. The mobility of spatial objects, one of the typical processes, can be represented as a sequential change of attribute for a cell or an assemblage of cells along the path of movement. Raster data models are the simplest way to partition a continuous and complex space into a finite number of discrete pieces. Strictly speaking, raster data models are not entirely compatible with spatial objects conceptually, and a square cell does not resemble most spatial features. It is the simple form and regular arrangement of cells that provide raster data models with the flexibility to support the representation of spatial objects. Spatial Data Models for Spatial Regions Spatial regions include two categories, the regions of individuals and regions in mass, as discussed earlier. Spatial regions are most likely to be represented as lines or polygons in vector data models. Because a spatial region can be perceived as a spatial object, as opposed to a field, the vector data models are conceptually com patible with its representation. The vector representation can support the scale, boundary, attributes, and processes associated with spatial regions, as would they for spatial objects. Unlike spatial objects that are independent of their background environment, spatial regions are bound to the field from which they are extracted. To represent their mobility, it is necessary not only to update the location of a mobile region, but also the rest of field needs to be updated in order to fill the ‘hole’ left by the region. Raster representation of spatial regions is similar to that for spatial objects. An assemblage of cells, rather than a single cell, is most likely to be used to spatially approximate a region. Because of the inherent advantages in representing heterogeneous and dynamic phenomena, it is easier for raster data models to represent the mobility of both spatial objects and regions than vector models.

Spatial Data Models

Because of the dual quality of spatial regions, that is, they are perceived as discrete spatial objects, but are always parts of a continuous field, a number of repre sentation strategies have been proposed to accommo date this dual quality. These strategies use the raster data model for the internal variation of a region, and integrate a vector data model to support the identity of the region. Spatial Data Models for Fields Fields include the categories of masses of individuals and continuous masses. Both vector and raster data models can be conceptually compatible with a field and, thus, able to support the representation of their characteristics. These characteristics include the spatial continuity, the spatial variation of attributes and processes, and the dynamics of these attributes and process. Six data models have been discussed specifically for the representation of fields. These are polygons, triangulated irregular networks (TINs), contours, cell grids, point grids, and irregular points. Of these, polygons, TINs, contours, and irregular points are vector data models, while cell grids and point grids are raster models. Of the four vector models, the polygon and TIN models partition space into contiguous regions with explicit boundaries. They support the representation of those fields that consist of discrete spatial regions. Each individual polygon may be perceived as a spatial object, but collectively, they are parts of a continuous field. The polygon model can readily support the representation of the spatial continuity of a field, and the spatial variation of attributes, processes, and their dynamics, as it would for spatial regions. For fields with a linear form, such as networks consisting of discrete linear spatial regions, the same principles apply. The TIN model can be considered a special kind of polygon model. The delineation of tri angles in a TIN is based on the locations of prominent attribute values, such as value peaks, ridges, passes, and valleys. The resultant triangles contain homogeneous values in slope and aspect and linearly varying values in elevation. TINs, however, are not used frequently in human geography. Contours and irregular points, though in a vector form, are intended to represent a continuously varying space, rather than points, linear shaped spatial objects, and regions. Strictly speaking, the contour lines and irregular points do not partition the space. They present attribute values of a field at sampled locations, either along the contour lines or at certain point locations. If needed, attribute values for the rest of the field may be estimated based on those at the sampled locations. These two models can support the representation of spatial continuity, spatial variation of attributes and processes, and their dynamics through a sampled form.

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The dynamics can be supported by updating the attri butes of the contours and points. The representation of field can take full advantage of raster data models, including cell grids and point grids. Their simple form, the explicit representation of attri butes, the easy representation of spatial variation, and the support for spatial operations allow the grid models to effectively represent the spatial continuity, spatial variation of attributes and processes, and their dynamics. Due to their inability to identify discrete spatial objects and regions, grid models are most appropriate for con tinuous fields lacking explicit regions. In these fields, individual grid cells are the result of a simple form of spatial partition. Each cell is a part of a continuous field, not any meaningful spatial object or region.

Composite Structures Both raster and vector data models have been imple mented in a layered structure. Raster data models are inherently constrained to a single layer. For vector data models, an individual layer is determined by both theme (e.g., land ownership, delivery areas, or electoral districts) and geometry (e.g., points, lines, or polygons). For example, an urban landscape may consist of residential, commercial, industrial areas (polygons), streets (lines), and individual humans (points). In many GIS software packages, this landscape must be prepared in three layers, a polygon, a line, and a point layer, respectively, although all belong to a single theme. It is theoretically and technically feasible to develop a ‘composite’ structure to support the representation of different geometries or themes in a single layer. For the example above, all three types of geometric features can be presented in a single layer to support modeling and analysis. Computing methods, such as object oriented and component based modeling, can support the implementation of the com posite structure. The theoretical design of such com posite structure, on the other hand, has been discussed in the literature only recently. A multigeometry and multitheme ‘object fields’ has been developed for environmental management recently. Vector data of various geometries and themes are inte grated with a continuous raster field of a different theme for comprehensive modeling. Furthermore, the nine intersection system is a notable theoretical development to support the complex topology between points, lines, and polygons. The implementation of a composite structure requires sophisticated vector databases. Con tinued theoretical development in the research com munity and the technical development from the GIS software industry are critical for advancing this com posite structure or any other more advanced spatial data models.

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See also: First Law of Geography.

Further Reading Bian, L. (2007). Object oriented representation of environmental phenomena is everything best represented as an object? Annals of the Association of American Geographers 97, 266 280. Burrough, P. A. and Frank, A. U. (eds.) (1996). Geographic Objects with Indeterminate Boundaries. London: Taylor & Francis. Couclelis, H. (1992). People manipulate objects (but cultivate fields): Beyond the raster vector debate in GIS. In Frank, A. U., Campari, I. & Formentini, U. (eds.) Theories and Methods of Spatio Temporal Reasoning in Geographic Space, pp 65 77. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Cova, T. J. and Goodchild, M. F. (2002). Extending geographical representation to include fields of spatial objects. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 16, 509 532. Egenhofer, M. J. and Franzosa, R. (1991). Point set topological spatial relation. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 5, 161 174. Goodchild, M. F. (1992). Geographical data modeling. Computers and Geosciences 18, 401 408. Kemp, K. K. (1997). Fields as a framework for integrating GIS and environmental process models. Part 1: Representing spatial continuity. Transactions in GIS 1, 219 234. Martin, D. J. (1999). Spatial representation: The social scientist’s perspective. In Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J. & Rhind, D. W. (eds.) Geographical Information Systems, pp 71 80. New York: Wiley.

Mcintosh, J. and Yuan, M. (2005). A framework to enhance semantic flexibility for analysis of distributed phenomena. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 19, 999 1018. Montello, D. R. (2003). Regions in geography: Process and content. In Duckham, M., Goodchild, M. F. & Worboys, M. F. (eds.) Foundations of Geographic Information Science, pp 173 189. London: Taylor & Francis. Peuquet, D. J. (1994). It’s about time: A conceptual framework for the representation of temporal dynamics in geographic information systems. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84, 441 461. Peuquet, D. J., Smith, B. and Brogaad, B. (1999). The Ontology of Fields, Report of Specialist Meeting Held under the Auspices of the Varenius Project. Santa Barbara, CA: National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. Smith, B. and Mark, D. M. (1998). Ontology and geographic kinds. In Poiker, T. K. & Chrisman, N. (eds.) Proceedings of International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH’98), pp 308 320. Vancouver, BC: International Geographical Union. Worboys, M. F. (1994). Object oriented approaches to geo referenced information. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 8, 385 399. Zubin, D. (1989). Untitled. In Mark, D. M., Frank, A. U., Egenhofer, M. J., Freundschuh, S., McGranaghan, M. & White, R. M. (eds.) Languages of Spatial Relations: Report on the Specialist Meeting for NCGIA Research Initiative 2, Technical Report 89 2, pp 13 17. Santa Barbara, CA: National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis.

Spatial Databases A. C. Winstanley, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Republic of Ireland & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Database A collection of interrelated information stored by a computer system. Database Management System (DBMS) A computer system designed to store, organize, retrieve, and combine information. Domain A classification of data according to their characteristics, for example, integer numbers and Boolean values. Relational Model A method of structuring data as a set of tuples or records in relations or tables so that the interdependence of data is modeled. Spatial Data Data that record the location as well as other attributes of objects.

Introduction Databases are computer systems designed to store in formation in a systematic way so that their contents can be easily accessed, managed, changed, and augmented. Spatial databases are such systems designed specifically to include data with spatial attributes, such as geo graphical location, distance, and extent. The software used to manage and query a database is known as a database management system (DBMS). The most prevalent type of database is the relational database, a tabular scheme in which data are defined in terms of simple data types and operations so that it can be reorganized and accessed in a number of different ways. Most spatial DBMSs extend the relational model to in clude more complex spatial data types and operations. All geographic information systems (GISs) use a spatial database with, in addition, functions for presentation, visualization, and analysis of the spatially referenced data.

The Relational Data Model The relational data model was first defined by E. F. Codd in 1970 and is based round the notion of data being stored in a series of interrelated relations of data items. A relation is a mathematical notion of groups of data items whose order is not significant. They can be repre sented as a regular table, with each group represented by one tuple or row, the individual data items occupying cells in columns. In a database, each relation/table holds data on one kind of object, each row representing one

object of this kind and each cell one attribute. Each cell holds an atomic datum, which cannot be meaningfully subdivided into smaller items. A relational database is a collection of these tables, along with queries, forms, reports, and macros, all stored in a computer program and all of which are interrelated. As an example, Table 1 shows a relation representing commercial businesses. Each row represents one busi ness, each column an attribute to describe a business, and each cell contains an indivisible data item. All values in each column are of the same simple domain or type, for example, integer number, string, or Boolean. According to the relational model, the order of rows and columns has no significance and relations with similar structures can be combined using set operations (e.g., union and intersection). Each relation has a key, one or more attributes whose value uniquely identifies each row. A database will typically consist of several relations, each representing a different kind of entity. For example, the business database might also include an owner table containing details of the people who own businesses (Table 2). The key attribute here could be that holding the name of each person. Each row also contains a value from the key attribute of the businesses table, a foreign key, which records the business owned. The strength of the relational data model is its rig orous foundation in the mathematical notion of relations which has properties proven to make it efficient and flexible. This includes the ability to normalize a set of relations to minimize data redundancy and optimize Table 1

A database relation representing businesses

Id

Name

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Conservation Products Ltd. 472846435 Timecare 547623810 Design Ltd. 657347384 Archive Books 657839210 Tom Meek Artist 648390184 Northern Music 475627439 Technologia 484756282 Gen Supplies 968567595 Arcare 947465484

Table 2 businesses

Phone

City London Birmingham Belfast Dublin New York Liverpool Manchester London London

A database relation representing owners of

Id

Surname

First name

Busid

101 102 103

Smith Jones Murphy

John Alan Patrick

9 2 4

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them for querying. Notations can be devised to specify queries as a set of combinations, manipulations, and ex tractions of values from relations. Mathematical methods, such as relational calculus and relational algebra, form the basis of computer based notations of which the most common is Structured Query Language (SQL). Queries can be reduced to a series of primitive operations on relations: selection of specific rows of a relation based on particular values of attributes or projection of specific columns from a relation. The most powerful operations consist of joining two relations together based on com mon values in key fields – the join. For example, to find the name of whoever owns a particular business we can join together the relations in Tables 1 and 2 using values in the key field, select the row containing the business name, and project out the column containing the owner name. This is expressed in SQL as: SELECT owner:name FROM business; owner WHERE business:id ¼ owner:busid and business:name ¼ Archive Books

Queries are the most common way to interrogate a database. They create new, usually temporary, relations or views of a database. Most DBMSs include tools to analyze data and generate reports also. Languages such as SQL also contain operations to alter or add to the database. Typically, selection involved extracting rows based on an attribute being equal to a value or in a range between two values using the standard Boolean operators. SELECT owner:name FROM business; owner WHERE business:id ¼ owner:busid and business:turnover > 100000;

Often to speed up querying, the system compiles indexes, sorted according to natural ordering, to access the relevant rows more efficiently. A typical DBMS will also include facilities for multi user access, versioning and transaction control to ensure the database is updated in a coherent way. The well founded methodologies for de signing and implementing well structured relational data bases, most notably a technique based on entity relationship modeling, together with its sound mathematical basis, has resulted in the almost universal dominance of relational databases for commercial and scientific applications.

Spatial Relational Databases A spatial DBMS typically follows the same pattern as relational databases but includes extra data domains as standard which can model spatial attributes such as

location, shape, and extent. Also included are spatial operations to allow these attributes to be manipulated in a similar way to the standard domains. What makes spatial domains different is that they can consist of complex data structures which may vary considerably depending on the application. For many applications the most appro priate is the vector model representing spatial attributes of features explicitly as their geometry of points, lines, and areas. A point would be defined using a suitable coordinate system; a line would be defined as an ordered collection of points; an areal feature would consist of an ordered col lection of lines that form a closed polygon. Spatial data base systems using the vector model have built in domains that allow users to model spatial features easily. However, many applications need to represent attributes that vary continuously over space, such as temperature, that are more naturally modeled as raster data grids. Whatever the underlying model, spatial data types usually have no natural linear ordering on which the usual search, selection, and indexing algorithms can work. Also the topological relationships between objects are generally as important as spatial relationships. Typical queries required by applications may include measuring distances and calculating the areas of features. They also include spatial functions such as the creation of new features through the combination of existing ones (e.g., the intersecting area of two polygons or the buffer zone around a feature) and spatial predicates (e.g., ‘is there a bus stop within 500 m of this building?’). A spatial DBMS provides facilities that enable these operations that would otherwise be difficult to efficiently program in a conventional database. Typically, these in clude tools to edit and create geometrical objects and link them to relational tables. In addition, spatial querying is provided which considers the spatial relationship between objects. Typical queries might involve determining the dimensions or centroid of a single object. Others deter mine whether objects touch, intersect, overlap, or contain one another – a group of operations classified as spatial joins analogous to the natural join using simple data types. These spatial query terms are sometimes provided through extensions to SQL or by a dedicated spatial query language. Core domains and operations for spatial data have been defined as international standards by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and have been implemented in query languages such as Spatial SQL and MsSqlSpatial. So, for example, a query to find all the businesses within 10km of ‘Arcare’ might take the following form: SELECT b1:name FROM business b1; business b2 WHERE b2:name ¼ ‘Arcare’ and distanceðb1:location; b2:locationÞo10;

Spatial Databases

Other Boolean spatial predicates include ones to detect adjacency, intersection, and containment between objects. Spatial queries are efficiently implemented using spatial indexing. Unlike standard data domains that can be indexed alphabetically or numerically, spatial domains require a more complicated scheme that takes into account their two or three dimensional nature. Typical schemes include using a superimposed grid system, R trees based on the bounding rectangles of objects and quad trees that use recursive divisions of space to pro duce indices based on object density.

Other Spatial Database Models Although the relational model is widespread, it is par ticularly suited for spatial data that uses the vector model of points, lines, and areas. However, not all tasks are amenable to, and not all spatial data come in, this form. Therefore, some spatial databases are based on alter native schemes such as the network or hierarchical models. Such problems include those dealing with topology and those concerning networks of features, such as roads in transport applications. In addition a large amount of data, particularly that used in environmental modeling or captured using remote sensing, is in the form of raster images or stored as data grids, and the applications that use them lend themselves better to flat file organization. Many commercial, spatial database systems, such as Oracle Spatial and ESRI ArcGIS, pro vide facilities for several types of data model to coexist and interact. One drawback with the relational model is that the data describing an object tends to be distributed over several relations. The object oriented model combats this through the use of software engineering concepts, such as encapsulation and inheritance. Indeed, these concepts are

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very good at modeling object geometry and nonspatial attributes. However, this model inhibits issues, such as indexing and query optimization – factors very important with the large quantity of data usual in spatial databases. See also: Qualitative Spatial Reasoning; Spatial Ontologies.

Further Reading Burrough, P. A. and McDonnell, R. A. (1998). Principles of Geographical Information Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Codd, E. F. (1970). A relational model of data for large shared data banks. Communications of the ACM 13, 377 387. Date, C. (2003). An Introduction to Database Systems. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley. Date, C. (2005). Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly. DeMers, M. N. (2000). Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems. New York: Wiley. Guting, R. H. (1994). An introduction to spatial database systems. International Journal on Very Large Data Bases 3, 357 399. Heywood, I., Cornelius, S. and Carver, S. (1998). An Introduction to Geographical Information Systems. London: Longman. Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J. and Rhind, D. W. (2001). Geographic Information Systems and Science. New York: Wiley. Papadias, D., Zhang, D. and Kollios, G. (eds.) (2007). 10th International Symposium, SSTD 2007: Advances in Spatial and Temporal Databases. Boston, MA: Springer. Rigaux, P., Scholl, M. and Voisard, A. (2001). Spatial Databases With Application to GIS. Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann. Ritchie, C. (2002). Relational Database Principles. Florence, KY: Int. Cengage Business Press. Shekhar, S. and Chawla, S. (2003). Spatial Databases: A Tour. Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Worboys, M. and Duckham, M. (2004). GIS a Computing Perspective. Boca, FL: CRC Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.opengeospatial.org Open Geospatial Consortium.

Spatial Division of Labor A. Smith, Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bloody Taylorism Despotic employment conditions in labor-intensive export industries often located in exportprocessing zones, usually in less-developed economies. Division of Labor The separation of tasks and their allocation to different groups of workers as part of the relations of production. Fordism A system of mass production involving the alignment of worker productivity with higher wage levels and the development of mass consumption. Outward Processing A system of production organization involving the relocation of certain tasks in the labor process, often of a labor-intensive nature, to other production sites for assembly and reimportation into the original market. Upgrading A process by which firms attempt to enhance their role in supply chains by adopting higherlevel and higher value-added tasks and responsibilities.

In late 2006 the fate of a factory employing about 300 workers in South Wales made the international stage when Hollywood actor and son of the Rhondda Valley, Ioan Gruffudd, joined a campaign against the closure of the plant and the proposed relocation of its production of Burberry polo shirts to China or South America. This was the latest in a whole series of clothing factory closures in the UK and elsewhere in the ‘old’ European Union (EU) over the last 20 years which, in the UK, has seen employment in the industry drop, according to Annual Business Inquiry data, by 88 000 jobs or 64% in the 5 years since 1998 alone. In the wider EU, between 1985 and 1995, employment in the clothing industry is estimated to have declined by 40%. The Burberry factory in Ynyswen was no longer deemed competitive following a supply chain review by the global brand which is famous for its high end fashion garments and distinctive British sensibility and, more recently, for finding favor among sections of working class youth culture. The local economic impact is likely to be dev astating in a region that has had its industrial heart torn out over the last 20 years. As one long standing employee of 40 years, 56 year old Alan Williams described: ‘‘Who’s going to employ me at my age?’’. yHe is bitter about Burberry’s decision to close the plant, which has been in the Rhondda since 1938 and once employed 2,500 people. ‘‘We have worked to get Burberry where they are today, and they’re just dumping us on the

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scrapheap. They’re going to China to earn 2% more than they earn now.’’ The GMB estimates Burberry will make an extra d4 m by switching production to Asia or South America; operating profits in the six months to Sep tember 30 were d84m; full year profits are on course to be double that. (Moss, 2006)

It is unusual for a day to go by without such media discussion of changing spatial divisions of labor, such as that in the Ynyswen case. While the language may be different, issues involving the changing location and organization of supply chains, patterns and shifts of employment, and the dynamism of organizational struc tures in the global economy attest to the very rapid transformations in economic geographical life we are currently witnessing. Indeed, the Ynyswen case high lights the central concept of changing spatial divisions of labor. From its headquarters in London, the design and decision making of Burberry is geographically removed from the sites of assembly production which operate in a quite fluid and increasingly liberalized global landscape of economic costs and social relations of production. Increasing competitive pressures in the global economy lead key decision makers in capitalist economies to take decisions which impact upon people and places from South Wales to China. From the call centers of India to the emergence of China as the putative ‘workshop of the world’, new geographies of economic activity and new spatial divisions of labor are continually being recreated and the geographical organization of the economy is thereby reshaped. At such a time of profound reconfiguration of the geographies of the global economy, it is therefore more than appropriate to consider what spatial divisions of labor mean for understanding contemporary processes involving the de localization of jobs, economic up grading, and national and regional repositioning in the global economy. Central to the current recreation of spatial divisions of labor is the internationalization of labor markets. Following the collapse of state socialism in East Central Europe and the thorough going, yet uneven, liberalization of the Chinese and Indian econ omies during the 1990s, there has been an inter nationalization of global labor markets. During the 1990s, this internationalization effectively doubled the size of the global labor force integrated into global capitalist commodity production. Access to large pools of lower cost labor resulted in a dramatic relocation of employ ment, especially in labor intensive manufacturing and service sectors from clothing assembly to call centers and


business processing operations, away from traditional centers of economic and manufacturing activity. This has taken the form of the de localization of certain types of jobs away from the core economies to lower cost locations and increasing national and regional special ization, along with uncertainty and unemployment for some in the labor markets of core economies. In some treatments, these new spatial divisions of labor are rendered as a race to the bottom; a relocation of jobs of global proportions attendant upon the further removal of decent conditions of employment, living wage levels, and resulting in a further immiserization of the global working class. For others, they demonstrate the benefits of glob alization as industrial and service sector jobs are spread around the global economy, leading to increases in in comes, and the core economies are left to focus on higher value added activity, thereby generating greater wealth than a focus on more labor intensive activity allows. Global and regional outsourcing has therefore dra matically reconfigured the map of employment and global spatial divisions of labor. From clothing production to call centers and business processing operations, jobs have been relocated and reconfigured in a complex and changing spatial division of labor. This has been accompanied, in the face of mass unemployment and de industrialization, by attempts to upgrade spatial divisions of labor in core parts of the global economy into knowledge based in dustries. For example, the EU’s strategy for competitive ness has stressed the importance of knowledge based economies and concentration on highest value added activity to enable Europe to secure its place in an in creasingly competitive and globalized world. What, then, is a spatial division of labor? Conventional approaches to divisions of labor seek to distinguish be tween the differentiation tasks and the differentiation of occupations. These approaches highlight how, over time, economies become more complex as tasks – and increasingly occupations – are split into many com ponents allowing specialization of activity. More recently, others such as the geographer Doreen Massey have focused on divisions of labor across space relating to how the economic geographies of control in the economy structure relations between places. In the following sec tions the origins of the concept of the division of labor are traced. This is then followed by a discussion of spatial divisions of labor and other more recent and related attempts to understand the changing geographies of divisions of labor in the global economy.

Origins: From the Ancient Greeks to Adam Smith and Karl Marx Discussions of divisions of labor can be traced as far back as ancient Greek philosophy and debates about the

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country and the city and the organization of economic life. The most widely acknowledged conceptualization of a division of labor has its roots, however, in the Scottish enlightenment of the eighteenth century. The Scottish economist, Adam Smith, famously acknowledged the importance of the division of labor in establishing eco nomic efficiency. Using the example of the pin factory, Adam Smith argued that the division of labor allows for: (1) increasing ‘dexterity’ in production processes as workers concentrate on specific aspects of production; (2) time savings made because of the eradication of movement for the worker from one set of tasks to another; and (3) increased efficiencies through the use of machinery adapted to the increasingly specialized tasks of production. Through a deepening division of labor, economies thus become more efficient and the increasing segmentation and division of tasks and occu pations is, in this view, to be welcomed. The analysis of the division of labor was taken much further and more critically by Karl Marx in his nine teenth century analysis of capitalism. For Marx, the development of capitalist manufacturing away from craft forms of production became central to the capitalist mode of production and entailed relations of production that resulted in the de skilling of workers as they con centrated on routine and repetitive activity in an in creasingly mechanized economy. The range of skills that any worker may possess became narrowed and resulted in the alienation of the worker from creative and satisfying work, which compounded the exploitative working con ditions and social relations embodied in the pursuit of profit and surplus value. At the same time, occupational categories developed with different positions in the production process leading to a labor aristocracy that – while still exploited by the capitalist class – retained some power, in positions such as overseers, foremen, or management, over the more mundane work of working class manual laborers. The result, for Marx, was the need to abolish the division of labor and to allow all workers to materially create conditions of existence that allow them to creatively express themselves as human beings. Of course, this lineage of the origin of the concept of a division of labor can be traced to times when economies were in many ways much less globally extensive. For both Adam Smith and Karl Marx the focus was very much on divisions of labor and of tasks within the factory and within capitalist societies more generally. Later, Alfred Marshall acknowledged the territorial basis for divisions of labor, situated in local and regional pro duction systems, which became known as industrial dis tricts. Indeed, Marshall and later work on industrial districts in the Third Italy and beyond highlighted how such districts create locally competitive positions through the agglomeration of activity that combine tasks in the production process across many smaller specialized firms.

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Neither approach, however, developed a strong geo graphical imagination to understanding how divisions of labor were established through space. It was not until the publication of Doreen Massey’s Spatial divisions of labour in 1984 that research began to take seriously the geo graphical basis of divisions of labor.

Spatial Divisions of Labor The most important geographical intervention in debates concerning spatial divisions of labor has been and con tinues to be Massey’s conceptualization of the spatial division of labor. For Massey, the critical issue – as other economic geographers have continually argued – was that economies cannot be understood as operating on the head of a pin. Rather, she argued that the combined and uneven development of capitalism required the production of a patterned landscape, involving the geo graphical arrangement of particular functions in the division of labor. For Massey, it is precisely the organi zation of the capitalist economy over space that creates the social relations through which inequality and uneven development become produced: But new spatial divisions of labour are also more than just new patterns, a kind of geographical re shuffling of the same old pack of cards. They represent whole new sets of relations between activities in different places, new spatial patterns of social organisation, new dimen sions of inequality and new relations of dominance and dependence. Each new spatial division of labour repre sents a real, and thorough, spatial restructuring (Massey, 1984: 8).

For Massey this entailed an analysis and under standing of the uneven development of the UK economy and the increasing concentration of economic and pol itical power in London and the southeast of England, concomitant with the relative marginalization of the branch plant economies of the North: The fact that one region has jobs only in direct pro duction while another claims all the headquarters, or that areas differ in their dominant industries, or that in one area the jobs on offer are overwhelmingly manual while in another there is a sizeable slice of white collar and well paid employment in research, all these differences reflect different forms of geographical organisation of the relations of production. What are often called ‘inter regional relations’ reflect the same thing. Structures of dominance and subordination between economic activ ities in different places mirror the way in which y the relations of production are organised over space. ‘Inter regional’ relations are the relations of production over space (Massey, 1984: 67 8).

Indeed, in the United Kingdom during the 1970s and 1980s, ‘Relations of production are increasingly central ized in the south and east of the country. There is a growing geographical, as well as social, division between conception and execution. yThis is the new spatial division of labor, and it brings with it a new north–south divide.’ At the same time, it is important to distinguish between sectorally based spatial divisions of labor, in which individual economic sectors are concentrated in particular places, and hierarchically based spatial div isions of labor, in which different stages of production in one sector are located in different regions. As Morgan and Sayer argue, this distinction reflects the geographies of social and technical divisions of labor, respectively. One illustrative example of a hierarchically based spatial division of labor in the UK is provided by the clothing and footwear industry that had been facing, by the time Massey was writing, a slow and painful economic decline and loss of contracts and production to other parts of the global economy. Massey highlighted the way in which small and large capital in the clothing industry were able to pursue different spatial strategies in this wider context of economic crisis. Small capital sought out cheaper labor reserves locally largely through outsourcing production to homeworkers and lower cost, often illegal, workers in the existing sites of production, such as London. Large capital, by contrast, was able to pursue a strategy involving the relocation of production, often to lower cost regions such as the northeast of England and Northern Ireland. Consequently, ‘‘in their choice of new locations[,] geographical dispersal and monopoly over local labor markets [in those new locations] enabled these large firms to reinforce the vulnerability of their new employees’’. The increasing hierarchical organization of the industry meant that the command and control functions – investment, design, marketing, etc. – were consolidated in London and other large urban centers while production and assembly activity was distributed to often feminized labor markets in peripheral and rural regions. Spatial divisions of labor are thus reflective of wider technical, organizational, class, and employment divisions of labor in the capitalist economy, and matter critically for the politics of regional policy and working class organization. In particular, for Massey, the politics of spatial divisions of labor revolve around the fact that the ‘‘issue of external control [of regional economies] is not simply a matter of the geography of ownership y Any real solution would have to tackle also the question of the social location of control and the deeper organ isation of production itself ’’. Interregional relations and the regional problem, as it was known, of uneven development are therefore the result of the stretching out of the relations of capitalist production across space.


For Massey, then, the very nature of the class organiza tion of British capitalism was at stake: Nor is it only ‘‘capitalist relations of production’’ in some general sense which must be challenged. It is also the specific class from which they take, for which they are the basis in the United Kingdom, just as much as facing up to the problems of the national economy, means attacking the dominance political, economic and spatial of international capital. It also means challenging the social power of certain strata in British society, in particular the upper echelons of white collar hierarchies, managerial, professional and technical, and those who occupy and maintain the archaic structure of the British establish ment in its broadest sense (Massey, 1984: 305).

Massey’s conceptualization of spatial divisions of labor provided a much needed impetus to the rethinking of economic–geographical scholarship and continues to resonate in many debates in the subdiscipline. However, the increasing globalization of national economies meant that other research was beginning to focus more on the particular forms that new international divisions of labor were taking. It is to these more geographically extensive spatial divisions of labor that we now turn.

The New International Division of Labor By the 1970s, the increasing internationalization of manufacturing activity – through the role of multinational manufacturing operations and through increasing out sourcing of production and global trade – led to recog nition that conceptions of the bounded national economy and its spatial divisions of labor could no longer be sus tained. Processes that Massey had identified operating in the UK national economy, relating to relocation and the reworking of spatial divisions of labor in manufacturing, were becoming increasingly related to international pro cesses of production relocation. In Europe, there was in creasing recognition that manufacturing activities were being relocated to other parts of the world economy creating new spatial divisions of labor. For Fro¨bel et al. in their detailed study of German industry, this involved what they termed a New International Division of Labor (NIDL). A major dynamic behind the NIDL involved the outsourcing of production from West European countries to lower cost production sites in Southern Europe, Asia, and – at that time – state socialist East Central Europe. Production costs were lower primarily because of the lower costs of labor in these regions – differences that continue today (Table 1). The major impetus for this relocation was the attempt to deal with the decreasing competitiveness – resulting from the saturation of markets and increasing costs – in the core economies through the search for low cost labor.

Table 1

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Labor costs in the clothing industry

Country

Cost per minute (US $)

Chinese Mainland CMT Belarus Ukraine Moldova Bulgaria Romania Slovakia Poland Czech Republic Hungary Hong Kong Greece Portugal Spain Italy Germany

0.05 0.06 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.14 0.16 0.18 0.18 0.32 0.38 0.42 0.48 0.60 0.62

Source: SECO Sector Consulting survey (2002) reported at: http:// www.tdctrade.com/imn/03010902/clothing075.htm and http://www.just style.com/article.aspx?id¼93035&lk¼s

In Asia, the NIDL thus underpinned the emergence from the 1970s of the newly industrialized economies – the five Asian tigers – while in Southern Europe it in volved the uneven integration into the wider European economy following the end of the dictatorships in Spain and Portugal. For French regulation theorist, Alain Lipietz, this new international division of labor involved the establishment of what he called bloody Taylorism, involving despotic employment conditions in labor intensive export industries located in export processing zones (EPZs), alongside the development of peripheral Fordism involving elements of factory work relations characteristic of Fordist production systems in Western Europe and the USA (the compartmentalization and segmentation of industrial work into strict categories in return for uneven union recognition and relatively stable jobs in some sectors). This occurred alongside the development of the state institutions of Fordism, notably a partial welfare state for the industrial proletariat. However, Lipietz insisted that this new spatial division of labor involved only a peripheral form of Fordism due to limited domestic markets and few skilled jobs being relocated from the core economies. In East Central Europe, the spatial divisions of labor involved in this process of internationalization of sub contract production provided a basis for export led growth in the latter years of communist power and during the period of more general economic decline after the collapse of state socialism in 1989. In a range of labor intensive industries, but notably in clothing and footwear, systems of outward processing trade (OPT) were developed to enable the relocation of labor intensive aspects of the division of labor to lower cost production sites in East Central Europe and beyond. For enterprises in East Central Europe this provided

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much needed access to new export markets and new machinery, which was often shipped directly from fac tories being closed down in Western Europe. This system of outward processing trade which helped to establish a new spatial division of labor in Europe was largely driven, however, by the requirements of an industry in Western Europe facing increasing competitive pressure in home markets and the need to reduce costs. The outward processing trade system enabled the duty free reimport of textiles which had been exported to enterprises in East Central Europe for sewing into clothing. This cus toms system enabled textile firms in Western Europe and designer manufacturers to retain activity while out sourcing the more labor intensive parts of the clothing supply chain. It also enabled the development of quick response strategies allowing relatively fast delivery times because of geographical proximity and responses to rapidly changing fashion markets in core EU markets. In this latter sense, new international spatial divisions of labor are not only the result of differential labor costs. Issues of proximity to main markets, indigenous production capacities and skill levels in new production sites, and the changing requirements of markets in core economies have all worked to place East Central Europe as an important player on the EU clothing industry scene since the 1980s. This process paralleled that in North America which was stimulated by a variety of regional trade arrange ments culminating in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), enabling production sharing and outsourcing from the USA to Mexico and, more recently, elsewhere in Central America. A variety of related re gional trade agreements have extended these outsourcing arrangements beyond Mexico to Central America and the Caribbean Basin and, through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), to Africa. Like the OPT ar rangements in Europe, such regional trade agreements are designed to ensure a regional spatial division of labor partly protecting core country production of textiles and yarn, for example, from the US, with labor intensive sewing taking place in lower cost economies. More recently, these regionalized divisions of labor have been challenged in part by the emergence and later consolidation of low cost, labor intensive production in China. Intensified by the 2005 completion of the phase out of quota constrained trade in textiles and clothing, China is witnessing dramatic increases in export pro duction to European and US markets, raising impli cations for the long term sustainability of industries in these core areas. The growth of Chinese export pro duction, however, has its roots in earlier post 1978 reforms allowing for the emergence of export oriented industrialization in regions such as the Pearl River Delta (PRD), neighboring Hong Kong, and Macau. Producers in Hong Kong and Macau were experiencing increasing

operating costs which coincided with the planned, state led liberalization of regions such as the PRD. For eign investment began to flow out of Hong Kong and Macau, drawing upon long standing ethnic ties, and into the PRD fuelling the rapid industrialization of what was previously a largely rural backwater. The PRD saw rapid economic growth based on the region’s inte gration into a system of ‘triangular trade’ coordinated through Hong Kong and Macau for the main export markets in the US.

New Spatial Divisions of Labor: Value Chains, Commodity Chains, and Global Production Networks These conceptualizations of dynamic and changing spa tial divisions of labor – through the new international division of labor – have been developed further over the last 10 years or so, specifically with regard to debates over global commodity chains, global production net works, and networked forms of value production. The further development of spatial divisions of labor into new conceptual frameworks involving commodity chains and production networks has been very profitable. In particular, these new frameworks have focused on iden tifying the organizational forces leading to particular changes in spatial divisions of labor. This has enabled a focus on what has been called the governance of global production. Gereffi’s focus on global commodity chains, for example, has stressed the importance of understand ing the role of lead agents in the global organization of production. In particular, Gereffi emphasizes the dis tinctive roles of buyer driven and producer driven commodity chains (Table 2). Producer driven chains involve capital intensive and technology intensive in dustries, usually coordinated by large multinational enterprises and are characteristic of sectors such as automobile, aircraft, and computer manufacturing. Buyer driven chains, which have received much more attention in the research literature, are organized in a less hierarchical way, in which large retailers and buying organizations establish geographically distributed con tracting networks with a large number of manufacturing operations, sometimes mediated by middlemen organ izations, such as trade companies. Such chains are typi cally found in sectors such as clothing and footwear, where labor intensive operations are more important. These lead firms design and market the product but usually do not manufacture goods. Unlike producer driven chains, where profits come from economies of scale, high volume production, and technological innovation, buyer driven chains combine higher value design, sales, marketing, and financial services in the activities of retailers allowing them to act as strategic


Table 2 Characteristics of producer- and buyer-driven commodity chains Form of economic governance

Controlling type of capital Capital/ technology intensity Labor characteristics in production Controlling firm Production integration Control Contracting/ outsourcing Suppliers provide Examples

Producer-driven

Buyer-driven

Commercial

Industrial

High

Low

Skilled/high wage

Unskilled/low wage

Manufacturer Vertical/ bureaucratic Internalized/ hierarchical Moderate and increasing Intermediate goods Automobiles, computers, aircraft, electrical machinery

Retailer Horizontal/ networked Externalized/ market High Finished goods Clothing, footwear, toys, consumer electronics

Adapted from Kessler and Appelbaum (1998).

brokers in geographically distributed networks of over seas factories and traders. These factories are linked to the main markets for consumption by the buyer driven agents in the chain, who are thereby able to accumulate profits from the control of distributional and retail net works, brands and their image, and higher level design and control functions in these global spatial divisions of labor. More recently, this framework has been extended in several directions to focus on value chains rather than commodity chains (through Gereffi’s collaborative ini tiatives with John Humphreys at the Institute of Devel opment Studies and Tim Sturgeon at MIT), on global production networks (through the University of Man chester based Global Production Networks project), and on networks of value and new spatial divisions of labor (through collaborative research on regional development in the enlarged European Union). Each of these approaches has sought to build upon the original global commodity chains framework but to extend it in two main ways to understand new spatial divisions of labor. First, these new frameworks have sought to move away from a focus on the commodity to the social relations and organization of production and value creation, distri bution and appropriation in spatial divisions of labor. This has the potential to return more fully to Massey’s original framework emphasizing that all forms of pro duction are embedded in social relations and that cap italist commodity production processes and the divisions

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of labor they create are about the (uneven) distribution and development of control of surplus value and profit in the economy. Second, a shift has occurred away from a more linear conceptualization of chains, in which com modities pass through different links in a unidirectional chain, to one emphasizing the complex organization of networks across space. These production or value net works are the lines through which value is created and divisions of labor established in the global economy. More recently, emphasis has been placed on under standing how firms in particular places in an international spatial division of labor can attempt to reposition them selves and to upgrade activity to capture higher levels of value added and profit. This process of upgrading has involved the capturing of certain types of activity and some of the command and control functions in the global economy from global buyers. An illustrative example is again provided from the clothing industry in which some assembly firms in lower cost production locations such as Mexico, Hong Kong, Turkey, and East Central Europe have been taking on the role of what is called full package production. Buyers and retailers in core markets have increasingly relinquished these activities and have been seeking suppliers who can purchase fabric and trim inputs (moving away from outward processing type arrange ments), organize production networks to schedules de termined by buyers, and provide packed, hung, bar coded and labeled clothing direct to warehouses and stores in core markets. This process of upgrading enables some firms to reposition themselves in global spatial divisions of labor, but recreates new divisions through potentially outsourcing production to new firms in new locations. Questions have also been raised about the extent to which firm level upgrading translates into improvement in the conditions of work for employees and into wider regional level processes of economic upgrading and value capture.

Conclusion Spatial divisions of labor continue to undergo dramatic change in a wider context of globalization and present real challenges to public policy makers, governments, businesses, and workers. The changing evolution of spatial divisions of labor has been accompanied by a very profitable development of conceptual frameworks over the last 20 years. These frameworks have focused on a shift from understanding regional divides in countries such as the UK to those understanding the changing organization of the world economy. A shift has also occurred toward understanding the organiza tional dynamics of firm and economic networks in the creation of spatial divisions of labor. However, although not explicitly making connections, these more recent

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approaches develop in different ways the original con ceptions of Massey and the spatial division of labor. In particular, they seek to understand contemporary processes of global economic transformation – often implicitly – in relation to how social and technical div isions of labor translate across space and constitute relations between places. This relational approach to such networks, and the spatial divisions of labor they give rise to, is most explicitly rooted in geography in the work on global production networks and on networks of value and regional development. However, such work extends into new interdisciplinary endeavors across economic sociology, international political economy, and global business studies, underlining the importance of cross disciplinary approaches to understanding the geographies of contemporary economic change. See also: Commodity Chains; Export Processing Zones; Global Commodity Chains; Global Production Networks; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Industrial Restructuring; Uneven Development.

Further Reading Bair, J. and Gereffi, G. (2003). Upgrading, uneven development, and jobs in the North American apparel industry. Global Networks 3, 143 169. Begg, R., Pickles, J. and Smith, A. (2003). Cutting it: European integration, trade regimes and the reconfiguration of East Central European apparel production. Environment and Planning A 35, 2191 2207. Coe, N. M., Hess, M., Yeung, H. W. C., Dicken, P. and Henderson, J. (2004). ‘Globalizing’ regional development: A global production networks perspective. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29, 468 484. Frobel, F., Heinrichs, J. and Kreye, O. (1980). The new international division of labour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gereffi, G., Humphrey, J. and Sturgeon, T. (2005). The governance of global value chains. Review of International Political Economy 12, 78 104.

Gereffi, G., Spener, D. and Bair, J. (eds.) (2002). Free trade and uneven development: The North American apparel industry after NAFTA. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Henderson, J., Dicken, P., Hess, M., Coe, N. and Yeung, H. (2002). Global production networks and the analysis of economic development. Review of International Political Economy 9, 436 464. Kessler, J. and Appelbaum, R. (1998). The growing power of retailers in producer driven commodity chains: A ‘retail revolution’ in the US automobile industry? Unpublished manuscript, available from Department of Sociology, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA. Lipietz, A. (1987). Mirages and miracles: The crises of global fordism. London: Verso. Lu, L. and Wei, Y. D. (2007). Domesticating globalisation, new economic spaces and regional polarisation in Guangdong Province, China. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 98, 225 244. Massey, D. (1984). Spatial divisions of labour: Social structures and the geography of production. London: Macmillan. Morgan, K. and Sayer, A. (1988). Microcircuits of capital: ‘Sunrise’ industry and uneven development. London: Polity. Moss, S. (2006). ‘They’ve got no reason to take it away from us’, The Guardian Unlimited, 12 December (http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/ story/0,1969948,00.html). Pellegrin, J. (2001). The political economy of competitiveness in an enlarged Europe. New York: Palgrave. Pickles, J., Smith, A., Bucˇek, M., Begg, R. and Roukova, P. (2006). Upgrading, changing competitive pressures and diverse practices in the East and Central European apparel industry. Environment and Planning A 38, 2305 2324. Rantisi, A. (1982). Marx and the division of labour. London: Macmillan. Sayer, A. and Walker, R. (1992). The new social economy: Reworking the division of labour. Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, A., Rainnie, A., Dunford, M., Hardy, J., Hudson, R. and Sadler, D. (2002). Networks of value, commodities and regions: Reworking divisions of labour in macro regional economies. Progress in Human Geography 26, 41 63.

Relevant Websites http://www.globalvaluechains.org/ Global Value Chains Initiative. http://www.guardian.co.uk Guardian Unlimited, Guardian News and Media Limited.

Spatial Expansion Method E. Casetti, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Dual Expansion Method A technique for creating a linear terminal model from two linear initial models that have the same dependent variable. The technique involves redefining the parameters of any one of the two initial models into linear functions of the independent variables of the other. Expansion Equations Equations that redefine the parameters in an initial model as functions of variables defining the initial model’s context. Expansion Method A technique for constructing a terminal model by redefining the parameters appearing in an initial model into functions of variables that define the initial model’s context. Models All the models referred to in this glossary are assumed to relate a dependent variable to one or more independent variables. Parametric Drift It occurs when the parameters of a model have different values at different points of the model’s context.

Introduction This article is divided into five sections. In this section the expansion method and the spatial expansion method are defined and discussed in generalities. A demon stration consisting in the step by step construction of a model of polarized growth follows in the second section. In the third section, the dual expansions extension of the method is described and illustrated. Selected classes of applications of the spatial expansion method are outlined in section four. The research philosophy implications of the expansion methodology are the object of the concluding section of the article. The expansion method is a technique for constructing mathematical models that involves widening the scope of an initial model by expansion equations that redefine some or all of its parameters into functions of expansion variables. The expansion variables index a substantively relevant context of the initial model. The terminal model thus produced includes both the initial model and a specification of its contextual variation. The mathemat ical models can be deterministic, stochastic, or mixed, and can be intended for solving, maximizing, or estimating. The expansion modeling can be applied to all these types of models.

The relevance of the expansion method to the spatial disciplines becomes readily apparent considering that models born nonspatial can be expanded to encompass spatial contexts defined by spatial variables, and that models born spatial can be expanded to encompass nonspatial contexts defined by nonspatial variables. A model is spatial if at least some of the variables in it are spatial. Examples of spatial variables are spatial dum mies, distances, directions, spatial coordinates, location quotients, measures of spatial inequality, and spatially referenced measures of phenomena that vary over space or index geographic environments. Spatial models are found not only in geography and regional science, but also in the spatial peripheries of virtually all social science disciplines. The spatial expansion method involves constructing spatial models either from a spatial initial model and nonspatial expansions, or from a nonspatial initial model and spatial expansions, or from a spatial initial model and spatial expansions. Let us sketch a rough typology of spatial expansions constructed from classes of initial models and classes of expansion variables. The initial models can originate from spatial theory, such as spatial interaction models, models from central place theory (for instance, nearest neighbor distance of centers as function of centers’ sizes), models from mathematical land use theory (for instance, population density models), transportation models, and so on. Alternatively, the initial models can originate within nonspatial social science disciplines. The parameters of any of these models can be redefined into functions of nonspatial and spatial vari ables. The spatial expansion variables more frequently used include the distances from substantively significant geographical reference points, the variables that appear in spatial polynomials such as trend surfaces or two dimensional Fourier polynomials, indexes of regional characteristics or factors extracted from these by factor analyses, and spatial systemic measures such as indexes of accessibility, of metropolitan dominance, or of inequality. The traditional regional studies that emphasize spatial differentiation can be effectively integrated with non spatial models (or vice versa) using the expansion methodology. For instance, this integration can be accomplished by redefining the parameters of a non spatial model as trend surfaces. These spatial polynomial expansions can identify and map the statistically signifi cant spatial variation of the model that can be then evaluated and commented upon in terms of the complex geographic circumstances the regional geographers are

355

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experts in. Alternatively, spatial expansions can be based on indices of economic, demographic, or social spatial differentiation, or on factors extracted from these indices.

An Example In this section the spatial expansion method is demon strated by constructing a model intended for estimation and testing. Consider an analyst who wishes to investigate the spread of modern economic growth from a pole to the pole’s hinterland. During the early stage of modern economic growth the product per capita tends to grow exponentially, and consequently the analyst chooses a simple initial model relating the natural logarithm of product per capita, y, to a linear function of time, t, y ¼ a0 þ a1 t þ e

½1

where e is a vector of error terms, and the parameters a1 and a0 denote respectively the growth rate of y and the value of y at time zero. This model does not involve space. To extend it to encompass space, first its parameters are redefined by expansion equations into functions of distance from the pole, s, and then the expanded par ameters are replaced into the initial model to produce a terminal model that encompasses both time and space. Specifically, the analyst chooses to expand all the parameters of the initial model into functions of distance from the pole, s, by the following expansion equations: a0 ¼ g00 þ g01 s

½2

a1 ¼ g10 þ g11 s

½3

By substituting the right hand sides of eqns [2] and [3], for the parameters a0 and a1 in eqn [1], the terminal model [4] is obtained: y ¼ g00 þ g01 s þ g10 t þ g11 ts þ e

½4

Let us assume that we have data for the pole and the areal units in its hinterland at a number of unequally spaced points in time. Then our dataset consists of the variables y, t, and s, where y is the natural logarithm of product per capita, t stands for time, and s is the distance between the centroid of each areal unit and the centroid of the pole. The percentage rate of growth of product per capita over time, y 0, obtained by taking the time deriva tive of both sides of [4] is the following function of dis tance from the pole y 0 ¼ g10 þ g11 s

½5

Assume that the terminal model [4] has been estimated, and that the results of all appropriate post estimation tests do not warrant the respecification of the model or

the use of a different estimation approach. Then the estimated model can be used to test for the possible occurrence and modalities of a number of types of growth, including polarized growth. Let us consider se lected tests relevant to the growth of product per capita: 1. If the hypothesis that g10 ¼ g11 ¼ 0 cannot be rejected, we have no evidence of growth of product per capita throughout the region. 2. If the hypothesis that g11 ¼ 0 cannot be rejected but the hypothesis that g10 ¼ 0 can, and if the estimated g10 is greater than zero, growth of product per capita occurs at the same rate throughout the region. 3. If the hypothesis that g10 ¼ g11 ¼ 0 can be rejected, and the estimated g01 and g11 are respectively greater and smaller than zero, the notion that the region ex periences polarized growth over the time interval considered is validated.

Dual Expansions The dual expansion method is an extension of the expansion method and builds upon the proposition that any given linear initial model and linear expansion equations imply a second initial linear model and linear expansion equations that yield the same terminal model. The two sets of initial models and expansion equations are referred to as primal and dual expansion formu lations, respectively. They imply each other much in the same way as primal mathematical programming formu lations imply dual ones, and vice versa. Let us illustrate the primal and dual expansions by extending the spatial temporal model of polarized growth discussed in the previous example. The example for malizes by eqns [1]–[3] an initial model relating product per capita, y, to time, t, and expansion equations relating this initial model’s parameters to distance from the pole, s. Suppose that the analyst defines a new initial model y ¼ b0 þ b1 s þ e

½6

relating y to distance from the pole, and expands its parameters b0 and b1 with respect to time: b0 ¼ g00 þ g10 t

½7

b1 ¼ g01 þ g11 t

½8

By substituting the right hand sides of eqns [7] and [8], for the parameters b0 and b1 in eqn [6], we obtain the same terminal model [4] arrived at in the example. The expansion formulation specified by eqns [6]–[8] is the dual of the one specified by eqns [1]–[3]. Actually, which one of the two formulations is primal is arbitrary, but when an initial model and expansion equations are


specified, a dual formulation is also specified, by implication. Clearly, the independent variable in the primal initial model is the same that appears in the dual expansion equations, and vice versa. Consequently, also the primal and dual initial models define the terminal model. They do so because the terminal model can be generated by expanding the parameters in one of the initial models into the independent variables appearing in the other initial model. Thus, we can regard the terminal model as a supermodel that combines and/or interacts the primal and dual initial models. The dual expansions method shows that the model context perspective is not the only foundation of the expansions approach to constructing models. A second general foundation rests on the notion of combining and/ or interacting alternative or competing models. These models could originate from different theories, possibly in different disciplines or in different subfields of the same discipline, and/or could reflect distinct empirical regularities. In terms of a model context perspective, terminal model [4] is arrived at by expanding the parameters of initial models with respect to contextual variables. The initial model [1] is temporal and its context is spatial. The dual initial model [6] is spatial and its context is temporal. In terms of the models combining perspective, the terminal model [4] combines or interacts models [1] and [6] by expanding the parameters of one into the independent variable of the other.

Applications The applications briefly described in this section are grouped into five clusters referred to as distance cluster, trend surface cluster, spatial context cluster, rank size cluster, and nonlinear dynamics cluster. The distance cluster encompasses applications in which functions of geographical distance appear either in the initial model or in the expansion equation. For instance, spatial diffusion, change in urban population densities, polarized growth and polarization reversal, and temporal change in spatial interactions can be modeled by expanding into distance polynomial(s), the parameters of a time function that appears in an initial model. For example, spatial diffusion models have been generated from an initial model relating the percent of adopters of an innovation to a logistic function of time, and by redefining the logistic parameters as polynomial func tions of distance from a diffusion pole. In order to investigate the effects of proximity to large and to small cities on fertility, the parameters of an initial model relating fertility levels to the distances to the nearest primary and to the nearest secondary urban centers were

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expanded into quadratic polynomials in time. The spatial variation of international trade has been modeled by expanding gravity models’ parameters into variables suggested by theory and previous empirics. Initial models or expansion equations in which trend surfaces appear, characterize the trend surface cluster. In an intriguing paper by Eldridge and J. P. Jones, the friction of distance parameter in a gravity model was expanded into a quadratic trend surface. The estimated terminal model obtained was then used to produce dis torted maps that depict the spatial warping implied by the variation of the estimated friction of distance parameter. In other applications the spatial temporal dynamic of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic was estimated using terminal models generated by expanding into trend surfaces initial models relating the number of AIDS cases to time. Methodo logically, similar applications have addressed the spatial temporal dynamic of population, of fertility decline, and of economic development. Initial models and/or expansion equations in which geographically referenced variables appear, characterize the spatial context cluster. In a number of applications falling in this cluster, initial models relating housing prices to housing attributes (such as size, or number of bathrooms) have been expanded into neighborhood quality variables. These spatially expanded hedonic equations produce estimates of the relation between the value of each housing attribute considered and neigh borhood quality. This line of work was pioneered by Ayse Can and has spawned a growing literature. In other applications falling within this cluster the households’ propensity to move has been related to households’ attributes, and the resulting initial models were then expanded using indices descriptive of geographical con texts. Other examples of expansions with respect to spatial context dealt with manufacturing productivity, with the determinants of poverty, and with women’s economic progress. In the rank size applications of the expansion method the parameters of a rank size model have been expanded into functions of time. In the classical rank size models the natural logarithm of a city’s population is linearly related to the natural logarithm of its rank. The time expansions of the parameters of this type of models have been used to investigate the differential growth of urban centers and the dynamic of regional income inequalities. The nonlinear dynamics cluster includes applications of the spatial expansion method to nonlinear dynamics modeling. The expansion method is well suited to modeling complex spatial dynamics because it allows the linking of geographical entities such as countries or regions to dynamics that vary across space and time. Thus, geographical entities can be associated with stable or unstable equilibria. In one such application the

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expansion method is applied to the catastrophe modeling of modern economic growth. Another application centers on the spatial spread of modern economic growth in Europe, and yields estimates of the time when each of 16 European countries transitioned from premodern quasi stagnation to modern economic growth. A third application investigates the favorable and perverse dynamic equilibria that historically materialized in distinct clusters of countries, and that are associated respectively with strong manufacturing growth and with strong growth of the service sector.

Concluding Remarks These remarks are concerned with the research phil osophy implications of the expansion method. Let us briefly sketch a line of reasoning suggesting why this is the case. Both conventional and expansion modeling link substantive relations among variables to mathematical structures such as equations, probability distributions, and stochastic processes. In the expansion modeling, however, the analyst starts from a preexisting initial model and redefines some or all of its parameters as functions of contextual variables by expansion equations. Redefining parameters into variables is tantamount to assuming that the initial model drifts, namely, holds with different parameter values across a context. The con textual variables index aspects of the real world that are external to the initial model and with respect to which it can be presumed on substantive grounds that the initial model drifts. Thus, a familiarity with the expansion method is likely to engender a readiness to question whether any model’s parameters should be assumed to be stable. Concurrently, it is also likely to motivate search ing across which contexts these parameters might drift and why. This switch from the default presupposition that parameters are stable to the default presupposition that they are likely to drift across contexts has a substantial impact on how research is carried out and leads to a change in the way models are perceived. Models cease to be candidates for law status, and become tools to ask questions about the manner in which they drift across real contexts and the reasons why they do so. In the limit, models are no longer expected to be true. Instead, they

become devices for interrogating shifting realities, with the objective of explaining which shifts occur and why. See also: Complexity Theory, Nonlinear Dynamic Spatial Systems; Hypothesis Testing; Regression, Linear and Nonlinear; Spatial Autocorrelation; Spatially Autoregressive Models; Trend Surface Models.

Further Reading Can, A. (1990). The measurement of neighborhood dynamics in urban house prices. Economic Geography 66, 254 271. Can, A., Anselin, L. and Casetti, E. (1989). Spatial variation in the propensity to move of households. Sistemi Urbani 1, 107 127. Casetti, E. (1972). Generating models by the expansion method: Applications to geographical research. Geographical Analysis 4, 81 91. Casetti, E. (1986). The dual expansion method: An application for evaluating the effects of population growth on development. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics SMC 16, 29 39. Casetti, E. (1989). The onset and spread of modern economic growth in Europe: An empirical test of a catastrophe model. Environment and Planning A 21, 1473 1489. Casetti, E. (1992). Bayesian regression and the expansion method. Geographical Analysis 24, 58 74. Casetti, E. (1997). Catastrophe models and the expansion method: A review of issues and an application to the econometric modeling of economic growth. Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society 1, 185 202. Casetti, E. (1997). The Expansion method, mathematical modeling, and spatial econometrics. International Regional Science Review 20, 9 33. Casetti, E. and Pandit, K. (1987). The non linear dynamics of sectoral shifts. Economic Geography 63, 241 258. Eldridge, D. J. and Jones, J. P. (1991). Warped space: A geography of distance decay. Professional Geographer 43, 500 511. Fan, C. C. (1988). The temporal and spatial dynamics of city size distribution in China. Population Research and Policy Review 7, 123 157. Jones, K. and Bullen, N. (1994). Contextual models of urban house prices: A comparison of fixed and random coefficients models developed by expansion. Economic Geography 70, 252 272. Jones, J. P. and Casetti, E. (eds.) (1992). Applications of the Expansion Method. London: Routledge. Kristensen, G. (1997). Women’s economic progress and the demand for housing: Theory, and empirical analyses based on Danish data. Urban Studies 34, 403 418. Malecky, E. J. (1980). Growth and change in the analysis of rank size distributions: Empirical findings. Environment and Planning A 12, 41 52. Zdorkowski, T. R. and Hanham, R. Q. (1983). Two views of the city as a source of space time trends in economic development and the decline of human fertility. Urban Geography 4, 54 62. Zhang, J. and Kristensen, G. (1995). A gravity model with variable coefficients: The EEC trade with third countries. Geographical Analysis 27, 307 320.

Spatial Filtering/Kernel Density Estimation G. Rushton and C. Tiwari, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Bandwidth The radius of a circular kernel. Choropleth Map A map that shows data values for discrete areas that are grouped into data classes. Kernel A defined area over which observations will be summed, weighted, and averaged to estimate the density of the observations that will be attributed to the center of the kernel. Privacy Protection A method for ensuring that individually identifiable information cannot be construed from a map. Window Width Same as bandwidth.

Density Estimation Much of geography is the study of patterns of points. This article focuses on methods for studying the spatial pattern of densities of points. This includes densities of observations or densities of the ratio of one distribution to another – such as the ratio of infant deaths and infant births over small areas to make a map of infant mortality. The focus is not on the absolute locations of things but on their relative location. Two questions are raised by this interest: over what area should the density be measured and how should each point be weighed when computing the density at any location. A density can never be defined literally at a point because by its nature it requires an area to be defined. But clearly the size of this area can be variously defined. As shown below, the larger the area over which a density is defined, the smoother the density will be. The area over which density is measured is known as ‘the kernel’ or ‘the spatial filter’, and the spatial weight function is known as the probability density function over which probabilities sum to one. In the simplest case, all occurrences within the kernel are weighted equally and the kernel density is simply a two dimensional moving average. In other cases, however, the weight assigned to an observation within the kernel declines with some function of distance from the point for which the density is estimated. Increasingly, with access to geographic information system (GIS) functions as well as specialized software, geographers are producing ‘kernel density maps’ or ‘spatially filtered maps’ as an important part of the process of investigating spatial aspects of many problems. Examples of application areas that use density estimation techniques include disease rates (number of

diseased cases/number of people at risk); crime rates (number of crimes/number of people); segregation rates; or poverty rates. In other applications, the densities may be spatial rates of change – as when the number of children in grade x þ 1 in time t þ 1, divided by the number of children in grade x at time t is a density that describes the change in the number of children in the cohort over a 1 year period in the area of the filter. This is called the grade progression rate. Density surfaces are sometimes computed for the purpose of testing hypoth eses. More commonly, they are used as an exploratory data analysis tool to suggest patterns in data, to ‘smooth’ the data, or to separate ‘signals’ from ‘noise’. When the spatial filter is circular and symmetric, it is usually called a ‘kernel’ and the size of the circle is called the ‘bandwidth’ or the ‘window width’. The character istics of density maps are that values are continuously distributed across the maps rather than in discrete values that change at borders of spatial collection units as in choropleth maps. In this respect, spatial density functions are solutions to the ‘modifiable area unit problem’ where patterns are dependent on the area units over which data are gathered and displayed.

Relationships between Choropleth Maps and Density Maps Although choropleth maps do not show continuously distributed values, they often portray densities. Figure 1a shows point based data – in this case the approximate locations of 41 238 births and 396 deaths of children within 1 year of birth in the greater Des Moines, Iowa, metropolitan area between 1989 and 1996. The resi dences of mothers of these children were geo coded to their street address. Figure 1b shows one method of illustrating the density of these point based distributions. It shows, for US Census Block Groups, a map of the infant mortality rate, which is the ratio of deaths to births (1000). In the language of kernel density maps, such chor opleth maps show densities for nonoverlapping kernels of different shapes and sizes. Viewed in this way, it is becoming common to question the appropriateness of displaying densities on choropleth maps unless avail ability of data absolutely prevents the making of kernel density maps. It is difficult to make the case that a spatial density map constructed for nonoverlapping, different sized and shaped areas, is the most appropriate way to describe spatial variations of densities. Yet, many

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Figure 1 Example of point-based data for making a kernel density map of infant mortality in the Des Moines (Iowa) metropolitan area. Births and deaths, 1989 96. Note that the locations of the births and deaths shown on the map have been spatially masked to preserve the privacy of the individuals shown on the map. (b) A choropleth map of infant mortality for the same area. Data is aggregated for US Census Block Groups.

choropleth type maps continue to be constructed in this way as illustrated in Figure 1b.

points are already smoothed, a raster layer generated from them can be used to create the density surface.

Kernel Density Methods

Typical Input Data for Density Maps

In preparing a density map, a kernel is placed suc cessively on the crossing points of a grid and at each point a density is measured. The kernels overlap so that densities at successive points on the grid are similar because they share a considerable proportion of the data values in the kernels. By design, therefore, the density map is usually smooth. The densities are often interpreted as probabilities of events occurring – the probability of a crime being committed in a given location; the probability of a person having a disease, etc. Kernel density estimation is a nonparametric statistical method for estimating the probability of a defined event; when gathered across all grid points a probability distribution of densities is pro duced. The density estimate is produced directly from the data. After the densities have been computed for all grid points, the density map is computed by inter polating the surface from the pattern of density estimates. A spatial interpolation function in a GIS is typically used to do this. The use of an interpolation function to create a smooth surface can be avoided by computing the density for every pixel on the map (known as a raster layer). Since the kernel density estimates obtained at grid

Density maps can be created from point data (individual entities) or from aggregates of data for small areas. For each grid intersection a count is made of the observations within the kernel or, with spatially aggregated data, a count is made of the small area aggregates for all areas whose centroids lie within the window. In making an infant mortality map for a city, for example, the grid points might be 0.5 km apart, the window might be 3 km in radius, and the data may be aggregated from small census areas. Such a map is made as a density defined as the ratio of the aggregates of births and infant deaths, respectively, in each kernel.

Mathematical Discussion A mathematical introduction to kernel density estimation methods is found in Silverman. We distinguish here between weighted and unweighted kernel methods. In unweighted methods, each data point contributes equally to the measure of density. In weighted methods, each data point contributes to the measure of density according to a function that is inversely related to the distance of the


observation point from the location for which density is to be estimated. Data points not located within the kernel window have zero weight. There are several inverse distance weighting functions in the literature. Silverman provides more details. Given data values x1, y, xn;

Silverman describes several functional forms for defining this weights function.

Effects of Varying the Grid Size Densities are measured from points on a grid. The resulting density map should not depend on the locations of the grid points. This is achieved if the resolution of the grid is much smaller than the window size – a good rule of thumb is that the window size should be at least four times the distance apart of the grid points. Such a ratio ensures that a large proportion of data points will overlap between neighboring window counts and the density values in neighboring grid points will be very similar.

1. An unweighted kernel density for a fixed window size h is defined at location (loc) as: pðlocÞ ¼ ð1=mÞ Sxi

ði ¼ 1; y; mÞ

x1, y, xm define the subset of values of x in order of their distance from loc for the kernel or window centered at loc of size h. For any location, m will vary in size with the density of the data observations. In this case h is a fixed distance size and m is variable (see Figure 2a). 2. An unweighted spatially ‘adaptive’ kernel density is defined as pðlocÞ ¼ ð1=MÞ Sxi

Effects of Varying the Window Width The size of the kernel is important in kernel density estimation. The window width is often referred to as the ‘spatial filter’, the ‘bandwidth’, or the ‘smoothing parameter’ since all data within the window is averaged for the point to which it is referenced. The window corresponds with the spatial scale at which the density is examined. Small kernel sizes give local detail and hence, in most cases, large spatial variability in the density surface. Large sizes give regional detail and smooth the local detail to reveal regional patterns of density change. It follows that increasing the size of the window, increases the smoothing of the map and decreases the variability in the map. There is no universally accepted approach for selecting the window width; instead, there are accepted subjective and automatic methods for selecting it.

ði ¼ 1; y; MÞ

x1, y, xM define the subset of values of x in order of their distance from loc for the kernel or window cen tered at loc of whatever size h is sufficient to find M data points. For any location, M is set at a fixed value and the kernel size h is whatever distance is needed to capture m observations. For this adaptive kernel case, h is of variable size and M is fixed (see Figure 2b). 3. A weighted kernel for a fixed window size h is defined as pðlocÞ ¼ ð1=mÞSwi xi

ði ¼ 1; y; mÞ

where wi ¼ wi/Swi (i ¼ 1, y, m), where Swi ¼ 1.

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Figure 2 A comparison of fixed and adaptive kernels in relation to the spatial pattern of grid points for which densities are estimated.

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Common guidance for making a subjective choice is to make several maps using different window widths and explore what is revealed as the window size becomes smaller. Geographers refer to this practice as ‘exploring scale dependent variation’ since it is well known that the processes that generate geographic distributions are fre quently scale dependent. For many problems, choosing a value of h somewhat larger than the value at which the densities begin to break up spatially is recommended as the optimal bandwidth. Silverman describes this approach as the test graph method. Studies of rates of asthma in children have been shown to decrease with distance from congested urban highways by varying the spatial window as a linear feature oriented to the cen terline of the highway. Likewise, the practice of varying the window width from small to large is often called ‘upscaling the data’.

The Adaptive Kernel Method In the adaptive kernel estimate, areas with low densities of observations are smoothed more than areas with high densities. The reasoning here is that the more data contributes to a given density rate, the more reliable that rate is. One rule to use is to select a size for a kernel adaptively based on the data around each point on a grid for which it is measured such that an equal number of observations is used for each point. It follows, that the kernel will be larger in areas of low density of obser vations. The geographic scale of the resulting map is variable across the map. Figure 2b illustrates the kernel size for a case where observations are shown. For the spatially adaptive kernel where m is fixed and h is vari able, it is the value of m that needs to be determined and that too can be selected by the test graph method in which the value of m is varied systematically. Spatially adaptive kernel density maps are especially useful when the density measured is interpreted as an estimate of risk which is based on numbers of events that occur with small probabilities. In such cases, the reliability of measures of risk is directly related to the size of the sample from which they are estimated. An adaptive kernel will ensure that estimates are based on the same size samples of data and therefore will be of approxi mately equal reliability.

Illustration of Density Estimation Methods Using the data shown in Figure 1a, we illustrate in Figure 3 the two kernel density estimation methods shown in Figure 2. As in Figure 1b, the density is defined as the ratio of deaths and births within the kernel area. By convention, this ratio is multiplied by 1000 so

that the interpretation is ‘deaths per 1000 births’. Instead, however, as in Figure 1b, showing this density for dis crete areas of different sizes and shapes, using kernel density estimation methods, we now control the sizes of the kernels. In this sequence of maps, map (a) uses the fixed filter of 1.8 miles and map (b)–(d) uses spatially adaptive kernels of 750, 1250, and 1750 births, respect ively. The median size of the adaptive kernels in map (c) was 1.8 miles (approximately 3 km). Note that in this sequence, the larger the kernel size, the more smooth is the rate and fewer high and low spots are found.

Protecting the Privacy of Point Data In many applications of density estimation methods, the actual locations of events are considered private infor mation that cannot be publicly disclosed. Armstrong et al. discuss a variety of methods, known as geographic masks, that can be used to protect privacy. In the case of the births and deaths in Figure 1a, a spatial randomization mask has been used to place the point randomly within a selected distance (200 feet) of its true location. By agreement with the institution that provided this data, this masking rule was used for any public display of the data. The locations of actual residences of the mothers of these children were used in the analyses shown in Figure 3.

Issues of Statistical Significance In spatial epidemiology, kernel density estimates are often made and tested for statistical significance. Boscoe et al. and Kulldorff make maps that show those kernels where densities exceed a given level of statistical sig nificance. Openshaw et al. compute maps that show the likelihood that the observed rates are higher than ex pected rates based on a stated hypothesis of the prob ability that each person may be positive for the event examined. These are known as ‘probability maps’.

Some Limitations There are other spatial analytic techniques that can be compared with kernel density techniques when the interest is in density surfaces. These include trend sur face analysis, splines, and kriging. The main difference of these approaches is that they attempt to model the surface either as a function of the location coordinates (trend surface analysis) or as spatial interpolation from known values at sample locations (kriging), rather than to construct the surface descriptively from local data (kernel density estimation). These other approaches are superior when the problem is that of uncovering spatial structures


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Figure 3 Four kernel density maps of infant mortality rates for the Des Moines, Iowa, area, 1989 96. (a) Fixed kernels, 1.8 miles radius (B3.0 km); (b) adaptive kernels, 750 births; (c) 1250 births; and (d) 1750 births.

in the data. An important question is determining the number of observations required to make valid density estimates. Adequate sample size varies with the spatial structure of the data. When the true (unknown) density is unimodal and not complex, a smaller sample size will suffice to estimate the density surface. However, when the density surface is complex, a larger sample will be required to make accurate density estimates. Spatially adaptive kernels have been developed to ensure that each density estimate will have the required spatial basis of support. Gatrell et al. discuss several possible exten sions to kernel estimation as solutions to this problem. Densities computed along the edges or corners of study regions suffer from the loss of data when the kernels centered within the study area have large areas without data. Density estimates from processes that occur

according to defined probabilities are therefore less reliable in these areas unless spatially adaptive kernels are used to compensate for the loss of data along edges by increasing the window width to gain more strength for the points in these areas. A limitation of the spatially adaptive kernel method is that the user of such maps generally does not know the precise area that has con tributed to any given value on the map. Maintaining accurate ‘readouts’ is an important property of maps.

Software for Kernel Density Applications Users of several commercial GIS software offer kernel density estimation methods as options in their appli cation areas. A common approach is to use the buffer

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function in a GIS centered on the grid values. The National Institute of Justice has distributed software – CrimeStat – for application of the method to crime data. The National Cancer Institute has distributed software – SaTScan – for identifying hot spots of disease that do not show the entire kernel density surface but, instead, show those kernels where densities exceed defined levels of statistical significance after correcting for multiple testing. The University of Iowa distributes DMAP which is software for making kernel density estimates for a grid.

Conclusions The use of kernel density estimation methods in human geography is increasing rapidly as data for small areas as well as geo coded data become available. Also contrib uting to their use is the availability of software and GIS that implement these methods. In addition to these technical forces, is the increasing philosophical interest in measuring and studying local differences, theorizing why such differences exist or, as in many practical imple mentations of these methods, making decisions to employ resources to change the patterns. Kernel densities are proving to be useful for these purposes. See also: Edge Effects; Kriging and Variogram Models; Modifiable Areal Unit Problem; Point Pattern Analysis; Spatial Clustering, Detection and Analysis of.

Further Reading Armstrong, M. P., Rushton, G. and Zimmerman, D. L. (1999). Geographically masking health data to preserve confidentiality. Statistics in Medicine 18, 497 525. Bailey, T. C. and Gatrell, A. C. (1995). Interactive Spatial Data Analysis. New York: John Wiley. Boscoe, F. P., McLaughlin, C., Schymura, M. J. and Kielb, C. L. (2003). Visualization of the spatial scan statistic using nested circles. Health and Place 9, 273 277. Diggle, P. J. (1985). A kernel method for smoothing point process data. Journal Royal Statistical Society C 34, 138 147. Gatrell, A. C., Bailey, T. C., Diggle, P. J. and Rowlingson, B. S. (1996). Spatial point pattern analysis and its application in geographical epidemiology. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers NS 21, 256 274. Kulldorff, M. (1997). A spatial scan statistic. Communications in Statistics: Theory and Methods 26, 1481 1496. Openshaw, S., Charlton, M., Wymer, C. et al. (1987). A Mark I Geographical Analysis Machine for the automated analysis of point data sets. International Journal Geographical Information Systems 1, 335 358. Rushton, G. and Lolonis, P. (1996). Exploratory spatial analysis of birth defect rates in an urban population. Statistics in Medicine 15, 717 726. Silverman, B. W. (1986). Density Estimation for Statistics and Data Analysis. London: Chapman and Hall. Waller, L. A. and Gotway, C. A. (2004). Applied Spatial Statistics for Public Health Data. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

Relevant Websites http://www.icpsr.umich.edu About CrimeStat, Inter University Consortium for Political and Social Research. http://www.satscan.org Software for the spatial, temporal, and space time scan statistics. http://healthgis 01.iowa.uiowa.edu Spatial Analysis for Environmental Health Surveillance.

Spatial Interaction Models M. E. O’Kelly, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

equation. The model can also be written as

Glossary Beta A parameter used to control the response of interaction to distance. Destination A place to which interaction is attracted. Origin A place from which interaction emanates. Spatial Interaction Flow or movement over space which results from a decision process.

Introduction Gravity models evolved from observed empirical regu larities in phenomena such as migration. Early work by Ravenstein identified the role of ‘push and pull’ factors and derived law like statements on the role of distance on diminishing regular interactions between places. The ideas in this field are often collected under the term ‘gravity model’, based on a fairly direct analogy with the Newtonian concept of interaction between masses at a distance. Despite these earlier crude generalizations, the model has in fact spurred many sound behavioral hypotheses and prompted much careful thinking in geography and regional science on the modeling of interaction phenomena. The later versions of these ideas are often collected under the title of spatial interaction (SI) modeling. The earliest formulations had a striking similarity to the Newtonian model familiar from physics, with driving forces like ‘masses’ (Vi and Wj) which in this case are assumed to be proportional to measures of the popu lations or flows originating from place i (Oi) and destined for place j (Dj) representing the key push and pull effects respectively. These areas interact in a positively reinforcing way that is a multiplicative function of their masses, and at the same time their interactions are diminished by the role of intervening distance. Further, the model requires a ‘k’ factor to ensure the concordance of the units to some observed total flow. A typical notation for the model is Mij ¼ kV i W j =d bij

where Mij is the expected interaction between origin i and destination j ; Vi and Wj are representative of the masses of the origin and destination respectively; and dij raised to an exponent b (‘beta’) is the distance effect acting as an impedance on the interactions. Note that the distance term appears in the denominator of the

Mij ¼ kV i W j d b ij

Note the conventional entry of b with a negative sign reflecting the fact that it enters the denominator of the original equation. Thus, a value of b ¼ 2 would imply that interaction diminishes with the square of distance. The indices ‘i ’ and ‘j ’ could denote a city, node, or regional area from which flows come (origins) and to which flows go (destinations). Contributing to the early use of the model was its relatively easy estimation using a log linear transformation, essentially making this model amenable to estimation by multivariate regression. Such simplistic efforts at estimation have since been eclipsed by more rigorous derivations using a wide range of statistical methodology (Poisson regression, generalized linear models, maximum likelihood, genetic algorithms, hybrid numerical methods such as neural networks, and so on). Even as geographers have downplayed the role of ‘analogies’ and law like statements as a basis for such models, the empirical usefulness of this type of model in areas such as air passenger forecasting has continued to keep it in the forefront of the spatial analyst’s toolkit. The model in its modern guise is known as an SI model and is widely studied, accepted, and is one of the principal contributions of spatial analysis to the fields of demography, regional science, and traffic estimation. The model was useful as an early basis for trade, air passenger traffic, and migration, but perhaps its strongest contribution was to stimulate the derivation of a family of models from a much more rigorous basis: that is, the model moved away from analog reasoning toward der ivation using information theory, choice theory, and behavioral processes. The fact that a similar functional form can be obtained from such diverse perspectives is regarded by many as a strength of the underlying fun damental conceptual framework.

Simple Gravity Model The gravity model posits that, other things being equal, interaction increases between larger places, and between places relatively close to each other. The notion of ceteris paribus or literally, holding ‘all else equal’ is important to SI theory, as it is necessary to derive and, if possible, separate the independent effects of a plethora of ex planatory variables. The pull and push factors that drive interaction would be technically referred to as attraction

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(positive impact on flow) and repulsion (negative impact on flow), and typically these effects are measured indirectly through some proxy variables. Perhaps some of clearest examples would be the idea that migration should be positively attracted to areas with thriving economies, good wages, and plentiful affordable housing. In common practice however, these effects are rarely aligned exclusively in favor of a single dominant region, and in the case of migration, places with high in migration may very well also have high out migration and return flows, due perhaps to rising house prices, failed expectations on the part of migrants, pressure of high competition in a congested metropolis, and so on. Interaction forces therefore change over time in response to changes in attraction and repulsion factors. Perhaps the greatest challenge facing interaction mod elers is not simply the notion of movement as a function of explanatory independent variables, which seems to be reasonably well established, but the need for accurate forecasts of the many driving forces and complexities that underlie the effects. In part this is made more difficult by the fact that some aspects of flows and attraction are intertwined: in a sense, attraction of a destination for migrants depends on the pool of migrants already in the community. Such endogenous effects give rise to a non trivial estimation task. The relevant econometric litera ture in migration has of course encompassed these general theories of movements (attracting attention from Muth, Alonso, Anselin, and Getis among others). As these systems are usually ‘open’ and inherently subject to un predictable changes, the art of interaction forecasting becomes more difficult.

Spatial Interaction Models Spatial interaction models, in general terms, deal with flows and movement between places, based on (1) their spatial separation; (2) their complementarity; and (3) whatever other intervening opportunities or spatial structural elements serve to augment or diminish the expected flow. Spatial separation in turn is measured by cost or time involved in the interaction, and is often represented by a distance decay function that shows diminishing interaction as distance increases. Complementarity is an indicator of the suitability of the particular pair of places for the movement in ques tion, so for example, a place with surplus crop production would be in a sense complementary to a place that has demand for food products. Whether trade flows actually take place between such complementary places depends on the distance, prices, and institutional barriers. Recognizing that interactions may be diverted to inter vening opportunities begins to raise the complex ques tion of the relative location of the interacting agents

vis a` vis other places. These fundamental driving forces (often attributed to Ullman) provide a general set of broad explanatory factors that help to measure, model, explain, and in some cases predict spatial interaction.

Family of Constrained SI Models By and large, the literature on measuring SI is structured around the notion of constrained origin–destination (OD) or trip distribution tables that are ‘pinned down’ on the marginal totals over either the rows, or columns, or both. When a table with row (or origin) total is con strained, it is required to match the data as well as pos sible with the known trip productivity from each origin. When a table with column (or destination) total is con strained, one is attempting to match the table as well as possible with the known trip pull or attraction to each destination. There is thought to be a trade off between better fitted tables with more constraints (i.e., a higher quality fit) versus a larger number of predictive effects in the unconstrained case. Each kind of model has its par ticular use and application. Production constrained models predict the share of a fixed amount of trip production from an origin to a given set of destinations: T ij ¼ Ai Oi W j f ðcij Þ Ai ¼ S1j W j f ðcij Þ

where Tij is predicted flow, Ai are balancing factors that ensure that the model reproduces the observed origin trip rates (Oi), and f (cij) is a distance impedance factor that limits trips to match an observed empirical trip length. Such models have the property of predicting an unconstrained estimate of the flows arriving at the j th destination, while reproducing the expected flow from the ith origin (Oi). They are especially well suited to retail trade area estimation. Attraction constrained models predict the share of a fixed amount of trips arriving at a destination that come from a particular origin: T ij ¼ V i Bj Dj f ðcij Þ Bj ¼ S1i V i f ðcij Þ

where Tij is predicted flow, Bj are balancing factors that ensure that the model reproduces the observed destin ation trip rates (Dj) and f (cij) is a distance impedance factor that limits trips to match an observed empirical trip length. Such models have the property of predicting an unconstrained estimate of the flows departing from the ith origin, while reproducing the expected flows for


the j th destination (Dj). They are especially well suited to residential land use allocation around fixed work places. Doubly Constrained Models An intensive use of SI models is in the area of trip dis tribution, an important step in urban travel demand models; it is also called a ‘doubly constrained’ model. These interaction equations are basically of the form devised by Wilson: T ij ¼ Ai Oi Bj Dj f ðcij Þ

where Tij is predicted flow, Ai and Bj are balancing factors that ensure that the model reproduces the observed origin and destination trip rates (Oi and Dj, respectively), and f (cij) is a distance impedance factor that limits trips to match an observed empirical trip length. In this special case where both row and column totals need to be bal anced, an iterative process akin to biproportional matrix adjustment is used to solve for the flows as a function of the main variables (Oi Dj and f (cij)).

Recent Extensions and Elaborations Access connotes proximity to other places and activity centers. Whether access then has a ‘diminishing’ effect on flow (due to competition) or an ‘augmenting’ effect due to complementarity is an empirical question. In the first case, openness to competition comes from access and relative location near to other places; for example: an ‘open economy’ is prone to suffer whatever turns of fortune should befall their larger neighbor(s). So accessibility can mean vulnerability to competition. On the other hand, access can promote larger markets and spillover effects from adjacency to opportunity. The balance of these forces is an important question; the answer can determine whether a place benefits from proximity to other complementary destinations or whether it is downgraded because of loss to close com peting destinations. (This is a theory that has been extensively elaborated by Fotheringham.) The spatial structure of destinations and the relative location of opportunities on this surface are important facts. Not only does one need to know what is close to a particular location, but before drawing conclusions about the interaction with any one specific place, one ought to reckon which (if any) alternatives are interspersed between the origin and destination. Having made that determination, one would then gauge the impact of ‘intervening opportunities’. For example, if we consider consumer choice of branch banks (places to transact retail over the counter banking), we are aware that the consumer faces an array of spatial alternatives: clearly distance is but one attribute of their spatial choice, and

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empirical observations confirm that people often pat ronize a facility other than the nearest. This of course is impacted by the convenience orientation of the product; traditionally, low order retail goods (central place the ory) are highly convenience sensitive, and so the pre ponderance of trips might be expected to be handled by the nearest retail service point (with resultant Voronoi diagram for trade areas). This is even the case for gro ceries though one has observed some tendency to bypass the nearest alternative on some occasions. Such decisions might arise from other contingencies in the trip maker’s travel agenda or may result from the desire to accom modate other destinations and activities as part of a multipurpose tour. As one goes to higher order retail goods and services, the hold of distance and convenience becomes even more tenuous as the sole factor, and such important processes as ‘variety seeking’ behavior, or complex trip chaining begin to trump the basic idea of going to the nearest source. In all these instances, the SI model permits a degree of dispersion even from the same origin to a variety of destinations, in a way that allows for realistic represen tation of trade areas and their resultant geographic expression. In other words, a person’s activity space depends on where the destinations are relative to their travel area. Further, the new spatial choices could come and go both as a result of dynamics on the supply side (the stores open and close and rearrange their positions) and as a result of the changing residential and travel landscape in the city. In fact, some of the remarkable transformation of the supply of retailing in the city has been capture mobile patrons at accessible nodes, but also to create nodes of accessibility to draw patrons toward new destinations. Without added consumer behavioral data, however, these spatial analyses are devoid of some of the more important social processes that are critical to the oper ation of an urban area. It remains to the analysts to enliven these descriptions with reasons ‘why’ we need to consider them and explanations (if possible) for their importance. Thus, we are not surprised to hear the contrast between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ meaning the difference between isolated locations, and the most central accessible parts. Recognize too that one region’s periphery may be very much more ‘central’ when we adjust the scale. (Growth poles are supposed to be places where the advantages of agglomerated activities promote further impetus to grow.) So as dij increases, we take it as axiomatic that the impact of the activity or entity at j, on i, decreases. At exactly what rate this decline occurs, and whether it is smooth, or whether is suddenly drops off to zero after a certain radius is what allows for a good range of flexibility in representing realistic geographical processes. To take an extreme example, one would not wish to include the

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population of Santa Barbara, California in the growth and population potential measures for Buffalo, New York. But what is a correct distance weighting? That question has fascinated geographers interested in spatial interaction models for several decades.

Applications Given this broad scope, it is not surprising that appli cations of SI concepts include migration, commuting, communications, retail consumer behavior, and inter regional trade. SI largely focuses on the beneficial (i.e., desired or positive) effects of connecting separated activities. Economists and demographers interested in migration, and transport geographers interested in intra urban mobility, think of spatial interaction as the outcome of ‘where a place is relative to what is going on around it’, and the resultant flows then become a target of inference and explanation for analysts. Spatial interaction is also a source of complex phenomena such as spatial interdependence and spatial externalities; these later effects require careful adaptation of standard econo metric methods. Note too that interactions are not always ‘positive goods’, as exemplified, for example, by the form of negative spatial externality displayed in congestion on highways, or pollution from moving sources. Modelers are also interested in the potential for interaction between places based on their relative lo cation. Such measures of traffic generation are clearly of great importance, especially as a factor in economic de velopment. Accessibility to a national market, or a claim that a particular location has a large population within easy access range are commonly used to report a city’s merits as say an industrial location, or a theme park, or an expansion franchise for major league sport. Potential market access, in terms of people within fixed proximity to an attraction, is often a preliminary screen used to gauge site suitability. Access in this sense can become a self reinforcing magnet for further migrants, when one considers processes such as family and kinship networks reinforcing the information that prospective migrants have about a destination. This aspect of population growth altering the accessibility to markets is a crucial dynamic element of spatial interaction in changing urban systems. A long standing concern of demographers has been to document the impact of population redistribution on aggregate measures of segregation, population het erogeneity, or the general mixing of people with various degrees of mobility (movers and stayers). Finally, a powerful application of the concept of spatial interaction leads to a measure of market size for the optimal location of a proposed retail site: as potential interaction reinforces the suitability of a site to accommodate a new business, or for expansion of an existing business.

Limitations Despite the rich inclusion of spatial interaction factors there are possibly missing effects that are influential on interactions, and these topics are of considerable ongoing research. Among these would be impacts of the relative location of surrounding nodes. Intrazonal flows also pose a recurring puzzle in interaction modeling, as the zonal arrangements impact the internal interactions. This can be quite consequential for traffic models in cities. Once a zoning scheme is set, there are inevitably intrazonal flows; to the extent that it is possible to have the bulk of the interactions being interzonal, the model is thought to be better specified. In the context of what is referred to as the modifiable areal unit problem, the size of self contained flows can be enormously consequential for model accuracy. The possibility of designing the optimal zonal scheme for modeling interactions is currently a topic of research. Inadequate treatment of activity patterns and multi purpose trips in aggregate interaction models have di minished their relevance for travel demand modeling, and instead the spatial interaction approach has been eclipsed somewhat by behavioral approaches. To the extent that the SI model is part of a larger system, the simplifying assumptions may lead to cascading errors, reinforcing the likelihood that interactions and travel impedance are in need of simultaneous estimation, re quiring a dynamic, stochastic, equilibrium network flow. See also: Location Analysis; Network Analysis; Space II.

Further Reading Alonso, W. (1978). A theory of movement. In Hansen, N. M. (ed.) Human Settlement Systems, pp 197 211. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger. Fotheringham, A. S. (1983). A new set of spatial interaction models: The theory of competing destinations. Environment and Planning A 15, 15 36. Fotheringham, A. S. and O’Kelly, M. E. (1989). Spatial Interaction Models: Formulations and Applications. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Greenwood, M. and Hunt, G. L. (2003). The early history of migration research. International Regional Science Review 26, 3 37. Isard, W. (1960). Methods of Regional Analysis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nijkamp, P. and Poot, J. (1987). Dynamics of generalized spatial interaction models. Regional Science and Urban Economics 17(3), 367 390. Pooler, J. (1994). An extended family of spatial interaction models. Progress in Human Geography 18(1), 17 39. Roy, J. R. (2004). Spatial Interaction Modelling: A Regional Science Context. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Taaffe, E. J., Gauthier, H. L. and O’Kelly, M. E. (1996). Geography of Transportation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Wilson, A. G. (1971). A family of spatial interaction models, and associated developments. Environment and Planning 3, 1 32. Wilson, A. G. (1974). Urban and Regional Models in Geography and Planning. New York: Wiley.

Spatial Interpolation N. S. Lam, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Areal Interpolation A mathematical procedure used to interpolate data values defined in one set of aggregated boundaries to another. Kriging A spatial interpolation method named after D. G. Krige who introduced the method in the early 1970s. Point Interpolation A mathematical procedure used to estimate values from a set of sample points with known values to locations with unknown values within a study area. Pycnophylactic Interpolation An interpolation method introduced by W. R. Tobler in late 1970s for volume-preserving isopleth mapping. Spatial Interpolation A mathematical procedure used to estimate values from locations with known values to locations with unknown values within a study area. Variogram A diagram depicting the relationship between variance and distance for a set of sample points.

Introduction Spatial interpolation is used to estimate values at lo cations whose values are unknown based on a sample of locations with known values. Before the 1980s, the spatial interpolation problem was confined mostly to point in terpolation, where the sample data are in the form of point locations. Goodchild and Lam expanded the tra ditional notion of spatial interpolation by incorporating areal interpolation, where data defined in one set of areal boundaries (polygons) are used to estimate values of areas defined using another set of boundaries. Together, point and areal interpolations have since become a major tool for many scientific investigations. Hence, the spatial interpolation problem can be broadly defined as follows: given a set of spatial data either in the form of discrete points or aggregated subareas, the spatial interpolation problem is to find the function that best represents the whole surface so that prediction of values at other points or subareas within the study area whose values are un known can be obtained. Spatial interpolation is a crucial technique in many disciplines and has been utilized in a wide range of ap plications. Perhaps the most common and earliest use is in cartography, where point interpolation is employed to

create a continuous topographic surface from sampled elevation points. The interpolated topographic surface is usually mapped in the form of contour lines or three dimensional block diagrams. In climatology, spatial in terpolation is an essential routine for estimating tem perature and other climate parameters for the entire globe from a network of weather stations. Spatial inter polation techniques have often been used to estimate air pollution parameters such as SO2, radon gas, and par ticulate matter (PM) concentrations using samples from monitor stations. In physical geography and geological applications, spatial interpolation is the key method for estimating subsurface geological strata and mining po tentials. Similarly in human and economic geography, spatial interpolation is frequently applied to estimate population density, market potential, income potential, health parameters, voting behavior, and crime patterns. With the development of geographical information systems (GIS) technology, the interpolated surface data can be stored in digital form called digital elevation models (DEM) or digital terrain models (DTM) (even though the variable of interest is not necessarily ele vation). These digital data can further be used to calcu late slopes, aspects, and volumes, and/or integrated with other data for more comprehensive analysis such as landscape planning, visibility assessment, route planning, and cut and fill engineering projects. This infusion of GIS and digital technology has opened up lots of ap plication potential and makes the interpolation process even more indispensable and popular than before. As in many other spatial estimation methods, spatial interpolation is subject to error, the magnitude of which depends on a number of factors. First and foremost, the mathematical function used in every spatial interpolation model to estimate unknown values is only an assumption; it may not be the best in approximating the underlying surface, thus resulting in error. Many interpolation methods have been developed, as well as refined and extended, in an attempt to find the best fit function that represents the underlying surface so as to increase in terpolation accuracy. The second major source of error arises from the fact that spatial interpolation deals with spatial data that have x and y dimensions; the nature of the problem is thus different from nonspatial inter polation such as interpolation of time series data. The spatial interpolation process will need to consider spatial proximity or neighborhood effects. The added dimension makes the interpolation process more complicated and subject to ambiguity, and factors other than the

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mathematical function itself, such as the grid size used during the interpolation process and the spatial distri bution of samples, will have great impacts on the re sultant interpolation error. With the availability of spatial interpolation routines in GIS and other mathematical software, spatial inter polation nowadays is simple to use and has been fre quently applied. However, many people perform spatial interpolation without realizing that there could be sig nificant errors involved in the estimates. Moreover, some methods may yield more accurate results than others for different types of data surfaces. An understanding of the major methods in spatial interpolation and their error sources should help in improving the accuracy of the interpolated estimates, as well as raising the awareness of the errors involved in subsequent analysis that is based on the interpolated estimates. In the following, a classification of spatial inter polation methods is described, which should help in putting the various methods in perspective. Then, major methods in each class are briefly explained. Factors af fecting the interpolation accuracy are outlined, followed by some suggestions toward future research.

A Classification of Spatial Interpolation Methods There are many methods for spatial interpolation, and a classification of these various methods according to some schemes is necessary to better understand the method itself and its relationship with the data. Using Lam’s classification framework developed in 1980, spatial in terpolation includes both point and areal interpolation

(Figure 1). Point interpolation deals with data collectable at a point, such as temperature readings or elevation, whereas areal interpolation deals with data aggregated according to some boundary delineation, such as popu lation counts by census tracts. Point interpolation is further divided into ‘exact’ and ‘approximate’ methods according to whether they pre serve the original sample point values. Exact methods are employed when there is high confidence of the accuracy of the original sample data, whereas approximate meth ods are preferred when the original sample data are thought to have some noise. Other classification schemes for point interpolation have been used in the literature. For example, some classify the methods according to the spatial extent into either ‘global’ or ‘local’ methods. Global methods utilize all sample points in determining value at a new point, whereas only nearby points are used in local methods. Another classification scheme dis tinguishes point interpolation methods according to whether it is a statistical technique or not. As such, Kriging is in the group of statistical technique, and the remainder of point interpolation methods is in another group. This article adopts the classification that cat egorizes methods into ‘exact’ or ‘approximate’, because the property of preserving the original sample point values on the estimated surface seems fundamental in analyzing accuracy and in examining the nature of in terpolation methods. Common examples of the methods of the ‘exact’ type include interpolating polynomials, most distance weighting methods, Kriging, spline interpolation, and finite difference methods. Examples of the group of ‘approximate’ methods include power series trend surface analysis, Fourier models, distance weighted least squares, and least squares

Spatial interpolation

Point interpolation

Exact

Weighting Kriging Splines Inerpolating polynomials Finite difference

Approximate

Trend models Fourier models Least-square fit with splines

Areal interpolation

Non-volumepreserving (point-based)

Volumepreserving (area-based)

Overlay Pycnophylactic

Figure 1 A classification of spatial interpolation methods. Adapted from Lam, N. S.-N. (1980). Methods and Problems of Areal Interpolation. PhD Dissertation, University of Western Ontario.

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fitting with splines (Figure 1). These examples reflect the most generic version of the method itself. It is noted that there are many variations and extensions of the generic versions, with some methods being a combination of dif ferent basic methods. Moreover, other criteria can be used simultaneously to help understand a method. For example, an ‘exact’ method can also be global or local, statistical or nonstatistical. For areal interpolation, two different approaches can be used. Following the terminology by Goodchild and Lam, the geographic areas for which data are available are called source zones and those for which data are needed are called target zones. The non volume pre serving approach, which is an older approach, does not preserve the original source zone data values, whereas the newer approach, the volume preserving approach, does. Again, similar to point interpolation, the preser vation of original source zone values is considered an important property for accuracy assessment. It has been shown in subsequent research that those methods that can preserve the original source zone values are far more accurate than those that cannot. Examples of non volume preserving methods include a number of point based interpolation methods, whereas examples of volume preserving methods include polygon overlay and pycnophylactic interpolation. Again, these are basic ver sions of the methods, and variations and extensions of these two methods have been made to compensate the shortcomings existed in each method.

Point Interpolation

A E D

B

C

F

H

G

A E D

B

C

F

Grid versus TIN Since sample points are most likely irregularly spaced, prior to point interpolation, a decision is needed to make on whether the interpolated values will be in the form of regular grid cells or a triangulated irregular network (TIN) (Figure 2). For the ‘grid’ approach, a mesh of grids will first superimpose on the study area. A point inter polation method is then applied to interpolate from ir regularly spaced sample points to regularly spaced grid centers or intersections. The size of the grid is often arbitrarily determined, which has great impact on the accuracy of resultant grid estimates, as discussed below. The TIN approach links the irregularly spaced sam ple points into a set of triangles. Interpolation will be directly made on any point along the edges of the tri angles. This approach was frequently used to produce contour maps and shaded relief maps, as it is more direct and generally faster in computation. However, in consistencies arise because there are many ways of making the triangulation of the same set of points. Fur thermore, for different sets of points, different TINs will result. This makes the TIN approach less desirable

G

H

Figure 2 Grid vs. TIN configurations for eight sample points. Note that TIN configuration is not unique; alternative triangles can be connected between two points (e.g., dotted line FC instead of BG). Adapted from Lam, N. S.-N. (1980). Methods and Problems of Areal Interpolation. PhD Dissertation, University of Western Ontario.

because of the difficulty to compare from one surface to another. Integrating the interpolated surface data with other types of data in a GIS setting using TIN configuration would be impossible. The grid approach enables comparison of different surfaces by using the same grid size; hence, it is often preferred for point interpolation. Exact Methods – Distance-Weighting Distance weighting method is probably the most com monly used point interpolation method, as it is flexible, easy to understand, and easy to use. Given a set of N data

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points, the distance weighting method is to assign more weight to nearby points than to distance points. This follows the logic of spatial autocorrelation, spatial de pendency, and the Tobler’s law of geography, where things close by are more related than things located farther apart. The general mathematical expression for computing the value at a grid center (x, y) is PN wðd i Þzi f ðx; yÞ ¼ Pi N1 i 1 wðd i Þ

w = 1/4

w = 1/4

w = 1/4

w = 1/4

½1

where w(d ) is the weighting function, zi is the data value at point i, and di is the distance from point i to (x, y). The main variation for this method is the weighting function. Unfortunately, the choice of a weighting function is often arbitrarily made, and it may or may not represent the underlying surface well. Some weighting functions will place far more weights for the points nearby and very little weights for the points farther, resulting in a more varying surface, such as the family of inverse distance functions (e.g., w ¼ d 2). Other weighting functions may place a less drastically reduced weight for distant points, such as a linear weighting function (e.g., w ¼ a bd ), thus resulting in a smoother surface. It is important to note that the weighting method can be ‘exact’ or ‘approximate’, though most of the functions used in geographical applications lead to ‘exact’ results. For those weighting functions where w(0) ¼ N, such as w ¼ d 1, the weighting method will give the exact value of the original sample points. On the other hand, for a negative exponential weighting function, 2 such as w ¼ 2e d , the method will only approximate the original values. Moreover, the distance weighting method can be made either a ‘local’ method, where only nearby data points are used to estimate the value at the grid center, or a ‘global’ method, where all data points in the study area are utilized to estimate a grid value. The simplicity and flexibility of the distance weight ing method make it a very popular method for point interpolation. However, in addition to the problem of selecting the appropriate weighting function, the dis tance weighting method is subject to two additional disadvantages. First, the method is easily affected by uneven distributions of data points, since an equal weight will be assigned to each of the points even if it is in a cluster (Figure 3). This problem has long been recog nized and can be handled by additional algorithmic ma nipulation, such as averaging all the points or selecting a single point to represent the cluster. Second, as a weighted average method, it has a smoothing effect, and the resultant interpolated values will be bounded by the maximum and minimum values of the samples. This means that if the original sample points do not capture the underlying true maximum and minimum surface values (e.g., mountain top and valley bottom), then the

w

w

1

0

w

0

w

0

Figure 3 Effects of clustered data points on distance-weighting methods. Adapted from Lam, N. S.-N. (1980). Methods and Problems of Areal Interpolation. PhD Dissertation, University of Western Ontario.

interpolated surface will never reach these maxima or minima. Exact Methods – Kriging The term Kriging is named after D. G. Krige, who introduced the use of the technique for mining appli cations in the early 1970s. Since then, Kriging has been extended from simple Kriging to other variations such as universal Kriging, block Kriging, co Kriging, and others. Applications of Kriging have been increasing, especially now that the technique is available in popular GIS and statistical software packages. Kriging is a statistical technique, which is different from the rest of the point interpolation methods. It is the main method in the field of geostatistics. In its simplest form, Kriging assumes that the surface to be interpolated is a statistical surface that has a certain degree of stationarity. The structure of the surface, also termed regionalized variable in Kriging literature, can be represented by its variogram, which is a function

Spatial Interpolation (d )

Sill

Nugget 0

d

Range

Figure 4 A hypothetical variogram function estimated from observed data points. Adapted from Lam, N. S.-N. (1980). Methods and Problems of Areal Interpolation. PhD Dissertation, University of Western Ontario.

depicting the relationship between the variance of the sample points and their distance (Figure 4). Math ematically, the variogram (2g) or semivariogram (g) is defined by N 1 X g¼ N ½zðx þd Þ 2 i 1 i

zðxi Þ 2

½2

where d is the distance between two sample points. This function (variance) is expected to increase with increas ing distance between two points. But just like many geographical phenomena, the increase is expected to taper off at a distance ‘range’, reaching a level called ‘sill’. Sometimes, there is a small nugget effect, where samples taken from the same location (zero distance) may not have exactly the same value. Based on the empirical estimated variogram function, points that have unknown values can be estimated as a weighted average of the sample point values according to their distances to these points. The system of linear equations to solve for the weights lj for an unknown point A is n X

lj gðd ij Þ þ u ¼ r ðd iA Þ for all i ¼ 1; n

½3

j 1 n X

li ¼ 1

This is an estimate that is derived using two criteria: (1) that it is an unbiased estimate; and (2) that it minimizes the expected variance. Hence, the Kriging estimate ob tained is also called the best linear unbiased estimate (BLUE). The corresponding error provided for each es timate is the Kriging error. For points that belong to the set of samples, Kriging returns the original data values; hence, it is an ‘exact’ interpolation method. Although Kriging is a weighted average method, it has several major advantages over the distance weighting method. First, unlike the distance weighting method where the weighting function is arbitrarily determined, Kriging uses the variogram estimated from the empirical data. The more the sample points, the more accurate the empirically derived variogram function, hence the more accurate the estimates. Second, as a statistical technique, Kriging provides an error estimate and confidence interval for each unknown point. This error information reflects the density and spatial distribution of sample points and the degree of spatial autocorrelation within the surface, and therefore is very useful in analyzing the reliability of the Kriged estimates. This proves to be very useful for future improvement of the estimates by showing where more samples are needed. Finally, the Kriged estimates are not bounded by the sample data minimum and maximum. On the other hand, if the assumption of stationarity is not met and if the variogram function is inaccurate, then the advantages of Kriging will diminish. Subsequent empirical studies have shown that Kriging will perform the best with a large number of sample points. Moreover, even with a small number of data points, Kriging will still return with more accurate estimates than distance weighting methods. Hence, Kriging is considered to be the preferred point interpolation method over the re mainder, and it should be used whenever possible.

Approximate Method – Trend Models This method is to find the best fit polynomial function that assumes values at the data points approximately but not generally equal to the observed values. Thus, there will be an ‘error’ or residual at every data point. The general equation is

½4

i

where g(dij) is the semivariogram function value for the distance between sample point i and j, g(diA) is the semivariogram function value between point A and sample point i, and m is the Lagrange multiplier. Once the l’s are found, the Kriging estimate of an unknown point A is zA ¼

X

li zðxi Þ

373

½5

f ðx; yÞ ¼

m X

aij x i y j þ e

½6

i; j 0

where aij are the coefficients to be estimated from ob served data point values, e is the residual, and m is the degree of the polynomial, which is less than the total number of points, N. These methods are called trend surface models since they are often used to simplify the surface into a major trend with associated residuals. Once

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the coefficients are estimated, they can then be used to determine values at other points. This method is highly affected by the extreme values and uneven distribution of data points. Moreover, the goodness of fit of the poly nomial (i.e., the r2 value) is not a true estimation of the error, but rather an underestimation (Figure 5). Factors Affecting Point Interpolation Accuracy To summarize, there are four major factors that affect the accuracy of point interpolation estimates using the grid approach, and these four factors are also interrelated. First, the size of the grid cell affects the resultant esti mates. Unfortunately, there remains no general rule on the optimal size of the grid and how it relates to the data density. A small grid size may lead to a surface that is artificially complicated, whereas a large grid size may not be sufficient to portray the real details. Second, the number of data points affects the estimates. Generally, the larger the number of points, the more accurate the estimates. However, this is not always true, as some points are more ‘informative’ (e.g., peaks, pits) than others. This is further complicated by the third factor, which is the spatial distribution of data points. Clustered sample points may not add much information, compared with sample points that are more evenly spread out. In fact, clustered sample points may bias the estimate, as shown in the distance weighting method. Finally, the inter polation method itself, such as the weighting functions used, will seriously affect the accuracy of the estimates.

one set of boundaries to another, such as census data to political boundaries. It has also been used to transform time series data where boundaries change over time to enable analysis. Lately, remote sensing images as well as other data layers have also been utilized to improve the accuracy of the interpolated estimates. The following describes the two most generic approaches using the classification scheme, non volume preserving and vol ume preserving.

Non-Volume-Preserving Methods Consider the areas for which data are available as source zones, and the areas for which data are needed as target zones (Figure 6), the non volume preserving approach generally proceeds by overlaying a grid mesh on the study area and assigning a control point to each source zone. A point interpolation is applied to interpolate the values at each grid. Then, the estimates of the grid points

A

B

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D

Areal Interpolation Areal interpolation, coined by Goodchild and Lam in 1980, was regarded as a variant of the general spatial interpolation problem. As GIS applications increase, the need to integrate various types of data increases. Areal interpolation has been used to transform data defined in

Source zones

III Real surface II

Polynominal (trend surface)

I

Sample point

Figure 5 An example of underestimation of true variance at unknown point. Adapted from Lam, N. S.-N. (1980). Methods and Problems of Areal Interpolation. PhD Dissertation, University of Western Ontario.

Target zones

Figure 6 Hypothetical source and target zones. Adapted from Lam, N. S.-N. (1980). Methods and Problems of Areal Interpolation. PhD Dissertation, University of Western Ontario.


are tabulated and averaged according to the new target zone boundaries, yielding the final target zone estimates. In this approach, the major variations between the numerous methods are the different point interpolation models used in assigning values to grid points. This ap proach suffers the same sources of error as point inter polation methods. It does not guarantee that the original source zone values are preserved; hence, it is called non volume preserving or point based approach. Volume-Preserving Methods In this approach, the original source zone values are preserved. Also, the zone itself is now used as the unit of operation instead of the arbitrarily assigned control point, and no point interpolation is involved. Two basic meth ods utilizing this approach can be distinguished. The ‘overlay’ method, also called area weighting method, superimposes the target zones on the source zones. The values of the target zones are then estimated as a weighted sum or average based on the size of overlapping areas. For example, if target zone II has 70% overlapping area with source zone A, then 70% of the population in source zone A will be assigned to target zone II. The equation is Vt ¼

X

U s ats =ss

½7

s

where Vt is the value for target zone t, Us is the source zone value, ats is the area of overlaps, and ss is the total area of source zone s. There will be minor variations of the formula, depending on whether the variable repre sents counts or density. The ‘pycnophylactic’ method was originally de veloped by Tobler in 1979 for isopleth mapping. Lam later expanded its uses in areal interpolation. The method starts by superimposing a grid mesh on the polygons and assigning the mean source zone value to each grid within the zone. Then, a number of iterations will be carried out to modify the grid values according to two criteria: smoothing and volume preserving. An ex ample of the smoothing condition is to change each grid cell value into the average of its four neighbors. The volume preserving condition is enforced by summing all the grid values in each source zone and then decreasing/ increasing all grid values within a zone if the total is above/below the observed source zone value. The final step is to reaggregate the grids according to the target zone boundaries to obtain the target zone estimates. Factors Affecting Areal Interpolation Accuracy The quality of areal interpolation estimates depends largely on how the source and target zones are defined and

375

aggregated and the characteristics of the partitioned sur face. Judging from the theoretical and subsequent empir ical studies, the volume preserving approach is far more accurate than the non volume preserving approach; hence, the former should be used whenever possible. Within the volume preserving approach, the overlay method assumes spatial homogeneity within each source zone, the more homogeneous the source zones, the more accurate the estimates. On the other hand, the pycnophylactic method assumes a varying smooth surface. Accuracy of the pycnophylactic estimates hence depends on whether this assumption of the underlying surface is true or not. Subsequent improvements and extensions of these two basic versions of areal interpolation hence focus on im proving the knowledge of the source zones by using add itional layers of information such as remote sensing images. These images can be used to identify different land cover areas within source zones so that the area weighted estimates are more accurate, a procedure that is similar to an old cartographic practice called dasymetric mapping.

Future Directions Spatial interpolation encompasses a class of methods that are crucial to producing estimates for the analysis of spatial phenomena. Many controversial studies have based on spatial interpolation estimates to derive conclusions without realizing the interpolation error involved in these estimates. A case in point would be the current debate of global warming. While there are many solid scientific studies that document gradual increase in global tem perature, the exact magnitude of increase through time and space will need to be carefully interpolated and calibrated using a better interpolation methods such as Kriging or its extension. Another case in point would be for estimating the air pollution PM concentration level through interpolation; the resultant estimates are often used to link with human health, and the conclusions of such studies are often controversial and subject to scrutiny. Although there have already been numerous studies on interpolation error, it is suggested that future research should focus on investigating the causes and con sequences of interpolation error. The emphasis of future studies should be more on developing realistic strategy to manage interpolation error, with an understanding that spatial interpolation error will exist no matter what. The task we are facing is to find the best strategy to mitigate and minimize such error, so that decisions and conclu sions basing on the estimates can still be made with a minimal degree of uncertainty. See also: Kriging and Variogram Models; Overlay (in GIS); Spatial Data Models.

376


Further Reading Abraham, J. S. and Comrie, A. C. (2004). Real time ozone mapping using a regression interpolation hybrid approach, applied to Tucson, Arizona. Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association 54(8), 914 925. Fisher, P. F. and Langford, M. (1996). Modeling sensitivity to accuracy in classified imagery: A study of areal interpolation by dasymetric mapping. The Professional Geographer 48(3), 299 309. Fisher, P. F. and Tate, N. J. (2006). Causes and consequences of error in digital elevation models. Progress in Physical Geography 30(4), 467 489. Flowerdew, R., Green, M. and Kehris, E. (1991). Using areal interpolation methods in geographic information systems. Papers in Regional Science 70, 303 335. Goodchild, M. F. and Lam, N. S. N. (1980). Areal interpolation: A variant of the traditional spatial problem. Geo Processing 1, 297 312.

Goodchild, M. F., Anselin, L. and Deichmann, U. (1993). A framework for the areal interpolation of socioeconomic data. Environment and Planning A 25, 383 397. Kennedy, E. and Kennedy, L. W. (2004). Using dasymetric mapping for spatially aggregated crime data. Journal of Quantitative Criminology 20(3), 243 262. Lam, N. S. N. (1980). Methods and Problems of Areal Interpolation. PhD Dissertation, University of Western Ontario. Lam, N. S. N. (1981). The reliability of spatial interpolation models. Modeling and Simulation 12(3), 869 876. Lam, N. S. N. (1983). Spatial interpolation methods: A review. The American Cartographer 10(2), 129 149. Liao, D., Peuquet, D. J., Duan, Y. et al. (2006). GIS approaches for the estimation of residential level ambient PM concentrations. Environmental Health Perspectives 114(9), 1374 1380. Tobler, W. R. (1979). Smooth pycnophylactic interpolation for geographic regions. Journal of the American Statistical Association 74(367), 519 536.

Spatial Ontologies N. Schuurman, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Formalization It is the process through which ideas, text, and spatial entities are translated into digital objects so that they can be manipulated in a computer. It is the process of rendering the nondigital world into code so that it can be computed. Interoperability It is the process of exchanging data and code between diverse computing systems and databases. It frequently involves conflation of near but nonidentical categories or computing protocols. Ontology It means something very different in philosophy than it does in information systems. In the former, it means the question of being. In computing and information sciences, an ontology is a formal universe in which each entity is precisely defined and its relationship with every other entity in the specific categorical or computing realm is also predetermined. Ontologies in this context are the range of what is possible. They can be thought of as simply a classification system or a data dictionary.

Definition: Spatial Ontologies The term ‘spatial ontologies’ is an amalgamation of two words that point to very different concepts. Spatial can be distinguished from geography as the former refers to space while the latter refers specifically to the Earth’s surface. Space is a concept that has many manifestations at scales from the interior of cells to entire galaxy and ultimately the universe. Space often refers to two di mensions but can be extended to three and even four dimensions. Space can be mathematical (e.g., a set) or philosophical (e.g., epistemological implications of a conceptual framework). Space and the adjective spatial are in effect complex descriptions of a concept that embodies area at a range of scales and epistemologies. Adding the noun ontology to the adjective spatial is a complicating strategy. Ontology is multifaceted term as it is understood very differently across disciplines. Human geographers and social scientists have interpreted ontol ogy in an Aristotelian manner. In this guise, ontology signifies a foundational reality and is often referred to as the essence of an object or phenomena. Alternatively, ontologies answer the question: what must the world be like – or what conditions must exist – for us to perceive and know something. Computing scientists and systems theorists, on the other hand, use an engineering

interpretation of the word ontology. In this view, an ontology is a complete and internally logical system (e.g., a classification system). In cartography and geographic in formation systems (GISs), ontology is interpreted in the information science tradition. Each ontology in this guise is a unique statement of logic, a way of describing spatial entities from one perspective or knowledge system. Formal ontologies comprise a logical universe, and an ontology in a formal environment is equivalent to a lo gical theory – but is often expressed as a classification system in databases. Formal or systems ontologies have three levels of convention: representational, communi cation protocol, and content specification. The realm of existence is limited to that which can be represented (often in a database). Domain knowledge must be for mally declared and this becomes its own world of dis course. Ontologies thus described appear circumscribed. They lack the mystery of philosophical ontologies yet this requirement of exact specification is a means of communicating different epistemologies within an in formation system. Each spatial ontology is a product of an epistemology – or a way of knowing the world. There is a tradition of essentialism in information sciences which argues that the world is divided into natural classes that reflect an es sential reality and these classes can be discerned. This epistemological view relies on the power of human ob servation to divide artifacts into natural classes. There is increasing recognition, however, that scientific classifi cation is a mixture of metaphysics and epistemology and that the classification systems we use to represent the world are dependent on perspective, measurement tech niques, and agenda. In geographic information science (GIScience), many scholars now acknowledge that context shapes the formation and selection of categories. Changes in context – or point of view – lead to a shift in perceived and/or enumerated categories. Each representation of categories leads potentially to an alternative ontology that could be implemented in a computational environment. Though there are GIScientists who would argue that categories are based on naturally occurring, stable cat egories, most people agree that GIS must be flexible enough to represent more than one system of classification. Multiple ontologies permit multiple stakeholders with divergent agenda to be represented in a single GIS. In a world with multiple spatial ontologies, scientific classification is just as vulnerable to error as lay classifi cation. Increased recognition of the role of epistemology

377

378

Spatial Ontologies

in creating ontologies is a radical departure from ob jectivism which is premised on one ‘real world’ in dependent of the human mind and social context. When we talk of multiple spatial ontologies, we are incorpor ating recognition that each of those ontologies represents an epistemology and a point of view.

How Do Spatial Ontologies Look Like? A spatial ontology then is a formal list of objects or terms that are permitted within a specified range set by a group. Medical data registries, for instance, contain fields (col umns in the database) that are strictly controlled. Using the example of a Trauma Registry, we find a number of fields including injury date, ICD 10 codes, postal code of patient’s usual residence, injury severity score (ISS), ex ternal cause code, etc. In combination, these database fields comprise a classification system. Such a classifi cation system, like many in common use, implicitly de scribes the developers’ epistemology – or ways of knowing and state of understanding – in that discipline. The ontology can be considered spatial because even though it describes nonspatial attributes (such as patient’s date of birth), the injury location is a critical element. A Trauma Registry from a different country might include quite different fields or more commonly the interpret ation or scale of the data in individual fields may vary widely. In one registry, location might refer to postal code while in another it may be entered using Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates. Likewise, injury description may be described using a different coding system (e.g., ICD 9). One of the challenges of working with multiple ontologies is that comparing and inte grating them may be difficult because each is developed based on differing assumptions about the world. And as the state of understanding in a field changes, ontologies change in subtle and often imperceptible ways. A reasonable question at this point might revolve around the difference between a simple classification system and an ontology. In a computational interpret ation of ontology, the only discernable product is the database. But before an ontology is fully developed, the stakeholders might consider the skeletal classification system the ontology. Moreover, geologists consider a map legend a fully fledged ontology while a GIScientist might consider a range of spatial entities (e.g., mountain, vol cano, valley, and foothills) an ontology. And a database analyst may refer to a data dictionary as an ontology. The truth is that there is a range of acceptable interpretation of spatial ontology in GIScience as illustrated in Figure 1. But every ontology is linked by its relationship to a particular epistemology and its role in determining the range of acceptable categories in a classification.

Moreover, ontologies in information science are ul timately translated into formal terms that can be imple mented computationally. Formalization is the process through which ideas and objects are described in terms that can be encoded digitally so that the objects can be manipulated in a computer. It is this process of formalization that separates organized but unstructured thoughts and conceptual frameworks from computational data structures populated with data. A necessary stage of formalization is the creation of succinct coherent ontologies.

Formalization and Ontologies GIScientists frequently refer to ‘formalization’ as the process of rendering concepts into a form that can be ultimately represented in a digital environment. This is more easily said than done. There is a great difference between the abstract concepts that we routinely use to describe the world and the formal language – and com puting code – that is required to implement technology. GIS, like all information sciences, is based on a hier archical relationship between conceptualization and formalization. If we think of conceptualization as a step toward understanding spatial processes and relationships, there remains a pressing need to express these relation ships in a mathematical or formal notation as a precursor to coding them. The trade off, however, is information loss associated with formalization. There is a danger that we suppress detail in favor of abstract and formal rela tionships. On the other hand, abstraction – based on in formation loss – is a powerful way of understanding structure. The process of abstraction assists us in making sense of the physical and human world and, in GIS, we use abstractions to model reality. The process of formal ization is based on abstraction of concepts into a symbolic form. A mechanism for moving between cognitive impres sions of reality and database representations of it is re quired, however, to achieve this level of abstraction. In a seminal paper by Jean Brodeur and others, the researchers describe five ontological stages associated with geospatial data and analysis. At the top level is reality (R), followed by cognitive models of reality (R1). The third stage consists of conceptual representations and is referred to as R2. The fourth ontological stage (R3) converts concepts to database representations. Finally, the fifth ontological level (R4) is the set of spatial con cepts that can be produced from the database. Figure 2 illustrates the conceptual model of ontologies. To human geographers, such a taxonomy might seem mechanistic, but it is essential in GIS to be able to express cognitive models in a formal language as a

Family Cebidae Family Aotidae Family Pitheciidae Family Atelidae

Family Tarsiidae

Parvorder Catarrhini Superfamily Cercopithecoidea Family Cercopithecidae Superfamily Hominoidea Family Hylobatidae Family Hominidae

Infraorder Simiiformes Parvorder Platyrrhini

Infraorder Tarsiiformes

Suborder Haplorrhini

Infraorder Lemuriformes Superfamily Cheirogaleoidea Family Cheirogaleidae Superfamily Lemuroidea Family Lemuridae Family Lepilemuridae Family Indriidae Infraorder Chiromyiformes Family Daubentoniidae Infraorder Lorisiformes Family Lorisidae Family Galagidae

ORDER PRIMATES Suborder Strepsirrhini

Data Element Patient—diagnosis date, DDMMYYYY 270544 NHIG, Standard 01/03/2005 The date on which a patient is diagnosed with a particular condition or disease. Patient—diagnosis date The date on which a patient is diagnosed with a particular condition or disease. Patient Diagnosis date

Date Date/Time DDMMYYYY 8

(d)

Source Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2006). National Health Data Dictionary, Volume 2.

Collection and usage attributes Comments: Classification systems, which enable the allocation of a code to the diagnostic information, can be used in conjunction with this metadata item. Source and reference attributes Submitting organisation: Cardiovascular Data Working Group Relational attributes Related metadata references: Supersedes Date of diagnosis, version 1, DE, NHDD, NHIMG, Superseded 01/03/2005 Implementation in Data Set Cardiovascular disease (clinical) DSS NHIG, Superseded 15/02/2006 Specifications: Cardiovascular disease (clinical) DSS NHIG, Standard 15/02/2006

Data element attributes

Representational attributes Representation class: Data type: Format: Maximum character length:

Value domain attributes

Data element concept: Definition: Object class: Property:

Data element concept attributes

Metadata item type: Technical name: METeOR identifier: Registration status: Definition:

Identifying and definitional attributes

DATE OF DIAGNOSIS

(c)

Figure 1 Mu t p e nterpretat ons of onto ogy. (a) ustrates a map egend. For many geo og sts and cartograhers, the egend represents the ent re forma un verse of an onto ogy. n (b), data mode s represent d fferent onto og es. (c) s a c ass ficat on systems or taxonomy – another nterpretat on of an onto ogy. (d) ustrates a data d ct onary that defines exact y what terms can be represented spat a y and how they are defined. Each of these are a ternat ve terat ons of onto ogy.

(b)

(a)

River/Lake

Private Land

Farming Park

Sigh ings Food/Gas Camping Protected Roads

LEGEND

(c)

Spatial Ontologies 379

380

Spatial Ontologies

R: Reality

R1: Cognitive models of reality

R2: Conceptual representations of reality

R3: Database representations of reality

Feature Cabin Storage Road Bridge Lake Stream Woods 1 Woods 2 Bush 1 Bush 2 Bush 3

ID 0001 0002 0003 0004 0005 0006 0007 0008 0009 0010 0011

Type Point Point Line Line Polygon Line Polygon Polygon Point Point Point

Length 50 7 70 -

Area 500 500 300 -

Man-made Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No

4

R : Spatial concepts that can be produced from the database Feature Cabin Storage Road Bridge Lake Stream Woods 1 Woods 2 Bush 1 Bush 2 Bush 3

ID 0001 0002 0003 0004 0005 0006 0007 0008 0009 0010 0011

Type Point Point Line Line Polygon Line Polygon Polygon Point Point Point

Length 50 7 70 -

Area 500 500 300 -

Man-made Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No No No No

Figure 2 Five levels of abstraction associated with computational ontologies. The highest level of reality is the world as it is a traditional philosophical interpretation of ontology. R1 represents the way that humans perceive the world transformed through cognition. When we conceptualize reality, we alter it again (R2). Database representations of reality (R3) introduce another profound transformation and the spatial concepts that can be produced from a database (R4) are further restricted. In this illustration, we see how at each step, representations of the world are altered (and limited) as we move through different levels of abstraction. For example, the first viewer conceives the scene of the forest, house, pond, and bridge differently than she is able to convey it to the interlocutor. And representations of reality are again transformed when articulated in databases and re-articulated as spatial concepts that can be computationally displayed.

Spatial Ontologies

precursor to coding it. R2 or the set of conceptual rep resentations marks the fuzzy dividing line between the conceptual and implementational realms. A structured vocabulary must be used to describe objects and object classes. Moreover, database representation requires a method of embedding context. For example, we need to know whether the word ‘crown’ refers to the degree to which a tree blocks light in a forest or a metal adornment intended to rest on a queen’s head. In everyday (non digital) life, such meaning is extracted from verbal or environmental context. In a digital environment, it must be supplied. Context is necessary for understanding im plied use, background, and common meaning of spatial entities. Ontologies are a way of encoding context. Ontologies can exist, be described and understood, but this does not mean that they have been formalized. Formalization is the critical step referred to by Brodeur’s R3 and R4. Formalization allows us to take descriptive concepts and render them digital; it makes them real in computational terms. GIScientists are currently de veloping methods of formalizing and encoding diverse ways of looking at the spatial world – a critical com ponent of ontology research.

381

development of databases – as a means of ensuring that the terms of classifications can be recognized in different settings. The goal of maintaining ontological context is con sistent with one of the chief objectives of present day GIScience: interoperability. There is a trend toward distributed digital knowledge with different institutions housing different databases that are occasionally inte grated for comparative or global analyses. Such insti tutions, including businesses, government agencies, and university researchers, need ways to integrate spatial information even when it is described from different epistemologies at different levels of abstraction using multiple schematics (e.g., different database organiza tion). Sharing spatial data and attributes requires stability of language across culture and geography – assumptions that are seldom true. Researchers are forced to develop methods of delivering intended meaning along with field names in databases in order to allow ‘intelligent’ semantic sharing. Semantic interoperability implies translating concepts into code and back again. The work of semantic interoperability is enhanced by thinking of each unique set of spatial objects as part of an ontology – with its own context.

Ontology Research in GIScience Ontology research in GIScience began in the mid 1990s when a number of scientific journal papers first explored the issue. Predictably, there were many variations in in terpretation of ontology but they were linked by the assumption that (1) we need to represent multiple epis temologies; and (2) formalization is a constraint in rep resentation at the computational level. There is a common understanding that concepts must be filtered through a formalization process. The process of formal ization is the designated arena for fixing meaning – for creating a fixed universe of discourse. Representing multiple ways of seeing and under standing the world in a computer has been tackled by a number of researchers in different ways. One way is to use semantic networks that employ node–arc structures from graph theory to achieve this goal. To achieve this, nodes are equated with spatial entities or concepts and arcs with relationships between the entities. Close con cepts are physically close on the graph structure. The goal of the semantic proximity approach is to identify close or near concepts and label database elements (e.g., mountains or valleys) so that proximate concepts and entities can be linked. Other researchers have developed complex sets of inclusion rules that must be incorporated during classification of entities. Whether or not a spatial entity is included in a future classification can be theo retically determined by the rules. Each of these methods is linked by emphasis on including context in the

Spatial Ontologies of Land Use: An Example Land use categories are used by municipal planners to organize and categorize public and private lands under their purview. Land use refers to the activities occurring on a particular piece of property or area of public land. Land use classification is intended to include both the intent and the reality of how a given land area within a metropolitan area may be altered by habitation and human use. Land use categories, however, vary widely among communities and most have different taxonomies (e.g., ontologies). Because it is complicated by semantic heterogeneity, integration of land use taxonomies is complicated. Each municipality collects its land use data using different assumptions about categories. These epistemological and ontological differences become en coded in the data – often with no record. Though the distinctions are often subtle (e.g., skateboard parks might be included as ‘green space’ in one community but ex cluded in another because they are concrete), they affect the reliability of the data. Data always contain gray zones of meaning. While they are being used in the context in which they are collected, this is usually not a problem. The meaning of green space in the dataset is implicit, for example, in the offices of individual municipal govern ments. But if that database is moved to a different municipality, workers there might interpret it differently – most likely in the same way that their community

382

Spatial Ontologies

presently understands the term. When data are inte grated in broader datasets, however, or sold as secondary datasets, their contextual meaning can be lost resulting in the propagation of uncertainty in the attendant analysis. Once subtle distinctions are encapsulated with the data, users make assumptions about their meaning. For example, neighboring municipalities might integrate their land use categories to develop a regional classification. Superficial integration of the datasets based on the as sumption that categories such as ‘green space’ or ‘recre ation centre’ mean the same thing in every jurisdiction embeds error into the resulting merged data. The prob lem, in effect, is one of different ontologies. Comparing urban land use across municipal lines in the Greater Vancouver metropolitan area of British Columbia (BC), Canada, is a telling example of the problems associated with different spatial ontologies that affect everyday GIS and cartographic practices. The Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), located within the province of BC, houses over 2 million people residing within 21 municipalities. It constitutes a single contiguous metropolitan area. Land use classifi cation is a municipal government responsibility in the GVRD. There is no regional land use classification standard, and resulting taxonomies of land use are dis parate and thereby incommensurable. For example, one community may identify ‘single family’ as a land use designation; this designation may include two or three different types of single family types in a competing classification (see Table 1). Municipalities characterize land use by employing codes to describe differences. Table 2 illustrates the superclasses used by the neighboring cities of Vancouver and Burnaby. The superclasses differ somewhat as would be expected – but the differences are more profound than

might first appear. The city of Burnaby uses detailed codes to identify land use at the scale of individual properties. They give each property outline a very spe cific code. For example, the numerical code range 000– 099 constitutes the ‘residential series’ and describes various housing types and their associated forms of tenure. The city of Vancouver, by contrast, operates with many fewer subclasses – and their database is much more general as a result. The general categories may be similar, but the problem is that there is no way of digging deeper. Fundamental ontological distinctions are a product of epistemological differences in data collection as well as varying insti tutional cultures in the individual municipalities. When these ontologies’ differences are accounted for, one realizes that a trivial integration of the superclasses contains un certainty. While the mapping presented in Table 2 is schematically legitimate, it fails to convey the true (lack of) symmetry between the land use classes. The city of Vancouver bases its land use coding on municipal ‘zoning’, a legal classification encoded into, and mandated by, city policy (bylaws). Zones are determined for large areas at a time, and they encompass many individual properties. Each prop erty is assigned a land use ‘code’ based on which zone their property lies in. Land use information for Vancouver is based on the ‘what should be there’ principle. By contrast, the city of Burnaby determines based on the activities associated with individual cadastral parcels – as determined by the taxation authorities. The city of Burnaby also determines its own municipal zoning. Un like Vancouver, it does not consider zoning and land use as equivalent. These epistemological differences in how

Table 2 Cadastral land-use classification for the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby Table 1 Number of different zoning designations for various categories including of industrial, low-rise residential, high-rise residential and single-family residential land use

City of Coquitlam City of North Vancouver City of Port Coquitlam City of Richmond City of Surrey

Industrial Res low

Res high

Single family

9 7

2 1

2 1

5 3

5

2

2

1

7 5

1 2

1 2

1 3

The table illustrates that the five sample communities have a varying range of subclassifications. Each land use categories and its subclassifications constitute an ontology. Schuurman, N., Leszczynski, A., Fiedler, R., Grund, D. and Bell, N. (2006). Building an integrated cadastral fabric for higher resolution socioeconomic spatial data analysis. In Riedl, W., Kainz, A., & Elmes, G. (eds.) Progress in Spatial Data Handling, 12th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling. Berlin: Springer.

Vancouver ‘District schedules’

Burnaby Land-use ‘series’

One-family dwelling Two-family dwelling Multiple dwelling Limited agricultural Industrial Commercial - no corresponding class -

Residential series

Cultural and recreation (a subclass) Historic area - no corresponding class Comprehensive development

Farm series Industrial series Commercial series Utility series includes railways, pipelines, etc. Institutional series government buildings, etc. - no corresponding class -

Note that the superclasses are not commensurate but can be manually synced. From Schuurman, N. and Leszczynski, A. (2006). Ontology based metadata. Tranactions in Geographic Information Science 10(5), 709 726.

Spatial Ontologies

land use is assigned in two different communities reveal ontological differences. The differences can be summar ized as the distinction between ‘what should be there’ versus ‘what is actually there’. As a result, it is difficult to directly compare land use categories between Burnaby and Vancouver. The two classification schemes are ir reconcilable at a very basic level because they emerge from two different institutional contexts – in other words, they represent two separate, though overlapping, ontologies. The example of land use reveals the impact that dif ferent ontologies have on spatial data – such as land use – that may otherwise seem unproblematic. If data users are to understand their data from a qualitative perspective, they need to think about ontologies. Are the two ontol ogies comparable based on their classification systems; attribute characteristics; terminology; naming conven tions; rationale for collection; scale; and measurement systems? Collectively, such parameters constitute data ‘context’. Context is likewise the basis for understanding how different spatial ontologies shape data.

Spatial Ontologies: Present and Future In the past decade, GIScience researchers have become increasingly concerned with optimal methods for repre senting multiple epistemological perspectives about the same spatial events and entities. At the same time, there is a pressing need to attach contextual information to database elements in order to identify different ontolo gies in the interest of enhancing interoperability of data across institutions and geography. Spatial ontologies enable multiple stakeholders to represent different scenarios, agenda, and interpretations of the geographic world. Formal ontologies are a means of implementing these diverse views in a struc tured digital environment. Acknowledging and under standing alternate perspectives on the same geographical

383

phenomena or spatial framework is a means of preserving heterogeneity of perspective with implications for democratic policy and governance. Spatial ontologies are a means of achieving these goals in a computational environment. See also: Critical GIS; Critical Realism/Critical Realist Geographies; Feminism, Maps and GIS; GIS and Cartography; Maps.

Further Reading Agarwal, P. (2005). Ontological considerations in GIScience. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 19(5), 501 536. Bowker, G. (1996). The history of information infrastructures: The case of the international classification of diseases. Information Processing and Management 32(1), 49 61. Bowker, G. C. (2000). Biodiversity datadiversity. Social Studies of Science 30(5), 643 683. Gregory, D. (2000). Ontology. In Johnston, R. J., Gregory, D., Pratt, G. & Watts, M. (eds.) The Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford: Blackwell. Harvey, F., Werner, K., Hardy, P. and Yaser, B. (1999). Semantic interoperability: A central issue for sharing geographic information. Annals of Regional Science 33, 213 232. Kuhn, W. (2001). Ontologies in support of activities in geographical space. International Journal of Geographical Information Science 15(7), 613 631. Schuurman, N. (2006). Formalization matters: Critical GIS and ontology research. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96(4), 726 739. Schuurman, N. and Leszczynski, A. (2006). Ontology based metadata. Tranactions in Geographic Information Science 10(5), 709 726. Schuurman, N., Leszczynski, A., Fiedler, R., Grund, D. and Bell, N. (2006). Building an integrated cadastral fabric for higher resolution socioeconomic spatial data analysis. In Riedl, W., Kainz, A. & Elmes, G. (eds.) Progress in Spatial Data Handling, 12th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling. Berlin: Springer. Smith, B. and Mark, D. M. (1998). Ontology and geographic kinds. Paper read at The 8th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling. Vancouver, BC, Canada. Winter, S. (2001). Ontology: Buzzword or paradigm shift in GI science? International Journal of Geographical Information Science 15(7), 587 590.

Spatial Science Ron Johnston, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Spatial science is an approach to human geography which came to prominence in much of the Anglophone world and a number of other countries – notably Sweden and the Netherlands – in the 1960s and 1970s, through what Burton heralded as the discipline’s ‘quantitative and theoretical revolution’; it has remained a significant component of the disciplinary portfolio ever since. It deals with aggregate patterns in space and their gener ating processes, and is characterized by two major fea tures: the description, explanation, and (in some cases) prediction – even control – of general patterns of spatial behavior and their reflection in the landscape; and the application of rigorous mathematical and statistical pro cedures in that task. The approaches taken within this broad framework have changed considerably over the last half century, however, as have the methods applied. This approach within geography is closely associated with parallel work in other social and natural science disciplines. In geology, for example, spatial science is a major component of the enterprise, and some develop ments within human geography have been stimulated by geologists’ work. There is also considerable inter disciplinary interaction with workers in other disciplines, such as economics, sociology, political science, and archaeology, where the spatial approach – as in human geography – is one component of a broader disciplinary framework. And there are applied disciplines – notably city and regional planning – which build on those foundations.

Origins With most substantial changes in a discipline’s portfolio, harbingers of those changes which nevertheless had little or no impact on its practices can be found in its research literature; they are contributions to knowledge which were not taken up by others and so very largely dis regarded. This was certainly the case with spatial science. Innovative pieces of work can be identified from the 1930s, and even earlier, which either went almost entirely unnoticed or attracted no followers among the small number of professional geographers, who chose to avoid such challenges to their established ways of working. Major change in disciplinary orientation usually only occurs when a number of individuals develop an alter native agenda to that currently dominant and promote their ways of working through a variety of aggressive political strategies. They mobilize support for their ideas

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and seek to change disciplinary practices – not only how research is undertaken and to what ends but also how the discipline is taught to undergraduates and presented in graduate training programs. Such academic social movements emerged in both the USA and the UK in the late 1950s and early 1960s, taking the discipline by storm and rapidly ensuring a major shift in its foundations. In the USA, the origins of this shift have been traced by Barnes and Farish to the experience of a large number of human geographers seconded to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II to provide information that would underpin military cam paigns and their aftermath. Unlike the parallel situation in the UK where geographers worked separately, geog raphers in the OSS were required to work in multi disciplinary teams, in which some became aware of deficiencies in their disciplinary practices that con strained their ability to contribute to various forms of policy development. They were convinced that their discipline had to change if it was to remain viable within academia, contributing applicable knowledge – in effect, it had to become more like economics in adopting the approaches considered typical of the natural sciences such as physics. Some – such as Ackerman and Schaefer – preached this need for change: others began to imple ment it. One influential change agent was Edward Ullman, who produced two pioneering essays on theoretical ap proaches to urban geography – one, much cited, was coauthored with Chauncy Harris. Ullman returned to Harvard after the war but following the closure of the geography department there moved to the University of Washington at Seattle. In the mid 1950s, a number of graduate students were attracted to work with him on the new theoretically based approach he was promoting, fo cused on the role of transportation as a major influence on human spatial behavior, and the resultant spatial patterns of areal differentiation. Ullman was away for some time, however, and they gravitated to work with another professor – William Garrison – who was com mitted not only to that approach but also to the appli cation of quantitative methods. Together, through a variety of strategies and practices, that remarkably talented and influential group (including Brian Berry, Ron Boyce, William Bunge, Michael Dacey, Art Getis, Duane Marble, Richard Morrill, John Nystuen, Forrest Pitts, and Waldo Tobler) stimulated others in the dis cipline to adopt the ‘new geography’. Their subsequent

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appointments to teaching positions in leading geography departments, from which in turn their students moved to other centers, facilitated a rapid spread of the new ways. In the UK, a parallel introduction of similar ap proaches focused on the University of Cambridge in the late 1950s to early 1960s, stimulated by two recently appointed lecturers, Richard Chorley (with an under graduate degree in geography from Oxford and then trained as a geologist in the USA by one of the pioneers of a new, quantitative, approach to geomorphology – Arthur Strahler) and Peter Haggett, who first en countered the sort of material that later became central to the ‘new geography’ when teaching economic geog raphy at University College London in the mid 1950s. (Haggett succeeded Brian Law as a lecturer there: Law introduced location theory to undergraduates – in cluding Brian Berry. Similar material – notably the work of Hoover on industrial location – was also taught at the London School of Economics in the 1940s–1950s, but had little wider impact.) Chorley and Haggett introduced the teaching of quantitative methods at Cambridge in 1960 and Haggett later taught a course that became his pi oneering text on Locational Analysis in human geography. Their students – like the Washington graduates a few years earlier – rapidly spread the ‘revolution’ to other centers, as did those from Bristol after Haggett moved there in 1966. Chorley and Haggett also fostered the new approach in the UK’s secondary schools through five mid 1960s summer schools that were the progenitors of two seminal collections they edited together. Changing approaches to the nature of geography in British schools – thus influ encing the backgrounds of those who studied the subject as undergraduates – were also strongly influenced from another source. Stanley Gregory, a London trained cli matologist, initiated the teaching of statistical methods at the University of Liverpool in the 1950s, published the first textbook on the subject in 1963, and inspired a fur ther stream of graduate students who moved into uni versity careers. He was also influential in changing the syllabuses for the public examinations taken at age 18 (‘A’ level) that determined potential for university en trance, which included work through the Geographical Association. Meanwhile, John Cole, at the University of Nottingham, pioneered in the development of teaching materials for students at primary (age 5–11) schools. From these origins, interest in quantitative and theo retical work rapidly spread, not only through those two countries but also a number of others, mostly English speaking, such as Australia and New Zealand. By the early 1970s a number of pioneering textbooks had been produced conveying the approach – mainly to under graduates in the UK but postgraduates in the US – re flecting the different positions of geography in the two countries’ educational systems. Notable and highly

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influential among these were Haggett’s Locational Analysis, plus Abler, Adams, and Gould’s Spatial Organization: The Geographer’s View of the World, and Morrill’s The Spatial Organization of Society: Harvey’s Explanation in Geography provided a detailed philosophical and methodological foundation for the practices the pioneers espoused. Spatial science soon occupied a major role within the discipline, with compulsory courses in quantitative methods normal in degree schemes and material on lo cation theory central in – if not dominating – many substantive courses. This provided the foundation for continued substantive and technical developments over the next four decades, and also the basis for major cri tiques and subsequent campaigns to change the nature of geographical practices in different directions: the ‘revo lution’ – if ‘revolution’ it was – was hardly over before counter revolutions were launched.

Location Theory, Hypothesis Testing, and Quantitative Analysis Many of the stimuli for this fresh approach to human geography came from outwith the discipline; geographers found both substantive and methodological inspiration in a range of disciplinary literatures, notably economics in the first instance. There was no coherent body of work within those disciplines that focused on the approaches taken up by geographers, but the contributions of a number of workers – mostly considered to be on the fringe of their discipline by economists – provided the initial stimuli that geographers followed up. Many – such as Hoover, Hotelling, Lo¨sch, Palander, Alfred Weber, and also von Thu¨nen, whose work was published in the early nineteenth century – concentrated on the location of economic activities, especially manufacturing industries. They sought to account for observed distributions not by identifying the rationales for particular decisions through empirical case studies but rather by uncovering general principles underpinning all locational decisions through theoretical development followed by hypothesis testing: model became a key word in their vocabulary. This impetus for a ‘new’ approach to human geog raphy occurred in parallel with the inauguration of re gional science, led by an economist – Walter Isard – wanting to introduce spatial perspectives to mainstream economics. Isard enrolled a number of geographers in his long running, extensive campaign to gain disciplinary status for regional science; many became (and some geographers remain) active in the Regional Science As sociation, which has branches throughout the world. But an autonomous separate discipline represented in major universities never eventuated, and although the Associ ation remains a vibrant interdisciplinary organi zation – running conferences and publishing journals – it

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has never threatened geography’s separate existence, as some originally feared. For the pioneering geographers, the key principle in the theories and models they were attracted to related to transport costs – reflecting an assumed importance of distance (or space) in decision making. Of the various costs involved in manufacturing products, it was the one that could be promoted as clearly geographical – a case made by Ullman and adopted by his followers. Manu facturing industries, for example, have to bring raw materials and component parts for a product together – which involves costs (both time and money) – and then distribute them to their markets, involving further costs. The more that these costs can be held down, the more efficient the production and distribution of the product and hence the lower the price to the consumer – as suming all other costs are held constant. Thus, the core geographical problem was presented as identifying the least cost location at which transport costs were min imized. Knowledge of an industry’s cost structures, in cluding those of transporting its various inputs as well as its outputs, could thus be deployed to suggest where factories should optimally be located, given information on where the raw materials and other inputs could be obtained and the geography of demand for its products. This ‘ideal’ was a model of the ‘real world’, a pre sentation of what the distribution of an industry should be in a country or region if those involved in location decisions were making the most economically rational choices. Elements of that model could then be tested empirically: hypotheses – speculations about what the world should look like – could be generated whose val idity could be assessed by, in effect, comparing a hypo thetical map of an industrial distribution against the ‘real thing’. Most geographers, following Harvey’s approach in his Explanation, chose to test their hypotheses using the verification approach, favored by positivists – is my hy pothesis right? – rather than the falsificationist approach favored by Popper – is my hypothesis wrong? The importance of transport costs was not constrained to studies of industrial location, particularly when broadened to the more general impacts of distance – closely linked to transport costs. As geographers dis covered through searching cognate discipline literatures, others were studying the impact of distance on a wide range of behaviors. With migration, for example, it was argued that it is easier to get information regarding a potential destination for a move about a nearby place than about one further away: there is a friction of distance to information flows. As a result, people are more likely to search nearby than distant places when planning to move. They are also more likely to select a nearby des tination, because longer distance moves are more costly. The result is a postulated distance decay effect – what one sociologist, Zipf, called a ‘law of least effort’ – in a

wide range of spatial behaviors, not only permanent migrations but also, for example, journeys to work, to shop, to a doctor’s surgery, to university, to church, and so on: the greater the distance between two places, the lesser the interaction between them. The hypothesized existence of distance decay effects could be tested by analyses of movement patterns, many of which were set in the context of the so called gravity model, using an analogy from Newtonian physics (on which Olsson provided an early introduction). According to the basic formula: I ij ¼ aðMi Mj Þ=d 2ij

½1

where Mi is the mass at point i; Mj is the mass at point j; dij is the distance between points i and j; a is the co efficient of proportionality; and Iij is the amount of interaction between points i and j. In modeling migration flows between places i and j (Iij), the two terms in brackets Mi and Mj might refer to the populations of towns i and j, respectively: the more people in i the more who would move to j (and vice versa); the more people in j, the more attractive it would be for people in i. And the shorter the distance between i and j (which is squared in Newtonian physics), the more people who would move between them – ceteris paribus. Alongside industrial location and migration, a third area of work dominating much early spatial science was central place theory, addressing issues relating to settlement patterns. A number of nineteenth and early twentieth century scholars had explored regularities in the distri bution of central places – where consumers purchase goods and services from shops and offices – but a German geographer (with a strong background in economics), Walther Christaller, first formalized this, although his 1993 publication was not taken up by English speaking geog raphers until the 1950s. Christaller’s work was also based on the ‘law of least effort’, assuming that people visit the nearest center offering their needed goods and services. Arguing that some baskets of goods and services are nee ded daily, some weekly, and others less frequently, Chris taller hypothesized that service centers would be organized in hexagonal patterns across the landscape (assuming no major topographical barriers), with denser patterns of small centers providing the most frequently demanded services, nested within less dense patterns of larger, less frequently visited, centers, etc. This theory – and a more complex variant developed by Lo¨sch, which does not assume bas kets of goods/services all bought with the same frequency – was the basis for much data collection and hypothesis testing, seeking regular patterns with hexagonal foundations. Finally among the most influential sets of ideas – though taken up a little later than some of the others – was work on spatial diffusion developed by a Swedish

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geographer, Torsten Ha¨gerstrand. This, too, was founded on the ‘law of least effort’ – reformulated by Tobler (1970: 234–240) as ‘‘the first law of geography: everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.’’ If flows of information are spatially structured, ideas should diffuse outwards from innovation centers in wave like formations, thus pro ducing ordered geographies of change. According to Morrill, Ha¨gerstrand’s initial work on migration was later extended by him and others after his 1959 visit to Seattle – to address a wide range of phenomena which have spread over landscapes, such as diseases. He also pion eered use of Monte Carlo methods to simulate patterns of spread and diffusion, and was one of the first human geographers to promote use of computers. Most of these approaches were summarized by Garrison into six basic spatial problems: 1. the transportation problem – what is the most cost efficient flow of goods through a network of supply and demand points?; 2. the spatial price equilibrium problem – what prices for goods and services will result from such flow patterns?; 3. the warehouse location problem – what is the best set of locations for a series of supply points, to serve a given geography of demand?; 4. the industrial location problem – what is the optimum location for an industry given the geography of supply for its inputs and that of demand for its outputs?; 5. the interdependencies problem – what is the best pattern of linked plants so as to maximize profits jointly?; and

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6. the boundary drawing problem – what is the most efficient set of boundaries for the hinterlands of places (such as schools), which minimizes transport costs?

Others synthesized the spatial science approach in dif ferent ways. Haggett, for example, used a diagram to identify the six major components of spatial systems (Figure 1), comprising: movements; the channels along which they flowed; nodes on those networks of channels; hierarchies of nodes according to their size and import ance; surfaces, representing internodal patterns; and dif fusions – which could flow down the hierarchies, along the channels and across the surfaces. Later work included classification and regionalization – dividing the surfaces up into relatively homogeneous areas on selected criteria. These idealizations of spatial structures and processes stimulated a large number of empirical studies seeking ordered patterns in the landscape – point patterns of settlements and hierarchies, for example; line patterns of transportation routes; smooth (trend) surfaces of inter nodal land use patterns and land values; diseases dif fusing down through urban hierarchies and across the surfaces – as well as ordered patterns of behavior, such as distance decay patterns in various forms of interaction. The emphasis was very much on pattern. As Bunge, Harvey, and others argued, geometry was the language of this ‘new geography’. To test the geometric hypotheses, the literature of statistical applications in a range of disciplines was explored for relevant procedures – such as nearest neighbor analysis for point patterns, graph theory for line patterns, the gravity model for migration flows, and trend surface analysis. Alongside theoretical

(c)

t3 t2 t1

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(e)

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Figure 1 Haggett’s representation of the six core components of a spatial system: (a) flows; (b) channels; (c) nodes; (d) hierarchies; (e) surfaces; and (f) diffusions.

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exploration there was a great deal of methodological experiment in spatial science’s early years. One set of procedures came to dominate, however – the general linear model, developed in statistics for testing hypotheses regarding associations and (putatively causal) relationships, and widely applied in other social sciences. Within this still evolving family particular attention was given to regression and associated measures of correlation. Regression relates two or more variables – one of which is the hypothesized effect and the others the postulated cause(s) – to inquire how well, if at all, the causes (the independent variables) predict the effect (the dependent variable). The gravity model (eqn [1]), for example, could be expressed in a regression framework as log I ij ¼ a þ b1 ðlog Mi Þ þ b2 ðlog Mj Þ

b3 ðlog d ij Þ7e ½2

In this, the regression coefficients b1, b2, and b3 indicate the relative importance of the size of Mi, the size of Mj, and the distance between places i and j, respectively as influ ences on the amount of migration between those two places; the constant term a is equivalent to the coefficient of proportionality in Newton’s formulation [1], and e is the (normally distributed) error term. The positive signs for b1 and b2 indicate expectations that the volume of migration increases the larger each of the places, whereas the negative sign for b3 indicates an expectation that the amount of migration between two places – holding con stant their size – will decline, the greater the distance between them. (In Newton’s model b3 is equal to 2, but in social science applications no theoretical justification could be found for that; empirical models had to be cali brated to the datasets deployed to obtain domain specific estimates.) The associated correlation coefficient – r, or R in multiple regression with more than one independent variable – varies between 0 and 1.0: the associated co efficient of determination – r2 or R2 – indicates the pro portion of the variation in the dependent variable that can be accounted for statistically by the independent variables. When fitted to data, statistical models such as these provide technical answers to the question ‘to what extent are variations in the dependent variable (in this case, migration) accounted for statistically by variations in one or more of the independent variables?’. (When applied geographically, they, in effect, ask questions about the correlations among two or more maps: how similar is the mapped distribution of x to those of y and z?) Such statements of association are frequently given a causal interpretation, within the context of the theory that stimulated the test: the volume of migration was gener ated/caused by the size of the places involved and the distances between them. Statistical relationships are thus taken as means of verifying theoretical expectations – or testing hypotheses. If the expected patterns are observed, then the postulated causative mechanisms can be

assumed to operate: they are provisional statements of the processes governing spatial patterns, open – as always – to critical scrutiny and modification (perhaps even falsi fication) by further research. Regression modeling – and associated techniques such as factor analysis – remain at the heart of much spatial science. But over the half century since they were introduced to human geography applications have be come much more sophisticated, allowing a wider range of hypotheses to be tested and datasets of different types to be explored. Log linear modeling, logit analysis, multi level modeling, and a range of other procedures are now widely applied: all are based on the general linear model and allow similar interpretations. The testing is under taken in one of two ways: 1. deductively, formal hypotheses regarding the size, strength, and direction of relationships among vari ables are stated and those expectations compared against empirical data; and 2. inductively, patterns are identified in datasets which suggest ordered behavior. Both approaches use measures of statistical significance to assess the importance of their findings. How likely is it, that the pattern uncovered in one’s dataset is a chance occurrence? Or, could it have occurred so rarely if chance were the only operating factor that one is justified in claiming there is a pattern with substantial meaning? The answers to such questions are only valid if the data meet (or at least substantially approximate) the major as sumptions of the general linear model – the regression residuals should be independently distributed, for example. Whereas a fundamental goal of the ‘revolution’ that brought spatial science to the foreground of human geography was to demonstrate that its approach provided not only better descriptions of the world but also rea sonable explanatory accounts for what was described, this was not necessarily an end in itself. For many involved – including the Seattle group – the representations they produced were also to be deployed in changing the world. As Yeates noted when reviewing research stimulated by Brian Berry during his immediate post Seattle years at the University of Chicago, it was characterized by a strong utilitarian purpose with much of it undertaken for external sponsors, both public and private sector. Simi larly, all of the modeling of urban and regional systems undertaken by Alan Wilson and his co workers at Leeds was aimed at more efficiently planned and operating cities and regions: a company he established – GMap – uses those models as the foundations for consultancy work seeking optimal locations for a range of commercial activities. Wilson is one of the few examples of a geographer who took an alternative approach from most of the early

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spatial scientists. Formally trained as a mathematician, he did not test hypotheses statistically. Instead, he sought to model entire systems. Most researchers took the gravity model as the source for hypotheses about flow patterns, for example. Wilson’s Entropy in Urban and Regional Modelling restructured it as a way of representing an entire system, concerned, for example, not just with the decisions underpinning travel behavior – as with com muting in a city – but also those regarding where homes and jobs are/might be located. His models, based on the thermodynamic concept of entropy, represent the system as a whole, and data were collected to illustrate that, rather than extract one element of the system for testing against empirical data. And then, by changing certain system elements, such as new home and job locations, he can estimate their impacts on other components – such as traffic flows. The concept of a system attracted considerable at tention among spatial scientists, largely as a rhetorical device rather than as a format for undertaking detailed research. Only Wilson and a relatively small number of others (such as Batty and Bennett) extended the interest in mathematical models, looking, for example, at catas trophe and chaos theories to explore system dynamics in space–time. This approach was marginal to most spatial scientists’ concerns, however.

Moving on I – from Normative to Behavioral Theory Many reactions to/critiques of early spatial science ar gued that its models were too simplistic, reducing de cision making in a complex world to a single key influence – transport costs; distance was presented as a basic determinant of behavior (thereby sustaining geog raphers’ claim for a separate place within the social sci ences). The result was deterministic models of spatial patterns based on rather simplistic assumptions about spatial behavior. Although transport costs are un doubtedly important to much decision making, large and small (which shop shall I go to today for a newspaper?; where shall I locate the next supermarket in the chain I am developing?), many other factors influence spatial decisions. Furthermore, very few – if any – decision makers have all of the information needed to resolve a particular locational problem optimally, and/or have the capacity, when making major decisions that require large volumes of data, to make the optimal decision. In add ition, the outcomes of many decisions are affected by those made by others – the profitability of a new supermarket may well depend on how close to it com petitors put their new outlets (so once sunk costs are incurred optimal decisions may not be possible). Perfect decision making is rarely feasible; people make rational

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decisions using the information available to them, which will in many cases reflect not only who they are but also where they are because, as Ha¨gerstrand has shown, in formation is not evenly distributed. A consequence is that the equilibrium patterns at the core of models such as central place theory are unattainable: systems are con tinually in flux, which requires models built into a dy namic location theory. The ‘traditional’ location theories with their relatively unsophisticated expected geog raphies based on the operation of a spatial single variable only – distance, or travel costs – are thus largely obsolete: nevertheless, as a small number of researchers, such as Fingleton, continue to demonstrate, it remains possible to derive testable hypotheses from economic theory – of variations in wages, for example. The realization of the power of these arguments stimulated a major shift in the nature of much spatial science. The models and theories that dominated its early years – such as central place theory – became much less important (indeed, some almost disappeared from the disciplinary portfolio), and were replaced by approaches that initially went under the name of behavioral geog raphy. These are now so predominate within the spatial science component of the discipline that the term is rarely used. They haven’t entirely taken over spatial science, however. Some formal modeling has been undertaken using alternative approaches to economics from the neoclassical such as welfare economics by Chisholm, Marxian by Webber and Rigby, and Ricard ian/Sraffian approaches by Sheppard and Barnes. Over the last decade a school of ‘new economic geographers’ has emerged from within economics. The Journal of Economic Geography was founded to bring them together with geographers who deploy formal modeling ap proaches based on neoclassical economics, seeing trans port costs as a significant element underpinning the creation of spatial patterns – such as trade flows and agglomeration/urbanization. The core argument from behavioral geography’s promoters is not that people are irrational decision makers but rather that they are boundedly (as against perfectly) rational: the boundedness reflects the limits to their information, their ability to process it, and the utility functions they apply when evaluating options. This does not mean that everybody has to be treated as both unique (having characteristics that nobody else shared in total) and singular (sharing no characteristics with oth ers), so that no general patterns can be found and theories developed. Rushton makes this point in contrasting studies of behavior in space – for example, mapping in dividual journey to work routes – with those identifying rules of spatial behavior, the general patterns within all those choices that can be uncovered from the individual pieces of data and which suggest common behavioral decisions. The reasons for such commonalities can then

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be explored by, for example, identifying shared infor mation underpinning such decisions, as in Peter Gould’s pioneering work on mental maps, the spatial depictions we use when evaluating the places we want to visit, move to, etc. Most of this work is theory driven, based on gener alized hypotheses of how people behave, but much of the analysis involves exploring data assembled to identify patterns rather than explicit hypothesis testing – most of those tested are general expectations rather than firm statements that can be rigorously evaluated. This very largely reflects the ‘immaturity’ of such studies; our knowledge of how people make spatially relevant de cisions and behave is limited and so the best we can come up with at this stage is broad expectations. In electoral studies, for example, there are strong theoretical argu ments that self interest will strongly influence how people vote, and that economic concerns will underpin that self interest. But it may be expressed in different ways: some may vote sociotropically, according to their views of the national, regional, and/or local economic situation (voting for the governing party(ies) if they are optimistic about the economic situation but against it if they are pessimistic); some may vote egocentrically, ac cording to their perceived personal financial situation; and some vote altruistically, in the interests of their (geographical) neighbors even when these don’t coincide with their own. Those theoretically based expectations generate testable hypotheses but – as with the gravity model – they cannot predict in advance the size of the relevant coefficients for each type of voting, because of the many other contingent factors (some of them spatial in nature) which influence electoral behavior. The results of such analyses provide understanding of general trends and patterns in behavior and its outcomes, but the term ‘law’ – widely deployed in the early years of spatial science – now rarely appears. Indeed, much contemporary spatial science adopts a less formalistic approach to knowledge acquisition. Early efforts to identify laws of spatial behavior were criticized as not only oversimplistic approaches to appreciating complex realities but also for treating individual decision makers as lacking free will – models were perceived as de terministic despite early essays separating macro and micro approaches to cause and effect. Spatial scientists still make generalizations – identifying general patterns of behavior within a given context (dataset) – but no longer imply that these are widely applicable, invariant law like statements. In searching for these generalizations, a great deal of spatial scientific work now involves alternative data ac quisition strategies. Much locational theory – such as central place and industrial location theory – concerned patterns observable in the landscape; settlement distri butions, for example, and shopping centers within cities.

The data were there – on maps, or in the field. The shift to a behavioral approach requires new forms of – usually bespoke – data, recording not only what people do but why, what information they have, how they evaluate it, and on what criteria, etc. Such data have to be collected from individual subjects, in most cases using question naires, requiring geographers to develop new skills. Not all studies require bespoke data collection by the re searcher, however. A variety of data sources – such as national censuses and surveys – can be used to address many geographical questions, and there is an increasing tendency for researchers to deposit their datasets in archives so that others can reanalyze them. A wide range of studies, in most of human geography’s subfields (urban, rural, political, social, electoral, eco nomic, etc.), illustrates the great variety of subject matter studied within these rigorous approaches. Electoral geographers examine spatial variations in turnout, for example, arguing that the more intense the local cam paigns by political parties the more of their supporters who go to the polls. At aggregate scales this has been tested by relating voting patterns to the amount spent on local campaigns: the more spent, as an index of campaign intensity, the better a party’s performance (especially by challengers to the incumbent party). This is com plemented by individual scale studies, showing that those who report having been contacted by a party during a campaign are more likely to vote than those who do not, but that in addition the more spent on the campaign there the more likely they are to vote. And a substantial program of work on a variety of diseases has similarly thrown light on the processes involved in their diffusion through environments where geographical contingency plays crucial roles in rates of exposure and contraction.

Moving on II – Methods In the early years of spatial science, geographers adopted methods developed in other disciplines, such as the ‘family’ of methods later categorized as the general linear model (regression, correlation, principal components and factor analysis, discriminant analysis, and canonical cor relation analysis): these continue to serve them very well. But problems with applications to geographical (spatial) data were identified, which require alternative – more sophisticated – procedures, some developed by geog raphers themselves, often working in collaboration with statisticians and others. The first of these problems – spatial autocorrelation – reflects Tobler’s first law of geography. The general linear model assumes that the residuals from a regression are independent, that the value for one sample point is not affected by the values for neighboring individuals: if it is, the estimated coefficients are imprecise. But Tobler’s law

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says that they must be so affected, that spatial auto correlation is the core of geography. Instead of deploying the general linear model, researchers – notably a group based in Bristol around Andrew Cliff – created pro cedures that provide accurate estimates of relationships in the presence of spatial autocorrelation. Others argue that the presence of spatial autocorrelation indicates (as yet unidentified) spatial patterning needing investigation: the model being tested is misspecified in at least one of a number of ways. Important spatial variables may have been omitted, for example: the message is that more re search is needed. The issue of spatial autocorrelation continues to in form much spatial science. As an example, O’Loughlin, Flint, and Anselin analyzed the geography of voting for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) (the Nazis) at the Weimar Republic’s 1930 general election and found, using regression, that the main pre dictor of NSDAP success was the percentage of the Kreis (electoral district) population who were Protestants: the more Protestants in the area the more votes for the NSDAP. Residuals from that regression (which included other, less important independent variables) are spatially clustered – that is, autocorrelated. A range of measures collected under the generic term local statistics, de veloped as part of a larger program of work in spatial statistics/econometrics led by Luc Anselin, separated this geography from the generic pattern associated with Protestantism. Local statistics identify ‘hot spots’, clusters of values out of line with the general pattern – in this example clusters of areas with either unexpectedly high or low levels of Nazi support characterized by O’Loughlin as ‘islands that are distinctive from sur rounding regions’. These are where support for the NSDAP deviated significantly, either positively or nega tively, from the general pattern which could only be accounted for by particular reasons applying to those places alone. In this way, statistical analysis is linked to a growing argument among geographical researchers that ‘place matters’: local statistics identify places where general relationships don’t operate, suggesting the im portance of spatial context (locale in the language of structuration theory) as an influence on behavior. An alternative approach to spatial autocorrelation issues developed by geographers is geographically weighted regression (GWR), which explores spatial variations in a defined relationship across a set of areas, autocorrelation having been detected. There may be a positive relationship between electoral turnout and voters’ average age in most parts of an area (suggesting that older people are more likely to vote), but a negative link in some (younger people are more likely to vote). A single regression equation fitted to all districts in the area would not identify this difference: GWR, which focuses on the relationship in various parts of the area by giving

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greater weight to nearby observations – the first law of geography again – can do so, and pose further questions for the analyst. GWR is linked to a wider range of inductive, ex ploratory spatial analysis procedures developed by Openshaw. These were initiated with his Geographical Analysis Machine (GAM) which identified significant clusters of points – such as childhood leukemia cases – unlikely to have occurred randomly and which therefore raised questions regarding their cause: did local sources of radiation generate such outbreaks? This was extended into a Geographical Explanations Machine (GEM), which explored spatial variations in relationships, such as regression equations. As in many other areas of science and social science, such inductive rather than deductive approaches (data led rather than theory led) are be coming more important. We have a great deal of infor mation about the world: exploring it is a very fertile source of ideas and knowledge, as a first stage to de veloping fuller understanding of spatial variations. Also deployed for exploring variations across places in relationships, multilevel modeling was developed by educational statisticians to evaluate differences between different settings (e.g., schools, classrooms) in student achievement, holding constant other influential variables such as family social class background. The method ex plores whether there are differences among places (levels in the terminology) in relationships, suggesting that processes vary across space; it can incorporate a number of levels, such as districts within counties, within states. For example, Datta et al. show that the prevalence of smoking among black women in the US is greater, the lower an individual’s educational attainment, and also greater among those ‘living as married’ than those who were married; it also varies by age group (younger and older people were less likely to smoke than the middle aged), and professionals are less likely to smoke than those in nonprofessional occupations. They also find higher smoking rates among those who live in neigh borhoods with higher poverty rates, as well as in states with higher poverty rates. Individual characteristics are important determinants of behavior, but similar people living in different places apparently act differently when presented with the same stimuli – reflecting the context within which they make those decisions. Multilevel modeling identifies and evaluates those geographical contingencies – the importance that place makes – dealing with places as discrete, predefined entities. (GWR treats space as continuous, although it may have to conduct its analyses using predefined entities.) A major issue for much spatial science is the modifi able areal unit problem. Much spatial analysis – across the social sciences – uses data for areal units, such as census data for counties. Analysts may explore whether there is a relationship between average house prices and

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the percentage of the workforce employed in managerial and professional occupations. There may be 50 counties in the study area, but this is only one way of amalgam ating a large number of smaller areas – census tracts, for example – into such areas. Will the relationship between the two variables be the same whichever amalgamation is used? Experiments by Openshaw and Taylor showed not, but rather that different configurations can produce dif ferent – sometimes markedly different – results. So ‘which is the right one?’; even ‘is there a right one?’ – and if not, what are the implications for spatial analysis? Openshaw and Taylor showed that the modifiable areal unit problem results from the interaction of two separate problems operating when creating larger spatial units from smaller, spatially identified, building blocks. The first is the aggregation problem: the same set of x building blocks can be aggregated into y larger units in a (possibly very large) number of ways, while meeting preset criteria – each y unit should comprise the same number of x building blocks, for example, and all x building blocks in a y unit should be contiguous. The second is the scale problem: different sizes for y (i.e., numbers of x per unit y) can be produced. In many cases, there is a clear relationship between the scale of the analysis and the size of the correlation coefficient. But the interaction of scale and aggregation effects can con siderably blur such a general tendency. The modifiable areal unit problem is significant not only because of the analytical difficulties it raises – what reliance can one place on one set of results given that the same data aggregated in a different formation could generate different results? – but also its practical rele vance. The definition of electoral districts exemplifies this. There are many ways in which UK parliamentary constituencies and US Congressional districts can be produced as aggregations of smaller areas meeting size, shape, compactness, and contiguity criteria, and they may generate very different election results. Even where relatively neutral nonpartisan procedures are deployed it is possible to generate equivalents of both major potential abuses in electoral cartography – malapportionment (the scale problem) and gerrymandering (the aggregation problem). This is illustrated by the biased outcomes in UK general election results: the Labour party has re cently benefited very substantially in the translation of votes into seats because of the geography of its support relative to that of constituency boundaries. But Open shaw realized that the problem is also an opportunity, because with experimentation it should be feasible to identify the optimum zoning of an area to meet pre determined criteria. Such zone design principles were deployed to create homogeneous small areas as reporting units for 2001 UK census data. Closely linked to the modifiable areal unit problem is that of ecological inference, which involves drawing

conclusions about individuals from aggregate data. In the classic presentation, Robinson found a correlation of 0.946 between the percentage of the population black and the percentage who were illiterate, using 1930 aggregated data for American census divisions. Using data for the 48 states, the correlation was somewhat weaker, at 0.773, and using individual data it was much weaker, at 0.203. Relying on aggregated data at either scale, analysts might conclude that blacks were much more likely to be illit erate than whites, but the individual level data show a weaker relationship (16% of blacks were illiterate, ac cording to the 1930 census, as against 3% of whites, a fivefold difference: the aggregate data analyses suggested a 10–15 fold difference). Robinson could point up these differences because individual level data were available, but if they are not, ecological inference appears to offer the only – although potentially flawed – way of drawing conclusions about individual behavior from aggregate data. Such inferences may be very weak. The vote for the British National Party – BNP – is generally higher in areas with large ethnic minority populations than where there are few representatives of those groups. But this should not be taken as indicating that members of ethnic minority groups vote for the BNP. Very few do, and higher levels of voting for the party in areas where such individuals are relatively common reflect voting by white residents there expressing support for an anti immi gration party. This is, in part at least, a scale problem reflecting the size of the area used to analyze the voting patterns: few of the whites who vote BNP actually live in the same streets as nonwhites, so at a fine enough scale you would get a negative relationship between per cent of the population who are nonwhite and voting for the BNP. It is possible, however, to use aggregate data to draw fairly robust inferences about individual relationships and behavior. One of the most widely used methods was developed by a political scientist – Gary King – but geographers have developed alternative procedures. Entropy maximizing methods, for example (first used by Alan Wilson in 1970 to model traffic flows and other interaction patterns more successfully than the gravity model), have been deployed to disaggregate voting pat terns, by, for example, Johnston and Pattie, and the as sociated method of microsimulation (developed in economics) produces similar types of estimate (as in Ballas et al.’s study of the impact of various social pol icies). Johnston, Pattie, and Allsopp’s 1988 study, for ex ample, showed that between the 1983 and 1987 general elections in the UK, whereas the national percentage remaining loyal to the Conservative party was 70, across the country’s 627 constituencies it varied from 37 to 84. They use these estimates to explore reasons for that spatial variation, finding that Conservative loyalty was lower than average in areas where support for the party was already relatively weak in 1983, but especially in

Spatial Science

those with high levels of unemployment, where voters were much more likely either to switch their support to another party or to abstain in 1987. Spatial science analyses spatial patterns and processes using rigorous quantitative procedures on datasets (many large and complexly structured). Its development has been much assisted – in many cases only made possible – by improvements in the speed and power of computer hardware and associated software. In particular, much re cent development has been closely linked to that of geo graphic information systems (GISs) and GIScience. These combined hardware and software resources for the col lation, visualization, integration, and analysis of spatially referenced data not only facilitate the creation and an alysis of large datasets in spatial science but also provide platforms without which many analyses are virtually im possible. Spatial science is about the analysis of maps: GIS is about creating those maps and facilitating their analysis. The field of geodemographics, for example, builds on work classifying areas according to their population character istics using census data by adding other datasets and identifying common patterns of consumer behavior, on which marketing strategies are based. Many of these approaches to spatial statistics can now be applied using bespoke software packages, some of them developed by geographers – such as Anselins’ spatial econometrics package, GeoDa. Furthermore, the approach is increasingly being taken up for the analysis of spatial data in the other social sciences: sociology, for example, has ‘‘taken a significant spatial turn’’ (Downey, 2006, 567) and realized the value of GIS, as have economists and political scientists.

Contemporary Spatial Science Spatial science is a substantial component of con temporary human geography. It is very closely associated with quantitative methods: without them and associated technologies for their application much (most?) spatial science would not be feasible. The methods are a means to an end, however, for answering the basic question posed by Fotheringham (2006, 237): ‘‘Does what I’m doing provide useful evidence towards the better understanding of spatial processes?’’ Most answers to this question from spatial scientists use aggregate datasets to research broad patterns. Spatial science is about patterns and processes involving large numbers of decision makers, seeking order in even the most complex situations. Even when data are available on individual decision makers, the goal is to distil general patterns – as in Rushton’s distinction between behavior in space and rules of spatial behavior. Unlike other ap proaches to human geography, therefore, spatial science is macro /meso in scale, rather than micro – though it

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may deploy micro scale data in its search for macro/ meso scale patterns. Its findings might pose questions that can only be addressed by studying individuals, but its core methodologies focus on wholes rather than parts. In some situations this approach is the only one possible given the subject matter. Patterns of (changing) regional development and underdevelopment, for ex ample, can only be studied as statistical aggregates – as can many indices linked to this concept, such as inflation, unemployment rates, land values, house prices, prod uctivity, etc. Aspects of our worlds are only accessible in such formats, and these are sensibly analyzed using spatial science approaches. In other cases, whereas indi vidual level data are available (or can be obtained through bespoke surveys) – on illness, turnout at elec tions, etc. – much can be gained from aggregating them and studying general patterns, of morbidity and mortality rates, for example. Much work in, for example, popu lation, medical, social, and electoral geography is of this type – though such subdisciplines are not constrained to spatial scientific approaches. A further justification for macro /meso approaches lies in the probabilistic nature of much of our understanding and representation of the world. For example, it is now generally accepted that smoking causes lung cancer – but not all people who smoke get lung cancer and not all people who get lung cancer have smoked at some time in their lives. It is a probabilistic relationship – albeit one with a high probability. Part of the reason why we cannot say that smoking causes lung cancer without qualification other variables can either accelerate or decelerate, even block, the processes involved; and part is because is be cause our knowledge is incomplete – the scientific work continues to explore all the processes involved, and is to some extent constrained because of the difficulties of conducting controlled experiments. Similar arguments apply to a whole range of behaviors studied by (physical as well as human) geographers: the processes involved are so complex and difficult to unravel – because we cannot conduct experiments (although a range of techniques is being developed in other disciplines that may be of value in such situations: see for instance the work of Sherman and colleagues). Hence work in spatial science is almost of necessity conditional; it represents the state of our current understanding and can only be phrased in probabilistic rather than deterministic terms. Take the example of tossing a coin. We invariably treat this as a random process: assuming there is no bias in either the coin or how it is tossed we assume – and can demonstrate experimentally – that the probability of heads being the outcome is 0.5. But if we could control every possible influence – where the coin is placed on the thumb; the distance between thumb and floor; how strongly it is flipped; the nature of the surface it lands on; etc. – then we could predict the out come much more precisely.

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The meso /macro patterns in many aspects of con temporary society described and analyzed by social sci entists are very relevant to people’s daily lives and experiences – the ‘meaningful nature of life’ explored in other geographical practices. Levels of ethnic segregation in neighborhoods and schools in many cities provide the context within which not only lives are (partially) lived but also people’s life chances and relationships within civil society are influenced. Geographical concentrations of poverty similarly structure many people’s life chances while biased election results – reflecting the operation of the aggregation and scale issues underpinning the modifiable areal unit problem – strongly influence gov ernment formation, and policies directed at those con centrations, in many countries. Alongside their intrinsic interest and importance to understanding spatial patterns and behavior, therefore, meso /macro scale work is relevant to public policies – either studies of their impact on geographies or analyses of geographic patterns that call for public intervention. Geographies of mortality, for example, may identify areas where further investment of medical resources is war ranted. Much public policy has impacts – direct and indirect – on topics of interest to human geographers and, although directed at individuals, is delivered to areas, as with the location of healthcare clinics: if the world operates through spatial aggregates, then it should be analyzed accordingly (though not exclusively so). Similarly, whatever the immense variety of human spatial behavior, public policy which intervenes in it in some way (and much private sector policy too) is almost invariably phrased in aggregate terms. New highways are planned to link places where demand either currently outstrips supply or modeling suggests that it soon will. New commercial establishments are located where po tential (unfulfilled) demand is deemed greatest (and usually implies some distance decay pattern in usage, as represented by the gravity model): much of the work by GMap (see above) is based on this aspect of Tobler’s law. Many critiques of spatial science from the 1960s on ward equated its approach with the philosophy of posi tivism, and its goal – as in the natural sciences – of establishing general laws. (Harvey’s, Explanation in Geog raphy set out the basic tenets of this approach – without ever referring to it as positivism.) This aspect of the positivist approach has long been abandoned by almost all spatial scientists: they adopt some of the precepts of the approach – particularly that the things they study can be observed and measured; that the statements which they derive can be tested for their veracity; and that their studies can be replicated. For them knowledge pro duction involves careful observation, measurement, an alysis, and interpretation, generating statements which identify synoptic patterns – the broad pictures which might then be decomposed to see how they are produced

and what they mean for the people who live in them. They do not – as Fotheringham (2006, 239) puts it – ignore ‘‘all the emotions and thought processes that are behind what is sometimes y highly idiosyncratic be haviour’’; they accept those as valid topics for study, calling for different approaches. For spatial scientists a whole range of subjects can be addressed at the aggregate level, from which valid generalizations can be drawn to illuminate aspects of the human condition. Spatial science is not – and should not be considered – an approach to human geography having few points of contact with other disciplinary practices. At the core of much contemporary geographical scholarship is the concept of contingency, with particular reference to place as the locale within which that contingency is played out. If, according to this argument, places matter, then with certain types of behavior this should be demonstrable through approaches associated with spatial science. This was the goal, for example, of Openshaw’s original work with his GAM: exploring whether places had significantly different cancer rates, as a preface to identifying why that was the case. (The answer, higher rates were found close to nuclear power plants, which suggested that the cause was radiation either from exposure to the reactors or from the waste.) GWR similarly explores large and complex datasets to identify places with particular characteristics, and work using bespoke neighborhood data enabled Johnston and Pattie to produce strong cir cumstantial evidence that people are influenced by talking to their neighbors when making electoral de cisions. Spatial science’s core purpose is to generate rigorous descriptions of complex realities, through clear pictures which suggest general patterns of behavior within those complexities. It is theory driven, with foundations based in beliefs about how people behave (individually and in aggregates), and its findings con tribute to theory development – but contemporary spa tial scientists are neither as ambitious nor as naı¨ve as the pioneers; complex realities continue to take much effort to understand. See also: Entropy-Maximising Models; Haggett, P.; Modifiable Areal Unit Problem; Positivism/Positivist Geography; Quantitative Methodologies; Region; Regression, Linear and Nonlinear; Space II; Spatial Autocorrelation.

Further Reading Abler, R. F., Adams, J. S. and Gould, P. R. (1971). Spatial Organization: The Geographer’s View of the World. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Ackerman, E. A. (1958). Geography as a Fundamental Research Discipline. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, Research Paper 53.

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Anselin, L., Florax, R. J. G. M. and Rey, S. J. (eds.) (2004). Advances in Spatial Econometrics: Methodology, Tools and Applications. Berlin: Springer. Anselin, L., Syabri, I. and Kho, Y. (2006). GeoDa: An introduction to spatial data analysis. Geographical Analysis 38, 5 22. Ballas, D. M., Rossiter, D. J., Thomas, B., Clarke, G. and Dorling, D. (2005). Geography Matters: Simulating the Local Impacts of National Social Policies. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Barnes, T. J. and Farish, M. (2006). Between regions: Science, militarism and American geography from world war to cold war. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 96, 807 826. Batty, M. (2006). Cities and Complexity: Understanding Cities with Cellular Automata, Agent Based Models, and Fractals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Bennett, R. J., Haining, R. P. and Wilson, A. G. (1985). Spatial structure, spatial interaction, and their integration: A review of alternative models. Environment and Planning A 17, 625 645. Bunge, W. (1966). Theoretical Geography. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup. Burton, I. (1963). The quantitative revolution and theoretical geography. The Canadian Geographer 7, 151 162. Chisholm, M. (1966). Geography and Economics. London: G. Bell. Chorley, R. J. and Haggett, P. (eds.) (1965). Frontiers in Geographical Teaching. London: Methuen. Chorley, R. J. and Haggett, P. (eds.) (1965). Models in Geography. London: Methuen. Cliff, A. D. and Ord, J. K. (1973). Spatial Autocorrelation. London: Pion. Datta, G. D., Subramanian, S. V., Colditz, G. A. et al. (2006). Individual, neighbourhood and state level prediction of smoking among US Black women: A multilevel analysis. Social Science and Medicine 63, 1034 1044. Fingleton, B. (2005). Beyond neoclassical orthodoxy: A view based on the new economic geography and UK regional wage data. Papers in Regional Science 84, 351 375. Fotheringham, A. S. (2006). Quantification, evidence and positivism. In Aitken, S. & Valentine, G. (eds.) Approaches to Human Geography, pp 237 250. London: Sage. Fotheringham, A. S., Brunsdon, C. and Charlton, M. (2002). Geographically Weighted Regression: The Analysis of Spatially Varying Relationships. Chichester: John Wiley. Garrison, W. L. (1959). Spatial structure of the economy II. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 49, 471 482. Gould, P. R. and White, R. R. (1974). Mental Maps. London: Penguin Books. Gregory, S. (1963). Statistical Methods and the Geographer. London: Longman. Hagerstrand, T. (1968). Innovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process. Pred, A. (trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Haggett, P. (1965). Locational Analysis in Human Geography. London: Edward Arnold. Harris, C. D. and Ullman, E. L. (1945). The nature of cities. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 242, 7 17. Harvey, D. (1969). Explanation in Geography. London: Edward Arnold. Isard, W. (2003). History of Regional Science and the Regional Science Association International: The Beginnings and Early History. Berlin: Springer. Johnston, R. J. (1978). Multivariate Statistical Analysis in Geography: A Primer on the General Linear Model. London: Longman. Johnston, R. J. and Pattie, C. J. (2006). Putting Voters in Their Place: Geography and Elections in Great Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Johnston, R. J., Pattie, C. J. and Allsopp, J. G. (1988). A Nation Dividing? The Electoral Map of Great Britain 1979 1987. London: Longman. Johnston, R. J., Rossiter, D. J. and Pattie, C. J. (2006). Disproportionality and bias in the results of the 2005 general election in Great Britain: Evaluating the electoral system’s impact. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 2, 37 54.

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King, G. (1997). A Solution to the Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate Data. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Martin, R. L. (1999). The ‘new geographical turn’ in economics: Critical reflections. Cambridge Journal of Economics 23, 65 92. Morrill, R. L. (1970). The Spatial Organization of Society. Belmont, CA: Wadworth. Morrill, R. L. (2005). Hagerstrand and the quantitative revolution: A personal appreciation. Progress in Human Geography 29, 333 336. O’Loughlin, J. (2002). The electoral geography of Weimar Germany: Exploratory spatial data analyses (ESDA) of Protestant support for the Nazi party. Political Analysis 10, 217 243. O’Loughlin, J., Flint, C. and Anselin, L. (1994). The geography of the Nazi vote: Context, confession and class in the Reichstag election of 1930. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 84, 351 380. Olsson, G. (1965). Distance and Human Interaction: A Review and Bibliography. Philadelphia, PA: Regional Science Research Institute, Bibliography Series 2. Openshaw, S. and Taylor, P. J. (1981). The modifiable areal unit problem. In Wrigley, N. & Bennett, R. J. (eds.) Quantitative Geography: A British View, pp 60 70. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Robinson, W. S. (1950). Ecological correlations and the behavior of individuals. American Sociological Review 15, 351 357. Rushton, G. (1969). Analysis of spatial behavior by revealed space preferences. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 59, 391 400. Schaefer, F. K. (1953). Exceptionalism in geography: A methodological examination. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 43, 226 249. Sheppard, E. S. and Barnes, T. J. (1990). The Capitalist Space Economy: Geographical Analysis After Ricardo, Marx and Sraffa. London: Unwin Hyman. Sherman, L. W. (2003). Misleading evidence and evidence led policy: Making social science more experimental. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 589, 6 19. Sherman, L. W. and Strang, H. (2004). Experimental ethnography: The marriage of qualitative and quantitative research. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 595, 204 222. Tobler, W. R. (1970). A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic Geography 46, 234 240. Ullman, E. L. (1941). A theory of location for cities. American Journal of Sociology 46, 853 864. Ullman, E. L. (1956). The role of transportation and the bases for interaction. In Thomas, W. L. (ed.) Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, pp 862 880. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Webber, M. J. and Rigby, D. L. (1996). The Golden Age Illusion: Rethinking Postwar Capitalism. New York: Guilford Press. Wilson, A. G. (1970). Entropy in Urban and Regional Modelling. London: Pion. Wilson, A. G. (2000). Complex Spatial Systems: The Modelling Foundations of Urban and Regional Analysis. Chichester: John Wiley. Wilson, A. G., Rees, P. H. and Leigh, C. M. (1977). Models of Cities and Regions. Chichester: John Wiley. Yeates, M. H. (2001). Yesterday as tomorrow’s song: The contribution of the 1960s ‘Chicago School’ to urban geography. Urban Geography 22, 514 529.

Relevant Websites http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org Journal of Economic Geography. http://www.regionalscience.org The International Regional Science Association.

Spatially Autoregressive Models D. A. Griffith, University of Texas – Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Auto-Model A phrase coined by Besag that describes a probability model where attribute values for a single variable distributed across n locations covary with weighted sums of nearby, neighboring attribute values for the same variable, and whose conditional probabilities can be written in terms of these weighted sums. Autoregression A regression model specification that includes memory or feedback, in terms of weighted sums of attribute values, such that the system of observations that it describes is interdependent and contains important internal structure, and the response variable appears on both sides of the equation. Generalized Linear Model A model specification in which some nonlinear transformation of a response variable is expressed as the weighted sum of a set of covariates whose weights are coefficients computed from observed data, without including an error term (the random component is a function of the mean response and is generated by the underlying probability distribution), and whose variation may be assumed to be non-normally distributed (e.g., Poisson, binomial, negative binomial) according to the mathematical link between the transformation and the non-normality. Georeferenced An ordering and then tagging to a two-dimensional surface (e.g., the Earth’s surface) of observations with Cartesian coordinates, such as longitude and latitude or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates, as symbolic descriptors of place. Linear Model A model specification in which a response variable is expressed as the weighted sum of a set of covariates whose weights are coefficients computed from observed data, to which a random error term is added whose variation is assumed to be normally distributed, where scatterplots for response variables and each covariate approximate a straight-line graph. Maximum Likelihood A popular inferential statistical technique that yields parameter estimates for a selected probability distribution by maximizing the joint probability for n observed values in a given dataset – the product of n individual probabilities for independent observations – resulting in estimates that make the observed data most likely. MCMC (Markov chain Monte Carlo) An iterative mechanism for drawing dependent samples in situations where regular sampling is difficult, if not completely impossible, in order to compute simultaneous likelihood results, that generates Markov chains with Monte Carlo

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simulation, exploits sufficient statistics, makes use of marginal probabilities, and frequently utilizes pseudolikelihood results. Normalizing Constant A constant by which all possible probabilities of a probability model must be multiplied to ensure that they sum to 1, for discrete values, and integrate to 1, for continuous values. Spatial Autocorrelation The self-correlation of values of a given attribute arising from their nearby locations in geographic space, and the essence of the first law of geography. Spatial Filter A model specification that decomposes a georeferenced response variable into the sum of two synthetic variates, one containing spatial autocorrelation and one free of spatial autocorrelation. These former synthetic variates can be a linear combination of the eigenvectors of a geographic weights matrix.

Background: The Literal Meaning of Autoregression The prefix ‘auto’ in the term ‘autoregressive’ (AR) means ‘self ’ and the root ‘regressive’ means regression. In other words, a variable containing n observed attribute values is being regressed on itself, which results in the response variable, Y, whose values often are denoted by the n by 1 vector Y, where n is the number of observations, ap pearing on both sides of the equal sign. The selection of values of Y to be on the right hand side of an equation is by observation, which is locational in the spatial context, and is dictated by some rule in such a way that each value of Y is not being regressed on itself, but rather on some subset of the remaining n 1 values of Y. For geographic models, the adjective ‘spatial’ dictates that these subsets comprise neighboring values of each location. Because of their closeness in geographic space, neighboring values tend to contain duplicated information. This situation is similar to taking a sample and falsely doubling its size merely by duplicating each of its entries. Spatially re dundant information needs to be accounted for by re gressing Y on neighboring values of Y. Otherwise, results can be misleading, as would be the case for the artificially doubled sample. Differentiation of neighboring and non neighboring values frequently is achieved with n binary 0 1 indicator variables (0 if the locations of Y values are not neighboring, and 1 if the locations are), each con taining n entries. These n indicator variables then are

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collected into an n by n table, commonly called a geo graphic weights matrix, and usually denoted by matrix C. Consequently, in matrix form, vector Y is on the left hand side and vector CY is on the right hand side of an AR equation. Because vector CY is the sum of sur rounding neighboring observed values of variable Y, it frequently is replaced with its row standard version (i.e., each cell entry in matrix C is divided by its corres ponding row sum – the number of 1s in its row), denoted by WY, which is the average of the surrounding values of Y. Individual ith observation row entries for these two versions are denoted, respectively, by CiY and WiY.

Introduction: The Meaning of Spatial Correlation Correlation refers to the relationship between two vari ables, X and Y, can be quantified with a Pearson product– moment coefficient, and often is portrayed with a scatter diagram (a two dimensional plotting of individual ob servation value pairs, (Xi, Yi), where i denotes an obser vation’s name). Positive linear correlation indexes a tendency for high values of X to be paired with high values of Y, medium values of X with medium values of Y, and low values of X with low values of Y. As this tendency becomes more pronounced, these pairings in creasingly align along a line – a straight line when a relationship is linear. Negative linear correlation indexes a tendency for high values of X to be paired with low values of Y, medium values of X with medium values of Y, and low values of X with high values of Y. Finally, no correlation (i.e., randomness) indexes a tendency for high values of X to be paired with high, medium, and low values of Y, medium values of X with high, medium, and low values of Y, and low values of X with high, medium, and low values of Y. Conventional linear regression models capture this correlation. Spatial correlation – also known as spatial auto correlation – replaces each value of X with CiY or WiY in this preceding relationship scenario, can be quantified with a Moran coefficient or a Geary ratio, and often is portrayed with a Moran scatterplot or a semivariogram plot, which are customized scatterdiagrams. Accordingly, positive spatial correlation indexes a tendency for high values of, say, WiY to be paired with high values of Y, medium values of WiY with medium values of Y, and low values of WiY with low values of Y. Negative spatial correlation indexes a tendency for high values of WiY to be paired with low values of Y, medium values of WiY with medium values of Y, and low values of WiY with high values of Y. Finally, no spatial correlation indexes a tendency for high values of WiY to be paired with high, medium, and low values of Y; medium values of WiY with high, medium, and low values of Y; and low values

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of WiY with high, medium, and low values of Y. Most spatial correlation is moderate and positive; one ex ception is spatial correlation for remotely sensed images, which almost always is very strong and positive. Spatial AR models capture this spatial correlation.

The Auto-Normal Probability Model Some interval/ratio georeferenced datasets have fre quency distributions that mimic a bell shaped curve (e.g., geo coding errors). One principal, and perhaps the most conspicuous, impact of spatial autocorrelation in terms of this type (as well as other types) of variable is on vari ation. The overwhelming majority case of positive spatial autocorrelation results in variance inflation, a well known feature of georeferenced data, which for a normal frequency distribution means the central frequencies (i.e., numbers of values near the mean) decrease and the tail frequencies increase – peakedness (i.e., kurtosis) is altered because the curve is flattened. Less well known is that the intermediate frequencies can become dis proportionately reduced in order for increased concen tration very close to the mean (see Figure 1). Spatial auto normal AR models seek to furnish a description of these data. Three spatial linear regression model specifications have become favored in the literature to describe geor eferenced data, namely the conditional AR ðCARÞ model : Y ¼ ðI

DÞY þ DXb þ e; D T D ¼ ðI

rCÞM

½1

AR response model : Y ¼ rWY þ Xb þ e

and simultaneous AR ðSARÞ model : Y ¼ rWY þ ðI rWÞXb þ e

½2

½3

where X is an n by (p þ 1) matrix of covariates, b is a (p þ 1) by 1 vector of regression coefficients, r is the spatial AR parameter, M is an n by n diagonal matrix, often set equal to the n by n identity matrix I, and e is an n by 1 vector of independent and identically normal distribution random errors. The first of these specifi cations describes spatial autocorrelation in terms of a first order inverse covariance structure (i.e., (I rC), which involves the first order term C); the other two describe it in terms of a second order structure (i.e., (I rW)0 (I rW), where prime denotes the matrix transpose operation, which involves the second order term W0 W). A first order model represents weaker spa tial autocorrelation over neighboring locations within a relatively short distance band; a second order model

398

Spatially Autoregressive Models −12 −6 Weak-hex

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200

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0

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800 600 400 200 0

−12 −6

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0

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Figure 1 Histograms for simulated normal data containing varying levels of positive spatial autocorrelation: m 5 and s 1. Top: a 45-by-54 regular hexagonal tessellation (n 2430) and bottom: China’s 1990 county irregular surface partitioning (n 2379).

represents stronger spatial autocorrelation over neigh boring locations in a greater distance band. The AR model, called the lag model in spatial econometrics, is a special case of the SAR model in which the spatial lag component coefficients for the covariates are restricted to zero rather than set to r. The AR specification con ceptualizes spatial autocorrelation as a direct effect outcome; for example, high population density in a given location tends to promote high population density in nearby locations. In contrast, the CAR and SAR specifi cations conceptualize spatial autocorrelation as an in direct, error effect; for example, a rain storm that moved across a field of crops may well create spatial patterning that is not captured by a crop yield model specification. Spatial scientist practitioner preferences tend to reflect employment of the CAR model in remote sensing, the AR model in spatial econometrics, and the SAR model in spatial statistics. One deviation from this usage pattern is employment of the CAR model in hierarchical Bayesian modeling by spatial statisticians, and hence epidemi ologists who engage in disease mapping. Parameter estimation most often is achieved using maximum likelihood techniques, which optimize the observed data likelihood function. If the spatial covariation is denoted by matrix V – that is, V 1 ¼ (I rC) for the CAR model with M ¼ I, and V 1 ¼ (I rW)0 (I rW) for the SAR model – then maximum likelihood estimates are given by bˆ ¼ ðX0 V 1 XÞ 1 X0 V 1 Y

½4

ˆ 2 ¼ ðY s

ˆ 0 V 1 ðY XbÞ

ˆ XbÞ=n

½5

and rˆ is yielded by MIN: ˆ 0 V 1 ðY XbÞ ˆ n=2 XbÞ 1 1 over the range ; lmin lmax

½ðe J ðrÞ Þ 2 ðY

½6

where V 1 is a function of r, and J(r) refers to the cal culus concept ‘Jacobian of a transformation’, which en sures that all probabilities integrate to 1. Meanwhile, for the AR model, bˆ ¼ ðX0 XÞ 1 X0 V 1=2 Y ˆ 2 ¼ Y0 ðV 1=2 Þ0 ½I s

½7

XðX0 XÞ 1 X0 V 1=2 Y=n

½8

ˆ 0 ðV 1=2 Y XbÞ

½9

and rˆ is yielded by MIN: ½ðe J ðrÞ Þ 2 ðV 1=2 Y

ˆ n=2 XbÞ

where V 1/2 commonly is (I rW). Equation [4] renders unbiased estimates whose ex pectations are equivalent to its ordinary least squares ˆ ¼ b); OLS first moments (OLS) counterparts (i.e., EðbÞ often are unbiased in the presence of spatial auto correlation. Equation [7] renders biased OLS estimates ˆ ¼ ðX0 XÞ 1 X0 V 1=2 XbÞ. The standard bias (i.e., EðbÞ correction adjustments for eqns [5] and [8] are to divide by (n p 1), for p covariates, rather than just n ; but this adjustment does not render unbiased OLS estimates in


the presence of spatial autocorrelation without also ad justing for the autocorrelation – this is where spatial autocorrelation introduces variance inflation, and where statistical efficiency is impacted upon. In ideal situations these estimates contain sufficient statistics, with the set of complete sufficient statistics now including a spatial covariation term. An alternative specification to eqns [1]–[3] exploits the geographic structure latent in matrix C. Pre and post multiplying this geographic weights matrix by the multivariate statistics projection matrix (I 110 /n) co incides with a centering of the data and yields the Moran coefficient numerator term (I 110 /n)C(I 110 /n). Now the right hand side of a regression equation can be spe cified using the matrix decomposition (I 110 /n) C(I 110 /n) ¼ EKE0 , where E and K, respectively, are the matrix of eigenvectors and the diagonal matrix of eigenvalues of this modified matrix C. This projection matrix essentially replaces the principal eigenfunction with one whose eigenvalue is 0 and whose eigenvector is 1. Judiciously selecting from among the n eigenvectors yields a subset of them, say EK, which can be used to replace AR terms like rC and rW in eqns [1]–[3]. Ac cordingly, the spatial filter (SF) model may be written as Y ¼ XbX þ EK bE þ e

½10a

where the subset of eigenvectors EK, which are mutually orthogonal and uncorrelated, can be selected with a stepwise linear regression procedure, bX and bE, re spectively, are regression coefficients for the p covariates and the K selected eigenvectors, and spatial auto correlation detected in non SF OLS residuals is captured by EK bˆ E, rendering the resulting residual vector, e, void of spatial autocorrelation. An appealing feature of this specification is that distribution theory for the Moran coefficient is known for the resulting linear regression residual vector e (e.g., a sampling distribution mean of n TRf½ðXEK Þ0 ðXEK Þ1 ðXEK Þ0 CðXEK Þg 1 T C1 n 1 p K

½10b

where TR denotes the matrix trace p operation, and an approximate standard deviation of 2=1 T C1 . A simple illustration of how this spatial statistical modeling may alter the understanding of empirical situations can be gleaned by revisiting Haining’s 1991 Glasgow health data. The bivariate correlation between respiratory and cancer death rates across the 87 health districts is 0.63. Both variables contain weak to moderate positive spatial autocorrelation, respectively, exhibiting roughly 1/4 and 1/3 redundant information. Results from SAR models indicate that this correlation actually is 0.51, a significantly lower value. Results from SF models in dicate a value of 0.45, and reveal that spatial

399

autocorrelation in the two variables has two map patterns in common, which inflates the correlation beyond 0.63, coupled with two and five map patterns that are unique to, respectively, respiratory and cancer death rates, which deflate the correlation to 0.63.

The Auto-Poisson Probability Model Many georeferenced datasets contain counts whose upper limit is unconstrained (e.g., lighting strikes in a given region), and hence have frequency distributions mimicking that for a Poisson random variable. Changing the probability model specification from a normal to a non normal, one does not necessarily alter the principal impact of spatial autocorrelation on variation. The most common case of positive spatial autocorrelation also re sults in variance inflation for a Poisson frequency distri bution, which means the chances of smaller and of extremely large values increase, at the expense of inter mediate values (see Figure 2). Excessive zeroes as well as outliers may materialize. Winsorized (i.e., truncating unlikely large extreme values) spatial auto Poisson AR models seek to furnish a description of these data when spatial autocorrelation is positive. The common spatial Poisson regression model specification – which has Y on both sides of the equation – may be written as PðY ¼ yi Þ ¼ c 1 eðXi bþrCi YÞ ðXi b þ rCi YÞY i ðyi !Þ

½11

where yi is the count for location i, ! denotes the factorial operation, Xi is the individual ith observation row entry in the covariate matrix X, which includes a 1 for the con stant term, and c 1 is the normalizing constant that functions like the Jacobian term for an auto normal model (i.e., it ensures that all probabilities sum to 1). Unfortu nately, c 1 is unknown, complicated, and intractable. Fortunately, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques enable the parameters of eqn [11] to be es timated. MCMC is used to simulate from a target joint auto Poisson probability distribution, which is known only up to the normalizing constant c 1. MCMC begins with the observed conditional (marginal) distributions, and outputs a sample of parameters drawn from their joint distribution. Starting with any initial conditions (e.g., independent and identically distributed Poisson random variables) and the transition matrix defined by eqn [11], the idea is to recursively and iteratively simu late each location’s value using eqn [11]. Initial parameter estimates can be obtained from a conventional Poisson regression that includes the spatial lag term, CiY (i.e., pseudo likelihood estimates). An iteration involves vis iting each location on a map in turn, perhaps in a random sequence, using its updated local Poisson mean to draw a

400

Spatially Autoregressive Models 0 Zero-hex

30 60 90 120 150 180 210 Strong-hex

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1200 900 600

Frequency

300

Zero-China

Strong-China

Moderate-China

0

1200 900 600 300 0 0

30 60 90 120 150 180 210

0

30 60 90 120 150 180 210

Figure 2 Histograms for simulated Poisson data containing varying levels of positive spatial autocorrelation: m 5. Top: a 45-by-54 regular hexagonal tessellation (n 2430) and bottom: China’s 1990 county irregular surface partitioning (n 2379).

random value from a Poisson distribution, and then im mediately replacing the existing value with this new value. Winsorizing is performed when a simulated value exceeds some prespecified maximum value. Many tens of thousands of iterations must be performed. A burn in set of beginning iterations is discarded so that the arbitrary initial map of counts becomes irrelevant. Next, time series plots of sufficient statistics need to be inspected, as do their time series correlograms, to ensure an absence of patterns and serial correlation, and convergence of par ameter estimates. Frequently conspicuous patterns can be removed by increasing the burn in period. Often serial correlation can be minimized by extracting every mth map (i.e., weeding). Convergence can be checked by generating and then evaluating several of these sequences (i.e., chains) with analysis of variance procedures. This MCMC scheme is known as Gibbs sampling, and is a method for generating a joint empirical distribution of multiple variables from a set of modeled conditional distributions for each variable when the structure of data is too complex to either implement mathematical for mulas or directly simulate. The resulting parameter estimates are obtained by constructing ratios of the converged upon distribution and the initial distribution. Constructing these ratios places the unknown normalizing constant into both the numerator and the denominator, allowing it to divide out of the problem, and hence remain unknown. Because the simple auto Poisson model can capture only negative spatial autocorrelation, Winsorizing tends to result in rˆ values

that are quite close to zero, and at best represent weak to moderate positive spatial autocorrelation. For corrobor ation purposes, these results can be approximated with an auto normal model specification by analyzing the square root of the observed counts (the variance stabilizing Box– Cox power transformation for a Poisson variable), or the logarithmic transformation LN(yi þ d), where d is a translation coefficient that helps to better align these transformed values with a normal distribution. The SF equation once again replaces rC with EKbE, yielding h iYi PðY ¼ yi Þ ¼ c 1 e eðXi bXþEi KbEÞ eðXi bX þEiK bE Þ =ðyi !Þ

½12

where the subset of eigenvectors EK can be selected with a stepwise Poisson regression procedure. Some criteria suggest that this specification may well be superior to its Winsorized auto Poisson counterpart. One appealing advantage eqn [12] exhibits over eqn [11] is that it can capture extremely high levels of positive spatial auto correlation. Another is that it does not require MCMC techniques for parameter estimation because its nor malizing constant is known and tractable; rather, it can utilize standard generalized linear modeling statistical theory and software.

The Auto-Binomial Probability Model A number of georeferenced datasets comprise counts that have upper limits (e.g., votes by precincts for political

Spatially Autoregressive Models 0 Weak-hex

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18

Figure 3 Histograms for simulated binomial data containing varying levels of positive spatial autocorrelation: N 18, p 0.5. Top: a 45-by-54 regular hexagonal tessellation (n 2430) and bottom: China’s 1990 county irregular surface partitioning (n 2379).

candidates), and hence have a frequency distribution mirroring that of a binomial random variable. Positive spatial autocorrelation also results in variance inflation for a binomial frequency distribution, which means the chances of the extreme probabilities increase at the ex pense of more centrally located intermediate prob abilities (see Figure 3). This effect is not detectable in binary, Bernoulli (i.e., logistic regression type) data. Spatial auto binomial/logistic AR models seek to furnish a description of these data. The common spatial binomial regression model specification – which has Y on both sides of the equation – may be written as PðY ¼ yi Þ ¼ c

!

yi e Xi bþrCi Y 1 þ e Xi bþrCi Y Ni yi Xi bþrCi Y

Ni yi

1

1

e 1 þ e Xi bþrCi Y

½13

where Ni is the total base statistical population at location i. Again, the normalizing factor c 1 is unknown, complex and intractable, but as with the auto Poisson model, parameter estimates can be obtained here with MCMC techniques. The SF equation once again replaces rC with EKbE, yielding PðY ¼ yi Þ ¼

Ni

!

yi 1

e Xi bX þEiK bE 1 þ e Xi bX þEiK bE

e Xi bX þEiK bE 1 þ e Xi bX þEiK bE

yi Ni yi ½14

Now parameter estimates can be obtained with standard stepwise logistic regression or generalized linear model procedures.

Summary and Contemporary Issues Spatial autocorrelation frequently has little impact on regression coefficient estimates for geographically dis tributed non distance based covariates, regardless of whether the statistical distribution of a variable is normal, Poisson, or binomial. In contrast, spatial autocorrelation impacts upon the variance of these variables, with posi tive spatial autocorrelation inducing variance inflation. This increased variance tends to flatten a bell shaped curve, and create overdispersion in Poisson and binomial variables. Consequently, frequency distributions are dis torted when spatial correlation is present. As positive spatial autocorrelation increases: (1) the center is squa shed and the tails are thickened in a normal curve; (2) the shape of a Poisson distribution increasingly resembles that of an exponential distribution, with the frequency of zero and/or near zero values increasing concomitantly with the appearance of marked outliers; and (3) the shape of a binomial distribution first approaches that of a uni form, and then that of a sinusoidal distribution. These metamorphoses are the only way variance can increase for these types of variables. In addition, spatial depend ency effects compromise the descriptive ability of con ventional versions of these probability models, as well as statistical inferences associated with them. Fortunately, technology now exists that enables the parameters of AR

402


versions of these probability models to be estimated, furnishing much better descriptions of georeferenced data. A number of unresolved issues are raised by the for going discussion. Foremost is the absence of formal tests for generalized linear model residual spatial auto correlation. Such tests also need to be developed for auto normal residual spatial autocorrelation. Second is the lack of standard software, such as GeoBUGS for Bayesian map analysis, for implementing the necessary MCMC techniques needed to estimate the parameters of auto Poisson and auto binomial models. SF model specifications help circumvent this latter problem. Nevertheless, spatial AR models have brought new power to the analysis of georeferenced data, capturing effects of redundant locational information contained in these data. Their descriptive abilities better portray ob served data, and have become, and continue to be, in creasingly appealing to scientists working in the spatially integrated social sciences, as well as in spatial epidemi ology. They offer a more fully developed nomothetic approach that, in turn, will support an increasing em phasis on the geographically varying local statistics that fluctuate around their global parameter counterparts. See also: Regression, Linear and Nonlinear; Spatial Autocorrelation.

Further Reading Anselin, L. (1988). Spatial Econometrics. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Arbia, G. (2006). Spatial Econometrics. New York: Springer Verlag.

Cliff, A. and Ord, J. (1980). Spatial Processes. London: Pion. Cressie, N. (1992). Statistics for Spatial Data. New York: Wiley. Griffith, D. (2000). A linear regression solution to the spatial autocorrelation problem. Journal of Geographical Systems 2, 141 156. Griffith, D. (2003). Spatial Autocorrelation and Spatial Filtering: Gaining Understanding through Theory and Scientific Visualization. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Griffith, D. (2004). A spatial filtering specification for the auto logistic model. Environment and Planning A 36, 1791 1811. Griffith, D. (2004). Extreme eigenfunctions of adjacency matrices for planar graphs employed in spatial analyses. Linear Algebra and Its Applications 204, 201 219. Griffith, D. (2006). Assessing spatial dependence in count data: Winsorized and spatial filter specification alternatives to the auto Poisson model. Geographical Analysis 38, 160 179. Griffith, D. and Lagona, F. (1998). On the quality of likelihood based estimators in spatial autoregressive models when the data dependence structure is misspecified. Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference 69, 153 174. Haining, R. (1990). Spatial Data Analysis in the Social and Environmental Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haining, R. (2003). Spatial Data Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Huffer, F. and Wu, H. (1998). Markov chain Monte Carlo for autologistic regression models with application to the distribution of plant species. Biometrics 54, 509 524. Kaiser, M. and Cressie, N. (1997). Modeling Poisson variables with positive spatial dependence. Statistics and Probability Letters 35, 423 432. Upton, G. and Fingleton, B. (1985). Spatial Data Analysis by Example: Point Pattern and Quantitative Data, vol. I. New York: Wiley.

Relevant Websites http://www.spatial econometrics.com Econometrics Toolbox for Matlab by James LeSage, University of Toledo. http://www.spatial statistics.com Spatial statistics software for Matlab and Fortran by Kelly Pace, LSU.

Squatter Settlements K. D. Willis, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Burgess Model Developed by Ernest W. Burgess in 1925, this modeled the urban social structure of industrialized cities based on the case of Chicago. The model consisted of a series of concentric rings around the central business district, with working-class populations living near the center where industries were located, and middle-class households living further out from the center. Gentrification Processes of urban social and economic change, which involve increased property prices and the influx of higher-income residents. May be associated with urban government infrastructure projects. Micro-Finance Term given to schemes which aim to provide funding to very poor individuals or families who are unable to obtain loans from formal lending institutions. Neoliberalism A political and economic ideology and set of practices which focus on reducing the role of the state and expanding the involvement of the private sector.

Introduction As more and more of the world’s population lives in urban areas, access to housing has become a growing concern. This is not because housing is necessarily difficult to find in urban areas, but because the rates of urbanization and the availability of appropriate hous ing do not match. The majority of people living in the cities of the Global South (where rates of urban growth are highest) are poor. Governments are unable or un willing to provide sufficient housing, and private sector housing provision is too expensive for most households. Given this housing gap, poor urban households have developed their own solutions. These often include what have been termed ‘squatter settlements’ where house holds occupy land and build their own houses. While housing quality and access to services may be limited, such opportunities are key in providing millions of people shelter. In this article, the main debates surrounding squatter settlements are outlined, focusing on definitional issues and their geographical distribution. The changing nature of policies toward these settlements is also covered.

Definitions The term squatter settlement is often used as a general term to encompass low quality housing, occupied by the poor, usually on the periphery of cities in the Global South. Such use makes it synonymous with other terms such as ‘shanty town’ and ‘informal settlement’. Despite the fact that they are often used interchangeably, these terms actually refer to different forms of shelter, with distinctions by land tenure, building type, construction method, and legal status. Formally, a squatter settlement is identified by land tenure, with residents occupying land illegally, that is, squatting. This may be through an organized land invasion, but is more often through the gradual accretion of the settlement as people move in over time. In many parts of the Global South, squatters occupy public or communal land as it is often harder to remove them from such lo cations, rather than privately held terrain. In contrast, shanty towns are formally defined ac cording to the quality of the buildings; shanties are usually flimsy constructions made out of materials such as cardboard, plastic, and corrugated iron. The buildings lack access to services such as water, electricity, and sanitation. Poor housing quality is also implied by the term ‘slum’, but this term also encompasses rental housing and overcrowded conditions in buildings con structed from more permanent materials. The more general term ‘informal settlement’ is used to encompass residential areas which may have dubious land tenure, for example, when settlers buy plots of land from landowners who have subdivided and sold their property without legal permission. Informal settlements are also those where housing regulations have not been followed and the houses have been built by the occupants (hence the terms ‘self built housing’ or ‘self help hous ing’) or informally employed builders. Such settlements usually lack services early in their history due to their informal status, but this may change over time as dis cussed below. Due to its broad scope, the term informal settlement is often used in official documents and will be used in this article unless land tenure is the focus of the discussion. Local terms for such forms of housing are also found throughout the world (see Table 1).

Distribution and Growth of Informal Settlements Informal settlements are most associated with the cities of the Global South, reflecting the mismatch between

403

404 Table 1

Squatter Settlements Alternative names for squatter settlements

Table 2

Slums by Global Region, 2001

Name Squatter settlement

Housing built on illegally occupied land.

Shanty town/shanty

Area of poor-quality housing, built from materials such as cardboard and corrugated iron. A shanty is an individual dwelling made of such materials.

Informal settlement

Area of housing which does not meet legal requirements of tenure, housing quality, and land use.

Self-help housing

Housing which has been built by the residents themselves.

Bustee/Favela/Pueblo joven/ Bidonville

Local names in India/Brazil/Peru/ Algeria.

Spontaneous settlement

Settlement which has developed without formal planning. May be due to a land invasion, or gradual growth over time.

urban population growth and affordable housing pro vision. They have, however, been and continue to be found in the Global North. For example, in the United States during the Great Depression of the 1930s, thou sands of people who had lost their homes or were forced to migrate for work lived in what became known as ‘Hoovervilles’ after President Herbert Hoover. As in parts of the Global South today, shelters were built from available scrap material and located in areas of wasteland, railway yards, streets, and parks, including New York’s Central Park. In today’s Global North, such settlements persist, for example, those built by migrant agricultural workers in California, or asylum seekers in Paris. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, informal settlements have become increasingly common in parts of the in dependent republics. Regardless of where or when they are built, their presence reflects the exclusion of residents from better quality housing produced by either the public or private sectors. While informal settlements can be found throughout cities, the common image is of large scale settlements being set up in the urban periphery. This has resulted in models of the ‘Third World city’, with a decreasing socioeconomic gradient from the city center to the pe riphery, so that the rich live centrally and the poor on the margins. This is contrasted with models of ‘industrial cities’ where low income populations reside in the city center and the rich in spacious accommodation in the suburbs, as in Burgess’ concentric zone model, for ex ample. Such models fail to recognize the heterogeneous nature of urban space; higher income households are able to afford to live in more desirable areas, thus leaving more polluted or dangerous locations to the poorer populations. Poorly drained locations or steep slopes are

Northern Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Latin America and Caribbean Eastern Asia Eastern Asia (excluding China) South-Central Asia South-Eastern Asia Western Asia Oceania (excluding New Zealand and Australia) World

Urban population (%)

Slum population as % of urban

52 34.6 75.8 39.1 77.1

28.2 71.9 31.9 36.4 25.4

30 38.3 64.9 26.7

58 28 33.1 24.1

47.7

31.6

Source: Adapted from UN Habitat (2003). Slums of the World: The Face of Urban Poverty in the New Millennium? Nairobi: UN Habitat, ( Table 3, p. 27).

more likely to be occupied by the poor as these locations present environmental hazards, while richer households will also seek to locate far from polluting industries. For example, the population most affected by the release of deadly poisonous gas from the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984 were the low income residents of informal settlements nearby. Models of Third World and industrial cities also fail to consider the dynamism of urban structures. Gentrifi cation has occurred in the center of many cities, par ticularly in the Global North, leading to shifts in demographic profiles, while in parts of the Global South, upper class households are moving to gated com munities, often toward the city edge. Additionally, in many cities, long established informal settlements have been consolidated and upgraded, thus becoming formally recognized areas occupied by middle class households. This process is discussed in more detail below. Globally, about one third of the population lived in slums in 2001, but the importance of informal settlements and slum housing varies greatly (see Table 2). Collecting accurate figures for such housing is difficult, given both definitional variations and the fluid and transitory nature of some of the settlements and their populations. The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat) talks generally about ‘slums’ to refer to poor quality housing. The importance of such housing for urban populations does not reflect the level of urban ization in a region. Sub Saharan Africa had an urban population of just over one third in 2001, but of these, nearly three quarters lived in what were classified as slums. In contrast, Southeastern Asia had a slightly higher urban population, but less than a third lived in slums. Such differences reflect, among other things, different urban growth rates, levels of economic development, land tenure systems, land availability, and political factors.

Squatter Settlements

Within regions, there may also be very different pat terns. For example, peripheral squatter settlements have been much more important in Mexico and Peru (most notably in Mexico City and Lima) than in Chile (after 1973) or Colombia. This reflects not only the availability of land for such settlements but also the way in which squatter settlements were viewed politically. As the sec tion below demonstrates, government attitudes to in formal settlements have varied greatly from wholesale clearance to tacit support as a form of patronage. In Mexico and Peru, in the past, politicians have turned a blind eye to informal settlements in return for electoral support.

Approaches to Informal Settlements When examining approaches to informal settlements, it is vital to recognize the diversity of opinion from a range of actors. The main groups involved are the informal settlement residents themselves, other urban residents, and government. International agencies, such as the World Bank and the United Nations, also have changed their policies toward low income housing provision over time. Clearance In the 1950s and 1960s when many Latin American and Asian cities were growing rapidly, informal settlements were often considered by governments and other urban residents (particularly the middle classes) as great prob lems. Such perspectives were not only because these settlements were viewed as being unhealthy for the in habitants, but also because they were seen as a threat to the city’s population as a whole. The living conditions were unhygienic because of overcrowding and a lack of water and sanitation, resulting in high levels of disease. In addition, the settlements were viewed by outsiders as being havens for criminals and gangs. Because of these perspectives, many municipal gov ernments cleared informal settlements, sometimes by sending in bulldozers with little warning, and in other cases, developing relocation schemes involving housing that was viewed by planners as more suitable. This al ternative housing was often in the form of high rise flats, located far from the original settlement, as in the case of the ‘superblocks’ of Caracas and the low income housing constructed as part of the Brazilian government’s devel opment of Brası´lia as the new national capital in the 1950s. Similar clearance and relocation schemes were adopted in Asia, with Singapore and Hong Kong being the most notable examples. While the housing provided through relocation schemes was of better quality and had basic urban ser vices, such schemes often failed in the aim of providing

405

housing for the poorest urban dwellers, although the Singapore and Hong Kong examples were certainly much more successful than their Latin American counterparts. These failures were largely due to planners’ limited understanding of the lives of the poor residents. The new flats had low rents relative to other formal housing in the city, but even these low rents were too high for most of the urban poor and the need for regular payments did not fit with the often sporadic and precarious earning cap acity of workers largely employed in the informal sector. Additional costs for water and electricity also made the housing costs too high. The result was that many re located families sold or sublet their flats to middle class households who could afford to live there and returned to informal settlement living. The location of the new flats was also a severe prob lem. Residents in informal settlements were often able to operate businesses from their homes, or chose to live near their place of work. Being uprooted from economic and social networks to be relocated elsewhere often destroyed these economic opportunities just at the time when the cost of living was going up because of rent and service costs. Families might also have had a small amount of space to keep animals or grow crops in the informal settlement; activities which were very difficult to con tinue in the apartment blocks. The general failure of such clearance and relocation schemes, combined with increasing pressures on state finances, meant that they became much less common in the 1970s and beyond. This was also because of changing attitudes toward informal settlements and their residents by governments and international agencies. Clearance of informal settlements still takes place, not least as part of urban regeneration projects associated with gentrifi cation, the rise of middle class consumer culture, and the demand for large shopping malls, and high profile international events such as the Olympics or a regional heads of state meeting. Upgrading and Self-Help An ignorance of the lives of people in the informal settlements lay behind many of the problems identified with state housing schemes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was some change in perspectives on this sector of the urban population due to research. The two key individuals involved were William Mangin, an an thropologist, and John Turner, an urban planner. They both conducted research in the squatter settlements of Lima, Peru. Rather than being havens for criminals, the only option for the urban poor and home to the large migrant population that had flocked to the city to seek a better life, Mangin and Turner’s research concluded that residents of the pueblos jovenes or barriadas, as they were termed, had often lived in the city for many years, were

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hardworking, and were seeking to improve their housing conditions as a form of investment for their children. Turner developed the concept of ‘bridgeheaders’ and ‘consolidators’ as a way of categorizing poor urban dwellers in Lima. This idea was based on the recognition that the urban poor, including migrants, made rational decisions about where and how to live. On first arriving in the city, the key issue for migrants was employment, so they tended to live in rental accommodation in over crowded tenements in the city center. These were the ‘bridgeheaders’. After a few years when they had become more established in the city, Turner argued that the priority shifted to housing and investment for the future. Given the cost of land and housing in the city center, squatting on land on the urban margins and constructing a house as and when you could afford it was a rational decision. Over time, housing quality would improve when families had funds available and communities would work together to access services from the gov ernment. These people were termed ‘consolidators’ and the process of improvement over time was called ‘up grading’. As a result of this research, the peripheral in formal settlements were often viewed as ‘slums of hope’ in contrast to the ‘slums of despair’ in the city center. The research of Mangin and Turner resonated with what was being seen elsewhere and encouraged many governments to view informal settlements in a more positive light. Here was a solution to housing problems for the poor which did not involve high levels of gov ernment spending and allowed the urban poor to build the housing appropriate to their lifestyles and income levels. This approach was also taken up by international agencies such as the World Bank. Rather than implementing state house building and settlement clearance, governments and inter national agencies increasingly sought to provide support to the self build process. In some cases, this involved the regularization of land tenure so that householders were given the legal title to their land and therefore the security to improve their houses without fear of eviction. In many cases, however, households improved their homes without the official paperwork as they felt secure enough due to political support or other indications of official approval, such as service provision. Some gov ernments also developed schemes to provide subsidized building materials for home improvements. In most cities, major infrastructure services were provided by the state as in the case of the high profile Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi, Pakistan. Having supposedly learned from earlier mistakes, some governments began to develop site and services schemes. The World Bank also invested millions of dol lars in such schemes in over 50 countries during the period 1972–1990. Households were provided (usually at a low cost) with a plot of land which had connections to

water, sanitation, and electricity services. They were then able to build the kind of house they wanted when they had available funds. The premise of the schemes was that it was easier and cheaper to put the services in before the development of the settlement and by giving households the freedom to build the house they wanted, the gov ernment was not trying to house everyone in uniform residences. While such schemes received large amounts of funding, issues around cost and location proved highly problematic once again. Households with low or irregular incomes were unable to participate, and this particularly hit women headed households who tended to have low incomes. As with the earlier relocation schemes, many site and service plots were sold or sublet to less poor families. Self help housing of this sort often failed to house the very poorest. Its adoption by governments also received criticisms as it was viewed as a way in which governments could save money and ignore their responsibilities to the poorest people in the city. The fact that the ideas and policies were largely based on the Latin American ex perience, particularly that of Lima, also needs to be considered. Lima had vast areas of arid land surrounding the city where squatters could move to build their homes; not all cities have this space available. Additionally, compared to many residents in cities in sub Saharan Africa and South Asia, Latin American poor urban dwellers often had more economic opportunities and therefore chances to invest in their own homes. For many migrants to cities in sub Saharan Africa, the lack of housing in the city centers means that the marginal in formal settlements are the only options; again contrasting with the bridgeheader–consolidator model developed in the Lima case. Processes of upgrading and self help have led to shifts in the urban structure of many cities. What were previ ously areas of poor quality housing occupied by very poor families have become middle class districts with all urban services. However, this is not always correlated with the improved lives of the original residents. As services are introduced and settlements are formally recognized, the cost of living there increases, so meaning that original residents may be forced to move elsewhere. Figure 1 shows one of the main streets in Colonia Aurora on the northwestern edge of Oaxaca City, Southern Mexico. This settlement started in the 1970s as an in formal subdivision and was occupied by residents from elsewhere in the city and also new migrants from the rural areas. By 1990, some residents had been able to build brick dwellers and there was electricity supply, although not all houses were connected. There were no connections to the water or sanitation system. By 2002, water and sewerage systems had been installed, the road was paved, and housing quality had improved greatly (see Figure 2). Some of the families who had lived there in


Figure 1 Street in Colonia Aurora, Oaxaca City, Mexico, 1990.

Figure 2 Street in Colonia Aurora, Oaxaca City, Mexico, 2002.

1990 were still residents, but others had been unable to afford the increased cost of living and had moved away. Others, seeing the chance for income generation, rented out their homes or sold them. Thus, upgrading may not lead to improved housing for all. The State as Enabler or Facilitator Since the early 1980s, government housing policy in the Global South and approaches adopted by international

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agencies have increasingly moved toward seeing gov ernment as an enabler or facilitator, rather than as a provider of housing. Within this model, housing is pro vided by the residents themselves, carrying on with the self build idea, and services and support are provided by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or the private sector. These policies clearly resonate with the broader neoliberal agenda which has become so prevalent. Rather than providing housing, the state will now provide an environment that will facilitate the develop ment of housing markets. It is argued that this is more efficient and provides greater choice for all urban resi dents. One of the key enabling processes relates to land titles. It is argued by researchers such as Hernando de Soto that housing provision and economic development in the cities of the Global South are limited by the lack of legal tenure and the amount of time it takes for tenure legalization due to bureaucratic procedures. Providing home owners in informal settlements with legal titles to their land and homes will, it is argued, give them the security to improve their houses, and will also enable them to sell their property, should they wish to. In addition, legal home ownership provides collateral to borrow money for other investments, such as home im provements and business expansion. Receiving legal land title is popular with residents, but it does not necessarily have the expected outcomes. As outlined earlier, while residents of informal settlements may not have formal land titles, they have often felt se cure enough to improve their property, and an informal land and housing market has developed in most cities. Legal titles and tenure regularization may also push out the poorest and most vulnerable households from in formal settlements as it is associated with increased costs. Housing finance has become an increasingly impor tant issue, especially as squatting as a route to access land has become scarcer around urban areas. Within an en abling framework, governments now attempt to promote private sector or NGO financing activities, often based on a micro finance model. This has achieved success in some cases, but again there are limits for households with very low or irregular incomes. Using housing as collateral for formal bank loans has also been effective for some, but this varies greatly; some banks still view low income applicants with suspicion, even if they do have formal title to their property. As infrastructure services have been increasingly privatized in cities of the Global South, issues around cost recovery have become more pressing. Private sector water, sanitation, and electricity companies have been encouraged to provide services to low income residents, including those in informal settlements, by being allowed to charge for these services. It is argued that this is be cause governments lack the funding and capacity to provide such services themselves. Given the importance

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of such basic services, many governments have imple mented policies to ensure that the very poorest are not excluded. Such policies include fixed tariffs and subsi dized services. In the case of South Africa, the very poorest urban households are provided with a set amount of free water per month. Consumption above this level must be paid for. By involving informal settlement dwellers in both the financing and the management of upgrading activities, governments, UN Habitat, and many NGOs are echoing Mangin and Turner’s ideas from the 1960s regarding the agency and capacity of such people. Such policies can lead to great improvements in housing quality and the concomitant betterment of health and environmental conditions. However, it is vital that the poorest house holds are not excluded from such processes and that the participation of residents is meaningful, rather than purely for presentational purposes.

Conclusions Squatter settlements or informal settlements have been a very important part of many cities in the Global South. Shifting government and international agency attitudes toward them since the 1960s have reflected a growing recognition of the capacity of the urban poor to adapt and sometimes to thrive in very difficult circumstances. As the world’s urban population grows, there will be increasing pressure on both land and housing. The shift toward market mechanisms for both land and housing delivery has been beneficial in some cases, but without forms of support and protection, millions of poor households will be excluded and left to fend for themselves in the diminishing number of available spaces in the world’s cities. See also: Housing; Neoliberalism and Development; Postcolonial Cities; Poverty; Third World Cities.

Further Reading Datta, K. and Jones, G. (2001). Housing finance in developing countries: Invisible issues on research and policy agendas. Habitat International 25, 333 357. Davis, M. (2006). Planet of Slums. London: Verso. De Soto, H. (2000). The Mystery of Capitalism: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. London: Black Swan. Drakakis Smith, D. (2000). Third World Cities (2nd edn.). London: Routledge. Gilbert, A. (2002). On the mystery of capital and the myths of Hernando de Soto. International Development Planning Review 24, 1 20. Hardoy, J. and Satterthwaite, D. (1989). Squatter Citizen. London: Earthscan. International Development Planning Review, 2006. Special Issue on State Society Relations in Land Delivery Processes in African Cities. International Development Planning Review 28, 127 285. Mangin, W. (1967). Latin American squatter settlements: A problem and a solution. Latin American Research Review 2, 65 98. Moser, C. and Peake, L. (eds.) (1987). Women, Human Settlement and Housing. London: Routledge. Potter, R. B. and Lloyd Evans, S. (1998). The City in the Developing World. Harlow: Longman. Turner, J. F. C. (1968). Housing priorities, settlement patterns and urban development in modernizing countries. Journal of the American Institute of Planners 33, 167 181. UN Habitat (2003). Slums of the World: The Face of Urban Poverty in the New Millennium? Nairobi: UN Habitat. Verma, G. (2002). Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours. London: Penguin. Ward, P. M. (1982). Self Help Housing: A Critique. London: Mansell Publishing Ltd.

Relevant Websites http://www.bshf.org Building and Social Housing Foundation. Independent research organization which focuses on the development of people centered and environmentally sustainable housing policy. http://www.citiesalliance.org Cities Alliance. A global coalition seeking to eradicate slums and urban poverty. http://www.sdinet.org Slum/Shack Dwellers International. Network of urban poor from the Global South who share experiences and approaches to housing improvement. http://www.unhabitat.org United Nations Habitat. United Nations agency responsible for human settlements. http://www.makingcitieswork.org USAID Urban Policy.

State M. Jones, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Perhaps the most difficult task in this article is defining the state, and this has been a challenge for political and human geographers, as well as social and political sci entists. As we shall see in this article, the state is a highly complex phenomenon and no single approach can ever fully capture this. States and interstate systems provide a moving target because of their complex developmental logics and because continuing attempts to structure and restructure states and the state system leave their own traces on forms, functions, and activities. History, geog raphy, and social agency matter. The state is, in short, a series of multifarious processes in motion and to get a handle on this we need to freeze the moment and see what is there, and go back and do this several times over. Getting a grasp on the state is further complicated be cause of the embedded relationship between states, so ciety, and space. There can be no adequate theory or position on the state without a corresponding theory or take on society and its spatial relations. The state and the political system are bound up with the broader geo graphical ensemble of social relations and one cannot adequately describe or explain the state, state apparatus, state projects, or anything else associated with the state, without referring to its relationship with such ensembles. All this calls for sensitivity to the historical and insti tutional specificity of the state’s social and spatial de velopment. This gives political geographers a unique opportunity to say something interesting and this article seeks to tackle this. The article has three sections. First, it outlines the different dimensions of the state, somewhat of a cookery book approach, which helps to set the scene further. It then turns to look at how the state can be theorized from different popular standpoints. The discussion focuses on three distinct approaches: Marxism, Weberian historical sociology, and post structuralism. All these have been used, at different times, in political geography and human geography more broadly. It then seeks to put the state in its place by looking at developments across time and over space. Periodization matters and we consider historical and geographical specificity. This is done to get beyond two interrelated blocks – the ‘territorial trap’ and ‘methodological nationalism’ – that have hindered and can still hinder a political geography of the state, espe cially that pervading theory construction and empirical research. Such ‘traps’ comprise three assumptions. First,

the state is said to possess sovereign and mutually ex clusive control over its territorial borders. Second, binary position of ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ is adopted as a fixed feature of the interstate system. Third, the state is con ceived as a static, timeless territorial ‘container’ that en closes economic and political processes. The approach in this article is more variegated and intimately geo graphical. Future issues for research and reflection con clude the discussion.

Tracing the State The most basic but least asked question, by all scholars and not just geographers, in thinking about the state is defining the ‘properties’ of the state. The most general feature of the state (premodern as well as modern and precapitalist as well as capitalist) is that it comprises a set of institutions concerned with the territorialization of political power. This involves the intersection of polit ically organized, coercive, and symbolic power, a clearly demarcated core territory, and a fixable population on which political decisions may be made collectively binding (such as the exercise of law and order, and the collection of taxation and other sources of revenue). Thus, the key feature of the state is the historically variable ensemble of technologies and practices that produce, naturalize, and manage territorial space as a relatively bounded container within which political power is exercised to achieve various, more or less well integrated, and changing policy objectives. A system of formally sovereign, mutually recognizing, mutually le gitimating national states exercising sovereign control over large and exclusive territorial areas – the con temporary scenario – is only a relatively recent insti tutional expression of state power. Other modes of territorializing political power have existed, some still coexist with the so called Westphalian system (initially established by the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648 but realized only stepwise, at times chaotically, and often subject to reversals, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), new expressions are emerging, and yet others can be imagined. In short, there remains much work to be done on the state by political geographers. The state, then, is distinct and different from say a multinational corporation, by virtue of its territorial in tegrity and its political legitimacy. The state is also dif ferent in the various roles that it can play. As we shall see

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below, to know the state we need to also know the history and geography of capitalism. States can respond to the contradictions, dilemmas, and problems of capitalism by creating the general conditions for the production and social reproduction of the capital relation, that is, the environment for economic growth and development. The state does this in part by seeking to regulate even de velopment and/or by responding to the effects of this, that is, uneven growth, change, and restructuring. The state though is omnipresent: due to its development and penetration into most spheres of life, it is everywhere and nowhere. This presents geographers with challenges of analysis and interpretation. Adopting these general parameters enables us to note that political power is not always exercised in and through territory and to explore the different modalities of territorialization, deterritorialization, and reterritori alization. For territory is not a given but something that gets constructed and institutionalized in different ways in different times and places. Recognizing this from a pol itical geography standpoint should exclude criticisms of ‘spatial fetishism’, that is, the belief that space as such had a linear causal efficacy in relation to the state. ‘State/ space’, as discussed elsewhere, is a lot more contingent, as the terrain of the state is forged through the ongoing engagements between agents, institutions, and concrete political and policy circumstances. The engagements change across time and space, which makes things even more interesting. One way of holding all this down to grapple with the state is to first dissect the state’s ‘insti tutional relations’ and second then to consider the ways in which the state interacts with its wider ‘social en vironment’, taking note of the points above. These two divisions can be subdivided further into analytical cat egories for conducting research, which we will now consider. In short, there are six dimensions to the state’s organization form and sociopolitical bases. Political geography can help us look at these. Starting first with the ‘institutional relations’ of state, it is possible to identify a ‘representational regime’. This is concerned with delimiting patterns of representation and the state in its inclusive sense. It uncovers the ter ritorial agents, political parties, state officials, community groups, parastate institutions, regimes, and coalitions that are incorporated into the state’s everyday policymaking practices. These are the state’s peopling and peopled properties. We can then identify the ‘internal structures of the state’. This is the institutional embodiment of the above and it underscores the distribution of powers through different geographical divisions and departments of the state and its policy systems. This reading not only allows research to study the apparatus of government; but it also explores the ways in which political strategy helps to create spaces and scales of policy intervention and delivery. For political geographers, the relationship

between the different politically and socially charged scales of intervention is interesting. Last, we can think about ‘patterns of intervention’ to analyze the different political and ideological rule systems that govern state intervention, such as frameworks of rights and responsi bilities, the balance between the public and private, and the perceived roles of the social partners in the policy process. Concerns here can include the discourses of citizenship, social inclusion/exclusion, universal versus targeted and selective service provision, and equality versus allocation through competition. Second, turning to the wider ‘social environment’ and social relations, and taking note of the point above that we cannot have a position on the state without a per spective on society and space, the ‘social basis of the state and its power’ draws attention to the consolidation of the representational regime through civil society, that is, those social forces outside the political system. We can explore here the different ways in which uneven devel opment is mobilized into the political system through targeted state strategies. In turn, thinking about ‘state strategies and state projects’ brings some overall co herence to the activities of the state, its forms of inter vention, and its policymaking priorities. The state is seen here as a political strategy and its various policy and power networks can privilege some coalition possibilities over others and some interest groups over others. Last, by using the idea of ‘hegemonic projects’, we can examine language and other semiotic codes, and seek to uncover ideological programs of action, that is, how forms of knowledge and discourses become codified and mobi lized to advance particular interests.

Theorizing the State: Three Positions These properties of the state are mostly accepted by those working on the state apparatus. The question be comes how do we use and interpret this framework and what drives the various categories of analysis, and how is the state ultimately linked to perspectives on society? The state cannot be reduced or restricted to studies of government and a political geography of the state has to proceed in tandem with more general theoretical and empirical research on the geography of socioeconomic relations. We will now look at this. Marxist perspectives on the state have certainly been popular in political geography over the years. With its emphasis on accumulation, regulation to counteract un even development, and the role of history and materi alism in making capitalist space economies, Marxism was well placed to capture the changing capitalist world of the 1970s and 1980s. This perspective has the benefit of highlighting big issue ‘why’ questions and a neat and often closed explanatory power, for the main tenet of

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geographical Marxist criticism – that sociospatial re lations are constructed and constituted according to the political–economic circumstance in and through which they are produced – might well immediately be accepted as self evidently true. The difficulty and controversy lies entirely in deciding how close the influence is. The ‘determinist’ position argues that the state is formed by, and acts in accordance with, the forces of capital and class, which are intrinsically interlinked through the ongoing territorialization of political power. Those that own and control the means of production ultimately have privileged access to the state apparatus (representational regime and internal structures) and are able to direct and redirect resources (patterns of intervention) to serve their own class and social interests. All this is reinforced by the control of ideology (hegemonic projects), in what can often read like a conspiracy, when things in reality are more complex. There are, of course, many different versions of the Marxist thesis, with recent years accepting the critiques of essentialism (the essential role of structural forms like the economy driving things) and exploring a ‘liberal’ line, where the forces of capital and class are much more distant, subtle, and can be traced through the distinctive nature of political strategy. Those advocating a neo Marxist regulationist approach, for instance, have ex plored this road and are interested in causal powers (seen through ‘state strategies and state projects’) that bring the forces of capital and class to bear on society and space. The leading edge of this is the strategic relational ap proach (SRA), formulated and deployed by Jessop. This draws on Marxist accounts of capital being a social re lation and applies this to the state as social relation so that the state is seen as neither a neutral instrument (equally accessible to all forces and useful for any pur pose) nor a rational calculating subject (with a pregiven unity and clear purposes). State power is strategically and spatially selective and results from a continuing interaction between structures, strategies, and balance of forces operating within and beyond the state. The state needs to be thus thought of as a ‘medium and outcome’ of processes that constitute its many interventions. The state is both a social relation and a producer of strategy and, as such, it does not have any power of its own, other than the forces acting in and through its apparatus. Historical sociology, and especially drawing on the work of Weber, offers a different perspective on the state and state power. In contrast to more structural ap proaches above, they are interested in the polymorphous crystallization of state power, which assumes a territorial shape through the interplay between the states ‘infra structural’ or ‘administrative’ power in and across space. Here, the state is an institutional ensemble of social powers that can be organized under the dominance of various macro social logics, with four being highlighted:

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economic, politico military, representational, and cul tural ideological. This approach is partly a critique of Marxist essentialism, where the economy is determinant in the last instance, with other possibilities being im agined and detailed. Thus, a historical sociological anal ysis of state formation emphasizes the important role for long periods of cultural ideological, politico military, and representational principles. The balance between these can be highlighted historically by drawing on the various sources of social power and interesting accounts have been presented on this. Critics of this approach do not deny the influence of, say, the state’s politico military dimensions – particularly in the current era – but cannot accept that this is either foundational or can possibly exhaust the complexities of the modern world. Post structuralism sits at the other end of the spec trum to Marxism. Difficulties and controversies with Marxist approaches to the state are self evident and have centered on reductionism, functionalism, teleology, class bias, structural determinism, and among other things the writing of peopled experiences out of the script of cap italist geographies. This is one major entry point for post structuralism – a diverse field covering everything from studies of narrative, subjectivity and body, the new his toricism, and philosophies of deconstruction. All these probably have one thing in common. Ontology (forms of knowledge on the state) is always already an outcome of the epistemology (means to knowing the state) of our socially constructed ways of knowing. Post structuralists insist that all knowledge and subjectivity, for instance on the state, is not out there waiting to be found but is antiessentialist. Elements of ontology are always framed in thought in the first instance and meanings and interpretations become fixed and known through social practices, power relations, and geographical sites of performance. This does not make knowing the state impossible; we instead need to develop frameworks on the ‘state in action’. Political geographers have used this in studies of critical geopolitics, whereby international statecraft is made through discursive practices to repre sent the world as characterized by particular types of people, places, and dramas. Visual performances of the social field are presently in vogue. Research on everyday, or prosaic, ‘state effects’ is also becoming popular. Here, we are drawn to studying the situated, performative, complex, chaotic, and problematic nature of existence and the multifarious struggles and articulations of pol itics. Things are messy and cannot be explained by a single causal force. Last, there has been an explosion of interest in the techniques and technologies of governing, using notions of ‘governmentality’ to examine the his torically evolving and shifting mentality of government. This is useful for looking at the creation of political objects, subjects, and spaces of government and govern ance. Critics of post structuralist approaches to the state

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normally take issue with their arguments on the every where nature of the state and state power (its supposed immanence) and urge accounts to focus on structural forces, causal properties, and how mechanisms trigger and situate those contingent everyday experiences. Despite the nature of some approaches, arguments, languages, and writing styles even in contemporary geography, none of the three approaches is necessarily more right than the others. Claims to ‘truth’ on the state ultimately rest on the particular research problems being addressed, the time frame in which they are being explored, and the kinds of explanations ultimately being sought by geographers. Marxism, for instance, is not as helpful as post structuralism for investigating the everyday and mundane world of state practices, such as the regulation of social behavior and the changing nature of political expression. Conversely, post structuralism offers less of an insight than Marxism into technical change, geographical specificities of economic re structuring, the general changing spatial divisions of labor, and the scalar geometries of state spatial re structuring. Last, historical sociology perhaps has a unique handle on the state apparatus and its internal development, and is useful for conducting longitudinal studies of ‘state/space’ in this more functional manner. These are the theoretical horses for our research courses: we make a choice, run with it, and endeavor to hold on tight. Occasionally, it can be a bumpy ride. Nobody is necessarily right.

Historical Specificity: Periodization and Territory One way of political geography making a difference to our understanding on the state is to explore the spatiality of the state, state restructuring, and state intervention through the creation of ‘spatiotemporal fixes’. This sug gests that the state performs the role of securing the relative stabilization of society by endeavoring to manage the various economic and political contradictions within the state system. This is inherently spatial, and always temporary, as we shall see. The window into this per spective is normally a neo Marxist approach, building on the above, interested in exploring state intervention and action through constructions of spaces (scales, levels, horizons, etc.) of intervention, the fixing of borders, the stabilization of places, and in short, attempts made to produce and reproduce a territorially coherent and functioning socioeconomic landscape. Using the work of Brenner on ‘new state spaces’, the remainder of this section outlines this and is interested in the historical specificity of the state in mainly North America and Western Europe in three distinct phases: ‘encagement’ (1890s–1930s), ‘entrenchment’ (1950s–early 1970s), and

‘de nationalization’ (post 1970s onward). As noted in the ‘Introduction’, this challenges the national container like assumptions of state and political geography. Until the late nineteenth century, there was a distinct polarization between industrializing city regions and predominately rural agricultural peripheries, which was reinforced at a global scale through colonialism and imperialist expansion. The global depression of the late 1890s and after, however, drove a search for a state managed and organized capitalism. Despite the con tinued exploitation of ‘peripheral’ zones in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, an emerging ‘encagement’ of socio economic relations was taking place due to the increasing spatial convergence between the interests of capital and the state, which fueled the development of global urban hierarchies and increasingly territorial states. Geoeco nomic interests began to dominate here and the con tinued expansion of capital growth and development drove the search for a spatial symmetry between a na tional economy, state bureaucracy, civil society, and na tional culture, all feeding each other. Infrastructure development across territorial space, industrial infra structures, national economic planning, and an expanding state apparatus helped to secure this. Over a 40 year period, the state thus acquired a major role in the con struction of numerous interlocking territorial infra structures – public transportation, education and housing facilities, communication networks, utility supplies, and other aspects of the expanding urban fabric. Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, and certainly after World War II, this model of statehood was consolidated further through modernization, national ization, and rationalization to make space for a new wave of capitalist expansion, despite the onset of serious and lasting economic crises. Consequently, throughout the Fordist–Keynesian period, roughly from the 1950s to the early 1970s, the role of the territorial state as a geographical container of capital accumulation and social development intensified and solidified. Though propelled by the dynamism of large scale manufacturing regions in Northeastern USA, the English Midlands, Northern France, Belgium, and the Ruhr district, the Fordist– Keynesian model of economic development was arranged into distinctly national space economies within a world system organized under the geopolitical and geoeco nomic hegemony of the USA. Control of finance was key here, first through a stable international monetary regime and second an increasingly interventionist state regime capable of influencing the spatial location of capital and managing demand throughout the economy. Already during the 1930s states had begun to engage directly in attempts to devalue and revalue capital through subsi dies, grants, loans, tax advantages, public investments, and state ownership of production facilities. This practice progressed and regional and local state institutions

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became transmission belts for interventionist central state politicis. Their goal was simultaneously to maximize growth and to redistribute its effects as evenly as possible on a national scale. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, a range of regional industrial policies were introduced to promote industrialization within each state’s under developed peripheries. This was supported by the ex pansion of the welfare state, increasing universal rights and social citizenship, and politics predominately related to achieving and raising social benefits. The state’s role in territorializing capital and in securing a spatiotemporal fix for social relations, therefore, converged around the national scale. In this manner, the national scale came to operate as the most fundamental geographical framework for capitalist production and exchange, as the key insti tutional site of sociospatial polarization, and as the most central arena of sociopolitical contestation. This ‘entrenchment’ period can, therefore, be characterized as that of the Keynesian Welfare National State (KWNS). ‘De nationalization’ has had more profound impli cations on geography of world capitalism and the polit ical geography of the state than the two preceding waves of spatiotemporal fixing. On suprastate levels, since the 1970s, new macro geographies have been emerging and consolidating as Fordist–Keynesian national economies are being challenged and superseded by a configuration of the world economy dominated by the super regional blocs of Europe, North America, and East Asia. Shifts within the international division of labor, aided by technical change, have brought about intense economic restructuring, which has transformed some industrial heartlands into wastelands and provided new post industrial opportunities for others. Accordingly, on substate levels, interspatial competition has intensified among cities and regions competing with one another to attract capital investment and secure state subsidies. Meanwhile, a global mosaic of world cities and indus trialized urban regions has emerged as a crucial terri torial infrastructure for the activities of transnational corporations. Consequently, the circulation of capital can no longer be adequately conceived with reference to autocentric national economies or the image of a world economy packaged into distinctive national territorial spaces. A mosaic of postnational socioeconomic and sociospatial relations has been created. In addition to these globally induced reconfigurations of the national scale, there has been a series of highly contested forms of reterritorialization involving the state and its interventions, restructuring impacts, and re sponses to this. Two overarching broad trends are worth mentioning and these have been defining research agendas in political geography and human geography more broadly in recent years. First, scholars have highlighted a ‘relativization of statehood’. In contrast to the era of Fordism–

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Keynesianism, described above, there is no privileged level around which the state can influence the unfolding of capitalism. The relativization of statehood thus im plies: (1) an increasingly tangled hierarchy of overlap ping, continually changing arrangements associated with multilevel interventions; and (2) the systematic lack of any dominant scale, or system of metagovernance, that encompasses or subsumes competing scales of political economic organization. To understand this, the crisis of Fordist capitalism and the subsequent burst of global ization should be understood as a de centering or ‘hol lowing out’ of nationally scaled regulatory arrangements, as subnational and supranational scales of political eco nomic life have acquired a renewed, and in some cases unprecedented, significance through a variety of trial and error, often ad hoc, political initiatives, in especially economic development and regeneration. This often in volves the shift from government to governance, as new arrangements for state management now involve an array of different socioeconomic partners and not just those in formalized state structures. The challenges of this are considered in the conclusion. While the Keynesian welfare national states of the post war era were intent to harmonize the equalization of wealth, population, and infrastructure across national territories, contemporary post Keynesian state projects are promoting territorial competitiveness within certain strategic subnational sites such as cities, city regions, and industrial districts, which in turn are to be positioned within supranational and global circuits of economic development. While certain aspects of this entre preneurial reorientation of local and regional policy has occurred from below, as fiscally stressed localities and regional states have attempted proactively to attract new sources of investment through the actions of develop ment agencies and other institutions, the ‘new localism’ and the ‘new regionalism’ must also be construed, to a significant degree, as national state projects. Indeed, provoked by hegemonic discourses of globalization and business civilization alongside a political rhetoric of fiscal prudence, national states have actively sought to reduce commitments to integrated welfare entitlements and redistributive urban and regional policies in favor of supply side neoliberal initiatives intended to promote technological innovation, labor market flexibility, lean management, and endogenous growth. Second, these state activities have been bringing with them ‘authoritarian politics’, that is, they can have deep consequences across cities and regions as inherited and hard won forms of popular control over welfare state institutions and capitalist firms are being gradually ero ded. Insofar as they have entailed a ‘productivist’ re ordering of social policy and the increasing privileging of economic competitiveness, shifts to entrepreneurial governance have also contributed to a reduced

414 Table 1

KWNS

SWPR

State

Properties of the KWNS and SWPR Economic policies

Social policies

Scale

Means of compensating market failure

Full employment, demand management, and provision of infrastructure to support mass production and consumption Keynesian Focuses on innovation and competitiveness in open economies, with increasing stress on supply-side reform

Collective bargaining and state help generalize norms of mass consumption; expansion of welfare rights Welfare Subordinates social policy to an expanded notion of economic policy; downward pressure on ‘social wage’ and attack on welfare rights

Relative primacy of national scale in economic and social policymaking with local as well as central delivery National Relativization of scale at expense of national scale. Competition to establish a new primary scale but continued role of national state(s)

Market and state form a ‘mixed economy’. State is expected to compensate for market failures

Schumpeterian

Workfare

Postnational

State Increased role of selforganizing governance to correct both market and state failures, but state gains greater role in the exercise of metagovernance Regime

Based on Jessop, B. (2002). The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity.

commitment to the concerns of collective consumption for poorer sections of the working class. The reworking of state spatiality and territory in major urban regions has also frequently been linked to the construction of nonaccountable institutional arrangements, dominated by corporate elites and property owners who are largely insulated from democratic control and subordinated to narrow productivist goals, such as performance measures and target setting. Finally, the rescaling of political economic governance has also entailed significant trans formations of urban and regional space, as large scale urban development projects and metropolitan insti tutional reforms are imposed from above, without ex tensive democratic deliberation or consultation. New landscapes of power have been created in which new forms of exclusion, subordination, and also resistance are inscribed into urban and regional space. One notable ingredient in this political endeavor has been ‘workfare’, which aims to secure a new relationship between the state and its subjects by requiring work or active labor market activities in return for unemployment benefit and welfare assistance. Collectively, then, we are witnessing the arrival of Schumpeterian Workfare Post National Regimes (SWPRs) to challenge what is left of the KWNS. Table 1 summarizes this transition.

Future Issues and Directions for Research This article concludes by raising three future issues for consideration on political geography and the state. We are living in exciting times and some things to think about are: How is the ‘relativization of statehood’ unraveling in different geographical contexts and is there an emerging

spatiotemporal fix to replace the primacy of national territory, national economic space, national social for mation, and national networks? Are new forms of state configuration emerging that seem to be consolidating and ossifying to create a relatively stabilized landscape of regulation, or are multilevel arrangements set to continue with an ongoing search for different possibilities? Polit ical geographers are getting excited at the moment about notions of multilevel governance, that is, the proliferation of different levels or scales of the state. Multiple rounds of ‘filling in’ are occurring, which challenges assumptions that with globalization the state is ‘hollowing out’, de clining, and being eroded away. This raises many re search questions, with some being: who has access to the state apparatus? And who participates when and how? What is the relationship between different types of state and nonstate actors and between different levels? How are issues of democracy and legitimacy dealt with? And how are the conflicting demands of competitiveness, co hesion, and sustainability dealt with? Building on this, interesting work can be undertaken on the ‘geographies of regulatory failure’. Given that state actors walk a difficult line between ensuring the right environment for economic growth and development but at the same time guarding against a crisis of electoral support (issues of legitimation crisis), instances of regu latory failure across cities and regions around the world are becoming apparent, as state policymaking constantly switches economic problems in concerns of state ra tionality that can be more easily addressed through public policy. State actors appear to be continually re inventing policy initiatives, often in response to the problems and contradictions caused by previous rounds of state intervention, in a search to get things right. Re search can be undertaken on how state actors are dealing with these challenges, that is, how is failure being

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presented and interpreted, addressed, new solutions proposed, and are these becoming successful? The growing knowledge based economy (KBE) across most of the developed world is a fertile ground to explore this, with governments searching for a fix to hold down globalization and ensure that their citizens have the skills they need for sustainable employment throughout their working lives. Attempts made to coordinate are also particularly interesting for political geographers to re search through work on metagovernance experiments. The spreading ‘city regions’ project is also something to watch, as it promises joined up thinking and super co ordination, social cohesion, economic competitiveness, and prosperity for all in a stretched relational new economy. This is currently political in vogue and is being implemented with very little critical analysis and reflection. Drawing on more ‘everyday’ accounts of the state, there are numerous opportunities to undertake research on what appears to be an increasingly paternalistic ad vanced capitalist state, that is, the embedded links be tween the state in/as political society and the state in/as civil society. The ‘authoritarian politics’ highlighted above is one road into this topic with the globalization of welfare to work and workfare schemes as part of a ‘new paternalism’. Taking more of a cultural political geog raphy slant, there is much research to be undertaken on more banal and prosaic interactions, which appear to be becoming more commonplace as state power spreads throughout civil society. Research can look at the pro duction and reproduction of nationalisms, regionalisms, localisms, and other spaces of identity and expression in a postnational state constellation. Devolution and consti tutional change across Western Europe is opening up spaces for this kind of cultural research. Subnational political geographies are being reinforced, resisted, re visited, and in some cases invented through language, history, and the symbolic naming and shaping of territory. The increasingly ideological nature of state power is also important to follow. Witness, for instance, the fostering of state sponsored environmental and sustain able citizenship regimes and responsibility codes in schools, institutions of higher education, the workplace,

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and the home – despite state government reliance on a rather unsustainable mode of growth across much of the world! See also: Governance; Governmentality; Hegemony; Nation; Nationalism; Space II; Territory and Territoriality.

Further Reading Agnew, J. and Corbridge, S. (1995). Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory, and International Political Economy. London: Rouledge. Brenner, N. (1998). Between fixity and motion: Accumulation, territorial organization and historical geography of spatial scales. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 16, 459 481. Brenner, N. (2004). New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brenner, N., Jessop, B., Jones, M. and MacLeod, G. (eds.) (2002). State/Space: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Clark, G. L. and Dear, M. (1984). State Apparatus: Structures and Language of Legitimacy. London: Allen & Unwin. Collinge, C. (1999). Self organization of society by scale: A spatial reworking of regulation theory. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 17, 557 574. Corbridge, S., Williams, G., Srivastava, M. and Ve´ron, R. (2005). Seeing the State: Governance and Governability in India. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Jessop, B. (1990). State Theory: Putting Capitalist States in Their Place. Cambridge: Polity. Jessop, B. (2002). The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity. Jessop, N. (2006). Spatial fixes, temporal fixes and spatio temporal fixes. In Castree, N. & Gregory, D. (eds.) David Harvey: A Critical Reader, pp 142 166. Oxford: Blackwell. Jessop, B. (2007). State Power. Cambridge: Polity. Jones, M. (1997). Spatial selectivity of the state? The regulationist enigma and local struggles over economic governance. Environment and Planning A 29, 831 864. Jones, M. and Jones, R. (2004). Nation states, ideological power and globalisation: Can geographers catch the boat? Geoforum 35, 409 424. Jones, R. (2007). People/States/Territories. Oxford: Blackwell. Kirby, A. (1993). Power/Resistance: Local Politics and the Chaotic State. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Mann, M. (1986). The Source of Social Power, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Mountz, A. (2007). Smoke and mirrors: An ethnography of the state. In Tickell, A., Sheppard, E., Peck, J. & Barnes, T. (eds.) Politics and Practice in Economic Geography, pp 38 48. London: Sage. Painter, J. (2006). Prosaic geographies of stateness. Political Geography 25, 752 774. Swyngedouw, E. (2000). Authoritarian governance, power and the politics of rescaling. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 18, 63 76.

State Theory B. Jessop, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

What Is the State? Everyday language sometimes depicts the state as a subject – the state does, or must do, this or that; and sometimes as a thing – this economic class, social stra tum, political party, or official caste uses the state to pursue its projects or interests. But how could the state act ‘as if ’ it were a unified subject and what could con stitute its unity as a ‘thing’? Coherent answers are hard because the state’s referents vary so much. When pressed, a common response is to list the institutions that com prise the state, usually with a core set of institutions with increasingly vague outer boundaries. From the executive, legislature, judiciary, army, police, and public adminis tration, the list may extend to education, trade unions, mass media, religion, and even the family. Such lists typically fail to specify what lends these institutions the quality of statehood and who can legitimately be de scribed as an agent of the state. One alternative is to define the state in terms of means rather than ends or statal entities. This approach informs Weber’s celebrated definition of the ‘modern’ state as the ‘‘human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’’ (Weber, 1948: 78), as well as definitions that highlight its formal sovereignty vis a` vis its own population and other states. This does not mean that modern states exercise power largely through direct and immediate coercion but that coercion is their last resort in enforcing decisions. For, when state power is regarded as legitimate, they can normally secure compliance without such recourse. Even then states reserve the right – or claim the need – to suspend the constitution or specific legal provisions in exceptional conditions and many rely heavily for their survival on force, fraud, and corruption and their subjects’ inability to organize effective resistance. Other theorists regard the essence of the state (pre modern as well as modern) as the territorialization of political authority. This involves the intersection of politically organized coercive and symbolic power, a clearly demarcated core territory, and a fixed population on which political decisions are held to be collectively binding. Thus the key feature of the state is the histor ically variable ensemble of technologies and practices that produce, naturalize, and manage territorial space as a bounded container within which political power is then exercised to achieve various policy objectives. The so called Westphalian system of independent sovereign

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states exercising control over large and exclusive terri torial areas dates back formally to treaties signed in 1648 but, as an effective institutional expression of state power, it has been more or less fully realized only in the last 60 years and was being challenged even as it was being completed. Other modes of territorializing political power have existed; some still coexist with the West phalian system; new expressions are emerging; and others can be imagined. Thus one can ask whether the Euro pean Union (EU) is a new form of state power, a rescaled ‘national’ state, a revival of Medieval political patterns, a post sovereign form of authority, or a new type of em pire. Similarly, are we moving toward global governance or even a world state?

The Origins of the State and State-Building State formation is not a once and for all process nor did the state develop in just one place and then spread elsewhere. It has been invented many times, had its ups and downs, and seen recurrent cycles of political cen tralization and decentralization, territorialization and de territorialization. Although its origins have been ex plained in various monocausal ways, none provides a convincing general explanation. Marxists focus on the emergence of economic surplus to support a specialized, economically unproductive political apparatus that seeks to secure cohesion in a (class )divided society; military historians focus on the role of military conquest in state building and/or the demands of territorial defense in stimulating state capacities to penetrate and organize society. Others emphasize the role of a specialized priesthood and organized religion (or other forms of ideological power) in giving symbolic unity to the population governed by the state. Feminist theorists have examined the role of patriarchy in state formation and the state’s continuing role in reproducing gender div isions. And yet other scholars focus on the ‘imagined political communities’ around which nation states have been constructed (classically Anderson 1991). The best approach is multicausal and recognizes that states change continually, may well break down, and must be rebuilt in new forms, with new capacities and func tions, new scales of operation, and a predisposition to new types of failure. In this context, as Mann notes, the state is polymorphous – its organization and capacities can be

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primarily capitalist, military, theocratic, or democratic and its dominant ‘crystallization’ is liable to challenge as well as conjunctural variation. There is no guarantee that the modern state will always (or ever) be primarily cap italist in character and, even where this is the case, state managers typically take account of other functional de mands and civil society in order to promote institutional integration and social cohesion within its territorial boundaries. Whether it succeeds is another matter. Modern state formation has been analyzed from four main perspectives. First, there are historical studies of the path dependent origins and development of one or more parts of the modern state (such as standing armies, modern tax system, formal bureaucracy, parliament, universal suffrage, citizenship rights, and recognition by other states). Such studies assume that the history of the modern state is decomposable into the histories of its constituent parts and, as such, can be written for all states. Second, a necessarily more restricted set of studies fo cuses on how just some states have acquired certain dis tinctive ‘formal’ features of a modern state, such as its institutional separation from other spheres of society, its own political rationale and modes of operation, and dis tinctive constitutional legitimation, based on adherence to its own procedures rather than values such as divine right or natural law. Not all states display these features, of course, and those that do acquire them at different stages in their development may also experience reversals. This approach poses additional questions about other state forms – authoritarian or totalitarian regimes and/or kleptocratic, narco, and other failed states. Third, other scholars study the elaboration and pursuit of state projects that give a substantive (as opposed to merely formal) unity to state actions, enabling the state to act ‘as if ’ it were relatively unified. They characterize states in terms of their dominant state projects, for example, mercantilist, liberal, welfare, fascist, developmental, or competition states. Fourth, ‘configurational’ analyses explore the dis tinctive nature of state–civil society relations and seek to locate state formation within wider historical develop ments. Rokkan on the intersection of economic, religious, political, and geographical cleavages in state formation in Europe over the last 400–500 years is exemplary.

Marxist Approaches to the State There have been many attempts to complete the Marxist theory of the state based on selective interpretations of the disparate writings of Marx and Engels. Most attempts tend to explain the state’s form and/or functions in economic terms and/or tend to see the state as a simple instrument that can be wielded by the temporarily dominant class forces for any purpose. They thereby ignore the distinctive ‘political’ logic of the state in

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capitalist societies as an institutional ensemble separate from the profit oriented, market mediated logic of cap ital accumulation as well as Marx’s argument that the form of state that underwrites the economic exploitation and political oppression of the proletariat (and other subordinate classes) cannot be the instrument of their emancipation. Analyses affirming one or both of these points were revived in the 1960s and 1970s in response to the seeming ability of Keynesian welfare states to secure crisis free economic expansion and/or to the ‘end of ideology’ allegedly produced by boom conditions. It was argued that, notwithstanding economic growth and the extension of social welfare, states could not abolish capital’s contradictions and crisis tendencies and still had a key role in maintaining class domination. This raised the question of ‘relative autonomy’, a topic much debated in the 1970s and 1980s, which essentially explored the relative freedom of states (or, better, state managers) to pursue policies against the ‘immediate’ interests of the dominant economic class(es) without becoming so au tonomous that they undermined the latter’s long term interests too. The best work in this period formulated two key in sights with a relevance that extends far beyond Marxist concerns. First, some scholars explored how the typical form of the capitalist state caused real problems for capital accumulation and political class domination. For the institutional separation of the state from the market economy, a separation regarded as a necessary and defining feature of capitalist societies leads to the dominance of different (and potentially contradictory) institutional logics and modes of calculation in each so cial field. Thus, political outcomes may not serve the overall needs of capital – even if states (and state man agers) are operationally autonomous – because they face distinctive political pressures that point in other dir ections. This conclusion fueled work on the structural contradictions and strategic dilemmas of specific state forms as well as interest in how the complex interplay of social struggles and institutions influenced state for mation. Second, Marxist theorists began to analyze state power as a complex social relation. This involved studies of the biases inscribed in different state forms and pol itical regimes and the factors that shaped their strategic capacities. Attention focused on the variability of these capacities and their impact on the state’s ability to project power into social realms well beyond its institutional boundaries. This led in turn to more complex studies of struggles, institutions, and political capacities.

State-Centered Theories The flourishing of Marxist state theories in the 1970s prompted a counter movement in the 1980s to ‘bring the

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state back in’ as a critical explanatory variable in social analysis. ‘State centered’ theorists argued that state ac tivities and their impact are easily explained in terms of its distinctive properties as an administrative or re pressive organ and/or the equally distinctive properties of the broader political system encompassing the state. Societal factors, when not irrelevant, were certainly secondary; and their impact on state affairs was always filtered through the political system and the state itself. The main focus of state centered work was detailed case studies of state building, policymaking, and implemen tation. Six themes were emphasized: (1) the geopolitical position of different states in the interstate system and its implications for the logic of state action; (2) the dynamic of military organization and the impact of warfare in the overall development of the state – reflected in Tilly’s claim that, not only do states make war, but wars make states; (3) the state’s distinctive administrative powers – especially those rooted in its capacities to produce and enforce collectively binding decisions within a centrally organized, territorially bounded society – and its stra tegic reach in relation to all other social subsystems (including the economy), organizations (including cap italist enterprises), and forces (including classes) within its domain; (4) the state’s role as a distinctive factor in shaping institutions, group formation, interest articu lation, political capacities, ideas, and demands beyond the state; (5) the distinctive pathologies of government and the political system – such as bureaucratism, political corruption, government overload, or state failure; and (6) the distinctive interests and capacities of ‘state managers’ (career officials, elected politicians, and so on). The main conclusions were that there are distinctive political pressures and processes that shape the state’s form and functions; give it a real and important autonomy when faced with pressures and forces emerging from the wider society; and thereby endow it with a unique and ir replaceable centrality both in national life and the international order. In short, the state is a force in its own right and does not just serve the economy or civil society. ‘State centered’ theorists argued that it is quite usual for the state to exercise autonomy in pursuit of its own, quite distinctive, interests. They emphasize: state man agers’ ability to exercise power independently of (and even in the face of resistance from) nonstate forces – especially where a pluralistic universe of social forces gives them room for maneuver; and the grounding of this ability in the state’s distinctive political resources and its ability to use these to penetrate, control, supervise, po lice, and discipline modern societies. Neostatists also argue that state autonomy is not a fixed structural feature of each and every governmental system but differs across states, by policy area, and over time. This is due partly to external limits on the scope for autonomous state action and partly to variations in state managers’ capacity and

readiness to pursue a strategy independent of nonstate actors. Neostatist empirical research has usefully countered one sided class and capital theoretical work but it has also been criticized on various grounds. The most serious charge is that it rests on a fundamental theoretical fallacy. It posits clear and unambiguous boundaries between the state apparatus and society, state managers and social forces, and state power and societal power; the state can therefore be studied in isolation from society. This renders absolute what are really emergent, partial, unstable, and variable distinctions. This excludes hybrid logics such as corporatism or policy networks; divisions among state managers due to ties between state organs and other social spheres; and many other overlaps between state and so ciety. If this assumption is rejected, however, little is left to distinguish state and society centered approaches.

Foucauldian Approaches Foucault aimed to challenge the centrality of the state, sovereignty, or law in the study of power relations by advancing three main criticisms of earlier work. First, state theory is essentialist because it tries to explain the state and state power in terms of their own inherent, pre given properties. Instead, it should explain state de velopment and functioning as contingent outcomes of practices that are not necessarily (if at all) located within, or openly oriented to, the state. Second, state theory tends to explore the modern state in terms of ‘Medieval’ notions of monarchical authority and/or a unified sov ereign power. This ignores the tremendous dispersion and variety of institutions and practices involved in ex ercising state power. Third, state theorists adopt a top down approach to state power. They are preoccupied with the summits of the state apparatus, the legitimation of political sovereignty, and the state’s capacity to penetrate society from above. Foucault advocated a bot tom up analysis of the many sites where power is actually exercised and may only subsequently be codified into a general pattern of domination. His ‘micro physics of power’ focused on actual practices of subjugation rather than macro political strategies. For state power involves the active mobilization of individuals and not just their passive targeting; and it is associated with multiple dis courses, strategies, and institutions. In short, power is not concentrated in the state: it is ubiquitous, dispersed, and immanent in every social relation. Nonetheless Foucault did not reject all concern with macro political questions. He came to see the state as the crucial site of statecraft and ‘governmentality’ (or gov ernmental rationality). What interested him was the art of government, a skilled practice involving the reflexive monitoring of the population and, with all due prudence,

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attempts to align it behind specific state projects. Raison d’e´tat, an autonomous political rationality, set apart from religion and morality, was the key to the rise of the modern state. It was linked to different modes of political calculation or state projects, such as the early modern ‘police state’ (where ‘police’ refers to policies oriented to the public good) or the late modern ‘welfare state’. These governmental rationalities or state projects colonize local sites of power and link them into ever more general mechanisms of overall domination. Foucault also identi fied the close connections between power and knowledge, highlighting the state’s role in surveillance, gathering knowledge about individuals and the overall population, shaping individuals as specific types of subject (e.g., pupil, patient, parent, prisoner, worker, citizen), and securing an appropriately balanced population. More recent studies inspired by Foucault have addressed the reorganization of the state and the reorientation of statecraft (especially in a neoliberal direction) and the conditions that enable states to engage in effective action across many social domains.

Feminist Approaches While feminists have carefully explored the gendering of social relations and powerfully criticized ‘malestream’ political philosophy and political theory, they have been less interested in developing a feminist theory of the state. The best work shows that patriarchal and gender relations make a difference to the state but it also refuses to prejudge the form and effects of this difference. Thus, ‘‘acknowledging that gender inequality exists does not automatically imply that every capitalist state is involved in the reproduction of that inequality in the same ways or to the same extent’’ (Jenson, 1986). An extensive litera ture on the complex and variable intersections of class, gender, and ethnicity in particular state structures and policy areas has since revealed the limits of gender es sentialism. This approach has been taken further by third wave feminists and ‘queer theorists’, who stress the social construction and instability of dominant views of sexual and gender identities and establish the variability of masculine as well as feminine identities and interests. This has prompted revival of explicit interest in gender and the state, including the construction of masculinity and femininity, the variability of gender identities, interests, roles, and bodily forms, and the issue of how some of these relata are privileged in state discourses, institutions, and material practices. This rules out ana lyses of the state as a simple expression of patriarchal domination and questions the patriarchy’s utility as an analytical category. But feminists reveal basic flaws in malestream theorizing and indicate the need for research on gender biases in state structures and capacities as well

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as its fundamental role in reproducing specific patterns of gender relations.

Discourse Analysis and Stateless State Theory Discourse analysis studies the production of inter subjective meaning in and through a wide range of oral, written, audio–visual, and digital ‘texts’ and their impli cations for identities and practices. Some recent work in this tradition suggests that the state does not exist but is, rather, an illusion – a product of political imaginaries. For belief in its existence depends on state discourses that provide a vocabulary of motives and a political grammar that orient (in)actions toward the ‘state’, leading social forces to act ‘as if ’ it existed. Since there is no common discourse of the state (at most there is a dominant or hegemonic discourse) and different forces orient their action at different times to different ideas of the state, the state is basically a polyvalent phenomenon that changes shape and appearance with the forces acting toward it and the circumstances in which they act. There is also growing interest in specific narrative, rhetorical, or argumentative features of state power. Thus case studies of policymaking suggest that state policies do not objectively represent interests located in or beyond the state or objectively re flect ‘real’ problems confronting the political system. Instead policies are discursively mediated, if not wholly discursively constituted, products of struggles to define and narrate ‘problems’ which can be dealt with in and through state action. The impact of policymaking and implementation is therefore closely tied to their rhetorical and argumentative framing and this also holds, a fortiori, for the capacity of different parts of the state apparatus to work together in a relatively coherent manner. Such dis course theoretical work clearly differs from state centered theorizing and a Foucauldian micro physics of power. In contrast to neostatism, it rejects the reification of the state; and, in contrast to a bottom up approach to state power, it highlights the critical role of narrative and rhetorical practices in creating belief in the existence of the state. This role is variously defined as mystification, self mo tivation, pure narrativity, or self description but, regardless of standpoint, discourses about the state have a key role in shaping the state as a complex ensemble of political re lations linked to society as a whole.

New Directions of Research Despite declining interest in the more esoteric and ab stract modes of state theorizing, substantive research on states and state power exploded from the 1990s onwards. Major themes include the variability of statehood (or stateness); the relative strength or weakness of states; the

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State Theory

future of the national state in an era of globalization and regionalization; the state’s changing forms and functions; scale, space, territoriality, and the state; and the rise of governance and its links to government. First, interest in stateness arises from growing disquiet about the abstract nature of much state theory (especially its assumption of a ubiquitous, unified, sovereign state) and rising interest in the historical variability of actual states. Some theorists focus on the state as a conceptual variable and examine the varied presence of the idea of the state. Others examine the state’s differential presence as a distinctive political form. Thus Badie and Birnbaum usefully distinguish between the ‘political center’ re quired in any complex social division of labor and the ‘state’ as one possible institutional locus of this center. For them, the state is defined by its structural differentiation, autonomy, universalism, and institutional solidity. France is the archetypal state in a centralized society; Britain has a political center but no state; Germany has a state but no center; and Switzerland has neither. Such approaches historicize the state idea and stress its institutional variety from the local to the international scale. Second, there is growing interest in factors that make for state strength. Internally, this refers to a state’s cap acities to exercise authority over events and social forces in the wider society; externally, it refers to the state’s power in the interstate system. This concern is especially marked in recent theoretical and empirical work on predatory and/or developmental states. The former are essentially parasitic upon their economy and civil society, exercise largely the despotic power of command, and may eventually undermine the economy, society, and the state itself. Developmental states also have infrastructural and network power and use it in allegedly market con forming ways. Unfortunately, the wide variety of inter pretations of strength (and weakness) threatens coherent analysis. States have been described as strong because they have a large public sector, authoritarian rule, strong societal support, a weak and gelatinous civil society, co hesive bureaucracies, an interventionist policy, or the power to limit external interference. In addition, some studies risk tautology insofar as strength is defined purely in terms of outcomes. A possible theoretical solution is to investigate the scope for variability in state capacities by policy area, over time, and in specific conjunctures. Third, recent work on globalization casts doubt on the future of national states in general and nation states in particular. This issue is also raised by scholars interested in the proliferation of scales on which significant state activities occur, from the local through the urban and regional to cross border and continental cooperation and a range of supranational entities. However, initial fore casts of the imminent demise of the national territorial state and/or nation state have proven erroneous. This reflects the adaptability of state managers and state

apparatuses, the continued importance of national states in securing conditions for economic competitiveness, political legitimacy, social cohesion, and so on, and the role of national states in coordinating the state activities on other scales from the local to the triad to the inter national and global levels. Fourth, following a temporary decline in Marxist the oretical work, interest has grown in the changing forms and functions of capitalist states. Key issues include the state’s role in: (1) securing conditions for private profit – the field of economic policy; (2) reproducing the popu lation, especially wage labor, on a daily, lifetime, and intergenerational basis – the broad field of social policy; (3) managing the scalar division of labor; and (4) com pensating for market failure. On this basis Jessop charac terizes the typical state form in the advanced capitalist economies during the post war expansion as a Keynesian welfare national state. Its distinctive features were an economic policy oriented to securing the conditions for full employment in a relatively closed economy, general izing norms of mass consumption through the welfare state, the primacy of the national scale of policymaking, and the primacy of state intervention in compensating for market failure. He also describes the emerging state form from the 1980s onwards as a Schumpeterian workfare postnational regime. Its distinctive features are an eco nomic policy oriented to innovation and competitiveness in relatively open economies, the subordination of social policy to economic demands, the relativization of scale with the movement of state powers downwards, upwards, and sideways, and the increased importance of governance mechanisms in compensating for market failure. Other types of state, including developmental states, have been discussed in the same terms. Fifth, there is interest in the changing scales of politics. While some theorists tend to see the crisis of the national state as displacing the primary scale of political organization and action to the global or regional scale, others argue for a relativization of scale. For, whereas the Fordist period of post war European and North American expansion was associated with national economies, national states, and national societies, the after Fordist period has witnessed dispersion of economic, political, and sociocultural issues across many scales of organization, with none of them clearly primary. This in turn poses problems about securing the coherence of action across different scales. This has prompted interest in the novelty of the EU as a new state form, the reemergence of empire as an organizing principle, the prospects for a global state. Sixth, with growing recognition of state as well as market failure, interest has grown in modes of ‘govern ance’ that rely neither on government command nor the anarchy of market forces but on different types of self organization. Governance operates on many scales (from the expansion of international and supranational regimes

State Theory

through national or regional public–private partnerships to more localized networks of power and decision mak ing). Although this trend is often taken to imply a dim inution in state capacities, it could well enhance the (national) state’s power to secure its interests and, indeed, provide it with new (or expanded) role in the meta governance (or overall coordination) of different gov ernance regimes and mechanisms. Finally, interest in governance is sometimes linked to the question of ‘failed’ and ‘rogue’ states. All states fail in certain respects and normal politics is an important mechanism for learning from, and adapting to, failure. In contrast, ‘failed states’ lack the capacity to reinvent or reorient their activities in the face of recurrent state failure in order to maintain ‘normal political service’ in domestic policies. The discourse of ‘failed states’ is often used to stigmatize some regimes as part of interstate as well as domestic politics. Similarly, the term ‘rogue state’ is used to denigrate states whose actions are considered by hegemonic or dominant states in the interstate system to threaten the prevailing international order. Moreover, according to some radical critics, the USA itself has been the worst rogue state for many years.

Final Remarks The state presents researchers with a challenge: it is tangible and elusive, seemingly constant but changeable. While its analysis is central to political geography, es pecially because a defining feature of the state is its role in the territorialization of political power, states and state power also impact, directly or indirectly, all other aspects of social life. This entry raises some central issues posed by the complexity of the state and emphasizes the need for various approaches that can, together, address its polymorphous character. Moreover, because state power cannot be studied in isolation from the wider sets of social relations in which states are embedded, it also discusses broader approaches that seek to put the state in its place. Lastly, as the territorialization of political power has been undergoing important changes, emerging areas of research on states and state power have been identified. See also: Governance; Scale; War.

Further Reading Abrams, P. (1988). Notes on the difficulty of studying the state. Journal of Historical Sociology 1(1), 58 89. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2nd edn.). London: Verso. Badie, B. and Birnbaum, P. (2003). The Sociology of the State. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Barrow, C. W. (1993). Critical Theories of the State: Marxist, Neo Marxist, Post Marxist. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

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Barry, A., Osborne, T. and Rose, N. (eds.) (1996). Foucault and Political Reason. London: UCL Press. Beck, U. and Grande, E. (2007). Cosmopolitan Europe. Cambridge: Polity. Chomsky, N. (2001). Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. London: Pluto. Draper, H. (1977). Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution. Part I. State and Bureaucracy. New York: Monthly Review Press. Evans, P. B., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol, T. (eds.) (1985). Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972 1977. New York: Pantheon. Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hennessy, R. (2000). Profit and Pleasure. Sexual Identities in Late Capitalism. London: Routledge. Jenson, J. (1986). Gender and reproduction: Or, babies and state. Studies in Political Economy 20, 9 46. Jessop, B. (1982). The Capitalist State. Oxford: Martin Robertson. Jessop, B. (2002). The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity. Jessop, B. (2007). State Power: A Strategic Relational Approach. Cambridge: Polity. Knutilla, M. and Kubik, W. (2001). State Theories: Classical, Global and Feminist Perspectives. London: Zed. Lauridsen, L. S. (1991). The debate on the developmental state. In Martinussen, J. (ed.) Development Theory and the Role of the State in Third World Countries, paper no. 2. Roskilde: Roskilde University. Mann, M. (1986). The Sources of Social Power, vol I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Melossi, D. (1990). The State and Social Control. Cambridge: Polity. Rokkan, S. (1999). State Formation, Nation Building and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rose, N. (1999). Powers of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schram, S. F. and Neisser, P. T. (eds.) (1997). Tales of the State. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Shaw, M. (2000). Theory of the Global State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Slaughter, A. M. (2004). A New World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tilly, C. (1973). Reflections on the history of European state making. In Tilly, C. (ed.) The Formation of National States in Western Europe, 96pp. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Weber, M. (1948). Politics as a vocation. In Gerth, H. H. & Mills, C. W. (eds.) Essays from Max Weber, pp 77 128. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Zeitlin, J. and Trubek, D. M. (eds.) (2003). Governing Work and Welfare in a New Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Relevant Websites http://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/ Feminist Theory Website, Virginia Tech University. http://www.marxists.org/ Marxist Internet Archive. http://www.psa.ac.uk/www/ Political Studies Association. http://www.foucaultsociety.org/ The Foucault Society/Resources. http://www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/index.html The Global Site, Critical Gateway to World Politics, Society and Culture.

Statistics, Descriptive J. Lee, Kent State University, Kent, OH, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Kurtosis A statistic that measures the degree of peakedness in the distribution of values in a data series. Maximum The largest numeric value in a data series. Mean The arithmetic mean is commonly called the average. It is the result of dividing the sum of a set of numeric values by the number of the values. Mean Center The location that is defined by the mean of the x-coordinates and the mean of the y-coordinates in a set of points. Mean Deviation The average of absolute differences between individual values to the mean in a data series. Median The value in the middle of an ordered series of numeric data. Median Center The location as defined by the median of the x-coordinates and the median of the ycoordinates. Minimum The smallest numeric value in a data series. Mode The value that has the highest frequency in a data series. Percentile It is a value on a scale of 100 that indicates the percent of a data series that is equal to or below it. Range The numeric difference between the minimum and the maximum values in a data series. Skewness A statistic that measures the degree of symmetry in the distribution of values in a data series. Standard Deviation The square root of variance. Standard Deviational Ellipse This is a closed curve formulated by modified standard distances with adjustments based on the orientation of data points in space. Standard Distance This statistic measures the degree to which points are concentrated or dispersed around the mean center. Variance The average of squared differences between individual values to the mean in a data series.

Descriptive and Spatial Statistics When working with a set of numeric data, statistics are quantitative measures derived from the data to describe various aspects of the data. If classified by their functions, we have ‘descriptive statistics’ and ‘inferential statistics’. Both can be used to analyze the data, to compare data with others, or to test the data against preformulated hypotheses. Descriptive statistics are calculated from a

422

data series to describe how the values are distributed within the data series. For example, these include the maximum, minimum, range, percentile, mean, median, mode, standard deviation, variance, skewness, and kur tosis. Inferential statistics are calculated from sample data for the purpose of making an inference to a population or for making comparison between series of data values. Depending on the area of application, ‘classical statis tics’, or conventional statistics, are generally used in different application areas, such as sociology, political science, medicine, and engineering. These statistics have been modified or extended to accommodate specific ap plication areas. For example, ‘spatial statistics’ are ex tensions of classical statistics that can be applied to deal with geographic data, or data with spatial references. The fundamental assumption for any statistical analy sis is that the data should be independent, or not influ enced by each other. In human geography, however, this is often not the case because geographic objects or phe nomena that we study could in some way be related to each other. This is often described as the ‘first law of geography’: ‘‘Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things’’ (Tobler, 1970: 236). For this reason, many classical statistics have been extended to spatial statistics to account for the spatial association between geographic objects or phe nomena being studied. For example, we may want to do a study that com pares the economic status of Portage County and Summit County, two adjacent counties in northeast Ohio. Reco gnizing that the two counties are of different sizes, we could start by randomly selecting 100 households in each county as the basis for comparison. First step in the an alysis would be to calculate what the average household incomes are in these two counties. The average income figures allow us to make a quick comparison but they only offer a partial story to what the sampled household incomes provide. The average income figures may be affected by the minimum and maximum values in each set; so it would be good to know the range of data values in each set. Still, data values could have different degrees to which they cluster around the average figures or could have different proportion of income figures that are mostly in the higher end or in the lower end. The add itional descriptive statistics of standard deviation, vari ance, skewness, kurtosis, and others can then be used to provide more details that better describe the distribution of sampled income figures from the two counties.


Remember that households have street addresses that can be converted to locations. Therefore, household in comes can also be considered to be spatial data. In that case, we could use spatial statistics to help us understand the spatial distribution of these income figures even better than using classical statistics alone. With mean center and median center, we can identify the center of a set of lo cations. With standard distance and standard deviational ellipse, we can assess how a set of locations may be clus tered or dispersed. Furthermore, it is even possible to give individual locations specific weights to reflect the im portance in that location with respect to others in the set. In summary, descriptive statistics, classical or spatial, are measures that help us understand data series in terms of not only central tendency but also variation of values in the series. These statistics are simple to calculate but are powerful in providing snapshots of the data values and in providing the basis for further analysis.

423

dataset. Simple arithmetic subtraction of the minimum from the maximum would yield the range. Using the same notation as defined above, the range of a distribution can be calculated as xn x1. To provide a quick glance of the distribution of a dataset, a greater range implies a wider spread of data values in the dataset than a smaller range.

Percentile Percentiles identify the positions of values in an ordered dataset as defined by grouping all values into 100 subsets or clusters. For example, the 50th percentile value in a dataset would have 50% of the data values above it and 50% of the data values below it. It is the middle value in an ordered dataset. Similarly, the 25th percentile in a dataset will have 25% of the data values before it and 75% of data values after it in the ordered dataset. Per centiles are commonly used for describing proportions of the data that should fall above or below a given value.

Descriptive Statistics For the purpose of illustration, let us use x1, x2, x3, y, xn to represent n numeric values in a data series, X. Fur thermore, let us simplify this representation to using xi, where i ¼ 1, 2, y, n, to represent the ith numeric value in the series.

Minimum and Maximum Given a set of ‘numeric’ values, the minimum and maximum can be easily identified as the smallest and the largest values in the set. If x1, x2, x3, y, xn are in as cending order, x1 is the minimum and xn is the maximum. If data values in a distribution are categorical in nature and can be ordered, the identification of the minimum and maximum would depend on the ordering of the various categorical values. In general, the minimum value will be the value at the very beginning of the categories when they are ordered into an ascending order while the maximum would be the very last category. For example, areas of different altitudes may be classified into low altitude, medium altitude, and high altitude regions. Given a set of ten regions of these three categories, the minimum value would be the low altitude region while the maximum value would be the high altitude region. It is to be noted that categorical data normally are not suitable for any mathematical calculation such that none of the other descriptive statistics are applicable.

Range For a set of ‘numeric’ values, the range is defined as the difference between the maximum and the minimum in the

Mean A very popular and useful representative of a set of ‘numeric’ values is the mean, or the average of all values in the dataset. This statistic is useful because it provides a quick snapshot of how the values in a dataset distribute. It is popular because it can be easily calculated. The mean of a set of data values can be calculated in two simple steps. First, add up all values in the dataset and then divide this sum by the number of data values in the set to yield the mean. Using the notation defined earlier, the ¯ is calculated as ðx1 þ x2 þ ? þ xn Þ=n, for the n mean, X, values in the dataset. In short, the formula for calculating the mean can be expressed as X¼

x1 þ x2 þ ? þ xn n

or Pn X¼

i 1 xi

n

While easy to calculate, the mean of a data distri bution is sometimes affected by extreme values. Users of the mean should be sensitive to this possible problem when comparing means from different datasets. For ex ample, a set of values (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) have a mean of 5 because 5 ¼ (1 þ 3 þ 5 þ 7 þ 9)/5. This mean is not too different from the mean of 5.4 from another set of values: (3, 3, 5, 7, 9). If the first 3 in the second dataset is replaced by 100, such that the second set becomes (100, 3, 5, 7, 9), the new mean from the second set will become 15.2, a significantly different value from 5 while four out of five values in each set are still identical. It can be easily seen

424


that the value of the mean can be affected by only one extreme value in the dataset.

Median One way to avoid the influence of extreme values in a dataset when measuring central tendency is to use the median value of the dataset. The median of a dataset is the data value in the middle of the ordered data values. Alternatively, the median can be thought of as the 50th percentile in a data series. In xi, i ¼ 1, n, if n is an odd number, the median is xðnþ1=2Þ . If n is an even number, the median is xðn=2Þ . Using the earlier example of the datasets (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) and (100, 3, 5, 7, 9), the medians of these two datasets are both 5, not affected by the extreme value of 100. The relative positions of the mean and median of a dataset depend on whether the data distribution is symmetric or asymmetric. In a symmetric distribution, the mean and the median are the same, indicating that both are at the center of the data distribution. Both the mean and the median mark the division of the data dis tribution into two equal parts: 50% of the data values on one hand and another 50% on the other. In an asymmetric distribution in which there are more data values in the series that are smaller than the mean than data values greater than the mean, the mean of the series will be to the right of the median because the mean will have a greater value than the median. Conversely, in a distribution that has more values greater than the mean than values less than the mean, the mean will have a smaller value than the median in the data series.

Mode With categorical data, mean and median cannot be cal culated. In those situations, mode is used. The mode of a set of data values is defined as the value that occurs most frequently in the dataset. In other words, the mode is the value that has the highest frequency. While used less often for numeric data, mode can also be identified in a set of numeric values. It provides another way to repre sent the distribution of values in a dataset. Since mode is defined as the value occurring most frequently in a dis tribution, it is located at the peak point of a frequency distribution curve. Together, the mean, the median, and the mode are three indicators of central tendency in a data distribution. Depending on whether the data distribution is sym metric or asymmetric, their relative positions can be outlined in Figure 1. In Figure 1, vertical axes are fre quency of data values while the horizontal axes are data values. The example being described (Figure 1) is a data series with more data values greater than the mean in the

Mean

Median

Mode

Figure 1 Relative positions of mean, median, and mode in an asymmetric frequency distribution.

series than those smaller than the mean. As a result, the median is greater than the mean. This also highlights the fact that the mode does not need to be the mean and the median does not need to be the mode.

Mean Deviation Deviation is the difference between an individual value and the mean of that dataset. The mean deviation, in turn, is the average of all such deviations in a data series. It measures the average extent to which individual data values deviate from the mean. This statistic is often used to estimate how much individual values may deviate from their mean. Since some deviations are to be positive and others negative, absolute values are used in calcu lating the mean deviation. Specifically, the mean devi ation, D, can be calculated as Pn D¼

i 1 jðxi

XÞj

n

Variance Mean, median, or mode can be used to provide a rep resentative value of a set of data. While useful, none of these representative statistics inform us of how different values in the data series vary. To derive information on how values vary, the variance statistic can be calculated. Variance is the average of squared deviations between each individual data value and the mean of the dataset. Specifically, the variance, V, can be defined as Pn V ¼

i 1 ðxi

XÞ

2

n

Variance describes how individual values differ from the mean value of the dataset. It is similar to mean de viation except that the deviations are squared rather than being expressed in absolute values. Squaring eliminates the offsets between positive and negative deviations so that they can be summed and averaged. Variance describes how wide or narrow the range of data values is. It provides a useful complement to the mean in describing the distribution of values in a dataset. In Figure 2, it can be seen that a distribution with a smaller variance has data values concentrated mostly around the mean while a distribution with a greater


−

Frequency

+

Normal curve

425

Positively skewed

Negatively skewed

Figure 3 Skewness of frequency distributions.

Mean

Figure 2 Two frequency distributions with different variances.

variance has data values concentrated less around the mean. The larger the variance, the greater the dispersion, or difference, of data values.

Standard Deviation Standard deviation is defined as the square root of vari ance. Since variance is calculated as the average squared differences from individual values to their mean, taking the square root of variance will return this statistic to the same numeric magnitude as the data values. Therefore, standard deviation is at the same numeric scale as the data values. The standard deviation, S, can be calculated as s Pn S¼

i 1 ðxi

XÞ

2

n

Because the standard deviation of a dataset is at the same numeric scale as that of the data values, it is used much more often than the variance in describing the degree of difference, or dispersion, among data values.

Skewness Given the mean and the standard deviation, most dis tributions of data values can be described sufficiently. However, more descriptive statistics can be used to provide even more detail of the distributions. One of such descriptive statistics is skewness. This statistic provides information about whether a distribution is symmetric or skewed to either the end of lower values or the end of higher values. Skewness, SK, can be calculated as Pn SK ¼

i 1 ðxi

XÞ

3

The middle diagram is said to be positively skewed. The right diagram, in turn, has more values greater than the mean than values smaller than the mean and is negatively skewed.

Kurtosis The last descriptive statistic is kurtosis, which provides information for the degree of peakedness of a data dis tribution. Peakedness in a data distribution is the degree to which data values are concentrated around the mean. Datasets with high kurtosis tend to have a distinct peak near the mean and tend to decline rapidly, and have heavy tails. Datasets with low kurtosis tend to have a flat top near the mean rather than a sharp peak. Data distributions that have the same means, the same standard deviations, and the same degrees of skewness can have different kurtosis because they may have different degrees of the peakedness. For example, Figure 4 describes two distributions with the same means and the same standard deviations but with obvious different degrees of peakedness around the means. The curve with solid line has greater kurtosis than that of the curve in dash line. Kurtosis, K, can be calculated as Pn K ¼

i 1 ðxi

4

XÞ

nS 4

Greater values of K indicate higher degrees of peaked ness whereas smaller K values indicate flatter distri butions. In practice, however, we often subtract 3 from the calculated K values so that we would have positive K values or negative K values with respect to 3. This is because K value for a normal curve often approximates 3 and that comparisons are often made with respect to normal curves. In this case, a positive kurtosis indicates a distribution whose data values are more concentrated around the mean than those in a normal distribution. Similarly, a negative kurtosis, in this case, indicates a distribution that is more disperse than a normal distribution.

nS 3

In Figure 3, the left diagram describes a normal curve that is symmetric and without skewness. The middle diagram describes a skewed distribution with more values smaller than the mean than values greater than the mean.

Grouped Data When the objects of study are in large numbers or when it is not appropriate to reveal individual identities of the

426

Statistics, Descriptive S1 = S2

X1 = X2

Figure 4 Two frequency distributions with the same mean and the same standard deviation but different kurtosis (peakedness).

study objects, researchers often group them into cat egories for further analysis. In such cases, a representative value, typically the midpoint value, from each category is used with the number of data values in the corresponding category for calculating descriptive statistics. For ex ample, let pi with i ¼ 1, n represent the midpoint value of the ith category and fi as the number of data values (frequency) in that category, the calculation of the mean for grouped data, X¯ G , can be summing the products of midpoints and frequencies and then dividing this sum with the total frequency Pn f i pi XG ¼ Pi n 1 i 1fi

Similarly, variance (VG), standard deviation (SG), skewness (SKG), and kurtosis (KG) for grouped data can be calculated by extending the corresponding formulas discussed above to the following: Pn VG ¼

f i ð pi i 1P n i 1fi

sP n SG ¼

SK G ¼

XG Þ

f i ð pi i 1P n i 1fi

2

XG Þ

2

Pn 3 i 1 f i ð pi XG Þ Pn 3 i 1 f i SG

to better reflect the various characteristics of data distribution. For example, for calculating the average family in come of all 88 counties in the state of Ohio in the United States, we can use the 88 average family income figures in the state. Simply adding these 88 figures and then div iding their sum by 88 will yield an average that may not be very indicative to the true income trend. This is because the average family income figures from large counties are treated the same as those from small coun ties. A more desirable way to calculate this statistic will be to weight each average family income figure with the number of families in that county in the computation procedures. In essence, we treat each county as a ‘group’ and calculate the grouped mean of average family in comes by county.

Spatial Descriptive Statistics In human geography, we often work with data that are associated with locations. We could be measuring areas of political units, we could be counting population of census tracts, we could be averaging family incomes among sampled neighborhoods, and so on. All these types of analyses call for additional information beyond what classical statistics can provide. For example, knowing the average family income of a set of sample neighborhoods may be achieved by calculating the mean of those family income figures for the neighborhoods in the study. However, we may want to know if these neighborhoods are very far apart from or clustered with each other. To assist analysts in describing such spatial patterns of the data and their locations, spatial descriptive statistics have been developed from extending the classical descriptive statistics.

Mean Center Given a set of points, P, with n points defined in two dimensional space as pi ¼ (xi, yi), where i ¼ 1, n, the mean center, C, can be calculated as Pn C ¼ ðxc ; yc Þ ¼

and Pn 4 1 f i ð pi XG Þ K G ¼ i P n 4 i 1 f i SG

With the proliferation of computers and computation technology, it seems that the descriptive statistics based on grouped data are less useful because we can always include every data value in our calculation. However, there are situations where such formulas should be used

i 1 xi

n

Pn ;

i 1 yi

n

The mean center gives an estimate of the spatial focal point of a set of points. It gives the central tendency of a set of points. When points in the set have different relative im portance, it is possible to calculate a weighted mean center by multiplying each coordinate with its predefined weight and then calculate the weighted mean from all of the weighted x coordinates and the weighted mean from


all of the weighted y coordinates as Cw ¼ ðxcw ; ycw Þ ¼

Pn Pn wx wy Pi n 1 i i ; Pi n 1 i i i 1 wi i 1 wi

where wi is the weight associated with point (xi, yi).

Median Center Using the concept of the median, the median center is the point whose coordinates are defined as the median of all x coordinates and the median of all y coordinates of the geographic objects in the dataset. Expanding from the classic descriptive statistics, the mean center and the median center have similar pros and cons. The mean center may be more affected by any outliers than the median center. It should be noted that the median center cannot be precisely defined to a unique pair of x co ordinate and y coordinate. This is because its x and y coordinates can be anywhere between the most centered geographic objects.

Extending from the concept of standard deviation in classic statistics, the standard distance provides a similar measure in two dimensional space. Combining the standard deviation in x axis and that in y axis, the standard distance, SD, in a point set can be calculated as i 1 ðxi

SD ¼

xc Þ2 þ n

Pn

i 1 ð yi

yc Þ2

Similarly, if each point is associated with a predefined weight, then the weighted standard distance would be sP n SD ¼

i 1

wi ðxi

dictated by the river course. Similarly, occurrences of algae on the surface of an elongated lake would tend to show an elongated pattern of point distribution. To account for this directional influence, the circle defined by the mean center and the standard distance is modified for that purpose to the standard deviational ellipse. This ellipse can be calculated by first performing al gebraic operations of transforming all coordinates to a new coordinate system that has the mean center as the origin and then apply an equation (given below) to cal culate the directional angle that describes the directional bias. Finally, this angle is incorporated into a second set of equation to calculate the deviation along the x axis and the deviation along the y axis. The transformation of point coordinates to a new coordinate system that has the mean center, (xc , yc), can be done by the following algebraic operations: xi0 ¼ xi yi0 ¼ yi

xc yc

The calculation of the angle for rotating the point set to fit the directional bias is by this operation:

Standard Distance

s Pn

427

xcw Þ2 þ Pn

Pn

i 1

i 1

wi ð yi

ycw Þ2

wi

When examining the spatial distribution of a set of points, analysts often draw a closed circular curve around the mean center with the standard distance as the radius. The size of this circle indicates how concentrated or how dispersed the set of points are around the mean center.

Pn tany ¼

0 2 i 1 ðxi Þ

0 2 i 1 ðyi Þ

Pn

þ

q

Pn

2

0 2 i 1 ðxi Þ 0 0 i 1 xi yi

Pn

2 Pn 0 2 þ4 0 0 2 i 1 ðyi Þ i 1 xi yi

Pn

Concluding Remarks Descriptive statistics provide summarizing information of the characteristics and distribution of values in one or more datasets. The classical descriptive statistics allow analysts to have a quick glance of the central tendency and the degree of dispersion of values in datasets. They are useful in understanding a data distribution and in comparing data distributions. For human geographers, it is often necessary to take into account the locational references of the data we work with. The spatial de scriptive statistics allow analysts to assess the central tendency and variation of data in spatial context. The two types of descriptive statistics are complementary. Combining both statistics, analysts are able to study the geographic phenomena they work with. See also: Distance.

Standard Deviational Ellipse Further Readings The spatial distribution of a set of points is often af fected by many factors such that the distribution may have a unique orientation, or directional bias. For ex ample, housing settlements along a river valley are often

Clark, W. A. V. and Hosking, P. L. (1986). Statistical Methods for Geographers. New York: Wiley. Ebdon, D. (1988). Statistics in Geography (2nd edn.). Oxford: Blackwell.

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Fotheringham, A. S., Brunsdon, C. and Charlton, M. (2000). Quantitative Geography: Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis. London: Sage Publications. Griffith, D. and Amrhein, C. G. (1991). Statistical Analysis for Geographers. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lee, J. and Wong, D. W. S. (2001). Statistical Analysis with ArcView GIS. New York: Wiley. Rogerson, P. (2001). Statistical Methods for Geography. London: Sage Publications.

Taylor, P. (1983). Quantitative Methods in Geography: An Introduction to Spatial Analysis (2nd edn.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Tobler, W. R. (1970). A computer model simulation of urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic Geography 46(2), 234 240. Wong, D. W. S. and Lee, J. (2005). Statistical Analysis of Geographic Information with ArcView GIS and ArcGIS. New York: Wiley.

Statistics, Inferential D. M. Scott, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Hypothesis An unproven statement concerning a problem under investigation. Parameter A numerical descriptive measure of a population that is calculated from the values comprising the population. Population A complete set of data (values or measurements) associated with some process or phenomenon. Probability Sampling A form of sampling whereby every element contained within a sampling frame has a known probability of being included in the sample. Random Variable A rule that assigns one numerical value to each simple event of an experiment. Sample A subset of data selected from a population. Sampling Frame A structure containing the entire set of elements from which a sample will be drawn. Statistic A numerical descriptive measure of a sample that is calculated from the values comprising the sample.

Introduction The goal of scientific research in human geography is to further our understanding of geographic processes and geographic phenomena. In statistics, the complete set of values or measurements pertaining to a particular process or phenomenon is called a population. The commuting times of all Canadian workers, for example, form a population. For a variety of practical and theoretical reasons, however, research typically proceeds based on a probability sample from a much larger (or even infinitely large) population. To be useful for scientific inquiry, the sample must be typical or representative of the popu lation from which it is drawn – that is, it must accurately reflect the underlying characteristics of the population without bias. If this is indeed the case, then a human geographer can use inferential statistics to make gener alizations about a population based on a sample, thus fulfilling the goal of scientific inquiry. There are two basic types of statistical inference: es timation and hypothesis testing. In some instances, a human geographer might simply be interested in esti mating a population characteristic, otherwise known as a parameter, from a sample statistic. For example, the mean commuting time of all Canadian workers could be estimated from a sample of commuting times. However,

given that probability sampling involves some un certainty, it is unlikely that the sample statistic will equal exactly the true population parameter. For this reason, a confidence interval is placed around the statistic. This is known as interval estimation. Hypothesis testing is more involved than estimation and is often considered the core of statistical analysis due to the important role that it plays in scientific research. Simply put, in human geography, the formulation and testing of hypotheses is what furthers our understanding of geographic processes and geographic phenomena. For example, a hypothesis test could be used to determine if the commuting time for a sample of Canadian workers influences time spent participating in social activities (i.e., activities with co workers, friends, and family). If a sig nificant relationship is found between the two variables, then it can be concluded that the relationship also holds for all such workers. In turn, this finding can help im prove our understanding of how work travel impacts the quality of life of Canadian workers. The key to understanding inferential statistics is to first understand what some may argue is the most im portant concept in statistics, the sampling distribution, which serves as the foundation for both interval estima tion and hypothesis testing. Given their importance to inferential statistics, sampling distributions are discussed in detail in the next section. After this, estimation is addressed followed by a section detailing hypothesis testing. The material presented in the following three sections pertains to what is commonly known as classical inference. An alternative to this approach is Bayesian inference, which is mentioned briefly in the final section.

Sampling Distributions Sample statistics such as the mean ð¯xÞ, the standard de viation (s), and the proportion (p) are random variables meaning that their values can vary from one sample to another. As such, each statistic computed from a sample of size n drawn from a population is associated with a probability distribution known as the sampling distri bution of the statistic. Simply put, a sampling distribution depicts the probability of occurrence (i.e., relative fre quency) of all values a statistic can assume when com puted for all possible independent, random samples of size n. The number of such samples, and therefore the number of statistics, is easily determined using com binatorial mathematics. Specifically, the number of ways of selecting a sample of size n from a population of size N

429

430


is computed as: N N! ¼ n n!ðN nÞ!

½1

where ! is the factorial symbol. Holding sample size constant, as population size increases and approaches infinity, the same is also true for the number of samples. On the other hand, holding population size constant and varying sample size results in a symmetrical distribution whereby the number of samples is maximized for a sample size that is half of the population size. Sampling distributions are theoretical entities. While it is possible to draw all samples of a particular size from a finite population and compute a statistic for each sample, it is impractical to do so for a host of reasons, including the sheer number of samples that might have to be drawn (as suggested above), and more importantly, the simple fact that such an endeavor would require infor mation for the entire population. Such information is rarely available (an exception would be a national, 100% census of the population), and if it is, then there is no need to use inferential statistics in the first place, which implies that there is no need to create a sampling distribution. For the sake of making the concept of the sampling distribution, including its properties, more concrete, a series of three is constructed using data on commuting times for Canadian workers obtained from Cycle 19 of the General Social Survey of Canada. A total of 7309 respondents reported commuting times on their survey day. For illustrative purposes only, the commuting times 50

Data summary Mean Standard deviation Minimum Maximum Skewness Kurtosis Population size

40

Relative frequency (%)

of these workers are considered to be the population from which samples are drawn. The distribution of commuting times is shown in Figure 1. As can be seen, it is positively skewed (skewness has a value of 6.13), has a mean (m) of 51.10 minutes, and a standard deviation (s) of 54.43 minutes. Overall, the distribution is not normally distributed. Although sampling distributions could be created for any one of a number of statistics, the mean ð¯xÞ is chosen for demonstration. Sampling distributions of the mean are derived for sample sizes of 250, 500, and 1000. In each instance, the sampling distribution is approximated by drawing 2500 random samples from the population using a computer program written explicitly for this purpose. The mean of each sample is then computed. Ideally, the sampling distributions should be created from all possible samples. However, in each case, the number, as calculated according to eqn [1], is astronomically large. The three sampling distributions, along with fitted normal curves, are shown in Figure 2. Like any other distribution, the sampling distribution of a statistic has both a mean and a standard deviation, which is more commonly known as the standard error of the statistic. For each sampling distribution in Figure 2, the values of these statistics, respectively, mx and sx are shown. It is clear that for each sampling distribution, mx is extremely close to m. Furthermore, it can be seen that as sample size increases, sx decreases. In turn, this implies that the mean ð¯xÞ of a larger sample has a tendency to be closer to m than the mean of a smaller sample. Finally, despite the fact that the population is not normally dis tributed, the sampling distributions are.

51.10 54.43 1 1080 6.13 76.08 7309

30

20

10

0 0

80

160 240 320 400 480 560 640 720 800 880 960 1040 Commuting time (minutes)

Figure 1 Distribution of commuting times for Canadian workers. From Cycle 19 of the General Social Survey of Canada.


431

n = 250


20 15 10

Mean Standard error Minimum Maximum

51.12 3.46 40.35 65.34


51.16 2.42 43.05 62.66


51.11 1.73 45.85 57.86

5 0

n = 500


20 15 10 5 0

n = 1000


20 15 10 5 0 40.4

42.4

43.6

45 2

46.8

48.4

50.0

51 6

53.2

54.8

56.4

58 0

59.6

61.2

62.8

64.4

Mean commuting time (minutes)

Figure 2 Sampling distributions of mean commuting times for Canadian workers for sample sizes of 250, 500, and 1000. Source: computed by author using data obtained from Cycle 19 of the General Social Survey of Canada.

For sample sizes of nZ30, the central limit theorem summarizes important properties of the sampling distri bution of the mean, two of which are mentioned above. Specifically, the sampling distribution of the mean will have a mean ðmx Þ equal to m, have apstandard deviation or standard error ðsx Þ equal to s= n, and be normally distributed around the mean ðmx Þ. Thus far, the discussion of sampling distributions has focused on those created by drawing all possible single samples from a population. However, sampling distri butions can be created by drawing and computing stat istics for all possible pairs of samples, triplets of samples, or other sets of samples. This is often the case for hy pothesis testing. For example, the sampling distribution for the two sample difference of means z test is derived from the differences in sample means for all possible pairs of samples of sizes n1 and n2 drawn from a popu lation where each sample size is Z30. This sampling distribution is known as the sampling distribution of the difference between means. It should be clear that many sampling distributions are used in inferential statistics. Each differs from the next according to sample size, whether single or multiple samples are drawn from a population, and the statistic being calculated. Fortunately, to reiterate, sampling dis tributions are theoretical entities, which means that we know what they look like without actually forming them. In practice, they are approximated by well known

distributions such as the standard normal (z) distribution, the t distribution, the F distribution, and the chi square (w2) distribution, to name a few. The exact shape of virtually all such distributions is, however, determined by sample size, which is often measured in terms of degrees of freedom.

Estimation Point Estimation The simplest form of statistical inference is point esti mation. Simply put, a statistic is calculated from a sample and used as an estimate of its corresponding population parameter. Such statistics are called point estimators. A point estimator is a rule or formula that is applied to a sample to calculate a single number or point that can be used as an estimate of a population parameter. For ex ample, the sample mean ð¯xÞ is a point estimator of the population mean (m). Likewise, the sample proportion (p) is a point estimator of the population proportion (r). Often many different point estimators can be found to estimate the same population parameter. Information about each estimator is contained in its sampling distri bution. Such information is crucial in determining the best point estimator or statistic for a particular parameter. For instance, a point estimator should be unbiased. An un biased estimator is one whose sampling distribution has a

432


mean that is equal to the population parameter that it intends to estimate. Obviously, this implies that if the mean of the sampling distribution is not equal to the population parameter, then the point estimator is biased – that is, it either underestimates or overestimates the pa rameter. The three sampling distributions of the mean shown in Figure 2 provide irrefutable evidence that the sample mean ð¯xÞ is an unbiased estimator of the popu lation mean (m). Specifically, the mean commuting time of each sampling distribution ðmx Þ equals the mean com muting time of all workers (m) – that is, 51.1 min. Another feature of sampling distributions that can help determine the best point estimator for a particular parameter is the standard error of the statistic (i.e., the standard deviation of the sampling distribution). Quite simply, given a choice between two or more unbiased estimators, the one with the smallest standard error should be chosen. The reason for this is that standard error measures how closely values of a statistic cluster around an unknown population parameter. Figure 2 il lustrates such a choice. The sampling distributions for three point estimators of the mean commuting time of all workers are shown. These estimators vary only accord ing to sample size (i.e., 250, 500, and 1000). Clearly, the smallest standard error, 1.73 min, is associated with the largest sample size. Given a choice between the three estimators, the sample mean ð¯xÞ derived from a sample size of 1000 is chosen. In summary, when making an inference about a population parameter, the best point estimator should have an unbiased sampling distribution. Such estimators are a matter of record. Quite simply, the best (unbiased) point estimator of a population parameter is its corres ponding sample statistic. If a choice exists among two or more unbiased estimators, which is sometimes the case, then the best point estimator is the one whose sampling distribution has the smallest standard error. Interval Estimation We know from the discussion thus far that a point estimate of an unknown population parameter can vary from one sample of size n to another. Furthermore, the exact location of any particular statistic within its sampling distribution is unknown. Given these facts, it is necessary to assess the accuracy of any given estimate of a population parameter. Interval estimation is used for this task. Simply put, a range or interval of values that has a known probability of cap turing the population parameter being estimated is calcu lated from a sample. The formula that specifies how to use a sample to derive this interval is called an interval estimator. For example, the interval estimator for the population mean (m) for large samples (nZ30) is x 7 za=2 sx¯

½2

where x¯ is the sample mean, z is the z value (from the standard normal distribution) for a given significance level a, and sx is the standard error of the mean. For small samples (no30), z is replaced by a t value from the t dis tribution. Generally, interval estimators for other popu lation parameters are constructed in a fashion similar to that shown in eqn [2]. The range of values derived by an interval estimator, bounded by upper and lower values known as confidence limits, is called a confidence interval because there is a known probability that the interval surrounding a sample statistic captures the population parameter being esti mated. This probability and its expression as a percentage are respectively referred to as the confidence coefficient (1 a) and the confidence level for the interval estimate. Likewise, the probability that the population parameter falls outside the interval is called the significance level (a) of the estimate. The concept of interval estimation is further ex plained by means of illustration by turning, once again, to Figure 2. For each sampling distribution, all of which are normally distributed, 95% of all mean commuting times fall within the lightly shaded region delimited by the outer dashed lines. This region is equivalent to 1.96 standard errors above and below the mean, which is identified by the dashed line at the center of each dis tribution. It follows that any sample mean computed from a random sample of size 250, 500, or 1000 has a probability of 0.95 of falling within the shaded region of its respective sampling distribution. If a sample mean does fall anywhere within this region, surrounding it on both sides by 1.96 standard errors (i.e., x¯ 7 1:96sx ) will identify a range of values that encompasses the mean commuting time of all workers (m). The confidence limits provided by x¯ 7 1:96sx define the 95% confidence interval, which has a known probability (0.95) of cap turing the unknown population mean (m). As with point estimation, an interval estimate of a population parameter should be as precise as possible. This implies that narrow confidence intervals are pre ferred over wider ones. The width of a confidence interval, and therefore the precision of an estimate, is governed by three factors. All other things being equal, interval width increases as confidence level increases, as the amount of variability in the population increases, and as sample size decreases. Of these factors, we have little control over the second. However, to some extent, we can manipulate the first and third to produce narrower intervals for a price that involves trade offs between precision, accuracy, and cost/effort. In particular, when modifying confidence level, we must bear in mind that the trade off concerns precision and accuracy. Increased precision can only be achieved by reducing the con fidence level and therefore the accuracy of the estimate. Although we can produce interval estimates for virtually


any confidence level, our choice is by and large tied to tradition – that is, the most commonly accepted con fidence levels in practice are 90%, 95%, and 99%. When it comes to sample size, the trade off is between precision and cost/effort. Simply put, both precision and accuracy can be enhanced by purchasing a larger sample. However, the relationship between precision and cost/effort is subject to diminishing returns. In other words, the rate of reduction in interval width decreases with sample size, which means that a point is reached whereby it makes little sense to further increase sample size. Fortunately, interval estimators, such as that shown in eqn [2], can be manipulated to determine the minimum sample size needed to estimate a confidence interval with a desired width (precision) and confidence level (accuracy).

Hypothesis Testing As mentioned earlier, hypothesis testing is more involved than estimation. To be more precise, it consists of six steps (Table 1). Together, these steps constitute a formal procedure whose goal is to draw inferences or conclu sions about the values of one or more population par ameters based on sample statistics estimating those parameters. As with interval estimation, hypothesis test ing also involves some uncertainty – that is, it is possible to draw the wrong conclusions about values of popu lation parameters based on sample information. This possibility is, however, controlled by the researcher who, as part of the formal hypothesis testing procedure, must assign a measurable probability of committing such an error to each conclusion. Hypothesis testing begins by defining two comple mentary hypotheses. As such tests involve either a com parison of one or more population parameters or a relationship between two variables, the null hypothesis (H0) usually states that no significant difference or rela tionship exists. Moreover, any observed difference or re lationship is merely the result of sampling error (recall that values of a statistic vary from one sample to another). In contrast, the alternative hypothesis (HA) states that the difference or relationship is indeed significant – that is, what is observed is too great to be attributed to sampling error. Furthermore, the alternative hypothesis takes one of Table 1

Hypothesis testing procedure

Step

Task

1 2 3 4

State null and alternative hypotheses Select appropriate statistical test and list its assumptions Select significance level (a) Establish the decision rule for rejecting the null hypothesis Calculate test statistic or its p-value Make decision regarding the null hypothesis

5 6

433

two forms. It is either nondirectional or directional, which implies that it can be written using one of three inequal ities: not equal (a), greater than (>), or less than (o). The choice between forms depends on whether a priori infor mation exists to justify a statement of directionality. If such information does not exist, then the nondirectional alter native is specified. The second step in hypothesis testing involves se lecting an appropriate statistical test to address the re search problem at hand. Oftentimes, this is perceived as the most difficult step in hypothesis testing given the wide variety of tests available to choose from. Fortu nately, some simple rules of thumb can be used to guide this selection. First and foremost, the choice of statistical test depends on the type of hypothesis being tested – is it a comparison or is it a relationship? The answer to this question should be obvious from the research problem and its translation into null and alternative hypotheses. Furthermore, if the answer is comparison, then the number and type (i.e., dependent or independent) of samples being compared must also be considered. Third, data can be measured at various scales: nominal, ordinal, interval, and ratio. Likewise, statistical tests are designed to work with data at specific levels of measurement. Traditionally, these tests are organized into two groups: parametric and nonparametric. Simply put, parametric tests can only be applied to interval or ratio data, and nonparametric tests to nominal or ordinal data. A final consideration in test selection concerns the assumptions underlying parametric tests. For example, many such tests assume that the population from which a sample is drawn is normally distributed with a mean m and standard deviation s. For samples of size nr2000, this assumption can be tested using a Shapiro–Wilk test (it is assumed that the sample is representative of the popu lation from which it is drawn). If this or any other as sumption is violated then an appropriate nonparametric alternative should be applied to the data. This is espe cially true for sample sizes of no30. In turn, this means that the data must first be downscaled to either nominal or ordinal form according to the requirements of the statistical test chosen. For instance, Spearman rank–order correlation (nonparametric), which uses ordinal data, could be used in place of Pearson product–moment correlation (parametric). Table 2 lists some common statistical tests and identifies the criteria governing their selection. The third step in hypothesis testing involves selecting an appropriate significance level (a), which is the prob ability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true (see Table 3 for a summary of possible outcomes from hy pothesis testing). This type of error, known as a type I error, is attributed to sampling error. This means that an observed difference or relationship can occur due to the fact that values of a test statistic vary from one sample to

434 Table 2


Some common statistical tests along with criteria governing their selection

Test

Type of hypothesisa

Number of samples

Type of samples b

Type of datac

Normality assumptiond

Chi-square goodness of fit Kolmogorov Smirnov goodness of fit Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed ranks Wilcoxon rank sum Mann Whitney U Kruskal Wallis H One-sample difference of means One-sample difference of proportions Matched pairs t Two-sample difference of means Two-sample difference of proportions Analysis of variance (ANOVA) Contingency analysis Spearman rank order correlation Pearson product moment correlation

C C

1 1

I I

N/O O

N N

C

1/2

D

O

N

C C C C C

2 2 3þ 1 1

I I I I I

O O O I/R I/R

N N N Y N

C C C

1/2 2 2

D I I

I/R I/R I/R

Y Y N

C R R R

3þ 1 1 1

I I I I

I/R N/O O I/R

Y N N Y

a

C ¼ comparison, R ¼ relationship. I ¼ independent, D ¼ dependent. c N ¼ nominal, O ¼ ordinal, I ¼ interval, R ¼ ratio. d N ¼ no, Y ¼ yes. b

another. In other words, like an ordinary sample statistic (e.g., x¯ , s, or p), a test statistic has a corresponding sampling distribution, which means that extreme values, although highly unlikely, are not impossible to obtain. Thus, to minimize the likelihood of committing a type I error, low values of a, such as 0.05 and 0.01, are usually selected. Once a significance level is selected, it is used to es tablish a decision rule whereby the null hypothesis is re jected. At this stage, the researcher must choose between one of two methods of hypothesis testing for this and subsequent steps. The first method, often referred to as the classical method, identifies the critical value of a test statistic that corresponds to a for a one tailed (directional) test and a/2 for a two tailed (nondirectional) test. Based on this value, the sampling distribution of the test statistic is then divided into regions of rejection and nonrejection. If the statistical test is two tailed, the rejection region is distributed equally across both tails of the sampling dis tribution rather than being placed in one as is the case for a one tailed test. A decision rule, which identifies the re jection region, is then specified. Obviously, this implies that the rule will be written with reference to the critical value of the test statistic. In contrast, when following the p value method of hypothesis testing, the decision rule for rejecting the null hypothesis is written merely in terms of a for both one tailed and two tailed tests. More precisely, the probability value (p value) must be less than a (i.e., if p valueoa, reject H0). The fifth step in hypothesis testing involves calcu lating a test statistic using the formula specified for a

Table 3 Decision

Do not reject H0 Reject H0

Possible outcomes from hypothesis testing Reality H0 is true

H0 is false

Correct decision (prob. 1 a) Type I error (prob.

Type II error (prob.

b)

a) Correct decision (prob. 1 b)

particular statistical test. For example, the formula for calculating the test statistic for a one sample difference of means test involving a large sample (nZ30) is as follows: z¼

m

x sx¯

½3

where z is the test statistic. If the p value method of hypothesis testing is being used, then it is also necessary to convert the test statistic into a probability. This is ac complished as follows. If the test is one tailed, the p value is equal to the area of the sampling distribution of the test statistic beyond the calculated value of the statistic in the same direction as the alternative hypothesis. Alter natively, if the test is two tailed, the p value is equal to twice the area of the sampling distribution beyond the calculated value of the test statistic, thus accounting for both tails. The p value calculated measures the exact probability of making a type I error. Based on sample evidence, hypothesis testing cul minates with a decision to either reject or not reject the


435

null hypothesis. This decision is rendered by comparing the test statistic or p value calculated in step five to the decision rule established in step four. If either of these values meets the conditions of the decision rule, then the null hypothesis is rejected. Failing this, we simply state that the sample evidence is insufficient to reject the null hypothesis at the specified significance level. By wording our decision as above, we avoid risking a type II error, which is accepting the null hypothesis as true when it is actually false (see Table 3).

the specification of prior probabilities, which reflect a researcher’s intuition concerning the value of a popu lation parameter. These probabilities are modified by sample information to derive posterior probabilities for the parameter. Unfortunately, few human geographers receive formal training in Bayesian inference. As it is beyond the scope of this article to delve further into this form of inference, the interested reader is referred to the texts listed under further reading for an extensive treat ment of the subject.

Concluding Remarks

See also: Monte Carlo Simulation; Sampling; Statistics, Descriptive; Statistics, Overview.

To reiterate what was said at the beginning of this article, the goal of scientific research in human geography is to further our understanding of geographic processes and geographic phenomena. Central to this task is inferential statistics. For this reason, human geographers, like many other social scientists, usually receive formal training in the application of such statistics as part of their under graduate and, to a lesser extent, graduate studies. The subject matter covered in this article (i.e., sampling dis tributions, estimation, and hypothesis testing) forms the core of such training, which implies that human geog raphers are educated in a form of statistical inference known as classical inference. Sampling distributions, which describe what will happen in the long run should all samples of a given size n be drawn from a population, are at the heart of classical inference. The probabilities formed are empirical probabilities, which measure the likelihood of specific events. In turn, this implies that significance level, in both interval estimation and hy pothesis testing, measures the probability of rare events occurring. Another approach to statistical inference is Bayesian inference. Unlike classical inference, Bayesian inference treats probabilities as personal measures of uncertainty based on available evidence. In other words, such prob abilities are subjective. This subjectivity is captured in

Further Reading Bećhard, M. and Marchand, I. (2006). General Social Survey Cycle 19: Time Use (2005) User’s Guide to the Public Use Microdata File. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Burt, J. E. and Barker, G. M. (2003). Elementary Statistics for Geographers (2nd edn.). New York: Guilford Press. Casella, G. and Berger, R. L. (2002). Statistical Inference (2nd edn.). Pacific Grove, CA: Thomson Learning. Diekhoff, G. (1992). Statistics for the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Univariate, Bivariate, Multivariate. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers. Fotheringham, A. S., Brunsdon, C. and Charlton, M. (2000). Quantitative Geography: Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis. London: Sage Publications. Gelman, A., Carlin, J. B., Stern, H. S. and Rubin, D. B. (2003). Bayesian Data Analysis (2nd edn.). Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC. Gibbons, J. D. and Chakraborti, S. (2003). Nonparameteric Statistical Inference (4th edn.). New York: Marcel Dekker. Griffith, D. A. and Amrhein, C. G. (1997). Multivariate Statistical Analysis for Geographers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Iversen, G. R. (1984). Bayesian Statistical Inference. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Keller, D. K. (2006). The Tao of Statistics: A Path to Understanding (with No Math). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. McClave, J. T. and Sincich, T. (2006). Statistics (10th edn.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. McGrew, J. C. and Monroe, C. B. (2000). An Introduction to Statistical Problem Solving in Geography (2nd edn.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill. Rogerson, P. A. (2006). Statistical Methods for Geography: A Student’s Guide (2nd edn.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Wong, D. W. S. and Lee, J. (2005). Statistical Analysis of Geographic Information with ArcView GIS and ArcGIS. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

Statistics, Overview G. M. Robinson, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Algorithm A procedure or set of instructions for accomplishing a (statistical) task. Chaos It describes the behavior of some nonlinear dynamic systems, which under certain conditions exhibit dynamics sensitive to initial conditions (popularly termed the butterfly effect). The behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random, even though they are deterministic in that their future dynamics depend on their initial conditions, and there are no random elements involved. This behavior is known as deterministic chaos. Cluster Analysis The classification of objects into different groups by the partitioning of a dataset into clusters so that the data in each cluster share a common trait (defined usually by a correlation coefficient or distance measure). Confidence Interval That interval within which a parameter (such as the mean) of a population is calculated to have a stated probability of lying. Confidence Limits The lower and upper boundaries of a confidence interval. Contingency Table Tables used to record and analyze the relationship between two or more variables (usually for categorical data). Correlation The strength and direction of a linear relationship between two random variables. Dendrogram A tree diagram frequently used to illustrate the arrangement of clusters in a dataset produced by a clustering algorithm. Dummy Variable A qualitative variable (measured on a binary scale) that can be incorporated into a regression analysis. Entropy A measure of the uncertainty associated with a random variable. Factor Analysis A statistical data reduction technique used to explain variability among observed random variables in terms of fewer unobserved random variables called factors. Fractal A rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which approximates to a reduced-size copy of the whole. It is derived from the Latin fractus meaning ‘broken’ or ‘fractured’. Frequency Distribution A list of the values that a variable takes in a sample. Hypothesis An empirical proposition testable by experience. It is a statement in the form of an unproven theory.

436

Inferential Statistics Inferences made about a population on the basis of a random sample drawn from it. Markov Process A sequence of states for which the conditional probability distribution of a state in the future can be deduced using only the current state. The past states carry no information about future states. Monte Carlo Methods Simulation methods that are nondeterministic, usually by incorporating a random element. Neighborhood Effect The propensity of geographically proximate locations to be more similar than places geographically remote from one another. Population The entire aggregate of individuals or items (sometimes called observations) from which samples are drawn. Probability Distribution A function of the probabilities of a mutually exclusive and exhaustive set of events. Regression The relation of a dependent or response variable to specified independent variables. Sample A set of individuals or items (sometimes called observations) selected from a population so that properties or parameters of the population may be estimated. Spatial Autocorrelation Spatially distributed variables being characterized by correlations between adjacent values. Statistics The art and science of gathering, analyzing, and making inferences from numerical data. Variable Any set of numerical values being investigated, such as values of prices, earnings, and distances. The term ‘variable’ denotes that it possesses a number of different values. To indicate these different values a special notation is used: xi.

Introduction The first genuine statistical inquiries were instituted in the United Kingdom (UK) and continental Europe in the seventeenth century as greater emphasis was placed on the exchange value of commodities, and therefore on the quantifiable aspects of people, events, and objects. There was a demand for more precise measurements and ac counting procedures. Subsequent advances in science led to statistical techniques being developed for analyzing experimental data, for creating effective designs in gathering data, and for controlling the quality of


manufactured products. Over the course of the next two centuries, into the nineteenth century, these develop ments represented the evolution of statistics as a clearly recognizable subset of mathematics. However, this im pinged little upon the work of geographers prior to the 1940s. Even then, it was only relatively simple de scriptions of geographical data that were employed. Averages, percentages, and graphical depictions of data, often in maps, were geographers’ main contact with statistics. This changed in the 1950s and 1960s as part of geo graphy’s quantitative revolution, pioneered in the United States and the UK. A wide range of techniques was ap plied to geographical data as increased emphasis was placed on utilizing quantitative analysis wherever pos sible. In some cases this was part of a deliberate pursuit of the generation of law like statements; in others it was a more speculative empiricism fueled by growing avail ability of large datasets and improvements in computer technology to handle such information. The initial wave of adoption of statistics by geographers emphasized techniques to measure the strength of relationships (correlation and regression), but there was also wide spread use of statistics to test hypotheses, and a gradual move to increased statistical sophistication as exemplified in the adoption of complex multivariate techniques and statistical models. By the end of the 1960s, few parts of the discipline remained unaffected by the introduction of statistical techniques, though concerns were voiced about in appropriate applications and the implications of the philosophical underpinnings of the new methods. Nevertheless, there had been a series of important de velopments in the use of statistics by geographers: 1. developing the use of statistical hypothesis testing to incorporate the full range of tests found in inferential statistics; 2. extending the study of relationships from the mea surement of the strength of the relationship between two variables (bivariate measures) to multivariate situations; 3. generating specifically spatial statistics, and moving from very simple descriptive applications to more complex analyses of spatial structure; 4. linking the spatial and temporal realms through time series analysis, analyzing the spatial form of temporal change through forecasting and predictive methods, and examining spatial diffusion processes; and 5. using new techniques to both analyze and generate maps (e.g., trend surface analysis). From 1970 onward, as human geographers developed alternatives to approaches reliant primarily on statistical methods, statistics were used both in more specialist applications and in new ways, notably in examining

437

aspects of public policy. However, major advances have also occurred in the development of spatial statistics and the use of sophisticated statistical models. General trends have included: 1. greater concentration on process rather than form; 2. reappraisal of the nature and appropriateness of statistical inference; 3. the stimulus of applied forms of geographical re search, directing it into new areas, generating a need for different approaches and forms of analysis, in cluding the use of statistics within geographic infor mation systems (GISs) and statistical modeling; and 4. criticism of the use of quantitative methods as part of a widespread critique of their underlying philosophy, and greater reliance on qualitative methods with dif ferent philosophical bases of inquiry. This overview outlines key aspects of statistical analysis undertaken by geographers. It includes sections on the collection of numerical data through use of sampling procedures, the application of inferential statistics, an alysis of the strength of relationships, multivariate stat istics, use of generalized linear models (GLMs) and categorical data analysis, statistical models, spatial stat istics, research involving both spatial and temporal dimensions, and the most recent advances in the appli cation of statistical analysis to geographical problems. It demonstrates the wide and multifaceted application of statistical techniques by geographers, ranging from sim ple descriptive work to complex modeling and analytical applications.

Sampling and Statistical Description Sampling One of the central pillars of statistical analysis is the use of sampling procedures and the use of sample data to represent the characteristics of larger statistical popu lations. Populations can comprise discrete objects (e.g., people sampled using a questionnaire) or they can be continuous (e.g., slope angles measured on a hillside). There are six basic stages in a sampling process: 1. define the population; 2. define the sampling frame containing all the entities of the population, such as persons and places. Examples include telephone directories, electoral registers, and locations on a map; 3. specify the sampling unit (e.g., city streets, households); 4. determine the sampling method; 5. determine the size of sample; and 6. specify the operational procedures necessary for tak ing the sample.

438


Samples are used as representations of populations, and inferences about populations are made by analyzing samples (and hence the term ‘inferential statistics’). When employing maps as their sampling frame, geographers have used three different ways to ensure that all parts of the map may be selected in the sample (Figure 1): 1. point samples (generally based on grid intersections or map coordinates); 2. line samples (transects); and 3. area samples (quadrats) as used in botanical sampling. There are two basic types of sampling design: random and systematic sampling. In the former, an individual element in the population is as likely to be included in the sample as any other. This is generally achieved using either a random number table or a tombola system. Systematic sampling involves selection from the popu lation at regular intervals, achieving a uniform cover age, whereas random sampling may overlook parts of a population and provide over representation of others. Systematic sampling can sometimes replicate underlying regularities in the population. This therefore generates bias, or the inclusion of unrepresentative fractions of the population, which sampling is seeking to avoid. 0

x

Stratification is the commonest variant to the basic designs: separate samples are drawn from each subset of the population, for example, using divisions based on gender, age, or socioeconomic status. Stratified systematic unaligned sampling combines elements of random, systematic, and stratified sampling when selecting point samples from maps. More complex multistage designs are employed in national surveys, enabling very small samples to repre sent a national population, for example, in the UK, na tional political opinion polls sample just over 1000 voters. Pioneered in the US by George Gallup, this approach employs a series of stratifications of the voting popu lation: by region, type of constituency, ward, block, and household. Descriptive Statistics Once data have been collected, the first stage of analysis is description, the basis of which is the four statistical ‘moments’: the arithmetic mean, the standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. The mean (or average) is a measure of central tendency (Table 1) and is sometimes accompanied by a related measure, the mode (the most frequently occurring value in a set of observations). Several measures of dispersion are used as statistical descriptors. Three in particular are commonly used:

100

y

x

100

0

x

100

y

0

0

(a)

(b) 0

x

100

100

100

y

y

0

0 (d)

(c)

0 100

100

Figure 1 Types of sampling with a spatial sampling frame: (a) point sample: simple random sampling; (b) point sample: systematic sampling; (c) line sample: random coordinates; and (d) quadrant sample: random squares.


Sample Size

1. skewness: the extent to which observations occur on one particular side of the mean; 2. kurtosis: the degree of peakedness of a set of obser vations when plotted as a frequency distribution; and 3. standard deviation (the square root of the variance): measures the average deviation of a set of observations about the mean. When two sets of observations are compared the standard deviation is often replaced by a relative measure, the coefficient of variation, which expresses the standard deviation as a percentage of the mean.

When sampling, the most desirable sample size may be determined using the central limit theorem. If a random sample is taken from a population and the mean value, x¯ , is calculated, it is unlikely that this sample mean will correspond exactly with the population mean (m). If this process is repeated several times, using the same size of sample each time, a series of values of x¯ will be gener ated, termed the sampling distribution of x¯ . Provided this is repeated at least 30 times, when plotted as a graph it gives a bell shaped curve, known as a normal or Gaussian distribution, centered on the population mean (m) and symmetric about the point x¯ ¼ m. Around one obser vation in three lies more than one standard deviation from the mean, and about one observation in 20 lies more than two standard deviations from the mean (Figure 2). If values of a normally distributed variate, x, are ex pressed in terms of deviations from the mean, the newly created values are termed standardized ones. The units of expression are proportions of the standard deviation and are termed z values, where z ¼ the number of standard devi ations by which x departs from m. From this, probabilities of particular events can be easily estimated using the distri bution, by employing pre prepared z tables (Figure 3). Applying the central limit theorem, the sample mean can be treated as a normally distributed random variable, with z ¼ ð¯x mÞ=sX . The number of standard errors (the standard deviation of a sampling distribution) can be de noted as z values. The two z values utilized most fre quently are 1.06 and 2.58 as these correspond to the 95% and 99% confidence limits respectively (i.e., 95% and 99% of the area under the normal distribution lie within these values). Confidence limits are the lower and upper bands of z (e.g., 71.96). The distance between the limits is the confidence interval. So a desired minimum size of sample

More extensive use is now made of various descriptive graphical methods termed exploratory data analysis (EDA), first developed by statistician John Tukey in the 1970s. EDA emphasizes careful examination of data using simple numerical description in conjunction with im aginative graphical representation.

Table 1

Statistical symbolsa

For a population

439

For a sample

Frequency

Number of observations ¼ N Number of observations ¼n Mean ¼m Mean ¼x Variance ¼ s2 Variance ¼ s2 Standard deviation ¼s Standard deviation ¼s aP ¼ sum all scores or quantities that follow, e.g., the notation P x means that all values of a variable x should be added. Pn i 1 xi ¼ sum all quantities from x1 to xn in the series, x1 þ x2 þ x3 þ ? þ xn. P15 i 5 xi means, starting at x5 sum the sequence to x15. 1 Pn Meanð¯xÞ ¼ xi . n i 1 1 Pn ðxi x¯ Þ2 . Standard deviationðsÞ ¼ O n i 1

(a)

1.55

1.65

1.75 m

1.85

1.95

−2 −

(b)

2

0.4

0.2 f (x) −6

−4

−2

0

2

4

6

(c)

Figure 2 The normal distribution: (a) the distribution of a sample of men’s heights; (b) the normal distribution centered on m; and (c) comparison of two normal distributions.

440


− z

−3

0 0.5 P = 0.5

(a)

−2

−1

z

P = 0.308 54

0 P = 0.683

1

2

3

P = 0.9545

P = 0.191 46

(b)

z −1.96 P = 0.025

0 P = 0.95

P = 0.9973

1.96 P = 0.025

(c)

Figure 3 The normal distribution: (a) P(z

0 to 0.5); (b) probabilities and z values; and (c) regions of rejection (P

may be sought to ensure that m can be estimated within specified limits. The larger the sample size, the more ac curate is the estimate of the parent mean. As a general rule, for a sampling design to be more appropriate than a simple random sample, for the same sample size, it should yield estimates of population parameters with smaller standard errors. Alternatively, it should yield the same level of accuracy, but using a smaller sample size. Generally, the final sample size utilized in any research project is a compromise between cost, desired accuracy, time, and ensuring sufficient numbers for real istic analysis of subgroups in a population.

Testing Hypotheses Hypotheses and the Language of Probability The basis of much statistical analysis is inferential sta tistics, in which theory is employed to estimate particular characteristics of the population on the basis of sample data. Underpinning inferential statistics is probability theory, and the products of any inferential analysis are statements of a probabilistic nature. This is because an inference is made from a sample to a population. The variability of information in a sample does not allow exact estimates of population parameters to be made. Instead, estimates are generally given within a particular range of values to which a level of probability is attached. Hence, much statistical analysis draws on probability theory,

0.05).

utilizing knowledge of probability distributions to repre sent or replicate events. Common distributions are the binomial (for two mutually exclusive, independent events), the normal (producing a curved frequency distribution symmetrical about the population mean), and the Poisson (for rare events within long periods of time or space). Two types of hypotheses may be identified: 1. an unrestricted hypothesis in which the actual hy pothesis being tested represents a large number of similar situations (e.g., all birds have wings); and 2. a restricted hypothesis that is only relevant to the context within which it is being tested (known as contingently related conditions) (e.g., incomes in place A are higher than incomes in place B). Most testing of hypotheses by geographers has been of the latter type, so that the notion of particular events being accounted for as examples of a general law has been avoided. It has been spatial irregularities, as op posed to the world of models and general laws, which have usually been the subject of hypothesis testing by geographers. Although this implies limitations within this approach, key advantages are replicability, the use of probabilistic conclusions, and avoidance of individual prejudices and dogmas through reliance on a repeatable and transferable method. Statistical testing of hypotheses makes use of the language of probability developed in the 1950s by

441


statisticians Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson. So the events under consideration, such as shopping behavior and migration, are conceptualized in terms of this lan guage. The hypothesis employed in statistical testing is termed the null hypothesis (H0), which generally takes the form ‘there is no difference between A and B’, for example, productivity per business in group A and productivity per business in group B, that is, H0: A ¼ B. The object of the hypothesis test then becomes to accept or reject this null hypothesis for a specific level of stat istical significance. Parametric and Nonparametric Tests Once H0 has been formulated various tests can be utilized, the selection of the most appropriate being partly determined by the type of sample data collected. Parametric tests require data on the interval or ratio scales (e.g., 23.7; 127.6), while nonparametric tests operate on ordinal scale (ranked) or nominal scale (categorical) data. Parametric tests possess three additional requirements: 1. the population from which the sample is drawn is normally distributed; 2. the population is heteroscedastic (samples should have equal variances); and 3. observations are independent of one another (it should not be possible to order individual observations in the population and have a better than random chance of predicting values of some when the values of others are known). Despite these requirements, parametric tests have often been preferred as they are deemed ‘more powerful’ (where power refers to the ability of a test to evaluate H0 correctly), and hence non normally distributed data have been transformed mathematically to convert them into normal form for use in parametric tests. However, over time, the qualities of nonparametric tests have been better appreciated because: 1. they can deal with very small samples; 2. they can utilize data on a variety of measurement scales; 3. they can analyze samples from several different populations; Table 2

2

Measuring Associations Correlation Initial work by geographers on measuring the strength of a linear relationship between two variables (x and y) re lied upon the Pearson product–moment correlation co efficient (rxy) r xy ¼

P ðxi ðn

xÞðyi yÞ 1ÞSx Sy

This has values lying in the range from þ 1.0 to 1.0. A value of þ 1.00 represents a perfect positive relationship Table 3

A 2 2 contingency table for a w2 test

Origin

Under 30s

Over 30s

Row total

Urban Rural Column total

5 20 25

12 13 25

17 33 50

Ho ¼ there is no difference in the origins of the two age groups.

Nonparametric Nominal data

2

In a hypothesis test the significance level (a) is usually set at 5% (probability, P ¼ 0.05) or 1% (P ¼ 0.01), so there is less than five/one chances in 100 that A is different from B. Table 2 shows the tests most commonly employed within geography. The nonparametric chi squared (w2) test is the most utilitarian. It operates on data in the form of frequencies and can be applied to one, two, or more independent samples, so that it can be used to see if one set of data corresponds to a particular type of distri bution, as well as comparing two or more samples. The latter is performed on a contingency table, an example of which is shown in Table 3. The two principal parametric tests, Student’s t test and Snedecor’s F test, are based on particular statistical parameters, the former on the mean and the latter on the variance, and hence it is commonly known as an analysis of variance (ANOVA). The calcu lations for many parametric tests and especially the more complex ANOVAs generally rely on computer programs.

Statistical hypothesis tests commonly employed within geography

Number of samples

1

4. they provide probability statements that are exact probabilities; and 5. they are usually easier to apply because they involve less complex calculations.

2

w Sign test Kolmogorov Smirnov test Runs test w2 Kolmogorov Smirnov test w2

Parametric Ordinal data

Interval data

Wilcoxon signed-rank test

z-test t-test

Mann Whitney U-test Wilcoxon rank-sum test Kruskal Wallis H-test

t-test Snedecor’s F-test

442


between the two variables (as y increases so does x to an equal degree). A value of rxy ¼ 0.0 indicates the absence of any statistical relationship between x and y, while a value tending toward 71.00 indicates high positive or high negative correlation. The relationship’s strength can be expressed further by the coefficient of determination ð100r 2xy Þ, the proportion of the variance in the two variables ‘explained’ by their correlation. A correlation coefficient of þ 0.90 produces a coefficient of determin ation of 81%, leaving 19% of the variance between the variables that is not coincident. The value of the correlation coefficient may be reinforced by an assessment of the relationship’s statistical significance, which may state that such a value could only occur by chance once in 100 samples (P ¼ 0.01). Student’s t test or calculation of z values are commonly used for this purpose. Pearson’s product–moment correlation coefficient analyzes interval and ratio scale data, whereas Spear man’s rank coefficient (rxy) uses ordinal or ranked data: rxy ¼ 1

P 6 D2 nðn 2 1Þ

where D ¼ differences in ranks of corresponding values of x and y ; and n ¼ numbers of pairs of x and y values. Bivariate relationships are often indirect or casual, with correlations dependent on intermediate factors. Therefore, much geographical research examines multi variate situations rather than bivariate ones. Four key problems can affect the results of correlation analysis of geographical data: 1. Modifiable areal units: for areal units (e.g., enumer ation districts, counties), correlation may measure not only the variation of the variables but also the arbi trary spatial units utilized. The impact of this arbitrary ‘spatial mesh’ is difficult to predict and measure. 2. Ecological correlation: different results may be ob tained if information is analyzed at different spatial scales. Correlations between individual observations are different to correlations for those individuals ag gregated into different spatial units. This is termed ecological correlation and is related to the problem of modifiable areal units. It demonstrates that careful nuances of interpretation are required when applying correlation analysis to data for areal units. 3. Closed number sets: when using proportions (which sum to 1) or percentages (which sum to 100), correlation structures will be biased by recording the same thing more than once. This is termed closure or the ability to predetermine a given value for a variable once other values are known (e.g., if there are three land use cat egories, one representing 50% of an area and another 30%, then the third category must cover 20% of the area). Wherever possible, closed ratios such as this must

not be correlated or recognition should be made of possible outcomes (if these can be determined). 4. Spatial autocorrelation: it is common for many variables to be characterized by correlations between adjacent values in space or time. This is termed auto or serial correlation. Its significance was not appreciated by geographers until work by Andrew Cliff and John Ord in the late 1960s. Essentially the presence of spatial auto correlation violates the assumption of independence of observations. The implication is that applying correl ation analysis to situations in which samples possess locational characteristics can conflict with essential as sumptions of the statistical techniques. This has often been ignored in many geographical applications, though some geographers have designed spatial models in corporating autocorrelation and have developed tests for and measures of spatial autocorrelation. Regression In two particular circumstances geographers have ex tended the investigation of the strength of bivariate re lationships by conducting regression analysis. 1. If one variable is deemed to be dependent on another, for example, if crop yield is considered to be dependent on labor input, in this case, the dependent variable is crop yield ( y ) and labor input is the in dependent variable (x). The correlation (rxy) can be calculated, and a scattergraph of y versus x can be produced. The line of best fit through the scatter of points in the scattergraph is the linear regression line whose equation ( y ¼ a þ bx) can be utilized in various ways (a ¼ the intercept on the y axis and b is the slope of the line). 2. When there is a desire to predict the value of the dependent variable for given values of the independent variable, the coefficient of determination (C), (where C ¼ 100r 2xy %) is the level of explanation of the dependent variable by the independent variable. C ¼ 100% if all observations lie directly on the re gression line. This is rarely the case in real life situ ations and so several individual observations may lie at some distance from the best fit regression line. The distance along the y axis from an individual point to the line is termed the residual (or the difference between the actual and predicted values of y). As the size of the residuals increases so the utility of the regression line decreases in terms of its predictive value (Figure 4). Each residual can be expressed in a standardized form as standard error units from the regression line, where Standardized residual ¼

xi

x se


443

Multivariate Analysis Residual yi y yi

x

Figure 4 Regression line and scattergraph with residuals.

Mapping of residuals can be used to help form hy potheses, to examine regional boundaries or identify study areas for intensive fieldwork. Multiple Regression Simple linear regression [y ¼ f(x)] may be extended to more complex multiple regression [y ¼ f(x1, x2, x3, y, xn)]. In multiple regression, the equation takes the form: y ¼ a þ b1 x1 þ b2 x2 7e

where a ¼ the intercept on the y axis, b1 and b2 ¼ partial regression coefficients, x1 and x2 are the independent variables, and e ¼ an error term. The partial regression coefficients can only be compared with one another if they are transformed into beta weights (bi), where bi ¼ bi(sxi/syi), bi ¼ slope coefficient of independent vari able xi, and sxi and syi ¼ standard deviation of the dependent and independent variables respectively. bi weights show how much change in the dependent variable is produced by a standardized change in one of the independent variables, with the influence of the other independent variables controlled. This enables assess ment of the effects of the individual independent variables in the regression equation: the higher the bi weight, the greater the rate at which the dependent variable increases with an increase in the particular in dependent variable. In multiple regression the multiple correlation co efficient (ry.x1x2x3yxn) measures the correlation between y and all the independent variables. If there is correlation between the independent variables then collinearity exists. This reduces the extent of the explanation of the dependent variable and indicates redundancy in the independent variables. This may be eliminated using stepwise entry of variables into the equation by adding variables to the equation in their order of importance in reducing the variance of y, starting with the most im portant first.

Analysis of datasets based on large numbers of variables was first performed by geographers and sociologists in the 1950s as a means of testing models of urban social dif ferentiation developed by human ecologists at the Uni versity of Chicago. Initially, this work was termed social area analysis. It used population census data to classify census tracts that could be mapped and compared with the urban social structure in the ecologists’ models. Factor analysis was the statistical technique employed for social area analysis, so its application was termed factorial ecology. During the 1960s factorial ecologies were performed for North American cities, and then for cities throughout the world and also for other multi variate datasets. Factor analysis reduces data for a num ber of intercorrelated variables (m) to a smaller set of factors (k) that represent amalgams of the variables. This involves a four stage sequence: 1. 2. 3. 4.

the geographical matrix (places vs. variables); the correlation matrix (variables vs. variables); factor loadings (variables vs. factors); and factor scores (places vs. factors).

From stage 2, there are two basic applications: principal components analysis (PCA) and principal axis factor analysis (PAFA). Principal Components Analysis PCA produces as many components as there are vari ables. The first component always accounts for the greatest variance among the variables and the mth com ponent the mth highest. The variance among the variables accounted for by each component is equal to the sum of the squares of the loadings, known as the eigenvalue or latent root. It is usually expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible variance and is a measure of the im portance of each component. The first four or five components extracted from a set of 40 or 50 intercorrelated variables should account for at least two thirds of the overall variance to be regarded as an effective replacement. These few components repre sent the basic differentiating characters of the dataset. To determine the probability of a particular loading having occurred by chance, a significance test can be employed. The first few components are termed common com ponents as they have high loadings on many of the variables. The components can be mapped and represent a measure of the importance of each component in each place, expressed in standard deviation units from the average score. The map of component scores replaces a series of maps of the individual variables. The component

444


score (cab) for place a on component b is: cab ¼

m X ðSai Þðl ib Þ i 1

where m ¼ the number of variables; s ¼ the standard score for place a of variable i on component b, with sai ¼ ði îÞ=si and lib ¼ the component loading of variable i on component b.

Ethnic status (a)

Principal Axis Factor Analysis PAFA was developed by psychologists as a hypothesis testing device; m variables are replaced by a smaller number (k) of underlying factors. PAFA splits the vari ance into three parts: 1. common variance (or communality): the degree to which one variable varies in conjunction with other variables; 2. unique (or specific) variance: the individuality of the distribution of each variable. The ratio of common to unique variance becomes larger as successive factors are extracted; and 3. error variance (or unreliability): any imperfections (such as sampling bias) in the original data. Variables with high communality are the ones of interest, and so more importance is attached to these variables when extracting factors. The different weightings applied to each variable modify the factor structure, in contrast to PCA, where each variable is treated as if it had the same communality. PAFA can employ rotation of the factor axes until the factor loadings created are either near 71 or near 0. This aids interpretation and labeling. Rotation can be per formed with factors at right angles (orthogonal rotation) or obliquely (oblique rotation). Partly because of the similar nature of the variables employed, the many factorial ecologies of North American cities typically produced three factors ac counting for the majority of variance: family status (varying concentrically with distance from the central business district), economic status (varying sectorally), and ethnic status (clustered, reflecting concentrations of different ethnic groups; Figure 5). More variation was found outside North America, but the value of such work was strongly questioned in geography’s ‘relevance debate’ in the 1970s. The end result of maps of factor/component scores was seen as misguided at a time when social in equalities within cities were being publicized daily in the mass media. Classification Factor scores can be used to delimit particular regions as a form of classification. Classification can be based either

Family status (b)

Economic status (c)

Figure 5 Schematic portrayal of the spatial distribution of the general components from PCAs of American cities. Based on Murdie, R. A. (1976). Spatial form in the residenmtial mosaivc. In Herbert, D. T. & Johnston, R. J. (eds.) Social Areas in Cities: Volume 1. Spatial Processes and Form. London: John Wiley.

on a correlation (r) or distance (d ) matrix depicting relationships between observations. The distance co efficient (dij) is the squared distance between observations (places) i and j :

d ij ¼

O

Pm

k 1 ðxik

xjk Þ2

m

where xik ¼ the kth variable measured on object (or place) i; xjk ¼ the kth variable measured on object (or place) j; m ¼ the number of variables; and dij ¼ the distance between object i and object j. A small value of dij indicates that two objects are similar or close together. It is not constrained within the range þ 1 to –1. The classification process itself is usually based on the representation of the correlation/distance matrix in a dendrogram, so named because of its branching structure. The initial step in the dendrogram is to select the mu tually highly correlated pairs of observations, which are then grouped with unattached observations until the grouping procedure has combined all the observations into one single group. Attaching a single observation to a group can be done in two basic ways:


1. single linkage clustering using the highest correlation between the object and any other object in the cluster and 2. weighted pair group clustering on the average of the correlation between the object and each individual in the cluster. In a classification exercise, there is no a priori knowledge of existing clusters. In contrast, discriminant analysis usually begins with already recognized clusters or groups. It allocates individuals to these groups by es tablishing a linear combination of variables measured for two clearly defined groups that produces the maximum difference between the groups. If this linear combination (a discriminant function) produces a significant differ ence, it can then be used to allocate samples of unknown origin to the known groups. A linear discriminant function transforms an original set of observations into a single discriminant score. The distance between the mean of two sets of observations along the discriminant function is the Mahalanobis distance, a measure of variance of the two groups. Dis criminant functions are used to test hypotheses, to evaluate a classification, and to assign new members to pre recognized groups.

Generalized Linear Models and Categorical Data Analysis Generalized Linear Models In the last two decades the range of statistical techniques applied to geographical data has been extended to in clude specialist tools to analyze categorical data. Stand ard regression techniques are often inappropriate for such data. Instead, it may be better to use a family of GLMs for estimating linear relationships with nominal data. GLMs are based on a suite of exponential prob ability distributions (Table 4), which can be used in the context of a simple equation whose form is similar to that for simple linear regression yi ¼ mi þ ei

where yi ¼ an independent random variable; mi ¼ the part of yi whose value is predictable; and ei ¼ the part of yi Table 4

The suite of exponential probability distributions

445

whose value is a random error. Any model of the variability of yi requires information on the character istics of other variables thought to influence the variation in yi, which is expressed as a linear predictor (Zi). It also requires information on the linkage which relates mi to these other variables. mi is related to the linear predictor Zi by a link function (g). There are various link functions and hence various models, for example, logarithmic (log m), logit (log(m/n m), probit (F 1(m/ n)), square root (Om), and reciprocal (1/m).

Investigating Contingency Tables These various models are applied to contingency tables created by the cross classification of categorical variables. Such variables may be dichotomous (e.g., yes or no), unordered polychotomous (more than two categories without a definite order, e.g., manufacturing, service, primary), and ordered polychotomous (e.g., young, mid dle aged, elderly). These models enable an investigation of contingency tables to examine relationships besides independence, while ‘traditional’ statistical tests, such as w2, only focus on independence. Alternative models can be fitted to data in a contingency table and then evalu ated, utilizing every possible form of interdependence in the data. One of the most popular forms of GLMs is log linear analysis, which attempts to obtain a model that is linear in the logarithms of the expected frequen cies of a contingency table and which describes or fits the associations and interactions that exist in the table. As with regression analysis, log linear analysis can involve the examination of residuals to see which individual values in the contingency table have the greatest re siduals. Log linear analysis can be extended from small 2 2 contingency tables to more complex ‘multi way’ designs that require more complicated modeling. The five principal models that have been used to analyze data are summarized in Table 5. The top row, with cells a, b, and c, represents the traditional models of simple linear regression, dummy variable linear regression, and ANOVA. The bottom row refers to categorical models and can be addressed by logistic, logit, and probit models. Table 5

Classification of statistical problems

Response variables (dependent)

Explanatory variables (independent)

Distribution

Use

Normal Gamma, beta Binomial, multinomial, Weibull Poisson, binomial, multinomial

Regression analysis Stochastic process modeling Analysis involving discrete choices and individual behavior

Continuous Categorical

Parametric analysis of contingency tables

Based on Wrigley, N. (1981). Categorical data analysis. In Wrigley, N. & Bennett, R. J. (eds.) Quantitative Geography: A British View, pp. 111 122. London: Routledghe and Kegan Paul.

Continuous Mixed

Categorical None

a d

c f

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g

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Statistical Models During geography’s quantitative revolution, progress was made in the use of statistical and mathematical models to represent different facets of economic and social geog raphy. These were developed from simple schemes for the internal structure of cities and the arrangement of central places. They incorporated theories, laws, hypotheses, structured ideas, roles, relations, equations, syntheses, maps, graphs, and computer hardware and software. From this catholic interpretation more sophis ticated mathematical models have emerged, with both deterministic (normative) and probabilistic forms. Em phasis has been placed upon spatial interaction problems that can be addressed using models. Gravity Models One of the foci of statistical modeling has been the geometry of cities, especially the forecasting of flows, which is essential in making land use and transport in vestment decisions. Predictions can be used to reduce the costs of spatial interaction while maintaining diversity of choice. Spatial interaction models are used to predict spatial choices reflected in flows of people or goods be tween origins and destinations, expressing trade offs be tween the accessibility of alternative destinations and the attractiveness of these opportunities. The gravity model is the basis of spatial interaction models. It provides a direct analogy with Sir Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation F¼

Gðm1 m2 Þ R2

where F ¼ magnitude of the attractive force, G ¼ a gravitational constant (the size of which depends on the system of units used, and which is a universal constant), m1 and m2 ¼ masses of the two bodies, and R ¼ the dis tance between them. In the late nineteenth century, E. G. Ravenstein’s laws of migration were based on this Newtonian idea. The basic gravity model has been used as a predictive tool, starting in 1931 with W. J. Reilly’s law of retail gravitation, predicting the flow of retail trade. Important respecifications were made in the 1960s, constraining production or attraction or both. Of the many variants of gravity models, the most popular is the Garin–Lowry model, based originally on allocating population and services by linking the gravity model with submodels relating population and services via an economic base mechanism.

These measure basic characteristics of the destination in terms of the number of opportunities available there. Instead of distance per se influencing the chance of a trip being made, the crucial factor is the number of inter vening opportunities: those opportunities closer to the trip’s origin than any particular destination being con sidered by a traveler. This model can be adjusted to allow for overlapping catchment areas, depending on how the rate of decline of demand over distance is calculated. Another alternative is entropy maximizing models, which analyze the most likely state of a system by drawing upon concepts of entropy in thermodynamics and information theory. They were developed in the late 1960s by Alan Wilson who treated movements of people and objects in the manner in which particles in gases were analyzed in statistical mechanics. He modeled the journey to work in cities, dividing the city into zones of residence and employment, with interaction between zones measured through analysis of trip origins and destinations. This shares with gravity models the inten tion of predicting a trip matrix. Entropy maximizing models have been used for forecasting different components of complex flows in urban and regional contexts, and they have formed the basis for estimating the structures of nonlinear models. These and other interaction and allocation models have been widely used by planners, especially through the addition of algorithms that relax some of the more sim plistic aspects of the basic models. They have been es pecially useful in helping retailers decide on the location of new stores and in predicting traffic flows. However, they have been criticized for failing to make adequate representation of the behavioral processes that lead to individuals selecting a particular journey. The models are aggregate ones, averaging out user behavior. Neverthe less, by adding underlying elements of economic and social structure to the models they have become much more realistic and more widely applied, drawing upon the increased power of modern computers to deliver rapid solutions to complex locational problems.

Spatial Statistics Geographers have used statistics and geometry to analyze spatial form, focusing on the locational pattern of objects and treating them as points, lines, and areas. The content of this analysis has ranged from use of simple descriptive indices to highly complex measures of spatial structure. Descriptive Measures

Alternatives to Gravity Models One alternative to gravity models is intervening oppor tunity models, first developed in 1940 by S. A. Stouffer.

The Lorenz curve

This compares the cumulative percentages of two dis tributions on a graph, with one distribution plotted as the


y axis and the other on the x axis. The Lorenz curve is the resulting curve: the bigger its variation from the di agonal, the bigger the difference between the cumulative proportions. The index of dissimilarity, Id

This is the percentage of a population group that would have to shift its residence in order to reproduce a spatial distribution identical with that of the group with which it is being compared. Id is the maximum difference in the cumulative percentages of the two distributions shown in the Lorenz curve 1X Id ¼ ðxi 2

yi Þ

where xi and yi are the individual percentages of each variable. Typically, the variables refer to occupational groups or ethnic status, for which Id becomes an index of segregation (Is), with a correction factor applied to eliminate the presence of yi (proportion of ethnic group y) occurring in the total population, T

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curve and is an alternative measure of dissimilarity IG ¼

n 1X jPi 2i 1

Ii j

where Pi ¼ % values of one attribute, for example, population numbers, and Ii ¼ % values of another attri bute, for example, income levels. IG is constrained be tween 0 (exact correspondence) and 100 (maximum inequality). The nearest-neighbor statistic (R)

This measures the dispersion of points in relation to properties of the distribution of distances between each point and its nearest neighboring point. Developed ini tially to analyze patterns in plant ecology, in human geography the points have often been locations of settlements. Using the Poisson probability distribution (which applies to random events), the average expec ted distances (re) between points ¼ 0.5O(A/n), where A ¼ area of study region, and n ¼ number of points. R ¼ ro =re

Id P

Is ¼ 1

yi T

Indices of 80% and above for African Americans in city blocks in the US cities led to the label ‘ghetto’ being applied. However, the size of the administrative unit on which Is is calculated can significantly affect its value, so it can only be used as a general indicator of the degree of segregation. Location quotients

These measure the extent to which a particular distri bution differs from the norm, typically comparing em ployment in a particular industry with the national average for all industries LQ ¼

gx k

where gx ¼ % of activity x in an area, and k ¼ the national %. 1. LQ >1 ¼ a high degree of concentration of a par ticular activity in an area; 2. LQ o1 ¼ low concentrations; and 3. LQ ¼ 1 ¼ the distribution is the same as the national average. The Gini coefficient (IG)

This compares the distribution of an attribute with a hypothetical equal distribution. It is related to the Lorenz

where r¯o ¼ observed distances. Values of R range from 0 (all points occupy the same location) to 2.149 (points are equidistant from six other points in a hexagonal pattern). A value of 1 suggests a random pattern. However, R is highly dependent on how A is defined, and the same value of R can be generated from different point patterns. Spatial Structure Detailed analysis of spatial structure has been performed by geographers since Cliff and Ord’s pioneering work in the 1970s. This examined spatial autocorrelation or the association between a particular quality in an area and its presence in a neighboring area (also known as the neighborhood effect). This is a form of self correlation and, if present, violates the basic condition of in dependence among observations required by parametric statistical tests. Positive values of autocorrelation indicate a greater presence than expected of the quality con cerned, and negative values indicate a lower presence than expected. Spatial autocorrelation is created by linkages and flows between places that create spatial dependencies. Such linkages are common but difficult to measure, especially for irregular spatial grids (e.g., maps of administrative areas). Various measures have been formulated for regular grids, initially based on nominal data (presence or absence), though they are generally complex and have proved difficult to incorporate in standard statistical computing packages. Two frequently used ones are Moran’s I and Geary’s C statistics, which

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can be applied to data for both regular and irregular grids. These measures are not normally incorporated in standard statistical computing packages, but they are commonly available in GIS programs and in stand alone packages for spatial analysis (e.g., GEODA). Related work by Stan Openshaw applied ideas of spatial autocorrelation to testing for clusters of disease, using computer programs to test repeatedly for clus tering at a range of spatial scales. This type of analysis has been significant in various epidemiological investigations, though usually employing more advanced methods, such as Bayes estimates, based on the joint probability of two events written as the product of one event and the con ditional probability of the second event, based on the first event. Recent Advances Recent advances in point pattern analysis have used three sets of properties of spatial stochastic processes: 1. First and second order properties: describing the way in which expected values of the process vary across space or are correlated at different spatial locations; 2. Kernel estimation: estimates of disease intensity at each grid point are made by counting events per unit area with a kernel or three dimensional (3 D) func tion centered on a number of locations arrayed in a fine grid superimposed on the study region. This can help to identify clusters of disease occurrence; and 3. The K function: this describes the extent to which there is a spatial dependence in a pattern of events, which therefore can be used to detect clustering and different types of clustering. lK(d) ¼ E(number of events odistance d of an arbitrary event), where, E(y.) ¼ expectation (as a probability); and l ¼ intensity or mean number of events per unit area. Further advances in the development of spatial stat istics are based on the assumption that variation in spatial data arises from three components that represent a probability model: 1. a deterministic structured element, usually given a functional representation that can be equated with the mean of a probability distribution; 2. a stochastic structured element, usually represented in terms of the second order properties of that prob ability distribution; and 3. a local random element or noise. It is usually assumed that E½ZðxÞ ¼ m

for all x

where E ¼ mathematical expectation, Z(x) ¼ the random variable at location x ¼ (x1, x2), and m ¼ a constant.

Space and Time Spatial Diffusion Processes Geographers have frequently applied statistical techniques to analyze changes in spatial patterns through time. Typical concerns have been the spread of diseases and the diffusion of innovations. Models of spatial diffusion processes are termed simulation models or Monte Carlo models as they utilize random numbers. There are three general types of diffusion processes: 1. Expansion diffusion: knowledge of an innovation is communicated throughout a population so that the number of people with knowledge of an innovation increases steadily over time. Such diffusion can apply to transmission of diseases through direct contact between people/animals. This process is sometimes termed contagious diffusion. Epidemic models divide the population into susceptibles, infectives, and removals. 2. Hierarchical diffusion: some innovations can leap over intervening people and places, following a path that concentrates, for example, initially on only large urban centers or significant individuals before filtering down to smaller places or beyond the immediate circle of community leaders. 3. Relocation diffusion: holders of information may migrate taking their knowledge with them, thereby transplanting new ideas into a different environment. Common examples of this relocation diffusion are large scale migrations of different cultural groups (Figure 6). In reality, many diffusion processes represent a combin ation of expansion, hierarchical and relocation diffusion, and especially of the first two. Simulating Spatial Diffusion The first substantial attempt to model spatial diffusion processes was the work of the Swedish geographer Tor sten Hagerstrand, who likened the expansion diffusion process to a wave like pattern which loses its strength as it moves away from its source of origin. Working on innovations among farming communities in southern Sweden, Hagerstrand simulated the expansion diffusion process in which a distance decay function was operating. The likelihood of and frequency of contact among the farmers were determined by the distance between the individuals concerned (a neighborhood effect or con tagious growth). Therefore probabilities of adoption were highest in the vicinity of an earlier adoption and de creased with distance away from an adoption. The wave like pattern can be represented as a common pattern of adoption of an innovation in the form of a normal curve


t

t+1

(a) 8

I

R R

8 R

(b) I Infective 8 Suscept ble

R Removal

(c)

(d)

Figure 6 Diffusion patterns: (a) expansion diffusion; (b) the general epidemic model; (c) hierarchical diffusion; and (d) relocation diffusion.

or its cumulative form, the logistic curve, expressed as Pt ¼ ð1 þ e abt Þ1

where Pt ¼ the proportion of adopters at time t, a ¼ the intercept, and b ¼ the slope coefficient. Similarly, yt ¼ kð1 þ e abt Þ1

where yt ¼ number of adopters, and k ¼ the maximum possible number of adopters, that is, the saturation level. rt ¼

bpt ð1

pt Þ

where rt ¼ the rate of change in pt (proportion of adopters) over time, (1 pt) ¼ proportion of the popu lation who have not adopted at time t, pt(1 pt) ¼ the probability that a random meeting between two indi viduals is between an adopter and a potential adopter, and b ¼ the rate at which meetings take place (the rate of mixing, which can be modified to reflect the neighbor hood effect: inhomogeneous mixing). To simulate the pattern of spatial diffusion, a mean information field (MIF) is superimposed over the study area. This is a grid of probabilities representing the probability of someone in a particular cell receiving in formation of the innovation in question (i.e., direct con tact). These probabilities have a distance decay function

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from the point of origin of the innovation. Derivation of these probabilities is problematic: Hagerstrand initially based them on migration patterns and telephone traffic. These gave a sharp distance decay effect. However, less steep effects prevail in modern society with greater ease of mass communication and travel. The MIF is oper ationalized using a random number table so that change through time and space may be predicted, and predic tions compared with reality or used for forecasting. The highly empirical nature of these simulations is one of their limitations, but they have been widely used to examine characteristics of the early adopters of innova tions, the influence of different forms of information, and barriers to adoption. Large scale simulations of the spread of disease have been developed, notably to analyze human immuno deficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV AIDS), influenza, and measles. These are known as epidemic models, which use more sophisticated ‘rules’ for the MIF and can incorporate other statistical techniques, such as regression analysis, to allow for the effects of influential variables. For HIV AIDS this might include information on drug use, sexual activity, availability of hospitals, and characteristics of people’s travel movements. More advanced methods use equations of stochastic pro cesses that formalize the various transitions from the three main stages experienced by an individual during an epi demic’s progress: from susceptible to infective to removal. One variant of this is the expansion method which in vestigates the variation in the temporal growth of a disease in response to changes in population density. A variant on the basic Monte Carlo model is the in jection of a more complex set of processes that can include adoption, rejection, and readoption of an in novation. This sequence of events can be incorporated in a Markov chain: if the probability of being in a state (or states) at time t is wholly dependent upon the state(s) at some preceding time(s), it is said to be a Markov process. In a Markov chain the MIF is replaced by probability values comprising a transition matrix (Pij), where Pij represents the probability of a change in state from a preexisting state i to a future state j. The transition matrix may be used to predict future outcomes by multiplying the matrix by a vector. The chain may be used to portray both spatial and aspatial sates, and a stochastic element may be injected to render outcomes probabilistic as op posed to deterministic (Figure 7).

New Frontiers Recent developments in the use of statistical techniques by geographers have used advances in computing to analyze complex systems, notably those involving catastrophes or discontinuities and chaotic or irregular systems. The theory behind this work has only been developed from the

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Time periods A

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Figure 7 A Markov chain (numbers refer to probabilities of change from one state to another).

mid 1970s, based on pioneering research by Rene Thom, Alan Wilson, and Benoit Mandelbrot. Catastrophe Theory Research on discontinuities has been termed bifurcation or catastrophe theory, and focuses on critical values of system parameters at which some unusual behavior of the system can occur. The simple catastrophe is the cusp catastrophe which involves one variable (x) and one (u) or two (u1 and u2) parameters or control variables. The maxima, minima, and points of inflexion of the potential function (F ) are known as stationary points. Where these points coalesce a singularity occurs, or a point at which the value of F can jump (i.e., the catastrophe). Maxi mizing or minimizing F determines the state of the sys tem. The equilibrium of such a system can be determined using quadratic equations, and the system can be por trayed graphically, providing a framework within which control variables may be investigated. Potentially, sudden changes in otherwise gradually evolving systems can be examined mathematically using these theories. Chaos Theory Chaos theory has been developed from the recognition that apparently simple physical systems which obey de terministic laws may nevertheless behave unpredictably. Nonlinear systems can converge to an equilibrium (steady state) or there can be a stable oscillation (periodic behavior) or there can be chaotic change. These three regimes are known as the logistic map and can be rep resented through simple mathematical equations so that a deterministic equation can portray nonrandom chaos. However, to model chaotic systems, Mandelbrot utilized a new form of geometry, fractal geometry. Fractals are

irregular but with the same degree of irregularity on all scales. This can be seen in nature in the tendency toward repeated self similarity in ferns, cauliflowers, and broc coli (the same basic structure created in ever decreasing scale with a detail twice as fine as that in the preceding scale). In addition to linear self similarity, fractals can also be random or nonlinear. Using advanced computer graphics random fractals have been applied to model coastlines, mountains, and cloud formations. Equations used to represent turbulence in liquids and weather patterns are nonlinear and display deterministic chaos. They have been used to model urban morphology and unpredictable aspects of behavior within economic and social systems. Complex measures have been developed to assess changes in state of such systems and computer packages are now available to calculate some of these measures. Statistical Analysis and GIS The development of computer packages has transformed the ability of geographers to conduct statistical analyses, with standard packages, such as Excel, SPSS, SAS, Minitab, and GLIM, becoming standard elements in the geographers’ ‘toolbox’. These have also been incorpo rated into GIS: integrated computer systems for the input, storage, analysis, and output of spatially referenced data. The use of GIS has generated wider applications of statistical methods and models, promoting a new techno scientific approach to analyzing spatial data. The in corporation of complex statistical operations, such as measurements of spatial autocorrelation, into GIS pack ages has greatly enhanced researchers’ ability to apply sophisticated statistical techniques to problems. As a consequence, statistical analysis of geographical data has become commonplace within many businesses and in the public sector. Yet, there are ongoing concerns about how these GIS based applications of spatial statistical analysis may be at variance with current trends within human geography emphasizing qualitative methods and espous ing theory driven investigation as opposed to the more data led enquiries using GIS. Nevertheless, the flexibility and scope for statistical analysis by geographers using GIS and computer packages has transformed the use of statistics within geography while constantly developing new technical advances, especially in the areas of spatial statistics and statistical modeling. The evolution of human geography over the last half century has seen the role and status of statistical methods in the discipline alter dramatically. From the dominance of such methods during the quantitative revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, subsequent critiques of statistical tech niques and the adoption of new philosophies, such as postmodernism and structuralism, have produced a much more diverse discipline in which statistical and other


quantitative techniques are often subordinate to the use of qualitative approaches. These have grown in promi nence as interest in the cultural, social, and political di mensions of geographical problems has risen. Important questions have been raised concerning the applicability of classical statistical hypothesis testing to geographical data, the representation of people by numbers, and the sim plification of complex processes in statistical models. Such concerns and the changing nature of human geography subject matter have produced several different types of approach to geographical research, some rejecting the use of statistics entirely, others embracing new technological advances, and employing complex methods of statistical analysis. There is evidence, though of a growing body of work that incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methods, as championed first by human geographers working from a feminist perspective. In this area of human geography, statistical methods have been used to docu ment the spatial and social dimensions of women’s lives at a variety of spatial scales. Statistical methods can provide the power of generalizations that may then be coupled with more qualitatively based studies of the particular. This has helped advance work employing multilevel modeling to analyze relations at different scales and the display and overlay capabilities of GIS. Therefore, one key challenge for future development of statistics in human geography will be to produce techni ques that can be readily adopted within mixed approaches that mesh the quantitative and the qualitative. Another ongoing challenge will be to respond to computing ad vances associated with the creation of cyberspace and new revolutions in computing and information technology. See also: Categorical Data Analysis; Chaos and Complexity; Factor Analysis and Principal-Components Analysis; Geographically Weighted Regression; Hypothesis Testing; Markov Chain Analysis; Modifiable Areal Unit Problem; Monte Carlo Simulation; Neighborhood Effects; Point Pattern Analysis; Q Method/ Analysis; Quantitative Methodologies; Regression, Linear and Nonlinear; Sampling; Segregation Indices; Spatial Autocorrelation; Spatial Data Mining, Cluster and Pattern Recognition; Spatial Data Mining, Geovisualization; Spatial Filtering/Kernel Density Estimation; Spatial Interaction Models; Statistics, Descriptive; Statistics, Inferential.

Further Reading Bailey, T. C. and Gattrell, A. C. (1995). Interactive Spatial Data Analysis. Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman.

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Birkin, M., Clarke, G. and Clarke, M. (2002). Retail Geography and Intelligent Network Planning. Chichester: John Wiley. Dorling, D. and Simpson, S. (eds.) (1999). Statistics in Society: The Arithmetic of Politics. London: Arnold. Fotheringham, A. S., Brunsdon, C. and Charlton, M. (2000). Quantitative Geography: Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis. London: Sage Publications. Haining, R. (2003). Spatial Data Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hair, J. F., Black, B., Babin, B. and Anderson, R. (2007). Multivariate Data Analysis (6th edn.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Johnston, R. J. (1978). Multivariate Statistical Analysis in Geography: A Primer on the General Linear Model. London: Longman. O’Brien, L. (1992). Introducing Quantitative Geography: Measurement, Methods and Generalised Linear Models. London: Routledge. Robinson, G. M. (1998). Methods and Techniques in Human Geography. Chichester: John Wiley. Rogerson, P. A. (2006). Statistical Methods for Geography: A Student’s Guide (2nd edn.). London: Sage Publications. Romesburg, C. (2004). Cluster Analysis for Researchers. Morrisville, NC: Lulu.com. Roy, J. R. (2004). Spatial Interaction Modelling: A Regional Science Context. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Thomas, R. W. and Huggett, R. J. (1980). Modelling in Geography: A Mathematical Approach. London: Harper and Row. Walford, N. S. (1995). Geographical Data Analysis. Chichester: John Wiley. Wheeler, D., Shaw, G. and Barr, S. (2004). Statistical Techniques in Geographical Analysis. London: David Fulton Publishers. Wilson, A. G. (2000). Complex Spatial Systems: The Modelling Foundations of Urban and Regional Analysis. Harlow: Prentice Hall.

Relevant Websites http://www.geoda.uiuc.edu GeoDa: an introduction to spatial data analysis, developed at the Spatial Data Analysis Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana Champlain, Illinois. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu Inter University Consortium for Political and Social Research: CrimeStat spatial statistics program for analysis of crime incident locations, National Institute of Justice, Washington, DC. http://www.office.microsoft.com Microsoft Office Excel: a spreadsheet application containing statistical facilities. http://www.minitlab.com Minitab statistical software originally developed at Pennsylvania State University. http://www.nag.co.uk Numerical Algorithms Group: GLIM, a generalized linear interactive modeling package developed by a working party of the Royal Statistical Society, London. http://www.sas.com SAS statistical analysis software. http://www.spss.com SPSS statistical package for the social sciences, first released in 1968. http://www.mrc bsu.cam.ac WinBUGS statistical software developed by Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Statistics, Spatial D. J. Unwin, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Centrography The name given to early methods that attempted to describe patterns in point event data. Complete Spatial Randomness (CSR) The benchmark process used in much spatial statistical analysis. Event Data Data that locate a point object or occurrence simply by its spatial location. Field, Field Data In geographic information science it is used to denote a spatially continuous variable, such as air temperature, which has a value everywhere. First-Order Variation Variation in the density of events that results from variation in some background control. Joins Counts A test for spatial autocorrelation (q.v.) based on counts of the number of joins in a binary (0/1, black/white, here/not here) indicator variable collected over an area lattice. k-Color Map A map of some qualitative attribute or attributes using different colors to represent each type of entity recognized, for example, a map of land use. Lattice Data Data that refer to discrete areas such as counties, countries, and other census enumeration districts. Local Statistics A relatively recent development in which almost any standard statistic is calculated for a small region (the kernel) around the place of interest and then mapped to show where there is spatial variation that might be of interest. Mean Center A centrographic (q.v.) measure of the middle of a pattern of point events. Modifiable Areal Unit Problem The problem that arises in the analysis of lattice data when it is almost always the case that any results are conditional on the often arbitrary choice of spatial units used. Quadrat Analysis A method for the analysis of point event data based on counts of the numbers in small subregions known as quadrats. Scatter Plot, Moran A plot of the value for a zone in a lattice against the average of its neighbors used to identify locally unusual observations. Second-Order Variation Differences in the spatial density of point events that result from some form of interaction between them such as attraction or repulsion. Standard Distance A centrographic measure of the dispersion of point events around their mean center.

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Introduction: Motivations and Justifications The term spatial statistics refers to the application of statistical concepts and methods to data that have a spatial location attached to them, and in which this lo cational element is used as an important and necessary part of the analysis. Typically such analysis is descriptive and exploratory, but it might also use the full power of statistical theory to test and/or calibrate models of the spatial processes held to be operating. The term spatial analysis is sometimes used to cover this approach togeth er with deterministic, mathematical procedures applied to location data as in optimal facility location, area coverage problems, the traveling salesman problem, and so on. This article addresses only those spatial analytical methods that rely upon statistical concepts and logic. At first sight, classical statistical analysis, which is used to infer properties of whole populations of objects from suitable samples or to calibrate models of how the objects of interest are thought to behave, might seem to have little relevance to geography. After all, if we have a map showing the entirety of some unique phenomenon, what is the meaning of statements about, for example, the population mean of these data? Similarly, geographic theory is seldom sufficiently well found to allow for easy model formulation and the almost ubiquitous presence of spatial autocorrelation makes any calibration using con ventional methods at best hazardous. The key concept in the statistical analysis of any spatial data is to regard them, and the map patterns they create, as an outcome, or realization, of a spatial sto chastic (random) process. In this interpretation any single mapped ‘geography’ is regarded as but one of a set of possible outcomes of some hypothesized process that it self creates some spatial differentiation. Typically, but again not always, the benchmark process used is one that has no geography inherent in it, called complete spatial randomness (CSR). Spatial statistical analysis is used to determine how unusual any mapped pattern is relative to this standard. A process that is CSR makes two as sumptions. First, it is assumed that everywhere in the study region has the same chance of having a given property; this is the assumption of equal probability. Second, it is assumed that there are no dependencies between places; this is the property of independence. If our Earth had a human or physical geography that was truly CSR, not only would it be a very strange place, geography as we know it – including this volume – would

Statistics, Spatial

have absolutely no interest whatsoever. Only when there are departures from CSR can we speak of there being any geography of interest. Departures from CSR are the result of two general types of variation, referred to as first or second order, and these occur when one or other assumption is relaxed. These variational effects are best understood by reference to a pattern of individual point ‘events’ making up a simple dot map, such as the distribution of cases of a disease. First, variations in the receptiveness of different parts of the study area may mean that the assumption of equal probability cannot be upheld. For example, points representing the individual cases of the disease will cluster in more densely populated areas that are more likely to have infected persons in them. Thus, we have a process that takes place in space, but does not contain within itself any explicit spatial ordering. The results show variation of the first order. Second, it may also be that the second assumption, that event placements are independent of each other, cannot be sustained. For example, some pro cesses involve aggregation or clustering, where the oc currence of one event, such as the existence of somebody with an infectious disease, at a particular location in creases the probability of other events being located nearby. The resulting pattern will be more aggregated/ clustered than random. Alternatively, if the existence of an event at one place makes it less likely that other events cluster around it, this gives a tendency toward uniformity of spacing. An example might be the distribution of market towns, each of which for its survival requires a hinterland of some minimum area that does not contain a similar town. In both cases we have a process that is not simply taking place in space, but is a truly spatial process that will create a pattern even if the study region is itself homo geneous. The result is second order variation. Processes that combine both sources of variation can also be envis aged and are a common occurrence. A major weakness of any spatial statistical analysis is that observation of just a single realization of a process, for example, a simple dot map, is almost never sufficient to decide which of these effects is operating. Departures from CSR can be detected using a variety of statistical tests, but it will almost always be impossible to say whether this is due to variations in the environment (first order) or to interactions between point events (second order). It is, however, in the very nature of geography, formalized by many under the name of Tobler’s law, or as the so called first law of geography, that spatial processes are never CSR, which in turn means that both first and second order variation are common. If we have a map that seems to show some pattern, it is natural to want to explore further and characterize this pattern using descriptive statistics. A great many spatial statistics have been assembled to deal with point ‘event’ data, ‘flow’ information through a network of linear

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objects, ‘lattice’ or area data, and what is often called ‘geostatistical’ data resulting from the sampling of a continuous ‘field’ of data such as the earth surface relief or the pattern of temperatures across a city.

Methods for Event Data With a dot map showing a distribution of some defined features, called the ‘events’, such as specific landforms, factories, or shops, it is natural to attempt to characterize the pattern that the dots create. The first approach, called centrography, attempted to define the ‘center’ of such a distribution by quantities such as the mean center, me dian center, and point of minimum aggregate travel. The spread around such a center was measured using a spatial equivalent of the univariate standard deviation called the standard distance. These measures remain useful for tracking the change in a point pattern over time, or for comparing the distributions of different phenomena, but they do not allow inferences about either first or second variation in the pattern, which is tackled in a number of ways. The simplest density based approach, called quadrat analysis, uses a fixed grid of small areas that completely covers the study region and counts of the number of grid squares, or quadrats, into which fall 1, 2, y, n events. In effect this is a map of the spatial variation in point event density. Alternatively, and by analogy with a standard field technique in ecology, use is made of a small quadrat thrown randomly and repeatedly onto the pattern of events to provide the same counts. Either way, the frequency distri bution of numbers, called a quadrat count, provides some guidance as to the nature of the pattern. Nowadays, with increased computer power, similar maps of the spatial variation in the spatial density are created using varieties of kernel density estimation. In this a spatial window, or ker nel, is passed over the entire area visiting every possible place in turn to generate an estimate of the event density at that place. The result is a spatially continuous surface of density estimates that can be contoured, much as one would a surface of ground altitude. Locally high values of the spatial density are revealed as peaks on this surface and indicate the locations of clusters of events. Several vari ations on this basic theme are possible, and the method has rapidly gone from research frontier to being a standard GIS visualization technique. As an alternative, patterns of events are also charac terized using methods based on the between point dis tances, of which the mean and standard deviation of the distribution of distances to the nearest neighbor of each and every point event was the first to be used in 1954 by Clark and Evans as an indicator in ecological popu lations. Over the subsequent half century, their so called R index of randomness has been much used and abused.

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Statistics, Spatial

More recent work now uses a series of plots of the cu mulative frequency distribution of various distances. All are more informative than the simple approach using the mean distance to nearest neighbor, but to date there have been surprisingly few sustained examples of their appli cation in substantive studies. The simplest, the G(d ) function, shows the cumulative distribution of the nearest neighbor distances as a function of distance. Rather more complex, the F(d ) function finds the nearest neighbor distances to actual events in the pattern from a series of randomly located locations in the same study region. At some cost in additional computation, the K(d ) function uses concentric circles of radius d placed at each of the events in the pattern and counts the number of other events falling into each. The plot of the mean density for each circle radius, d, against distance gives the function. Note that all of these approaches to a greater or lesser extent sensitive to edge effects at the boundaries of the usually arbitrary study regions selected. All the above methods provide summary statistics that in some sense characterize the pattern of events. More formal spatial statistical analysis tries to determine whether or not they are typical or unexpected relative to a specified stat istical model. As noted above, most work uses CSR as its testing benchmark. It is relatively easy to derive the ex pected distributions generated by the assumptions CSR for the various summary statistics, and thus to assign a prob ability to any observed pattern under this hypothesis. In biology, astronomy, and some experimental sciences, this kind of spatial analysis can be conducted using more real istic process models that modify the basic assumptions, but in geospatial problems this has only seldom been attempted and there are severe analytical problems in differentiating between possible, but competing, models. First, there is an inherent circularity in using a map pattern to estimate key model parameters at the same time as using these self same data to validate that model. Second, although capable of discriminating between CSR and first /second order ef fects, with the available data these methods often are in capable of discriminating between otherwise similar, but alternative process models. Finally, with the exception of kernel density estimation and some recent experiments using agent based approaches, none of these methods dir ectly tackle the problem of cluster detection, determining where significant clusters occur, which is frequently uppermost in practical point pattern analysis in disciplines such as epidemiology and criminology. Event data are extremely common in human geog raphy and such data have been increasingly available through our present use of post code and similar lo cational systems as a rough spatial point coordinate. Nowadays, methods such as kernel density estimation and plot of the various functions of distance outlined above are routine in, for example, spatial epidemiology, retailing, geodemographics and crime pattern analysis.

Methods for Flows in Networks Geographic objects such as roads, railways, or river channels are often linear in nature. In practice, the spatial analysis of such line data most frequently represents them as topological graphs in which the networks under study are summarized by matrices in which rows and columns represent ‘nodes’ (sources or junctions) and the 0/1 entries record whether or not a link is present. At only a slightly higher level of sophistication, the 0/1 can be replaced by entries that represent some measure of distance, flow, or other interaction, between the nodes. An interesting example of this topological representation of line objects that emphasizes connection rather than pure distance is provided by Henry Beck’s justly famous 1933 visualization of the London Underground. In network analysis a basic distinction can be made between studies that describe the pattern of connection per se, and those that in some sense take the network as given and analyze the pattern of flows through it. Interest in the structure networks per se developed from work in geology where the interest lay in the characterization of natural stream networks for use in hydrological fore casting. Analysis was based on the idea of treating the tree like networks created by river channels as topo logical graphs, within which individual streams could be labeled by their position in the graph as ‘1st, 2nd, y, nth order’. The descriptive regularities that emerged were collectively known as Horton’s laws of stream com position. In fact, as numerous workers have shown, these descriptive laws seem to be a general property of more or less all similar tree like natural structures, including the branching of real trees. Similarly, when judged against simple models of random junction formation, the ob served patterns have been found to be extremely com mon realizations. More generally still, networks with closed loops within them have been analyzed using methods from standard network analysis, for example, to compute the shortest path from one network node to another. A well known, but hard to solve, example from algorithmics is traveling salesman problem, but there are many others, including the consequences of the so called ‘small world’ phenomenon. Describing the structure of geographical networks in this way draws attention to the fact that the network is a very general data structure that is encountered in many other, nonspatial, contexts and this is a field that has developed greatly in recent years.

Methods for Lattice Data Area, or ‘lattice’, objects are of three basic types. First, they can arise naturally, as for example the area of a lake, or forest stand. Second, they also arise as imposed and es sentially arbitrary regions created by human agencies, such

455

Statistics, Spatial

as census enumeration districts, counties, and countries. In both cases when they are coded into GIS, the term polygon is often used to characterize such data. Third, they are often created by investigators, or the sensors that have been used, as some sort of regular space filling tes sellation of the area of interest such as a grid of squares or hexagons. In a GIS, these are usually referred to as a raster of data. Any data collected for these second and third types of lattice, even the appearance of any maps that are drawn using them, are conditional on the boundaries chosen: this is the crux of the so called modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP). In dealing with lattice data, interest focuses on the attribute values assigned to the lattice and not on the patterning of the zones themselves which is known and assumed to be unchanging. The ob jectives of any spatial statistical analysis are to understand the spatial arrangement of these attribute values, detect patterns in them, and to examine any relationships among a set of attributes measured over the same lattice, while at the same time allowing for any spatial effects that might be present. The attribute values assigned to any lattice can also show considerable variety. Sometimes these values are simple categorical assignments that refer to the whole of each area, such as lake/dry land, a land use category, or labor/conservative/liberal voting. Such data are usually visualized using distinct color shading to give what have been called k color maps, where k is the number of colors (categories) used. Notice that these attributes are not themselves a function of the physical area of the zones to which they relate. Alternatively, the numbers might be interval or ratio scaled counts, such as the populations of the areas, which arise as aggregates that are clearly themselves functions of the spatial areas to which they refer. It is vital to note the consequences of the MAUP for such data; they are inevitably related to the sizes of the areas used, such that in both mapping and analysis it is usual and sensible to standardize them in some way, by creating an areal density (population per square kilo meter) or other population ratio (% of zone population with some property or other). As with patterns of point events, a number of statistical descriptors of the pat terning in area objects have been developed and used. Again the objective is usually to detect and describe departures from CSR in the numerical values assigned to these areas, the phenomenon known as spatial auto correlation. It cannot be stressed too highly that, in addition to the MAUP and unless it is explicitly in corporated into the analysis, the almost ubiquitous presence of spatial autocorrelation in lattice data will have potentially serious implications for the results of almost any statistical analysis applied to such data. The simplest test for spatial autocorrelation is a two dimensional analog of the Runs Test in serial data used for situations in which the areas have been coded into two

states, black (B) or white (W), according to the presence or absence of some property to give a two color map. In the Joins Count test for spatial autocorrelation, the numbers of joins of different types (B/B, W/W, and B/W) across area borders are compared to those that would be expected under the hypothesis of random coloring. For interval and ratio scaled attributes, testing for spatial autocorrelation uses two statistics, called Moran’s I and Geary’s contiguity ratio, C. Of these Moran’s I, a simple translation of the standard nonspatial correlation coefficient, is the most popular. It is worth examining its composition in full: "

n I ¼ Pn ðy i 1 i

# yÞ2

"Pn Pn i 1

j 1 wij ðyi P n Pn i 1 j 1

yÞðyj

yÞ

#

wij

The important part of the calculation is the second fraction whose numerator is n X n X

wij ðyi

yÞðyj

yÞ

i 1 j 1

This is a covariance. The subscripts i and j refer to dif ferent areal units or zones in the study, and y is the data value in each. By calculating the product of two zones’ differences from the overall mean ðy¯Þ, this quantity provides a measure of the extent to which they co vary. These covariance terms are multiplied by wij . This is an element from a weights matrix W, which switches each possible covariance term on or off depending on whether we wish to use it in the determination of I. In the simplest case, wij ¼ 1 if zone i and zone j are adjacent, otherwise wij ¼ 0, so that W is an adjacency matrix for the study region. The rest normalizes the value of I relative to the number of zones being considered, the number of adja cencies in the problem, and the range of values in y. The divisor SSwij accounts for the number of joins in the map. The multiplier Pn

n

i 1 ðyi

yÞ2

is actually a division by the overall dataset variance, which ensures that I is not large simply because the values and variability in y are high. As for a conventional, nonspatial correlation coefficient, a positive value indi cates a positive autocorrelation, and a negative value a negative or inverse correlation. The value is not strictly in the range 1 to þ 1, although there is a simple correction that can be made to scale it appropriately. Geary’s C is formulated in a similar way, but instead of using the covariance between zones it is based on the squared differences in adjacent zone values.

456

Statistics, Spatial

As with point pattern analysis, these measures can be used at the global level in formal statistical hypothesis tests in which the entire mapped pattern is tested against an independent random model. Such tests are an essen tial first step, if only to prevent the eye/brain asserting that some pattern exists when there is no objective evi dence for this. As with commonly used measures in point pattern analysis, they do not identify where over the entire study region such patterning is prevalent. How ever, recent work has moved away from this use as global measures and concentrated more on their utility as what are called local indicators of spatial association (LISA). For example, plots of individual zone scores relative to the average of their surrounding zones, called Moran scatter plots, provide a rapid exploratory method of identifying zones that are unusually high or low in value relative to their immediate surroundings. For reasons to do with the need to protect individual privacy, aggregated lattice data are extremely common in human geography are possibly the most used and abused of all data types, particularly in any work involving population and related census data.

Methods for ‘Geostatistical’ Data The major characteristics of field (surface or geostatis tical) data are those of spatial continuity, whereby everywhere has an associated value, and thus also self definition. A familiar example is the relief of the earth’s surface, but many other scalar quantities, such as tem perature or the mean annual rainfall, are also represented as fields. The property of continuity means that in almost all non earth surface relief examples we can never rep resent fields in their entirety and must rely on some data recording scheme that in some sense samples the field as a pattern of discrete, exact values. Examples include spot heights, contour lines, local or global mathematical functions that give the field height, z, as a function of the spatial location (x, y), or a regular grid of exact point values in a digital elevation matrix (DEM). Such fields can be visualized in many ways, but, since the nineteenth century the most common approach has used contours, or, more generally, isolines that plot the locus of points that have the same z values. Note again that it is only possible to draw such maps and analyze these data be cause the phenomena under investigation exhibit spatial autocorrelation. Possibly the simplest statistical approach to the anal ysis of geostatistical data uses a variation of standard multiple linear regression to calibrate models that ex press the field height, z, as some function of its position: z ¼ f ðx; yÞ

Since it is almost never the case that such a function would exactly honor all the data, the surface predicted by any such function is called a trend surface. There is a separate entry that deals in more detail with this approach. Numerous methods have been used to interpolate from a discrete sample of heights of the field into the ‘unknowable’ spaces between them. The geostatistical approach estimates for the field height at un sampled locations using a simple weighted sum of the surrounding sampled values: zˆj ¼

m X

wij zi

i 1

but informs the choice of weights and neighborhood by computation and modelling of a so called experimental semi variogram, estimated from the sample data as 2ˆgðd Þ ¼

1 X ðzi nðdÞ dii d

zj Þ2

The experimental semi variogram, g(d ), is thus a func tion of distance, d, based on the average sum of squared differences in attribute values for all pairs of control points that are a distance d apart. The number of pair of points at separation d is n(d ). Note that although tech nically this is the semi variogram and the quantities are the semi variances, in the literature and where the con text makes it obvious, these terms are often shortened to ‘variogram’ and ‘variance’. It is also worth noting the similarity between this measure and Geary’s C measure of spatial autocorrelation. In essence, the semi variogram is an application of exactly the same idea to geostatistical data, with the additional provision that we wish to esti mate its value at a series of distances. Numerous models for the semi variogram have been proposed, as have a variety of methods of fitting such models to the experi mentally determined one. Figure 1 shows one of the most common, which is the spherical model, defined as gðd Þ ¼ c0 þ c1

3d 2a

3 ! d 0:5 a

The important property of this type of model is that it specifies a continuous function that can be used to esti mate the semi variance at any distance, d. Provided we have the correct model for the experimental semi variogram, ordinary kriging solves a system of linear equations to provide values of the field height that are in some sense optimal. There are other forms of kriging that make different assumptions about the underlying surface and the nature of the data used. Universal kriging is used when there is drift in the mean height of the field. In dicator kriging is used where the field variable is a binary,

Statistics, Spatial

457

available toolkit of methods has been expanded greatly. Although many contemporary human geography theo reticians may think otherwise, the plain fact is that there is now much greater use of these methods in research than at any time during the entire history of academic geography.

(d )

sill, c0 + c1

See also: Kriging and Variogram Models; Quantitative Revolution.

c1

Further Reading Nugget, c0

range, a Distance, d

Figure 1 A typical fitted variogram.

0/1, indicator. Disjunctive kriging gives the probability of exceeding a predefined threshold z value and co kriging extends the analysis to two or more variables considered at the same time. Although introduced primarily as a way of inter polating geostatistical data, readers should be aware that there is a rich theory associated with this method of analysis. This has been developed mostly by applied statisticians and it finds major application in the mineral exploration industry and environmental science. Appli cations in human geography are rare, but many GIS now offer geostatistical analysis options, and there is a great deal of public domain software, such as GSLIB, that implements and extends these basic notions.

Conclusion Spatial statistical analysis was introduced into human geography during the so called quantitative revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. At that time computational facilities were primitive and data were generally scarce. What was also often unappreciated was that appropriate methods for spatial data simply had not been developed, with the result that many reported applications lacked a sound basis in statistical theory. One consequence has been the total rejection of this approach by many human geog raphers working in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet, as the above review shows, our understanding of the problems asso ciated with the statistical analysis of spatial data has developed greatly. Similarly, stimulated by the emer gence of GIS and the discovery by other numerate dis ciplines that geographical location actually ‘matters’, the

Anselin, L. (1995). Local indicators of spatial association: LISA. Geographical Analysis 27, 93 115. Bailey, T. C. and Gatrell, A. C. (1995). Interactive Spatial Data Analysis. Harlow: Longman. Chiles, J. P. and Delfiner, P. (1999). Geostatistics: Modeling Spatial Uncertainty. New York: Wiley. Clark, P. J. and Evans, F. C. (1954). Distance to nearest neighbour as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology 35, 445 453. Cressie, N. (1993). Statistics for Spatial Data, revised edn. New York: Wiley. Deutsch, C. V. and Journel, A. G. (1997). GSLIB: Geostatistical Software Library and User’s Guide (2nd edn.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Diggle, P. (1983). Statistical Analysis of Spatial Point Patterns. London: Academic Press. Fotheringham, S., Brunsdon, C. and Charlton, M. (1999). Quantitative Geography: Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis. London: Sage. Gatrell, A. C., Bailey, T. C., Diggle, P. J. and Rowlingson, B. S. (1996). Spatial point pattern analysis and its application in geographical epidemiology. Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, NS 21, 256 274. Haining, R. (2003). Spatial Data Analysis: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harel, D. (2000). Computers Ltd. What They Really Can’t Do. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Openshaw, S., Charlton, M., Wymer, C. and Craft, A. (1987). Developing a Mark 1 geographical analysis machine for the automated analysis of point data sets. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems 1, 335 358. O’Sullivan, D. and Unwin, D. J. (2003). Geographic Information Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Watts, D. J. (1999). Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Webster, R. and Oliver, M. (2001). Geostatistics for Environmental Scientists. Chichester: Wiley.

Relevant Websites http://www.csiss.org Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu CrimeSatsIII(version 3.1), ICPSR. http://www.spatialanalysisonline.com Geospatial Analysis Spatial and GIS Analysis Techniques and GIS Software. http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis.

Storper, M. P. Sunley, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Flexible Specialization An economic system in which districts of specialized and complementary small firms respond rapidly to changes in demand. Relational Assets Networked and collaborative relationships between economic actors which act as forms of social capital and are beneficial for economic activity. Technological Trajectories Routes of technological change that follow a course channeled by collective and incremental learning and past experience. Untraded Interdependencies Relationships between economic actors that are not market contracts and actions, and which increase the capabilities of these actors. Worlds of Production Varieties of industrial production system defined by differing conventions and common understandings, and hence different types of economic behavior.

Storper, Michael (1954–) US geographer Michael Storper was born in New York in 1954, and educated in sociology and history at Berkeley in the 1970s (Figure 1). A prolific and esteemed economic geographer, Storper’s international eminence is evidenced by the fact that he currently holds professorial posts at the London School of Economics, Sciences Po, Paris, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been a leading figure in the development of an institutionalist and relational approach to local and regional develop ment. At its core this approach has attempted to explain why regional and urban economies have proved to be, not just resilient but, resurgent entities in the context of the globalization and rapid falls in the costs of communi cation and transport. Indeed, he has argued that the principal challenge facing economic geography is to ex plain why regions and cities keep reemerging as sites of agglomerated economic growth in an integrating global economy. Storper describes the contemporary economic landscape as a complex mosaic created by the outcome of tensions between two forces; the dispersal of routine and standardized production operations and a set of agglom erative forces that causes production to concentrate in leading regions. His research mainly focuses on the latter. Storper’s earlier work combined a critique of political economy with an emphasis on the importance of flexible

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specialization. In particular he argued that Marxian pol itical economy provided a framework for analysis but was too conservative and unable to address micro scale and concrete issues and thus was unable to understand the geographical variability of capitalism and its radically changing nature. Much of his work has attempted to ad dress these more concrete issues by looking at the inter section of what he termed a ‘holy trinity’ of technology, organization, and territory. In addressing these concrete issues, Storper has drawn insights from institutional, evo lutionary economics, economic sociology, and the French school of economic conventions. His expertise and ori ginality lie in synthesizing these ideas and demonstrating how they explain the causes of industrial clustering and co location. There are several key themes in this work. One of the foundations of Storper’s work is the ar gument that industrialized economies have crossed a major divide from mass production to a post Fordist style of growth. Together with Allen Scott, Storper became a leading figure in the ‘Californian School’ of economic geography which emphasized the growth and significance of territorial complexes of small firms. Complexes of specialized but complementary firms benefit from econ omies of scope and are marked by positive feedback loops between agglomeration and vertical disintegration. In his account, film production in Hollywood and the demise of the large studios represent a paradigmatic case of this

Figure 1 Professor Michael Storper.

Storper, M.

change. While some initial explanations emphasized that co location lowered transaction costs, Storper argued that such explanations were insufficient as they were unable to distinguish economically dynamic regions and districts from those that were stagnant and locked in to outdated production methods. They therefore gave in sufficient attention to learning. A second theme in much of Storper’s writing has been the importance of technologically based product learning. Here he has argued that the most competitive technology districts are based on a strong form of competition based on selling products that are differentiated not so much by their price as by their quality. Thus the growth of intra industry trade has seen the appearance of districts that are spe cialized in particular types of product, so that, in Europe for example, trade integration is not leading to regional specialization by industry similar to that of the United States. Storper has explained some of the key character istics of product based technological learning and, in par ticular, he has argued that it is subject to increasing returns and that it shows path dependent, technological trajec tories. He suggests that when new technological trajectories emerge their location may be indeterminate so that there may be windows of locational opportunity. Storper’s key original contribution, however, lies in arguing that this technological learning is strongly shaped by apparently ‘noneconomic factors’ and untraded interdependencies. One of the most important theses in Storper’s work is that learning processes and knowledge creation and transfer are dependent on underlying conventions. He has argued that the key economic problem is one of co ordination between actors and that in the context of un certainty such coordination is dependent on the stabilization of conventions between actors. These are cognitive frameworks that increase the predictability of behavior and so allow collective action. High rates of re flexive learning depend on the presence of the appropriate conventions and relationships. These conventions are not the same in different types of production systems, how ever, but are seen to vary according to characteristics of the product. Together with Robert Salais, Storper dis tinguished four main types of industrial ‘worlds’ based on different types of conventions relating to whether products are generic or dedicated, specialized or standardized. Such worlds of production are realized in various combinations in different national and regional economies. Storper’s more generic argument that untraded inter dependencies are the key to successful and dynamic re gional economies has been highly influential. In essence, it argues that particular types of extramarkets relation ships are required in order to allow dynamic and reflexive learning in economic systems. For instance, dense face to face relationships generate trust between actors which allows the exchange of tacit knowledge. Storper’s inter pretation of urban buzz proposes that regular face to face

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contact is an efficient means of communicating complex knowledge, as well as a screening mechanism for judging the effort and commitment of others, and it also has a performative effect in motivating and stimulating others. Thus he argues that variations in face to face contact within interpersonal network can help to explain why some cities are more creative and dynamic than others. While these relational arguments have been seen as a move toward a more cultural approach to economic geography, Storper has also been highly critical of cul turalism and postmodernist relativism. He has argued, instead, for a humble and pragmatic type of modernist rationality. His work continues to search for some of the micro foundations of resurgent and emergent urban economies and has theorized the intersections of indi vidual preferences with urban structures. See also: City-Region; Globalization, Economic; Innovation; Learning Regions; Planning, Urban; Political Economy, Geographical.

Further Reading Reimer, S. (2004). Michael Storper. In Hubbard, P., Kitchin, R. & Valentine, G. (eds.) Key thinkers on space and place, pp 282 287. London: Sage Publications. Scott, A. J. and Storper, M. (2003). Regions, globalization, development. Regional Studies 37, 579 593. Storper, M. (1992). The limits to globalization: Technology districts and international trade. Economic Geography 68, 60 93. Storper, M. (1995). The resurgence of regional economies, ten years later. European Urban and Regional Studies 2, 191 221. Storper, M. (1996). Innovation as collective action: Conventions, products and technologies. Industrial and corporate change 5, 761 790. Storper, M. (1997). The regional world: Territorial development in a global economy. New York: The Guildford Press. Storper, M. (2003). Regional ‘worlds’ of production: Learning and innovation in the technology districts of France, Italy and the USA. Regional Studies 27, 433 455. Storper, M. and Christopherson, S. (1987). Flexible specialization and regional industrial agglomerations: The case of the US motion picture industry. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77, 104 117. Storper, M. and Salais, R. (1997). Worlds of production: The action frameworks of the economy. London: Harvard University Press. Storper, M., Chen, Y. C. and De Paolis, F. (2002). Trade and location in the location of industries in the OECD and European Union. Journal of Economic Geography 2, 73 107. Storper, M. and Venables, A. J. (2004). Buzz: Face to face contact and the urban economy. Journal of Economic Geography 4, 351 370. Storper, M. and Walker, R. (1989). The capitalist imperative: Territory, technology and industrial growth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Relevant Websites http://www.cso.edu/cv equipe.asp?per id=85 Centre de Sociologie des Organisations. http://www.spa.ucla.edu/dept.cfm?d=up&s= faculty&f=faculty1.cfm&id=257 UCLA School of Public Affairs, Department of Public Policy, Los Angeles.

Street Names and Iconography M. Azaryahu, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA & 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Glossary Commemoration The cultural production of the past in different media aimed at facilitating remembrance. Commemoration is a two-tiered process that involves both the representation of the past (content) and its presentation through different media (form). Commemoration in space includes media such as monuments, historic sites, street names and cemeteries. Semantic displacement The change of meaning that occurs when a historical street name becomes a geographical designation. As a result of semantic displacement, the geographic meaning of a street name take over while the historical meaning becomes increasingly obscure to most users of the city. Semiotics The study of signs and sign systems as modes of communciation. A semiotic analysis explores how signs facilitate the communication of meaning and how messages are encoded and decoded. City-text A system of commemorative features in the cityscape. Constantly written and rewritten, a city-text represents not only the past but also the commemorative priorities of former periods.

As a prerogative of elected or nominated authorities and affected by administrative and political agendas com peting for control over the public domain, naming streets is an expression of authority. Once affixed, street names belong to the structures of power. This becomes espe cially evident with the conventional use of street names for commemorative purposes. Following the example set by the French Revolution, commemorative street naming has become a widespread feature of modern political culture. At a practical level, street names distinguish between different streets, pro vide the users of the city with spatial orientation, and secure administrative control over the city. As a vehicle of commemoration, street names introduce official repre sentations of the ruling sociopolitical order and espe cially a canonized version of history into the cityscape and into social communication. Commemorative street names provide for the intersection of hegemonic ideo logical structures with the practices of everyday life. Potentially contested and possibly challenged, they con flate the discourse of history with the geography of the city and the politics of public memory.

Addressing History: The Politics of Commemorative Street (Re)Naming Introduction Place names combine geography and language, politics and culture, vernacular traditions and official policies, and contemporary ideologies and visions of history. The shaping or reshaping of sets of toponyms is a profound example of the connection between political and cultural processes. Ostensibly mundane and seemingly obvious, street names are actively involved in the spatial organization and semiotic construction of the city. Street names des ignate locations and pronounce certain thoroughfares as distinct urban units. They also conflate urban space and the symbolic realm of cultural signification. Geographical street names (of other cities, rivers, mountains, etc.) confer prestige or conjure romantic associations. When they serve commemorative function, place names and street names in particular are also employed and involved in the semiotic construction of history. Traditionally, street names were vernacular and des ignated either by geographical orientation or referred to a certain peculiarity associated with local topography and history. The modern practice of bestowing nonlocal names was introduced in Paris in the eighteenth century.

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Prominent squares and streets may commemorate polit ical abstractions or concepts such as President or King, Revolution, Republic, and Independence. Yet the vast majority of commemorative street names in the cityscape perpetuate the memory of historical figures and events found worthy of public honoring by the authorities in charge of street naming. Commemorative street names are a conventional element of the urban texture. Em bedded into language, they are constantly evoked in contexts that are commonly detached from the sphere of ideology and the realm of politics. In this semiotic cap acity they introduce an official version of history into mundane settings of everyday life. The significance of street names as historical com memorations becomes apparent when the political role of history, as both a version and interpretation of the past, is considered. On the one hand, political regimes and elites utilize history to legitimate their dominance and aug ment their authority. On the other hand, the sense of a shared past is crucial to the cultural viability and social cohesiveness of ethnic communities and nation states. Commemorative activities figure prominently during national revivals and stages of state formation by a


postcolonial or a revolutionary regime. Officially pro moted commemorations belong to the symbolic foun dations of modern statehood. In particular, street naming patterns reflect the needs of communities and regimes to assert ‘their’ vision of history in commemorative terms. In the late nineteenth century, Berlin street names com memorated the ruling Hohenzollern dynasty and Prus sian military victories. London had 11 Queen Streets and a dozen King Streets. However, since the late nineteenth century commemorating historical heroes and events by street names was not limited to celebrating dynastic glory only, but was increasingly associated with nation building measures and the efforts of political elites to cast national identity in the mold of a national history. The association of commemorative street names with nation building measures became paramount in the twentieth century in numerous cases of successful ethnic revivals and postcolonial state formations. The street names that appeared in Stockholm in the late nineteenth century, for instance, also commemorated Swedish na tional history. Introduced in, and expressive of, a stage of national revival, the street names of Tel Aviv represent a Zionist version of Jewish history. Street naming in post independence Singapore was one aspect of the attempt to mold a sense of national identity. Affixed in the early 1990s, the street names of Arab–Israeli cities governed by the Islamic front celebrated the glory of early Islamic history. Aware of the power of symbols as political statements, authoritarian regimes have utilized commemorative street names to consolidate and to legitimize their au thority. Street names in Nazi Germany celebrated a National–Socialist version of German history. The ex tensive use of street names (as well as names of ships, hospitals, schools, and towns) to commemorate Soviet leaders was a prominent feature of Soviet political culture. This practice was introduced after the death of Lenin in 1924, and reached extreme proportions in Stalin’s cult of personality. As long as the communist regimes of Eastern Europe were in power, the street names of communist cities represented an ideologically correct version of na tional history that corresponded to the officially promoted Marxist–Leninist interpretation of history. Socially constructed and culturally formatted, public memory is continuously reevaluated as the consequence of changes in cultural codes, social values, ideological premises, and political power relations. In an open soci ety, where public debate is the norm, commemoration of persons and events is potentially controversial. A case in point is the controversies over the commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. in the American South, where issues pertaining to evaluation of historical greatness and the scaling of memory in terms of selecting an appro priate street to be named after King have figured prominently.

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The intentions of national and local elites and the popular support for these elites notwithstanding, chal lenging the legitimacy of certain names as well as the historical traditions they represent belongs in the politics of commemorative street naming. Where political op position is legitimate, the rejection of commemorative names becomes part of public debate. In the late 1980s, a campaign was waged in West Berlin against street names that commemorated the colonial past of the German Empire. Though this campaign targeted specific street names, it provided a focal point for public discussion on a fundamental issue: what constitutes German historical heritage? The influence of political majorities in the city council is evident in the city’s commemorative traditions. Former communist majorities are still reflected in the street names of Parisian suburbs and Italian towns. A pertinent issue is how a change of local administration impacts on the existing register of commemorations. This is especially relevant when the commemorative priorities of the new adminis tration differ from those practiced by its predecessors. When continuity and stability are considered a priority, a possible solution is the commemorative naming of streets in newly built neighborhoods in order to compensate for al leged or real past commemorative deficiencies. That commemorative street names belong to the symbolic foundations of the ruling sociopolitical order makes them, together with other symbolic expressions of power, vulnerable to changes in the course of a revo lutionary phase of national history. As a measure of historical revision, renaming streets in the context of a regime change recasts the presentation of history in a modified commemorative mold. Renaming the past is a twofold procedure: first comes the decommemoration of persons and events associated with the old regime, fol lowed by commemorating the heroes and events that represent the new regime and its version of history in their stead. Renaming the past figured prominently in nineteenth century France. With the collapse of the imperial regime in France in 1814, rue Napoleon was renamed rue de la Paix. The renaming of streets figured prominently in Paris after the establishment of the Third Republic in 1870. The purge of Nazi street names in German and Austrian cities followed immediately after the surrender of the Third Reich in May 1945. In April and May of 1951, 159 streets in East Berlin were renamed in a well orchestrated renaming operation aimed at decom memorating the Prussian tradition from the street signs of the capital of the communist German Democratic Republic. In the Soviet Union, decommemorations indicated major political changes. The end of the Stalinist era in the Soviet Union, as well as in other East European communist states, was sealed in 1961 with the purge of

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Stalin from public memory, including the renaming of streets and cities and pulling down monuments. At the height of perestroika, the Central Committee of the Communist Party decided to strip Leonid Brezhnev of the public honors bestowed upon him after his death in 1982 and to rename a large square in Leningrad, toge ther with a famed Moscow suburb, and a city whose names perpetuated the memory of the former Soviet leader. Notwithstanding local differences, the cases of Moscow, Bucharest, Budapest, and East Berlin demon strate that renaming the past figured prominently in the transition from a communist to a post communist regime. In these cases, beyond decommemorating heroes of the communist state, the question was also whether and to what extent traditional names erased by the communist regime should be restored. Decommemorating the communist history was an aspect of the democratization of political life, which also meant debating issues per taining to public memory in the public arena. Relatively simple and comparatively cheap, renaming streets and other public spaces in the course of a regime change has an immediate effect on language and space. The transformation of the city’s political geography introduces the political change and the ideology of the new regime into mundane spheres of urban experience and even intimate levels of everyday life. As an assertion of discontinuity in the perception and experience of urban space, renaming streets is bound to produce a sense of dissonance and confusion among users of the city. When conducted in the context of a regime change, the commemorative street renaming, together with the more spectacular pulling down of monuments, is an act of substantial resonance since it communicates a powerful political message. Renaming streets asserts that a radical restructuring of power relations in society and an ideo logical reorientation have indeed been accomplished, or are under way.

Commemorative street naming demonstrates the ef fect that administrative political processes have on semiotic procedures. Though the authorities decide upon what should be commemorated and where, they can hardly regulate the different contexts in which the name is used, the extent and context of its evocation, or the responses to the past thus evoked. As the result of its commemoration, the past is a concrete semiotic reality rather than a platonic idea or a mere mental abstraction. A primary effect of commemoration is that the encounter with the past, that is, an authorized version of history, becomes an optional shared experience. Of course, the influence of such experiences and individual responses to them are to a large extent governed by preconditioned ideological dispositions and political attitudes, and are dependent upon the context in which the evocation of a particular name takes place. The main virtue of street names as a commemorative vehicle is that everybody uses them but hardly anyone pays attention to their specific historical meaning and to the fact that they belong to the structures of power. The encounter with a street name is casual. Unlike commemorative monuments, street signs do not induce pathos and are not charged with the sacred. On the other hand, the utilization of street names for commemorative purposes enables an official version of history to be incorporated into spheres of social and spatial practices of everyday life that seem to be totally detached from political contexts or communal ob ligations, and to be integrated into intimate realms of human interactions and activities. Street names are not intended to fulfill any cultic pur poses. They are intended to assert and to reaffirm the validity of the history they reify as a constituent of everyday life. Their power lies in their ability to make a version of history an inseparable element of reality as it is constantly constructed, experienced, and perceived on a daily basis. History is interwoven with daily life and thus gains the appearance of naturalness, a highly desirable effect in light of the function of history as a legitimating factor.

The Power of Commemorative Street Names

Semantic Displacements

Spatial commemorations formulate memory and history in terms of geographical knowledge: when invested with commemorative functions, monuments and street names are constitutive elements of particular geographies of public memory and a culturally shared vision of history. Spatial commemorations merge the commemorated version of history with the landscape. The effect of this is twofold. On the one hand, the landscape is invested with culturally shared symbolic meanings. On the other, the commemorated past is reified by its integration into the physical environment and its subsequent identification with what is considered the natural order.

The name given to a street also invests the street with the official meaning assigned to the particular historical referent. However, the meanings of a street name, an chored as they are in reputations, mythologies, images, and sociospatial practices, are dynamic. Though often determined by personal experiences, they may further be differentiated according to social, ethnic, gender, and generational divisions. This notwithstanding, the im portance of the official name is paramount. Contested as it may be politically, and despite the inherent instability of its meanings in the course of time and for different audiences, the official name provides a fixed point of


reference in the official geography of the city and, in most cases, also in its folk geography. The official meaning originally assigned to the name, in its capacity as a his torical referent, figures prominently throughout the naming procedure and dominates the decision making process that leads to the particular commemoration. The semiotic operation of commemorative street names is based upon semantic displacements that dis connect the meaning of the name from its original his torical referent without, however, denying the existence of such a referent. The success of commemoration by means of a street name becomes evident in how the name loses its historical meaning and becomes a geographical designation, and as such an integral part of the language of the urban landscape. The history behind the name is known to only the few who are familiar with the com memorated history. Semantic displacement is an inevit able aspect of the history of street names. The official commemoration refers to the history represented by the name. However, with the passage of time the name be comes increasingly entangled in the meanings assigned to it as a result of the geographical context of its use, and the name increasingly becomes associated with a location; history becomes geography, and in this geographical capacity it is integrated into narratives of the city. When names are transported from history to geography, they become susceptible to sharing the fortunes of places. When obscure streets gain in urban significance, their namesake heroes gain in prominence and fame. The op posite is also true – when famous heroes are associated with the reputation of notorious slums or derelict neighborhoods. In a few cases, a street name – in its capacity as a geographical designation – also becomes a metaphor for a social milieu, cultural phenomena, modes of behavior, and a certain way of life that, at least in their early evolution, were connected with the location. The geographical designation provides the appearance of a specificity and objectivity and solidifies a set of human activities and notions about these activities into a powerful cultural reference that transcends the physical location itself. Dizengoff Street, a central thoroughfare in Tel Aviv, is named after the first mayor of the city whose foundation and development was considered a major achievement of the Zionist enterprise. In Israeli popular culture, the ac tivities centered upon the smart shops and coffee shops on Dizengoff Street, in the 1950s, introduced and featured values of a new consumption and leisure culture in Israel. The type of activities associated with the street provided a model of a new urban experience, for which Dizengoff Street became a celebrated cultural metonym.

Reading History: City-Text The spatial configuration of commemorative street names in a city defines a particular city text as a semiotic

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feature of the city that presents a particular mapping of space and time. Constantly written and eventually overwritten, city texts are the sum of additions and erasures. Writing a city text is a prolonged process that conflates urban developments, ideological considerations, and political contingencies. As a particular geography of public memory, a city text represents not only a version of history but also commemorative priorities and hege monic discourses in different periods. Reading street signs or referring to street names, as is practiced repeatedly in the context of everyday life, mainly involves their practical function as markers of location rather than their commemorative function. Moreover, a city text is not intended to be read as an entirety, and its eventual reading as a text does not in volve any obligation to a prescribed order. In principle, a city text is a spatially configured register of historical figures and events. It is a disorderly representation of history rather than a coherent historical account. How ever, the semiotic structure of a city text offers a measure of historical analysis that is pertinent to reading a city text. The correspondence between the significance as signed to a historical figure or event and the spatial status of its commemoration is a prominent feature of historical consciousness. The semiotic structure of a city text provides a built in scale which enables the reader to determine the relative status of the commemorated events and heroes. The status hierarchy in an ideal type text is reflected through the configuration of elements in the urban fabric, for which the underlying rule is that the urban importance of a thoroughfare and the prestige of the associated commemoration are positively correlated, and that urban and historical significance conform to each other. In 1925, the republican authorities named a distinguished street in the historical center of the German capital after Friedrich Ebert, the Social Demo crat first president of the ill fated Weimar republic. The resolve of the authorities to accord Ebert an honorable commemoration was also manifest in the selection of an appropriate thoroughfare at the center of Berlin. Yet, deviations from this pattern often occur as the result of the combined effect of urban dynamics and reevaluations of historical significance. One problem is the evaluation of urban prestige. It seems obvious that, from an urban perspective, a central boulevard is more significant than a small lane on the margin of the city, and that the measure of public exposure of the first is much greater than that of the latter. The evaluation of urban prestige, however, also has to take into account the fact that different parameters may have contradictory effects on the production of prestige and status. A newly built highway may be of supreme importance from the point of view of transportation, yet the context in which its name is used is specific and may even reduce its appeal as a

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vehicle for commemoration in spite of the public ex posure it guarantees to the name. The fact that a city text is a product of a protracted historical process is a source of further distortions as regards reading a city text. The history of the text has a twofold effect. One is the reevaluation of the significance of historical figures and events, which is an indispensable element of a societal discourse of history. This process is independent of urban developments. The other is the effect of urban dynamics on the prestige of streets and neighborhoods, in general, which is independent of the academic and political discourse of history. Commemorations reflect prevailing notions of the period concerning the historical significance and great ness of events and persons, respectively. Unless renam ings were undertaken, a city text would conserve notions and priorities that prevailed in different stages of its emergence. The urban expansion of Berlin in the late nineteenth century and the tight control of the Prussian authorities produced a situation in which numerous streets of the former West Berlin further commemorated obscure Prussian generals and officials. Urban dynamics is a factor to be reckoned with whenever the relative status of commemorations is de duced from the significance of the thoroughfare in the urban fabric. An example is provided by the history of Herzl Street in Tel Aviv, where, as the result of the ex pansion of Tel Aviv to the North, the urban prestige of Herzl Street gradually diminished. The version of history represented in a city text is biased in favor of local history; this is evident in the names of local dignitaries, most notably mayors, and local events that are commemorated in the street signs. The recurrence of particular commemorations in different city texts is a measure of the historical significance as signed to them. The popularity of a commemoration in different city texts that belong to the same national context is a marker of status and an indicator of repu tation. From the practice of street naming in France, it can be deduced that Jeanne d’Arc, Hugo, Pasteur, Jaure`s, Clemenceau, and Blum belong to the French national consensus, Napoleon and Richelieu are highly contested, while Danton, Robespierre, and Napoleon III – all salient protagonists of modern French history – have a bad reputation. In contrast to textbooks, which present both heroes and villains of history and an evaluation of their roles in national history, a city text mentions heroes and glorious events only. The guiding principle is that villains are not entitled to the place in eternity ostensibly guaranteed by commemorative street names. Hitler and Pe´tain are ab sent from contemporary German and French city texts, respectively, in spite of their paramount significance in twentieth century German and French history. The heroes/villains dichotomy becomes apparent when, as a

result of political changes and the reevaluation of history that follows, ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ change roles and eventually even their places on the street signs. After the establishment of a socialist–communist administration in Leipzig in 1945, the name of August Bebel, the founding father of German Social Democracy replaced that of Kaiser Wilhelm, his historical archrival, on the street signs of the Saxon metropolis. The spatial organization of street names does not produce any significant linear order, and the intersection of streets does not necessarily imply any temporal or thematic relationship between their names. Such inter sections, however, may suggest imaginary encounters that are sometimes weighed down with irony. For instance, the intersection of the Boulevard Voltaire with rue Saint Sebastien is ironic in the light of the notorious anticlerical disposition of the eighteenth century philosopher. A fundamental property of a city text is that it lacks a built in time arrow, and hence chronology. Historical figures and events coexist simultaneously, and one can not make a distinction between before and after. A city text does not provide its readers with a chronological narrative of history, but rather with an authorized index of a putative narrative. Notwithstanding the afore mentioned distortions that characterize the semiotic structure of this text, the similarity between the list of street names attached to a city map and the index of a history textbook is illuminating. The index of a city map is an exact reproduction of the city text as it mentions all the names that appear on the map. The alphabetical order of this index implies neither spatial nor temporal order, but is essential for using street names as geo graphical designations that provide for spatial orien tation, which is, after all, considered to be their primary function.

Conclusion The growing interest in the critical study of street names reflects the understanding that they belong to the his torical and cultural geographies of urban landscapes and spaces and to the political geographies of public memory and historical heritage. Current studies direct attention to the role and performance of street names in the pol itical and administrative shaping of urban space. In par ticular, the analysis of the social context and ideological dimensions of commemorative naming procedures highlight the extent to which street names pertain to the societal discourses of national and local history.

See also: Art and Cartography; Landscape Iconography; Memorials and Monuments; Urban Morphology.


Further Reading Alderman, D. H. (2000). A street fit for a king: Naming places and commemoration in the American South. Professional Geographer 52(4), 672 684. Alderman, D. H. (2003). Street names and the scaling of memory: The politics of commemorating Martin Luther King, Jr. within the African American community. Area 35(2), 163 173. Azaryahu, M. (1986). Street names and political identity: The case of East Berlin. Journal of Contemporary History 21, 581 604. Azaryahu, M. (1996). The power of commemorative street names. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 14, 311 330. Azaryahu, M. (1997). German reunification and the politics of street names. The case of East Berlin. Political Geography 16(6), 479 493. Azaryahu, M. and Kook Doron, B. (2002). Mapping the nation. Street names and Arab Palestinian identity: Three case studies. Nations and Nationalism 8(2), 195 213. Gill, G. (2005). Changing symbols: The renovation of Moscow place names. The Russian Review 64, 480 503. Ferguson, P. (1988). Reading city streets. The French Review 61, 386 397.

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Foote, K., Toth, A. and Arvay, A. (2000). Hungary after 1989: Inscribing a new past on place. Geographical Review 90(3), 301 334. Holscher, S. and Alderman, D. H. (2004). Memory and place: Geographies of a critical relationship. Social & Cultural Geography 5(3), 347 355. Light, D. (2004). Street names in Bucharest, 1990 1997: Exploring the modern historical geographies of post socialist change. Journal of Historical Geography 30, 154 172. Light, D., Nicolae, I. and Suditu, B. (2002). Toponymy and the communist city: Street names in Bucharest, 1948 1965. GeoJournal 56, 135 144. Milo, D. (1986). Le nom des rues. In Nora, P. (ed.) Les lieux de memoire II: La nation, pp 28 315. Paris: Gallimard. Palonen, K. (1993). Reading street names politically. In Palonen, K. & Parvikko, T. (eds.) Reading the political: Exploring the margins of politics, pp 103 121. Tampere: The Finnish Political Science Association. Stump, R. W. (1988). Toponymic commemoration of national figures: The cases of Kennedy and King. Names 36(3 4), 203 216. Yeoh, B. S. (1996). Street naming and nation building: Toponymic inscriptions of nationhood in Singapore. Area 28(3), 298 307.

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